The Mass Effect 3 Breakdown (spoilers)

[NinjaDeathSlap]

27% of people saved the Quarians? That should probably read "27% of people weren't paying attention when it turned out that the Quarians were the bad guys in that conflict.".

Eh... The Quarians (most of them anyway), kind of deserved to get kicked off their home world in the first place. However, when you look at what's happened to them since, you wonder if maybe the Geth didn't do them such a kindness by sparing their lives.

Also, the Geth are far from guiltless. I don't care what the Quarians blew up, allying with the Reapers for self-preservation is a fucking daft move whatever way you try to slice it, especially when it involves using Reaper tech to imprison the only platform (Legion) with any kind of chance of opening a dialogue with the Quarians. Even Legion himself, the one who's supposed to be on your side, and no matter how many time you tell him you're on his, just will not stop lying to you! Hell, he's even forced to admit at one point that the Geth have really fucking screwed up.

Shepard: "How did we get here Legion? The Geth are better than this!"

Legion: "... No. Based on empirical evidence, we are not."

 

[AD-Stu]

The best way I've heard it put is that while Mark Meer can be pretty brick-like in his recitations, he improves throughout the series. Compare some of his ME1 lines with some ME3 lines and you'll see the difference. Jennifer Hale, on the other hand, stays at about the same level of quality throughout the series. She's better in ME1, about the same overall in ME2, and worse in ME3.

IMO Mark Meer actually got worse, then better. I found him OK to listen to in ME1, but in ME2 he had a heap of lines where his delivery just made me cringe. I thought he picked his game back up again and did a pretty good job on ME3 though.

This just proves that the target audience for ME3 weren't ME fans and RPG fans, but rather CoD fans. Why else would SO MANY players not meet Wrex and play with soldier class? There's nothing wrong with soldier class, don't get me wrong. But look at the statistics. If it didn't include casual shooter crowd you can bet the statistical difference between soldier and other classes wouldn't be that great.

How does the fact that people played the soldier class make the target audience CoD players? And..just for ME3? They didn't change anything for the classes in ME3 from the other games so Im not sure why it suddenly made the third game targeted at CoD players. If Bioware was targeting CoD players soldier would be the ONLY class. In fact, Bioware went out of their way to make all the other classes better in the sequels.

Whether or not the percentage of people who played as Soldier confirms it, and regardless of the fact that there was content in there for core RPG fans, it's undeniable that Bioware and EA were targeting the broader shooter market more and more as the series developed through ME2 to ME3.

It's not just CoD players that they were targeting - Battlefield players would actually have been the closer target, along with Gears of War fans. And they'd have been stupid NOT to target that market, since we core RPG fans were always going to buy the game regardless...

Also, while I didn't hate Vega, HE WAS MORE POPULAR THAN TALI?!?!

Again, it all depends what they're basing that on. But if it's on time spent in the party on missions then you can see why Tali ranks pretty low since she's not very useful in combat during ME3. She's possibly my favourite character in the series but I almost never took her on missions in ME3 (as opposed to ME1, where I took her all the time because her techspamming was godly).

It also didn't help that ME2 onwards greatly favored the more "gunplay-heavy" classes due to the changes in the combat engine. But again, that's just conjecture.

I actually think the reverse is true - from ME2 onwards, the changes to the combat engine made it legitimately possible to complete the game without having to use guns at all. That certainly wasn't the case in ME1, where the offensive powers weren't anywhere near as good AND ammo was unlimited.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

It's cute how they still want Mass Effect to be relevant, and you thought the fans were beating a dead horse.

Did they do this for the first two games?

 

[Gatx]

How the ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck did nearly half these people play as soldier? It's so dull!

Did you play it on PC? Because while using skills and stuff almost come as second nature to people who play RPGs on PC (using the number keys) but to use a variety of skills on a gamepad is harder. Yeah you can pause to freely select skills, but it's not as fun when you have to pause every couple seconds in the middle of combat to shoot off a stasis or singularity, especially when it plays like a third person shooter instead of, say, a JRPG.

 

[Kingjackl]

None of these are all that surprising. People are harping on James' popularity, but to me it makes sense. He's not a bad character, he's useful in combat and he's with you the longest. The Wrex thing makes sense as well. He'll only show up if you played ME1 or used the Genesis comic and his survival in both of those are optional as well.

Given the amount of people who play ManShep, it makes sense that Kaidan's popularity is so low. That doesn't make it a good thing - dude's infinitely superior to Ashley.

 

[Olas]

Vega is more popular than Tali? Give me a break.

10.7 billion, holy hell. That's like... more than one per person on earth.

 

[hazabaza1]

How the ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck did nearly half these people play as soldier? It's so dull!

Did you play it on PC? Because while using skills and stuff almost come as second nature to people who play RPGs on PC (using the number keys) but to use a variety of skills on a gamepad is harder. Yeah you can pause to freely select skills, but it's not as fun when you have to pause every couple seconds in the middle of combat to shoot off a stasis or singularity, especially when it plays like a third person shooter instead of, say, a JRPG.

First two on console, then played the trilogy on PC. Still only ever played as Soldier for like, a couple of hours on 360 to see how they played. I mained as a Vanguard and occasionally played Adept or Infiltrator.

 

[Captain Sunshine]

*Siiigh* I was one of the ones who didn't get Wrex. I started Mass Effect 1 and couldn't finish it, then jumped to Mass Effect 2 and loved every second, but I somehow got stuck with Wrex and Kaiden dead. Dangit.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

How did the people playing manshep stand it? His voice acting is soooooo bad next to femshep.

I can't stand femshep. She sounds pissed all the time.

As one of those atrocious, idiotic mouth-breathers who genuinely enjoys CoD and rates it as one of his most favorite games... no. Just... no. Saying that 'More people played the soldier class, therefore CoD appeal!' is like looking at the 4% Insanity statistic and going 'Look! Nobody finished the game on Insanity! Filthy modern gamers don't want challenging or hard games anymore!'.

I started playing ME1 as a Soldier not because 'Lol CoD', but because the Soldier was the default class and was focused more on weapons and tanking damage then using abilities strategically - so a great class to jump into a game I've never played before and therefore know nothing about it. Pretty much everyone I know who started playing Mass Effect 1/2/3 also started off with Soldier - because again, it's both the default class and a really good class to use when you're still learning the game.

So these figures don't provide evidence for the 'They were appealing to the CoD fanboys the entire time!' argument, instead showing that people either A) picked the default class, B) were recommended to pick it by their friends as it's an easy class to learn or C) genuinely enjoyed playing Soldier and kept the class via transferring. Coupled with people not playing through a second time after finishing the game with the soldier, the Soldier number is going to be way higher than everything else.

Look man. Read my post one more time. I just said that if the stats didn't include casual shooter crowd, the difference wouldn't be as great as it is. Maybe the soldier class would still be the most played class, but not by such a large margin. I played with a soldier class once as well to see what it's like. But it's not a secret that EA tried to appeal to the wider audience. And the widest fuckin' audience are shooter fans. Bioware even said that they want Call of Duty audience. Deal with it: http://www.nowgamer.com/news/919569/bioware_we_want_call_of_dutys_audience.html

 

[Zhukov]

This just proves that the target audience for ME3 weren't ME fans and RPG fans, but rather CoD fans. Why else would SO MANY players not meet Wrex and play with soldier class? There's nothing wrong with soldier class, don't get me wrong. But look at the statistics. If it didn't include casual shooter crowd you can bet the statistical difference between soldier and other classes wouldn't be that great.

My bullshit alarm just went off so hard that it broke.

The Wrex statistic is because having him dead is the default. The only way to meet him is with an import from the first game, taken through the second and into the third or by starting at the second game and using that Genesis comic save generator thing to save him.

That 64% is made up of:
- People who started at the third game.
- People who started at the second game.
- People who lost their save games (switched platforms, bricked consoles, deleted saves etc etc)
- People who chose not to import for whatever reason.
- People who didn't get the opportunity to save him (didn't do his little quest, didn't have enough charm/intimidate)
- People who just plain chose to kill him.

Given all that, I'm actually surprised that over a third of players got to meet him.

As for the class stats, it was similar in the first two games. You can search the for the stats yourself. (The actual stats from the game mind you, forum polls are not reliable.) If nothing else, soldier is the default class.

 

[lunavixen]

Of these stats, the ones that apply to me are:

~Met Wrex
~Cured Genophage
~Have played as Infiltrator and Sentinel in single player (am yet to do soldier class)
~Have played through as Femshep with two profiles (haven't done MShep yet, been putting it off so i don't have to put up with the voice acting)
~Have played through as Paragon on both FShep plays (gonna redo one as Renegade)
~Never shot Mordin
~My favourite team is EDI and Ashley
~Have got both 100% galactic readiness and long service medal
~Saved both Quarians and Geth in all playthroughs
~Let Garrus win once on the Citadel shootout
~I've sunk 102 hours into the multiplayer according to my stats on the bioware social network


I don't like either Kaidan or Vega, they irk me for some reason, so Ashley always lives and i never use Vega outside the missions where i have no choice.

I have not yet completed Insanity, though it's coming up soon

snip

right in one

At what point can Liara/Vega die? I don't remember any situation like that.

It happens in the EMS score is too low in the final Harbinger push and they are in your squad

 

[Todstyak]

I didn't let Garrus win the shootout. Sometimes you just need to put people in their place. Plus on one of my profiles i screwed up Tali's romance and ME3 they were making out and to put it lightly i was like: AUH HEEEELLL NAUH! Ive been passive aggressive with him on all my characters ever since. i kinda feel sorry for Kaidan, nobody seems to like him. i mean i don't but still..........also, does this have anything on the romance options picked? I've always wanted to see that break-down.

 

[Carnagath]

64% of people never meeting Wrex is surprising. A lot of people must have just jumped into the series late.

Nah, it's been a pretty long time between the releases. I played the first one on X360, the second one on PS3 and the third one on PC, so there were no saves transferred between them and I didn't really bother to find saves online. Then I discovered that without previous saves there's no Kasumi, you can't bring peace between the Geth and the Quarians and other really important things. Damn.

 

[Hugh Wright]

- Cured the Genophage
- Met Wrex
- Have not completed on Insanity yet
- Have earned "Long Service" Medal
- Have achieved 100% Readiness
- Male Shepard twice, Female Shepard twice
- Saved both geth and quarians
- Most popular squad mates were Garrus, Liara, and Tali
- Let Garrus win half the time, fairs fair
- Never shot Mordin.
- Two inflitrators, engineer and an adept/ vanguard .
- Generally play as a pragmatic paragon (if I'm going to be shooting them anyway might as well do it in an interrupt)

Just out of curiousity did anyone side with the salerian Dalatras?

 

[Sarge034]

Ok let's see...

Number of hours played- 700+ total across all three games
Genophage- Cured
Wrex- Met
Survival- ...? WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEEN!?!?!?!?
Galactic readiness- 100%+ (N7 alone at this point is 100%)
Insanity- Complete
Long service medal- Acquired
Shepard- Male
Most popular squad mates- Tali and Garrus
Garrus shootout- Shepard won
Saved- Quarians and Geth
Mordin- Did not shoot
Class- Soldier
Enemies killed in ME3 multiplayer- A lot
Paragon or Renegade- Mix, paragon with renegade when it feels right

I originally killed Kaidan but I ended up killing Ashley in ME1 because she ninja romanced me. I was saving my Shep for the awesome that is Tali

No squad deaths unless scripted.

 

[Xeorm]

Wow, only 3.8% of people shot Mordin? Now I feel like a jerk. Also, Kaiden seemed surprisingly unloved.

 

[Raikas]

)

Just out of curiousity did anyone side with the salerian Dalatras?

I did! Just once.

That must include the 3.8% that shot Mordin, plus however many shot Padok Wiks, and whatever percentage kept Modrin/Padok alive with Wrex and Bakara dead.

 

[Boogie Knight]

Beat the game on Insanity, and played as an engineer. That must make me a very small percent of players. That so few people beat the game on Insanity is odd, cause once you max your level and fully upgraded powers and gear you pretty much can mop up in the game pretty easily (Aside from a few points in the latter part in the game which were ridiculous).

I liked the resolution of getting both Geth and Quarians on my team, in part because it reminded me of the resolution of the Dalish-Werewolf feud I brokered. That closing of the arc also felt like putting in the work through earlier installments would help me get everything in the finale.

Reached the 100% Galactic Readiness for the battle, even reached an EMS of over 6K for the sake of overkill.

Oh, and in the Genesis comic, I decided to save Kaiden partly because all the guys were saving her because they were boning her. I also didn't like that she was a bigot, so I didn't want to drag around Archie Bunker cause she had hooters.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

This data seems to imply that most people who bought the game were new to the franchise, or at the very least didn't import a save.

 

[Raikas]

This data seems to imply that most people who bought the game were new to the franchise, or at the very least didn't import a save.

Or imported an ME2-only save.