UPDATE: Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer is incredible. (Added my refletions and a quick guide)

[hermes]

I thought it was good. Nothing spectacular but good.

I liked that you level up by class, which makes having different characters less of a chore.
But I didn't like that all classes start as humans, and you have to use credits to unlock other races... my plans to have a Turian soldier will have to wait some hours.

 

[godofallu]

I played it for 6 hours yesterday, and I found it to be a lot of fun trying out all the classes and unlocking different guns/abilities.

Even managed to beat both levels with all 4 surviving multiple times.

I wouldn't say it's astonishing as the character growth is fairly minimal, and the levels don't have a story or a set path. Just a square like area to defend.

 

[Link XL1]

really? you guys all love it? cause i just cant help but feel its tacked on. like its jumping on gears of war 2's horde mode bandwagon. it is kinda interesting to be able to play as the other races, but they're not really any different

You mean how Gears of War jumped on Unreal Tournament 2004's Invasion mode bandwagon?

im not saying gears 2 did it first, they just made it popular. every other developer threw it in their game after gears 2 came out (ODST's firefight, nazi zombies, L4D's survival mode, uncharted's Siege mode, etc). besides both gears and unreal are made by Epic

 

[Coreless]

I really love the multiplayer, have been playing it almost nonstop since the demo was released. Sitting at lvl 55 I really feel they nailed the customization on the abilities and weapons. It creates lots of room for different play styles that can give you exactly the damage or utility that your looking for.

The weapon system is varied in terms of letting you use just about every weapon available no matter your class (and the mods and attachments) with the trade off that the more weight you carry the more time it takes to recharge abilites. The weight system starts you out low on most classes, so you choose to put points into options like fitness or tech mastery to carry more weapons (and still keep your cool downs at a good level) or increase your health and damage. and I've seen tons of different setups that all have worked great for their individual play styles and it didn't limit them in any way from still being effective and getting good scores. I ran with an Asari Adept the other day who only used a pistol so that they could dump all focus into biotics and they had almost instant cool downs when fully leveled and completely decimated entire squads.

I originally played as a melee/shotgun sentinel, and pretty much ran in with tech armor on and just focused on breaking shields and using charge melee attacks for kills but I've slowly gravitated toward the Engineer class and I've already seen lots of different play styles with just the Engineer. Engineers that focus on using only sniper/incinerate and overload, Engineers that go pistol/rifle and focus on dropping sentry turrets. Engineers that go full melee/shotgun and focus on combat drones and energy drains for kills. There are tons of different ways to go about the classes once you start leveling up and unlocking things.

To sum it up, if you think its all pretty simplistic...you really haven't put that much time into it. The classes work so well together and when organized for certain enemies and situations can really mean the difference between winning and losing, especially once you start hitting silver and gold.

 

[Coreless]

Nope. played it. Didn't find it entertaining at all. It was kind of easy and boring. Maybe my squadmates were just good, but it was terribly too easy. And terribly generic.
No surprises.

Did you try turning up the difficulty?

Is it possible to turn up the difficulty in multiplayer? Because my setting is already on Insanity but thats for Single Player. If it is possible, please tell me how.

Yes. there are three settings, Bronze, Silver, and Gold you can choose them on the multiplayer menu when your looking for a match. I would suggest staying with Bronze until you have unlocked your characters powers completely and gotten like level IV or V weapons.

 

[boag]

Can someone explain how the Multiplyaer missions affect the Final outcome of the Game?

I know you can reach it by playing solo, but I just want to know what doing what in multi equates to what single player.

 

[Berenzen]

Nope. played it. Didn't find it entertaining at all. It was kind of easy and boring. Maybe my squadmates were just good, but it was terribly too easy. And terribly generic.
No surprises.

Did you try turning up the difficulty?

Is it possible to turn up the difficulty in multiplayer? Because my setting is already on Insanity but thats for Single Player. If it is possible, please tell me how.

Bronze/Silver/Gold are difficutly settings. Bronze is obviously the easiest. Playing Gold is like- Ohgodohgodhelpuswe'redyingonthesecondwave.

 

[Legendairy314]

Being a Krogan Soldier with Damage Reduction and Melee Damage Specializations is by far the most fun thing I've done this year. Me and 3 other people were basically crying with laughter for an hour.

 

[Zhukov]

Nope. played it. Didn't find it entertaining at all. It was kind of easy and boring. Maybe my squadmates were just good, but it was terribly too easy. And terribly generic.
No surprises.

Did you try turning up the difficulty?

Is it possible to turn up the difficulty in multiplayer? Because my setting is already on Insanity but thats for Single Player. If it is possible, please tell me how.

After you hit "quick match", there is a list of setting on the left side of the screen. Server type (locked on public for the demo) Map, enemy type (locked on cerberus for the demo), and "challenge".

Challenge can be set to bronze, silver or gold.

It sounds like gold is the one you want.

 

[boag]

Nope. played it. Didn't find it entertaining at all. It was kind of easy and boring. Maybe my squadmates were just good, but it was terribly too easy. And terribly generic.
No surprises.

Did you try turning up the difficulty?

Is it possible to turn up the difficulty in multiplayer? Because my setting is already on Insanity but thats for Single Player. If it is possible, please tell me how.

Bronze/Silver/Gold are difficutly settings. Bronze is obviously the easiest. Playing Gold is like- Ohgodohgodhelpuswe'redyingonthesecondwave.

Dude you got to the second wave?

 

[Fappy]

Its been pretty fucking fun so far.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Also that spacebar does to many different things, making sprint when I want to go to cover or the other way around.

I never understood this complaint. Everything works fine on the 360 controller with "A" mapped to ALL THOSE SAME ACTIONS. ME2 was the same way, even.
Why the complaints?

Because ME3 introduces rolling about and squadmate revival.
God help you if a squaddie dies next to a piece of cover, or you try and sprint down a corridor slightly too close to a wall, or you go to climb a ladder and just roll at it like a mentally deficient clown, or you go to slide into the sweet protective embrace of cover from an Atlas only for the game to think you wanted to roll off to the side and deflect its missile with your face.

 

[boag]

Also that spacebar does to many different things, making sprint when I want to go to cover or the other way around.

I never understood this complaint. Everything works fine on the 360 controller with "A" mapped to ALL THOSE SAME ACTIONS. ME2 was the same way, even.
Why the complaints?

Because ME3 introduces rolling about and squadmate revival.
God help you if a squaddie dies next to a piece of cover, or you try and sprint down a corridor slightly too close to a wall, or you go to climb a ladder and just roll at it like a mentally deficient clown, or you go to slide into the sweet protective embrace of cover from an Atlas only for the game to think you wanted to roll off to the side and deflect its missile with your face.

or if you want to run the fuck away from a cyber ninja and then just stick to the wall so it can rape you softly and gently.

 

[RJ 17]

I'm really glad to hear this. Personally I'm not getting the demo because I don't want to be tempted to take a peek at the Campaign, so I'll impatiently wait for March 6th before busting it out (you can bet your ass I'm calling into work sick that day ).

But I honestly had high hopes for it, I wasn't one of the ragers complaining that they put it in there. People had been asking for co-op ME since the first game...they didn't want to make it Campaign Co-Op since that would make the campaign ridiculously easy no matter what difficulty. Personally I think the setup they made is a very good compromise.

Everything I've heard about it is good, so I'm very much looking forward to playing it.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Not had a chance to give it a whirl, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

The posters here are generally Bioware fanboys. Your opinion is not to be trusted when it comes to Bioware. When I play the multiplayer, then we'll see how 'good' it is.

Spoiler

hahahaha perfect picture for that. thanks for the laugh.


OT: Haven't played it myself but checked out a few tid bit videos here and there, and it looks like alot of fun! Can't wait to try it out along with the main game, hopefully if there is any dlc it'll make multiplayer even more fun

 

[JamesStone]

The posters here are generally Bioware fanboys. Your opinion is not to be trusted when it comes to Bioware. When I play the multiplayer, then we'll see how 'good' it is.

Because we all need your aproval to see how good it is. Only when you play it, we can know how good it is. Riiiiight.


OP: I enjoyed it a lot myself. Although Bioware combat is not the strongest, it's entertaining and addictive. And there's a lot of weight knowing that it will influence the story. I admit, I'm convinced.

 

[Setrus]

The cover system REALLY needed an upgrade, getting in and out of cover is a complete mess and since the enemies love to spam grenades it gets annoying.

Also why doesnt it scale? If there are only 2 players dont give me objectives that are still challenging for 4 players. When we have to assassinate the guys with the shields its usually game over

EDIT: I really dont like how "A" does everything, if a teammate is down near a beacon it is a mess to revive him.

Well I don't know how it is with the xbox, since I play it on PC, but I've had no problem with the cover system. Press space to go into cover, walk away from cover to leave it. Press forward and space to jump or slide forward, left or right with space to move from one piece of cover to another...took me a few tries but then it worked soooo smoothly.
The one issue I've had is when interacting with a computer or trying to revive a teammate while you're close to a wall...shame there's no 'interact' button like 'e' but oh well.

As to the scaling...you're quite right, it should scale. That said, I had great fun being a Turian sentinel and fighting together with a Drell Vanguard on our own, we managed to beat several maps on our own! :-D (admitedly it was a bronze challenge, but still...) That was some of the most fun I've had, really brutal.

So with all that said...it's pretty obvious that I like the multiplayer. It's challenging, fast-paced and require teamwork to pull off. It's a little annoying with the packs for unlocking things, I've unlocked the same guns maybe five times each when I've wanted to try being a Salarian or Quarian...but that's supposed to be fixed in the retail.
Instead I've been having fun as the Turian Sentinel with the viper sniper rifle and a shuriken pistol that sees nearly no use. Got to love overload, and warp is not so shabby either, that combined with the Turian being such a good shooter (A turian is a slightly slower then average weapon-platform, apparently) I can overload and then headshot Centurions and nemesis' with a nearly ridiculous speed. :-D