11/20 Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

[murdoc]

After reading the review here and watching all the preview videos I am so, so pumped about playing this.  Except now with Christmas approaching I have a moratorium on game purchases.

I think my are odds good though. My list kind of went like this:

Socks
Other stuff
a game
Mass Effect 
World Peace
Tools

I did one better, I bought Mass Effect, gave it to my parents and said 'Give me this at Christmas'

[Rasix]

Hah, I usually have a special arrangement with my in-laws since they love to keep me happy.  I straight out tell them one game to buy me for my birthday and Christmas.  I just couldn't wait for this one.

One thing about grenades, does the damage not scale well towards later levels? I found them less useful towards the end of the game.  Perhaps I should just add status effects like Cryo when they become available instead of High Explosive.

[Murgos]

Cryo rounds effect is pretty cool.  Haven't tried cryo 'nades though.

I'm kind of bummed at the effectiveness of shield bypass rounds so far.  If they bypassed enough shield so that I could actually kill something faster it would be cool but the way it feels is that you take small chunks off shields and health until shields drop and then with the full effect on health things drop quick.  It seems to go faster if I just smash down shields and then health.

I got some 40% shield bypass ammo last play session, maybe those will have a more noticeable, uh, impact.

BTW Assault rifles with 50+ accuracy are luverly.

[Mazakiel]

Grenades may not scale as well, or it might be the massive shield levels that start to show up on some of the enemies.  I haven't noticed a huge change in their effectiveness, but I've also got a maxed warp that I use before the grenades on the big groups.  So that could be compensating for any weakening of the grenades as a whole.  I tend to use the high explosive mod as well.  Pretty much the only time I haven't is during the thorian sequence. 

[Riggswolfe]

Ok. Figured out my next character. An infiltrator with probably a bonus talent of throw. I'll spec in commando when I get the choice. Electronics, throw, "unlimited" immunity, and adrenalin burst = win. This will probably be my character to use in the next game. Also, I found out that you can almost max charm and/or intimidate in repeated play-throughs with the same character without ever putting a point into them. You get a free point when you become a spectre. Still...I love those dialogue options.

Finally, about ammo and grenades. I love cryo, toxic and incendiary. It's fun watching enemies shatter into little pieces as well as turning them into flames. And then finally turning some of their friends into goo. For this reason I tend to have 1 of each type of ammo between my allies and I.

[Mazakiel]

I'll probably keep my initial play-through guy for the 2nd game.  If weapon unlocks from achievements are usable on established characters I'll branch out to more than pistol, but other than that, I can't think of anything I'd want to change talents wise.  His face though....I didn't realize how odd his cheekbones can look from angles not really noticeable too well in chargen, so now he's got a Willem Dafoe thing going on. 

I definitely like characters carrying forward to the next game.  That also possibly means that my choice on Peak 15 could very well bone the galaxy in the later games.   Should be fun.  Not to mention all the other side effects from various choices that could result.  Hopefully by the 2nd installment the Council won't be second guessing my every decision.   

[MrHat]

What? your PC persists to ME2?

[Mazakiel]

A bioware dev said to hang on to your favorite save because Mass Effect 2 will use your Mass Effect 1 character.

[MrHat]

nice.

[Riggswolfe]

What? your PC persists to ME2?

A topic was started about this on the Bioware forums and one of the devs responded and said "I'll say this, keep your favorite save."

I'm curious how it will work since I will probably have a max level character with all spectre weapons. They either have to a) raise the level cap or b) only keep your face, backgrounds, and class, but find some reason to reset everything else or c) do like Baldur's Gate 2, let you keep your level but find an in-universe reason to strip your skills.

I'm guessing it'll be the game+ save that is carried over. Unanswered questions are:

1) Does it record your choices in the game?
2) Does it record the fates of certain NPCs?
3) Since paragon and renegade reset in the new game+ is that lost as well?

in other news, the lead writer is releasing a novel next summer that is a bridge between ME1 and 2. And sadly I'll probably buy it. They've also said they want the whole trilogy to come out on the 360, so if you assume a 4 year life span that'd be about 2 years per game. Which is doable since they have the game engine and alot of the artwork. As well as the world fully developed.

Edit:

The two relevant quotes:

Quote: Posted 11/23/07 21:50 (GMT) by Chris L'Etoile

Just hold on to your favorite end-of-game save. ^_^

Greg verifies this on page 50 of GameInformer, Issue 176:

"I can be definitive in saying that we are definitely going to use the save file that the original [Mass Effect 1] created."

Edit 2:

I hope this also includes the bonuses unlocked from achievements.

[lesion]

I'm getting creepy anime dick-nipples here. The fact that there will just be a Mass Effect 2 is giving me twelve erections. The character thing...I just can't quantify it.

[geldonyetich2]

I should have seen it coming, really, based off the way the game ends.  Now I'm in suspense about whether they're going to make it so you start out maxed or if there's whole new levels worth of character progression in the sequel.

[Rasix]

Just a confirmation: I got the scholar achievement before I left the Citadel for the first time.  I got the last piece talking to Anderson near the Normandy right after the Urdina(sp?) left. 

[Riggswolfe]

I'm getting creepy anime dick-nipples here. The fact that there will just be a Mass Effect 2 is giving me twelve erections. The character thing...I just can't quantify it.

ME was always supposed to be a trilogy.

[Riggswolfe]

I thought I'd repeat a couple of posts here about mods and ammo that I found really useful.

first, about how the math is done on % mods:

It depends on what kind of modifier you're applying.

If it's a reduction like the damage reduction on your armor or the reduced cooldown times on your powers, then it's multiplied so that it can never reach 100%

So if you had two 50% reductions, the total reduction would be 75%, not 100%.

100 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 25

If it's a bonus, like bonus damage on your weapon or bonus duration on your powers, then the percentages are added together, to prevent the stacked bonuses from getting too out-of-hand.

So two 50% bonuses would be a 100% bonus, not a 125% bonus.

100 * (1 + 0.5 + 0.5) = 200

_________________
Jason Attard
Senior Systems Designer
Mass Effect
BioWare Corp.

Second, about armor mods and how useful toxic rounds and other kinds of rounds are:

Quote: Posted 11/29/07 21:10 (GMT) by SpideyKnight

Thanks for the info, anyway you could explain Hardening and Physics threshold? I mean in relation to what they actually do? Why take them over say Shields or Shield recovery?

Hardening is a bonus to your Tech and Biotic resistance. It will reduce the damage or duration of any power that hits your character.

Physics Threshold increases the amount of physics impulse you can absorb before your character falls to the ground.

Quote: Posted 11/29/07 21:10 (GMT) by SpideyKnight

Also the +toxic damage on Polonium rounds, how is that calculated? Anyone who has tested it can tell you that Shredder/Tungstein do more damage against their respective targets than Polonium, even though Polonium says it's 55% damage and Shredder/Tungstein say 40%(on VII). Any chance of getting some clarification, please?

Toxic 40% actually doesn't increase the damage at all. What that means is that 40% of the damage you do will also add toxic points to the target. (So if you do 200 points of damage at 40% toxic, you'd also add 80 points of toxin to the target).

Toxic damage slows healing. If someone tried to heal the enemy you shot then they'd have to heal 280 points of damage to return them to full health, instead of just 200 points.

In practice, there aren't many enemies with healing powers in the game, so it's not a terribly useful Mod.

The damage-over-time done by those rounds is actual bonus damage however.

_________________
Jason Attard
Senior Systems Designer
Mass Effect
BioWare Corp.

[Mazakiel]

Yeah, there was no question as to whether there'd be sequels, that was in the design from the get go.  One character continuing to the next one though, that is a new bit of info.  I was expecting something like KOTOR 2, where you're in the same universe, but anyone left standing from the first one is left to either bit cameos or just being the subject of discussions about history.  I just hope we don't have to put up with a contrived delevelling plot device.  Adding new abilities shouldn't be a problem.  Advanced weapons training, new weapons, etc.  Stuff like biotics could definitely be opened up to new abilities.  Mass Effect 3, with an aged Shepherd, would be all sorts of interesting.  "I'm getting too old for this shit." 

[Khaldun]

Here's something I can't figure out. How do you know which mods you actually have in your weapons/armor?

I also really, really wish you could select a bunch of mods at once to turn into omni-gel. Doing it one at a time when you've got a backlog is teh tedium. Though given the things I've found out how to do that there's no hint you can do, I'll bet you can and I just haven't figured it out yet.

[Mazakiel]

Whenever you open up the upgrade menu, the one currently equipped will be at the top of the list. 

As to melting stuff and everything, yeah, they need to improve the inventory management a bit.  It's a pain in the ass to dig through it. 

[Khaldun]

But how do you tell where the ones you have equipped end and the non-equipped list begins?

[Riggswolfe]

But how do you tell where the ones you have equipped end and the unequipped list begins?

Errr...go to the weapon or armor. click the X button. Whatever is at the top of the list is equipped. Everything else is unequipped.

[Khaldun]

I still don't get it. Take the armor mods list that comes up when I hit X. It's a long list. It has duplicates of stuff on it.

Let's say I'm trying to figure out whether I've equipped a current piece of armor with one unique mod of each major type that I have in inventory. So I clicky-clicky on the various mods. This shuffles around what's at the top of the list. I find it confusing to have to scroll down and figure out where the equipped mods end and the unequipped ones begin so I can be sure there isn't some unique type of mod I have yet to equip on that particular piece of armor. It seems to me that the UI here is pretty lame: it would be much better to have two separate lists that come up side-by-side: what's equipped and what is unequipped and in my inventory. It would also be really, really nice to have two parallel stat listings of the unmodded and modded armor so I can see concretely what it is that all the mods are doing when it's added up. That's pretty much standard with equipment in RPGs: base item stats in one color, modded stats in another.

I also really wish it were possible to somehow select multiple items for conversion to omni-gel. I hate having to stop in the middle of a tense, good mission to do five minutes of inventory management because if I don't I'm going to end up at the end with six Exoskeleton VI armor mods that each have to be converted to omni-gel one at a time.

[Murgos]

The "ONE" at the top of the list is equipped unless it says "EMPTY".  In the sales inventory view equipped mods do not show up in the list at all.

[Khaldun]

! So you can only have one armor or weapon mod equipped. I didn't understand that. I thought you could have one of each type of mod. D'oh.

[Rasix]

! So you can only have one armor or weapon mod equipped. I didn't understand that. I thought you could have one of each type of mod. D'oh.

Depends on the armor/weapon.

Early armor has one slot, later armor has two.  Early weapons have one slot for a weapon mod and one ammo mod. Later weapons have 2 weapon mod slots and one ammo mod slot.  So, the top thing listed will be equipped for each mod slot.  How is this that hard of a concept?

Here's the installation instruction for equipping a weapon with a heat sink and armor piercing rounds.

1.  Hit X with the weapon equipped.
2.  Scroll down to heat sink and hit right on the directional pad while it's selected.
3.  Scroll down and highlight armor piercing rounds.  Hit A.
4.  You now have a weapon equipped with a heat sink and armor piercing rounds.  These equipped mods will now always show at the very top of the selection list.  There are also graphical indicators on your currently equipped weapon to detail this.

If this does not help you, perhaps you should be playing Peggle. I can see problems with the inventory system, but this I think anyone would figure out with relative ease. 

Edit: Heh, for a lark I'm going to look at the manual when I get home.  Most games are very poorly documented.  Lamentably so, coming from the perspective from someone that works in the documentation field.

[Khaldun]

See, what I thought was happening was I was hitting A on a mod that I wanted, and it was disappearing from a list of equippable mods because it was now equipped. So what I've been doing without realizing it is cycling through available mods, and whatever the last I put in is what the armor or weapon actually ends up having. I thought the graphic was displaying the mod presently on the top of a list of equippable mods, not the mod I actually had in the armor or weapon.

I got that you could have ammo mod and weapon mod and how to switch back and forth between those.

Just me not getting it.

[Riggswolfe]

1.  Hit X with the weapon equipped.
2.  Scroll down to heat sink and hit right on the directional pad while it's selected.
3.  Scroll down and highlight armor piercing rounds.  Hit A.
4.  You now have a weapon equipped with a heat sink and armor piercing rounds.  These equipped mods will now always show at the very top of the selection list.  There are also graphical indicators on your currently equipped weapon to detail this.

I feel silly. I didn't know you could just highlight and hit right to go the next mod slot (or ammo) and it would equip that mod. I've been hitting X, finding the mod and hitting A, then going back in for the ammo.

[Bunk]

Yea... me too.

[Velorath]

One thing I'll say on this game is that the combat takes getting used to. My first play attempt was with an Infiltrator and that was a mistake. Trying to figure out the combat system using the sniper rifle is not good. I restarted with a Vanguard after about 7 hours of the first character, and I haven't looked back. Leave the sniping to Ashley.

I found sniping to be pretty easy actually, and a lot of fun.  For Benezia and the last boss I had to switch over to pistol, since sniping really wasn't viable (and most times I was fighting Husks I suppose, since they all tend to bum rush you as soon as you shoot one of them), but it made a lot of the game allmost feel too easy.

[geldonyetich2]

My first being an infiltrator too, I can see where Bunk is coming from here.  Sniper rifles are effective weapons after you get used to them, but they're sort of the advanced weapon you learn to use in long ranged combat after you figure out how to crouch and aim effectively.  Starting out players are better off learning pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles first.  At the high end of the spectrum, we finally figure out what Tech attacks and Biotics are good for.

[Riggswolfe]

Man I'm torn about what to play as my next character and the one I'll take to ME2.

A vanguard, maybe with AR or a tech ability.
An infiltrator with lift or throw
or
A sentinel with AR (probably.)

[geldonyetich2]

A Sentinel or Biotic (for Singularity fun) with Assault Rifle sounds like good choices to me.  Having lousy durability becomes less of an issue after you get really good at using cover.

[Velorath]

My first being an infiltrator too, I can see where Bunk is coming from here.  Sniper rifles are effective weapons after you get used to them, but they're sort of the advanced weapon you learn to use in long ranged combat after you figure out how to crouch and aim effectively.  Starting out players are better off learning pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles first.  At the high end of the spectrum, we finally figure out what Tech attacks and Biotics are good for.

Wasn't really that hard for me to learn (this was my first character also).  The hardest part for me was just having the patience to let the gun cool down enough before firing it again to keep it from overheating.

On another note, are there some encounters in this game that are just completely random?  When I was doing the Benezia part, I entered one area and there was an Asari Commando with a gun pointed at one of those Volus guys, and was getting ready to kill him (which I prevented).  Shortly after, I got to Benezia and was promptly killed, and then I discovered that I hadn't saved in a while so I had to go back through a couple parts.  This time though, when I got to the room where I saved the Volus, it was completely empty.

[geldonyetich2]

I think that, deep down, there's a but of the Aurora Engine (used in NWN) here.  Either that, or at least some of the design methodology involved.  In the same way that the enemies scale to player level, it's entirely possible that there's other elements at work such as random chances of spawns in places.  That's some of the stuff I could do using the NWN tookit, too.

[Rasix]

The waving about of the sniper rifle makes it annoying to use.  Thus, I don't use it much.  Is there a way to keep that to a minimum?  I may mess around with the sniper rifle more once I've got the pistol achievement done.

Infiltrator on hardcore is a little difficult at first. You're far too fragile to start.  Pistol + shotgun + tons of cover + power spam + funneling enemies has worked ok.  Couple things I've noticed: krogans are absolutely nasty now and sometimes the AI can go a little wonky.  I didn't notice any playing on normal, but on Feros I had enemies got a little braindead a few times.

[Velorath]

The waving about of the sniper rifle makes it annoying to use. 

It usually only waves about right after you take a shot.  It's usually best to just wait a few seconds (you have to wait for the gun to cool a bit anyway), and it will stop.