Fight for the Lost - The Mass Effect 2 Thread

[Felon]

Er...
[sblock=Spoilers]
You don't necessarily have to lose anyone by picking them to lead the distraction team. Miranda or Garrus can lead the team just fine without losing their heads.
[/sblock]

Well, if you say so, but...
[sblock=spoilers]...pretty lame if only those two can survive, since that makes the matter of who lives or dies less about exercising enough good judgment to pick a qualified individual than it is about being lucky enough to pick a random candidate from a number of qualified individuals (or looking it up online). Zaeed has got at least as much experience at that sort of skirmish than those two.

Btw, there are two points where you pick alternate team leaders. Miranda wanted to be the leader on the first team (that opens the door) and I picked Garrus. He got through fine, and I assume Miranda would have as well since she's the candidate the game was pushing. Now, the second team is the distraction team, so if they're once again the two survivable candidates, it kinda makes it pointless to have to pick a leader a second time.[/sblock]

At any rate, I still plan to do the suicide mission again, and I'd rather not be told flat-out what the right choices are like that, so I guess I'm not gonna read any spoilers you might reply with for a while.

 

[stonegod]

[sblock=Felon]I think the "deaths" are somewhat random: Its affected by loyalty and upgrades (esp. on the ship). I went back w/ my all loyal crew and took Mordin with me this time and no one in the hold-the-door team died. Loyalty helps, but its not 100% I think.[/sblock]

 

[Felon]

[sblock=Felon]I think the "deaths" are somewhat random: Its affected by loyalty and upgrades (esp. on the ship). I went back w/ my all loyal crew and took Mordin with me this time and no one in the hold-the-door team died. Loyalty helps, but its not 100% I think.[/sblock]

Without posting any more spoilerblocked text, I'll just say it may be that performance factors (such as time taken to complete a given objective) are variables weighed against a candidate's competence at a given task.

 

[Felon]

Completed the final story mission three times now, and done every sidequest I could find. My save file shows total playing time at 61 hours, and still didn't manage to make it to level 30.

 

[SolitonMan]

I'm ambivalent about this title so far. I've played it through once, and honestly the planet scanning was so jarringly boring and ill-implemented that I'm dreading going through another playthrough (which sucks, since I played through ME1 at least seven times). It's kind of like a kick in the teeth that you have to do this. Bioware even started a thread on their ME general forum with tips on how to speed it up, which if they feel the need to do, maybe they should have tried something else in the first place?

And nevermind the fact that, yes, if you have AIs and crew members they should be doing this. Just in the RL implementation, you couldn't make the switch to scan a TOGGLE? I have to HOLD a trigger (Xbox) to scan? What sadistic bastard thought this up????

I'll eventually get around to another playthrough, but between the planet scanning AND the implementation of ammo, I'm less than thrilled. I do have good things to say about it, but the planet scanning is such a peeve that I can't think about them right now...

I am, however, totally digging Dragon Age: Origins.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I consider replaying ME 1, and I am dreading the Mako exploration missions to hunt for artifacts and stuff. I guess I'll ignore that part.

It's more difficult with the ME 2 scanning, but i found once you got the sensor upgrade, it was fast enough. Still, I could do well without it. I do generally like the research/upgrade mechanic, though. And the inventory system.

I played through it now. I lost a part of my crew, unfortunately, but none of my team members.

 

[SolitonMan]

I consider replaying ME 1, and I am dreading the Mako exploration missions to hunt for artifacts and stuff. I guess I'll ignore that part.

It's more difficult with the ME 2 scanning, but i found once you got the sensor upgrade, it was fast enough. Still, I could do well without it. I do generally like the research/upgrade mechanic, though. And the inventory system.

I played through it now. I lost a part of my crew, unfortunately, but none of my team members.

I also think that actually making the resources useful was a brilliant idea. And I played enough ME1 to get tired of driving the same routes over the same planets time and again. But that was tiresome over the course of many playthroughs, whereas scanning got tiresome by like the 6th time I was doing it (even with the upgrade to speed and number of probes). It is just jarringly BAD given the otherwise excellent improvements in the game. Like the bypass and hacking minigames, they're not difficult or anything, but they're quick, they're at least slightly fun, they take a minuscule amount of skill, and generally you don't have to do them or else risk losing the game. If you want to survive, you have to upgrade your ship, which means you have to scan for minerals. I can think of a bunch of ways they could have made this aspect of the game actually FUN, instead of completely not fun.

And that's the crux of the problem, not that scanning "isn't so bad" or "doesn't take too long" or whatever other non-complimentary description is being passed around the Bioware boards. The point is that it is NOT FUN, and why would anyone deliberately choose to add a feature to a game - which in my experience is something that is supposed to be fun - that is not fun? It just stymies me.

And while the Mako also got boring after repeated playthroughs, I'll tell you true, that first time, and most of the second, the threat of a thresher maw erupting from the ground made me VERY SCARED when driving over large, open terrain. It was great!

I didn't have any part of ME2 that got me nervous or scared or anything. I liked it mechanically a lot (save for the scanning obviously), I think that the trimmed down inventory system went a bit too far but was a generally great idea, I thought that implementing ammo (whatever in-game term they choose to call it) was going to suck but it wasn't a drawback in any meaningful way, and overall the game was majorly improved. If only they had done something more intelligent than that planet scanning, I'd probably love the game. As it is, I'll probably get one more playthrough out of it before I put it on the shelf.

 

[wolff96]

I liked it mechanically a lot (save for the scanning obviously), I think that the trimmed down inventory system went a bit too far but was a generally great idea, I thought that implementing ammo (whatever in-game term they choose to call it) was going to suck but it wasn't a drawback in any meaningful way, and overall the game was majorly improved. If only they had done something more intelligent than that planet scanning, I'd probably love the game. As it is, I'll probably get one more playthrough out of it before I put it on the shelf.

I'm most of the way through my Insanity playthrough and I have a few comments and opinions of my own. I quoted SolitonMan because a lot his opinions mirror my own.

On the inventory -- good idea, taken too far. When you have perhaps four weapons in the entire game, it's time to add a tad more variety. Why involve a selection screen when you almost invariably want to use the latest and greatest weapon? I would have liked to have seen a bit more weapon variety of the "This pistol kills armor, this one kills shields, this one kills barriers..." You get the idea. Make the choice MATTER and different from mission to mission.

The planet scanning is bad. I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's just not fun. It should have been a quick mini-game resulting in a list of nodes around the planet -- then you could send probes to the ones you needed. Make the player decide where to spend their valuable probes. (I would have increased probe cost a bit with this option...)

The ammo is an odd issue. Some classes -- especially those that rely heavily on the sniper rifle -- complain BITTERLY about the lack of ammo on the higher difficulty levels. When it takes four headshots to drop someone AFTER their shields/barriers/armor are down, it's kind of ridiculous that you can only carry 12 shots for that type of rifle. I'm playing an Adept on my Insanity run (I know, I'm a glutton for punishment) and the ammo is a complete non-issue because I'm mostly hiding and using Warp 500 times in a row to cut through enemy defenses. I might actually shoot my gun half a dozen times in any given mission.

I think the real problem with the ammo isn't the implementation or how generous they are with the clips. I think the problem is that it feels like a giant step backwards from ME1.

 

[Felon]

I'm most of the way through my Insanity playthrough and I have a few comments and opinions of my own. I quoted SolitonMan because a lot his opinions mirror my own.

On the inventory -- good idea, taken too far. When you have perhaps four weapons in the entire game, it's time to add a tad more variety. Why involve a selection screen when you almost invariably want to use the latest and greatest weapon? I would have liked to have seen a bit more weapon variety of the "This pistol kills armor, this one kills shields, this one kills barriers..." You get the idea. Make the choice MATTER and different from mission to mission.

The planet scanning is bad. I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's just not fun. It should have been a quick mini-game resulting in a list of nodes around the planet -- then you could send probes to the ones you needed. Make the player decide where to spend their valuable probes. (I would have increased probe cost a bit with this option...)

The ammo is an odd issue. Some classes -- especially those that rely heavily on the sniper rifle -- complain BITTERLY about the lack of ammo on the higher difficulty levels. When it takes four headshots to drop someone AFTER their shields/barriers/armor are down, it's kind of ridiculous that you can only carry 12 shots for that type of rifle. I'm playing an Adept on my Insanity run (I know, I'm a glutton for punishment) and the ammo is a complete non-issue because I'm mostly hiding and using Warp 500 times in a row to cut through enemy defenses. I might actually shoot my gun half a dozen times in any given mission.

I think the real problem with the ammo isn't the implementation or how generous they are with the clips. I think the problem is that it feels like a giant step backwards from ME1.

The planet-scanning doesn't really seem to make much sense on the whoe. You shouldn't be able to quickly deplete a planet like that. If you could, then eveyr planet would be a dry husk by now. They want to add a space-exploration eleemnt, and they just couldn't figure out a good way to implement it.

Then again, I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that you don't really need to do as much scanning as most people are doing (myself included). You certainly don't need to plunder every single planet you discover. I ended the game with well over 100,000 platinum, palladium, and iridium. Element Zero is rare, but the applications for it don't require very much, so that evens out.

I think your comment about the weapons and your comments about ammo are at odds. The very reason to not pick the latest-greatest sniper rifle is that it only has 12 shots. The starter assault rifle also offers much more ammo than the five-round-burst model.

The intention behind the ammo is that since the heat sinks are usable by all weapons, the player is supposed swap back and forth between weapons frequently to avoid getting low on one.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The planet-scanning doesn't really seem to make much sense on the whoe. You shouldn't be able to quickly deplete a planet like that. If you could, then eveyr planet would be a dry husk by now. They want to add a space-exploration eleemnt, and they just couldn't figure out a good way to implement it.

One could claim the planets are depleted for the quick-type of mining the Normandy can do, or you are actually just collecting information for suitable mining spot and Cerberus awards you for finding it, but ... That's just fanwank from me.

Then again, I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that you don't really need to do as much scanning as most people are doing (myself included). You certainly don't need to plunder every single planet you discover. I ended the game with well over 100,000 platinum, palladium, and iridium. Element Zero is rare, but the applications for it don't require very much, so that evens out.

Definitely.

I think your comment about the weapons and your comments about ammo are at odds. The very reason to not pick the latest-greatest sniper rifle is that it only has 12 shots. The starter assault rifle also offers much more ammo than the five-round-burst model.

I never ran into ammo problems with the third assault rifle. But of course that was on normal difficulty.

The intention behind the ammo is that since the heat sinks are usable by all weapons, the player is supposed swap back and forth between weapons frequently to avoid getting low on one.

Actually I tend to think the intention is to keep the player moving from cover to cover towards fallen enemies and their dropped heat sinks. That is an actually interesting dynamic, I think.
But you might still be right, it's another aspect of the system. Heavy Weapons tended to be very useful for this purpose to me - I might be able to gun down some of the heavier enemies with my assault rifle (on normal difficulty), but the Heavy Weapon means I don't waste heat doing so, and I probably cut through its defenses quicker, too.