Mass Effect 3 (no spoilers)

[Wik]

Yay, Vanguards! But I have to ask (since I don't know if I've encountered it and haven't heard about it)... what bug?

If you use your biotic charge, there is a slim possibility that you will be either a foot above or below the ground, and then you will start clipping through the map, essentially constantly "falling" for a foot, but unable to move. Basically, you are visible to your teammates, hovering about a few feet over the ground, unable to do crap or often to be shot at. I've had it happen to me a couple of times, and I've seen it happen a few more times than that.

Probably explains why there are so few vanguards in multiplayer, which is too bad, because it's a very fun class.

 

[Kzach]

Probably explains why there are so few vanguards in multiplayer, which is too bad, because it's a very fun class.

Fun for the player, annoying for everyone else. My main Shep in the SP is a vanguard so I know the class well and enjoy it, but in MP it's a different ball-game and without being able to pause the action a vanguard is a liability both to himself and the other players. For one thing, he gets into trouble that he can't get out of and for another, he sends all the enemies sprawling throughout the map instead of concentrated in one kill-zone that ranged players can pick-off.

Whenever I get a vanguard in MP I groan because it means my infiltrator will constantly have to run around in order just to find targets and even when he does find them, the vanguard will be forcing them to move around so much that they're hard to target. Whenever I'm in a an MP without a vanguard, I do very well and often top at least 25 head shots and either manage middle to highest depending on the skill level of the players I'm with (I don't put myself at the top of the skill list, just middling). With vanguard I generally manage only about five and almost always get the lowest score.

What's worse is that the very vanguard that's spoiling everyone else's shots not only gets flat-lined during at least half the waves, but they also generally only get slightly better a score than I do, meaning all that chaos they're causing results in jack contribution to the success of the mission.

 

[Felon]

Squad control is the best it's been in the series, though, and unlike an earlier poster, I found myself using different group combinations for different mission types. I also found myself bringing in characters I thought would be interesting depending on the mission at hand - sometimes, this even opened up huge dialogue options between your two squadmates! I love it when that happens.

This was my "but...but...but..." thought. Advice isn't a spoiler, right? When you pick squad mates for mission, pick the ones that you think should go or match up well. You'll be glad you did.

This is especially true of the character added to the the party by the "From Ashes" DLC. He provides a very unique perspective on the ME universe, as well as a certain personality type that is otherwise lacking from ME.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes, extremely annoying. I mean, really, the entire POINT of ME has been that it's an ongoing story with a character that you've become attached to and yet this most basic of functions they've screwed up in not one, but two iterations of the game.

Also annoying and stupid was tying what has been a focused single-player game to a multiplayer platform. If they're so desperate to include MP then, whatever, but don't tie the two together and punish all the people who've supported a SP game from the start by forcing them to do MP.

Those two things I'm genuinely annoyed at and yet the ending isn't something that bothers me.

But there is no real punishment. If you're a completist and collect all those war assets, you can pretty much get the best ending anyway, so it's a moot point. I think they did that well.

What they didn'T do well was the Quest Log. Leaving out too much information on how to find stuff. Of course, a completist will got to every place eventually anyway...

 

[Felon]

But there is no real punishment. If you're a completist and collect all those war assets, you can pretty much get the best ending anyway, so it's a moot point. I think they did that well.

What they didn'T do well was the Quest Log. Leaving out too much information on how to find stuff. Of course, a completist will got to every place eventually anyway...

I'll take your word for it, and hope you're right. There's one event in the game that effectively cancels a large number of uncompleted quests, denying a player bunch of war assets. I had to do quite a bit of backtracking, digging through old saves and replaying a couple of missions. Pretty frustrating at the time. Essentially, labeling the main story missions with "Priority" is deceptive. They're actually the last that ones that should be pursued.

 

[Felon]

The Primary story missions had plenty jaw-dropping moments and pulse-pounding action. Gunplay was sharper, powers even more fun, more variety to locations and plenty of different enemy types made for engaging combat... even if healing is still a bit on the easy side.
But... the ending... I was not pleased. Not at all... and that's all I will say about it in this thread.

I'm appreciative of that.

I'll tell you one gameplay element that really surprised me: sniping. Back in ME1, the infiltrator was a bit of a joke. Scopes had such bad sway that they were all but unusable. Meanwhile, enemies would shoot with pinpoint precision. I remember one planetside mission where I got out of the Mako and aimed at a target who was no more than a dot in the crosshairs. Fired, missed due to sway, and sure enough he immediately started plugging me.

In ME2, they got rid of the sway, and gave infiltrators a cloak and time-dilation while sniping, but the environments were still not conducive to long-range combat.

But in ME3, the battlefields are much longer. Some enemies don't seem to even be able to spot me if I'm sniping from far enough away. And rifles can be modded to increase the time dilation even more.

Of course, there's still virtually no real stealth to speak of, as enemies almost always spawn out of thing air looking for a target. But one neat trick as an infiltrator is to get a weapon that can be charged (geth weapons, spike thrower), and charge it right before cloaking. Releasing the trigger and firing the charged shot won't negate the cloak.

 

[jonesy]

There's one event in the game that effectively cancels a large number of uncompleted quests..

It's a staple of computer rpgs and adventure games that there are points of no return where you lose the ability to go back to finish other things. A completionist always has to account for that.

 

[Felon]

It's a staple of computer rpgs and adventure games that there are points of no return where you lose the ability to go back to finish other things. A completionist always has to account for that.

Allow me to counter your sweeping generalization with an equally broad swath. A good rule of game design is to find a way to communicate the implicit rules to players in some fashion. Since time is utterly abstract in a RPG, windows of opportunity need to be at least hinted at. That way, when the shake-up occurs, I get to slap myself on the head and go "d'oh, they warned me and I didn't listen". What happens in ME3 is basically a blindsiding, which was actually quite a lot of fun until the dust settled and I realized what the fallout was.

In Dragon Age, for instance, there's a quest that's extraordinarily long and provides no opportunities to restock. They, quite correctly, make sure that before the player embarks on it that he knows what he's getting into.

 

[jonesy]

Since time is utterly abstract in a RPG, windows of opportunity need to be at least hinted at in some fashion.

Morrowind had a couple of things that could only be done at certain times of day. The days were sped up from real time, but you could count how long it would take for the next chance to arrive by the real clock. I really liked that, and more games should do it that way, instead of arbitrarily.

 

[Felon]

That's another fine example. I remember be approached in Oblivion by an NPC who told me to meet him back around midnight. Of course, it wasn't necessarily midnight of that particular night. Reasonable window of opportunity.

Oh, btw, speaking of completionism, here's a tip some might not have caught: weapons, upgrades, armor, and even quest items that you miss during a mission will become available at the Citadel after you perform another mission. Weapons will be at the Kassa Fabrications kiosk, and the rest are available at the Spectre office terminal.