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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:Thanks, all! Any suggestions as far as Bonus Powers? I have them all except Dominate (although I'm considering doing a sociopath!Shep run just to divest myself of my dumbassed emotional attachment to whatever so I could get that then). You don't have to actually stick with Morinth to get Dominate. Pick her and you'll unlock the power, then reload the game and pick Samara instead and continue on. Once you unlock it, it's unlocked forever. I guess it's save scumming in a sense but who gives a poo poo.
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May 5, 2012 02:24
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Oh man I don't know how that never occurred to me 
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May 5, 2012 02:26
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:Thanks, all! Any suggestions as far as Bonus Powers? I have them all except Dominate (although I'm considering doing a sociopath!Shep run just to divest myself of my dumbassed emotional attachment to whatever so I could get that then). EDIT: In other news, I've just started my OCD-propelled screenshot run of ME3, and it looks like it's going to be a long, tiresome road again. Being flippin' mad as I am, I've literally spent hours going through the prologue again and again just to get those perfectly-timed shots. And then I've had to spend a few hours more discarding screenshots, filing away most close-ups of my FemShep (nobody's going to care about those), and adjusting contrast and saturation on the shots I wanted to keep. The entire prologue amounts to 170 screenshots already, and that's only spanning a little over 10 minutes' worth of cut-scenes. This is going to take forever and fill up my already cramped HDD in no time at all.  Oh well. Have a pretty picture. 
Sombrerotron fucked around with this message at 03:29 on May 5, 2012 |
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May 5, 2012 02:36
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Sombrerotron posted:Soldier handicap weight The cooldown doesn't apply for ammo powers or frag grenades and you didn't say "cooldown between concussive shots", so you are probably implying that Adrenaline Rush has uses.  I'm playing soldier wrong then...
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May 5, 2012 04:01
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HardDisk posted:The cooldown doesn't apply for ammo powers or frag grenades and you didn't say "cooldown between concussive shots", so you are probably implying that Adrenaline Rush has uses. Adrenaline Rush slows down everything relative to Shepard (not only making it easier for you to aim, but also allowing Shepard to move around at superhuman speed), and gives a major damage boost, possibly along with damage resistance and/or a shield boost, depending on how you upgrade it. http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Adrenaline_Rush#Mass_Effect_3 Not bothering with it would be like playing a Vanguard and not bothering with Charge.
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May 5, 2012 04:12
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I forgot that I don't play on Insanity. 
Space Kablooey fucked around with this message at 04:53 on May 5, 2012 |
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May 5, 2012 04:39
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Digital Scumbag posted:Is that blue typical of Marines in ME3? I never remembered seeing this in previous games. I'm not sure offhand what armor you're talking about, but the Alliance's colors did change for ME3. It used to be the grey, red, and white of Shepard's armor, and now it's blue and white.
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May 5, 2012 06:10
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For those wondering why we haven't seen Mark Meer or Jennifer Hale say they are recording new lines I'm guessing they might be, but Bioware is keeping it a secret so that it's more of a surprise. Total speculation but I could see that happening. After all, if we know they're in it then that heavily implies that Shepard lives in at least one of the endings.
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May 5, 2012 06:21
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Sombrerotron posted:Er. Yes? I barely ever used it on Insanity. It doesn't feel nearly as necessary as it did in ME2.
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May 5, 2012 07:57
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Lady Gaga posted:For those wondering why we haven't seen Mark Meer or Jennifer Hale say they are recording new lines I'm guessing they might be, but Bioware is keeping it a secret so that it's more of a surprise. I thought I heard Mark Meer had gone in at the same time as Hackett's VA. Hale doesn't go in till Meer has tested the script, anyway.
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May 5, 2012 07:58
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Just finished a renegade run of me1 since I'd never done that before. I'll eventually play this dude through 3. Renegade was pretty amusing, though some of the choices were made to be comically evil even though you could have legitimate reasons for taking them. For example when I executed the Rachni Queen, my party members at first intervened and said I shouldn't, and then two dialogue options came up, one of which was saying I can't do it and the other of which was going through with it. Well I naturally went through with it, but of course it makes my Shepherd say something completely assholish like "stay dead this time" or something to that effect. I just wanted to kill the queen I didn't want to trash talk it and call it a piece of poo poo. It wasn't personal, it was for the safety of the galaxy dammit. But in any case, Me1 is how you do a proper ending Bioware. Please watch it over and over as you revise your precious artistic vision.
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May 5, 2012 08:09
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Lady Gaga posted:Total speculation but I could see that happening. After all, if we know they're in it then that heavily implies that Shepard lives in at least one of the endings. sassassin posted:I barely ever used it on Insanity. It doesn't feel nearly as necessary as it did in ME2.
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May 5, 2012 13:16
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Sombrerotron posted:It might not be necessary, strictly speaking, but considering the massive benefits it provides, I honestly can't see any reason for not using it as much as possible. The benefits are not nearly as great as they were in ME2. Standard enemies don't get added layers of protection like they did in ME2 on higher difficulties, just a bigger health bar. You're not in a position the majority of the time where you need to quickly take out defenses before disabling them. Shooting them once will set them on fire or whatever, and if they don't die right away they'll be harmless for a time while they scream. The damage bonus only really matters when you face boss level enemies, and they're never in great numbers. If you're after damage protection, choose fortification as a bonus power and use it full time. People place a great deal of importance on the cooldown bar. It's hard not to; it's big and goes red if you're doing it 'wrong'. But in a practical sense there's no grand difference between -200% and -100% even for an adept. As long as you have an AR saved up for emergencies (read: banshees), you don't lose any effectiveness by packing the biggest, most powerful guns you have. In fact you're cheating yourself if you choose only two lighter guns so you can use AR 3 times rather than 2. Relying on it is a wholly unnecessary crutch.
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May 5, 2012 13:46
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sassassin posted:The benefits are not nearly as great as they were in ME2. Standard enemies don't get added layers of protection like they did in ME2 on higher difficulties, just a bigger health bar. You're not in a position the majority of the time where you need to quickly take out defenses before disabling them. Shooting them once will set them on fire or whatever, and if they don't die right away they'll be harmless for a time while they scream. Still, that wasn't quite the point I was making. What I meant was: whenever you're in combat and you can use AR - i.e. when it's not on cooldown -, what reason is there not to use it?
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May 5, 2012 15:54
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Gammatron 64 posted:One thing that really gets me about a lot of sci-fi where there are a bunch of races, all the traits associated with humans are really traits associated with western cultures, especially America. In Mass Effect, humans are basically "Americans" in that they're highly individualistic entrepreneurial newcomers who bully their way to the top of the galactic community. Honestly the lack of human diversity doesn't bother me so much as the lack of diversity in the aliens. Everyone's using translators, so the accents are a bit of an affectation anyway. I like that *all* the races aren't bipedal humanoids, but you sure don't get much interaction with them compared to the other races. I was super pissed off that the Eclor rescue mission where you go to their homeworld just has you scanning the surface of the planet rather than doing a full fledged mission. I want to see what Elcor vehicles and buildings look like! The Hanar, too. What kind of technology would a giant space jellyfish have? [edit] They also sort of pussed out with Javik's design. He looks much less alien than what you see in the cipher visions. Irving fucked around with this message at 17:59 on May 5, 2012 |
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May 5, 2012 16:02
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Irving posted:Honestly the lack of human diversity doesn't bother me so much as the lack of diversity in the aliens. Everyone's using translators, so the accents are a bit of an affectation anyway. If Mass Effect were realistic, none of the aliens would be humanoid at all, and all would be weird things like the Hanar and Elcor. That's easier said than done, though, and it's not like Mass Effect is anywhere close to hard sci-fi. Well, that, and if it were realistic hard sci-fi, it wouldn't have FTL travel, so no aliens period. Mass Effect is very firmly soft sci-fi and is a homage to retro space operas that you don't see very often anymore, ala Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galatica, Flash Gordon, etc. That said, I really love the Discovery channel's Alien Planet special and I wish more aliens in sci-fi were really weird and out there and nothing like earth animals at all. For soft sci-fi humanoid creatures that have to adhere to the human bone structure, the aliens are done pretty well. Other than the Asari, there are no "Star Trek aliens" that are just people wearing makeup and prosthetics on their heads. That said, since a lot of the aliens use the human bone structure, if you did a live action Mass Effect movie, almost all of them would look great using a mixture of suitmation and puppetry and few of them would have to be CGI. I would love to see some kind of live action Mass Effect thing with Guillermo del Toro or Jim Henson Productions involved. This is a cool Garrus costume that somebody made that I found on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCEV4RASlC0 Mostly I just think I want a retro sci-fi movie that feels like old school Star Wars \ Battlestar Galatica and has aliens in rubber masks and model spaceships rather than CGI.
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May 5, 2012 16:46
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Gammatron 64 posted:If Mass Effect were realistic, none of the aliens would be humanoid at all, and all would be weird things like the Hanar and Elcor. That's easier said than done, though, and it's not like Mass Effect is anywhere close to hard sci-fi.
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May 5, 2012 17:00
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Sombrerotron posted:I just performed a minor experiment, switching from two to three heavy weapons while also carrying a gun (as in ME2). This caused my cooldown bonus to drop from +4% to -197%. In practical terms, this means that AR doesn't take a little less than 8 seconds to recharge, but a little less than 27 seconds. That's an absolutely huge difference... I think sassassin meant that the difference between +200% and +100% recharge bonus isn't that important, not -200% and -100%. He just accidentally reversed the sign. Hell, -200% would make an adept absolutely terrible to play. It could probably be done, but it would be the most boring thing ever.
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May 5, 2012 17:02
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dwazegek posted:I think sassassin meant that the difference between +200% and +100% recharge bonus isn't that important, not -200% and -100%. He just accidentally reversed the sign.
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May 5, 2012 17:08
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Gammatron 64 posted:If Mass Effect were realistic, none of the aliens would be humanoid at all, and all would be weird things like the Hanar and Elcor. That's easier said than done, though, and it's not like Mass Effect is anywhere close to hard sci-fi. Well, that, and if it were realistic hard sci-fi, it wouldn't have FTL travel, so no aliens period. Mass Effect is very firmly soft sci-fi and is a homage to retro space operas that you don't see very often anymore, ala Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galatica, Flash Gordon, etc.
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May 5, 2012 17:23
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I like how FTL travel immediately puts a story into the "soft" category. Apparently Mission of Gravity (Hal Clement) is soft sci-fi now? I think a few other Clement stories had FTL as well. I remember The Songs of Distant Earth (Arthur C. Clarke) had some kind of bullshit drive as well. "Hard" and "Soft" are not binary states in science fiction. EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not calling G64 out or anything (ME is soft as gently caress), it's just that this sort of thing has been posted quite a few times. GloomMouse fucked around with this message at 06:21 on May 6, 2012 |
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May 6, 2012 06:17
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Yeah, hard sci-fi doesn't mean there aren't any fantastical elements at all. Just look at 2001 and the Monolith.
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May 6, 2012 06:20
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What Assault rifle would you guys recommend for a Soldier on insanity (doing newgame+, so I have all weapons already unlocked)? I've always stuck with the M-8 Avenger in ME2 and my first ME3 playthrough, since it's such a solid all-round performer. The damage is a little low though, causing me to stray out of cover sometimes a bit too long. So what would you guys recommend? Are there any other assault rifles that are actually better suited for all-round action? The N7 Valkyrie or M96 Mattock perhaps?
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May 6, 2012 06:54
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Batham posted:What Assault rifle would you guys recommend for a Soldier on insanity (doing newgame+, so I have all weapons already unlocked)? I've always stuck with the M-8 Avenger in ME2 and my first ME3 playthrough, since it's such a solid all-round performer. The M-76 Revenant Light Machine Gun is the only weapon a Soldier needs. With the Assault Rifle Piercing and Extended Barrel mods, and AR + Defense Matrix active, you can get right up in the enemies face and shoot them forever. EDIT: I guess you could take Barrier if you were a pansy and wanted ~space magic~ GloomMouse fucked around with this message at 07:27 on May 6, 2012 |
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May 6, 2012 07:19
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GloomMouse posted:The M-76 Revenant Light Machine Gun is the only weapon a Soldier needs. The wrongest opinion. High-accuracy weapons 4 LYFE
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May 6, 2012 07:53
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Batham posted:What Assault rifle would you guys recommend for a Soldier on insanity (doing newgame+, so I have all weapons already unlocked)? I've always stuck with the M-8 Avenger in ME2 and my first ME3 playthrough, since it's such a solid all-round performer. M99 Saber You want to spend as little time out of cover as possible.
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May 6, 2012 08:40
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Don't listen to them, Batham. With an onboard medical and ablative VI, nanocrystal hard shield, and a redundant field generator, you are unstoppable. Strong synthetic fibers are woven through your skin, dramatically reducing injury taken from your enemies, as well as acting as medi-gel conduits to keep you in the fight. Your muscles are perforated with micro-fibers that increase your strength and endurance so you will never tire of slaughter. Your skeleton is reinforced with synthetic weave making your bones almost unbreakable. Soldier, you are cover. Your M-76 will see you through anything. If you really want to play it safe though, bring along the two standard issue SABER units (Semi-Autonomous Banshee Engagement Resource) nicknamed 'Liara' and 'Kaiden' Seriously though, if you've already done the whole cover-shooter thing with the Avenger, the Revenant will encourage you to play differently. Save the sniping poo poo for an Infiltrator run. Use teammates to strip banshee barriers as usual.
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May 6, 2012 09:48
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I wish I could end lovely situations like a krogan would. You know, a headbutt and a thundering laugh.
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May 6, 2012 10:35
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GloomMouse posted:The M-76 Revenant Light Machine Gun is the only weapon a Soldier needs. With the Assault Rifle Piercing and Extended Barrel mods, and AR + Defense Matrix active, you can get right up in the enemies face and shoot them forever. Gonna second this. Use incendiary ammo evolved for explosive bursts and watch everything melt. Carry a Carnifex or Paladin as a backup gun and you're set.
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May 6, 2012 12:43
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Gammatron 64 posted:If Mass Effect were realistic, none of the aliens would be humanoid at all, and all would be weird things like the Hanar and Elcor.
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May 6, 2012 16:41
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Crows Turn Off posted:How do you know what a "realistic" alien looks like? How can you say that one alien design is more realistic than another? Last time I checked, we didn't know of any aliens, so I'm not sure what you're basing this on. There is absolutely no way to tell how an alien species would evolve. A humanoid design and a jellyfish design are equally possible, or equally improbable, however you want to say it. Yeah, we have no idea what aliens would look like, but I just find Star Trek aliens who are just people with bumpy foreheads to be extremely evolutionarily improbable. Let me say this: weirder aliens are more believable. Not that I mind humanoid aliens in Mass Effect, it's firmly soft sci-fi.
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May 6, 2012 20:31
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Gammatron 64 posted:Yeah, we have no idea what aliens would look like, but I just find Star Trek aliens who are just people with bumpy foreheads to be extremely evolutionarily improbable. Let me say this: weirder aliens are more believable. Not that I mind humanoid aliens in Mass Effect, it's firmly soft sci-fi. While I'm not saying the Star Trek route is believable - what I take issue with is this - if there exists another planet out there, with an extremely similar atmosphere, gravity, all of that - to Earth's, I don't see any reason to think life that would evolve and develop on it wouldn't share many of the same traits that Earth creatures do. After all, I don't think I buy that animals that developed on Earth particularly cared what planet they were on when evolving, they just cared about what their local environment was like, so they evolved traits and statures suited for that environment. A same environment, even on a different planet, should logically yield similar creatures.
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May 6, 2012 22:40
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Gammatron 64 posted:Yeah, we have no idea what aliens would look like, but I just find Star Trek aliens who are just people with bumpy foreheads to be extremely evolutionarily improbable. Let me say this: weirder aliens are more believable. Not that I mind humanoid aliens in Mass Effect, it's firmly soft sci-fi. I think in many cases a bipedal form with numerous digits (including thumbs) would be a good evolutionary track. I know we only have ourselves to go off of right now, but being a biped with a working thumb is infinitely useful for an intelligent species. Now, the features, weight distribution, gross biological processes..I have a feeling there would be an incredible amount of drift there, but basic biped structure? I'd say one could make a case for it being fairly common.
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May 6, 2012 23:51
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You also have to consider the inherent chance that the mutations culminating in some "novel" gains-of-function phenotype is extremely low. It's true that what mutations "stick" isn't random at all, but whether those mutations happen is. It's all part and parcel in evolution along with "noticeable" evolution taking 10^x generations the more complex the animal is. Bipedal forms might be extremely uncommon just by statistics. Now whether bipedal animals are more likely to develop socially in such a way that they develop space travel, so much so that they have a plurality in the "body plans that made it to space" group, is another concept entirely.
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May 7, 2012 00:08
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Aristobulus posted:While I'm not saying the Star Trek route is believable - what I take issue with is this - if there exists another planet out there, with an extremely similar atmosphere, gravity, all of that - to Earth's, I don't see any reason to think life that would evolve and develop on it wouldn't share many of the same traits that Earth creatures do. Basically, when it comes to the dominant race of a planet, we know for a fact that humanoids are viable. We don't know if anything else is viable or not. Humanoids may be one of only a few viable options, and heck, for all we know, it may even be the most viable option. I just had an issue with the idea that non-humanoid aliens are more "realistic" than humanoid aliens when there is no way to know that. I don't understand why that means it's "soft sci-fi" instead of "hard sci-fi," not really sure what that means.
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May 7, 2012 00:21
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I probably shouldn't have said "realistic", I probably should have said "plausible." Or hell, maybe not even plausible, but "interesting."TyroneGoldstein posted:I think in many cases a bipedal form with numerous digits (including thumbs) would be a good evolutionary track. I know we only have ourselves to go off of right now, but being a biped with a working thumb is infinitely useful for an intelligent species. Yeah, I've heard that argument before, and it's possible. There very well may be other bipedal lifeforms out there. Given how big the universe is, there probably is. We'll never know, though. And if there is, who knows how common it would be? Could be rare, could be common. We only have ourselves to go off of. I just personally think it's unlikely that we'd ever run into a race similar to us (or well, extraterrestrial life at all.) Life could also be wildly, wildly different depending on the environment they come from - whether they have higher or lower gravity, pressure, etc. There's also the possibility of silicon based life, although chances are, that wouldn't get very complex. I tend to call bullshit on stuff like traditional Roswell gray aliens due to their human-like features, and I'm hardly the only one. I think it's SUPER unlikely. (Also, there's the whole defying physics to get here thing) but I don't want to veer this way too off topic. I do think Mass Effect DOES have some really good alien designs, though, for the most part. The asari are really the only "Star Trek aliens" in the games. Turians are pretty alien, and not really like one particular earth animal. The Asari are really silly, though, because they look exactly like humans, but blue and they have different heads. However, due to the genre its in, plausibility doesn't really matter all that much in stuff like Mass Effect and Star Wars, as long as the series follows some consistent rules and make logical sense. Which is something both failed to do later on... but they started off all right! Crows Turn Off posted:I just had an issue with the idea that non-humanoid aliens are more "realistic" than humanoid aliens when there is no way to know that. I don't understand why that means it's "soft sci-fi" instead of "hard sci-fi," not really sure what that means. Soft sci-fi tends to be space operas where actual science doesn't matter, hard sci-fi is more scientifically plausible. It's kind of a sliding scale, though and not a binary "you're either one or the other" kinda thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction GET IN THE ROBOT fucked around with this message at 00:36 on May 7, 2012 |
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May 7, 2012 00:31
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GloomMouse posted:Don't listen to them, Batham. With an onboard medical and ablative VI, nanocrystal hard shield, and a redundant field generator, you are unstoppable. Strong synthetic fibers are woven through your skin, dramatically reducing injury taken from your enemies, as well as acting as medi-gel conduits to keep you in the fight. Your muscles are perforated with micro-fibers that increase your strength and endurance so you will never tire of slaughter. Your skeleton is reinforced with synthetic weave making your bones almost unbreakable. Soldier, you are cover. Your M-76 will see you through anything. If you really want to play it safe though, bring along the two standard issue SABER units (Semi-Autonomous Banshee Engagement Resource) nicknamed 'Liara' and 'Kaiden' That...was the most beautiful thing I've read in this entire thread. I've never seen such support for the manliest gun in space, and I'm proud to have been here to see it come out of the woodwork.
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May 7, 2012 00:36
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You know I'm a little disappointed that we didn't see more alien animal species throughout the series. Like we hear that Thessia is home to a lot of biotic wildlife, or those intelligent biotic bugs that Cerberus Daily News talked about. It would have been cool to see some of that stuff. They could have cut loose with some weirder designs when they weren't tied down to making animals fit into the game's mechanics. It seems the reason why elcor and hanar never seem to do anything is because they probably don't animate as easily as the bipedal creatures. I think we see each of those species moving once in ME2, both during cutscenes, and they don't exactly fit into the "cover shooter" mechanics when it comes to gameplay. Which is why all of those hilarious "where is my hanar adept?" posts when the subject of new multiplayer classes comes up will never come to fruition.
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May 7, 2012 00:44
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Batham posted:What Assault rifle would you guys recommend for a Soldier on insanity (doing newgame+, so I have all weapons already unlocked)? I've always stuck with the M-8 Avenger in ME2 and my first ME3 playthrough, since it's such a solid all-round performer. Geth plasma rifle with armor piercing mod, armor piercing ammo, and extended magazine and all the cooldown reduction armor. AR is your reload button so you just hold down m1 and shoot every enemy through the environment. If you ever run into a tricky spot spam concussive shot every 1.6 seconds.
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May 7, 2012 00:46
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Dr. Abysmal posted:You know I'm a little disappointed that we didn't see more alien animal species throughout the series. Like we hear that Thessia is home to a lot of biotic wildlife, or those intelligent biotic bugs that Cerberus Daily News talked about. It would have been cool to see some of that stuff. Seeing wildlife like that would've been really cool, but you don't get to explore really any planet in enough detail to see any of that. A game in the ME universe, that had a smaller scope/scale and wasn't about a galaxy wide threat, might be able to let you explore planets closely enough to see things like that.
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May 7, 2012 00:47
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