Belthan wrote:Just summarizing a few ideas from throughout the thread, but I can see the "perfect" ending (most difficult path with all choices made correctly) being civilization is trashed but the Reapers are defeated, council species survive to rebuild from the ashes. The "moderately successful" ending being everybody dies, but the next time sentient life evolves it won't be under the shadow of the Reapers. The "epic fail" ending would be humanity taking the Collectors' place and the cycle starting over.
The only real issue I see is, from what we have seen, the Reapers are for the moment only attacking Earth (though I wouldn't consider it a stretch to say the other human colonies would also be under attack). The focus of the game, and what I would assume your, as the player, goal is to save Earth. Humans are the ones at risk, if the fails, we as a race become one or more new Reapers. What happens to the rest of the Galaxy would be up in the air, but we wouldn't be around to care.
If anyone get's turned into new Collectors, I would say it'd be the Turians.
Ok, let's try a new topic: COMPANIONS! (say it like ENCHANTMENT! in DA:O)
First of all, no team building. We had a bit of it in ME1, did it to death in ME2. Don't need anymore, there should be enough potential squad mates that everyone can be happy.
Second, fewer companions. I liked the number of companions that ME1 had, though I can understand that some people would want more. ME2 had too many for me (and I personally believe that there are so many to pad the game, and make up for the short and small main mission). I feel that so many companions made them cardboard cutouts, none of the new ones could be given the depth to make them truly interesting. So, if ME1's six companions is too few, and ME2's eleven (not counting the two DLC characters) is too many, I would choose eight.
Third, if there are no new companions, who should come back?
- Tali and Garrus: Obvious choices. They were in the first two games, they are the best developed and are the most interesting.
- Liara: While I can see a way to put her on the ship, I can't see her as a squad mate. She's just too busy with her new job and all.
- Kaiden/Ashley: Possibly, so I'll say yes. Like them or not, not only does this give the players who romanced them in the first game and stayed loyal in the second a chance to reconnect, They would be the Alliance rep in your effort to save humanity.
- Wrex: Unfortunately no. Assuming he's alive, his role as leader of Clan Urdnot makes him someone who can't just pick up stakes and follow you around anymore.
- Jacob and Miranda: While they have all the character depth of a spoon, they are Cerberus, it's a Cerberus ship, and assuming they survived ME2, I can't see them leaving.
- Thane: Depending on when ME3 takes place, he should dead. Not only is he uninteresting and a stereotypical moody assassin, he has a terminal disease. Not having him die from it makes it meaningless.
- Samara/Morinth: Why was she there in the first place?
- Jack: Unless romanced, Jack should move on. If you talked to her at all, you'd know it's just her nature.
- Grunt: While he make take leave to "get busy" on Tuchanka. Shepard is his Battlemaster. He would stay.
- Legion: Would probably still be around. "He" doesn't need to leave to stay in touch with the rest of the Geth. He's also very popular with the kiddies.
- Mordin: Should never have been a squad mate in the first place. He works best in an on ship support role, not in combat. Mordin was best for his conversation anyway.
That's seven (Tali, Garrus, Kaiden/Ashley, Jacob, Miranda, Grunt, Legion), with Jack as a potential eighth depending on romance status. Mordin and Liara on ship but as, quite literally, supporting characters.
Fourth, make your squad choices matter. In ME1, if you lacked Biotics or Tech abilities in you squad, you could tell. In ME2, if it wasn't for the loyalty missions I wouldn't have used anyone other than Tali and Garrus as squad mates and never noticed a difference.
Fifth, no replacements for dead squad members. If you couldn't keep them alive in ME2, and it's not that hard to do, it's your problem.
A real inventory, like in ME1. Maybe a bit better managable, but at least the option to tinker with weapons, armour and mods. It's an aspect of games that I love.
A more elaborate skill system, again like in ME1. Make skill development deeper.
Ofcourse, "deeper" and more thorough versions of these things than in ME1 are welcome, but I doubt the average current gamer is willing to make the mental effort of actually reading & thinking.
GawainBS wrote:
A more elaborate skill system, again like in ME1. Make skill development deeper.
There was a serious problem with ME1 skillsystem. By the end of the game you had 90% of them.
Third, if there are no new companions, who should come back?
I did my list in the first post
Although i must add emphasis on Zaeed and Kasumi, beign the most interesting NPCs in ME2.
Fourth, make your squad choices matter. In ME1, if you lacked Biotics or Tech abilities in you squad, you could tell. In ME2, if it wasn't for the loyalty missions I wouldn't have used anyone other than Tali and Garrus as squad mates and never noticed a difference.
I'd say : allow the player to run with only 1 squad mate, or none whatsoever
Fifth, no replacements for dead squad members. If you couldn't keep them alive in ME2, and it's not that hard to do, it's your problem.
Pretty much, yeah. The only tricky part is keeping Yeoman Chambers alive.
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By the time you had 90% of your skill points, you were halfway through the second playthrough in ME1.
In ME2, you have all the skills you'd ever wanted at about 66% of the first playthrough.
I know. I figured we could hit on another topic of your original post for awhile and keep this tread going.
Stworca wrote:Although i must add emphasis on Zaeed and Kasumi, beign the most interesting NPCs in ME2.
Yes, they were the most interesting, but since they were DLC characters (though Zaeed was free, Kasumi wasn't), there is no guarantee that the player would have them, so I stuck with the base team. Eleven was too many anyway, thirteen is just ridiculous.
Stworca wrote:I'd say : allow the player to run with only 1 squad mate, or none whatsoever
Acceptable.
GawainBS wrote:By the time you had 90% of your skill points, you were halfway through the second playthrough in ME1.
In ME2, you have all the skills you'd ever wanted at about 66% of the first playthrough.
The biggest issues I had with ME2s skills (other than the fact that they cut nearly all of the non-combat passive skills) was that by the time the game was over, your character looked just like every other one. There was no room for "having it your way". One Vanguard, Infiltrator, Adept, whatever looked like any other.
I'd say : allow the player to run with only 1 squad mate, or none whatsoever
Speaking of which, i'd also prefer if your max squad capacity was much higher than 2 + Shepard. More NPC's equals more firepower, equals much more enemies beign beatable at once, equals more explosions, bullets and screams of pain.. equals more fun and realism. Also, why would you take only two people, when FIVE would do the job with less risks
The biggest issues I had with ME2s skills (other than the fact that they cut nearly all of the non-combat passive skills) was that by the time the game was over, your character looked just like every other one. There was no room for "having it your way". One Vanguard, Infiltrator, Adept, whatever looked like any other.
True, with the sole exception of Loyalty special powers. Some people take X, others Y. I took armor-piercing ammo iirc. But yes, there was no customisation.
However, ME1 had a bunch of useless abilities that noone sane should ever take, thus even though there were a ton of ranks, everyone had more or less the same character anyway.
A system that would allow more customisation would require choices, which disable some other choices upon picking.
Speaking of Zaeed.. The authentication system for ME2 was a pain, and the Secu-rom in early releases of ME1 was even more pain. I hope that they won't request blood samples, finger prints and 24/7 PC monitoring with ME3.
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Stworca wrote:Speaking of which, i'd also prefer if your max squad capacity was much higher than 2 + Shepard. More NPC's equals more firepower, equals much more enemies beign beatable at once, equals more explosions, bullets and screams of pain.. equals more fun and realism. Also, why would you take only two people, when FIVE would do the job with less risks
All true points, but I bet this is the reason: It's probably limited by the technology. Lets face it, the squad mate AI is slightly better than the enemy bot AI, and probably consumes more processor cycles. To make the game playable on the limited hardware of a console (and Bioware makes console games first and foremost now) they had to limit the number of actors it had to control.
Stworca wrote:However, ME1 had a bunch of useless abilities that noone sane should ever take, thus even though there were a ton of ranks, everyone had more or less the same character anyway.
None of the abilities in ME1 were useless, it depended on your play style whether a particular ability was useful to you or not. An example, for me, is Stasis. Some people like it, I never used it, or put any points in it after I played my first Adept and tried it. To this day, it's the only power I don't have unlocked as a bonus power. I don't put many points in Barrier either IIRC.
Stworca wrote:A system that would allow more customisation would require choices, which disable some other choices upon picking.
Instead of, or in addition to, unlocking powers, certain skill trees exclude others. I could see that. Warp would lead to Shockwave etc, and Barrier would lead to Stasis and so on. But a second tier choice on one path would exclude second tier choices on the other. I could get behind that.
Stworca wrote:Speaking of Zaeed.. The authentication system for ME2 was a pain, and the Secu-rom in early releases of ME1 was even more pain. I hope that they won't request blood samples, finger prints and 24/7 PC monitoring with ME3.
You'll probably have to log into your EA account, create a facebook account, befriend the Bioware faceboook account, get 10 friends to friend Bioware, have 24/7 in house monitoring and a over the phone pass phrase authentication in order to play.
Rad wrote:
You'll probably have to log into your EA account, create a facebook account, befriend the Bioware faceboook account, get 10 friends to friend Bioware, have 24/7 in house monitoring and a over the phone pass phrase authentication in order to play.
And there will be an EA worker attached to each game box, who will monitor if the game is played legally. Yeah, i can see this system work and attract customers.
Hmm.. Grunt is the only NPC whos loyalty quest isn't either revenge or family based.
Miranda ; Sister, Thane ; Son, Tali ; Father, Geth ; obvious, Jacob ; Father, Samara ; Daughter, Kasumi ; Lover (but also kind off revenge)
Garrus, Zaeed, Jack, Mordin - revenge.
Come to think of it, it's a poorly designed part of the game. Bioware ran out of ideas?
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Stworca wrote:Hmm.. Grunt is the only NPC whos loyalty quest isn't either revenge or family based.
Actually, if you think about it, it IS family based. He was looking to join one...
Stworca wrote:Come to think of it, it's a poorly designed part of the game. Bioware ran out of ideas?
While I will agree with those who say the loyalty missions were the best parts of ME2, it was a bad concept. The main hero shouldn't have to deal with all of his squad mates baggage in order to gt the job done.
I've meant the concepts. Kasumi was the only fresh RP breeze, until i actually started to read the dialogue.. It turned out to be another regular mission then.
But yes, they are action packed
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hmm lets see. things id like to se in ME3.
well first of all i would like to see the army that i secretly gathered come to work, i saved the arachnaid queen, im quite sure she owes me one, i gave the order to cure the genophage, gogo my faithfull krogan! i kept the collector station for study. everywhere possible (on 1 playtrough from ME1-ME2) i always took the way, that in ME3 could give me an army!
why did i do this? well.... its the reapers, i need an army
these are some of the choices i very much would like to have an impact in ME3.
combat system in ME 2 worked fine for me. could possibly use some better NPC AI. some of my idiotic fellows was jumping right out of cover, into the biggest line of shot avaible in the goddamn galaxy.
maybe a bit more difficult all in all. nothing in ME2 was hard. (ME 1 was MUCH harder if you were not playing a soldier vs mele mobs) only thing remotely challenging in ME2 was those bloody husks. but then again. "grunt fixes"
a more "epic" end fight than ME 2, sure the fight itself was "ok". 100-0 was exactly the same silly stuff. maybe the should consider something like this.
100-75% boss time. 75% boss goes imune, and an "endless" ammount of collecters starts to spawn, with 1 bossmob among them. once the "boss mob" is dead, spawning stops, and boss becomes vaulnerable again.
repeat or find something new evey 25% phase.
ps: remove nuke launcher that thing is NOT ballanced, freaking getting gunships to 10% hp in 1 hit. im all for heavy ammo, that you can use when things get tough. but no... just no....
I'd like to see different ammo types dependent on the gun, and not on the class your playing. If they are not going to put weapon mods back in the game (and I'll bet real money that they won't), give us more guns with different ammo modes built into the weapon, some with one (or even no) special ammo, and the best with two or even three.
Unless someone reading this can explain to me why an Adept or Infiltrator can't use Incendiary Ammo?
Definitely need to have Tali, Garrus, Grunt & Legion back. Kind of hoping for a ME3 "Thane goes out with a bang" moment that his terminal illness seemed to foreshadow in ME2. Mordin is hilarious but not a great squad member; he should at least be on board with Joker, Chakwas & Chambers.Wouldn't break my heart if Miranda & Jacob get promoted off the ship and you have new Cerberus squad members. I torched Zaeed, so obviously not concerned about whether he comes back. I relied pretty heavily on Jack in ME2, but I agree with Rad's comment - unless you romanced her she doesn't seem like the type to stick around for long. Similar situation with Kasumi & Samara/Morinth. If you romanced LIara in ME1 and stayed loyal to her in ME2, I'd like to see that wrapped up a little more conclusively than what we got in the Shadow Broker DLC, but not necessarily as a squad member.
Unless someone reading this can explain to me why an Adept or Infiltrator can't use Incendiary Ammo?
Yeah, what's up with that? "While you were dead, we redesigned every weapon in the galaxy so they use disposable heat sinks and don't accept mods"? ME1 inventory management was a bit ridiculous, but I loved the plentiful options for customizing weapons & armor. Ammo mods in particular were useful to augment or fill gaps in your squad's abilities. There's token armor customization in ME2, and the only weapon choices are between one "basic" model and one "deluxe" model in each weapon class. I'd like the ability to mod weapons and armor back in ME3.
ME1 inventory management was as painful as it goes without killing a person. I was quite happy with dumbed down inventory. Let's face it, unless they make upgrades and weapon switching PC friendly, and not 100% console port, it will be pain to manage inventory.
All it realy needed are some filters, options to sell / turn all into biogel, show only the highest quality upgrades, and stack similiar ones, so you dont have to scroll through 5285190 weapon upgrades to find the one you seek.
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Belthan wrote:Yeah, what's up with that? "While you were dead, we redesigned every weapon in the galaxy so they use disposable heat sinks and don't accept mods"?
The cleanest way to have weapon mods back in the game is to only allow the modding in the weapon lab (where Jacob hangs out), like the workbenches in KotOR. They also need to limit the number of mods. Most either didn't work, or were so out performed by other mods that they were useless.
Belthan wrote:There's token armor customization in ME2, and the only weapon choices are between one "basic" model and one "deluxe" model in each weapon class. I'd like the ability to mod weapons and armor back in ME3.
The armor customization in ME2 is less than token, it's irrelevant. I tested this by playing a game and not "upgrading" my armor, and did not notice the difference.
Stworca wrote:ME1 inventory management was as painful as it goes without killing a person. I was quite happy with dumbed down inventory. Let's face it, unless they make upgrades and weapon switching PC friendly, and not 100% console port, it will be pain to manage inventory.
The dumbed down inventory only works if they give you sufficient variety of weapons to choose from, not two for each type (minus DLCs). Give each weapon it's own, built in ammo types would create the needed variety.
Stworca wrote:All it realy needed are some filters, options to sell / turn all into biogel, show only the highest quality upgrades, and stack similiar ones, so you dont have to scroll through 5285190 weapon upgrades to find the one you seek.
An option not to pick things up would have been nice as well. As I have said, the inventory system only needed to be adjusted, not redesigned. Filters would have been a perfect solution to the problem.
It may be just a wild guess, but i think ME1 had the worst inventory management in RPG games from the last decade
The dumbed down inventory only works if they give you sufficient variety of weapons to choose from, not two for each type (minus DLCs). Give each weapon it's own, built in ammo types would create the needed variety.
True, most shooters had more weapon choices than ME2, and it's an RPG we're talking about, and the genre is known for tons of items. But i still must say that i preffered it over ME1 system
In ME1 it was a no-brainer which weapon you should use, and once you get XXX version 8, version 7 will be trash. In ME2 there were very few useless ones. Only four weapons per weapon skill (incl DLC's), this should be increased to ten at least! , but each had its uses. Differend weapon - differend playstyle. For example : Ze pistol. I used the low-ammo, low-clip heavy pistol, because it fitted my style more than the bigger-clip, more-ammo, fast shooting piece of junk
Heavy weaponry had a satisfying variety. I liked the alien beam the most, but all of them had their uses.If they give each type a few alternative choices, i'll be happy with ME3 itemisation.
Ahh.. Where are your reviews of ME, Rad!?
Also, we're now officialy the longest ME thread on GB Filthy spammers, all three of us!
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Stworca wrote:Heavy weaponry had a satisfying variety. I liked the alien beam the most, but all of them had their uses.If they give each type a few alternative choices, i'll be happy with ME3 itemisation.
I hated the particle beam, it was too ugly and didn't fit with the style of everything else. I actually liked the Grenade Launcher. That thing hits harder than the Rocket Launcher and has a good amount of ammo and a decent ROF.
Stworca wrote:Ahh.. Where are your reviews of ME, Rad!?
I have started to write something. While I can write, it isn't easy, and it takes time, assuming I get it finished.
Stworca wrote:Also, we're now officialy the longest ME thread on GB Filthy spammers, all three of us!
I was thinking that was going to happen soon, but have you checked EVERY sub-forum? It's probably more accurate to say longest ACTIVE thread.
Edit: ignore the above, I miss read your post.
Anyway, hooray for us not having anything better to do...
Rad wrote:I hated the particle beam, it was too ugly and didn't fit with the style of everything else. I actually liked the Grenade Launcher. That thing hits harder than the Rocket Launcher and has a good amount of ammo and a decent ROF.
It had 100% accuracy rate regardless of range, and nice damage against barriers or armor, i cannot remember which. But as i said, this is the variety i wish to see in ME3, instead of 51285190 differend, crappy weapons when you'll use the top one always anyway (Aka ME1)
I have started to write something. While I can write, it isn't easy, and it takes time, assuming I get it finished.
Wha-pish, wha-pish! FASSTAAAA! (whip)
Anyway, hooray for us not having anything better to do...
Or the forum beign officialy dead
Also, i think i've exhausted the topic, and have nothing to add about ME3 at the moment.
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