Mass Effect 2 was NOT "dumbed-down"

[linwolf]

This thread is nothing but a bunch of people who equate customization with tediousness. Clearly true fans of the RPG genre.

What do you mean by "customization"?

For some people that means dressing up the character. I don't really care about that (Barbie was never really my thing) but I agree that it certainly was missing from ME2. I just don't see how the lack of dressing-up can be described as "dumbing down".

For other people, customization means shaping your character's gameplay. If this is what you're referring to then I'd ask that you formulate a logical argument rather than spouting throw-away sarcasm.

Then let me. In ME1 you choose one of several classes and then customised it to suit you. In Me2 you choose one of several classes and that was it. there where no customisation in how you character played. The inventor made me change the weapons mods part to make the weapon better for something instead of others by ME2 that was gone. For me the first was interesting the second boring. And I blame that on the fact that by ME2 the RPG was dumb down and the shooter improved, since I love RPGs and dislike shooters this made the game boring.

 

[Altorin]

ME1's less meaningful but larger variety of choice gave it fifty-billion times more replayability than ME2's barely existent choice. ME1's item system was broken, but at least it existed, and flawed as it was gave you at least a SENSE of progression and variety; ME2 had a starter weapon, a second one that was universally better than the stater, and a specialist one universally better than either.

Each weapon in ME2 was different and honestly, except a few cases, which weapon was "better" was largely a matter of taste and preference. The starting pistol is better for spraying a lot of bullets and cover fire, whereas the carnifex pistol had more powerful shots and favored a player with better accuracy. I think of them like standard semi-automatic pistol versus a magnum revolver. Fewer shots per clip, fewer shots in general, more bang for your buck, but not necessarily "Better".

The SMGs were similar. Each one had different firing patterns. The starting SMG fired 3 shot bursts with a slight delay between them, but had a relatively large clip. Something like the Locust (the gun that killed two presidents) has a very small clip and does less damage per shot but can fire individual rounds (basically 1 shot bursts) with no delay between them, so you can auto fire all 20 bullets. The starting SMG is better if you like to just press the trigger, the 3 bullet burst fires faster then the locust, but the locust gives you more ammo control, and doesn't leave you with any dead time between bursts.

Shotguns, different shotguns had different clip sizes, which I found made a huge difference. Sure the unlockable shotgun had the best damage in the game, but it had one bullet clips. Meaning if you weren't ontop of your reloading, you'd often charge in with no bullet in the clip and waste a charge and perhaps put yourself in hot water. The other shotguns had 3 or 5 round clips, so there was less reloading, and you almost could always have at least one bullet in the clip and not be caught with your pants down.

I haven't played a soldier, but I imagine Assault Rifles are similar to SMGs.

Sniper Rifles do have "strictly better" versions, but even saying that, there are two styles of sniper rifles and they can both be very effective. The starting sniper rifle and the super powerful widow are 1 shot sniper rifles. The other two (1 from Thane's recruit mission and 1 from DLC) are rapid fire sniper rifles). The Widow is strictly better then the starting sniper rifle, I'll admit that (It does more damage, has more rounds overall, it's just a better gun), and I'd imagine one of the rapid fire sniper rifles are better then the other, but to choose between the styles of sniper rifle, and there's an actual choice there. I played through the game once with each type of sniper rifle as an Infiltrator, and had an alright time of it both ways.

Armor-wise, unless you download the Kestral Armor, there are LOTS of valid choices for armor, depending on what you want to do. If your a soldier with the 50% health damage reduction version of Adrenaline Rush, stacking health might be better. If you're a sentinel or vanguard, with their built in barriers that are dependant on shield strength, boosting your shield strength might be better. The Kestral Armor set overall is strictly better then pretty much anything else you could use, but other then that there's great variety and you feel like you're actually building an armor set to suit your tastes.

I *NEVER* in the 10-11 times I've played through Mass Effect 1, had that level of choice in my gear. Never. It was always "which has the best damage", until I could get specter gear, and then it was "Specter 7 or Specter 10?" and the answer of course is 10. Armor-wise, it always came down to colossus or Predator LMH, and the answer was almost always colossus. Mods might change things up slightly, but even that was just about min/maxing damage and damage resistance (so it usually came to ablative armor for armor, and scram rails balanced with frictionless materials for most weapons, with double scram-rail and explosive ammo for sniper rifles) To do it any other way is just silly, you're gimping yourself entirely by doing it any other way for no gain other then "I'm different, yay!"

ME2 has real choice in its gear, ME1 has fake choice.

 

[Altorin]

For example, my preferred soldier build in ME2 actually forgoes AR entirely (I use Retrain Powers to get back the 1 point that's in there by default) and focuses mainly on ammo powers. I'm not saying your way is wrong and my way is right, I'm saying that there's choice and therefore depth. Personally I find AR to be useless until it gets to the fourth rank, at which point you get some damage reduction (which is nice but not worth a 10-point investment IMO).

That's funny, I hardly ever cloak with my Infiltrator. The only time I cloak is when I need or just want the damage buff, and I cloak, pop out of cover, aim, shoot. I also will cloak if shit has really hit the fan, but often I just end up dying at the end of the cloak because if I'm in that much trouble, my health and armor are low, and my allies are probably fried, and I have to choose between cloak and unity.

This thread is nothing but a bunch of people who equate customization with tediousness. Clearly true fans of the RPG genre.

What do you mean by "customization"?

For some people that means dressing up the character. I don't really care about that (Barbie was never really my thing) but I agree that it certainly was missing from ME2. I just don't see how the lack of dressing-up can be described as "dumbing down".

For other people, customization means shaping your character's gameplay. If this is what you're referring to then I'd ask that you formulate a logical argument rather than spouting throw-away sarcasm.

Then let me. In ME1 you choose one of several classes and then customised it to suit you. In Me2 you choose one of several classes and that was it. there where no customisation in how you character played. The inventor made me change the weapons mods part to make the weapon better for something instead of others by ME2 that was gone. For me the first was interesting the second boring. And I blame that on the fact that by ME2 the RPG was dumb down and the shooter improved, since I love RPGs and dislike shooters this made the game boring.

In ME1, it was way too easy to end up with a build that was just bad. I mean, bad bad. My first time through the game, I put full points into both Intimidate and Charm, and completely ignored important skills like Fitness and Pistols (having 100% uptime on Immunity and Marksman? Yes please.). You could argue that I was bad and deserved to have a bad character back then, but there was also no way to fix a bad character except to start over. Even when you NG+'d, you were stuck with your old choices. I would wager that if you wanted a character that wasn't bad in ME1, it took 3 playthroughs to get it, that way you spent no points on intimdate/charm, but had 12 in it anyway.

It was a bad system that needed to be changed. In ME2, you can't make a bad character. No matter what you do, your shepard will not be pants on head horrible. And if you make a build that's not to your liking, it's 5000 Eezo to fix, which admittedly is annoying the first time through the game, but on all subsequent plays is ridiculously easy as the 50,000 Eezo you get from the long service award is enough for almost all your tech/biotic upgrades.

but other than that he just had concussive shot, which I found all but useless on any difficulty.

Just saying, Concussive shot does hilarious things to Barriers. Like making them disappear. Sure, a couple of NPCs have it so it's not like your soldier NEEDS to have it. But it's certainly not useless. Against armorless husks it can give you some space, it gives you another almost instant kill attack against a lifted or pulled enemy, and it obliterates biotic barriers, which is one of the more common protection types in the most annoying battles in the game (the Praetorians)

 

[Vuljatar]

I agree with OP, overall.

Sure, there were AREAS that were dumbed-down (miscellaneous side-missions), but overall the game was not dumbed-down.

If you want a real example of dumbing-down, look at Oblivion compared to Morrowind, or worst of all Supreme Commander 2 to the original Supreme Commander.

 

[Altorin]

ME2 has real choice in its gear, ME1 has fake choice.

QFT. Too bad 50% of the real choice was in the DLC haha. But yeah - if I'm playing an RPG where a branch of character customization (i.e., clothing, weapons, etc.) basically boils down to the one optimal choice for a particular build, there's really no point for me to be involved in that customization. That, and I hate playing dress-up in video games haha.

DLC weapons off the top of my head

laser sight pistol - seemed utterly awkward to me. I went back to my carnifex
flamethrower heavy weapon - hilarious and not too bad as a sidearm for vanguard, but go with the collector particle beam, it's much better in general
Locust SMG - I LOVE this gun. And it's a Kassa Locust... no wait, THE Kassa Locust - the gun that killed two presidents. What's not to love?
Collector Assault Rifle - Never played a soldier, so what is this I don't even
2nd Rapid Fire Sniper Rifle - I don't know if this is even better then the Viper. My first Infiltrator used the Viper cause I was bad and needed the margin of error. My second used the Widow, I never really used this gun that much.
Cerberus Shotgun - I think this one has 5 round clips, and quick fire rate so it's sort of like an auto-shotty. Kinda nifty but on my vanguard, I usually went with the 3 round clip starter or the 1 round clip super shotty.

So, there's really not too much in the DLC that takes away choice from the main game's weapons. People just looked at the number of weapons and assumed "lol, only like 10 weapons? what the gay." and I think they assumed incorrectly.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

I don't equate "Spreadsheet combat" with "RPG combat" so overall I agree with the OP. Combat itself in ME2 was WAY more streamlined and better implemented than it was in ME1.

Removing the Inventory, Lack of Weapon customization and Tying the Paragon/Renegade dialogue choices with the Meters Instead of having them be skills, were all BAD Design Choices.

It wasn't about Appealing to a wider demographic. It's just that they removed things they did not need to AT ALL, while they added new things in (like the multitude of Companions and environments.etc.) BUT they are bringing those things back in ME3 so, fingers crossed.

 

[Altorin]

ME2 has real choice in its gear, ME1 has fake choice.

QFT. Too bad 50% of the real choice was in the DLC haha. But yeah - if I'm playing an RPG where a branch of character customization (i.e., clothing, weapons, etc.) basically boils down to the one optimal choice for a particular build, there's really no point for me to be involved in that customization. That, and I hate playing dress-up in video games haha.

DLC weapons off the top of my head

laser sight pistol - seemed utterly awkward to me. I went back to my carnifex
flamethrower heavy weapon - hilarious and not too bad as a sidearm for vanguard, but go with the collector particle beam, it's much better in general
Locust SMG - I LOVE this gun. And it's a Kassa Locust... no wait, THE Kassa Locust - the gun that killed two presidents. What's not to love?
Collector Assault Rifle - Never played a soldier, so what is this I don't even
2nd Rapid Fire Sniper Rifle - I don't know if this is even better then the Viper. My first Infiltrator used the Viper cause I was bad and needed the margin of error. My second used the Widow, I never really used this gun that much.
Cerberus Shotgun - I think this one has 5 round clips, and quick fire rate so it's sort of like an auto-shotty. Kinda nifty but on my vanguard, I usually went with the 3 round clip starter or the 1 round clip super shotty.

So, there's really not too much in the DLC that takes away choice from the main game's weapons. People just looked at the number of weapons and assumed "lol, only like 10 weapons? what the gay." and I think they assumed incorrectly.

Yeah, I agree that the DLC weapons are awesome - they're creative and add a lot of flexibility to the system. I just wish they were A) free, or B) in the main game, because I don't like shelling out money for content more than once.

If you play the game, you owe it to yourself to get at least Lair of the Shadowbroker. It adds quite a bit to the game. Most importantly for me it added the ability to reskill my party members, which struck me as a horrible omission in the first game. It also adds free resources over time, and even additional weapon upgrades. Plus you get to figure out what the shadow broker is, and if you really think about it and understand it, it's pretty profound (although on the surface glance it might seem dumb).

Also, unless you exclusively play a soldier and hence don't have access to SMGs in your standard loadout, get Stolen Memories. The Kassa Locust alone is worth the 6 bucks or so for the DLC... ok, maybe not, but the Kassa Locust and Kasumi's quest and storyline are certainly worth it.

I don't equate "Spreadsheet combat" with "RPG combat" so overall I agree with the OP. Combat itself in ME2 was WAY more streamlined and better implemented than it was in ME1.

Removing the Inventory, Lack of Weapon customization and Tying the Paragon/Renegade dialogue choices with the Meters Instead of having them be skills, were all BAD Design Choices.

It wasn't about Appealing to a wider demographic. It's just that they removed things they did not need to AT ALL, while they added new things in (like the multitude of Companions and environments.etc.) BUT they are bringing those things back in ME3 so, fingers crossed.

I'm not going to convince you, but I think you're way off base. I can't see how having a bunch of bloated systems that do very little to the game is better then having a streamlined system that does a lot. The inventory system isn't "gone". It's just been altered. All your weapons are now actually different from one another and you don't have to scramble around or pay a bunch of worthless money to get them. The armor in ME2 gave you more actual choice then ME1. You could customize your armor to a much greater extent. Purchase new pieces, and until the Kestral Armor ruined it by being strictly better then any other armor set, you wouldn't be going wrong by choosing whatever armor you wanted - that's real choice.

Weapon customization... so, mods? Maybe I'm just a cynical nerd, but none of the mods in ME1 gave me as much feeling of choice as the ammo powers in ME2 did. In ME1, there were always strictly better choices, in almost every situation. Because "protections" in ME1 amounted to shields and immunity, and only one of them had ammo mods specifically to combat it (and the shields themselves were useless anyway so the specific ammo to thwart it was usually the wrong choice), ammo mods basically boiled down to "do I want the enemy to burn to death or melt into goo when I kill them?" High Explosives Ammo was a tactical choice but it was pretty much the only one. Other weapon mods basically boiled down to Scram Rails and Frictionless Material - Do I overheat a lot or not at all? That's pretty much it for weapons.

Armor mods were basically "Ok, do I want lower skill cooldowns, more shields or damage protection?".. If you built your character correctly you never really needed to use the lower cooldown mods to have 100% uptime on your buffs, so throw those choices out. And Damage Protection was almost universally better then shields. SO it's 1 choice.

Intimidate/Charm as skills instead of tied to the paragon renegade meters. I'll give you half a point for thise, because ME1 sort of sold itself on playing the "grey area" between good and evil, and ME2 kind of flies in the face of that. But I do have a couple things to say. one, I think most players in ME1 chose an alignment for their characters, rather then skirt between the two. Two, unless you were just planning to play through the game one time, spending any points in charm/intimidate were wasted points that could (and probably should) have been spent on something else. Getting 75% in either would get you 4 "free points" per playthrough, so if you played through 3 times, you could have a character with full Intimidate/Charm without spending any points. And three, charm/intimidate being tied to skills IS still in the game. the "Class Skill" increases both paragon and renegade by a large amount, and if you really want to play both sides of the coin, get the +100% bonus level 4 skill, and wear a Death Mask, and bam, you can probably pass most checks either way. Also, most of the interrupts weren't tied to actual paragon/renegade points, but rather then context of the conversation you're in. For instance, if your shepard is impatient with Veetor on Freedom's Progress, he'll get the Renegade Interrupt regardless of paragon/renegade score. If he's concerned about Veetor's lack of attention, he'll get the Paragon Interrupt. So if you want to be the Paragon Shepard who also kicks random Eclipse mercs out of skyscraper windows, that's totally in the cards.

 

[Reishadowen]

ME1 had a cumbersome inventory system that added no depth whatsoever to the gameplay because there was never any choice. I've played ME1 a dozen times, and not once have I ever had a dilemma over whether to use this weapon or that weapon, or this armor vs that armor. Whenever I get new loot I just look to see if any of them are bigger and better than what I have and then swap out accordingly. In order for there to be a choice there has to be a situation such as this: you have two weapons to choose from, one with great range and the other with great damage, which do you choose? Or like this: one armor protects you from damage type A, the other from damage type B, which do you choose? This kind of choice never, ever happens in ME1. New armor is always better than old armor in every way, so there is no dilemma, no choice, no depth. Removing the inventory system did not strip the game of any depth, it just streamlined it.

This is perhaps where I disagree with you a little. I actually have a a few instances where I had one assault rifle with more damage, and another with about 30 or more less, but instead of an accuracy of 1 (like all the others up to about level 7 or so), it had 30. There were three different bars, damage, accuracy, and cooldown, and not always did the three bars go evenly and steadily up. The Geth rifle even had vastly more damage and accuracy, but could afford no upgrade slots, and had a bit less cooldown than other assault rifles for instance.

Another thing were the upgrades themselves. While they just made the ammo upgrades into "powers" in ME2, the upgrades for armor is something I CONSTANTLY fretted over and had a hard time picking just one...or ten in my case.

Though I do agree with you on the skills. I can't say I ever really used any skills outside the soldier "blast things" or "shoot faster" skills besides throw and lift. If I did use any other skills, it was only for lulz, because I could just shoot and kill the enemy quickly enough anyways. None of them really felt that integral in the way that ME2's skills do. Almost all of ME2's skills felt MUCH more useful and worth having.

 

[Trolldor]

I'm an elitist PC wanker gamer, and I hate the dumbing-down of games as much as the next guy. But something I've seen said over and over is that ME2 was a dumbed-down game compared to ME1, and that just isn't true. So here comes my rant.

RPG elements are only of value when they add depth. Depth is only added by choices that matter. The basis of my argument here is that the additional choices in ME1 (such as what armor to wear, or where to put skill points) didn't matter at all.

ME1 had a cumbersome inventory system that added no depth whatsoever to the gameplay because there was never any choice. I've played ME1 a dozen times, and not once have I ever had a dilemma over whether to use this weapon or that weapon, or this armor vs that armor. Whenever I get new loot I just look to see if any of them are bigger and better than what I have and then swap out accordingly. In order for there to be a choice there has to be a situation such as this: you have two weapons to choose from, one with great range and the other with great damage, which do you choose? Or like this: one armor protects you from damage type A, the other from damage type B, which do you choose? This kind of choice never, ever happens in ME1. New armor is always better than old armor in every way, so there is no dilemma, no choice, no depth. Removing the inventory system did not strip the game of any depth, it just streamlined it.

ME1 had more skills than ME2, and the skills had independent cooldown timers. In ME2 there were fewer skills and they shared a single cooldown timer. Again, this was critised as "dumbing-down" but it's actually the opposite; by having a single cooldown timer ME2 actually introduced a new choice (which skill to use) that actually matters, thereby adding depth to the game (in comparison to ME1 where there was no reason not to use every skill at once).

ME2 also merged similar skills together. For example ME1's Sabotage, Overload and Decryption were merged in ME2 to form a single skill called Overload. This would equate to a lack of depth if there were times in ME1 when you would use one of those skills and not the others, but I for one never encountered such a situation. It was always a case of either spamming all three or spamming none of them, so again this is not a lack of depth, it's just streamlining.

It's almost ironic, really; the people who claim ME2 is dumbed-down are only demonstrating how dumb they really are, as they have mistaken choices that don't matter for choices that do.

Did you even play the game?
None of your choices in ME:1 mattered, and every character in ME:2 was on the 'Ashley' level of cardboard personality. Even returnees.

 

[demotion1]

I consider Mass Effect series to be FPS/RPG games. I agree with the OP that it was not dumbed down. It felt less an RPG yes, it was also less tedious and the only disappointing thing was that there were so few skill levels. This is just my opinion though

 

[Altorin]

The last 8 posts have been more nonsense from shooter fans happy they removed all the common RPG elements from the game.

Because RPG's shouldn't have annoying things like loot of course. What RPG fan would want something stupid like that in their RPG? Picking up a new weapon which gives me +2 to my stats over my previous one?! SO TEDIOUS! No RPG should have these elements! Who enjoys these kinds of things anyways? Certainly not RPG fans. DUH!

that's pretty much the point that we're making. When everything is just written out for you, like +2 damage as opposed to another weapon that's +3 damage, how is that giving you choice? The argument that ME2 is "dumbed down" is wrong because ME1 was actually more dumbed down, it just hid it behind a veil of "oh, look at all these wonderful numbers for your to pontificate about". For a game to be dumbed down, it means that choice has to be taken out of the picture. In ME2, there are lots of instances of real choice, in character builds, in who to bring with you on missions, on which if any powers to use at any given time (as you're only allowed 1 power at a time, you have to.. CHOOSE between them), which weapon to use - as I've talked about at great length, the weapons in ME2 don't tend to be "strictly better" then other weapons. They may favor different playstyles or different skill levels, but they're interesting and diverse, as opposed to just... numbers - higher numbers being good, lower numbers being bad.

Also, the number of times I found something in Mass Effect 1 that made me go "Wippee, look what awesome thing I just found" was almost none, at least past the first couple times through the game. The best weapons in the game are bought in the store with money that's trivially easy to make once you reach a certain level (you literally cannot spend it fast enough past a certain point), and that leaves armor, which too, the best armor can be bought in a store, although it requires a tiny bit more patience. Although you MIGHT get lucky and find some out there. So I'll give you that, but really, it's 1 or 2 pieces of armor that make the entire loot system justified?

I like loot systems. If Mass Effect 2 had Fallout 3's loot system, I think I'd be happy with it. However, it doesn't. The question then becomes is it better then Mass Effect 1's loot system, and in my opinion it certainly is.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

The last 8 posts have been more nonsense from shooter fans happy they removed all the common RPG elements from the game.

Because RPG's shouldn't have annoying things like loot of course. What RPG fan would want something stupid like that in their RPG? Picking up a new weapon which gives me +2 to my stats over my previous one?! SO TEDIOUS! No RPG should have these elements! Who enjoys these kinds of things anyways? Certainly not RPG fans. DUH!

Bloody hell, you still here and bitching about loot and how none us are real RPG fans? You seem to have missed the point entirely, and your presumptuousness is getting on my tits.

Torchlight

I think this is a good example of an RPG which has a little depth to it. Not a huge amount of depth, but a lot more than the ME games for sure. Loot drops like rain in Torchlight, and it does get better over time as you'd expect, but it gets better very slowly and it's randomly generated, so most of the time you're weighing up pros and cons. Do I keep my 100 damage axe, or swap it for this new sword with only 50 damage but 25 health stolen on hit? Should I put on this new helmet which increases my elemental resistance but lowers my armor? Should I instead put on that helmet which increases my dex, which will in turn allow me to wear those great gloves I found? Torchlight is full of this kind of choice/depth. And it's not just the loot; the skill trees are also well done, offering meaningful choice and a variety of equally viable builds. The game is a snooze-fest on Normal difficulty, but on Very Hard Hardcore it's a real challenge and the placement of skill/attribute points requires a lot of thought.

THIS IS WHAT IS MISSING FROM ME1. And yes, it's missing from ME2 as well but that's not because it's been taken out, it's because it was never there in the first place. All that has been taken out is pointless crap that never made any difference to anything.

 

[uc.asc]

Mass Effect 1

I think this is a good example of an RPG which has a little depth to it. Not a huge amount of depth, but a lot more than ME2 for sure. Loot drops like rain in Mass Effect 1 and it does get better over time as you'd expect, but it gets better very slowly and it's randomly generated, so most of the time you're weighing up pros and cons. Do I keep my 230 damage assault rifle, or swap it for this new rifle with only 200 damage but better accuracy and more shots before overheat? Should I put on this new armor which increases damage and biotic resistance but lowers my shield? Should I use the amp which greatly decreases cooldown, or the one which increases duration? Mass Effect 1 is full of this kind of choice/depth. And it's not just the loot; the skill trees are also well done, offering meaningful choice and a variety of equally viable builds. The game is a snooze-fest on Normal difficulty, but on Insanity it's a real challenge and the placement of skill/attribute points requires a lot of thought.

THIS IS WHAT IS MISSING FROM ME2.

I fixed this for you.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

I fixed this for you.

Reported. Please don't edit my posts.

 

[Trolldor]

I fixed this for you.

Reported.

Daww, he doesn't like his own idea being used - successfully - against him.
It's adowable.

So go on, please explain how Mass Effect 2 removing all semblence of depth in both gameplay and story is not dumbing down?

 

[Laser Priest]

Mass Effect 2 was a great game but did you hear about what they're doing to Mass Effect 3?
Depressing shit.

You mean improving the shooter elements while trying to also add and refine more RPG elements or trying to make the story on a more epic scale?

Because that is all BioWare has announced that they're doing with the game.

 

[Altorin]

Mass Effect 1

I think this is a good example of an RPG which has a little depth to it. Not a huge amount of depth, but a lot more than ME2 for sure. Loot drops like rain in Mass Effect 1 and it does get better over time as you'd expect, but it gets better very slowly and it's randomly generated, so most of the time you're weighing up pros and cons. Do I keep my 230 damage assault rifle, or swap it for this new rifle with only 200 damage but better accuracy and more shots before overheat? Should I put on this new armor which increases damage and biotic resistance but lowers my shield? Should I use the amp which greatly decreases cooldown, or the one which increases duration? Mass Effect 1 is full of this kind of choice/depth. And it's not just the loot; the skill trees are also well done, offering meaningful choice and a variety of equally viable builds. The game is a snooze-fest on Normal difficulty, but on Insanity it's a real challenge and the placement of skill/attribute points requires a lot of thought.

THIS IS WHAT IS MISSING FROM ME2.

I fixed this for you.

the answer to your first question about the assault rifle is "lol, wait for Specter 7, then never look back til you get specter 10, and just go for highest damage until then"

The answer to the question about the armor is in the beginning, go for more shields, in the end go for more damage protection when it gets to a ridiculous amount, and don't worry about Biotic protection. If you're getting beaten by biotics, even on Insanity, you're doing something wrong.

For the amp, it doesn't matter, because once you can get Savant Amps, there's literally no reason to use any other one.

I say wait for specter and savant amps and you might think "but those are end game items, there are plenty of choices before then", and the answer is largely no. Cooldown is almost universally better then duration. Not all of your powers are effected by duration, or if they are, it might not even be important, but being able to use all of your powers rapid fire is almost always better. So even before Savant, there's very little choice. Go for Cooldown. It's better.

A multitude of different builds, this I don't even understand. A level 60 shepard in Mass Effect 1 and a Level 30 Shepard in Mass Effect 2, Skillwise, look almost the same. They have about the same percentage of their skills maxed.

And yeah, I beat the game on Insanity, and on insanity, these "choices" become even clearer. The only choices that aren't right are bad choices. That's BAD.

 

[Laser Priest]

Mass Effect 1

I think this is a good example of an RPG which has a little depth to it. Not a huge amount of depth, but a lot more than ME2 for sure. Loot drops like rain in Mass Effect 1 and it does get better over time as you'd expect, but it gets better very slowly and it's randomly generated, so most of the time you're weighing up pros and cons. Do I keep my 230 damage assault rifle, or swap it for this new rifle with only 200 damage but better accuracy and more shots before overheat? Should I put on this new armor which increases damage and biotic resistance but lowers my shield? Should I use the amp which greatly decreases cooldown, or the one which increases duration? Mass Effect 1 is full of this kind of choice/depth. And it's not just the loot; the skill trees are also well done, offering meaningful choice and a variety of equally viable builds. The game is a snooze-fest on Normal difficulty, but on Insanity it's a real challenge and the placement of skill/attribute points requires a lot of thought.

THIS IS WHAT IS MISSING FROM ME2.

I fixed this for you.

Actually, you completely broke it.