This got pretty pointless for me in the end. I just maxed out incendiary ammo and used SMGs/assault rifles. Rapid fire weapons get a damage boost against shield and the flaming ammo gets a bonus against armour AND stops regen. no real choice there for me. Sure, if your an adept or engineer their might be more, but for any class with incendiary ammo and a rapid fire weapon, it was the obvious choice (Some weapons also flat out stated 'does more damage to shields', making the choice even easier).Altorin said:
Mass Effect 2 was NOT "dumbed-down"
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Nothing to do with ME2, you've just made me curious. I tend to feel that the point of games is to have fun; and while obviously optimal builds do that for you, there may be people who think that, say, acid rounds are a lot of fun. If they can get by with that on their difficulty setting of choice, that isn't "wrong".Altorin said:
There's no moral imperative to build the the strongest possible character. It may be necessary at times, but if I'm staying ahead of the difficulty curve I really prefer to optimize for fun gameplay rather than stats.
Well I will have to respectfully disagree for some points of the game. Companions became simply a "talk to and do quest" thing, they didnt really evolve. You essentially just lost when they died, it wasnt like the first where a decision had to be made, depth with them was gone. In ME2 it seemed alot more like there was a simple good and bad answer for everything, when to me, the first had alot of grey area things, being good meant making the hard choices, the second game lacked those.
I would say it was dumbed down. There rearely if ever was a "do this or do that" thing in the game, there were upgrades, and you had to get the companions to like you. Companions didnt really evolve based on you, they eveolved based on if you talked to them after a couple missions and then went and killed someone for them. It became a shooter first and an RPG second, which to me, is a dumbed down game
I would say it was dumbed down. There rearely if ever was a "do this or do that" thing in the game, there were upgrades, and you had to get the companions to like you. Companions didnt really evolve based on you, they eveolved based on if you talked to them after a couple missions and then went and killed someone for them. It became a shooter first and an RPG second, which to me, is a dumbed down game
I tend to agree, though I'm less positive about it than you are. Its less of a dumbing down, which would require removal without replacement, and more of a mid-trilogy entire direction change.
They more or less just made it so *every* class in ME2 uses guns, rather than ME1 where you had future military space wizards who didn't know which end of the assault rifle the bullets came out of despite being a Commander in the Navy.
The problem ended up being that they were still future military space wizards, so some stuff happened and 90% of powers got completely gutted and were pointless, or had superior alternatives. The requirement to lower the 17 different layers of defenses to use powers just ended up making them worthless on harder difficulties, and it was faster to just gun everything down on easier ones. The powers that specifically stripped defenses were great, but that, ammo powers, Geth Shield Boost, and adrenaline rush is all I have *ever* found a use for in that game. Some people like the infiltrator cloak, I don't.
Makes it seem like all six classes are just variations of the old Soldier, rather than actual classes.
Still, it was a pretty fun game. I'd never play any other class than Soldier in it because the other 5 are weaker soldiers with fewer functioning powers and crappier weapons with worse available upgrades, but it's a fun game.
They more or less just made it so *every* class in ME2 uses guns, rather than ME1 where you had future military space wizards who didn't know which end of the assault rifle the bullets came out of despite being a Commander in the Navy.
The problem ended up being that they were still future military space wizards, so some stuff happened and 90% of powers got completely gutted and were pointless, or had superior alternatives. The requirement to lower the 17 different layers of defenses to use powers just ended up making them worthless on harder difficulties, and it was faster to just gun everything down on easier ones. The powers that specifically stripped defenses were great, but that, ammo powers, Geth Shield Boost, and adrenaline rush is all I have *ever* found a use for in that game. Some people like the infiltrator cloak, I don't.
Makes it seem like all six classes are just variations of the old Soldier, rather than actual classes.
Still, it was a pretty fun game. I'd never play any other class than Soldier in it because the other 5 are weaker soldiers with fewer functioning powers and crappier weapons with worse available upgrades, but it's a fun game.
Mass Effect 2 WAS dumbed down, its a fact based on clear observations, and if you disagree you are just simply wrong.
Take your pick really, from the disconnected short storylines taking precedence over an actual major plot arc that affects the trilogy, to the overwhelming focus on shooter combat.
In ME1 during the main missions I would land on fully realised, plot defining planets where not everything was structured around some gears ripoff combat.
In ME2 nearly every single area was the same, regardless of main or side plot status: a linear combat corridor where 95% of everything revolved around (shooter) combat. The only areas that bucked this trend were the universally recognised as fucking awful so called "hubs", and the Normandy. That makes 5 in total, all of which were fucking tiny. Combine all of them, and they are probably on slightly larger than the citadel of ME1, if that even.
Mass Effect 2 offers up a series of linear missions where the game holds your hand between them all as you gun down countless hordes of generic enemies.
Id say thats definitively dumbed down for sure.
ME1 had its problems, no doubt. But in ME2 they didnt even try to fix them, they just made easy and cheap levels and filled it to the brim with their new, visceral "point and shoot from behind cover solves everything" take. Even the dialogue only comes in staccato bursts between repetative shooter combat every 10-15 minutes max.
If you find yourself out of dumbass shooter combat for 20 minutes or longer, you are either deliberately wasting time or getting too caught up in planet scanning.
Take your pick really, from the disconnected short storylines taking precedence over an actual major plot arc that affects the trilogy, to the overwhelming focus on shooter combat.
In ME1 during the main missions I would land on fully realised, plot defining planets where not everything was structured around some gears ripoff combat.
In ME2 nearly every single area was the same, regardless of main or side plot status: a linear combat corridor where 95% of everything revolved around (shooter) combat. The only areas that bucked this trend were the universally recognised as fucking awful so called "hubs", and the Normandy. That makes 5 in total, all of which were fucking tiny. Combine all of them, and they are probably on slightly larger than the citadel of ME1, if that even.
Mass Effect 2 offers up a series of linear missions where the game holds your hand between them all as you gun down countless hordes of generic enemies.
Id say thats definitively dumbed down for sure.
ME1 had its problems, no doubt. But in ME2 they didnt even try to fix them, they just made easy and cheap levels and filled it to the brim with their new, visceral "point and shoot from behind cover solves everything" take. Even the dialogue only comes in staccato bursts between repetative shooter combat every 10-15 minutes max.
If you find yourself out of dumbass shooter combat for 20 minutes or longer, you are either deliberately wasting time or getting too caught up in planet scanning.
While I do think that you made a very good arguement and some good points, I still feel that there were elements missing, such as the inventory, weapon mods and Mako. They did add more depth, rather than just giving you three or four different assault rifles ranging from bad->Alright->good->Godly. I liked the inventory. Sure it was awkward, to say the least, but it was better having a few different types of armour (although I hope ME3 mixes the different choices of armour with the different armour mods a la ME2). The Mako made everything feel exciting when exploring planets rather than just popping into orbit, seeing if there was an anomaly and popping back off. I wouldn't say it was dumbing down, I would just say that it was streamlining. I still loved the game and I'm still playing it, but I'm hoping ME3 will strike the perfect balance between the two: keeping the variety of the first, but the accessibility and just cleaner system of the second.Guy Jackson said:
PS: I agree and disagree with your mention on abilities. At times, it is fun to launch an entire room of people around the place with biotics in ME1, but I do agree with the need to choose what powers you're going to use in ME2. Especially with the Soldier.
What they said they're doing is a lot closer to stripping away more RPG elements in order to make ME3 appeal to a wider audience.Necromancer Jim said:
The RPG elements can't possibly be more refined or streamlined than they were in Mass Effect 2, unless they start automatically implementing them on level up or just take them out.
Just so long as they don't pare down the story at all it won't be such a big deal. I mean you get enough level points to pretty much fill up all your stats so there's really not too much choice involved at the moment.
If it even seems like they reallocated any money away from the writers and voice actors Mass Effect 3 could easily become just another shitty shooter clogging up the market.
how exactly is going from a dozen or so levels of progression to 1-2 levels of progression an improvement? there was no choice in ME2, there they went from levels 1-10 to levels 1-3. there were slgiht variations (as there were variations in ME1) but there was a clear linear progression; the second smg, shotgun, and machine gun was universally better than the first and the third was better than those; whether you like burst fire or not, the next level up was still better to use. the only argument that can be made is for the 2nd sniper for being radically different than the first, though im sure you still get a better ammo/kill ratio out of it.Hyper-space said:
there is still one right answer, and its still hidden behind the same illusion of choice. the only difference is that it is far more obvious because your options are far fewer. the same equation, made more obvious and less complex; that sounds like dumbing down to me.
Liked being able to equip my party members, use different armours and such forth, the mods and other aspects of the game were really good, and to get rid of them was really idiotic in my opinion.
Less skills as well, also a huge let down.
With those two points, I can't see how anyone can say it wasn't "Dumped down".
Less skills as well, also a huge let down.
With those two points, I can't see how anyone can say it wasn't "Dumped down".
The combat in Mass Effect 1 sucked. The combat in Mass Effect 2 was a bit better, but still sucked. It's literally just Gears of War style whack-a-mole, which takes little to no skill at all to play. You regenerate, they regenerate much more slowly. Your bullets hurt a lot more than theirs. Most importantly, you aren't a braindead retard (I hope anyway) and know how to move around while most of the enemies are firmly rooted to their chest-high walls OR they suicide charge directly into your killzone.
I can recount ONE mission in ME2 that was challenging solely because of its level gimmick. I actually had to plan a path while dealing with enemies who didn't.
So for me, eliminating the weapons dump at the end of every mission was a boon. Oh, and Infiltrator was pretty cool. It let me pretend that skills mattered for a short while at least.
So I didn't find ME2 to be "dumbed down". It's painfully difficult to dumb down what is already barebones combat.
I can recount ONE mission in ME2 that was challenging solely because of its level gimmick. I actually had to plan a path while dealing with enemies who didn't.
So for me, eliminating the weapons dump at the end of every mission was a boon. Oh, and Infiltrator was pretty cool. It let me pretend that skills mattered for a short while at least.
So I didn't find ME2 to be "dumbed down". It's painfully difficult to dumb down what is already barebones combat.
All of the items in ME2 were a matter of choice, sure there were upgrades and stuff like that, but every item is unique and has something over the next one.Frotality said:
Lets take the heavy pistol for example: The M-3 predator does not have as much stopping power as the Phalanx or Carnifex, but it has much more ammunition and each clip is 12 rounds, compared to the 6 rounds per clip of M-5 and M-6. This makes the M-3 invaluable if you find yourself needing a stable back-up with enough ammo. This is the same with the Assault Rifles, Sniper-rifles, SMGs, shotguns and heavy weapons.
So no, its actual choice, there is an actual trade-off for picking the one over the other. Though i am sure that you will soon find your favorite weapon as it fits your play-style much better.
Yes they did matter. What armor to wear was a huge personal choice in ME. My friend Ben front-loaded armor, Jon front-loaded biotics/tech resist, and I front-loaded shields, because we all played the game in a different way. I always had a dilemma, do I lose 20 points of armor for 10 points of shields? do I drop 30 points of tech/biotic resist for 10 points of each shield and armor. DO I use the AR with more accuracy or more power or do I pick the one with the most shots b4 overload. I don't know what game your playing, but if you never ran into similar sets of armor that had different stat's loaded, it wasn't ME1. It also gives you broader control over appearance which aids immersion. Skills in ME1 also let you customize how to use your character much more than ME2 because there were so many more. i just don't understand how you could say that ME2 wasn't dumbed down. It was still fun, but it was definitely dumbed way the hell down.Guy Jackson said:
The choice of which skill to use is an interesting point, but I don't think it added any more depth than what they took away by using fewer skills and fewer skill points, and here's why: In ME2, there are so few skills that what skill to use is never a question. Against hoards you spam either the weapon skill or whatever skill has the shortest cool-down. Against bosses you spam your survivability talents and when you get the chance, you use the talent which damages the appropriate type of bar(shields/armor/health). There was no choice because there weren't enough skills for the skills to have competing function. Even with a group of 3 people i almost never had more than 2 skills that could damage armor, 2 that could damage shields, and 3 that could damage health.
but how are the variations in clip size, damage, and firing rate any different than the variations in heat buildup, damage, and firing rate fomr ME1? its the same equation, but made more obvious because there are fewer options. and while there were clear differences in ME2, i still felt like it was the same deal as ME1; these weapons have different properties, but there is still one that is clearly better (the 2nd then 3rd one you got). its the same system made simpler and more obviously defined.Altorin said:
the armor in ME2 has the same problem because the stats for it are so minimal; you can pick whatever you like, but it doesnt really effect anything; unless you find a way remove armor pieces and the corresponding bonuses, i didnt notice any real change in shields,health, regen, or whatever like i did in ME1, which at least had a sense of progression for its armor. now i like the idea behind this system...is just that there is so few options with so little impact, its ends up less satisfying than just getting an upgraded version of whatever armor your wearing.
im not counting anything from DLC because the game should have all the variety it needs in the box, but even then the DLC just seems to provide slightly different upgrades to a weapon class.
i suppose im saying that ME1 had fake choice and a sense of progression, and ME2 just had fake choice that was hidden better. i at least had a goal with ME1 intertwined into said fake choice; you upgraded your weapon, upgraded to better manufacturers, upgraded and had real choice with modifications; ME2 just put all that into into far fewer options that made even less of a difference because of the faster combat.
in ME1 you still had various levels of equipment to get once you found all the types. in ME2 you find the 2-3 types and then your done. any improvements it might have made are wasted because the sense of progression, scale and variety (key word: sense) is completely lost, with mods shoved into a completely seperate system that feels more like an obligation than ME1 ever did.
Guy Jackson said:
You might have the beginnings of a point if you actually knew what you were trying to address. That's not insulting, it's simply that you seem to be basing your arguement off of rants you've seen from other people who were also misinformed, rather than looking at the issue itself.
In general the battles involving Mass Effect revolve primarily around RPG gamers vs. shooter gamers. It has little to do with any kind of "PC elitism" as the arguements are universal and accross platforms, with console gamers being upset by most of the same issues that are being discussed.
The bottom line is that RPGs require a game to be stat based, as opposed to depending on the skill of the player. The original "Mass Effect" included things like weapon skill, aiming your targeting sight at the opponent and hitting "fire" meant very little, as the success or failure of your shot depending on your character's weapon skill, vs. the opponents defensive abillities, with an invisible dice being rolled to determine success or failure. This meant stats like "accuracy" were influacing the results rather than your abillity to aim. Some shooter player could run up with a weapon, fire it point blank, and miss entirely, if they didn't have the requisite weapon skills to even make that shot. Likewise exact aim wasn't all that important to someone who had high weapon skills, the intent mattered more than anything, and firing in generally the right place was enough.
In this case the "dumbing down" is because with the RPG mechanics, the game was largely an intellectual exercise, it was about setting up the skills, gear, and other things to get the results you wanted. Without the RPG mechanics the game became another shooter, where anyone could just aim and fire a gun and have the weapon hit if they had the targeting sight in the right place, making it totally dependant on the abilluty of the player to twitch his way through the fights, rather than the stats and how they built their character.
Differant kinds of games appeal to differant players, and by de-doing the whole game into another reflex based shooter, catering to the whole "I don't want to look through menus and compare numbers" crowds, they really did dumb it down in a literal sense, by making it a game that required little if any thought on the part of the player. The game became just another shooter, with some cartoons thrown in between levels.
The thing is that it's hard to be nice when making an arguement like this, when the whole issue that mandated the changes was LITERALLY people not wanting to have to think or understand things in order to play the game. It's not hype or flaming, in this case they literally made the game dumber accross platforms, in order to try and draw in a larger group of customers and make more money.
Now, normally I don't think anyone would care, if there were still a lot of RPGs being made out there, but there aren't. Finding a good "AAA" stat based RPG is increasingly difficult, as everyone doing development wants to appeal to the lowest human denominator possible to increase the customer base. People were content with the whole "Shooter fans have Halo and Gears, we have Mass Effect" breakdown, live and let live at it's finest. Nobody was heading over to the Halo forums and saying "hey you people should play only smarter games, and Halo should replace the entire shooter basis of the game with stats, itemization, and inventory management". Right now the issue is that the game developers replaced all the things that made "Mass Effect" an RPG with shooter mechanics, and that slotted off the core fan base that was supporting Mass Effect because it was an RPG.
RPG gamers are so vocal because we're NOT a tiny group of people, by the numbers we are outnumbered by the shooter fan base, but we still represent millions upon millions of gamers. We ARE a hugely profitable group to cater to, we're just not the MOST profitable group, and that's why we keep getting "sold out" so to speak. Everyone figures they want to go after the bigger bucks, not simply being content with making a substantial profit.
There is room for both shooter fans and RPG gamers to co-exist in the market, it's just that RPG gamers need to be catered to as well.
Also, when you consider that there is a sort of "proud to be dumb" mentality among the shooter fans, it's really hard not to jump on that in discussions. If you look at explanations as to why your typical action gamer doesn't like RPGs, which comes down to number crunching, menus, and all the other stuff that defines it, there is no other way to look at it since they themselves will say they want a game that gives immediate gratification and where they don't want to have to do things like think or read. When people will go off on rants about how menus and text are bad, how else do you view those things? It's not like someone is forcing the action gamers to sound off on this at gun point.
Where the PC Vs. Console debate comes up is more about interface, than actual game content. The issue is usually that game developers don't want to go through the trouble of developing seperate user interfaces for differant systems. As the consoles have less buttons availible, it means that a system like a PC is going to be limited to everything being done with only that many buttons no matter how they are located. This can make things needlessly cumbersome when you need to work through a portion of an interface to do something that could be assigned to a single keystroke.
Likewise, there are also issues on why a game can't do certain things that should be easy for a PC, when it largely comes down to the developers having used up all the viable buttons and combos that can be used on a console.
It's not an easy thing to resolve because if you add in all these features for the PC due to a better interface, the console users scream about getting an inferior version of the product. If you don't give PC users any features that a console doesn't have, omissions become more noteworthy (ie things that the game should have based on titles optimized for the PC) and people complain about how the console release was holding back the game from working to it's full potential on the PC.
Totally differant types of arguements.