Mass Effect 3's level up screen spotted. Looks great.

[Joccaren]

Okay, I've played every class the game has to offer with the exception of engineer on every difficulty. Linked cooldowns creates a tactical choice in selecting which powers to use at a given time. That doesn't exactly come out on the lower or mid difficulties given that enemies are very easy to kill, but gets very important at higher difficulties when you have to match powers and weapon types to destroy layers of protection, prioritize targets, decide on when to control enemies and when to kill them, and take into account immunities and weaknesses.

And honestly, Vanguards are by no means gimped. They're easily the most-powerful class in the game -- when played correctly. Which, even on ME2 insanity that boils down to "don't be an idiot with charge".

Well, I tend to disagree here. If they had an entire bar cooldown of 1-3 seconds, but the ability you used took 4-8 seconds to cool down, maybe, but as the game is, even on insanity, I'd only ever swap ammo (Basically no cooldown there) Charge/Adrenaline Rush and use Tali's Shield Drain. Everything else was practically useless because it required that they have a certain armour type, or, in most cases, none at all.

On the lower difficulties, it was just a matter of what way you wanted to see your enemy die. On the higher difficulties, it was a matter of 'can't use, they have armour, can't use, thy have armour, can use, affects myself and (for charge) can use, gets me close enough to take a killing shot (except on some of the higher health enemies, but even then it regened your shield so, if you were going to die, charge, and you'd probably live)

Though I do agree, Vanguard is possibly the most powerful and most fun class to play if played right.

And on topic.. hehe. I dig the Goldilocks approach. ME1 was way too much (too many powers to chose from) ME2 was way too few. This one looks just right.

After some more careful examination, I realised I was right wrong originally, you have the same number of skills (and the same skills themselves) as you did in ME2 if you got the squadmate skills. The only apparent difference is in the skill upgrade window, where there appears to be 5 or so possible upgrades for the skill. Other than that, its the same ability screen.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Well, I tend to disagree here. If they had an entire bar cooldown of 1-3 seconds, but the ability you used took 4-8 seconds to cool down, maybe, but as the game is, even on insanity, I'd only ever swap ammo (Basically no cooldown there) Charge/Adrenaline Rush and use Tali's Shield Drain. Everything else was practically useless because it required that they have a certain armour type, or, in most cases, none at all.

On the lower difficulties, it was just a matter of what way you wanted to see your enemy die. On the higher difficulties, it was a matter of 'can't use, they have armour, can't use, thy have armour, can use, affects myself and (for charge) can use, gets me close enough to take a killing shot (except on some of the higher health enemies, but even then it regened your shield so, if you were going to die, charge, and you'd probably live)

Yeah, for soldiers, vanguards and infiltrators the choice was in matching weapon and ammo types to destroy defenses, and squadmate selection to fill in power gaps. Other than that, it was a matter of using the class ability when applicable and the other 1-2 actives as necessary (such as setting up shatters or warp bombs on enemies that can't be charged as a vanguard). Linked cooldowns as tactical choice really came into play with engineers, sentinels and adepts, especially sentinels.

Then again, I probably had the least overall fun on my sentinel playthrough considering by the end of the game I was steamrolling enemy defense with a heavy warp ammo mattock then warp bombing them straight to oblivion, and only carted out throw and overload against husks and to control enemies. If I do a sentinel again, I'm going the "assault" route (shotgun, assault armor, and geth shield boost/energy drain) considering I've heard that's massively more fun than the "controller" route.

 

[Elamdri]

I never got the bitching about the stats in Me2.

Sure there were less numbers to fiddle with, but the number-reliance on ME1 just made it a bad shooter. It wasn't very 'RPG' to begin with.

At least ME2 was a better shooter - I'll happily sacrifice fiddling with stats in order to be able to shoot straight for half the game.

It's a flaw with the RPG mindset that Less Talents = Bad. The problem with ME1 was that almost all the talents were passive boosts to silly thinks like accuracy and damage.

Why in the hell can't Commander Shepard, a decorated war hero, shoot straight without pumping 10 talent points in a skill? For EACH GUN?

The fact was that in ME2 the talents were MUCH better in terms of what they did. The improvements for each point were much more noticeable and they felt meaningful. I'm putting a point into a talent to increase my cooldown or my damage on an ability, rather than to make sure that I can hit what I am aiming at.

 

[ultrachicken]

So yeah, single karma metre, they've removed another unique feature. I was also sad to see they kept with ammo. I was hoping that they'd had some flash of sense and retconned back to the old system, coz it was unique and fit with their own lore. That change really did feel like a pandering to the console boys.

Why is uniqueness valued over quality? The ammo system works better because there's nothing quite as annoying as sitting through 10 seconds of not being able to use your gun. Ammo means you have to place your shots somewhat more carefully, and removes the overheating from the first game.

As for the karma meter, I am sad to see the original go. It made more sense to have a reputation for both good and bad rather than having actions cancel each other out.

And while I'm at it, the new cover system, does sheperd rolling and diving all over the place make him look like a 7 year old boy playing "fighting" to anyone else too?

The way you waddled around while crouching in ME1 made you look like a fool, I don't see anyone complaining about that. But, more on point, I don't think trying to maneuver between cover quickly and without getting shot means you're a kid playing war.

 

[Still Life]

Why do they even bother at this point? Really it's more of a video game novel than an actual RPG.

Just give us a ton of pew pew and lots of dialog.

I know. This is even worthy of a thread.

But is that really a problem?

Sure, Mass Effect isn't going to tickle everyone's fancy and the bigger the game/franchise, the more vocal become those who take issue with various design choices. Mass Effect is an RPG at the core, because it gives me Shepard and a focused story, which are both nuanced by the player. It also has a lot of action and shooter game-play, on top of all the narrative devices and character customization. It would be fitting to describe it as a hybrid game, and it has been from the very start.

The issue seems to be that everyone has their own definition of what an RPG should be and Mass Effect has defied a lot of the genre's conventions as it has evolved.

Also, I had no issued with the story in ME2. I thought overall it was great considering the size of the cast. Being a character-based story offers a serious challenge in keeping the characters compelling and the general consensus was that Bioware succeeded. I will say, though, that it suffers from 'middle trilogy' syndrome in a few ways. However, given that ME was designed to be a trilogy from the first instance tells me that all the important story elements will be wrapped up nice (as they should be) with the last chapter.

 

[ultrachicken]

They should do away with the RPG pretense and leave out the leveling entirely. Give you a pre-set loadout based on your dialog and exploration. Have a mission screen on the Normandy so you pick where to go. And have lots o cutscenes because the game developers really wish they were making a movie.

I don't think the level of interaction you have with characters in Mass Effect is replicable in a movie.

If its like ME2 none of the choices will be meaningful gameplay wise other than what color bullet you shoot people with.

So you didn't think that the decision of whether you want ammo that burns people to death, or ammo that freezes them is important? Whether to pump your points into fewer skills to become a master at them or to put some everywhere and become a jack of all trades? How about whether to have a concentrated, powerful blast of biotics that demolishes a single enemy, or a wide ranged blast that incapacitates large groups?

There is no inventory management, there is no scarcity of resources or allocation decisions, the respecs are infinite so the leveling choices don't matter anyway. This is basically Halo except with mega-man level decision making where you get to pick missions from a hub until you get railroaded back into the main plot.

It seems like you don't even know anything about ME3, instead you've pieced together bits of ME2 that you didn't like and then made some assumptions.

If you'd even played through ME2, you would have noticed that you can't fill up all of your skills with the points you receive. That means decisions regarding allocation of resources.

Inventory management is back in the form of weapon modding, and there are also more choices as to what weapons you get. Besides, the choices of weapons in ME1 were often not very interesting. You just picked the one with more green stat bars. There were also only around two different skins for each weapon type, just with different coloring. The same thing can be said for armor types.

Most RPGs that do not have open world gameplay akin to the Elder Scrolls, are about picking missions from a hub.

The footage shown is nothing like halo, which is a from the hip first person shooter that has a two weapon limit. ME3 is a third person, cover based shooter with up to a four weapon limit with a focus on aiming, using powers, and managing your squad.

 

[Joccaren]

Yeah, for soldiers, vanguards and infiltrators the choice was in matching weapon and ammo types to destroy defenses, and squadmate selection to fill in power gaps. Other than that, it was a matter of using the class ability when applicable and the other 1-2 actives as necessary (such as setting up shatters or warp bombs on enemies that can't be charged as a vanguard). Linked cooldowns as tactical choice really came into play with engineers, sentinels and adepts, especially sentinels.

Then again, I probably had the least overall fun on my sentinel playthrough considering by the end of the game I was steamrolling enemy defense with a heavy warp ammo mattock then warp bombing them straight to oblivion, and only carted out throw and overload against husks and to control enemies. If I do a sentinel again, I'm going the "assault" route (shotgun, assault armor, and geth shield boost/energy drain) considering I've heard that's massively more fun than the "controller" route.

Well, I've never played Adept or Engineer, those classes never really appealed to me, but I did try the sentinel one round.

I went the assault route, and it is more fun than the controller route I'm pretty sure, but its also a lot more one-skill dependent. In the early parts of the game, you usually just charge up your shield, then pop out of cover, lose shield, pop into cover, wait a minute or two, re-use shield, repeat. Mid to end game you actually have some ability to run up to enemies, lose your shield next to them, then shotgun them in the face, but its far more dangerous than even the Vanguard's charge; you don't gain shield by doing this, you lose it.

It does help a lot for that mission where almost endless husks come at you in that mine with the reaper artifact, you just charge up your shield, run into the husks, melee and shotgun them, run when your shield pops and they get stunned, keep running until your shield ability recharges, repeat. Takes a good 5-10 minutes to get rid of all of them, but it is easily done.

My personal favourite class is the vanguard, I'm hoping they haven't changed them too much in ME3. Can you imagine Charging into an enemy then Omni-blading them to the face? That will be awesome.

 

[Steven He]

To those people who think its a single karma slider, i actually think its 2, but they both go up (or down for renegade) at the same time from the middle

 

[Frotality]

gah...still has that stupid "multiple points to increase a level" thing of ME2, so that you have do the kind of math the developers want to convince us they hate to use up all your points.

still, at least they seem to be ADDING AND IMPROVING stuff instead of deleting and degrading like ME2. first positive thing ive heard of ME3 yet, and its a leak; that probably says something about their marketing, doesnt it?

 

[MiracleOfSound]

It's a flaw with the RPG mindset that Less Talents = Bad. The problem with ME1 was that almost all the talents were passive boosts to silly thinks like accuracy and damage.

Why in the hell can't Commander Shepard, a decorated war hero, shoot straight without pumping 10 talent points in a skill? For EACH GUN?

The fact was that in ME2 the talents were MUCH better in terms of what they did. The improvements for each point were much more noticeable and they felt meaningful. I'm putting a point into a talent to increase my cooldown or my damage on an ability, rather than to make sure that I can hit what I am aiming at.

Such a rare opinion, but one I agree with 100%.

Most of the stats in ME1 felt like they were simply there for the sake of having something to adjust. You never felt much difference apart from the gun skills.

More armour and weapon types would be nice in ME3 though.

 

[Elamdri]

It's a flaw with the RPG mindset that Less Talents = Bad. The problem with ME1 was that almost all the talents were passive boosts to silly thinks like accuracy and damage.

Why in the hell can't Commander Shepard, a decorated war hero, shoot straight without pumping 10 talent points in a skill? For EACH GUN?

The fact was that in ME2 the talents were MUCH better in terms of what they did. The improvements for each point were much more noticeable and they felt meaningful. I'm putting a point into a talent to increase my cooldown or my damage on an ability, rather than to make sure that I can hit what I am aiming at.

Such a rare opinion, but one I agree with 100%.

Most of the stats in ME1 felt like they were simply there for the sake of having something to adjust. You never felt much difference apart from the gun skills.

More armour and weapon types would be nice in ME3 though.

The way I look at it, Mass Effect 3 could benefit from 2 things.

1st: The addition of an LMG class of weapons. I know in ME2 we had the Renevant, but it was an assault rifle, not it's own class of weapon. I think what I would do is take away either the sniper rifle or the heavy pistol from the soldier class and replace it with an LMG class of weapon. I also think that perhaps a class like the Sentinel would benefit from an LMG.

I also think that Shepard should have the option of classifying his armor as Light, Medium, or Heavy. I think that the higher the level of your armor, the more shields and health you should have, but I think in turn you should suffer from reduced speed and longer cooldowns.

 

[Fappy]

Don't know if its been mentioned yet, but Casey Hudson commented on the squadmate Paragon/Renegade bars. Apparently those screens aren't finished yet and they haven't turned off Shepards meter on the squadmate screens yet, so no, squadmates don't get their own meters.

 

[Shock and Awe]

So basically its Mass Effect 2 with more options for leveling that is steadier but shorter, a mix of the original and the second. I like it, its more logical than the first but gives more options than the second, I approve.

READ BELOW

READ BELOW​

It has both bars put into one visually and you will rack up points in the same way, just that two lines will ascend/descend from the center independently. Look closely and you will see a little red line and a little blue line, its the same system, just presented different. Stop freaking out.

On a different note I can't wait to see what the stuff on the second Shepard screen is all about, I know what the effects are, but I wonder how you attain them.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Well, I've never played Adept or Engineer, those classes never really appealed to me, but I did try the sentinel one round. [...] My personal favourite class is the vanguard, I'm hoping they haven't changed them too much in ME3.

One thing I think was one of ME2's major, understated successes was creating classes which catered to multiple psychologies and playstyles. That's pretty rare in FPS games, especially single-player ones where the class distinction typically becomes a matter of flavor more than actual function. To be quite frank, vanguards despite being powerful are not my favorite class in ME2 (that's the adept), because they're all-out assault, super close range; that frustrated me in the transition from 1 because I built my vanguard there as a close- to medium-range controller, and it worked fantastically.

Anyhow, sentinels. Sentinels are IMO frankly dependent upon their advanced weapon training selection, as that's the critical factor. Until you get it, you're better off adapting a middle road controller approach, then evolving powers to match weapon selection.

Most of the stats in ME1 felt like they were simply there for the sake of having something to adjust. You never felt much difference apart from the gun skills.

More armour and weapon types would be nice in ME3 though.

Indeed, on both accounts. ME1 had a small number of high-impact talents, then a large array of minor-impact to outright useless talents. That's not to mention the weapon skills, which forced you to specialize into weapons, some of which didn't even become all that good until the mid-20s and had prerequisites of wasting points in other weapon skills. Don't get me started on the tech "synergies" wherein you had to dump dozens of points to get the most out of your tech mines, which necessarily came at the cost of the high-impact passives and had exorbitant cooldowns which dampened their usefulness until you could get your hands on a decent omni-tool which didn't even happen until the end of the damn game.

All in all, ME1's talent system while diverse was really a disorganized mess that sorely needed to be streamlined. That streamlining came in ME2, and I'm glad to see it's getting expanded in ME3 given that in ME2 it was almost a little too streamlined for most RPG players' tastes. I know I personally felt a little hogtied when it came to ME2's power distribution and squad point allotment.

I also think that Shepard should have the option of classifying his armor as Light, Medium, or Heavy. I think that the higher the level of your armor, the more shields and health you should have, but I think in turn you should suffer from reduced speed and longer cooldowns.

Honestly, I disagree here on one point: I don't think increasing cooldowns and reducing running speed is quite the solution. I like the idea of armor classification, but I think that should come at the cost of reducing storm speed or prohibiting the use of combat maneuvres, and possibly even slightly increasing Shepard's hitbox. Mucking with cooldowns I think would negatively impact the pace of combat, especially given the combat classes depend upon their class power and the non-combat classes are already highly cooldown-reliant. Reducing normal movement speed would just be bothersome when moving through a level.

Combat classes already get storm speed bonuses, so changing to a heavier armor class would at best bring them back to parity. Locking out combat maneuvres just makes sense; you can't expect a character wearing heavy armor to be able to dodge and roll as well as someone wearing light armor.

 

[Elamdri]

I also think that Shepard should have the option of classifying his armor as Light, Medium, or Heavy. I think that the higher the level of your armor, the more shields and health you should have, but I think in turn you should suffer from reduced speed and longer cooldowns.

Honestly, I disagree here on one point: I don't think increasing cooldowns and reducing running speed is quite the solution. I like the idea of armor classification, but I think that should come at the cost of reducing storm speed or prohibiting the use of combat maneuvres, and possibly even slightly increasing Shepard's hitbox. Mucking with cooldowns I think would negatively impact the pace of combat, especially given the combat classes depend upon their class power and the non-combat classes are already highly cooldown-reliant. Reducing normal movement speed would just be bothersome when moving through a level.

Combat classes already get storm speed bonuses, so changing to a heavier armor class would at best bring them back to parity. Locking out combat maneuvres just makes sense; you can't expect a character wearing heavy armor to be able to dodge and roll as well as someone wearing light armor.

I meant storm speed, sorry.

Perhaps cooldowns aren't the way to go, but there has to be something that discourages you from wearing heavy armor all the time. The way I see it, structure it so that classes like Adepts and Engineers are encouraged to wear light armor, classes like Infiltrator and Sentinel are encouraged to wear medium armor, and classes like Solider and Vanguard are encouraged to wear heavy armor.

 

[Amphoteric]

I still miss this screen.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Liara always did have some Orb Lift

hehehehehehehe.

Looks great and at least there is still SOME choice going on.