The Mass Effect thread

[AxB]

Mine is 2555, which puts me in the top 5% in the world. My N7 is 1025, top 3%, but that's because of all the people with monster challenge points who never promoted once and are stuck on 120. And also the people who only played it once and their N7 rating is 7. I was in a game with one of those guys last night.

[RIPPA]

Well there is an entire mastery that is based just on promoting people so that is why I promoted the fuck out of everyone.

It is also why I never have to worry about getting the "best" ending in single player - because I have over 5000 war assests thanks to promoted people

[J.T.]

5 hours ago, RIPPA said:

It is also why I never have to worry about getting the "best" ending in single player - because I have over 5000 war assests thanks to promoted people

Yep.  There was quite a bit of outrage from the I Don't Play Well With Others people about how folks who liked to participate in multiplayer were better suited to get the "best endings" thanks to the bump to their GR% that modified the value of campaign mode war assets.

[J.T.]

5 hours ago, AxB said:

Mine is 2555, which puts me in the top 5% in the world. My N7 is 1025, top 3%, but that's because of all the people with monster challenge points who never promoted once and are stuck on 120. And also the people who only played it once and their N7 rating is 7. I was in a game with one of those guys last night.

N7 rating is dependent on a lot of factors (ie. unlocked classes, unlocked weapons, upgraded consumable modifiers, class levels).  His low rating was a due to a combination of things like shitty weapons, low leveled classes, unpromoted classes, and a bunch of other things.

[AxB]

I thought the N7 rating was just how many levels you've gained in total, and nothing else?

[J.T.]

22 minutes ago, AxB said:

I thought the N7 rating was just how many levels you've gained in total, and nothing else?

Nope.  You might not have noticed it but your N7 rating should go up a couple of points whenever you unlock a rare or ultra rare weapon and whenever you got a +1 unlock for your consumables until you reach the max and naturally it raises in value whenever you promote one of your classes.  

I may be mistaken, but I think you also got a few N7 rating points for unlocking a new class.   I seem to recall getting an N7 bump when I unlocked my Krogan classes and whenever I got a new DLC class.

The more you promote your classes, the better the modifier for war assets, which helps out your GR% rating in campaign mode.

High CP and N7 ratings aren't really a metric of skill though.  It just means you've been in the grind long enough to unlock a whole bunch of stuff.

[RIPPA]

HEY! Don't be cheapening my achievements!

[AxB]

CP ratings aren't just for unlocking a lot of stuff, they're for using a lot of different stuff. If you only ever used a Human Engineer (or whatever) and never changed your weapons, the only CP points you'd get were the ones for that exact character and weapons, and very eventually the Cerberus Mastery and Collector Mastery et cetera.

Speaking of human engineers, I have no points in Overload or Combat Drone? I must have given up on standard characters really early on.

[J.T.]

17 hours ago, AxB said:

CP ratings aren't just for unlocking a lot of stuff, they're for using a lot of different stuff.

I don't think you really understood what I said.  Neither CP nor N7 ratings really measure skill. 

Long and short of the matter is that CP Rating really represents how long you've been grinding away at certain aspects of the game because you pretty much earn medals based on what powers, classes, and weapons you use or which maps you've been on or the level of difficulty you tend to play. 

N7 ratings are a combination of what classes you have unlocked, what weapons you have unlocked, the aggregate levels of all of your classes, how many times you've promoted, and other factors.

Rippa and I played co-op for a long time, so I'm very familiar with the game mechanics.

[RIPPA]

I would also argue that my rankings are high due more to my skill than the amount I played

I am not saying that applies to everyone but it shouldn't be dismissed 

That one dude who played with was a boss and last I looked he was ranked 20th in the world 

[J.T.]

10 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I would also argue that my rankings are high due more to my skill than the amount I played

I am not saying that applies to everyone but it shouldn't be dismissed 

That one dude who played with was a boss and last I looked he was ranked 20th in the world 

I don't think it should be totally dismissed, but I've run into just as many morons with high CP / N7 as I have decent players with respectable or low ratings. 

Nearly every time I get it into my head that I wanted to try Gold (when I was chasing that map achievement), I'd get into a match with players with N7s in the thousands that were either kill stealers, no revivers, or were plain old idiots that did dumb things and died in the worst areas of the map surrounded by a million enemies and refused to sort themselves out.

And what do they do if you revive them or if they have to use their own medi-gel?  THEY FUCKING QUIT THE MATCH.

And yeah, HiTechWise was an absolute monster.  That dude was all about the team.

[The Man Known as Dan]

For what it's worth, the best guy I ever played with regularly, who would solo platinum, was a lower rank then Phil or J.T. And that's not a shot at Phil and J.T., when I played Gold with that guy he just destroyed absolutely everything.

[J.T.]

I never soloed Gold or Platinum out of principle.  The whole point of multiplayer is that there should be multiple players. 

The only reason I have Soloed Bronze and Soloed Silver medals is because I did those during the time there were Weekly Challenges and some medals were easier to get solo rather than competing with other players for situational kills.

[RIPPA]

Yeah - HiTechWise is a prime example of how sometimes randos can be amazing 

Then on the other hand is Veelox

[AxB]

According to the wikia:

• N7 Ranking is displayed on a red banner, and is calculated by adding together the total levels ever gained by each class, plus 10 for each time a class has been promoted.
• Challenge Ranking is displayed on a gold banner, and is the total number of challenge points the user has accumulated. The previous are uniform across all classes.
• Promotion Ranking is displayed on a blue banner and is unique to each class. It shows the number of times that class has been promoted.

[J.T.]

55 minutes ago, AxB said:

According to the wikia:

• N7 Ranking is displayed on a red banner, and is calculated by adding together the total levels ever gained by each class, plus 10 for each time a class has been promoted.
• Challenge Ranking is displayed on a gold banner, and is the total number of challenge points the user has accumulated. The previous are uniform across all classes.
• Promotion Ranking is displayed on a blue banner and is unique to each class. It shows the number of times that class has been promoted.

I could be mistaken, but I don't think that Bioware has ever officially stated how N7 rankings are calculated and how it is computed has been debated ad nauseum. 

If N7 rating is calculated by total levels gained for all classes plus ten points per promotion plus the sum of all current class levels and you have PR as a hard number that allows you to compute your total levels earned per class and number of promotions per class, some simple addition and multiplication should give you your N7 rating.

20 * PR + Current Class Level should equal the total levels you've earned for one particular class.  10 * PR should equal the additional point value you get for promotions per class.  Adding those two values together should give you the N7 rating portion covered by that class.  Computing that value for every class and adding those totals together should equal your total N7 rating.

If it does, that's dandy but as I said before it's not really a metric of actual game skill.

[J.T.]

3 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Yeah - HiTechWise is a prime example of how sometimes randos can be amazing 

Then on the other hand is Veelox

I will take the heat for Veelox, but at least I make the effort to talk to people.

[odessasteps]

Like thats a good thing.

[AxB]

6 hours ago, J.T. said:

I don't think you really understood what I said.  Neither CP nor N7 ratings really measure skill. 

Long and short of the matter is that CP Rating really represents how long you've been grinding away at certain aspects of the game because you pretty much earn medals based on what powers, classes, and weapons you use or which maps you've been on or the level of difficulty you tend to play. 

Yeah, but if you only ever use one character with three powers, you'll never get near getting Biotic Mastery or Tech Mastery, because you need to swap out characters to access different powers until you've got max points in all of them. And if you only ever use one Assault Rifle, you can't get Assault Rival mastery because you need to get shitloads of points with 9 different ones (or 8, if you get 100 medals).

I just did get Assault Rifle mastery. And it didn't reset my Assault Rifles medals progress, so I'm a little way on the way to getting it again. A very short little way. On the plus side, some of the guns gets you points in two categories, Assault Rifle and Outsider or Rebellion or something. So it's more to shoot for, if you're the sort of person who plays for that stuff.

[J.T.]

2 minutes ago, AxB said:

Yeah, but if you only ever use one character with three powers, you'll never get near getting Biotic Mastery or Tech Mastery, because you need to swap out characters to access different powers until you've got max points in all of them.

People care about those things because multiplayer caught fire and turned out to be just as popular, if not more popular, than campaign mode. 

Otherwise people would've played just enough co-op to create the modifiers necessary to buff their war assets in campaign mode.  ME3 had a much longer shelf life thanks to co-op.

[J.T.]

12 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Like thats a good thing.

The purpose of social media is to engage society without being sociable?

[AxB]

You know, for all the shit ME3 (story mode) gets over it's ending, it has one of the all-time great beginnings. Also, I just got to the Mars archives and the Illusive Man's hologram popped up and said "That's where we differ Shepard. Where you see a means to destroy, I see a means to control." Foreshadowing~!

[Robert C]

Yeah, that whole sequence before you get to the Citadel is just amazing.  Can't think of another game that gripped me like that.  It loses some steam once you get to the Citadel, but that was really unavoidable without making the game entirely linear.

[AxB]

I thought your readiness rating dropped for every day you didn't play online, but it's been sitting at 90% steady while I've been playing through story mode (on Insanity). I've got 34 promotions, so even though I'm only a few hours into the story, my readiness is almost over the minimum line already. Basically I've picked up Garrus and the Primarch, done Grissom Academy, recruited two Merc clans for Aria, saved Primarch Victus' son on Tuchanka... and wandered around the citadel talking to people a bit.

Meeting Thane in the hospital was very different on this playthrough. On my first run, I was Femshep and romanced Thane in ME2, so seeing him again when he had accepted his imminent death was sort of heartbreaking. Whereas Evil Shepard never really bothered getting to know Thane, is a bit of a casual species-ist, and sees people as tools anyway, so he wasn't that bothered. 

I've already got the facial scars coming back in, and Shep's eyes have glowy orange spots already. But there's a way to go on that score.

It's odd that there's no Krogan party member in this game. I figured Wrex/ Wreave would be to busy to join the Normandy crew, but Grunt should have agreed to come back. I mean, James Vega is basically a Krogan in human form, but it doesn't feel right not having a massive armoured Space Toad watching my back.

You know how Miranda Lawson's voice actor looks an awful lot like Miranda? Samantha Traynor's voice actor looks nothing like her at all.

[AxB]

Isn't it odd that even though most of your crew-mates in ME2 are either long-term Cerberus, or joined Cerberus to stay with Shepard, every last one of them has left and turned babyface by the time ME3 starts? Wouldn't it have been a bit more interesting if there'd been someone down in Engineering or something who was a Cerberus true believer? Someone who stayed Cerberus in ME3 and you'd meet them late in the game while you were taking the Illusive Man's base... they could beg for their life, or try to tell Shepard it's not too late to rejoin and help the Illusive Man take over the galaxy. Be an interesting wrinkle to things, anyway.