MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA (Here be Spoilers)

[The Man Known as Dan]

13 minutes ago, J.T. said:

The N7 Crusader fires a slug rather than a shot package and it is as wildly inaccurate in this game as it was in ME3.  If your targeting reticule isn't dead on, you'll miss your shot most of the time. 

The trade-off being that the N7 Crusader has the benefit of being able to hit things at range and the Smart Choke turned it into a no scope Widow in ME3.

It also does not help that melee combat is hilariously overpowered in this game.  I can kill things faster with an Omni-Blade than I can with a mid-range shotgun blast or pistol fire.

I liked using the Disciple in ME3, but it was almost the same principle as the N7 Crusader. 

The shot package is so tight naturally that you may as well be firing a slug, but you don't have the luxury of the distance that an N7 Crusader will give you, however the Disciple had a fairly high ROF so you could quickly kill something at close to point blank range.

Problem was that you had to fire all of your shots to do it, but at least the reload time was fairly short.

The other cool thing about the ME3 Disciple was that it fired eezo pellets and it was also fairly light for its class, so you got bonus damage to enemy Biotic barriers and most Asari classes could pack one without angsting about cooldown loss.

The bad and ugly of the Disciple was the same as the N7 Crusader.  If you want to hit something, you HAD to use the iron sights.  Those were not hip fire shottys like the Katana or the Graal Spike Thrower.

I get what your saying on these, and you are correct on how those guns work. The problem was, they simply didn't do enough damage for that strategy to be viable on Gold, due to how much faster enemies swarm you in this game then the last. Every single enemy in this game has an enemy like the Husks in ME3, except they are all faster, and if they grab you, you don't immediately kill them in response. Add in on Gold everything just goes into super bullet sponge mode, with you having under powered weapons AND explosions, and it just led everything to being a boring slog of a time, if you were not getting murdered. It would take me over half a barrel to be able to kill a base Outlaw on Gold with a Crusader. It would take 6-7 from the Disciple. Now Transfer that over to trying to kill a pre-patch Berserker, Destroyer, Fiend, or god damned Ascendant where accuracy really matters. it felt like you were shooting a pellet gun.

Basically, there's a reason why they hugely buffed Shotguns in the patch. It didn't make them over powered at high levels, it just made them a good option, where as previously, save for one or two, they were not really.

[J.T.]

That is the peril of scaling difficulty by boosting enemy health and shield power rather than boosting the lethality of enemy weapons.

The problem is that turning things into bullet sponges is arguably the more player friendly option.

Increased enemy weapon damage would force you to use cover more often and that is a losing strategy since the Kett have Ascendants and Fiends that can waltz in during the precious seconds you're waiting for your kinetic barriers to recover and one shot you.

The only real solution is to (as they've already done) boost weapon damage, power damage, and combo damage.

[jstout]

I had a bit of that last night, where I was just blasting a Krogan over and over again from point-blank range with a Disciple IV and seemingly not fazing him. I gave up and melee'd him to death.

I need to try another shotgun or two, but the Disciple is way lighter than the other shotguns that do comparable damage.

[J.T.]

46 minutes ago, jstout said:

I had a bit of that last night, where I was just blasting a Krogan over and over again from point-blank range with a Disciple IV and seemingly not fazing him. I gave up and melee'd him to death.

TBH, it is fitting and well within game mythology that Krogan should give you pause when they show up, but they shouldn't be nightmarishly hard to kill.

[odessasteps]

I got the Long Jump bonus on Voeld. There are a lot of mountains, particuarly around the Kett stronghold. I think there is where i got mine. 

[AxB]

See when you get your character to card level IX, you unlock the camo skin? Make the main colour bright red, the pattern colour white and pattern #3. You're covered in blood spatter!

[RIPPA]

The Ryder athletic outfit is comically hideous

[AxB]

So Silver missions pay a lot better than Bronze ones, credits-wise. I got loads of packs.Every Common character is an X now. Got the Male Human Engineer to level 15, because I want to see if the reward for a level 2 bonus stat is as underwhelming as the reward for a level 1 (the Female version is level 20 already). I've also been playing a Vanguard, because that's the most fun. Although it's a lot less fun if someone else is also playing one.

Got a level 9 Sniper Scope already. Haven't even equipped a Sniper Rifle yet. I've got  a Widow and an Isharay though.

[RIPPA]

It is amazing when you know what you are doing (and are overpowered)

Hit Eos and went Monolith, Monolith, Monolith, Site 2, Vault in basically less than 90 minutes

So now I can do most everything else without the environment fucking with me

I am a little irritated that I had to shred/sell like 60 things but it defaults you back to 100 capacity

They usually should have had like one storage bin in the game

[odessasteps]

Did you pick the AVP that expands your item capacity when you opened up Pos? 

[RIPPA]

45 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Did you pick the AVP that expands your item capacity when you opened up Pos? 

Yes - I ended my first playthrough at 200 capacity

I will say that I haven't physically gotten an outpost yet so technically the cryo pods aren't available yet. So I have no idea if I get all of the back immediately or not.

[jstout]

Finishing silvers by the skin of my teeth with randoms. Lots of first aid packs and revives, but job gets done. Switched back to my human soldier 'cause he's an X and my Asari Adept is a III. The Adept just doesn't have enough shields, and punching things to gain them can be problematic.

Also been doing Bronzes to level up different characters. Rule is that I try my damndest not to use first aids or revives. It's fun playing new characters, but the pay sucks.

Got the Revenant I assault rifle. Would be an awesome gun if it packed a bit more punch. I think it'll sing once it gets to III or IV.

It amazes me that when this came out, I couldn't fathom playing Silver because Bronze was overwhelming. Now it's my play-around level. I can't fathom doing Gold anytime soon, though. Maybe in a few weeks.

[Robert C]

Ran a couple bronzes today trying out lower characters.

Played with a guy who had an Apex rating of 300 and was running the Krogan Gladiator.  I don't know who this guy is, but I hate him.

[jstout]

Kept my streak of at least partial extractions (with me always extracting) in Silver going, and even got brave and tried (and finished) a Gold APEX mission (Outlaws, of course). The Gold mission was a partial extraction, but I'm not sure how - I thought we had it. Gold is an entirely different critter. I think there were four Krogan coming after me at one point. When a Hydra showed up in Level 3, I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Level 6 was a Devices wave, but I got so busy just trying to stay alive that I completely forgot about the devices.

One Silver match was tainted by a Level 4 who took it upon himself to die 5,000 times. I revive him at one point and immediately die. He pretty much hops over my corpse to get started on the task of dying again, leaving one of our teammates to revive me. That partial extraction was a complete miracle. I've never quit out of a lobby so fast after it was over.

Here was a charming one - Silver match, Remnant. I've had this happen before, but figured it was some kind of special stipulation in an APEX match. It wasn't. None of my d-pad stuff worked (first aid, revive, RPGs) - all of them showed zero, including the ammo packs that I have 4,502,034 of. And to make matters worse, the right bumper and left bumper didn't work either, so there went all my special attacks. I knew if I actually tried to help my teammates out, they'd be reviving me more than shooting enemies, so I just basically hid the entire match and we somehow all made it out. I knew it couldn't be a stipulation when one of my teammates died and immediately popped. No popping for me, no sir. That was tough.

Another weird thing - I sent two NPC strike teams on either Bronze or Silver missions (their chances of completing the Gold missions is so small I don't wanna chance them getting negative traits for failing). I'm 100 percent positive they weren't Gold missions, but when I checked on my teams before calling it a night, they were both in Gold missions (with the bad chance of success) somehow.

Here's a depressing little fact: XBox deals with gold is already selling the Special Edition download for $41. It listed for $69, so that's quite a price break. I remember it taking much longer for Fallout 4 to even drop by $10, for example.

[Robert C]

Sometime the game gives you crap.  Other times you get the Vanquisher and the Revenant from back to back advanced packs.

[jstout]

I just wish the game would realize that I already have 2 trillion ammo packs and don't really need any more. It could then give me something I actually use, like an RPG, revive or first-aid pack.

I also wish the guy left at Bioware Montreal could fix the bug where the guy (can't remember his name) quits talking to you during multiplayer. It sounds strange, but I can't stand to not hear when there's three left. It actually influences several decisions.

 

[odessasteps]

I play with game sound off and chat on, so it's funny when I hear stuff from other people's games.

[Robert C]

No idea how you do that.  Sound is very helpful for me, especially when Fiends/Ascendants/Destroyers are about.

Which makes the times my sound has gone out completely in multiplayer extremely annoying.

[RIPPA]

Got the infinite loading screen bug this afternoon 

Was about to go to all DA2 but was able to finally get it fixed

[Robert C]

Was playing on the Kett ship map today and had a Kett get lost.  We had a heck of a time locating him till I found him stuck to the roof.

Down to 5 uncommon weapon drops left.  Weirdly enough, they're all on the same weapon.

[odessasteps]

Got my collection plate. Got turian agent up to level 4. Sadly, my group died on extraction level doing my bronze strike team mission. Believe it or not, i had the highest avp rating in the group.

[jstout]

I gotta find a spot where I deem someone too low to be playing Silver and find me another bunch to play with. I had a Level 4 Krogan of some sort in a Silver game with me, and I think he died every 15 seconds.

The objective was to revive him, then do all the other crap.

Still, having mostly good luck with randoms.

[AxB]

Joined a mission that was all glitchy and freezy. Lots of repeatedly melee'ing Observers that were fighting like statues. A  few times I died with full health & shield, and for the upload wave, I couldn't move other than dashing sideways, but we managed to get through it. And then the game couldn't display the final scores, so I got no XP and no Credits for it.

I had thought that getting both Engineers to level 20 would give me a level 2 bonus stat, but you actually need 6 Million total XP for that, and it's only 2million per character. So either keep playing once you're maximum level, or find a third character to max out as well. Maybe the Angaran with the Trip Mine, I've unlocked him at level 1. But first, my Vanguard. Max Health level 1 is close.

[J.T.]

Got my final Common class up to 10th over the weekend.

Starting work on my Uncommons tonight with the Turian Soldier after I get back from my kid's soccer game.

[RIPPA]

I will be playing single player until my wife goes on her nightly hike with the dog then I will switch to MP

Anything to keep me from watching RAW