MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA (Here be Spoilers)

[J.T.]

1 minute ago, RIPPA said:

What's funny is that I saw all of you on and playing MP so I thought you were all together last night.

I came home to play some MP and eat dinner and then went back to work around 9PM or so.  I got back in around one in the morning.

[AxB]

13 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

And no it doesn't matter how many outposts you have. (I mean technically the implication is all of them are joining in but it really is only Prodromos)

There were probably going to be extra outposts in one of the planned DLCs.

[J.T.]

17 minutes ago, AxB said:

There were probably going to be extra outposts in one of the planned DLCs.

Well, I was wondering if having outposts on Kadara or other planets factored in aka do I get any extra dialogue or NPC cameos in Liam's LM for waiting and establishing more outposts?

Eos rolled in strong, but where were my Voeld homes?

Now that the mission is done, will there be Angarans helping out at Prodromos now or was that cutscene stuff just for show?

[J.T.]

The Item Shop list has been refreshed.  The Assault Package or somesuch is on sale this week.  It boosts Assault Rifle and Shotgun damage.  Not bad for myself and the two or three other people that bother to equip some of their characters with more than one gun. 

I run AR / Shotty on my Male Human Soldier (Avenger S III / Katana X) and my KroMerc (Soned II / Hesh VI) so the new mod could see some use.

The Batarian Vanguard is also available in the APEX roster.  Maybe it's me but he looks like he's wearing on the same douchey scarf that CSC's GTA4 multiplayer character had on.  He's an N7 character so you'll need to buy Premium Packs for a shot at unlocking him or pray that a future APEX Pacm does the trick.

There is also a new weapon.  A shotgun called the Shorty.  I'm guessing that is the gun that Cora packs in the game.

The Weekend APEX mission is a bit of a doozie.  It's a Bronze mission on Firebase Nimbus (I think) and the Kett are involved.  You probably won't want to use lowbie level characters because the Platinum match stip, Glass Jaw, is in effect so enemies will deal 1000% percent more melee damage.

Yeah, not a hundred percent more.  A thousand percent more.  Whatever punches you will at the very least take out all of your shielding if not outright kill you if your character is too squishy..

The other stip in effect is Combat Skirmish so break out your Soldiers, Batarian Skirmishers, Turian Havoks, KroMercs, Angaran Aventers, and those characters with Barricade that you barely use.

Ill be up for running this with you dudes when I get to the crib.  I should be online around 6PM or so after I finish dinner and let the dogs out.

[jstout]

Yay, another N7 character to keep me from leveling up the Avenger! Woohoo!

[RIPPA]

I have been waiting all day for maintenance to show up at my apartment then I can finally hop on

It will be the first time I played since before headed to NY

So very rusty...

[Robert C]

Hopped on for a few minutes to check strike teams and buy the weekly stuff.  The new changes to character drops at least let me know what I'd be getting from buying rare characters beforehand.  600 mission funds = 5 scrapper drops.

Got a new headset at lunchtime, so hopefully I'll actually be able to talk to folks after the old one took a dive last night.  Ought to be on tonight, but probably late.  Gotta deal with night meetings with folks in Bangalore first.  

[RIPPA]

I went into single player to cash in all the packages I had collected via MP since I was approaching the cap

The game gave me like 25 sniper rifles

[jstout]

I wasn't up in time to catch the stream, but the Reddit recap makes it sound like every question that people asked got answered with "we'll look into that." This includes the first statement that players need help coping with this gigantic pool of cards now. People have been complaining about the pool being overwhelming since they first changed it, and now they'll look into it? And so to add insult to injury, they add an ultra rare character and gun (which sounds particularly useless).

Someone also - get this - complained that Platinum was too easy, especially when playing the Kett. They said they'd look into it.

One of the devs also referred to my beloved Avenger as OP. Here comes the nerfing.

I love playing the game with y'all, but reviving randoms 2,000 times a game just to inch toward another variant of an assault rifle that I'll never use is getting old as hell.

[Robert C]

I'm really curious to see how the new guy works out, especially with charge + annihilation.  Might Does that mean automatic biotic combos on every charge?  Either way, flak cannon can kiss my ass.  I ain't ever gonna put points into that.

[RIPPA]

In ME3 - the Batarian Vanguard was amazing because what you would do was charge and literally start your melee as you smashed into the guy so it was Charge/Melee death all the time.

I wonder if the punch animation will be as slow as ME3

[RIPPA]

Was able to eat the Bronze waves done before the storms hit our area.

Despite being warned- I played as a Salarian. So fucking whiny.

[Robert C]

The stuff the Salarian Infiltrator says is pretty good.  Friendly neighborhood Hydra.

[jstout]

That Batarian might actually be fun to play, as opposed to the first one.

[J.T.]

12 hours ago, jstout said:

That Batarian might actually be fun to play, as opposed to the first one.

The Scrapper is a Cryo Combo machine.  Totally fun to play.

Giving the Batarian Vanguard the Annihilation power is pretty interesting. 

I suppose they are going for the "whatever he charges into will blue explode" concept, but Annihilation also degrades your Movement Speed and Recharge Speed until you chose to get rid of the negative effect by taking the Remove Penalty perk for Annihilation 4.

I had no idea that the new weekend APEX mission would be all fucking Challenge Waves except for Insertion and Extraction.  Between that, Glass Jaw being in effect, the Kett being the enemy, and Firebase Nimbus being a fairly complex map, it was a pretty intense mission even for Bronze. . 

I played my Havoc Trooper and mowed down groups of Kett with Flak Cannon while hovering.  That map is perfect for exploiting the level changes.  I had to burn a Cobra at the end to keep the Ascendant from eating the team and wipe out a couple of victory spoiling chain gunners and the entire squad extracted clean.

Some poor girl gamer decided that her first Multiplayer mission with her Level 1 Human Female Soldier I and shitty Avenger I / Katana I load out would be this particular mission.   What a horrible choice.... 

She died a lot.  I felt badly for her.  I knew she had to be screaming at her television set.  She bailed out on us around Wave 4 and went back to playing Campaign Mode.  It didn't take us long to get a replacement. 

Normally tapping out early would've earned a player a spot on my Blocked List, but that move was the move of a complete newbie that was not ready for MP and not the infuriating dementia of a serial quitter.  She was nowhere close to being the worst behaved player I have run across in ME multiplayer. 

For that, we'd have to talk about the guy that thought it would be cool to grab the object during a Retrieval challenge and decided not to take the backpack to the LZ and deliberately tank the mission because it was time for dinner.  How do I know?  BECAUSE HE ANNOUNCED IT OVER HIS FUCKING MIC~!!!!

Hey, asshole.  You have a mic.  Why not just say over your fucking mic, "Hey, guys.  I have to get something to eat," and just quit the mission and let everyone else continue on until we get a replacement?  What a fucking douchebag...

I knocked out the Firebase Magma daily challenge last night and got about 3/4ths of the way through Biotic Mastery before going to bed.  I finished up the rest this morning with the Bronze APEX mission in my queue.

In Campaign Mode, I took out the Kett base on Voeld and recovered the Kett first contact data that the Angaran scientists were looking for.  I chose Truth / Reality over Hope / Lie.  He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.

After that, I had the Angaran shuttle pilot get me, Vetra, and Drack to the Angaran ruins and we explored the ice cave.  I recovered my purple historian bae's artifact, killed more Kett, encountered Angaran HAL, and chose to unplug her with a bullet. 

Fuck Voeld SHODAN..

It was bad enough that she lied to me on multiple occasions.  When she tried to add attempted murder on top of that, it was time for her digital ass to go.  I know the Angaran prisoner made the first move but self defense is one cautionary jolt only, not short circuiting the electrical field of a life form that depends on naturally generated alternating current.

I honestly feel that I made the right decision.  I read somewhere that if you spare the AI, she asks to be placed into SAM's custody and I am very certain that allowing the untrustworthy and homicidal AI to merge with the AI intertwined with the implant in my skull is a really bad idea.

[J.T.]

15 hours ago, Robert C said:

 Either way, flak cannon can kiss my ass.  I ain't ever gonna put points into that.

It depends on what the other powers are and what class you are playing.

There's no way I would put points into FC for the KroMerc when Flamethrower is there or the new Batarian Vanguard when I'd prefer to level up Annihilation in order to remove the Recharge Speed / Movement penalty, but FC is pretty awesome for the Turian Havoc Trooper if you chose the passive perks that improve her jump jet hover time.

Spec FC for the Stun and Extra Flak Explosions effects and you can pretty much murder entire groups of redbars from the air.

The Death From Above effect is even more dramatic if your THT has a high ROF weapon and you remember to activate Turbocharge before starting your jump jet run.  I tend to make her primary a high ROF / Low Weight assault rifle like the Avenger or the Cyclone so that I can rain down bullets and Flak Cannon rounds on enemies that are dug in.

I've also been known to arm her with the Falcon grenade launcher and the Charger S and either carpet bomb fools with micro grenades while I am airborne, or hit Turbocharge, switch to the Charger, jump / hover, and alternately open up with the Flak Cannon and strafe survivors with the Turbocharged SMG,

[RIPPA]

My first playthrough I killed the AI

2nd time I gave it to the Angarans (Partly because I didn't know that was an option)

If there was a sequel - I am sure I would regret giving it to the Angarans

I might be cool with weird space rocks on my ship but not that fucking thing

[J.T.]

40 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

My first playthrough I killed the AI

2nd time I gave it to the Angarans (Partly because I didn't know that was an option)

If there was a sequel - I am sure I would regret giving it to the Angarans

I might be cool with weird space rocks on my ship but not that fucking thing

So you killed the crazy and murderous living computer, but you shuttled the insanity inducing Scourge boulder closer to a humanoid population living on a space station surrounded by a hard vacuum.

Thank God there is no upcoming DLC to make you regret that choice.

Handing Angaran HAL over to the Angarans might not be a bad idea provided that the Angarans don't hook her up to anything, but you know they will and we'd be playing the Overlord DLC in a brand new galaxy if EA did not do idiotic things like raiding their own companies for talent.

[J.T.]

13 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Was able to eat the Bronze waves done before the storms hit our area.

Despite being warned- I played as a Salarian. So fucking whiny.

The highlight of many MP sessions was listening to Melraz and Stout make fun of Salarian dialogue.

I nearly pissed myself laughing every time one of them said, "Stop trying to be the hero!" in their best Salarian whine with accompanying drawl.

[Robert C]

Got my scrapper up to level X, so I can get back to random drops for rare characters now.  Only N7 drop was a Piranha II, but I'll take it since that's my go to shotgun.

We had the dirt worst teammate for one match.  Pretty sure we all got revive medals off of him.  Stout got a gold.  We had a hard time figuring out if he was AFK, since he kept dying in the same spot over and over.  Turned out he wasn't, he was just that bad.

Probably shoulda gone to bed long before I did.  Pulled a Burke at one point, till melraz hollered at me and woke me up again.

[J.T.]

20 hours ago, jstout said:

Someone also - get this - complained that Platinum was too easy, especially when playing the Kett. They said they'd look into it..

I've played Platinum twice and the no lifers that think that Platinum is too easy need to fuck right off and go outside and experience actual sunlight.

[Robert C]

My strike teams are gonna get a bad performance review.  4 fails in a row on the same mission.  According to the game's numbers, there's less than a .06% chance of that happening.

[jstout]

Get this: There's a bug in the respec process: when you respec at less than Rank X or less than Level 20, you may not be refunded all your skill points.

This happened to me when I was re-specing the ultra-rare Asari, and it just plain sucks, beware.

[RUkered]

28 minutes ago, jstout said:

Get this: There's a bug in the respec process: when you respec at less than Rank X or less than Level 20, you may not be refunded all your skill points.

This happened to me when I was re-specing the ultra-rare Asari, and it just plain sucks, beware.

In addition to that, I played a couple silvers yesterday to give myself enough points to get the 100,000 weapons box. Got up to 121,000. Bought the box, it said it was communicating with the server, then it dropped the connection.

I reloaded multiplayer only to have it drop again the minute the main menu loaded. Did it a third time, and I had 21,000 points and no new items.

I invented a few new curse words. Goddamn buggy game.

[RIPPA]

Got in two games tonight

Laggy as shit so I gave up.