MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA (Here be Spoilers)

[jstout]

"We can't wait to see what the future holds." Hilarious. Do you think the person who wrote that said "this'll get them"?

Got all the ultra-rare characters up to XX. Lately, I find myself in teams with the same two or three guys no matter when I'm playing.

[J.T.]

1 hour ago, jstout said:

"We can't wait to see what the future holds." Hilarious. Do you think the person who wrote that said "this'll get them"?

I was thinking to myself that sentence is the most infuriating thing they've said since the game has been released

I am exactly two spots above Robert in APEX rating now.  He will be back in front after dealing with the latest DCs.

[Robert C]

It's neck and neck for third place our standings.

3 guesses on the future holds:

1.  Diddly squat

2.  Anthem 2, the search for Shepard

3.  Battlefront 3, Jedi vs. Reapers

Meanwhile Dragon Age devolves into Templars vs. Mages 26, this time we swear it won't be boring.

[RIPPA]

I finally deleted the Apex app off my phone

Fucking EA

[J.T.]

17 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I finally deleted the Apex app off my phone

Fucking EA

I did that three months ago,

[jstout]

I think the bad random teammates I used to have to carry through Gold matches have now followed me over to Platinum. I was the only one of the four of us to extract during a match last night (first time I can remember that happening), and I had to leap into extraction to make it myself. The doctor was going insane running triage after teammates' dubious decisions. 

[J.T.]

5 minutes ago, jstout said:

I think the bad random teammates I used to have to carry through Gold matches have now followed me over to Platinum. I was the only one of the four of us to extract during a match last night (first time I can remember that happening), and I had to leap into extraction to make it myself. The doctor was going insane running triage after teammates' dubious decisions. 

I must've encountered those very same people this morning.  I was in a party that wiped out on the Silver APEX Pistol Skirmish mission in the current queue.

I finished three waves straight solo after people let themselves bleed out and refusing to revive each other. 

I finally got tired of making death defying medic runs and and tapped out in Wave 5.  If it had been Wave 6, I'd have burned consumables to get us to Extraction.

[jstout]

Had some Platinum winners today:

1. This chick I played with a few days ago was going to be the shield-boosting Salarian, so I loaded up the Kroglad. She, however was giving no shield boosts and wandered away from me as soon as wave 1 started. So, Krogan with no Nova = huge target with no way to fight back. We made it, somehow, but I had to be revived at least 30 times.

2. Guy with a low Apex is the cloaking Turian. Someone's a Krogan, so I switch from Avenger to Salarian, thinking the Turian was gonna try to do the cloaking stuff. Nope, he stayed put, leaving me to try to do retrievals with a non-cloaking character. No fun. Didn't go well.

[J.T.]

12 hours ago, jstout said:

2. Guy with a low Apex is the cloaking Turian. Someone's a Krogan, so I switch from Avenger to Salarian, thinking the Turian was gonna try to do the cloaking stuff. Nope, he stayed put, leaving me to try to do retrievals with a non-cloaking character. No fun. Didn't go well.

Definitely a new crop of players out there. 

In ME3 co-op in a Gold match, if you played the stealth guy it was understood that if Devices came up it was all on you.

[jstout]

He was an idiot. I had to explain to him earlier via messages how to get weapon variants. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and lost.

Today, we had 3 Avengers in a room for Platinum. A Kroguard joins as a fourth. I figure we got the Avenger market cornered, so I switch to the Salarian so I can shield boost and feed the Krogard's nova, right? 

Guy proceeded to nova ONCE the entire game. I just kept shield boosting and shooting like a madman. We made it.

[J.T.]

Happy N7 Day.... sorta...

Your resolve to succeed in Platinum matches shames my own, Stout.

Well, I am near the endgame of my Full Performance playthrough.  I was up to the part where Scott and Cora got busy on but lo and behold my great uncle and aunt came over for a visit.

Since having that cutscene on the Family Room television would've been hella-awkward, I started the Brief Adventures of Biotic Sara playthrough I've been meaning to fire up for a couple of days now.  I've unlocked the Trapshooter achievement as well as the Sucker Punch rare achievement, so now I just have High Performance and Fastball to go before I platinum this game.

I unlocked Trapshooter before the end of the intro mission.  I'd have unlocked it sooner, but you only start off with Throw when you play a Pure Biotic.  I had to wait until I leveled up before I could put points into Pull and Lance.

Unlocking Sucker Punch was pretty annoying.  Biotic Sara with Adept Profile is very squishy, so there were times that I couldn't hold the bumper down long enough to Pull an enemy close enough for me to punch it. 

Enemies would shoot at me and nearly break my Barrier before I had a chance to Pull a Chosen or Assembler all the way to me, so it would float along in the air instead and Cora would charge it and score a Biotic Combo.

I've already seen on the internets that Fastball is a broken achievement.  I am constantly checking my progress and reloading my games from the most recent save when I notice that progress stalls.

I'm kinda bummed that I did not get Fastball credit for throwing a frozen Anointed into three Chosen and killing everyone with a Cryo Combo during the firefight at the monolith near Fairwinds Basin right before you head off to the Eos Vault..  That shit was Twitch worthy.

How fitting would it be that I unlock the last available achievement N7 Day so that I can trade this thing in tomorrow towards credit for Watch Dogs 2 or Destiny 2.

I may keep this game around for a bit until the Night Shift transitions to another multiplayer game so that we can still occasionally hang out and kill things as a family. I imagine that will probably end up being Red Dead 2.

[Robert C]

We ran a platinum last night with a dumbass Avenger who had to be reminded to go get the objectives every time they popped up*.

*i was the Avenger.

[J.T.]

Oh, I almost forgot.  I got a Shorty in my not quite so disappointing pack this morning before rolling to work.

I think my collection of non-variant firearms is now complete.

[jstout]

1 hour ago, Robert C said:

We ran a platinum last night with a dumbass Avenger who had to be reminded to go get the objectives every time they popped up*.

*i was the Avenger.

Hell, at least you weren't napping instead of giving out shield boosts.

[Robert C]

13 minutes ago, jstout said:

Hell, at least you weren't napping instead of giving out shield boosts.

I only nap while Nova-ing.

[jstout]

Two new characters are out - both rares. There appear to be no new guns. 

[J.T.]

1 minute ago, jstout said:

Two new characters are out - both rares. There appear to be no new guns. 

Our presents for N7 Day have arrived.

One good Reserve Pack should unlock both of them.

Two more orphans for me to drag to Level 20.

[RIPPA]

Here's a video to remember when we didn't fuck things up!

Grr....

[jstout]

There's a neato Silver APEX that I had to play just to see what its deal was - it lists no modifiers (first APEX I've ever seen that has no modifiers like dampened weapons, etc.). It also gives you no extra money or XP, apparently. It's a seven-wave battle on Derelict with activities on 2, 4 and 6 like in Platinum. Also like Platinum - the mission is listed as against Kett, but it''s a greatest hits like Platinum is - some kett, some outlaw, some remnant. The Ascendants start coming out at wave 2. Wave 7 started as an insane dogpile of bad guys, but all we had to do was move. I could hear some guy over the TV cussing constantly, but I dunno what for - game was never that bad.

Apparently, the bronze APEX gives one of those "celebratory" packs upon completion, which last time was like a Premium pack, if I recall correctly. Remnant, remnant bunker, weakened assault team, no replacements in ammo boxes. I seem to remember this one being trickier than usual last time.

[J.T.]

2 minutes ago, jstout said:

There's a neato Silver APEX that I had to play just to see what its deal was - it lists no modifiers (first APEX I've ever seen that has no modifiers like dampened weapons, etc.). It also gives you no extra money or XP, apparently. It's a seven-wave battle on Derelict with activities on 2, 4 and 6 like in Platinum. Also like Platinum - the mission is listed as against Kett, but it''s a greatest hits like Platinum is - some kett, some outlaw, some remnant. The Ascendants start coming out at wave 2. Wave 7 started as an insane dogpile of bad guys, but all we had to do was move. I could hear some guy over the TV cussing constantly, but I dunno what for - game was never that bad.

I need to get this done before the Ric Flair 30 For 30 tonight.

[jstout]

Actually, the Celebratory pack is the one with one guaranteed ultra-rare, two guaranteed rares and five XP booster IVs.

The mission that wins it seems to (seems to - I wanna see what you guys think) open up a tiny new bit of the Remnant "dungeon" level. I read at one point that they were gonna make that level pickable by players - I hope that's the case, it's great.

Apparently they've tweaked some guns, at least: http://blog.bioware.com/mass-effect-andromeda-multiplayer-updates/

[RUkered]

2 hours ago, J.T. said:

I need to get this done before the Ric Flair 30 For 30 tonight.

Pretty off-topic of me, but thank you for this reminder.

[RIPPA]

Okay - I am gonna admit that I refuse to watch the N7 video because I know it will make me cry and then I am going to be angry all over again.

And this day has already sucked enough

[J.T.]

Okay those two special APEX missions were a lot of fun.  I don't think anyone on my squad was expecting Deal With The Devil to be a Platinum-lite mission.  There were lots of deaths in my match because players really underestimated the threat. I used my Level 20 Krogard XX for Deal With the Devil.  I did not mess around.

The Bronze celebration mission was challenging, but not really tough. 

I finally have enough map familiarity to know when to jump to the sniper ledges on the map in prep for Survival Wave 5 and enough match experience to know to hold position and cover down on the players working the hack in Challenge Wave 6.  I unlocked my SR Mastery Silver trophy after getting some work in with the Inferno during that match and I believe that makes me the JStout of Challenge Rating Rankings amongst DVDVR Players..

I broke out the new Human Commando this morning for the early APEX mission queue. 

I was sad because she's wearing FemShep's default N7 armor, only it has the Andromeda Initiative logo on it.  I love her power load out, though.  She has the long distance Biotic Explosion set up that I expected the Human Adepts and the Asari Adept to have.  I have her armed with the N7 Hurricane and a scoped N7 Eagle (to chip away at Pistol Mastery) and she's pretty beast.

I am intimidated by the Human Guardian so I have not played him yet.  His armor is rather... colorful... He looks like a rainbow puked on him. He is a walking acid trip.

The Brief Adventures of Biotic Sara in Campaign Mode have come to an end.  I muddled around Eos long enough to unlock Fastball and then I watched the Ric Flair 30 For 30.  I was annoyed for a bit because Vetra and Peebee kept killing the enemies I captured with Pull before I could Throw them at someone else. 

I had to send them off to attack another target so they'd quit shooting the Kett I intended to use as a projectile.

The only thing left now is to grind out levels with Scott until I unlock High Performance.  It's time for the showdown with the Archon again and I don't think I will have the levels to get Adept up to Rank 6 by the end of the game, so I will just have to wander around the galaxy clearing enemy camps until I eventually have enough XP to fill in enough bubbles.  I'm not starting another New Game+ with that guy.

[RIPPA]

I am not 100% on this but the way I read the achievement is that you don't have to max all the profiles to 6 at the same time.

You just can keep re-specing and the achievement will unlock.

I never did that because I too was stubborn and was trying to get it all on one character at the same time and then I hated the game so I stopped playing so I am not 100% certain that it will work.

But if it gets you the achievement it will save you A LOT of time