Mass Effect Series Catch-All

You have that turned backwards. ME1 is more punishing if you don't use the cover mechanics for the simple reason that they didn't design the game to have no-cover gameplay. ME2 and ME3 both feature no-cover mechanics intentionally deployed to allow that sort of gameplay. Both Sentinel and Vanguard are classes that are designed to allow you to get into the thick of the fight and ignore cover altogether. There is Immunity (Soldier and Infiltrator power) in ME1 that allows you to basically ignore fire completely, but that's because that power is broken to hell and back.

I just tested the walk forward mechanics in the Armax Arsenal Arena in ME3. You don't stick to the cover unless you hit spacebar. You can walk right up against the side of a wall and sidle around it and not stick to it. You need to press spacebar for that.

I just tested it again in the Derelict Reaper in ME2. Same thing. You don't stick to cover automatically. You have to press the action button or spacebar.

Yeah, I can see that. Even the way the the targets moved ("ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE!") made using cover less essential in ME1. Sometimes being in cover in ME1 just felt like "here, come kill me everybody!" or "this is just for waiting for your shield to reset." It did feel like you had to break out of cover in ME1 to get a good angle on enemies while 2 and 3 were more like Gears.

That's completely weird. ME1 was the game that made you invincible in cover AND the enemies all came from a single direction so all you had to do was sit in cover and shoot. Plus, all the enemies in ME1 did not have directional properties, so it was pointless to flank. I just replayed the final missions in ME1, so that's where that's coming from. Sit and cover and shoot. You can even use it against Saren.

In ME2, aggressive enemies like Husks forced you to move or break out of cover to get a good bead on them, otherwise your position would be compromised ME3's level design is circular loops rather than corridors, so enemies can flank you (and their script often makes them do it), and enemies like Shield-carrying Cerberus troops were a lot more vulnerable from the side or back, rewarding flank tactics.

In ME3, cover was destructible and you weren't invincible in cover, so a fair bit of moving around was good. In addition, you could benefit from both soft cover and hard cover in ME3, to compensate for the decreased efficacy of hard cover, so you're incentivized to move to a good spot even when you're in hard cover. ME1's architecture made this less important.

I never took cover in ME1 unless it was to recharge shields or recover health. Shotgun Vanguard Shepard stops for no enemy. Do you know how many enemies you can 1-shot or spam shot outside of cover with practically no ill effects? Pretty much any enemy besides special NPCs like Benezia's super commandos.

The cover mechanics in ME1 aren't cover shooter mechanics in the same way I think of them. Or at least they don't sh*t on the experience in the same way they do in ME2 and 3.

I suppose it depends on the difficulty setting? ME1 upper diff setting guys whittled your shields to nothing in a split second and the Vanguard doesn't have Immunity. Many of those guys also have Immunity themselves, so you're not one-shotting those guys at any rate. One of the most common complaints about ME1 was that the enemies were boring sloggy bullet sponges, so I can't see where you're one-shotting dudes unless you got the difficulty turned way down. And with a Shotgun of all weapons.

If you're going to turn down the diff level, then ME2 and ME3 are cakewalks, totally. No need for cover, either, especially with a tank Sentinel or a Vanguard. Just smash everything. I've seen a Vanguard do the initial combat encounter on Haestrom before the dialogue cut in ME2 in less than two minutes. On Insanity. Both ME2 and ME3 are designed specifically to allow you to ignore the cover mechanics if you want to.

LarryC wrote:

As an Adept, you have, like, a pistol and a submachine gun, neither of which were particularly effective by themselves. You have to use the power system unless you enjoy slogging through buckets of HP that you can't handle because your guns are (intentionally) wimpy.

Not sure we played the same games. Some of the pistols in 2 and 3 were way OP and some of the best SMGs were better than like 80% of the Assault Rifles.

The best Assault Rifles were better than 100% of the assault rifles and all of the submachine guns. In fact, the Mattock (IIRC) rifle in ME2 was so strong that it basically invalidated everything except very long range one-shot sniper rifles.

Be specific so we can talk. Which pistols did you use? It is possible that I did not have access to them and declined to chase them because of their unbalancing nature. Example: I still don't have Kasumi because the Locust is way too powerful for a submachine gun. It renders choice obsolete. Tempest vs. Shuriken is a more even comparison and a better balanced game.

FWIW, I tested all the guns I had access to in the Armax Arsenal Arena, including all the pistols. Many of the pistols were passable weapons, but I can't say any of them were OP. Care to specify?

I never really took cover much in ME1 (as far as I remember) and did feel forced into cover in ME2 with the classes I played. Survivability outside cover felt much lower in ME2 and I played through both games on every difficulty setting except easy. It's a personal preference thing in the end. On paper ME2 may well be the better game but I preferred ME1 for whatever reason. I did like the sense of exploration in ME1. At the time I feel they were on a shoe string budget now, with more money behind them, visits to unknown worlds where you tour around and find stuff to do could be ten times better. Here's hoping they have the best of both games.

I don't play with high difficulty. Long combat sections are not my interest with these games. I want it to go as fast as possible because it's the weakest thing in these games and not what I'm there for at all.

LarryC wrote:

I've played longer door unlock minigames in ME1.

Heh, that reminds me:

I finished every game of ME1 with sooo much omnigel...did we get experience from unlocking? If not, why did I insist on never using omnigel?

NSMike wrote:

I don't play with high difficulty. Long combat sections are not my interest with these games. I want it to go as fast as possible because it's the weakest thing in these games and not what I'm there for at all.

Higher difficulty doesn't necessarily mean much longer sections. In fact, the only reason I played with Hard Core in ME2 is because that's the only way many of the powers made any sense at all. It was completely pointless to combo something into a Warp Explosion when a single Heavy Warp one shots so many things (literally), which makes Unstable Warp's combo-only advantage completely pointless.

I remember running virtually through an entire section of Miranda's loyalty mish because I was obliterating entire groups of enemies as soon as I saw them. I don't mean that figuratively. As in, I'd make contact with the enemy, strip their defenses instantly with an Area Overload, set up a wide area explosion with a Pull, and then detonate with Unstable Warp. Click, click, click. Encounter over. Back to running.

On anything lower than Hardcore, I won't even need Area Overload. Spending literally 5 seconds to deal with an encounter is so fast it barely counts as a game. I've played longer door unlock minigames in ME1.

EDIT:

People unaware of squad tactics may assume I'm using powers all from Shepard, so a cooldown is involved. No cooldown is involved in this sequence because I'm using two Squaddie powers and Shepard's Unstable Warp. They are on independent cooldown timers. So you pause running just long enough to instantaneously queue two powers, and wait for the Warp animation to arrive. Then you resume your running. You won't be taking fire because the instant Overload staggers the enemies long enough that they don't fire or act until Pull-Warp kills them all.

LarryC wrote:

The best Assault Rifles were better than 100% of the assault rifles and all of the submachine guns. In fact, the Mattock (IIRC) rifle in ME2 was so strong that it basically invalidated everything except very long range one-shot sniper rifles.

The Mattock was DLC so a lot of people won't have it, and its ammo capacity was also rather poor which does matter on the higher difficulties. I find that I use all the weapon types in ME2. Regarding the SMGs, the damage bonus they get to shields makes them very useful on a lot of missions and I think the chance to overload weapons you get from distupor ammo is %-based, so it procs way more often with high rate of fire weapons like the Tempest.

I don't think you can truly realize how bad the Tempest is as a main weapon until you actually try using it as one (and not use non-weapon powers). It's kind of survivable, but unnecessarily sloggy. If you're a power-using class, you're best advised to use them, not engage in the cover-based shooting.

I have such fond memories of the Mattock. I used that through the entire game, and then in multiplayer when I got it. Best assault rifle in the game, even though it was one click one shot.

I have such fond memories of the Mattock. I used that through the entire game, and then in multiplayer when I got it. Best assault rifle in the game, even though it was one click one shot.

I think people should play the game the way they enjoy it, whether that be shooting a submachine gun, firing off powers, or spraying and praying with a Revenant.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
LarryC wrote:

I've played longer door unlock minigames in ME1.

Heh, that reminds me:

I finished every game of ME1 with sooo much omnigel...did we get experience from unlocking? If not, why did I insist on never using omnigel?

The banter in that DLC was worth the price of admission.

BadKen wrote:

I think people should play the game the way they enjoy it, whether that be shooting a submachine gun, firing off powers, or spraying and praying with a Revenant.

That's right. That's exactly my point. NSMike points out that he doesn't like ME2 or ME3 because it forces him to play the cover shooting game. I'm pointing out that he should play it the way he enjoys it. If he doesn't like cover shooting, he doesn't have to do it that way.

Once again, Insanity, against two of the toughest foes in the game. The Vanguard player faces both head on, in close quarters, with tactics very reminiscent of fighting games. Sidestep, hit, sidestep hit. This is on Insanity. On Normal, this fight would go a whole lot faster.

LarryC wrote:

a bunch of combat stuff

This is all way deeper than I cared to go into the combat. I don't know what 80% of that means.

Simpler explanation: unlike in other games, mastering the combat systems in ME2 and 3 makes it go incredibly fast. Like, seconds fast. The combat is over in 10 seconds on Normal. Even on the higher settings, it doesn't go that much slower. Insanity demands that you know the systems well, but the faster runthroughs on Insanity are actually faster than the cover-based shooting runthroughs on lower settings by people who don't know what they're doing. It demands mastery, not time.

This means that you actually don't need to use cover mechanics - which is why you don't stick to cover in ME2 and ME3 unless you press the button that says, "I want to go into cover." Granted, that's the same button that you use for running and dodging, but you don't need to use those either, anyway. If you just don't want to stick, never touch that button.

LarryC wrote:

I don't think you can truly realize how bad the Tempest is as a main weapon until you actually try using it as one (and not use non-weapon powers). It's kind of survivable, but unnecessarily sloggy. If you're a power-using class, you're best advised to use them, not engage in the cover-based shooting.

If you're say an Adept on Haestrom you don't have Overload yourself, you could pick Energy Drain (I never do), so you have one or two to go around depending on who you pick. I like to go with Zaeed for the aforementioned Disruptor Ammo, which leaves me with one Overload. That's not enough to work with when every enemy has shields that I need to remove before my biotics have any kind of use. Tempest is better than spamming Heavy Warp or whatever (like I said, I just use it specifically against shields). I also don't agree with your last sentence, because in ME2 the cooldowns are long enough that you have nothing better to do than shoot while you wait them out. ME3 is another story.

I think the problem is that you're positing five very specific things:

1. You're a power-using class that only has access to pistols and SMGs.
2. You intentionally picked a squaddie to boost your anti-synthetic ammo.
3. You're on a synthetic-heavy mission.
4. You picked a squaddie that doesn't have anti-shield activated powers.
5. You intentionally didn't pick any anti-shield or anti-synthetic powers on your Shepard.

Yes. With all of those things true, the Tempest is a great choice!

@LarryC

In ME2 the Phalanx and Carnifex Heavy Pistols were two of the highest powered weapons in the game other than Sniper Rifles. They have a higher base damage than any of the Assault Rifles including the Mattock. I think that both the Locust and Tempest were pretty good fully upgraded in ME2 but yea the Assault Rifles were mostly better but you could make due with an SMG if needed. If I was playing a class without Assault Rifles I would always take the Assault Rifle on the Collector Ship, but up to that part it wasn't too bad using the SMGs and Heavy Pistols.

Eh. I've used both Phalanx and Carnifex. Good at short to medium ranges. Excellent against armor. But not OP. Definitely not OP. Worse against anything shielded than the SMGs, which is saying something. They're a specialty weapon that's good for armor, and passable against other things. Even close combat infiltrators chose Shotguns on the Collector Ship, and didn't stick with the Carnifex only.

The Carnifex in ME3 is more like a light sniper rifle. For close combat, the Talon is preferable because of the Shield Gate issue. And I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Acolyte yet. Either way though, the one thing that bugs me about ME3 is that the "stick to cover" key is the same as the "run" key, and the only way to split them apart is by hacking the game. This is almost as annoying as the Assassin's Creed problem where run and climb are bound to the same button. You absolutely don't have to play Mass Effect as a cover shooter (and in higher difficulties it's more difficult to do so than not), but the game does kind of encourage you that direction anyway.

complexmath wrote:

The Carnifex in ME3 is more like a light sniper rifle. For close combat, the Talon is preferable because of the Shield Gate issue. And I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Acolyte yet. Either way though, the one thing that bugs me about ME3 is that the "stick to cover" key is the same as the "run" key, and the only way to split them apart is by hacking the game. This is almost as annoying as the Assassin's Creed problem where run and climb are bound to the same button. You absolutely don't have to play Mass Effect as a cover shooter (and in higher difficulties it's more difficult to do so than not), but the game does kind of encourage you that direction anyway.

The Acolyte is one of my go to guns in ME3. I have run tons of MP using nothing but it to drop shields on power heavy classes. Also great as a companion in single player with a nice armor piercing assault rifle as your other weapon. You can even use it with a Vanguard to prime enemies for explosions when you charge into them with a few of the special ammo types.

Thanks to discovering that these controller mods exist and purchasing a Steam Link, I'm playing through the series again for the first time since ME3 came out. This is something like my 10th time playing through ME1, but will be just my 3rd of ME2 and 2nd of ME3 (and first with the DLC).

At this point I'm far enough along in ME1 to already hate that I'm forced to work for/with Cerberus in ME2. Since I've never played renegade in ME2 or ME3, I'm going that route this time. Or I'm mostly doing so. Some of the renegade choices in ME1 are so pointlessly mean that I just can't make them. There's no reason to kill all the colonists on Feros, for example, so I'm still ending up with a decent number of paragon points.

Given the number of times I've played it, the first game no longer holds any surprises for me, but that's not the case for the next two games. I remember very little about ME2 and basically nothing about ME3, so that should be fun.

billt721 wrote:

Thanks to discovering that these controller mods exist and purchasing a Steam Link, I'm playing through the series again for the first time since ME3 came out. This is something like my 10th time playing through ME1, but will be just my 3rd of ME2 and 2nd of ME3 (and first with the DLC).

I was actually thinking of doing this myself pretty soon. I was originally holding out in case a proper remastered version of the trilogy came out (those cutscenes were rather compressed even for their time), but I feel like if that was happening, EA would have announced it by now so it would be released before the new game came out.

I'm almost a complete newcomer to the series. I've just installed Mass Effect 1 and after some troubleshooting (Really Steam? I can't run Mass Effect without some tweaking?) I've created my character: Jane Shepard. Spacer. Ruthless. Engineer.

You're going to meet two characters early on, Wrex and Garrus. You need to bring them on all of your missions.

But to you need to romance Liara (but she doesn't become super awesome until 2).

This is just a personal preference, and there is no "right" way to play a RPG, but when I'm playing a Role-Playing game I like to Role Play my character. So even if it seems like what my character would do, I'll do it, even if it's not the best action for the game itself.

That is an excellent way to play Mass Effect. Resist the urge to min-max story decisions, and play it more like a Telltale game with slightly-more-competent-than-Telltale shooter segments.