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 Lynata wrote:

+1

I think you are both goading each other and escalating the situation. I know it's easy to fall into this trap, but ... just try to shift down a gear.

Yes, I admit I made a sarcastic response to her sarcastic one liner and it all escalated from there. So I already have "shifted down a gear" and decided to stop responding to Melissia. So lets not bring it up again and just agree to disagree?

Ah, such a lovely picture that is.

Lynata wrote:

Warpig1815 wrote:Back on-topic - I'm kind of avoiding Mass Effect DLC as there's that much it all ramps up in price.

You don't need all of them. But at least get Lair of the Shadow Broker and the Citadel DLC, asap!

Will do, I'm needing an excuse to start up another game I've always got the best of intentions of starting as a different class, using different powers and different guns, but inevitable it always ends up; Soldier, Ammunition modifiers, Mattock. I can't help it, it's just too damn badass literally walking through a Cerberus assault, absorbing all their fire and popping Centurion's heads off left right and centre.

Lynata wrote:

Warpig1815 wrote:Seeing as it hasn't come up already - what's everyone's favourite weapon of the series?

Depends on what role I play. As Shep in the campaign, and as Asari Adept in multiplayer, I stuck to the classy M-8 Avenger assault rifle.
When playing the Human Sniper, though, which I did a lot, I almost always pick the N7 Valiant, only rarely switching it for the Black Widow. It may not pack quite the same punch, but the higher rate of fire lets you take off targets ridiculously fast if you're good with headshots.
Lastly, for a pistol sidearm, I swear by the M-77 Paladin, of which I also have a replica in my room. This gun is just sexy.

Honourable mention goes towards the Phaeston. Originally only picking it because I wanted my multiplayer Turian Soldier to have a "proper" turian gun, I quickly grew to appreciate its extreme rate of fire and accuracy. It has low damage, but it shoots so fast that this little baby almost feels like a Reaper beam.

Ooh, just reminded me - what was that human sniper rifle based on a Turian assault rifle, name escapes me, but it was white and blue in the default version. Now that gun, that was awesome. It didn't pack the same punch as the Mattock or M-99, but with upgraded rate of fire and magazine capacity, it made one hell of a battle rifle - far surpassed the Vindicator in that role.

Lynata wrote:

Warpig1815 wrote:It may be a bad idea, but I'd like to see the next Mass Effect get a more open world Skyrim-esque (The link being that Bethseda makes both Fallout and Skyrim) feel to it. I'd keep the planet exploring and the fast, action based linear main missions, but I'd kind of like them to re-work it so that there's a larger open world with loads of side-quests. The only trouble I see with this is that in doing so, it would possibly mean that they can't put as much detail in and it would lose some of it's charm.

It would lose much of its pacing, and the experience would not be nearly as cinematic.

Still, I think I'd enjoy this, too. It'd be a completely different kind of game, but that does not mean it would have to be worse...

Yeah, that's what I half suspected. It's a pity, simply because I often feel Mass Effect undersells it's huge potential for lore, in exactly the opposite way that Skyrim capitalises on it. :(

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Lynata wrote:

+1

I think you are both goading each other and escalating the situation. I know it's easy to fall into this trap, but ... just try to shift down a gear.

Yes, I admit I made a sarcastic response to her sarcastic one liner and it all escalated from there. So I already have "shifted down a gear" and decided to stop responding to Melissia. So lets not bring it up again and just agree to disagree?

Glad to hear it. It may be best if we all move past the Indoctrination theory - it's always been highly contentious. I don't know if the OP's still about, but is it ok to talk about what we'd like to see in ME4?

I think I'd like to see a few more NPC's knocking about the battlefields. I know Shepard's team was usually did more Special forces, flanking-actions type of stuff, but with next-gen consoles having higher performance thresholds, they could really go all out and have some spectacular sized battles. It's for this reason that I really liked ME3 - It really did have that feel that the whole galaxy was at war by including NPC's fighting alongside you (Conversely, something that Skyrim, for all it's grand scale, completely failed at ), especially in the Priority: Thessia and Priority: Earth missions.

@Warpig.

Do you mean the Indra? A full auto sniper rifle that functions as an Assault Rifle.

In ME2 I think it might be called the Viper? Not 100% though

 Warpig1815 wrote:
I've always got the best of intentions of starting as a different class, using different powers and different guns, but inevitable it always ends up; Soldier, Ammunition modifiers, Mattock. I can't help it, it's just too damn badass literally walking through a Cerberus assault, absorbing all their fire and popping Centurion's heads off left right and centre.

I do that with my Sentinel, as a sort of medium tank.

Shields and HP ~ 1100.
Tech Armour focused on boosting shields.
Phaeston Assault Rifle upgraded for ammo capacity and stability.
Warp & Throw for Biotic combo's (will be replacing Throw with Flare as Flare has a freaking HUGE and powerful explosion).


The combination of Tech Armour and Shields lets me wade through enemy fire, blasting away with my Phaeston machinegun and occassionaly chaining Warp & Double Throw with Liara's singularity for massive biotic explosions.

I'm like a Jedi Terminator with an M60 machinegun and the power of the force.

I think I'd like to see a few more NPC's knocking about the battlefields. .... It's for this reason that I really liked ME3 - It really did have that feel that the whole galaxy was at war by including NPC's fighting alongside you (Conversely, something that Skyrim, for all it's grand scale, completely failed at ), especially in the Priority: Thessia and Priority: Earth missions.

The Civil War storyline was fun when you got to attack or defend Whiterun, and when you assaulted Solitude or Windhelm because of the high NPC count, though the corpses did fade away quickly. More of these battles were needed out in the wider world. A random encounter of Imperial and Stormcloak patrols clashing in the wilderness would have been awesome. Nothing particularly huge, but some large fights of 10 NPC's a side would have helped to give the feeling of a wider war being waged throughout the country. Also, the two sides were at a stalemate anyway by the time the Dragonborn joined the war, so more massive battles akin to Whiterun, Windhelm and Solitude aren't necessary - just a few minor skirmishes triggered randomnly in the wilderness.

It's the M-13 "Raptor".

Incidentally the gun, itemwise, was originally an assault rifle. It was not until Cerberus was finalized as "the Bad Guys" for ME3 that the developers realized that having the Nemesis using the M-98 Widow(which was originally what the Nemesis was armed with visually--and still is actually what they are armed with according to the damage they deal and the fact that sometimes you will have them shoot at you through cover since the M-98 Widow has innate piercing) resulted in a severe lack of actual Cerberus weaponry.

So the M-13 Raptor gets reclassed as a Sniper Rifle and gets some fluff about having been a Cerberus design based off a Turian zero gravity assault rifle that was semiautomatic to prevent issues with fighting in zero gravity. And voila, the Nemesis gets their own special Cerberus sniper rifle!

@Kanluwen - That rings a bell. Fluff idiosyncracies aside though, it was still a pretty epic battle rifle. I didn't find it as useful as a Black Widow in the sniper role, simply because it lacks stopping power in that role, but I found it very useful as a mid-range general purpose rifle.

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

Warpig wrote:I think I'd like to see a few more NPC's knocking about the battlefields. .... It's for this reason that I really liked ME3 - It really did have that feel that the whole galaxy was at war by including NPC's fighting alongside you (Conversely, something that Skyrim, for all it's grand scale, completely failed at ), especially in the Priority: Thessia and Priority: Earth missions.

The Civil War storyline was fun when you got to attack or defend Whiterun, and when you assaulted Solitude or Windhelm because of the high NPC count, though the corpses did fade away quickly. More of these battles were needed out in the wider world. A random encounter of Imperial and Stormcloak patrols clashing in the wilderness would have been awesome. Nothing particularly huge, but some large fights of 10 NPC's a side would have helped to give the feeling of a wider war being waged throughout the country. Also, the two sides were at a stalemate anyway by the time the Dragonborn joined the war, so more massive battles akin to Whiterun, Windhelm and Solitude aren't necessary - just a few minor skirmishes triggered randomnly in the wilderness.

Yeah, Skyrim wasn't great for that. The closest I ever got to that was when two of the 3-man patrols clash, but it's just not the same. Mass Effecy on the other hand, would be ripe for NPC's in large scale battles - but you hardly seem to find any! Even those that you do find, such as the Thessian Commando's in Priority: Thessia are only present for a short introductory interlude before the mission proper takes over and it's just you and your two chosen squadmates. Hell, even if the NPC's weren't special characters, but just the other members of your team who you hadn't picked going about their own tasks - ala ME2's Suicide mission - it'd be a touch better. All this said though, none of these points mean the Mass Effect games are bad, just limited in hindsight.

EDIT: On a completely off-topic note - Why didn't the Thalmor play a larger role in Skyrim? For the instigators of the whole mess, you'd have thought that you'd see quite a few more of them going about enforcing the Aldmeri Dominion's will...

I think Bioware are actually aware of that, Warpig. In the ME3 'Citadel' DLC, on one of the missions everyone comes along, splitting into 3 'fire teams' and starts doing assorted tasks. It's pretty neat and is something I'd like to see more often.

It actually reminded me a bit of the Stargate SG-1 episodes, where, although you're following SG-1, you see another couple of the backup SG teams helping out.

I grew up with Stargate, from the age of 12. It was my Star Trek.

It would certainly be a change of pace from the small-scale actions type gameplay that we're used to. Not that spec-op's stuff is bad of course. I appreciate Shepard and his team were elite, and had to do stuff others couldn't, but even Special forces in our world are known to work alongside the regular forces, acting as a vanguard to crack open a breach and then move on, letting others exploit it. Overall though, I'd be happy with ME4 simply being a new story arc, with minimal changes of gameplay. I can't really fault ME3 in terms of game mechanics too much, as it was very well polished.

It was a long read but I did indeed find a few things I did not know.