Bjorn

A gun that showed up all over trailers and marketing, and even appears in cut scenes in the game.....doesn't exist as a weapon you can actually find and use.

Oh, I'm punching/headbutting my way through Golds right now It's by far my most consistent damage source at that level. The guns so far are mostly for applying ammo effects and shooting when we have to hold a hack zone or whatnot. I've got a few weapons now that will clearly be Gold worthy once they're leveled up, have better damage mods and are on characters with weapon focused passives. And between Rage on the Kroguard and the Melee Shield Regen on the Novaguard, melee is also what's keeping me alive. I got the Ishara (sp?), a strong single shot SR last night, and decided that was good enough to take my level 10 infiltrator to Gold We got through it, and I held my own, but it was a rough, rough match. It would also help if I could aim for headshots worth crap. Might be better to wait until level 12-15, but I was being impatient.

Yeah, just glanced at those, and some of them are super pretty. I've actually got in quite a bit of good playtime in MP between Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Regularly doing Golds now, and mixing in some Silvers leveling up classes that aren't ready for Gold yet. All common kits and weapons are at X, still have about 20 common mod cards left to drop. Have got a few Rare AND UR weapons to drop, which is nice, because I was getting a little tired of putting the Hurricane on everything. The Vanquisher SR is by far the best SR I've got. It feels like the Black Widow from ME3, and is honestly one of the few guns that just feels "right" in terms of its damage. I also got a couple of new weapons whose names escape me, an SMG that's very similar to the Geth SMG and a Krogan Shotgun, both of which tentatively feel pretty good. The Krogan shotty has a really slow reload though. I super miss reload canceling. There are some real bad guns in MP though. Like, wow, holy shit bad. Canceling the public beta was a very poor idea, because damage on guns is just all over the map. And not every gun needs to be equal, but generally one would expect all Rare guns to be able to perform at least comparably on Silver, and that's not the case. I got an AR called the Sweeper, and had to resort to just punching things to death for the whole match, because it worked so poorly. It's the second weapon I've got now that doesn't require a reload (has an overheating mechanic), and both are very bad weapons. I think the greatly overestimated the value of not having to reload when trying to balance them. Overall, I think making the jump to Gold is easier in Andromeda than it was in ME3. Some of that is probably experience, but I think the movement speed, jumping, and the new fitness trees that include some shield regen all help. Even when I shifted to playing ME3 on the PC after starting on the 360, I had to build up my manifest with some decent guns before I could regularly do Gold.

I can't endorse enough my favorite little productivity tool, Clipboard History. It just stores the last X things you copied, and lets you permanently save a list of text entries to paste at the press of a key. It default binds to Caps Lock, which takes a convenient key I never use and makes it one of the most valuable keys on my keyboard. I keep all my stock customer service and troubleshooting answers saved in it, which cuts hours out of my week replying to customers.

I'm feeling pretty much the same way on MP vs SP right now. I did start, and made it to the Hub area, but I might just park there until the first big patch hits, particularly with people talking about quests breaking. I've been pretty happy with the Priming evolution on Nova. It changes your flow some, where you're wanting to get in, Nova, then Charge, but it definitely gives those kits some more firepower. I'll end up speccing one of my Humans into the other evolution to see what I think of burning shields to Nova. But right now I think it would be a hard sell to take that on Gold, but probably runs fine on Bronze/Silver. I think the shield use evolution goes better on the Humans in general though, with their Fitness tree having two options to recharge shields.

The Kroguard is definitely an excellent baby's first Silver/Gold kit with all the DR it has. I got him up to level 16 tonight and took on my first two Golds, and extracted on both. To be fair, there were players with better weapons and higher level than me in both, but I was able to contribute and only went down a handful of times. On the second match, three of us carried a Level 1 guy who only had a few Apex points (so was really super duper new) to extraction. So many of my other characters are still just levels 1-4 because I've put far more matches into the Kroguard and a Human Novaguard. But being able to mix in some Gold matches with him will make unlocking stuff bunches faster. One more level and I'll be able to get the final evolution in Fitness, and activate Rage on 2 kills instead of 3. I know this complaint existed early in ME3 as well, but it does bum me out a bit that it feels like quite a few characters share 2 powers. One of the Turian soldiers is almost identical to both Human Soliders. The Asari Sentinel shares Energy Drain/Throw with the Human Sentinels. The few new powers don't feel like they make up for all the cut powers in allowing for more diversity in the kits. Adrenaline Rush, Reave, the Asari Bubble, Lift Grenades, Cluster 'Nades and Incendiary Grenades all feel like they should be in here. And a few of them may make a return with DLC (the hopefully hinted at return of Drell and Quarians). But for weapon boosting powers, ME3 had both AR and Marksman, which both favored different weapons and playstyles. MEA just has Turbocharge which tries to work with everything. It lacks the defensive boosts that AR gave, which is what made the Human Soldier really stand out. Although I do look the looks of how they changed Concussive Shot, it's got some interesting evolutions in it now.

Years ago, I heard an interview with a cross country cyclist asking where was the worst place he'd ever rode. He said, "Kansas, I don't know if you've ever been to Kansas. It's lonely there, it's awful. Scenery gets really monotonous. You don't have any sightseeing...nothing."

Yeah, it's sad how often this happens. But still, it's not the kind of thing I thought would happen to me or my family. It's like, a thing you read about, or hear about, or see a Lifetime Original Movie™ about.

Thanks for the kind thoughts and words everyone! As stressful as this has all been, I think there's real silver linings in it as well. I think, as near as I can tell, I got this nipped in the bud before anything really bad happened (although it was very close, this got to the point that one of the people "helping" mom actually picked her up and drove her to her lawyer's office to try and change mom's power of attorney, thankfully that didn't happen). Mom was diagnosed with dementia last fall, and there's some memory loss, but her doctor and I both think she's still able to live at home with her dog for now, which is where she wants to be. But spending most of a week with her gave me a much better feel for how she's doing and what she needs. She had become isolated from her old friends, which can be common in early dementia because people don't want to let their friends/family see how they're doing. So I got two of her good friends over visiting her. Have her setup to be picked up to go to the senior center for lunches. Got her an emergency beeper ordered so she can wear it in case of another fall. Got her on a wait list for a nurse to visit once a week and help her organize her meds (unfortunately small towns are desperate for medical professionals, and the health department is short staffed, so they couldn't start right away). Switched her lawn care to an old family friend who's going to check on her every week. I've had plenty of complaints about growing up in a small town, but really that saved the day. There were people I hadn't spoken with for 10-20 years that I visited, explained what was going on, and all they wanted to know was how they could help. Mom and Dad have barely spoken for the last two decades, and even he wanted to help. He was very sweet, he bought her lunch the first day I took her up to the senior center to eat. An old buddy of mine who still lives back there was really awesome. He was calling and texting me every day to make sure I was doing okay. Having that kind of support and backup is the only reason I got through it without a total breakdown.

I know a lot of y'all are younger than me, so you may be a decade or two away from this. But when the time comes that you have to worry about older parents/family, if you start having concerns about the people around them, don't ignore your instincts. I did, and my last 6 days have included multiple conversations with the police, having the police to the house twice, multiple conversations with Adult Protective Services, visits with a social worker, doctors, nurses and several trips to my family's lawyer. It was without a doubt the single most stressful set of days I've ever dealt with. I'd love to tell the whole story, but even semi-anonymously on here I probably shouldn't given that there is currently an open investigation. The sad thing is that even if I had tried to act sooner, I'm not sure I could have got anything done, because it took a moment of crisis to get outside people involved.

I haven't been able to play since last Wednesday night and this thread just makes me want to be able to play.

The Hurricane, but it's much harder to level, so a maxxed Hornet might outdo a low level Hurricane. It's not my fault their a bunch of rejects! (it is my fault, I sent them on all their missions). At this point I'm deeply amused at the little narrative that I'm telling myself about my suicide squad. They picked up a 4th negative, they are now Cowards with a Hero Complex who get hysterical at the sight of two of the three enemy factions. Theyre a bad video game sidekick! I just sent them back out on a Gold with a 10 percent chance. At this point I'm rooting for the fuckups to keep accumulating negatives.

Follow up on Strike Teams, I now have what I'm calling my N7 Team, who are badass and have 4 positive traits, no negatives. And then I have my suicide squad, who are some inept fuckers. They have 3 positive traits and 3 negative traits. I'm just going to keep throwing my suicide squad at golds and see what kind of a disaster they can be. FWIW, it doesn't seem like buying equipment for Strike Teams is a good payoff. From what people can tell right now, equipment can't be moved between teams. It's a one-off purchase that's stuck on that team, and if you want to buy something else for the same team, the first equipment you bought is lost. Given the cost of the good gear, it's literally in the 100s of matches in order for it to pay for itself, let alone turn a profit. The missions where it makes a difference might help you keep a negative trait or two off a team, but even figuring that in, it's just a very long payoff. I'd suspect just disbanding teams in and recruiting a new one as they build up too many negatives is the more cost effective approach. Edited to add: OH! I also got a Krogan Hammer from one of the SP reward packs for doing strike missions. I haven't even left the Nexus yet, and I already have the one weapon I was most excited about! So don't forget to open those packs. The credit rewards seem pretty terrible. But everything else seemed like it was useful, particularly if you don't want to have to scan a bunch.

To be pedantic, you could always Charge > Nova, because in 3 Nova is a shield draining power, not a cooldown power. The shield drain is now an evolution on Nova. But the overall point absolutely stands, power classes can execute combo explosions much faster and more reliably now. It also means there are reasons to spec into all 3 powers now. In 3, a lot of builds would skip one power because the global cooldown meant you were probably only using two powers anyways. And with the Novaguard specifically, Nova also has an evolution that can prime for explosions now, which very few, if any, Vanguards could self prime without ammo in 3. Now you can Nova, Shockwave for an explosion and then Charge away to the next group. Also Gorbles, make sure to take a look at the Fitness tree of the kits, there are some really different evolutions compared to 3. Two of the Novaguards shield recharging evolutions are in Fitness. The 6th evolution that autorefills shields at low health was a lifesaver when I took it to Silver. Blowing through all my credits before I quit last night I got the Asari Huntress, the kit with the group cloak ability, which I'm super intrigued by. So far the single biggest break point in any match I regularly see is the Devices objective round. Without a good team watching someone's back, that objective can just fall apart fast. The group cloak seems like it would make it much easier.

Haha, I always figured there were people who liked it. There's some repetitive stuff in games I like, the planets just never did it for me. On the general quality of faces and facial animations, they aren't great, but they don't really bother me except for one thing. And that's the eyes. The eyes move around a lot, and quite often end up not looking at the person speaking, and it's the weirdest most distracting thing. Between having a couple of Vanguards above 10 now and the Hurricane, I can consistently do Silvers, which is really speeding up getting all the common/uncommon stuff unlocked and upgraded. Since Character cards now unlock additional skill points, I've decided to leave all my level 1 Commons untouched until I can get more of the character cards and start off with 15+ points in them. The Human Novaguard seems really godly, like crazy so. With three different ways to recharge shields, she can just tank the hell out of almost anything on Bronze/Silver.

Haha, I still haven't got to the planet exploration stuff, I'm moving slow through SP. I got to the Nexus this evening, and then switched over to MP because I had a stressful day and wanted to murder things, not talky talk. I got my first UR, saved up for a Premium Pack and a Hurricane dropped It's much more satisfying than the Charger. Some of the APEX missions are tough with characters that are still just in their teens. Tried a Silver tonight with the modifier of +100 percent shields, -75 percent health. It meant that once your shields broke, you were toast. So many chain revives, didn't even make it through Wave 3.

I've got the Krogan Engineer, he's basically a Krogan version of the Human Engineer from ME3. I've only played a round, but I liked what I saw. As for Vanguards, Charge will recharge their shields half full, or all the way full with an evolution. A key to vanguarding is to have low enough cool down to be able to take just enough of a beating until you need to charge again. With Nova (on the Human and Krogan guards), you get another power that lets you stagger enemies in a group around you, buying you more time to wait until Charge is ready. Humans gets an evolution in their fitness tree that lets them recharge shields with melee attacks, and recharge shields when low on health. Krogans get Rage, giving them more damage resistance when headbutting things to death. Basically it's all about stacking various ways of regenning shields, cooldowns, damage resistance and screaming YEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAW a lot. Vanguarding is my favorite MP class The Drellguard in ME3 was one of the hardest but most rewarding classes to play. All the squishiness of a Drell, but a powerhouse from hell thanks to 'nades and the best passive damage tree in the game.

I started up single player briefly last night, played til you land on the first planet. And I'm definitely seeing what people mean with the criticisms. Just the opening few sections are very...inconsistent in terms of quality of voice acting, animations, performance. I was particularly surprised at how poorly the Character Creation tool ran. I fucking had it lag up on me multiple times. I've never been a Breckon type player of skipping past stuff in games, I've always wanted to see and hear all the story/lore stuff. But I found myself wanting to skip past stuff last night and just get to something actually happening. Which...probably not a good sign for a Bioware game? On MP, I have successfully completed a single Silver mission now! Wooo! I'm pretty sure that's a couple of weeks faster than I was able to do a Silver in ME3MP. I would say for anyone looking to try and get into some silvers, both the Human Vanguard and Kroguard (if you have him) are probably easiest kits to make the jump at around level 10ish. Between Charge, Nova and Melee, they can compensate for their underpowered guns. Oh, and I bought the Juggernaught thingie from the Gear store, it's a 10 percent shield bonus and 75 percent melee bonus. Doesn't appear to have any levels, just a one off purchase. The ammo one is apparently a 75 percent increase to reserve ammo. So gear looks like it's going to be really valuable for some builds, not just a nice bonus. I also discovered that your AI Strike Teams can get negative traits for failing missions. I know have an AI person who is afraid of Outlaws and gets a penalty for going on Outlaw missions. I had just been throwing both my teams at every mission, but I may back off sending them on Golds for awhile, it could be really bad to pick up a second negative trait on one.

There's a pretty straightforward way to handle that if you want a tip, it's the way that speedrunners handle it as far as I know (it's what was the recommended way when I did my sub-4 hour run). It's in the spoiler.

The companion app (Android/ios) launched worldwide this afternoon. It's called Apex HQ The most useful thing about it is being able send out your Strike Teams (AI teams who run missions for you) without having to go into the game. There seem to be about 8-9 missions a day, 3 of which you can run yourself as an MP match if you want, and the rest are AI only. You get SP resources for them, but then you also get "Mission Funds" which are quite necessary for MP. Mission Funds let you buy Gear (persistent stat boosting equipment that can be equipped, not the one off boosters that are consumables), let you buy Respec Cards for MP characters and let you buy consumables like rockets, medigel, etc. The gear is time gated, each piece of gear is only available 2-3 weeks at a time. I assume they'll be rotated in and out, so they'll be back eventually, but getting those mission funds built up now will be super useful for the early gear that is on sale. There's two pieces now. One boosts reserve ammo and the other boosts shields/melee damage.

Maxed out the time on my account in MP over the weekend. I'm very sad that the Drell didn't make it to the Helios Cluster. I miss my little space ninja lizards in MP. Really hoping that expansions bring in some of the old races, the Vorcha, Volus, Batarian and Drell were all some of my favorite MP characters (yes, even the Volus, because they were hilarious). Edited to add: Oh, and the game unlocks tonight at 11pm central, 9pm Pacific for those of you who didn't do the trial.

I'm getting on MP to burn through the rest of my time if anyone is around.

I still haven't touched SP, just going to leave that for Tuesday, but I've put a few more hours into MP (I actually activated Access on the lady's origin account as well so I would have time on Sunday to for sure play). I'm really warming up to MP, as long as it's not laggy. Now that I've got a couple of characters I like, a little more map familiarity and am more comfortable with the pace and movement, there's a lot of potential here. But, lag, lag is the devil. That increased movement and speed make lag feel even worse than in ME3MP. If you've got good internet, probably not that big of a deal, but with our shitty internet....

I spent about 2 hours in MP last night and have thoughts. Matchmaking/Lobby - Way, way, way better than ME3MP. No loading screen entering or leaving a lobby. The game is definitely faster than ME3 was. It was jarring at first, but after a couple of matches I got used to it. THE KROGAN VANGUARD HAS NOVA. KROGAN SMASH. Heavy Melee, as near as I can tell, is gone. And this blows big juicy chunks. The Krogan backhand was the most satisfying thing in ME3MP. This is just wildly mystifying to me. From all early accounts, melee was getting a great overhaul/refinement in SP, but removing Heavy Melee is pretty gutting for MP. The bit I played around, I also didn't see melee combos. Before, most characters had a light combo, now the couple I tried just did the same light attack over and over. The Omni-Button is gone. No more, "Hit A for everything". Move up against cover and you automatically take cover. Promotions seem to be gone, which is not bad. You level up each individual character to 20 (you leveled up entire classes in ME3), and then can respec either with cards that drop, or spending the new currency that you get from specifically doing Strike Team missions. Each character has a permanent experience pool which once filled gives small permanent bonuses to all characters, which I think is something similar to what DA:I did. I only glanced at the Strike Team stuff, but it seems interesting. Each MP Strike Team match has modifiers that give benefits and penalties, like you might have reduced weapon damage but increased power damage. Much like what we've seen from SP, the models are a mixed bag. Some are really good, but some of the humans just look wrong. Like, heads to big for bodies in some cases. The Supply Pack (rockets, medigel, etc) is much more reasonably priced now. I didn't buy one to see what the quantities were, but in ME3 it was 30K credits and now it's 5K. You can also buy supplies with the Strike Team currency. Out of like 7ish matches, I think only 3 of them reached extraction. Bronze is fucking hard when you're starting out with all low level characters/equipment. Which, that makes it pretty hard for me to have a good feel for the long term play, because ME3 really shined once you were better kitted out. Matches are 6 waves plus extraction, but they seem to start off with more enemies on wave 1, so it's like they cut the first 4 waves. It does speed up matches, I think the longest one was maybe 20 minutes. I think it may ultimately make matches feel...less weighty or epic, but overall being able to play more matches in an evening is probably better/more fun. It would really suck in ME3 when you only had an hour or so to play, and ended up with a nightmare team who could drag out a match to 30+ minutes. I would say that overall it was a pretty positive experience, but I don't have a good feel for if it's got the legs that ME3MP had, because a lot of that is going to be contingent on how it feels at Silver/Gold with higher level characters and gear. Leveling up characters feels a lot slower, but that might just be because I'm stuck doing bronzes.

The trial went live early tonight, I'm downloading it now. Origin id is BjornDaDwarf and sent friend requests to those of you who gave your IDs.