Bjorn

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Posts posted by Bjorn

  1. Posted

    40 minutes ago, Gorbles said:

    Yeah, that's in one of the pages of notes, I think? Incredible box of goodies. I got three consumables, three Silvers, two Golds (Krogran Mercerny, up to IV now, and Angaran Insurgent, up to III now) and my first UR class, the Salarian Operator.

     

    I'm about to roll with KroMerc with a Ruzad VII on Silver, see how I do. Nine Power Cells thanks to the buff to Flak Cannon :D

     

    EDIT

    Currently sitting dead on Wave 5 because the patch reset my keybinds (heads up) and I forgot to reset them. Evade not being Ctrl is really messing me up, haha. Ruzad is hitting like an absolute beast though, basically two-shotting basic mooks on Silver. That's more like it.

     

     

    Haha, perfect to be all excited about changes, then sit out a wave :P

     

    The Operator is the ONLY class that I don't have now.  All my rare/uncommon classes are maxed, but only a few guns are.  Seems that the packs favor dropping character cards over weapon cards, which I'm fine with.

     

    Oh, and there's a new Turian and a new AR available as well with this patch.

     

    Are we friends on Origin?

     

    I plan on being on tonight, first match out will probably be KroEngi with Crusader. 

  2. Posted

    Yeah, I saw those earlier and was about to post them! 

     

     

    It's a massive set of changes.  There are a handful of 200+ percent buffs to things, quite a few 100+ percent changes and then the rest are in the 20-50 percent range.  It shows just how poorly a bunch of things were performing. 

     

    Smart Choke for shotguns has also reportedly been fixed, and their aim overall improved, which should help them a lot.  Your intuition was dead on about them being the poorest of all weapon choices in almost all situations.  The original poor aim plus the inability to improve aim due to bugged mods just pushed them further into the garbage bin. 

     

    The Crusader's aim still isn't pinpoint.  FFS.  But it has been improved, and with the massive damage buff, it's likely at least pretty good now. 

     

    Early reports on the BSN are that combos are godly against basic units now, even on Gold (at least with the power kits that have good buffs/debuffs for powers and combos, like the KroEngi). 

     

    Also of note, is that the patch notes are incomplete.  People on the BSN are working on figuring out what didn't get documented, but at least a number of powers got cooldown reductions (stuff like going from 10 seconds to 8 seconds) that are in the list. 

     

    Also, I got a free extra Deluxe Edition pack for some reason (maybe an apology/thank you?), and I got the the Krogan Gladiator!  Whooooooo! I was only missing 2 characters, and she was one of them.  As she's the only kit right now with the Krogan Hammer as a melee weapon, I was sorely missing having her. 

  5. Posted

    1 hour ago, Korax said:

    The Denver area got FUCKED UP by hail yesterday: http://kdvr.com/2017/05/08/hail-breaks-windows-windshields-in-lakewood-and-golden/

     

    This was 30 minutes before I normally leave work:

     

    I haven't heard of any human casualties so far, but there are plenty of shattered windows and stripped trees. My house lost power for 6 hours!

     

    A buddy of mine out there was posting pictures of hail stones lined up next to his golf balls to show the comparison.  It was scary looking as fuck.

  6. Posted

    9 hours ago, Gorbles said:

    I'm hoping that they're fixing core game issues before moving onto the meatier stuff. A shame that it has to go this way (or even that that's my positive spin on it, as that's not very positive, haha), but that's what I'm holding out for.

     

    Still grinding Uncommon and Rare classes me, I don't have the kind of kits to reliably do Gold except on a couple of classes I'm really played out on at the moment (the Asari Adept, for example). Been having a bit of fun with a Viper X / Charger X Human Soldier, to be honest. Never enjoyed Soldiers beforehand but homing Concussive Shot makes a world of difference. The Munitions trait (however it's named) in the offensive passive tree is fantastic too; vastly increases the ammo I can carry for my Viper. I need to get my Widow up a level so I can use that without any Power Recharge issues (currently at -1% with a Widow VI).

     

    If you're playing with Random groups, the thing right now is that there isn't much reason to not being playing Golds, since you never really know what the full match difficulty settings are because of the host SP bug.  You can be getting Gold level armor on a Silver.  Enemy HP values, spawn rates and damage values seem to be appropriate to MP difficulty, but that's about it. 

     

    As far as Gold worthy kits/weapons go:  The Vanquisher is king of all weapons.  The Lanat is a very good, though higher skilled, sniper.  Thokin is really solid.  Equalizer, Hurricane and Talon are all good pistols.  For kits, the HVanguard and KroGuard are melee gods. And melee is the only attack in the game that comes close to rivaling the Vanquisher in terms of DPS and effectiveness (that's how broken the Vanquisher is).  Any of the kits with the Barrier passive (Hguards, Hadepts, AA, and a couple of others) are all Gold worthy once Barrier is maxed with the Saving Barrier perk. 

     

    Testing has also found that the store is not in fact all that random, they actually added in a pity or poor luck check.  For Expert packs, you will never go more than 10 packs without a UR dropping.  There's something similar for Rare drops from Advanced packs, though I don't know the exact number on it.  The actual droprate for URs seems to be in the 4 percent range for any one pack, because the pity check guarantees an average of like 1 per 9 packs over the long haul.  The general consensus on the best way to spend your credits right now is on Expert packs.  Uncommons will drop in them, and you get the best bang for the buck in terms of accumulating boosters and UR chance.  The Premium packs might have a very slight edge on URs, but at the sacrifice of getting far, far far fewer consumables. 

     

    Also, another thing they've now tied to the SP settings is the speed that Sharpshooters aim and fire.  Up to 5 seconds on Narrative and down to 1 second on Insanity. 

     

    I've barely played MP for the last week and a half, maybe 10-12 matches total.  I will probably jump back in to check out the changes in the patch, but given what a clusterfuck of bugs and design choices this game has been, I just don't have a lot of faith on the team to be able to deliver an experience that is anywhere near what ME3MP delivered.  There's very little evidence that serious testing was done before release (the scale of some bugs is so mind boggling that it's hard to believe that professional testers wouldn't have found them).  The balance is non-existent.  Some Common and Uncommon weapons outperform UR weapons by better than 2-1 in achievable DPS.  And for nearly two months what the community heard was "We had a design philosophy that we followed and while it's different than what players expected, we think it succeeded."  Only once the community started putting hard facts and numbers behind how ridiculously bonked this game is did that message change.  Hence my lack of faith. 

  7. Posted

    If any of you are still playing MP, you might find some of the recent community testing to be interesting (and embarrassing for Bioware). 

     

    MP is pretty badly broken right now.  There's some error that's causing multiple variables to be set based on the host's single player difficulty rather than the MP chosen difficulty.  So far, this includes:

     

    Combo Damage (higher SP difficulty, more damaging combos) - Combo damage is so low as to be almost a joke anyways, even when the damage is maxed

    Enemy armor damage reduction (lower SP difficulty, less damage reduction, down to 0 if set to Narrative)

    Player Shieldgate invulnerability window (the period of invulnerability for players when their shield breaks, ranges from 0.5 to 0.1 second)

     

    Things suspected by be influenced by SP difficulty, but unconfirmed:
     

    Player Healthgate

    Enemy Shieldgate (if this isn't affected by SP difficulty, something is badly broken about it because shotguns don't get any damage passthrough and should)

    Some weapons appear to be performing differently depending on SP settings. 

     

    There's one big thread on the uBSN that's tracking all the tests players are doing, and several threads on the MEcoop subreddit tracking various tests. 

     

    This goes a long way towards explaining why the community has had mixed results testing, and why matches can feel pretty different from one match to another, since it's the host's settings that matter. There is supposed to be a big patch coming this week or maybe next, but it's not clear that Bioware was aware of this issue before submitting the patch to cert, as the community just discovered it this weekend and it wasn't mentioned in any of the fixes or changes discussed by Bioware in a stream on Friday morning. 

     

    I've barely been playing MP for most of the last two weeks.  Between this discovery, other bugs, the terrible balance the game has in terms of powers and weapons, elements of the core design, locking skill points behind character cards (very frustrating for Ultra Rare characters), it just hasn't been as much fun as it should have been.  It was rushed out and it is getting a fraction of the support that ME3MP got.  Pushing 7 weeks from release, ME3MP had already had hundreds of individual balance changes (released weekly) and its first expansion.  MEAMP has had one set of a couple of dozen balance changes and no expansion in sight, with a second set of balance changes and patch to be released soon™.

  8. Posted

    I did Harvarl, and there's at least a couple of quests left on it that I can do, including what looks like a pretty substantial side quest. 

     

    Companion wise, I've had Drack, Jaal, Vetra and Peebee with me for the most amount of time so far, but Drack without a doubt earned his perma spot by my side with a few comments  ("Well, that might not be the dumbest idea I hear today, but it's in the running.")  Cora just seems boring af.  Liam's fiiiiiiiiiiine (also kinda boring).  I like Vetra a lot in the ship, but in squad she hasn't said a lot so far that's amused me. 

  9. Posted

    So I've hit a point where the game opens up, I had to pick between two planets (Havarl and Voeld), and after finishing one planet, now I have a bunch of options on places to go.

     

    Are there any broken quests, or weirdness, or landmines people ran into here?  My inclination is to knock out most of the side quests before continuing on to the next big story thing. 

     

     

    I'm still spending most of my time in MP though.  For as much time as I've put into it, I'm oddly still somewhat split on what I think of it.  There's good fun in here, and some of the characters have some interesting things that can be done with them (the HSent is easily one of my favorite characters, because Barricade is that good, and I cared for very few of the Sentinels in 3).  But the balance and testing that went into the release of Andromeda in general, and MP specifically, is just ridiculously disappointing.  There's no cohesive throughline or plan that's visible in how weapons or powers are balanced.  DPS is just all over the board, regardless of rarity, with at least one UR weapon being among the 5 weakest weapons in the game.  Even weapons with good theoretical DPS end up trash because their base accuracy is so poor that they're only usable at close range. 

     

    It's been four weeks since the soft launch, and there has been one balance change (fingers crossed we get one this week, but no one knows for sure).  ME3MP managed weekly balance changes, and the AMP team so far is being incredibly secretive about what they are considering and when or if any changes will be released.  The 3 team ended up recruiting a number of the most respected regular players and including them in on at least some of the balance discussions and having a dedicated outlet to hear the view of the community at large.  Warframe has its Design Council, a similar group that rotates members monthly to give a couple of dozen regular players a direct communication channel with the devs.  More open communication with a player base of an on going co-op game is hardly revolutionary in 2017, and the vagueness and lack of communication really just reinforces the community's concerns about the game and its state. 

     

    There are laughably bad bugs, like Krogans apparently can't shoot a sniper rifle straight (shots are consistently low and to the left, the leading theory is that they have the largest character model and this wasn't accounted for). 

     

    The "events" have just been pale shadows of ME3MP.  3 included individual and community goals that each rewarded an N7 weapon.  AMP's only events, so far, have been an extra Bronze APEX mission each weekend with some flavor text and the default APEX rewards (slightly extra xp/credits and 10 Mission Funds).  They've gated content behind the APEX system, including a new map, a map variant of an existing map, a new enemy unit, and new objective, explicitly to make these additions feel "special".  Which bugs me, the APEX mission system is really one of the best and coolest additions to the game, it's unnecessary to lock some content to it to make it feel more special. 

     

    And yet, I'm still playing pretty much daily and having a jolly time murdering aliens and robots and leveling up characters, in spite of the many flaws and issues going on. 

  10. Posted

    Over the last few years, I've spent almost no time in gaming communities besides the Thumbs, and I had actually forgot how ugly and toxic they can be on just an hourly basis.  But Mass Effect has got me visiting another forum for news and stuff (because god forbid Bioware have any organization or plan about communicating with players, it's all scattered about).  And the frequency that there's "jokes" about diversity, BLM, autism, gays, feminism, etc., is almost ever present.

     

    So anyways, good reminder that y'all are awesome and there's a damned good reason a lot of us settled in here.

  12. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Roderick said:

    This weekend I won the Harland Awards for a sci-fi short story I wrote! The Harlands are basically the Dutch Hugo Awards, for best fantastic literature (sci-fi, fantasy or horror) both in short story form or novel length. It was a big ceremony in Amsterdam and it's been an insane couple of days since!

     

    lineup-uitreikingen.jpg

     

    I'm the guy in red, and yes my friends, that is an Apollo Justice cosplay I'm wearing. English language report here.

     

    Holy shit, congrats Roderick!

  13. Posted

    I'm warming up to SP finally, have spent some of each of the last two nights in it.  The patch definitely improved the faces during conversations, at the very least the eye animations are much better and they aren't rotating all willy-nilly anymore, staring off into space while talking to someone in front of them.

     

    Also, I know a lot of people have criticized the writing in this, and while it is intermittent in quality, I think they've done a good job with Ryder nailing the tone of someone who is young, had leadership/responsibility thrust on them, is taking it seriously, but didn't have the training or experience for it.  Also, getting the pilot to say, "Kill me now" as he had to listen to Suvi and I flirt is easily one of the funniest things in a conversation in ME that I've seen. 

     

    In terms of combat, MEA is feeling a lot like how I felt about ME3, which is that once you've spent a bunch of time in MP, combat in SP just has no weight or feeling to it.  The encounters individually just aren't big or long enough.  Maybe that improves, but I'd doubt it.  But since I've begun enjoying the talky-talk parts, that's fine, that's what SP is for.

     

    Edited to add: Oh yea, and I have tried tweeting my complaints about the Crusader to some of the MP dev team now.  I'm not generally one to do that, but the Crusader being crap has me that disappointed. 

  14. Posted

    16 hours ago, Korax said:

     

    I dunno, I'm using a controller and I'm able to get about 3x the rate of fire from the Mattock after the patch, and the only inaccuracy I have to worry about is from weapon spread.

     

     

    I've never been able to run any of the fast rof semi-auto weapons for longer than a match, makes my fingers/hands end up aching too much.  The lady can't even do it for a match, but she has some repetitive stress damage in her hands. 

     

     

     

    I unlocked the Crusader last night in MP! My fav gun! And they fucked it up, fucked it up bad :cry:

     

    The Crusader was a pretty unique weapon in multiple ways.  Innate piercing, single slug shotgun, crazy accurate (the highest accuracy outside of SRs, afaik). They took away innate piercing from all guns that had it, so that's gone. But on top of that, they gave the Crusader shotgun spread in Andromeda.  So, it's basically pointless outside of close range, because the slug can land anywhere in the reticle (which appears to be the normal shotgun reticle), which just means landing any kind of a distance shot is pure luck, and forget being able to land headshot/weak point shots at all.  At least with other shotguns, you can land some pellets at midrange.  The Crusader has a fair chance to just whiff completely. It really fundamentally breaks the design/role that the Crusader was intended to have. 

  15. Posted

    There's an APEX mission you can run yourself that's on a new map, Paradox (the mission is These Beautiful Killer Bots).  Hopefully the new map gets put in the regular rotation soon, because it seems pretty cool and we really could use more maps. 

     

    Even if you already sent a Strike Team on it, you can still replay missions by manually selecting them from the Custom match settings and searching. 

     

    I got my Asari Adept up high enough to do Golds last night, and I like her very much.  The 6th evolution that makes unshielded/unarmored enemies float inside the field is hilarious and wonderful. 

  16. Posted

    Haha, yeah, I laughed quite a bit at that.

     

    I think Bioware greatly overestimates people's ability to hit and sustain the theoretical DPS on the high rof semi-automatic weapons, unless they're using a mouse macro.  For people playing with controllers, it's virtually impossible to hit, let alone maintain and accurately fire. 

  17. Posted

    6 hours ago, Gorbles said:

    Doing what Bjorn suggested r.e. credit crates and all my gear is coming along quite nicely. Adept is now IV (level 11) with double-width / extended-length Shockwave (such a good skill). Weapons are at V or above (for the commons) and ranking up a lot of my other Human classes as well. Probably going to start pushing Silver with my Adept soon just to speed up the credit farming. Biotic Combo + controllable Detonating Singularity deals brilliant damage (and hitting Singularity early starts the cooldown earlier, with no penalties, as far as I can work out).

     

    Once I maxxed commons, I'm just doing a mix of the upper 3 packs now.  I generally save up 250-300K, then buy one double rare pack, two single rare packs and the rest in uncommon packs, mostly wanting to get the ranks up on the Asari Adept.  I don't know if it's the most efficient strategy, but I have picked up several URs. 

     

     

    The first batch of MP balance changes have happened!  And....it's a pretty mixed bag, tbh.  Some stuff got buffed that badly needed buffed (mostly semi-auto ARs, a couple of SRs and a bunch of pistols).  But melee got a nerf, which is a very frustrating change.  The only reason that melee is dominating Gold right now is because we don't have close quarters weapons that do shit.  Buff a couple of shotguns to damage that equals a punch, and you'll see punching decrease a bunch. 

     

    Hydra's actually sync kill now too.  Thankfully the Remnant Observer's got a nerf though.  Those fucking little flying bastards are the single biggest threat the Remnant have. 

  19. Posted

    Oh, an update on stuff dropped this morning.  Also, patch notes. 

     

    That update honestly reads like a list of shit that should have been finished before the game shipped.  Like, this is exactly the kind of thing that the last couple of months of polish are intended to address.

     

    But, on a positive note, sounds like the first MP event is going to start on Thursday.  Yah!  Also, the patch notes say that the devices bug in MP is getting fixed, where off-host players have to try and use a device multiple times in order to finish it.  And assorted balance changes that aren't detailed yet.  I'd be shocked if the Vanquisher doesn't get nerfed, but hopefully that comes with some buffs to about a dozen weapons. 

     

    Edited to add: I really, really, really hope that event rewards are guaranteed URs again.  I desperately want my Crusader more than anything else in MP, therefore RNG logic dictates it will be the last UR I unlock :(

  20. Posted

    5 hours ago, Gorbles said:

    In terms of Multiplayer, I decided to rank one of my other duped classes, the human lady Adept.

     

    My goodness.

     

    Yeah, I've had similar experiences going from Krogans to Humans and Asari.  The difference in speed in all types of movement is just huge.  I honestly feel like I have more survivability with with Humans than I do Krogans because I'm being hit less.  I think the Human Adept will be the next class I take to Gold once I finish leveling up my Infiltrator. 

     

    Speaking of Infiltrators, my god, the Vanquisher is silly good.  Like, best gun in game, no questions asked good.  Once I switched to it from a single shot, my level 11 Infiltrator had no problem running a couple of Gold matches.  I did just unlock the Naralden (sp?), a UR SR that fires explosive rounds last night.  I took it for a spin on Bronze, and it also seems very good. 

     

    My biggest disappointment in kits right now is the Human Soldier.  She just feels off, in a large part because of a lack of defense options.  Human vanguards and adepts get the Fitness evolution to auto-recharge shields at low health, plus punching recharges shields.  Human engineers get a Fitness evo that recharges their shields when they use a power every 10 secs.  Human Sents get Energy Drain to recharge shields, and a Fitness evo that makes shields recharge faster after taking damage.  The HSol in ME3 at launch was the only class with a shield regenerating power that didn't require targeting an enemy, and it made a huge difference for the class.  Replacing AdRush with Turbocharge feels like a very poor substitute, because the HSol just can't take the same kind of punishment.  And it's doubly weird when almost every other Human kit can take more punishment than the basic soldier can. 

  22. Posted

    6 hours ago, Gorbles said:

    Haven't even tried Gold yet. I probably should, given that my Kroguard has been sitting at Level 20 for a few days. Problem is I don't have any of my weapons geared up to the level you have, haha. I might give it a go once my Kromerc™ gets a bit higher (Level 11 right now); he's been unlocked three times which gives me a crucial extra ability point or two to sink into my choices. Means I might get a set of maxed abilities that I want by Level 20.

     

    Good to know it's not just me that has been finding issues in weapon balance. Been getting some rares (because I've been messing about with the Expert packs, and one top-end pack for a laugh) and honestly astonished at how the basic variants are more reliable. It seems that they've traded effectiveness for quirks, but they're not effective enough at their quirks to be reliable weapons. Compounded by the rarity index, not the best way to incentivise unlocking those tiers of weaponry.

     

    That said, at least the Scorpion is solid. Really getting good usage out of a Scorpion / Sidewinder (another reliable pistol) combo on my Kromerc.

     

    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 :lol:  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. 

  23. Posted

    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. 

  24. Posted

    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. 

  25. Posted

    6 hours ago, Gorbles said:

    Still haven't started SP. I'm having entirely too much fun in MP so I might as well wait to see Bioware's patching plans, and then make the drop.
     

     

    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.