Bjorn

Mass Effect Andromeda - Thumb Drive Engaged!

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Here is a stereoscopic 360 screenshot of the bridge. If you have a VR device (including Google Cardboard) then you should be able to see it using that device. I'm constantly surprised by how much bigger everything is when it isn't on a screen. When I'm playing the game, the rooms in the Tempest feel conservative and small, in VR they seem kinda grand.

I tagged it as a spoiler to avoid it having to load on my phone everytime I check this page.



Tempest bridge_small.jpg

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

 

My goodness.

 

The facial animations might be drawing a lot of (warranted) criticism, but they've absolutely nailed how Krogan and human-types feel different. Kinda intrigued to give an Angaran class a try now; their frame's a bit exaggerated compared to human / Asari / Salarian. Krogans were incredibly clunky in ME3, and they're clunky in ME:A - but understandably so. It feels more like they're their actual weight, instead of them just being an awkward physics collider shape bouncing off of geometry left, right and centre.

 

Which makes the change to a human class all the more amazing. First (Bronze) mission as a Level 1 Adept, and I topped the scoreboard on my team simply by dint of being a Fecking Space Ninja. Jumps feel faster. Running feels fast. Melee lunges are beautiful and look vicious, too (as supposed to the ME3 clunky "I bop you with my elbow" attacks you got a lot of the time). I was able to dodge so much enemy attention in a way that didn't feel possible as either Krogan class (Vanguard had Charge, but that only goes so far).

 

Kinda not looking forward to going back to my Kromerc now, haha. But man, moving animations deserve all the praise.

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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. 

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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 :(

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I would, uh, not be as charitable as to call TheRalphRetort a "creator" of any kind. But that's a small concern, it's a good piece :)

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I'd be interested in hearing the impressions on Havarl of someone who enjoyed Havarl.

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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).

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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. 

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I like the juxtaposition of the first two bits of weapon rebalancing:

 

Quote

Generally, we’ve found that semiautomatic assault rifles and pistols are underperforming when compared to their automatic counterparts. We’ve increased the damage per round for most of these guns and fixed bugs that limited the rate of fire for semiautomatic weapons.

 

....

 

Mattock

  • Lowered damage per round from 71–89 to 50–63

 

I know there's more to that with regards to fire rate, but it was pretty funny to see that.

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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. 

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Damn, I actually have to be careful around Hydras now?

sadface.jpg

 

Didn't get a chance to try out MP last night, most of yesterday was a write-off for me personally. Looking forward to doing some this weekend if I get the time.

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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. 

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On 4/6/2017 at 5:51 PM, Bjorn said:

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. 

 

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.

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Gonna be trying to split my time between the DoW III Beta, Andromeda SP and Andromeda MP this weekend. Real Life might successfully manage to get in the way though, hah, it always does.

 

Finally got started on the SP! Made some characters I've pretty proud of, and DadRyder turned out ace I think. Currently at the Nexus just having been introduced to the situation, and trying frantically to get the story to the level where I can start unboxing my 190 Strike Team crates, hahaha.

 

 

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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. 

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I started a New Game+ on Insanity difficulty out of curiosity, and there are some problems with its implementation. It all seems to stem from the fact that the increase in difficulty seems to just be an increase in enemy health. Instead of mixing the makeup of enemy encounters or having more tactically challenging AI, everything's just a bullet sponge, which makes most fights a tedious battle of attrition. The real problem comes in the way that the increased health interacts with other elements in the game. I figured that a great way to take care of enemies would be to throw them around with biotics. Slam them against walls, throw them off the map, drop them from extreme heights, etc. Turns out that the damage from physics forces isn't good compared to the increased health, and that maps (in Habitat 7, at least) don't have any sort of kill box at their boundaries. I was stopped twice by scripting that was waiting for a final enemy that I had thrown across the area to die. The first time I was able to eventually find the guy I had thrown and kill it, but the second time the enemy had apparently been tossed out of the navigable area of the map, and I could only progress by reloading a checkpoint and making sure not to use any powers that caused combo explosions.

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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. 

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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. 

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I went to Havarl right after finishing Voeld and it broke the pacing for me. I don't know if I could manage the discipline to skip a whole planet, but if I was to do it again I would have continued on the main quest-line for a bit before going to Havarl. Not sure how that would have turned out though. It was around this time that the side-quests started seeming like they were mentioning planets I was supposed to know about that I hadn't been to. 

Did you do Havarl or Voeld?

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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. 

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Yeah I agree with your summation of the companions, and I'd add that Jaal is sort of an auto-include most of the time for story reasons. The angara are just so damn pervasive in the plot, at least early on, that it would feel strange to not have him along. Which I'm actually beginning to kinda resent, because it means I only have one actual rotating squadmate - which rather than "rotating" is now mostly just alternating between Drack and Peebee for the reasons you mentioned.

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I actually stuck with Liam and Cora for a bit, but I've literally hit the same point in the story that Bjorn was at yesterday. Choosing between the two planets (and running back to the Nexus for side-mission stuff, because why not). Jaal is an immediate contender for Best Person Ever, and I might drag PeeBee along because heck I've decided to romance her why not (I really don't find her annoying). Just to switch it up. I quite like Liam and Cora isn't as stiff as she originally tries to be. Her backstory is actually quite interesting (considering I loved the Asari society bits with Samara in the original trilogy).

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This may be a case of a game companion dilemma whereby if the writers try to create a companion who is not immediately likeable, but has an interesting arc or backstory, they'll never get the chance to show it off because players will simply not hang out with the unlikeable character. Unfortunately while I haven't had the reaction of profound distaste some have towards the writing in Andromeda, I certainly don't have a great deal of faith that they can pull something that tricky off if I put the effort in to look for it.

 

Also as Bjorn mentioned, there are characters that are interesting and I'm happy to talk to on the ship, who nevertheless never seem to contribute anything worthwhile or entertaining in a squad. Vetra's the main example, but Cora definitely falls into that category too. I'm not actively avoiding talking to her, but she's never in my mind to have around.

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I am the Typical Sprawling RPG Audience Demographic (TSRPGAD, for short) in that I will always compulsively check every single squad member after every single mission or major cinematic event. Can absolutely see how that design doesn't work for others, though.

 

It's weird, I have limits on other types of game for what I can be bothered to do, but much like weapon grinding in more Diablo-style RPG games (Torchlight is a big favourite of mine), I never get bored of this kind of busywork.

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