Tag Archives: Mass Effect 3

On Origin

Blaugust Post #20

The Multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 is very good. That almost makes up for the fact that Origin is intensely frustrating to deal with. We spent a larger amount of time on Thursday trying to get into the game than actually playing it, because a bug that’s been around for months is apparently not fixed, and hit me.

Thanks, Thalen.
Thanks, Thalen.

I understand it…

The oft-quoted number is that Steam takes a 30% cut of everything sold on their store. I’ve heard rumors that that number is no longer accurate, but even if it is, it’s understandable that companies might want a part of that slice of the pie back. EA was the first company I can think of the entirely break ties with Valve (which is kind of ironic after they published Portal 2 on consoles). Ubisoft followed with UPlay, but that seems to be less relevant as time goes on. EA actually has releases big enough that they can maintain Origin independently. They’ve actually done some things on Origin that I would say work better than Steam, as they had an actual functional return policy first, and their customer service is very good. I haven’t had to deal with Steam’s customer service, but from what I hear it’s generally pretty awful.

If you say so.
If you say so.

…But I don’t have to like it

The actual origin client itself is pretty terrible. The in-game overlay had a nice UI, but it’s been broken for (apparently) several months. It’s allegedly fixed in the beta release, but not for me. (In addition, despite not working, having it enabled makes my game crash.) As mentioned, there’s also that issue with the friends list. Unfortunately, the only thing I can really do here is vote with my wallet, and while EA continues to make excellent games like this, I’m afraid I’m stuck voting for something I don’t like.

Kind of like a real election.

On Class Selection

Blaugust Post #12

Q: You can excise one class from every future game. Which? Why?

A: Warrior. Replace with something more interesting than ‘guy who hits people with sharp objects’.

Thalen wrote the above this morning, and it inspired this post. A while back, the developers of Mass Effect revealed various statistics about how people play their games. (Some spoilers for ME3 at that link.) It turns out that a very large number of people play the game as the basic Soldier, which was somewhat disappointing to me. In a game that has 6 class options with varying unique abilities, the one that “just shoots people” struck me as utterly boring. It remains one of two classes I haven’t played a Mass Effect game as (at least single-player).

Unexpected Brilliance

Mass Effect 3 wasn’t just a single player game; it has one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever played. It wasn’t quite so good at launch, but by the time I actually got into the game a year later, they’d added so much to the multiplayer that it was nearly unrecognizable. You have the same selection of classes from the main game, with a stripped down selection of abilities at the start (and honestly I don’t think I like most of the starting ability sets). What later patches brought was the ability to unlock additional characters with varied power sets. They’re still divided into Soldier, Engineer, etc., but some of them are different races with different strengths and weaknesses, and even the human unlockables tend to be pretty non-standard. The differences are pretty extreme in some cases, with the N7 Shadow infiltrator having a shadowstep and being more about murder with a sword than a sniper rifle (although it can do that too).

This brings me to my earlier point: Some of the soldiers in the multiplayer bring variety and interest to what would otherwise be the most boring class. (They’re still the class about shooting things.) There are two variations on slow, unstoppable powerhouse types in the Geth Juggernaut and the N7 Destroyer. The Juggernaut is large and slow with well above average health and shields, but comes with an immunity to instant kills and the highly damaging Siege Pulse power . The Destroyer is a mobile weapons platform, with the ability to slow its own movement in tradeoff for increased damage and accuracy, while also launching homing missiles at things that come too close. At the other end of the spectrum is the jetpack-equipped Turian Havok, capable of using its stimulant pack ability to run around the battlefield faster than any class that can’t teleport (i.e. the aforementioned Shadow and almost all of the Vanguards).

Lessons to Learn

I feel like certain other games are learning from examples like this. D&D5 comes to mind immediately, with subclass-like options for all of the base classes. Even Fighters get in on the game, with options I’m going to call “Standard”, “Battlemages are fun”, and “I liked 4e’s Warlord”. (On a semi-related note, there are a bunch of ways to make a character that can both hit things and cast spells, which one is primary mostly depends on what class you’re using to start.) I’d kind of like it if other games could use a bit of this, and make the “basics” not always so basic.