Mass Effect 3 demo - 2/14/12

TwistedAegis said:
You mean charge you extra for a download that doesn't effect your bandwith cap for the month? ;) Patent pending...EA, call me.
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They (Digital River specifically since it's their rules not EA's) used to offer an extended download thing, but they ended up getting rid of it.
 
polonyc2 said:
next thing you know Origin will charge for shipping too
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Are you surprised that a company charges sales tax if mandated by the law?

Amazon and Steam both also charge sales tax depending on your state. Same with every other digital service depending on your location and how their business is setup.
 
limitedaccess said:
Are you surprised that a company charges sales tax if mandated by the law?

Amazon and Steam both also charge sales tax depending on your state. Same with every other digital service depending on your location and how their business is setup.
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the law states that they can only charge sales tax if they have a physical presence in the state you are in...Amazon did not charge sales tax in my state (NY) for a long time and only started doing that after a big lawsuit (which I believe they are still fighting)...does Digital River have a physical presence in NY?...if not then Origin should not be charging me sales tax

I accept that places like Best Buy and Walmart charge sales tax but do not accept it when states/companies try to skirt the law...Steam is based in Washington hence no sales tax for all states except Washington which is great...these digital services in no way should be charging tax to everyone
 
polonyc2 said:
the law states that they can only charge sales tax if they have a physical presence in the state you are in...Amazon did not charge sales tax in my state (NY) for a long time and only started doing that after a big lawsuit (which I believe they are still fighting)...does Digital River have a physical presence in NY?...if not then Origin should not be charging me sales tax
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The only US location I can find on their site is in Minnesota.
 
that may be but every state nowadays is just jumping for a piece of the pie, pretty much anything can be used to define a "presence" in your state. for now they usually require at least some kind of shipping outlet for physical goods, but eventually they will be broadening this definition (ie. minnesota) to include any business operation.

even for something like steam that deals explicitely with digital goods based in washington, they can claim that the colos dotted all over the country containing nothing but pastic and wires filled with data will justify some kind of tax.
 
somehipster said:
As awful as working at a game studio post launch of a title can be (aka, losing your job or seeing friends lose their jobs), gratuitous DLC is a bit much. I don't mind Day 1 DLC, but codes with action figures and whatever seems overboard.
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702
 
Ryom said:
comic snip...
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Funny... but they wouldn't dare do that. Removing the Prothean, you only tick off people interested in the lore. If you piss off the Bioware Social romancer crowd, things could get violent!
 
somehipster said:
Well, it got modded in to the last one and it worked pretty well. Guess I'll have to do the same for this one, too.
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The last one wasn't running through Origin, and EA just deleted a 20+ page thread about modding the Coalesced.bin file we had running over there without a word.

The problem is that modding the file mods both SP and MP games, and EA isn't going to let that stand, so modding at all on ME3 could be difficult at best and impossible at worst depending on the kinds of checks they want to implement.

No one knows for sure at this point, but the general feeling among some of the people who were doing a lot of the mod work in that thread is that EA is gonna be ban-happy if they put in some way to check for file mods, and it's expected they will, if not at launch, then soon after.

We may get lucky on the modding, but I wouldnt get your hopes up at this point, esp knowing how EA operates.
 
Or alternatively, you may have to crack your legit copy to do any modding you want to do. (that only works if, like me, you don't care about the MP)
 
Limahl said:
The last one wasn't running through Origin, and EA just deleted a 20+ page thread about modding the Coalesced.bin file we had running over there without a word.

The problem is that modding the file mods both SP and MP games, and EA isn't going to let that stand, so modding at all on ME3 could be difficult at best and impossible at worst depending on the kinds of checks they want to implement.

No one knows for sure at this point, but the general feeling among some of the people who were doing a lot of the mod work in that thread is that EA is gonna be ban-happy if they put in some way to check for file mods, and it's expected they will, if not at launch, then soon after.

We may get lucky on the modding, but I wouldnt get your hopes up at this point, esp knowing how EA operates.
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Making the same file work for SP and MP is a very amateur mistake. Bioware has access to the knowledge of companies like DICE, you'd think they would talk to other companies about what kind of amateur mistakes to avoid.
 
Derangel said:
Making the same file work for SP and MP is a very amateur mistake. Bioware has access to the knowledge of companies like DICE, you'd think they would talk to other companies about what kind of amateur mistakes to avoid.
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That line of thought assumes that Bioware wants to enable/support modding.

I think they have it set up exactly as they want it and EA has the ban hammer ready for those who don't submit to their no-modding policy.
 
drako said:
Or alternatively, you may have to crack your legit copy to do any modding you want to do. (that only works if, like me, you don't care about the MP)
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Thats certainly something to consider, but without knowing just how hard they are going to crack down, we can only guess.

Some people figure they'll do the D2-D3 route of constant connection required, along with a program running that actively scans for hacks and the like.

At this point I've stopped even looking through all the code in the file. No point in investing the time until we know for sure what the real options are going to be.

I just want custom outfits, hair, eyes, etc for my SP game, but those are things EA can charge money for as DLC and make a fortune, so I'm expecting they're gonna lock it down unfortunately.
 
drako said:
That line of thought assumes that Bioware wants to enable/support modding.

I think they have it set up exactly as they want it and EA has the ban hammer ready for those who don't submit to their no-modding policy.
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Even if they didn't want modding, it's still an amateur mistake. No amount of cheat protection is going to help forever, but having everything MP related server side instead of client side would still be much better. On the other hand at least it looks like they're not using Punk Buster.
 
drako said:
Funny... but they wouldn't dare do that. Removing the Prothean, you only tick off people interested in the lore. If you piss off the Bioware Social romancer crowd, things could get violent!
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EA will have to pry the creepy romantic fanfic from my cold, lotiony hands.
 
Last night I switched from the Mantis sniped rifle to the Viper. I don't like that I can't two-shot phantoms (headshot to get barrier and then torso shot because it's a PITA to get their heads again once they start hopping around), but I can get nemesises and centurions much faster now. Assault Troopers still die with a shot to the head. Also, for some reason I don't think all my shots register with the Viper, or else it's really just not a very accurate gun.

I'm spending too much time playing that game.
 
J W said:
Last night I switched from the Mantis sniped rifle to the Viper. I don't like that I can't two-shot phantoms (headshot to get barrier and then torso shot because it's a PITA to get their heads again once they start hopping around), but I can get nemesises and centurions much faster now. Assault Troopers still die with a shot to the head. Also, for some reason I don't think all my shots register with the Viper, or else it's really just not a very accurate gun.

I'm spending too much time playing that game.
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As I stated much earlier in the thread, I believe there are either hitbox issues or the game has a specific algorithm to allow only certain shots to the head actually to count as headshots.
 
IGN is running a review-in-progress on the game and answering a bunch of user questions.
 
lol, I was excited to see the music question, as I feel the same way. I was less excited to see him completely ignore it and talk about voice acting.
 
drako said:
lol, I was excited to see the music question, as I feel the same way. I was less excited to see him completely ignore it and talk about voice acting.
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Yeah. I really like music in games as well and I agree it sucks that he ignored it. People just don't seem to realize that a good soundtrack will enhance a story or scene and even subtle background music can help manipulate people's feelings to where they need to be.
 
Derangel said:
Yeah. I really like music in games as well and I agree it sucks that he ignored it. People just don't seem to realize that a good soundtrack will enhance a story or scene and even subtle background music can help manipulate people's feelings to where they need to be.
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Amen.
 
polonyc2 said:
the law states that they can only charge sales tax if they have a physical presence in the state you are in...Amazon did not charge sales tax in my state (NY) for a long time and only started doing that after a big lawsuit (which I believe they are still fighting)...does Digital River have a physical presence in NY?...if not then Origin should not be charging me sales tax

I accept that places like Best Buy and Walmart charge sales tax but do not accept it when states/companies try to skirt the law...Steam is based in Washington hence no sales tax for all states except Washington which is great...these digital services in no way should be charging tax to everyone
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Well this is honestly an issue you need to take up with your legislators. I have serious doubts that any company is intentionally taxing you (which also incurs more transaction costs) and thus driving up their prices compared to competitors if they are not required to by law. But I don't see how you can place fault on the company in general for doing something they are required to do.

I suppose they could be in fact illegally taxing you and not remitting that portion to the government but I would find it very unlikely any publicly traded company of this size is engaging in that type of behavior.
 
limitedaccess said:
I suppose they could be in fact illegally taxing you and not remitting that portion to the government but I would find it very unlikely any publicly traded company of this size is engaging in that type of behavior.
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Not on purpose anyway. Companies are very aware of the advantageous position you can find yourself in if you can offer products to your customers without having to charge taxes.
 
Derangel said:
Yeah. I really like music in games as well and I agree it sucks that he ignored it. People just don't seem to realize that a good soundtrack will enhance a story or scene and even subtle background music can help manipulate people's feelings to where they need to be.
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Q-BZ said:
Amen.
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Yes, the most underrated part of games. Usually the game that gets the double thumbs up also has the strong track as well.
 
I finally unlocked the asari adept. Wow, they really are overpowered. I think I scored around 120,000 points just by myself in 11 rounds on gold on my second game with the asari. I had never gone over 100,000 previously. Spamming stasis bubble + pistol with scope + throw = damn near impossible to stop. Basically the only time I ever die, and this can be said of my infiltrator, is when I go to rescue my fallen squadmates. This is why it's so important to play with people who understand that the #1 thing is to not die ( I also hate it when people waste their rockets on just one Atlas; they might as well get two for the price of one, preferably in a later round).

I'm going to uninstall the demo, I think. I've been staying up late every night trying to unlock that damn asari. Now that I have her, why bother continuing? Finally some sleep.
 
Once i got Stasis bubble i stopped firing my pistol. its just not necessary.
 
Downloading the full game from GameFly, right now, for pre-installation prior to March 6 release date. :)
 
Dome said:
Once i got Stasis bubble i stopped firing my pistol. its just not necessary.
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Do you use throw or warp? Throw works great for knocking out health, but it doesn't seem to do much for taking out barriers or shields. Maybe I messed up my skill tree?
 
Parmenides said:
Yes, the most underrated part of games. Usually the game that gets the double thumbs up also has the strong track as well.
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I think most music is not great so most people tend to ignore it. I usually don't appreciate music in games much myself and find myself watching tv or listening to podcasts while gaming. I did listen to only game music/sound in Dead Space 2 and Dear Esther which has changed my perception a bit towards game music in general.
 
On the topic of music, I *love* the ME music. I have the ME1 and ME2 soundtracks mixed with Daft Punk's TRON soundtrack for some AWESOME ambient sci-fi music. I use it whenever I'm reading Sci-Fi, or playing a sci-fi game that doesn't have good music.
 
ninjaturtle said:
Well I think the multi-player demo is over. :(
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It was a good demo with the following exceptions:

-the change character bug which messed up your power presets
-the lack of choosing where to play -- all random or else you had to have people on your friends list
-the two maps got boring as hades.
-some characters were extremely overpowered. Heavy pistols were also about as strong as the lower-level sniper rifles.

Otherwise I had a lot of fun.
 
Don't forget joining a game around wave 7 in the middle of a few phantoms on gold with power add-ons when you wanted to be in silver. Total WTF moment.
 
ninjaturtle said:
Don't forget joining a game around wave 7 in the middle of a few phantoms on gold with power add-ons when you wanted to be in silver. Total WTF moment.
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LOL + the rest of your squad has just died and you're left trying to revive them/ win the game.
Yeah, that did happen too much.
 
My favorites where:
-Getting killed in the wall then slooooowly falling to the bottom of the 3D space.
-Air walking
-Can't reload, powers have no effect, and the enemy only pays attention to you 5% of the time
-Using an invisible gun
 
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