Mass Effect: Andromeda

[TaintedSquirrel]

Take the one that reveals chest locations, then the 10% XP, and then work towards the extra augment slot.

 

[M76]

but this game is such a mess

Not the impression I was getting.
BTW thanks for the explanation. However I still don't see it as an issue even if it's true that weapon damages scales with levelling but tech damage does not. It might be a conscious design choice.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Anybody else notice the quality drop-off after Eos? Outposts matter less, they're smaller. The military/science choice appears to be completely gone and totally irrelevant even on Eos. There's fewer quests, less people to talk to. It also seems like the rest of the game focuses on Eos more, people on the Nexus refer to it more than anything else. Eos' vault is also way more fleshed out. The planet map itself is also the largest as far as I can tell.

Definitely an unfinished game.

However I still don't see it as an issue even if it's true that weapon damages scales with levelling but tech damage does not.

It's an issue only at high levels. Eventually your guns will do 2x-3x more damage than abilities, making them useless. You don't need to cast a spell when you can do much more damage by shooting a bullet. In the end, you will only use them to proc weapon damage buffs.

 

[SighTurtle]

I reached the 4rd planet but 2 and 3 have status in place that prevents....active colonization. And 4 is...eh.

 

[M76]

Anybody else notice the quality drop-off after Eos? Outposts matter less, they're smaller. The military/science choice appears to be completely gone and totally irrelevant even on Eos. There's fewer quests, less people to talk to. It also seems like the rest of the game focuses on Eos more, people on the Nexus refer to it more than anything else. Eos' vault is also way more fleshed out. The planet map itself is also the largest as far as I can tell.

Definitely an unfinished game.


It's an issue only at high levels. Eventually your guns will do 2x-3x more damage than abilities, making them useless. You don't need to cast a spell when you can do much more damage by shooting a bullet. In the end, you will only use them to proc weapon damage buffs.

The only thing I noticed is the lack of choice of Scientific/Military outpost. There is plenty to do on each planet it seems to me. Actually come to think of it, the Military/Scientific choice is superseeded by choosing which people to thaw out from cryo. You only get that choice after EOS, so basically the Military/science outpost choice on EOS was about choosing which personnel to bring out from the freezer.

 

[jiminator]

I suspect the first outpost sets the "theme" of your colonization, probably to come into play at a later stage.

so with strike teams, has anyone gotten to do gold > 50%? How have you managed that? seems to be an incredible amount of mission grinding (like everything in this game) for buffs. Missions also seem to have gotten much stingier after you start.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Not the impression I was getting.
BTW thanks for the explanation. However I still don't see it as an issue even if it's true that weapon damages scales with levelling but tech damage does not. It might be a conscious design choice.

That would mean that all skills are worthless and you may as well make a character that is 100% weapon based as it is the only thing that scales from a damage perspective.

 

[Vegas P11]

I preordered the Deluxe version but only got to play about 30 minutes on release night. Last weekend I played quite a bit, but it took a few hours before I really got into it. I have noticed a few of the things that people having been complaining about but none of them seem to be game breaking for me. I saw Cora launch from the first floor to the second floor and honestly it just made me laugh. I believe some people are looking for anything to complain about and the mob mentality has taken over.

I can honestly say that I am enjoying the hell out of this game. The only thing that I wish they didn't change was the team control during combat. I really liked that about the first three. Unfortunately I have never been that great at first person shooters and pausing to tell my squad what to do really helped me out. So far I have gotten used to this style of combat, but I do miss the old style a bit.

I have also noted that it is time to upgrade the old GTX780. At 2560x1440 I have had to lower the settings a bit, but I still think the game looks gorgeous.

 

[Dan_D]

Your team tends to jet pack around a lot. I am not sure if that's what you are talking about. Although I've seen them shoot through the floor when spawning in from a conversation on the Tempest. I saw that today.

 

[Vegas P11]

Your team tends to jet pack around a lot. I am not sure if that's what you are talking about. Although I've seen them shoot through the floor when spawning in from a conversation on the Tempest. I saw that today.

No I was walking around on the Tempest when it happened. I thought it was pretty funny. I am thoroughly enjoying this game. I think it was well worth the money myself.

 

[polydiol]

Probably the only time I've seen a black hole in a video game.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

So I stacked Tech Regen rate on literally everything, I think my total was like 120%. Turns out there's a regen cap and using a stopwatch to time them, it seems to be 60%. After that, you get nothing. Disappointing, I was hoping they could recharge instantly.

I noticed Biotic skills have inherently higher recharge rates (Charge). I'm going to see if they have a different cap.

 

[M76]

I'm starting to get over saturated with the game. After getting to kendros (is that the correct name?) and realizing I have to do almost exact sama tasks as I did on voels and eos. Until now I was all positive, but now something snapped in me and I realized I'm no longer interested in turning monoliths on using the exact same routine I used many times before. Plus on this map the forward station locations are completely bonkers there are areas where there are no forward stations for miles, forcing me to drive back and forth for long minutes to do some menial tasks. And there is a huge cave with one exit which has no option to fast travel in or out of.

 

[Q-BZ]

I'm starting to get over saturated with the game. After getting to kendros (is that the correct name?) and realizing I have to do almost exact sama tasks as I did on voels and eos. Until now I was all positive, but now something snapped in me and I realized I'm no longer interested in turning monoliths on using the exact same routine I used many times before. Plus on this map the forward station locations are completely bonkers there are areas where there are no forward stations for miles, forcing me to drive back and forth for long minutes to do some menial tasks. And there is a huge cave with one exit which has no option to fast travel in or out of.

My antidote: Play some other games and games that are *completely* different.

 

[polonyc2]

Bioware has to be announcing something major on Tuesday right?...can't be just a simple patch notes list...maybe something similar to the Extended cut of ME3 free for all users

 

[M76]

My antidote: Play some other games and games that are *completely* different.

When I'm playing something with a story I don't like distractions. I mean playing two games simultaneously.

 

[jiminator]

ugh, multiplayer is just a cluster. you start out way too weak, enemies do too much damage, grinding takes forever. then actual bugs, sound just stops, buttons that don't work, game just shuts down on joining a match, no regional matchmaking, and so forth.

 

[jiminator]

ugh, multiplayer is just a cluster. you start out way too weak, enemies do too much damage, grinding takes forever. then actual bugs, sound just stops, buttons that don't work, game just shuts down on joining a match, no regional matchmaking, and so forth.

and the app, although it is cool, it is just too much, I wish they had a light version. at 1 GB it is huge and slow and clicking something can take 30 seconds to register

 

[silent-circuit]

and the app, although it is cool, it is just too much, I wish they had a light version. at 1 GB it is huge and slow and clicking something can take 30 seconds to register

What app? Smartphone? What the fuck could they have possibly done that'd require 1GB on your phone...

 

[Ryan7968]

The Apex app is 117.2MB on my iPhone 6. If you're like me you just want to use it for strike teams. I'd suggest clicking the thing in the app that says "Manage Widgets" and turning off what you don't want. Made loading faster, although my loads were usually faster than 30 seconds to do anything.

 

[CrimsonKnight13]

The only thing I noticed is the lack of choice of Scientific/Military outpost. There is plenty to do on each planet it seems to me. Actually come to think of it, the Military/Scientific choice is superseeded by choosing which people to thaw out from cryo. You only get that choice after EOS, so basically the Military/science outpost choice on EOS was about choosing which personnel to bring out from the freezer.

Why not allow both if the new frontier has hostiles abound? That doesn't make sense to me since real life would dictate that one has guards to protect the scientists from being killed or kidnapped.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

After 60 hours of killing endless armies of Kett, finally:

Spoiler

I get to Kadara and there are MILKY WAY ENEMIES. Wow, what a fucking revelation. Why did they wait so long?
Why couldn't some exiles be present on the other planets?

(Very minor spoiler)

 

[M76]

Why not allow both if the new frontier has hostiles abound? That doesn't make sense to me since real life would dictate that one has guards to protect the scientists from being killed or kidnapped.

This is just some dumb sjw shit i think. I choose military too, because it would've been insane to bring scientists onto a hostile planet full of kett. We saw what happened to the previous outposts. Yet the game doesn't do anything but shit on you for that choice, even 20 hours later.

 

[Frraksurred]

I'm starting to get over saturated with the game. After getting to kendros (is that the correct name?) and realizing I have to do almost exact sama tasks as I did on voels and eos. Until now I was all positive, but now something snapped in me and I realized I'm no longer interested in turning monoliths on using the exact same routine I used many times before. Plus on this map the forward station locations are completely bonkers there are areas where there are no forward stations for miles, forcing me to drive back and forth for long minutes to do some menial tasks. And there is a huge cave with one exit which has no option to fast travel in or out of.

I was describing this same feeling several pages back. I've done all the loyalty missions now, found all the other Arks and am headed into the final couple of missions (I think). It does get 'a little' better, but still sticks to the same basic formula. I had a take a night off and then focus on some story stuff to break the monotony. The game is good in many ways, but like I've said before, it really needed more time. For me it is still mediocre with a few intermittent flashes of brilliance.

 

[Ranulfo]

Heh, the next generation has arrived:



The fishtank at the end with a special ending after that.

 

[CrimsonKnight13]

This is just some dumb sjw shit i think. I choose military too, because it would've been insane to bring scientists onto a hostile planet full of kett. We saw what happened to the previous outposts. Yet the game doesn't do anything but shit on you for that choice, even 20 hours later.

Yep, I'm going wait for the completely patched up & DLC laden version when all is said & done. I think its best for my sanity & respect for others here. I don't want to get the game & tear into it since its not the game I'm looking to play at this time (which is sad since I had hoped it'd be more).

 

[dragonstongue]

I fell through floor once when I tried jet pack on a mountain side, thankfully game didnt say "you died" and just respawned me

I am quite enjoying this game, did Eos, Kandra, Aya etc at 44% complete, still tons to do, maybe it can be a wee bit bland at times, but still enjoy it, havent touched architect worms yet, tried 3x, got owned all 3x. first time was EOS triggered where the worm spawn am like OMFG!, died, tried going back but mission was bugged, so is the put enhanced shield on vehicle thing.

Have not touched multi-player as of yet, maybe at some point I will but, no real interest to do that, not overly fond of all over the damn galaxy, nor the occasional game locking up when teleport back to the tempest so I learned to save before I do that, leave it 30 secs, then go to tempest just in case.

The between planets teleport thing is much too long IMO though looks really nice, they could have toned it back a wee bit. either way love the game, even if some of the animations are awkward at times, especially the pathfinder female version eyes being all goofy

 

[dragonstongue]

lol this place is hostile in nature in the main base....oh yeh and that was one thing I not liked much, have to go all the way back across universe to talk to same, instead of on tempest type thing

 

[st4rk]

Still enjoying the game. Aya is such an awesome city, very detailed.

I played some multiplayer too, pretty damn fun. I'm surprised it's actually challenging, which is nice, you can't just mindlessly run around like Rambo. Within 2 matches I had to mute someone because it's 2017 and people still can't figure out how mic feedback works, holy shit.

 

[Dan_D]

Anybody else notice the quality drop-off after Eos? Outposts matter less, they're smaller. The military/science choice appears to be completely gone and totally irrelevant even on Eos. There's fewer quests, less people to talk to. It also seems like the rest of the game focuses on Eos more, people on the Nexus refer to it more than anything else. Eos' vault is also way more fleshed out. The planet map itself is also the largest as far as I can tell.

Definitely an unfinished game.


It's an issue only at high levels. Eventually your guns will do 2x-3x more damage than abilities, making them useless. You don't need to cast a spell when you can do much more damage by shooting a bullet. In the end, you will only use them to proc weapon damage buffs.

I can only speak to the normal difficulty as that's what I'm on right now. First off, there is a shit ton of ability bloat in the game. Some of the tech, combat, and biotic abilities are essentially redundant. They more or less do the same thing as another ability in the same skill tree effectively does. None of the abilities are going to kill an enemy outright in most cases. Your biotic and tech abilities are designed to work in conjunction with your weapons. You can't judge the combat by the standards of the old games, despite them more or less training you to think a certain way in a Mass Effect game.

It doesn't seem as though they wanted you to run around and use an ability only build where you had a handgun or SMG as your only real weapon to keep the weight down. In this game it seems as though they designed the powers and abilities to supplement your weapons, not replace them. This is probably a design decision more than anything. It keeps you having to stock up on ammunition and switch weapons when you run out of ammo for a particular gun. The key here is not to throw tons of points in a lot of redundant skills and to maximize your weapon damages and use a couple of powers with it. For example: Open with concussive shot to drop their shields and knock them down. Incinerate to burn their armor and while they are getting up you can hit turbocharge and destroy them with your assault rifle. I can also hit them with overload, biotic charge and then use a shotgun at close range. Tactical clock with a sniper rifle or shotgun can be incredibly powerful as well. There are lots of other possibilities to but taking out enemies without shooting at all just really isn't one of them.

If you stick to a soldier only build relying primarily on guns everything feels like a bullet sponge. (Outside of using really powerful sniper rifles or shotguns) If you try biotic or tech attacks only, shit feels similarly difficult or takes a very long time to kill. When using both abilities to compliment each other shit does much more quickly.

The only thing I noticed is the lack of choice of Scientific/Military outpost. There is plenty to do on each planet it seems to me. Actually come to think of it, the Military/Scientific choice is superseeded by choosing which people to thaw out from cryo. You only get that choice after EOS, so basically the Military/science outpost choice on EOS was about choosing which personnel to bring out from the freezer.

Effectively, the military vs. scientific outpost decision is a PR decision at the most. If you opt for one vs. the other it changes the Angaran perception of the Initiative somewhat. They don't trust you as it is and it's hard to earn their trust. If your outpost is a military focused outpost, then it's harder to make the "we are settlers" claim. The outpost on Eos is the first established outpost and it's treated differently than the others. You return to it more often than the others. This is also a decision that may be a larger factor at a later date.

I suspect the first outpost sets the "theme" of your colonization, probably to come into play at a later stage.

so with strike teams, has anyone gotten to do gold > 50%? How have you managed that? seems to be an incredible amount of mission grinding (like everything in this game) for buffs. Missions also seem to have gotten much stingier after you start.

Indeed it does. So far it's largely dialog. Because the game is so new and so large, people haven't seen all the variations that are possible yet. All the romance guides for example state you can't romance PeeBee if you fuck her with no strings attached. That's not true. It's likely the reviewers that said that did shit to piss her off after the fact. There is one choice you make that almost certainly precludes further romance as a possibility. I made another decision that pissed off the Krogan, but it seems to have been mitigated by everything else I did for them. Had I pissed them off with both sets of decisions, things would have been rougher. In fact, you can't establish an outpost on Eledaan if you make the wrong decision on the first major point.

That would mean that all skills are worthless and you may as well make a character that is 100% weapon based as it is the only thing that scales from a damage perspective.

It's not true. It's just that the balance of the game is different than what it was in the last two. The way it's currently balanced, powers are helpful but you can't do a M3 Predator + Tech Damage build and have shit die this century. I've not thought about every possible build combination but it seems that you are better off evolving the two bottom skills for each of the three discipline paths and then picking no more than two or three abilities to evolve in those trees. You want to then add those to your profiles. That's what I've done and the combat is super easy with rare exceptions.

It's a different game than the earlier ones and people just have to learn that, and grasp how it works. The combat's very different despite seemingly being the same. Those similarities to the other games are more superficial than anything.

I'm starting to get over saturated with the game. After getting to kendros (is that the correct name?) and realizing I have to do almost exact sama tasks as I did on voels and eos. Until now I was all positive, but now something snapped in me and I realized I'm no longer interested in turning monoliths on using the exact same routine I used many times before. Plus on this map the forward station locations are completely bonkers there are areas where there are no forward stations for miles, forcing me to drive back and forth for long minutes to do some menial tasks. And there is a huge cave with one exit which has no option to fast travel in or out of.

I've got news for you, every RPG and MMPRPG has you doing a variation on the same basic task types over and over again. That said, over time you don't have to solve puzzles on all the monoliths. Effectively, once you've scanned enough glyphs, SAM / Ryder can activate the monoliths without the drama. The whole point is to make those worlds inhabitable and doing that means "Quaid, start the reactor" er.. monoliths.

The real problem with this game is that there is too much shit to do. The way people tend to play these things has you going off and doing these side quests as they pop up or clearing out a planet like Eos or Voeld before you move onto the next one. Don't fall into that trap. Also, pay attention to the story. A lot of the side quests have their own little stories attached to them. Some of them, many of them actually tie into the main story and flesh it out. Without getting into spoilers, it does alter your perception of the game's story. I'm on the last mission and I'm not seeing the weak writing (outside of some dialog) that a lot of people are. The pacing of the game is off, but I felt that way about ME1. It's because I'd complete all the side quests, mine all the resources, complete my map of the galaxy, etc. before diving into the meat of the story. ME1 had this over with in a few hours. This game will take days to do that. It makes the game feel flat, so you need to space that shit out some. You don't have to worry about the time or triggered lockouts of earlier games.

You will also want to drive around and quickly establish your forward outposts. It sucks and it's dull but once done it makes questing much easier. Especially later in the game where you get an additional quest or two per world. I will agree that not being able to fast travel out of some of the cave systems or bases can be annoying. Fortunately, this sort of thing doesn't really happen that often in the grand scheme of things.

ugh, multiplayer is just a cluster. you start out way too weak, enemies do too much damage, grinding takes forever. then actual bugs, sound just stops, buttons that don't work, game just shuts down on joining a match, no regional matchmaking, and so forth.

The "problem" is that they made the game gear dependent. Damage is level + weapon level + weapon based. In ME2 and ME3, all weapons were basically viable for the whole game. In ME3 the unlocks were largely cosmetic. The weight impact of a higher level weapon, or lack of weight made them worth unlocking and the extra damage was nice. It didn't feel essential. This game, like ME1 forces you to get better gear to deal with enemies. So your character level and weapon level have become important. They've kept this intact with the multiplayer to artificially increase the grind time.

Why not allow both if the new frontier has hostiles abound? That doesn't make sense to me since real life would dictate that one has guards to protect the scientists from being killed or kidnapped.

The way the game presents the problem has to do with the limited amount of resources they have. The Initiative does not take everyone out of stasis immediately upon arriving in Heleus. They only have so much food, so much housing etc.

After 60 hours of killing endless armies of Kett, finally:

Spoiler

I get to Kadara and there are MILKY WAY ENEMIES. Wow, what a fucking revelation. Why did they wait so long?
Why couldn't some exiles be present on the other planets?

(Very minor spoiler)

Spoiler: Do you even story bro?

It's very simple: All the human enemies are exiles from the Nexus uprising or criminals thrown off the Nexus at a later date. There wouldn't be that many human enemies in the Heleus cluster to deal with.

I fell through floor once when I tried jet pack on a mountain side, thankfully game didnt say "you died" and just respawned me

I am quite enjoying this game, did Eos, Kandra, Aya etc at 44% complete, still tons to do, maybe it can be a wee bit bland at times, but still enjoy it, havent touched architect worms yet, tried 3x, got owned all 3x. first time was EOS triggered where the worm spawn am like OMFG!, died, tried going back but mission was bugged, so is the put enhanced shield on vehicle thing.

Have not touched multi-player as of yet, maybe at some point I will but, no real interest to do that, not overly fond of all over the damn galaxy, nor the occasional game locking up when teleport back to the tempest so I learned to save before I do that, leave it 30 secs, then go to tempest just in case.

The between planets teleport thing is much too long IMO though looks really nice, they could have toned it back a wee bit. either way love the game, even if some of the animations are awkward at times, especially the pathfinder female version eyes being all goofy

The worm will kill you no matter what you do to the Nomad. Avoid it. That's also not the same as the Remnant Architects.

Still enjoying the game. Aya is such an awesome city, very detailed.

I played some multiplayer too, pretty damn fun. I'm surprised it's actually challenging, which is nice, you can't just mindlessly run around like Rambo. Within 2 matches I had to mute someone because it's 2017 and people still can't figure out how mic feedback works, holy shit.

Its definitely harder than ME3's multiplayer was.

 

[jiminator]

Have not touched multi-player as of yet, maybe at some point I will but, no real interest to do that

I'd suggest that you may want to do strike teams. MGSV5:TPP had something different. You have a crew member to go do bronze/silver/gold missions. if they succeed your SP character gets loot. So, free shit
They level up on missions. You also get points to recruit more or buff attributes or use for MP stuff.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Spoiler: Do you even story bro?

It's very simple: All the human enemies are exiles from the Nexus uprising or criminals thrown off the Nexus at a later date. There wouldn't be that many human enemies in the Heleus cluster to deal with.

Spoiler: Kadara spoilers

I know the story's explanation. It's still stupid. Limiting enemy variety for half the game? Especially when there's only 2 enemy factions to begin with.
They could've easily avoided that by saying the exiles formed their home base on Kadara but pirates spread to other planets to smuggle resources. Voeld, for example, is a "water mining" planet. They even make a point to tell you that your outpost is used by Ice Runners.

They could easily put pirates there and explain they are smuggling ice for the exiles on Kadara.

The crew actually DOES mention that pirates are inhabiting Eladaan. But for some reason they avoided Eos, Voeld, and Havaral?

Being able to justify a bad decision doesn't make it a good decision. It's like if someone were to say the facial animations are bad because the characters spent 600 years in Cryo and their faces are still cramped up or whatever. "It's not a bug, it's a feature" springs to mind.

 

[Dan_D]

Spoiler: Kadara spoilers

I know the story's explanation. It's still stupid. Limiting enemy variety for half the game? Especially when there's only 2 enemy factions to begin with.
They could've easily avoided that by saying the exiles formed their home base on Kadara but pirates spread to other planets to smuggle resources. Voeld, for example, is a "water mining" planet. They even make a point to tell you that your outpost is used by Ice Runners.

They could easily put pirates there and explain they are smuggling ice for the exiles on Kadara.

The crew actually DOES mention that pirates are inhabiting Eladaan. But for some reason they avoided Eos, Voeld, and Havaral?

Being able to justify a bad decision doesn't make it a good decision. It's like if someone were to say the facial animations are bad because the characters spent 600 years in Cryo and their faces are still cramped up or whatever. "It's not a bug, it's a feature" springs to mind.

Really? I think a lot of you guys who are playing this game are rushing through it, space barring conversations or have Alzheimer's disease.

Spoiler: Allow me to refresh your memory

You have to keep in mind that Eos and Voeld are virtually uninhabitable until the Remnant Vaults are activated. Eos is largely radioactive and all the humans who tried to settle there DIED. It's basically the same with Voeld. It's too damn cold to support human life and you have to ask why there are no human enemies on those planets? Your statement concerning Havarl makes more sense and it's a harder one to explain away. Again, humans aren't terribly abundant in the galaxy and those are big planets. Not seeing humans on every planet is not a stretch of the imagination. Humans might have avoided it because of the large Angaran resistance population as well. Humans aren't found on Aya either until the Tempest arrives.

I agree the enemy variety is lacking but adding more humans on planets to fill that gap isn't a solution.

 

[NoOther]

I am also playing at 4k, but with no scaling. I may try some because while frames are not bad (45 to 60+), the cutscenes stutter badly and exiting menus stutters badly.

I keep forgetting to check the frame rates, but I did notice it did seem to run significantly slower this weekend when I was playing, even with my 2xTitanXPs.

I'm glad you're not getting any bugs. I haven't been so lucky. The characters often do the 360 turn around when entering the conversation cutscene. Sometimes there are more than one of them (I was talking to Drake while his twin kept clipping through us both walking back & forth). Sometimes I start a conversation with a crew member in one room and magically finish it in their designated room (ie;PeeBee in the escape pod). Then when I go to leave, the door is closed... the door that is only closed when there is new story dialogue with that character. When I open it, I telephoto to the outside of it and the new cutscene starts.

Finally got this one yesterday. I have seen it in other Bioware games as well. This seems to happen when you complete more than one trigger objective before talking to the crewmate. And it doesn't have time to reset the character after your initial conversation. I also got stuck in a loop yesterday where if I selected any option other than the bottom right, it just kept repeating the conversation over and over. After a quit and reload this went away.

 

[M76]

Effectively, the military vs. scientific outpost decision is a PR decision at the most. If you opt for one vs. the other it changes the Angaran perception of the Initiative somewhat. They don't trust you as it is and it's hard to earn their trust. If your outpost is a military focused outpost, then it's harder to make the "we are settlers" claim. The outpost on Eos is the first established outpost and it's treated differently than the others. You return to it more often than the others. This is also a decision that may be a larger factor at a later date.

Yes it seems so. But it's handled very badly here. It would be complete lunacy to build a purely scientific outpost on a planet a few clicks away from the huge kett base, when the kett already destroyed two previous outposts. That choice would be good to measure of your intent if it was offered on a planet with no or only minor kett danger. This way all it serves is to test your sanity. And quite frankly I assumed that choice would be offered for every outpost, and I had hoped that it would be possible to build more than one outpost on planets. When I decided that it would be a military outpost I already decided that the next will be the science outpost after we will be able to get a foothold and guarantee safety for scientists. But sadly that option was never presented to me. Basically this is a slap in your face political correctness test. And I'd wager there are no ill effects or drawbacks for choosing science. But you're constantly dragged trough the mud for choosing military when it is the only sane choice.

Indeed it does. So far it's largely dialog. Because the game is so new and so large, people haven't seen all the variations that are possible yet. All the romance guides for example state you can't romance PeeBee if you fuck her with no strings attached. That's not true. It's likely the reviewers that said that did shit to piss her off after the fact. There is one choice you make that almost certainly precludes further romance as a possibility. I made another decision that pissed off the Krogan, but it seems to have been mitigated by everything else I did for them. Had I pissed them off with both sets of decisions, things would have been rougher. In fact, you can't establish an outpost on Eledaan if you make the wrong decision on the first major point.

That reminds me of Beyond: Two souls where most reviewers pissed all over the game for how linear it is, when they didn't realize that there are dozens if not hundreds of choices in it, but they're so seamless that they all thought their solution was the only thing possible. That's why I prefer reviewers who hold off and actually play the game properly before making their voices heard.

It's not true. It's just that the balance of the game is different than what it was in the last two. The way it's currently balanced, powers are helpful but you can't do a M3 Predator + Tech Damage build and have shit die this century. I've not thought about every possible build combination but it seems that you are better off evolving the two bottom skills for each of the three discipline paths and then picking no more than two or three abilities to evolve in those trees. You want to then add those to your profiles. That's what I've done and the combat is super easy with rare exceptions.

I agree, just because the skills are less powerful than weapons doesn't make them useless. They're for support and not for basing all your tactics on them.

I've got news for you, every RPG and MMPRPG has you doing a variation on the same basic task types over and over again. That said, over time you don't have to solve puzzles on all the monoliths. Effectively, once you've scanned enough glyphs, SAM / Ryder can activate the monoliths without the drama. The whole point is to make those worlds inhabitable and doing that means "Quaid, start the reactor" er.. monoliths.

Do you honestly believe that this is the first RPG I played? Repeated tasks are fine if the task itself is satisfying to do. Like for example clearing out bases, blowing up scarecrows or activating outlook points in Mad Max. There is just enough variety in them to keep it interesting for a dozen or so times. In ME:A as far as I can tell there is zero variety in the way you activate monoliths. And the task itself "scan glyphs solve sudoku" is hardly satisfying to do. It becomes tedious after the third monolith.

The real problem with this game is that there is too much shit to do.The way people tend to play these things has you going off and doing these side quests as they pop up or clearing out a planet like Eos or Voeld before you move onto the next one. Don't fall into that trap.

There is no such thing as too much shit to do. The problem is that most side missions are still very basic fetch and grab or fetch and scan here.

Also, pay attention to the stor. A lot of the side quests have their own little stories attached to them. Some of them, many of them actually tie into the main story and flesh it out.

That's actually hurtful. I play the game for the story. Of course I pay attention. But giving fetch quests stories doesn't make them better. It's not the story I hvae a problem with it's the lack of variety in gameplay and the tasks I need to do. Which is basically walk here, or drive here, scan or pick up something, you get jumped by enemies, then walk back to the one who gave the task mission complete. And this despite the promises of no fetch quests and complex side missions. I don't think they realize that a fetch quest is not just a quest where you go somewhere to bring back something but every quest where you "get objective from NPC, go someplace to do sg, then return to NPC for reward"
Of course there are a number of quests that are better, but not nearly enough. Maybe 20% fetch quests and 80% else would be a good place for me. But right now I think it's the other way around or at least 66-33.

You will also want to drive around and quickly establish your forward outposts.

You don't say. There is no point in driving to every outpost first, you can establish them when you need to go near them for the first timebut on this map there are no forward stations at all in the north western part.

The "problem" is that they made the game gear dependent.

The problem is that I waste a ton of materials and resources building a weapon, only to have to build another from it. In ME1 it was no problem you could find or buy them. But here you have to collect a number of resources to build a weapon, then feel it all go to waste as you research the next level of the same item.

Spoiler: Do you even story bro?

It's very simple: All the human enemies are exiles from the Nexus uprising or criminals thrown off the Nexus at a later date. There wouldn't be that many human enemies in the Heleus cluster to deal with.

You didn't even understand the question yet you're at his throat.
The question is not where did the enemies came from. It's why was there none of them at any of the other planets before kadara? It makes no sense for all of them to be on that single planet.

 

[Armenius]

Does anyone have the Prima guide here? Curious if it has an objective map for each planet. Hunting down all the "Additional Tasks" is a pain.

I would buy the eGuide. It's only $10 and includes interactive maps if that is all you want.
https://www.primagames.com/games/mass-effect-andromeda/products/mass-effect-andromeda-eguide

Christ, people still buy the Prima guides, and they are actually useful?!?

They have gotten massively better over the years. The quality of the physical copy and quality of the authors have increased tremendously. They're still not worth $30-$50, though. I would shop around to find a good deal on them, or just buy the digital version for $10.

There are some definite balance issues that need to be addressed in both single and multiplayer modes. The assault rifle class is relatively week and only has an advantage in an encounter where you are boxed in with lots of enemies and you need the ability to sustain fire with fast target switching and little reload time. Shotguns are overpowered. I can use incinerate, biotic charge and then a couple of shotgun blasts from something like the N7 Piranha will kill almost anything regardless of its defenses. The Piranha holds a few rounds and fires very quickly. While other shotguns are more powerful, it holds more and reloads faster than most if not all other shotguns. I've had great success getting in everything's face, filling that face with buckshot and then using Biotic charge on cool down to keep my shields up. I almost can't die doing this.

I've found it quite a bit of fun to change up my play style from time to time. Sometimes I use tactical cloak + a heavy hitting shotgun like the Dhan to destroy enemies. Sometimes I head shot everything without needing to take any real fire at all. Other times I use the Revenant with the vintage heat sink mod, turbocharge and throw in incinerate plus concussive shot on cool down. That too shreds enemies and is decent for groups when your skills are placed wisely.

Games with a lot of weapons frequently need rebalancing multiple times after launch. ME3 had weekly or bi-weekly updates for this for a long time. Battlefield and other shooters frequently need this too.

Melee, Vanquisher, and VanGod are currently the only viable and effective approaches to Gold in the multiplayer. It's bad. Way worse than I remember ME3 being at launch. If you go full detonation spec you still won't see health bars move at all when detonating power combos. Power combos are basically only useful for crowd control. Hopefully there will be good things announced regarding balance in both the MP and SP coming tomorrow. Until the game is balanced out I have a strong urge to go back and play ME3 multiplayer instead.

Probably the only time I've seen a black hole in a video game.
View attachment 20960

Elite: Dangerous has them, just without the artistic interpretation going on in MEA.

So I stacked Tech Regen rate on literally everything, I think my total was like 120%. Turns out there's a regen cap and using a stopwatch to time them, it seems to be 60%. After that, you get nothing. Disappointing, I was hoping they could recharge instantly.

I noticed Biotic skills have inherently higher recharge rates (Charge). I'm going to see if they have a different cap.

Vanguard gets 125% cooldown reduction on Charge, but it looks like you still have to wait 1 second. 8 second base recharge down to 1 second is an 87.5% reduction.

 

[SighTurtle]

I would buy the eGuide. It's only $10 and includes interactive maps if that is all you want.
https://www.primagames.com/games/mass-effect-andromeda/products/mass-effect-andromeda-eguide

They have gotten massively better over the years. The quality of the physical copy and quality of the authors have increased tremendously. They're still not worth $30-$50, though. I would shop around to find a good deal on them, or just buy the digital version for $10.

Its heartening that Prima guides are still here. Thanks for the info, gotta consider it now.

 

[NoOther]

The real problem with this game is that there is too much shit to do. The way people tend to play these things has you going off and doing these side quests as they pop up or clearing out a planet like Eos or Voeld before you move onto the next one. Don't fall into that trap. Also, pay attention to the story. A lot of the side quests have their own little stories attached to them. Some of them, many of them actually tie into the main story and flesh it out. Without getting into spoilers, it does alter your perception of the game's story. I'm on the last mission and I'm not seeing the weak writing (outside of some dialog) that a lot of people are. The pacing of the game is off, but I felt that way about ME1. It's because I'd complete all the side quests, mine all the resources, complete my map of the galaxy, etc. before diving into the meat of the story. ME1 had this over with in a few hours. This game will take days to do that. It makes the game feel flat, so you need to space that shit out some. You don't have to worry about the time or triggered lockouts of earlier games.

I think what they tried to do is get gamers more involved with the story by adding side missions which flesh out the story. The problem is that people get so tired of doing the side missions, they speed through them and don't pay much attention to the dialogue or what is going on, and so they miss out on the depth of the story. I have to admit all the side missions are starting to get a bit much. I almost quit playing yesterday cuz I was getting sick of some of the same tasks and then missions that spawn a bunch of places to investigate that are irritatingly difficult to travel to in the nomad at times, even with the enhancements I have put on it.

The worm will kill you no matter what you do to the Nomad. Avoid it. That's also not the same as the Remnant Architects.

I haven't had much luck with the worm or the Remnant Architects. Any suggestions on that?

 

[Dan_D]

Yes it seems so. But it's handled very badly here. It would be complete lunacy to build a purely scientific outpost on a planet a few clicks away from the huge kett base, when the kett already destroyed two previous outposts. That choice would be good to measure of your intent if it was offered on a planet with no or only minor kett danger. This way all it serves is to test your sanity. And quite frankly I assumed that choice would be offered for every outpost, and I had hoped that it would be possible to build more than one outpost on planets. When I decided that it would be a military outpost I already decided that the next will be the science outpost after we will be able to get a foothold and guarantee safety for scientists. But sadly that option was never presented to me. Basically this is a slap in your face political correctness test. And I'd wager there are no ill effects or drawbacks for choosing science. But you're constantly dragged trough the mud for choosing military when it is the only sane choice.

I agree completely. The logical choice was to build a military outpost. However, I could tell that I might have to think of my choice in PR terms despite how insane it sounds.

That reminds me of Beyond: Two souls where most reviewers pissed all over the game for how linear it is, when they didn't realize that there are dozens if not hundreds of choices in it, but they're so seamless that they all thought their solution was the only thing possible. That's why I prefer reviewers who hold off and actually play the game properly before making their voices heard.

Agreed. I could tell a lot of the reviews were rushed now that I've been through most of the game now. One reviewer talked about planet scanning as though you could do it the way you did it in ME2 and ME3. He mentioned the icon in the corner letting you know when you found something. He pointed out the auto-save icon. Really, the planet scanning sucks but it's not the level of suck we had in earlier games. The reviewer didn't even understand the mechanics of it and judged it based on a limited understanding of the mechanics.

Do you honestly believe that this is the first RPG I played? Repeated tasks are fine if the task itself is satisfying to do. Like for example clearing out bases, blowing up scarecrows or activating outlook points in Mad Max. There is just enough variety in them to keep it interesting for a dozen or so times. In ME:A as far as I can tell there is zero variety in the way you activate monoliths. And the task itself "scan glyphs solve sudoku" is hardly satisfying to do. It becomes tedious after the third monolith.

I don't think we are talking about the same things here. I'm talking about a lot of the side missions. As for the Monoliths, they do activate in two ways. You always scan glyphs. Some use the Sodoku puzzle and some don't. You can also spend the credits on Remnant decryption keys and forgo the puzzle if you wish. I know it isn't ideal but you don't have to activate monoliths on every planet you reach.

There is no such thing as too much shit to do. The problem is that most side missions are still very basic fetch and grab or fetch and scan here.

Getting back to the side missions, I think they hide enough of them in the guise of a story to make them palatable. They are busy work designed to inflate the game's time to completion. The problem is that if you do enough of that flat content for long enough it tends to overshadow the better parts of the game experience.

That's actually hurtful. I play the game for the story. Of course I pay attention. But giving fetch quests stories doesn't make them better. It's not the story I hvae a problem with it's the lack of variety in gameplay and the tasks I need to do. Which is basically walk here, or drive here, scan or pick up something, you get jumped by enemies, then walk back to the one who gave the task mission complete. And this despite the promises of no fetch quests and complex side missions. I don't think they realize that a fetch quest is not just a quest where you go somewhere to bring back something but every quest where you "get objective from NPC, go someplace to do sg, then return to NPC for reward"
Of course there are a number of quests that are better, but not nearly enough. Maybe 20% fetch quests and 80% else would be a good place for me. But right now I think it's the other way around or at least 66-33.

I think BioWare thinks that throwing conversations and story context around fetch quests will prevent us from noticing that these are in fact fetch quests. BioWare did a better job with this in this game than they have in the past. Many of these quests involve you figuring out what happened to this piece of gear or that shipment. Occasionally investigating a murder or something like that. There is a fair number of them with variety but you do have way too many fetch quests all the same. I feel less like a UPS man than I did in ME2 and ME3.

You don't say. There is no point in driving to every outpost first, you can establish them when you need to go near them for the first timebut on this map there are no forward stations at all in the north western part.

Fair enough but I will go somewhat out of my way to establish these before I need them. Quests open up later and there is nothing worse than getting a quest later in the game and the marker being in the one place you never put a forward base.

The problem is that I waste a ton of materials and resources building a weapon, only to have to build another from it. In ME1 it was no problem you could find or buy them. But here you have to collect a number of resources to build a weapon, then feel it all go to waste as you research the next level of the same item.

You can buy most of the weapons and gear. What you can't buy you will generally find somewhere by looting enemies or opening cache crates. There is a benefit to crafting the weapon and adding extra mod slots and augments. Many of the reviews said you had to craft the N7 armor from the previous games. I simply found the shit at the vendor. I do agree that it sucks we can't simply upgrade a weapon we already crafted. This is especially bad because resources for crafting are fairly limited. My advice is to figure out what weapons you like and craft better versions of those. I wouldn't bother crafting them until you can access level V weapons. I'd craft again at Level VII. You'll be clear of the game by that point. You won't need higher levels again unless you do a new game+.

You didn't even understand the question yet you're at his throat.
The question is not where did the enemies came from. It's why was there none of them at any of the other planets before kadara? It makes no sense for all of them to be on that single planet.

Don't be overly dramatic. I'm not at anyone's throat. He also didn't ask a question. My point still stands. You don't find anything but Kett and Remnant on Eos because it's fucking radioactive. It barely supports any life before the monoliths are activated. Without the Nomad and it's shielding you don't last very long on the surface of Eos or Voeld for that matter. You find Angaran enemies on Voeld in addition to Kett and Remnant. You don't find human's, Asari, Krogan, Turians or Salarians on either planet because you have access to the best equipment and resources of the Initiative while the Exiles scrounge for food and build makeshift armor. Again, those planets do not support those life forms so Is this really that hard to understand?

Now, your argument concerning Havarl isn't valid for one reason. It's a planet that I believe is suited to Quarian and Turian life, not Humans, Asari and Krogan. The only exiles you'd see there would be Turians. Turians probably make up the smallest portion of exiles given the Turian culture's predisposition towards service. There could be some pirates or raiders who brought food for them but the heavy Angaran and Remnant presence makes it anything but a soft target. BioWare could have put some enemies there anyway for whatever reason but a ton of them wouldn't make much sense.

 

[Dan_D]

I think what they tried to do is get gamers more involved with the story by adding side missions which flesh out the story. The problem is that people get so tired of doing the side missions, they speed through them and don't pay much attention to the dialogue or what is going on, and so they miss out on the depth of the story. I have to admit all the side missions are starting to get a bit much. I almost quit playing yesterday cuz I was getting sick of some of the same tasks and then missions that spawn a bunch of places to investigate that are irritatingly difficult to travel to in the nomad at times, even with the enhancements I have put on it.

I couldn't agree more. This is why I've had to space them out. I've done a pretty good job with that and now I only have a few of them left before the final push to the end.

I haven't had much luck with the worm or the Remnant Architects. Any suggestions on that?

Again, leave the worm alone. It's invulnerable to your weapons. As for the architects, you need to use cover, be careful of getting trapped by cover and pick a weapon with either the vintage heat sink mod or simply use a weapon that holds a lot of ammunition. Incinerate and biotic charge, or combo detonations to the legs when they are vulnerable will get it done. After each leg phase when the heads vulnerable you attack that but you have to be careful of his attacks. Dodging and dashing around will get you through it. The hardest one is on Voeld. You have to stick close to the heaters and recharge your life support between attacks.