Mass Effect: Andromeda Combat Combo Mechanics

I like the notion of expanded combo mechanics, but your suggestions strike me as a little too game-y. How does completing a combo make our character suddenly better at reloading? How would it turn us invisible? Extra power dynamics are certainly welcome, but ideally, they would come from a more grounded ruleset. The upcoming Divinity: Original Sin II supposedly has a number of combos triggered by powers and environmental hazards, like electrocuting water, creating acid mist, lighting oil, etc. Fairly standard combinations, but I prefer it to out of place randomness, and I've always been a sucker for environmental effects (especially in shooters). Mass Effect definitely needs a more intricate power system, though. The prime/detonate procedure on its own is painfully dull, and that's the only mechanic that keeps Mass Effect's powers from being a collection of ho-hum direct damage and stun attacks.

To throw in a suggestion of my own: I've been playing a Pathfinder campaign as a Psion, which has a pretty cool casting dynamic. Rather than simply having a number of spell casts per day, the Psion has a pool of psionic points which they an spend on casting any power. On it's face, that just sounds like plain old casting with a different limiter mechanic, and it is. However, the super neat bit is: Psions can spend extra psionic points to augment the power they're casting. Admittedly, most of those augmentations come in the form of "your power can now affect two people!" or "that mind spell can now affect animals!" which aren't exactly the coolest of perks, but I think it's a neat dynamic nonetheless.

I suppose that system performs similarly to metamagic, but I think spending a greater reserve of psionic energy seems closer to biotics than metamagic. While I know it doesn't sound like a combo system (it isn't, of course), any mechanic that adds another layer of choice to power usage will serve equally well. For instance: Biotic charge could be split up into two powers. Default fire (tapping the ability button) would just teleport the player to a location and alt fire (holding the ability button down) would teleport them, deal damage, and refill the player's shields. Default fire would obviously be cheaper, either triggering a shorter cooldown or, if BioWare wanted to be real interesting and give Biotics a limited number of per-encounter biotic points, costing fewer biotic points.

There's no way in hell BioWare would actually do anything like this (I don't think I've even played a CRPG that has a metamagic-like system), but I feel like the idea might have legs.

The DAI Fade Cloak de-cloaking blast was nice.

It can be used as a stand alone power, or in combo.

It could work in MEA, if implemented correctly into the otherwise OP Infiltrator classes.

I'm thinking more melee oriented..

Given how Mass Effect''s powers work, I don't think that kind of combo scheme would be effective. Power chains work well in well in fighting games or spectacle fighters (Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, etc.) because every attack is 1:1 with your button press. There's no difficulty remembering where you are in the combo and no protracted casting sequence. Spectacle fighters also have the added benefit of interesting combo results. Kick-Kick-Jump-Punch won't just give your next attack a bit more damage; it'll do a jumping grapple power slam (or whatever). Moreover, that jumping grapple power slam may be the most optimal way to kill a certain enemy type or it might be a way to remove the shield from an otherwise invincible enemy. The point is: combos in fighting games offer actual utility, not just miscellaneous buffs.

Mass Effect or other RPG with similar combo mechanics (Dragon Age is the only one I can think of off the top of my head right now), on the other hand, work on a prime/detonation scheme because abilities have cooldowns of a few seconds. In the time it takes to chain 3-4 powers on a single enemy, you could probably just kill them with plain bullets. 

If you can trigger the combos by using these powers in sequence on any enemy, then I still don't think the idea works. Effectively, you're encouraging players to use powers to complete combos than situationally against enemies.

And none of that changes the fact that these buffs seem to come out of nowhere. "throw-warp, warp-throw" giving more shield strength isn't just a "bit gamey." It just doesn't follow. As a player I can understand that freezing an enemy and then shattering them will cause massive damage and that combining a instability power like warp with any other power is going to cause an explosion, but if I get more shields from some combination of warping and throwing, I won't understand the relationship.

How will you visually inform players that their next power will do 20% more damage, and can you be certain that players will know they got this buff because of a specific combo? With powers being as situational as they are in Mass Effect, I just can't imagine the average player would immediately make that connection. Honestly, I think the only way most people could figure it out was if they looked in the game's manual, and if you have to look in a manual to just understand a simple game mechanic, I think that isn't very good design.

I can't imagine–nor would I want, for that matter–Mass Effect with spectacle fighting mechanics at its core. However, I could imagine a potential Biotic "Monk" class that achieves a similar result. All their attacks could be incredibly weak, low-to-zero cooldown attacks that needed to be chained in order to be effective. It's base powers could be something like: biotic punch, prime, and biotic uppercut. None of these would deal much damage or cause much stun on their own, but they could be easily combined to create different effects. Punch-Punch-Uppercut could send enemies flying upwards; Punch-Prime-Punch could explode enemies backwards; Prime-Uppercut-Prime could lift enemies up and keep them in a short stasis where they take extra damage from Punch; etc. The lynchpin of the class though is that it can cast instantaneously. Without that, combinational combo systems just don't work very well.

Actually I would have liked for ME:A to pull a page out of Divinity Original Sin book: have different environmental status effects that influence each other, and make them interact with each other rather than having a primer and a detonator like in ME3. In DO:S you could fill a field with poison and ignite it, causing it to explode and cause a massive amount of fire and poison damage to who were caught in the blast, you could create a pool of water and electrify it to stun everyone that was standing in it. Make something similar, maybe like cryo blast + incinerate will create a pool of water, overload will electrify it and cause a stun, or use biotics to shape the environment, if there is a fire, you could use biotics to fling it at the enemy and so forth.