Hrulj's Mass Effect ideas thread

This is just a thread for me to jot down some of my own ideas about Mass Effect, how it can be rebooted and how to continue it from there. What changes are needed and what worked out. It may be a bit in disarray since it will be done organically, as ideas come to me. Also feel free to push forward your own ideas on what you would change for a Mass Effect reboot- I'll keep the OP updated. For now let's start with a few key changes.


Removal of Bikini battle costumes:

It was one of the most cringiest and saddest changes for me trough Mass Effects development. The First Mass Effect felt like an actual combat formation. Armor seemed protective and functional, be it light, medium or heavy. Many people objected that there were not enough differences between various pieces, that it simply consisted of various protection values and some color changes. Which is somewhat valid of a critique. However one that is easily rectified simply trough more varied armor design. And even in the lack of variety there was change. Tali's suit changed from purple to blue, to yellow, to red, and various other colors. Colosus looked imposing on every character. People wore helmets when in space or non-atmospheric environment. It added both a sense of immersive realism as well as professionalism. Then came Mass Effect 2. Various characters went into vacuum environment wearing nothing more than a mask covering their nose and mouth, leaving eyes, ears and skin exposed to space. In real universe skin would start to raise in boils as water within and in the tissue underneath starts to evaporate. The water in the eyes would start boiling away. Due to having a supply of oxygen the typical death by asphyxiation would not occur, however the exposed areas of skin would suffer an extreme loss of temperature, leading to hypothermia and death by freezing. The process of pressure equalization without a suit would rapture ear-drums and cause pressure sickness. And unfiltered radiation would cause cancers and sickness in those exposed to it. 

The trend of bikini armor continued in Mass Effect 3 for various characters. The secondary problem of said armor changes is inherent sexism. Everyone knows why the change was made so I won't spend time discussing it further. And last problem is the feeling of progression is absent. When you started Mass Effect 1 you felt the progress for both yourself and the team-mates as they got better and better armor. That feeling is completely absent and is purely cosmetic and limited to 1-2 changes of clothes, some of which are cringe as hell 



Removal of thermal clips in their current form:

Mass Effect will never be Call of Duty. It will never be Battlefield. Nor any other FPS. The thermal clips as they are were made explicitly to move Mass Effect more in the shooter genre, over-riding the lore established in the first game. Somehow, changing from being able to reliably fire tens of thousands of shot to 80 from an assault rifle was considered progress in the game lore as well. Even Conrad Verner points out the ridiculousness of it. That is not to say we need to remove them completely. The removal of the old system also removed numerous skills from engineers and ways to counter the enemy. Overheating their weapons as an engineer was no longer possible. Instead I would change the overheat system to be more punishing if it happens, but give the player a limited, non replenishing number of thermal clips as a get out of jail free card when in difficult situation. Something to ration and use wisely.