Should've called it "Mass Effect: Farming"

I think what you wrote proves my point.  The grind to incrementally improve the gear was really tedious.  There are all sorts of different ops and flashpoints to get to a certain level, then more ops to get slightly better gear.  All sorts of hoops to jump through.  And some of those ops took over 2 hours to do!  And failure meant no drops.  Getting disconnected on gold here is nothing in comparison.  No one I've talked to playing SWTOR ever said that the system was well-implemented.  It was just referred to as "the grind".

In any case, I enjoyed SWTOR's PvE content; never cared for the PvP.  But I much prefer the combat in ME3 and ME:A MP.  It's the right mix of first/third-person shooter + space magic.

Evidently not.  I played with several groups that were more casual.  I remember hours of grinding to do Dread Masters (or Dread Lords?), failing, and trying it the next week.  Some of the ops were doable without much problem, some were very difficult.  With an experienced group with nearly maxed gear, it probably was a cakewalk, but it was all very tedious.  Have to remember the sequence and order to do things for each op.  Rinse and repeat.

You can say that is somehow less grindy, but it felt more like a job than a game later on.  Glad you enjoyed it though.

Well, it's a very round about way to play JE2...

Underlurker before the nerfs was my timesink. Also my first op. Bestia, Master & Blaster and Many Tank battles also could be a pain, particularly when you went higher than SM.

Nice. Very nice.

Well, basically any day now. The most important thing that needed getting done was syncing up my powerline adapter with neighbour to escape the dread of wi-fi, so I can finally go back to hosting and starting matches solo (important for those Platinum hours where no one joins right away). Only thing left is to reinstall ME3 on C-Drive, as my D-Drive with all my stuff failed (arm stuck on platter, need to acquire torx to self fix). I'll make sure it gets installed today and let docsteely know.

Yeah, I'm starting to suspect that both of you are either misremembering things or just making stuff up.

Underlurker and Master/Blaster were part of the 3.0 patch (Shadow of Revan expansion). But there had been bolster for SM ops since 2.8, which meant that gear didn't matter at all for any SM ops. You could literally walk in naked. Obviously, you were supposed to have a few pieces of SM gear before stepping into a HM instance, but it always was a question of knowing the encounter mechanics first, and gearing up second. Conversely, full HM gear would not save you from a wipe if you didn't know the script.

Much like when some people did Plat runs with level 1 characters and common guns in ME3MP, equipment matters less than knowledge of the game. Failing to clear the content can hardly be considered "a grind". It's simply learning. The grind was doing the same ops once a week, week after week... but compare to repeating the same match (APEX) several times a day in MEAMP, because they took away the bonuses for U/U.

Also, SoR raids were, outside of EC, the hardest in the game. It would have been... ill-advised to earn your raiding stripes there.

They've been overhauling crafting with just about every major patch, but at what point exactly did they make it impossible to just up and buy SM crafted MH/OH/implant/ear/relics off GTN? So much for grinding. And Legacy gear was available starting with 1.2 from vendors in the capital planet, and a bit later (1.7) from the Gree event (including offhand). It was at no point "almost impossible to get".

At any rate, it's a pretty pointless conversation, as I'm not going touching either SWTOR or MEAMP with a ten foot pole now. Enjoy not grinding as bad as in a MMO, I guess.

You missed a prime opportunity there to say something like:

Play, or play not.
There is no grind.

Sure is bro, sure is.




(that's what "content" actually looks like btw)

Feel free to quit playing anytime. Honestly, I do not understand people's obsession with maxing every character and weapon. I won't even touch the vast majority of characters and weapons if I continue playing for the next 3 years. The main objective is not collections, it's having fun. If it isn't fun, you really should find a different game.

They are blocking poeple to get high level kits and weapons that they do not have as yet.

Is this true? I already have all rare weapons maxed. I thought the special variants start dropping once everything else has been maxed (except URs, I still don't have three UR characters...).