ME3MP and MEAMP: How do they compare?

They never quite nailed the gunplay and I was so heavily disincentivised using powers from the launch state - never really got into them again. Powers and shooty stuff sucked at launch so what did average player do? They punched their way through. Which is fun, but it gets old eventually.

Variety. If everything kinda sucks you tend to stick to the more powerful things and that limits the variety and will to play around with silly ideas. We're talking about guns taking insane amounts of headshots to kill unprotected mooks. Right away from day one. On bronze. Eventually you become proficient with punching and bronze and silver become kinda too easy. You go to gold and keep clinging to the powerful stuff. Because you want a gun that can actually kill a redshirt with one headshot. The funcking slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow levelling dint help either. Not at all. What a stupid idea.

Feedback. Let's just say Fiend. The embodiment of totally opposite to ME3MP. The silent sync killer. Not that I experienced it often. I was too busy dodging it and running away because guns and powers wouldn't harm it meaningfully anyway and punching was too dangerous. Many people praised the Hunter vision in ME3MP for the added awareness - I never needed that - the audio hints enemy gave was just enough. Footsteps, comchatter, reload sounds - that all was much "closer" to the player experience. And in a meaningful, useful way. I played countless solos just for the atmospheric experience.
Or that Krogan solo for more nether instincts. Instead we got some weird character quotes. I mean they were cheesy in DAMP, too, but actually in a funny way - at least they were good for a couple laughs on the forum.

I guess they turned up the enemy speed at some point? When the Outlaw became unfun to play against. I mean we all rolled eyes at geth bombers and dragoons, at least they were creative answers to all too cheesy playstyles.

MEAMP could never decide whether camping is the way or not. Just look at the poor vanilla engineer. It has a static turret that gives advantages while you hump it but beware you wanted to relocate, because we give you half a minute of CD. Eventually it was changed for the better.

And ammo priming. I stopped bothering. I mean I might have primed enemies a couple of times. Only to find out my detonator was on a long ass CD or the priming effect was just not telling the truth.

MEAMP had interesting elements, but it didn't really come together. It appears to me it was intended to maximise hours spent by grinding than actually appreciating good gameplay. Now what good is good gameplay if it doesn't earn microbucks? And the state at release has severely tainted it. The bullshit that was piled on later steadily added to the disincentive to play further.

If you like spamming powers or guns that do damage (and also jiggly bumbums), just play ME3
If you like mobility (and playing without sound), try MEA

+1  I totally forgot about those jiggly bumbums


ME3MP:   I relished hearing the Krogan on my team say:  "Headshot!" when I got one


MEAMP:  I am tired of hearing:  "Stoooopid shields"

No need to do that, the game does that for you often enough. (I get it every single day, twice already today, didn't even manage half a game after restart before it kicked in again).

Sublimestest Hipshake ever:

I've stopped playing the multiplayer, and when I finish the campaign this week I'll be moving on to other games in my huge backlog.

I've had a lot of fun playing the MP so far, and that's not the reason I'm giving up. The crappy decisions of the past few weeks had something to do with this...

I think MEAMP is superior at it's core than ME3MP, and if it had gotten as much love from the devs/suits/players as it's predecessor, it would have been better in most ways.

I like the jetpacks, the increased freedom of movement, the maps, most of the kits, and the setting. It also has the same level of addictiveness as ME3 to me.

I also think automatic cover is better, but the implementation in the game is worse, since no over-cover grabs, and only protected against the direction you're facing.

In case of jetpacks I do have to agree that the lack of variety in dodging animations is a waste. But at least Krogans and Turians can dodge now...

The HUD, the lack of [ANY]-key, and individual cooldowns are all improvements IMHO.

Graphics is obvious because of "5 years". But ME3 wasn't exactly state-of-the-art to begin with, and aged horribly now. It was also on the most over-used engine of last console generation, making a lot of games looking a bit similar.
Ofcourse graphics isn't what counts most (though I'm a graphics-whore).

EDIT: FFS I forgot the most important improvement: Ponytail! And the different faces on all the helmetless humans in general.



But even with all these improvements they failed to completely re-capture the magic of ME3:
The lack of unique powers, DLC-packs, weekend events, and on-going support probably account for most of the issues.

Surely they still kind of support the game but it's obvious it's clearly not on the same level as ME3. I think the lack of resources (and money) is the main reason we don't get DLC-packs, not because people are to dumb to download them...

The 1.09 manifest-explosion wasn't the brightest idea they had, and a flying kick in the face of "completionists".

So ME3 is better in the ways that it's more "complete". A bit like the green screen GameBoy being better than an Atari Lynx or something...


There's more but one can only write so much in half an hour on a smartphone...

The real, core underlying problem is that weapons are designed ASSUMING you will put mods on them. i.e. their accuracy and damage are shitty without the mods. Weapons SHOULD be fine without mods, and BETTER *with* mods. But that is not how Bioware designs.

What I don't like about MEA:MP
MEA:MP actually makes me motion sick, between the "front row of the movie theater" unchangeable perspective, and aggravated by the jetpack, and by the HUGE status icons (that can't be turned off or docked someplace less annoying?). It's unplayable for me!
PC, low res, 17" monitor. Tried a bigger monitor but that was worse. On the best PC in the house, i5/8GB (Maxxed)/SSD, it takes 1min 45secs to load an MP mission, so the team is in wave 3 by the time I get inserted. Takes over 45 seconds to get to the results screen after the mission.
I can play ME3:MP all day, no problems. Frost engine is too much for my PC, apparently; but all other games play fine.
Not that ME3:MP is flawless; but I did not find anything in MEA:MP that I liked better than ME3.
Only played a couple dozen missions--one a day--was all I could take, and then gave up. Still play ME3:MP most days.
Not a fan of "hopping down the bunny trail," jet packs all the way (but armed with high-tech weapons). Jet pack is fine to get up/down, but makes no sense to me for combat or for use with aimed weapons.

#CobraMissileModsNeeded!

I'm sure they tried, but couldn't get them to do anything except reduce the damage output, or, in the rare occasions that they had coffee first, they could increase the radius without nerfing the damage more. In the end, they decided that they'd lost enough fans already, and decided to NOT officially launch this feature, despite it being as complete and functional as most of their ideas.

With regard to the lack of cooperation in MEAMP, I am truly interested to hear how you think this wasn't a thing in ME3MP...