What makes Mass Effect 3 multiplayer so good?

For me it's the intense brevity of matches, 20 minutes of non-stop visual/auditory sense overload...

Discovering unique character combination after all these years...

Getting into random match, not knowing if there gonna be toxic troll, tryhard, competent player with interesting kit, bsner, friend...?


+ popping heads and meleeing, which feels by far the most satisfying of any games I've ever played (with Captain Blood on pal's Atari being my first ever game experienced, for time reference).

For me what makes ME3 MP good.

I always liked the skill ceiling in ME3 MP. There's so many things you can always improve to make yourself a better player as some examples:

Knowing how the faction you're facing operates, what are their strengths and how can you combat yourself against those strengths, to make it more favourable for you, and hopefully not result in a team wipe.

Having map knowledge, knowing what places are best for you to pick your fights, know where the enemy can possibly flank you, where are the enemies most likely to spawn.

Reload cancelling, cancel out long reload animations such as the claymore, and javelin as the obvious.

Improve your aiming with whatever weapon, getting better aiming for the head or just not miss as much in general.

Waking up every morning, knowing the sad truth every time admiral hackett gets on the comms and says there's no time for an aerial bombardment

And a huge one is getting continuously better with any character that you use. I think this takes the longest out of anything because it's not something you can't simply just rush through in a day and all of a sudden be very proficient on a character.And there's a lot that you can do, such as how do the powers work, do I like the power evo of 4A over 4B, do I wanna go for a 66606 or a 66660 build, how can I best effectively use this character to fight against any faction i'm facing, how do I stop dying to these scumbag phantoms , how can I stop getting flanked by these dragoons and their BDSM whips, how do I avoid these scions that hit hard like ravagers on steroids. So many things, which takes a lot of time, dying a lot of course, and experimenting seeing what works and what doesn't.

Also doing all that in all honesty can be very mentally draining in my experience. Sometimes you just wanna turn your brain off. Have fun, in general, roast some teammates in hazard reactor, blow up your teammates with the possessed aboms by any means possible even if it includes firing a cobra missile and making them donate an ops pack or a medi gel to the salvation reaper/cerberus army to recover from the explosion . Even if they rage at you on mic, just make an excuse and say you got indoctrinated through the screen and was forced to aim a cobra when you're near a possessed abom.

There is no sequel
There is only Mass Effect 3

Simply put, it's fun. Most games are friendly with no need to rush for loot drops.

Also, can drop in for a 20 min quick game and there is usually some PUGs around in Gold even after so many years.

ME3MP is in my opinion the pinnacle of a co-op horde mode game, I've not played anything that captured the same long term enjoyment. I believe it's the amount of different builds you can play that greatly change how you play through a match, the huge list of weapons and skills you can use, the decently complicated mechanics (I still need to look up certain interactions to remember what is additive versus multiplicative and the smaller nuiances of some skills) and a huge skill ceiling! If you told a new player that it's possible to solo platinum difficulty they'd think you were joking. And speaking of difficulty, it's something that isn't addressed in places like this filled with BotB veterans, this game is actually very difficult. In a gaming scene increasingly filled with "streamlined experiences" finding something tough as nails but well balanced isn't common.

And finally the key that brings it all home, it's the successful implementation of meaningful team work, setting up combos, the massive advantages of focus fire, having someone to tie up boss units while you chew up the wave points by destroying low rank mobs etc. the list goes on. We all talk about good and bad PuG's, that's how impactful the team work is in this game that it makes or breaks your enjoyment of a match.

I dabble in a bit of Warframe from time to time, and it lacks that feeling you get in ME3MP when a team clicks.

My 5 cents on lag, it's really hit and miss, my only issue is when the only lobby I can land in is a super laggy host, and I start rubberbanding if I walk near another player. Living in New Zealand I've learned to simply never equip certain things outside of host like spike thrower or GPS etc. having to wait sometimes 400ms before the projectile appears is beyond infuriating.

because its not Andromeda

And I thought I was old

Mass Effect is more than a game, it is an experience. Once you dive deep into its story, and its universe, it becomes part of your life. And multiplayer allows us to share that experience, and invite our friends to this universe. Just as single player characters, companions, squadmates, antagonists, species, are so much unique and different in story telling, personalities and design, that's how much multiplayer characters are diverse. Every character has more than one build, and a mix with different weapons brings so many different playstyles onto the table, and each of them even has a small story lore description. This diversity continues between enemy factions as well, and even within a single enemy faction. The enemies behave differently, have different weapons, powers, attacks, movements... They have bosses, crowd controllers, damage dealers, sneaky backstabers, debuffers ... When you place this kind of diversity into a match backed up with its deep single player core where birth of this co-op came from, it is impossible to have a bad time with the game, especially when you run side by side with your friend, who loves mass effect just as much as you do.

It's a bit of an imponderable why it's so good but it is. Partly because TSents are awesome and partly because playing a krogan as a melee (alright, I just hit everything ok) is hilarious. Great destressor.

You know, I've not been over to this board so much for a while but came back to see how Anthem is getting on and here you all are - DRIVING ME BACK TO IT.