Harder Game Than ME2 Insanity

of course, but i played ME2 way more and still had issues in places as opposed to ME3. 

anyway, we shall see.

I believe the problem with the difficulty modes is not so much the difficulty per se, but the amount of potential upgrades which were handed down to the player characters, particularly if they installed add ons to the game. Insanity is indeed pretty difficult if you try it with your starting gear without ever installing a mod or upgrade to weapons and armour. So, yes, you can shoot a husk dead with a single shot from the sniper rifle into its face, but that's not so problematic if you're using a Mantis, given the time it requires to ready it again after every single shot.

On top of that, the extended amount of content in the add ons to the game allowed for a higher level, even if it was a freshly created character. (Imported characters don't count as far as the difficulty is concerned.)

I could imagine a difficulty mode where you cannot use mods, only starter weapons without upgrades, armor is purely decorative and adds no boni whatsoever and you cannot level up beyond level 15 or 20.

On top of it I am always for more sophisticated control scripts for enemies. They might adapt to tactics which the player characters use, be more mindful to find the right moment to make a push and then do it aggressive and coordinated. Enemies like Phantoms should adjust their evasive patterns to the patterns in which player characters attack. (There were enemies in Unreal which did that.) I don't think their lack of powers makes the enemies weak, but their being predictable and outrageously stupid does. There are examples for more sophisticated enemies throughout video games; not in MMOs, of course, but if the player's computer does the computation for up to ten or twenty enemies at any given time, there should be a lot more possible.

What I really like to be scaled down however, is the respawns. It annoys the hell out of me if make a tactical smart move to get the enemy into cross fire and then end up in the middle of respawn straight out of nothing. Or that you end up in the middle of a respawn because your simply too successful and moving faster than the devs anticipated. I really hate it to kill the last Marauder with a cool melee attack, only to find myself in the cross fire of four others which just happened to pop out of nothing.

Incoming shuttles, like with Cerberus troups are alright. Enemies popping out of nothing where it makes no sense at all are not; there should be a meaningful entry which the player can consider while choosing their tactics.

Enemy rogues / rage demons could and would steal your potions ( medigels) in dragon age 2. I was thought it was brilliant. I hope bioware would consider it.

Grant enemy immunity to certain type of damage.

One way to make insanity difficult to cheese could be that bosses are able to analyze your teams strength and procedurely create resistances. I.e. If your team is teach or biotic heavy make boss tech or biotic resistant.

I agree.. Grissom was the only highlight for me.. and it was only because it was my first ever playthrough, with a non-optimized Soldier at the time.

I think trimming down the ammo availability would've gone long way for ME3 though.. but not sure that's the main problem.

Xen you magnificent bastard.

I'm going to try that next time I try to play an adept and then remember I'm terrible at adept three missions in.

Eh. Not in my experience, but the first time I did Arrival, I was playing a sentinel. So I pretty much got that achievement by accident. It's very easy to replicated -- less so on the squishier classes, where you have to DEFEND A CORNER WITH YOUR LIFE.

The first time I played Grissom, I got smeared into bloody pulp repeatedly. So I do tend to perceive it as harder than Arrival, since I've absolutely never waltzed through it without dying at all. I think the big difference is that by the time you're doing Arrival, Shepard is usually leveled up and you're comfortable handling the controls, whereas Grissom smacks you right out of the gate.

Empirically, the hardest fight is probably "The One and Only", but Grissom sticks in my memory as the most rage inducing. Probably because it's actually part of the game that you need to beat. And it absolutely took me to the cleaners way too many times.

I tried to make a list of suggestions for changes in this thread, as well as a list of potential problems with those to focus the discussion a little. I tried to list everything without bias, even points I personally consider to be rubbish.

• There should be more difficulty modes with a finer granularity.
• Enemies should be smarter (employ a wider array of tactics and switch faster between them) in high difficulty mode.
• Enemies should be tougher (more health/armor/shields) in high difficulty modes.
• Halo skulls type system (whatever that means).
• Permadeath (but sophisticated autosaves) and/or no in-combat revival for team mates, no medigel.
• A dynamic difficulty system that constantly rates the player performance and adjust the difficulty based on previous ratings or upon death in case of a reload.
• Reduce the number of available skill points and lower the rate at which powers can be used.
• Have enemies use medigel and the same powers as player (including disabling ones such as singularity).
• Set a hard level limit and limit equipment options on higher difficulty levels.

Potential problems:

• The number of players desiring a higher difficulty is statistically insignificiant.
• Difficulty depends not only on player skill (and the computer they use, lag, screen resolution, mouse sensivity obviously has a great impact on difficulty), but on things like character class.
• Smarter enemies are bad, because that would require enemies on lower difficulty levels to be unnescessarily stupid.

I was surprised to hear on here that ME2 insanity was considered so difficult. I suppose, by the time I experienced it I had already played ME1 on all the difficulty levels (except Casual) and ME2 on Normal and Hardcore so I figured it was just a natural progression.

I didn't find it easy, don't get me wrong, but it was still do-able.

To be honest, I didn't notice that ME3 Insanity was easier than ME2 Insanity. I just reckoned I was getting better at this stuff

The main reason I went for Insanity (and stuck with it throughout the run) was to get the achievement. I am one achievement away from having the full set on the trilogy right now (on Xbox) and I would have been really annoyed if Insanity had been too difficult for me to cope with.

So, while I don't mind if they want to make a difficulty level too hard for me to cope with I would be really annoyed if they tied any achievements to it!

I think one reason people find ME3 insanity easier is because the skill trees are much more compacted and simpler.  In ME2, it is possible to really wind up with squad builds that just don't really help Shepard out very much.  In ME3, I found that pretty much any squad build I made was helpful.  Also, I think most people have access to the N7 weapons... which can give you some really powerful weapons right at the start of the game.  I also find I'm fully leveled up much earlier in the story progression of ME3 (unless I'm just trying to blow through the absolute minimum number of missions (perhaps that's because I've not yet tried an ME3 insanity run without an imported ME2 character, although I've also never started an ME2 insanity run without an imported ME1 character either... and the game does give you some level points to start out with in both cases.)

About the difficulty progression and re-imported characters:
Experiences from re-imported characters don't really count. With a newly created character you are typically struggling to get all the equipment you need unlocked and in the early fights you even have the mod-slots of several of your weapons open. When you re-import a character you're basically saying "I am god", you can't really complaint about the level of difficulty when you decide to be god. There was a fundamental flaw that importing a character from the previous game you naturally start out being too powerful.

There is a bit of a twist in the logic; the more intensely you play, the more rewards and the more easy the game becomes. More skills, more levels, more weapons from add-ons, more money. At the same time your skill as a player increases, which would make you desire a harder game, but through all your achievements the game has become easier.

What would enhance the game severely would be meaningful rewards that do not make combat easier, and meaningful rewards for accepting limitations, such as using starter weapon without mods only. (If there were non-combat rewards for combat achievements that in turn may bring casual players up on the barricades, however. Romances would be an absolute no-go.)


About changes to the better in Mass Effect 3:
I believe, in terms of tactical variety, Mass Effect 3 added something really important:

Fragmentation grenades for enemies. As a sniper it changes the play style severely, you need a lot more space to defend a position and you are forced to switch positions more often.

Turrets of the Cerberus engineers primarily worked to my advantage, since I could always hack them. I still tried to take engineers as soon as possible because too many turrets might pose a problem, but if it's only one here and there I usually say "Thank you".

Smoke grenades cut in both ways.
In the early game I found them really annoying.
But once I did have a thermal scope they worked to my advantage.

But I do believe that features such smoke grenades, turrets and fragmentation grenades did add a lot to the tactical diversity of the game, even though it may be circumstantial whether or not it made the game more difficult.

A way to increase difficulty which has not been named yet:
Increase the number of enemies in any one group. Suppose a group early in the game, nothing fancy just two cannibals and a marauder. If the difficulty was higher you might add an additional marauder, four husks and a ravager. In the extreme you might take care that there is always at least a brute, banshee or harvester in any one reaper group, either by adding them or by replacing a mid-level enemy such as a marauder or ravager. Changes for other types of enemies would work accordingly.

I am really concerned now. I have just found out that there are no classes, basically we get to pick whatever abilities we wish. Not only that, now each ability is on it's own cool down time; meaning if you use one biotic you'll be able to use another biotic right after. I can live with no more class restricted abilities, but separate cool downs for every ability? That balanced combat. Where will the difficulty come from now? I doubt from AI. I got a feeling we're going to see a cheap DA2 difficulty model, where there's mobs and mobs of enemies, minus the jumping out of the sky part. I am so confused right now. Will insanity ever be difficult?

At this point I'm really hoping the option of going on missions alone will be considered.

The last stand in Arrival was good, but if you go in with a fully-upgraded, post-campaign Shepard, it can be kind of a cakewalk. My Shep's a Vanguard with energy drain as the bonus power. I almost felt like I could fight Object Rho itself. As for Tela Vasir, I thought she was ridiculously easy. The music was great and the mission overall was fun. 

DA2 definitely had some tough fights though.