Active abilities in ME:A (Updated)

No, it's try it before bashing it. You have been lazy in reading my post if it's the only thing you retained from it. ME3SP was easy as hell, even on insanity. It was silver difficulty compared to ME3MP, and I'm not even one of the elite ME3MP players who soloed Platinum with a lvl 1 Quarian engineer, far from it. As far as MPers go, I'm pretty average.
Having more active powers was possible in previous installments since the kind of powers available to Shepard were limited by his class, and even then, three active powers were definitely sufficient to complete the games. The level of attention a player can muster is an uncontrollable variable that shouldn't impact the gameplay design. On the other hand, the number of active powers sufficient to complete a game, and how much these powers impact the game difficulty under normal or stressful circumstances is a measurable one. Because of the classless system, and presumably the access to a wider range of powers, MEA needs to be balanced differently than the previous ME games. Considering we'll have weapon mods and ammos being tied to the weapon instead of the character, we'll most likely have mods for the armor as well (like shield amplifiers and whatnot), and the ability to respec whenever without class restrictions, we don't know for sure how many passive powers we'll have either, all of this will already mitigate, if not trivialize, the game difficulty quite a bit. Just thinking about a build with Arc grenades, Reave and Biotic Charge makes me shudder, if these powers work at all like they do in ME3MP and are present in MEA. I can think of some more OP builds, just going with some of the available powers in ME3MP. If we add even more powers, like Marksman, Snap freeze and cloak to that roster of three, all of which on individual cooldowns, I wonder if there will be even a point in having enemies in that game, however bullet-spongy they are.

Like it or not, this game isn't only a RPG, it's a TPS as well. It has been since ME1, and a big part of what has endeared this franchise to many of us, not necessarily you, I realize, but many of us do enjoy that aspect of the game. I don't see what's so bad about wanting solid and fun gameplay in that area. So this isn't only FPS logic, this is also gameplay logic. Too much power and the devs will need to compensate the difficulty differently, aka having enemies become bullet sponges with increased speed and damage. But there are limits to doing that before the game becomes just tedious. Putting a low limit to the number of active powers is a tool amongst others to ensure the difficulty levels can be properly balanced.

At this point, changing the number of active powers would mean re-balancing the whole game, which is far more work than polishing animation and sound designs. Gameplay design is locked on very early in the making of a game, because it will impact everything, arguably more so than even the story. You seem to only consider the problem from a RPG standpoint, try considering it from a gameplay one too, unless you'd rather just disparage contradicting opinions. And yes, I'm happy I can be lazy and that there's seemingly less chance I will get wrist tendinitis, again, because of possibly poor mouse/keyboard port. One needs to enjoy the little things in life.

I return the question, what is your problem with a limited number of active abilities, if it's perfectly doable like that? Especially if you customize your build to be as effective as possible. And again, what is the limit of active powers then? Why not have them all then? I have 111 buttons on my keyboard, 6 on my mouse. Arguably, I could bind all the game powers, save for the keys necessary for movement and reload. The power wheel would serve the same purpose for console. Why limit yourself to eight? It's as arbitrary as three or sixteen. But you can measure the effective minimal number of powers to complete a game and use it to balance the game difficulty. 

I already do it, and I don't see how you'll be limited in playstyle when you can basically change your loadout on the fly. Actually, with the classless system, I suspect the playstyles will be more varied than ever. Power limitation is a necessity for balance. 

Developers make a gameplay change, people freak out and act as if putting restrictions on players isn't something that devs have been doing for decades. The world keeps on spinning.

Not true. It's forgetting that what made some weapons so good were powers, Tactical cloak and Marksman being the most guilty of these. The alternative to what you say is making weapons useless, so that it's justified to have more powers to compensate crappy weapons and ammo. Balancing is not easy work and imply limitations of some sort anyway. They chose to limit the number of active powers to do that, most likely because with ME3MP, they had evidence of good balance and fun gameplay with a large variety of weapons, amps and powers for all kits, even if many were less effective than the Gethfiltrator. They could have gone as you say, without powers at all, but then, that really wouldn't have been Mass Effect anymore and that whole discussion would be moot.

So, I can see you understand the value of balancing. If you can have tact cloak + prox mine + marksman with a Piranha on the same build, what do you think will happen? Add, oh, I don't know, incendiary grenades and Overload, and we get absolute pandemonium. Welcome to godhood.

I agree with you that bio/tech combos didn't offer as much dps as some weapons, but the solution isn't to give 'casters' more powers (while still wielding those same weapons, by the way, unless you suggest coming back to weapon limitations). The solution is to make these combos more effective (the solution I favor), or to decrease the DPS bonus some powers gave weapons, if you're really looking to even everything across the boards. Personally, I don't mind less effective builds and weapons, because I find them fun to play, like the Vorcha engineer or Volus vanguard.

Another solution would indeed be to lower weapon's dps, but to still reward skill with a nice damage bonus for headshots, but I suspect many wouldn't be too happy to find some of their favourite weapons have been nerfed to oblivion.

It won't be MP-only in MEA. We've already seen it in the gameplay trailer.

If you fail to see how OP that made Shepard, I guess discussing balance is pointless.

With that, I'm off to play my off-meta, less than effective, but still fun to play main Junkrat.

Yes, it's pointless, because in a SP game, balance is less of an issue. You can make powerful or challenging builds based on how YOU want to play.

When you add MP to the mix, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Everyone has to be special, so no one is.

To provide a direct interface between the brain and the tool?

There are some cutscenes that show Shepard working with the omnitool as if it has some sort of external interface, but there are other times when Shepard uses the tool without punching any buttons or otherwise manipulating an obvious interface.



Can you shoot a gun without a trigger or type on that computer without a keyboard? No you can't.



One implant, multiple configurations.



One that has memory limits and can only load so much software at a time? Or one that needs to load different OS or drivers, depending on what the user might want to do with it.



Honestly - I have to wonder if trying to play a pure (or primarily) caster class is going to be viable with the longer cooldowns.

If you can't control squadmate powers, you're not going to be able to use combos as frequently as ME3 afforded.

So - it may be that the powers do significantly more damage than they have in the past, or work very differently.

No, you don't - so long as you're willing to stop fighting long enough to holster your weapon, hold up your omnitool arm, look for the buttons to push and push them, right in the middle of battle.



No, I don't have any technology that provides a direct interface between my brain and some tool, so I use the commonly provided interfaces when I interact with tools.

Triggers on guns and keyboards on computers are both commonly used, standard issue interfaces to use their associated tools. Even now, some computing devices have touchscreens instead of keyboards.



What's the highest number of tech powers the omnitool could support in the trilogy?



Those comments weren't necessarily directed at you.

Ability restrictions plus longer cooldowns plus no access to squadmate powers plus jet packs spell a pretty big change in combat mechanics and dynamics for MEA.

Not to mention we already know what the interface is:


Computers: Haptic Adaptive Interface 
Advances in computing have done away with traditional input devices like keyboards. Instead, modern input peripherals are usually holographically displayed in front of the user at a height and angle for ergonomic ease. Machines that use this interface detect a user through a microframe chip in the user's glove that "keys in" to the computer. Once a user is accepted, motion accelerometers in the user's gloves match his hands' location with that of a proportionate but smaller "mirror" set of controls inside the computer itself. As the user presses against the holographic field, force-feedback in the glove kicks in, giving a slight resistance. A person can feel his way through using a touch-screen that isn't actually there. A simple toggle switch on the back of the hands allows the glove to be turned off when not in use.

Haptic interfaces have become so common that some individuals undergo cybernetic enhancement surgery to have the accelerometers implanted in their fingertips. "Going bareskin" is the sign of a committed computer user who no longer has to fuss with putting on gloves or cleaning them with alcohol wipes to get rid of the clammy-hand smell.