Active abilities in ME:A (Updated)

You do realize balance exists as well against AI, do you? If your character can wipe a room in two fucking seconds, our enemies will need to become bullet-sponges (yay! so looking forward to such a scenario) just to absorb your raw DPS in powers alone. There's no tactic or strategy involved at all. Not even a modicum of skill with aiming is required there. That or they need to nerf the powers to the point they'll just be tickles, if you want to have that many powers. I have already explained why limits are a good thing two or three pages ago, I don't feel like repeating myself. I wonder if you're able to hear it out with an open mind anyway, you want what you want so much that you won't consider how being so powerful affects the game for people who enjoy a challenge. Personally, that effectively kills all the FUN.

Why would one recreate Sheploo's classes? They're so bloated with overlapping, &/or useless powers. Having a lot of powers like in ME2, & ME3, (5+1+Passives in ME2, you have 51/70 points to spend so it's more like 3+1+Passives, & 6+1+Passives+lolfitness in ME3 you have 181/189, IIRC) with universal cooldowns made it so using 3 powers having good synergy in your class is better than trying to use all of them. ME1 Powers, aside from Immunity, Lift, Singularity, Decryption, Weapon powers, & one point in Medicine on Insanity, are bad, or a waste of time, because they did jack all for damage.



Having a 3 power set on independent cooldowns is far better than having 4-7 on a universal cooldown any day of the week, & twice on sundays.

Except you're willfully 'forgetting' we'll have individual cool-downs and access to all tech/bio/soldier powers to build a kit this time around. Things we never had before. Balance was somewhat more manageable in previous games (although I do think they failed big time with ME3SP regarding balance at higher levels) thanks to universal cool-downs and being restricted to the powers of your class.

Have at it. The whole discussion on balance started there: bsn.boards.net/thread/2616/active-abilities-me-loadout-3?page=22
But the most relevant of my posts is probably on this page: bsn.boards.net/thread/2616/active-abilities-me-loadout-3?page=26


You realize you say, in one breath, you never said you were against limits, then say you'd love them removed... . Read my posts about balancing, and then tell me which magical solution you can come up to balance a game with an OP build such as: Arc grenades->Snap Freeze->Overload->reave->biotic charge->Flamer. That's only 6 powers, and you want the double of that. No matter how clever the AI is, I can't see it having a solution to counter such an onslaught or raw power except for putting lots of armor and/or barrier on every single enemy, even husk-types. Just the first power was enough to nuke a spawn in ME3MP...  The only other way I can envision is to severely nerf all these powers, making weapons yet again, the main source of DPS.

Besides, how did you come up with the idea that the system forces you back into classes to be effective? It doesn't at all. You can have a mix of the three branches, and be perfectly effective. Cryoblast or some other tech primer->Biotic Charge/Throw->Flamer/Marksman, assuming powers and combos still work the same as they did in ME3.

Your idea of fun is my idea of boring hell. When I'm forced to gimp myself to get challenged, it means I can never go all out. It's boring. It was lame to spec out of Biotic charge for a vanguard, or Tact cloak for an Infiltrator just to feel challenged, and I only ever used three powers on any class. I didn't put points in the powers I knew I would not use. ME3SP Insanity wasn't challenging, in that respect, it was boring, so was DAI where the only combats where I woke up and paid somewhat attention to were against dragons, certified bullet-sponges that they are. So who should BW cater to? My idea of fun or yours? I hope that with that exemple you can understand how fun is a highly subjective thing. Besides, the way I see it, player's creativity has actually been enhanced. You can now create builds that were impossible previously.

And mashing the same 3-4 buttons over and over to win sounds boring as hell to me, regardless of difficulty level.

But hey, Insanity is so easy for you that you can do it in your sleep, so I guess the opinion of this scrub doesn't matter

No, you're allowed to feel whatever you want, and express it as you wish, just as I hope I'm allowed to. I don't remember having once looked down on you, and I don't get why you insist in feeling so. However, if your aim there is to discredit my arguments by painting me as the selfish leet player who can't be bothered with other's opinions, then try better. The bottom line is that we all want to have fun with this game, but we all have different ideas of how to get it, because fun is a very subjective thing. Basing an argument purely on a subjective perception makes it very shaky at best, that is what I was trying to demonstrate.

Now I have no idea how the combat balance will really end up being. It is a more delicate matter than everyone seems to think it is, even in SP. Too hard even on Easy/Casual difficulty, à la Demon Souls, and many players will be left out of the fun. Too easy, even on Insanity as ME3SP was, and many other players won't find their fun either. One player base isn't better than the other, and in an ideal world, both should be able find enjoyment in the game they purchase, so it needs to be carefully addressed and evaluated for each level of difficulty. To achieve that, compromises will need to be done, and limits put in place.

Universal cool-downs and the class system are two limits that existed in previous games, put in place to help balance the games, with more or less success depending on the games. Those two limits are no more, individual cool-down in particular means weapon restriction based on 'weight' is effectively out too. So we need something else. Hopefully, the AI will be better, but it's only one part of the solution. So, either the powers are nerfed, or we have less active powers than we used to. Both solutions can work. One allows for more active powers, with the trade-off that powers in general will be less potent. The other allows for powers to truly be impactful. As long as a reasonably good balance, without too many bullet-sponges, can be found, I'll be happy, although I have made no mystery that I find, very subjectively, the latter more fun and convenient, but hey, I can understand others preferring the former.

Because the entire weight of your argument seems to be "combat is too easy" (often mentioning how you coast right through Insanity)  which, imo has FA to do with the number of powers at our disposal.  Limiting player choice doesn't make combat more challenging, it makes combat more BORING.  Prime.  Detonate.  Shoot until CD ends.  Repeat. 

You want the game more challenging, tell them to make the enemies smarter, not the characters dumber.


If I spent skill points, or whatever to unlock a power, I want it UNLOCKED and ready for use.  

I actually think individual cooldowns are better.  At least then you have to time your power uses in a way that doesn't leave you standing there with you...gun...in your hand waiting for something to come off cooldown.  SO from that standpoint, yeah, you do have to play smarter.

But I want powers to be more than primers and detonators.  I don't want to compress everything the Pathfinder can do to four buttons.

Just a heads up question for me. Did we actually got a conformation that you are limited to 3 active skills per fight for all platforms or is it just from screenshots?

I see. I guess we will have to wait for the 15 minutes gameplay video to judge for ourselves. If we are limited to 3 active abilities I hope it is per encounter and not per mission so I could rapidly switch between them, and I hope that the abilities have nuances and combo with other abilities to not make it seem so bad. I recently finished my last ME trilogy playthrough before Andromeda with a shotgun Sentinel that uses 6 abilities pretty much all the time.

It is too easy, I'm far from being the only one saying so, and I beg to differ, it has everything to do with the number of powers at our diposal, at least for MEA. In ME3 it had more to do with the potency of these powers, they at least were limited by universal cool-downs and classes. Limits have always been there, whether you acknowledge them or not, and their aim, even if it wasn't always successful, was to offer challenge for people who enjoy it. Again, what you find boring isn't to me, and vice-versa, it seems. Besides, prime and detonate, shoot, prime and detonate, shoot, is what you'll do with three other powers anyway. Oh, and you are free to rely on your squadmates, and build a character who can only prime, or only detonate, or only has weapons damage bonus powers, if you so wish. And switch around for variety between combat phases. The only one who limits themselves to an unique way of playing here is you.

I have already explained why I think even a smarter AI wouldn't be enough. Not going there again.

Since I don't know yet how we unlock powers, if we even have to unlock them, I will refrain to comment on this. I lack way too much information about this to speculate one way or another. All I've seen so far is how powers will be upgraded, which is similar to ME3, three common upgrades, plus three branching upgrades.

I'm just saying it can be done and I seemed to have as much fun (who knows maybe even more) for anyone who used 6 ability slots for their characters.  

Not to mention you have way more varietty in this game then you did in the trilogy, you just can't use all of that variety at the same time.  Which it would require an insane amount of keybinding OR an insanely large tactical wheel that you would have to pause to go through each time if you were to access all those potential abilities at the same time. 

Yeah, if you want to switch from using Warp to Stasis you bash yourself over the head until Ryder's brain is damaged enough to forget how to use that ability.  Just like the characters in DAI forgetting how to backstab, or pommel strike