Powers, Skill Trees and Active Abilities (Official Thread)

I really doubt that. I got the impression that this is a pathfinder ability that all pathfinders have. I think it's more likely that it's new tech developed for the Andromeda Initiative to enable their point person to be as flexible as possible.

I strongly suspect that is related to Sam. Their father was the pathfinder and previously had a connection to Sam. Now his son or daughter becomes the pathfinder and also inherits a connection with Sam. So I think Sam, or other AI/Vi's like him, are part of this new tech that enables the reconfiguration of a pathfinder's implants. He may even be the implant

Sure.  Let me preface this by saying I don't exactly know how this profile switching will work in the finished game, but it currently seems to work by going into your menu and manually switching to a profile that fits your situation.  Depending on how often the situation calls for it, this could be a nuisance issue.  Nuisance issues get old fast, and I wouldn't be surprised if I found myself sticking to a single profile in all situations because of it.

I'd rather you simply have every bonus you've unlocked (from every profile) active at all times.  If that OPs your character, then the bonuses are set too high.

Umm, wouldn't the SA be all over that tech for their special forces guys?  Or the Council for their Spectere?  The salarians for the STG?

MEA may be set 600 years after teh trilogy, but they LEFT in the middle of it.  MEaning anything they took with them would have to be contemporaneous with what was around in Shepard's time.

I suppose they could put all their special ops people into surgery to replace their implants with experimental, illegal-AI-controlled, ones. After intensive training for their soldeirs to learn tech skills and for their techs to learn soldier skills they may be able to send soldiers to do engineer work and send engineers to do soldier work.

Not sure why they'd bother though?  Surely they've got enough of both!

When I saw cryo beam listed as an tech ability I was excited- hadn't realised they had showed a very small snippet of the ability in action!

It's gonna be interesting trying out a Sentinel ...who will freeze people and shatter them with biotic charge

I believe that bioware has finally listened to my incessant screaming and it looks like they employed a system similar to kingdoms of Amalur. PS: these are not the actual numbers, I'm just explaining the concept.

There, you had 3 "skill trees" (fighting, finesse and magic) and you needed X amount of points invested in one of the 3 to unlock Y level of a type of "destiny".

So if you had invested 20 points in fighting, 10 in finesse and 5 in magic, you would be able to choose several "destinies" for your character, which each gives particular bonuses. eg, you would be able to unlock warrior 3, thief 2 and mage 1. Warrior 3 would give +30% attack (among others), thief 2 woudl give +20% critical and mage 1 would give +10 mana. You also could choose polymancer 1 becuase you have fighting, finesse and magic all at 1, or you could choose a thief-fighting hybrid at level 2.


I really loved this system, and I'm very glad they used this in MEA (well, it looks like they did, anyway).

The only point of contention that remains - for me personally, and imho - is that you only get to equip 3 skills at one time. The same was true in kingdoms of amalur. You had all these points invested and all these skills, and you could only use 4 at a time ;
In Kingdoms of amalur, you could freely switch "destinies" at any time in the menu and receive different bonuses to your stats. And I caught something bioware said which was that it would also be able to switch profiles. Now my only hope is that for example, you can make 2 loadouts in the menu, and that you can switch freely between them in battle (e.g. by a d-pad press), thus giving you access to 2 profiles and 6 abilities during battle. It would even make sense lorewise as it would be a command for your enhancements to switch focus. You could even have a cool animation for it which roots your character for a second or 2, if you don't want to overpower the PC. Also, it makes the PC feel slightly more special than, say, multiplayer characters or squadmates, which cannot switch.

Anywho, I'm curious to see how it'll play out. Probably what we see is what we get, and then I'l probably stick to my 3 favorite abilities (biotic charge, overload, adrenaline rush). But it'd be nice if you could switch between tech and biotic focus depending on the situation needed in battle. That'd add a more tactical approach.


I guess only 70 or so days remain to see, huh? It will be interesting to see.


PPS: First post, yay!

Yeah, I've got to agree that this profile swapping is going to get annoying if it works as you described and I'll likely do the same as you and stick with my "optimal" load out.  Anything that interferes with game flow is a bad idea.  If profiles could be tied to my F1 thru F4 keys that would be better, but I doubt that happens because it wouldn't be "fair" to console users.

Well if you weren't annoyed by the weapon upgrades and multiple squad mate options in the trilogy then you shouldn't be any more annoyed by the option of profile switching in this

I gather no one knows for sure how profiles work. But I have a hope and a guess.

Presumably they will give passive bonuses but not restrict ability usage. So let's say you have Infiltrator profile. Maybe it gives a passive bonus of time dilation to sniper rifles when in scope and then gives bonuses to tech/combat cooldowns and damage. But it doesn't prevent you from adding a biotic ability to your 3-skill loadout while running Infiltrator profile. That's my hope at least.

That would make sense. You'd not restricted from using what you've learned. But your biotic woudln't hit as hard as someone running adept profile. In that sense it rewards specialization without cutting into freedom too much.

I know when I imagine characters I'm sort of working on the assumption that I won't switch profiles all that much. And honestly I'll probably design towards one of the seven profiles. But we'll see.

I was wondering about this. The CES footage last week showed the player selecting the engineer profile but they had flak cannon (a combat ability) equipped in the subsequent combat, together with two tech skills.

Granted, they could have have just cut the footage so we were then watching someone use the infiltrator profile but that wasn't the impression I got.

Nah, I added the full tech tree (that we saw) in the OP. Flak cannon definitely wasn't in it. I'm almost certain it's a combat power.

It's also very similar to the N7 destroyer soldier's multi-frag power in ME3 MP.