Cover vs mobility

Is it a thing from the past ?

In the last gameplay videos, it seems to me that the character never stops moving in the vast environment, always being an easy target without any cover to help him, taking damage or doing damage as a bullet sponge, it seems a bit messy. I prefer organized, structured, combined actions, careful but intelligent movements to trap and surprise the enemy, ( as a soldier as well ) where my shield is hardly touched, where I hardly take damage, my companions playing a real role, and where I crush my ennemy thanks to, tactics, patience and absolute efficiency, not speed and audacity as a lonewolf. 

Will it be possible to play that way ? So far I've hardly seen the character hiding behind a cover, it's all run and fire in vast places where it seems difficult to find a cover. As a vanguard okay, but as a soldier, this is a bit suicidal. Unless the enemies are very bad at targetting their preys while they have accurate weapons and the difficulty in Mass effet Andromeda is really that bad. I would think that with the hardest difficulty, it couldn't be that easy to play that way without difficulty... It still remain a bit an FPS. 

I'm really hoping that the enemies in Mass effect Andromeda will be offensive, intelligent, disruptive, will take advantage of stupid movements, and it will very hard for us if we commit dumb mistakes on the ground. This isn't funny at all to me to be able to do a lot of things against my enemies without feeling that I have to be careful about how I'm going to kill them.....

I think it was just that particular player's combat style (or the fact that they wanted to show off offense rather than defense in the video due to limited time). A pop-up even appears at one point telling the guy to take cover and he doesn't. You do see Sara take cover a bit in the VGA trailer, and they have said in interviews that you can take cover behind almost any object (but that some of those objects can also be destroyed). You also have the option to make shields and such if you prefer more defensive play. I think they just haven't shown much of that in the trailers because they want to show of the flashy sparkly stuff rather than someone taking their time to pause, think things through, and strategize (which is my preferred playstyle as well - which is why I think I'd be terrible at MP!).

Even in that last video, there were rocks and such you could surely take cover behind, but that player opted to get up close to the enemy instead (again, probably for the sake of showing off said enemy over showing off a character hiding behind a rock). And, I just remembered! Toward the end of Sara's VGA video, you see her duck behind a rock, use tactical cloak, and snipe an enemy from afar. So maybe it depends on where you are, and you may have to change strategy depending on if you're in open desert or an area with lots of cover, which is actually kinda neat. In ME3 especially I remember feeling like every combat area having conveniently placed crates everywhere made the fights kind of boring after a while.

I didn't know they said that. If that's the case, i'm a bit relieved, because that not really my favourite type of gameplay as a soldier. I mean, i love the challenge to absolutely move on the ground, it is a must, but I do not believe at all realistic to never take cover, always being an easy target in the middle of everything, as a bullet sponge. 

I like the way you think

I'm sure you can.

A few playthroughs I've avoided using cover and just bullrushed the baddies as a soldier. It was great. I believe I lost my shields twice. That was on insanity mode. It's a good way to go if going through the game very quickly

The devs told us that modern games are moving away from the cover based system battle and so they have decided to do the same with MEA.
Then they said that their biggest influences were Overwatch and Destiny...(two titles that are not even tps games!!)

As far as I know cover plays a significant role even in the most recent tps games...

FWIW in regards to the last video at least, that was mostly a tech demo to show off Nvidia's new graphics. it made sense to avoid cover and use flashy abilities for that purpose.

I'm thinking that, with the vertical aspect being added, strategic use of cover may become more important than it was in previous ME games.  I don't think merely hunkering down behind a crate at the back of the battlefield and sniping is going to cut it anymore.  However, that doesn't mean that cover will be irrelevant either... it's going to require thinking things through on multiple planes and movement from cover to cover is probably going to be quite important.  Personally, I'm looking forward to such a challenge.

Really that were no cover in the traditional sense of meaning. It were just some environmental obstacles.

I also have not noticed any shield gate and health gate mechanics. It is sort of critical for mutiplayer at least for ME3MP. For DAIMP, the only thing matters is how many times you promoted. The more you promote, the more hit points you have and the more damage resistance you get to the point of being essentially invincible. But in ME3, on higher difficulties, the mechanics allows you to take 2 hits from enemies and still stay alive. Somehow. Let's say you play mutiplayer and are being shot by collectors' scions guns. Let's say you char has 500 shields and 500 health and scion does 1000 damage per shot. So, first shot will break your shields but health still remains intact. Second shot will decimate your health but will leave a tiny sliver of it just to keep you alive. And only 3rd shot will kill you. These are called health and shield gating mechanics and it worked reasonably well. There is nothing in the trailers that resembles this. The jerk who played it has taken every hit possible from every enemy multiple times and still managed to stay alive. I did not like what I've seen so far.

Are you expecting crates and walls to be littered everywhere?

We witnessed combat out in the wilderness twice and on some prefab platform where Sara Ryder was a Vanguard and blasting things to hell. And when she Charged up to the upper level, she went into cover for a split second before jumping back down into the fight. Cover is there.

Shield and health gating is irrelevant and unnecessary in a two minute snippet showing off some of the combat mechanics. Nothing in the trailers resemble shield and health gating because:

1. They're not showing everything, evident by how every time they showed off the main menu and tabs within the main menu, they cut out significant chunks of it.

2. No one is going to die in the footage. It wasn't a live playthrough; it was a fast and loud teaser to drum up interest in the gameplay mechanics. Every game does it, every Mass Effect game previous has done it. Watch gameplay demos at E3 and you'll see characters eat attacks left and right, screen flash red, and the character run around, mowing down everything in sight after taking damage well beyond what actually kills them in the final build that we end up playing because they're showing off the flashiness of their combat and mechanics.

They're not showing balance, they're not showing enemy variety and what they do when you do X or what they do to curb you doing Y, they're showing you how cool everything looks while you do it. Consequence of your gameplay actions isn't what these trailers are for, either in Andromeda's case or any game, from Call of Duty to Tekken to Star Ocean to Grand Theft Auto, that's not the point of what they're showing off.

And as it's been the case with every single one of the game franchises I just mentioned, as they do more media and show off more of the gameplay in actual sitdowns of moderate to significant length, they start showing off the enemy tactics and give hints to how people will likely end up playing when God mode isn't enabled so that they can show off some stuff for a trailer that is largely targeted to newcomers to their respective franchises versus diehards who were locked into the purchase the moment the game logo came out.

You don't have to like what you've seen so far, just like you probably didn't like this:



Or this:



Or this:



Everything we've seen so far of Andromeda amounts to what we saw of those games via these trailers.

It does look cool; it looked cool and fun as hell to me and a bunch of other people.

Those types of trailers don't appeal to you and that's fine, but that's not all that indicative of much of anything.

Games have been moving away from sticky cover for awhile and more to the dynamic cover that Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell had since forever. Should help cut down on that at least a little bit.

edit: ME1 had dynamic cover too, but it was half cooked, just like a lot of stuff in the game.