Is Insanity mode too easy? No replay value?

All builds are cheese.

Even the classic setup of just tactical cloak + powerful sniper rifle- + energy drain. Is just as OP as it was in ME3 from salarian infiltrator and even more so in ME:A.

I would be interested to see what even classifies as a non cheesy build in this game if that's even possible in this game.

If I had to imagine if people really wanted a non cheesy build they can do something crazy like this:

No fusion mod of adrenaline or other fusion mods

No crafting of weapons, you have to go buy them or find them enemy drops.

No augmentations of sorts on your weapon or armor pieces

Only use powers that suited to the name of the profile so no biotic abilities when using the engineer profile

No restoration powers unless you play vanguard

Use the gun restriction types like in ME2.

Can only use powers that are available to that specific class using ME2's class restriction on skills.

If playing an engineer you cannot spec into passives from the biotic skill tree. 

You will obey the level cap in ME2

ME:A insanity gets pretty easy although I wouldn't say it was that easy compared to ME1.

ME1 had broken biotics and created scenarios like this that cannot be replicated in the later ME games. This was before bioware even implemented special rules like you can't lift certain targets until shields are gone.

This, I'm just a casual gamer, not really into min-max. Even on normal difficulty I die sometimes.

I played normal in my first playthrough, then hardcore in my 2nd and now I'm doing insanity on my third. My Ryder is level 76 now, playing as Vanguard and I do find insanity easier than I thought. I genuinely thought hardcore would be my limit.

Insanity is really only "challenging" if you start at level one of your first PT, like I did. It's an absolute pain if you don't have any skills or gear early on. Once you have decent gear and a decent level, it's barely an obstacle. There really needs to be some sort of scaling in the game to compensate for a player's gear and level.

I'm hoping for a new difficulty mode that is harder than Insanity with the next xpac.

Or at the very least some nerfs to the absurdly overpowered techs (looking at you vintage thermal clip, bio-converter, shield oscillator,  charge, and tactical cloak)

I found Insanity fairly challenging for the first 15 levels but once I got enough skill points to max out a few key skills, the game got easy.

By level 30 I was zeroing out bosses on Insanity in seconds.

Here is a clip of how the game played out at level 50 on Insanity. I very rarely even took health damage any more while standing in the wide open.

Yeah I don't take my time  completing the game, I don't rush it either though. I've decided my third playthrough will be my final and "complete" playthrough so we will see how long this one takes. I'm on 111 hours right now.

Also according to the devs the enemies are supposed to level with you each NG+ so the challenge should be the same. Key word is should. 

Am I supposed to apologize for building my character well?

No matter what build you are using, your character's growth clearly out-scales the enemy's.

So while my character out grew his opponents by level 15 nearly everyone's build outgrows the enemies by 40 and certainly by 80 when the gear caps out.

A lot of people are going to have outgrown Insanity by the first DLC, which is the main point. 

So stop being a dink and acknowledge that the game needs a harder than Insanity difficulty or that Insanity needs to be tweeked or that the overpowered mechanics need to be nerfed...

Holy ****. Is that plasma seeking bolts on the piranha? Well done.

I was going to say much the same. This is not a problem with Insanity, but rather a problem with some broken ass augmentations. One builds that gun to do precisely what is seen in this video. Having a grenade launcher that autofires infinite plasma grenades is as cheesy as it sounds. It's like playing the game on God Mode. The build is just gravy, at that point; though he did manage to include Charge, so lots of gravy. 

Yes, Insanity will become easy if you're a somewhat skilled gamer. Still, they did a decent job with this one. If you avoid cheese like the above, and try out a variety of builds, it keeps things interesting. The scaling is much better in MEA than in previous games. The challenge is not drastically different at level 90 than level 15. The big difference is player skill, and some equipment.

I'm playing my second playthrough, at the moment. My character is now Level 87. I've kept things entertaining by consistently try shifting my build, and trying new things. After I master one build and use it for a while, I move on to another.

To me ME:A is extremely hard on Insanity. But I have weird set of "skills" as a gamer. For example, I played Bloodborne on my PS4 and that game's difficulty was perfect for me. Apparently The Old Hunter DLC's last boss was supposed to be the hardest boss in Bloodborne. I killed him on my first try. However, it took me FEW DAYS to kill the Blood Starved Beast, which is a kind of low-level boss in a fairly early part of the original game. Weird, huh? As for Andromeda, I simply lowered the difficulty back to Normal and I'm enjoying the game FAR more. I guess it's just that I'm not a big fan of the more action-oriented combat so I cannot even dedicate myself to play on Insanity. I figured that since I don't like it too much I will just play on normal and be done with it. But yeah, ME:A on Insanity is very hard to me, much harder than any Souls games. I usually end up dead without knowing what actually killed me, really can't wrap my head around the battlefield. I wish there was a radar and everything was a bit more slow-paced

Having an  extremely challenging game formats does sell a game many times.

Ever hear of a game called Dark Souls? It's the high difficulty of the game and extreme punishment on death that draws people to that title. Demon Souls... same thing.

That's why the Diablo series has a "Hardcore" mode. 

Some of the best games of all time hold that title because of their extreme difficulty... Battletoads... Contra... Arma 2... Mario Bros: TLLs... NetHack... FTL... Ninja Gaiden... Myst/Riven... Mike Tyson's Punch out... the old Zelda and Megaman games...

They might not be everyone's cup of tea, but there are certainly enough gamers out there that enjoy being challenged.

Aside from that point (the point that you are just plain wrong about hard difficulty not selling copies of games), if they want to sell us DLCs and come back to this game after the initial release hype, then you have to present us with a fresh challenge for the next leg of the journey.

If you come back to this game with a fully developed character that just stomps everything in its way with no challenge, then you aren't going to enjoy the DLC.

It is mandatory that if they want to sell DLCs that they fix either the enemy's scaling to catch them up with us, or give us a new difficulty rating. Otherwise the DLCs are just going to fail...


AND BTW...

This is nothing new. Borderlands has been doing this SUCCESSFULLY!! for years now.

The introduction of "UBER" levels into Borderlands was one of the most brilliant moves I've seen a video game pull. Mass Effect needs to follow suite if they want to follow the Borerlands model.