Completing the Game with Only Two characters

In the other thread you posted like this one, I mentioned that in ME3 you can have James and Liara for nearly the whole game. At least from Menae to the end except for having the edibot on Cronos. In ME2 the player can use Jacob and Miranda for the whole game unless completing a squadmates loyalty mission

I would not have a problem if only 2 squadmates were available to use from beginning to end without recruiting others.

Why would there be a no romance option? If the player can't romance a squadmate, the player can always romance a crewmember on the ship if available.

DAI the player can have Solas, Varric and Cassandra for the whole game without recruiting anyone else. I did it

Yeah I still hate the very thought of that though (it being forced). I mean in the original XCOM reboot I still had a relatively small squad of people I took with. I didn't have some massive roster. I did my best to work around there system because I ultimately don't want to deal with a constant changing squad makeup.

Ultimately I like having a set squad per playthrough. Doing something to force me out of that as the only way to play the game would ultimately just fuel to cause me to not enjoy the game as much. If it was a separate mode or something then sure. But if requiring they stay out of the squad for a mission to get rid of debuffs that continuously accumulate would basically require I get some kinda check list to ensure I know who I brought on what missions for subsequent playthroughs and, quite honestly fuck that nonsense.

One of the main reasons I pick specific squadies for my team for the bulk of the playthrough is because I want to see that whole line of dialog through out. They also compliment my specific build regardless of the situations (the idea of specifics for missions when it's not required has never been a concern for me). If that kind of mechanic existed and I was forced to it would put a damper on replay, for me anyway.

As an aside 'additional gameplay' doesn't equate to a hassle. Mechanics that exist to get in the plays way can be depending on the kind of game it is and how there handled. Food/Water mechanics are fine, I even enjoy them depending on how it's handled. FO4 for instance just got them in, and if taken at base I'd say yeah they're a hassle. But that's because an hour goes by in 3 freakin' minutes. Which means your guy gets dethly hungry every 18 minutes. With out a time scale mod (or console command if your on PC) it's kinda a giant pain in the ass that isn't difficult to deal with but is a pain in the butt due to the accelerated time.

I think a lot of games, especially survival games, tend to get the whole idea of hunger/thirst wrong. They tend to view it as a tactical or difficulty mechanic when it's really more of an immersion thing. It makes sense to be there but realistically not eating every 6 hours doesn't cause you to go into some traumatic shock. And it's not that hard to actually eat or drink, it's just a consideration that I enjoy when the timers on them aren't absurd.

Aaaannyway, the mechanic could work in an RPG, not saying it couldn't. Just saying I would want it to be optional. I'd definitely even do a playthrough with it on. Hell I'd probably play with it on for my first playthrough since thats the one where I have no idea what the full roster is, who I like, who fits what characters I wanna play blah blah blah. but for replays? I'd drop it like something you drop quickly because dropping... ehh... reasons? I dunno, maybe it's hot or is spiky?

This is actually why I like the Long War mod to XCOM:EU. Not only do get wounds that last longer, each soldier now gets fatigued for so many hours (or days) after any mission. You can take them out on another mission without any debuffs (I think), but they're guaranteed to go though a "wounded" period after that. This forced me to make ample use of my entire roster and level my rookies. The game becomes a lot more interesting when you have to juggle multiple teams each with differently specialized characters.

I don't like to think of it as a "you have to do this" kind of mechanic, but it would ultimately come down to balance. Ideally, the mechanic wouldn't outright stop the player from taking out a specific squad, but would encourage the player to be more deliberate with decisions regarding their squad rather than mindlessly choosing the same few people over and over. A single mission wouldn't totally ruin a character's ability to fight, but extended use would.

I can sympathize with that, but I think there is a way BioWare could pace the dialog such that you get a relatively consistent dialog with each character even while swapping. Even in DA:I, I think it's possible to exhaust the dialog between a single grouping of companions fairly easily (assuming you're doing enough exploring).

I suppose it would also behoove BioWare to make crew members more versatile if they implemented a system like this, i.e. an Engineer wouldn't be the obvious choice for a mission against synthetics. If each character had multiple unique narrative (e.g. squadmate knows a guy who works in the facility you're raiding) and mechanical (e.g. ) reasons to bring them along, then there shouldn't be as much redundant squad composition in subsequent playthroughs.

That was my point: unlike some poorly implemented immersion mechanic that would only serve to annoy the player, a fatigue mechanic would be a natural extension to the Mass Effect's existing mechanics and premise.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of untapped potential in the realm of custom difficulty. In a perfect world a feature like this could have an analog slider from off to default to hardcore, but unfortunately, more options is just more debugging.

I think even if you could play the game with only two same characters end-to-end, you would be just missing out a lot of the stuff associated with the other potential team-mates.
For the first playthrough, I can't imagine myself doing such playthrough, for 4-5th playthrough? Yea, but no way for the first one

Althrough, they could add sort of an achievement for that, like in ME 1 where you could get a badge for playing vast majority of the game using a particular teammate.

Only problem with that is this isn't Dragon Age. We don't have complete control over are squadmates, or healers or tanks or any of that. The only way to ensure they don't go down is to leave them behind. They are, ultimately, driven by there AI and there AI can be dumb as shit sometimes. You can have them hold back and you go on alone and they'll survive longer for sure but they'll eventually give up the position you told them to and be stupid.

That's one of the big issues with this style of game. For the most part there 'isnt' any managing your squad. They're designed to do there own thing outside of you giving a general 'area' for them to take cover around and when to use an ability. None of that'll really reliably save any of them. It's like playing Hardcore in Diablo with 500 latency. Extremely not recommended cause at some point your going to die and it wont be because of any tactical choice you made or lack of reaction time. Something wildly out of your hands will screw you over.

That said I agree with the set timer thing. Maybe doing a mission with out them bypasses that as well. Maybe spending some space-bucks to bypass it entirely (though expensive?). Either way having a system that will penalize you on something that's mostly out of your hands is kinda... meh. But could prove interesting.