Video: ME:A Multiplayer Problems: Weapon Balance

Great, great video. 100% agree.

Id like to see you do one about powers and combos too if you have the time.

I completely agree. I've got a lot more issues with the game than just the balance though.

Does anyone know if Bioware are going to publish their balance changes in full anywhere? The Bioware blog only has the laughably non-specific 'Balance changes to guns' hidden among the notes for patch 1.04.

Nice Vid.

I refrained from adding similar me3 data to that dps chart I put together because, as far as I know, nobody knows enemy health values - ie If enemies have 50% less health than in ME3, then guns would need to be nerfed 50% to maintain parity.

That said, from your vid...

ME3 Carnifex: 1 headshot to remove Nemesis shields
MEA Carnifex: 4+ headshots to remove sharpshooter shields

From what I've seen in game enemy health seems to be slightly higher in this game than me3. Even bosses on bronze feel tanky, so I feel it's a fair comparison. There's no way that enemy health is 50% lower.

I didn't think you did, just chose my words wrong.

What's strange is that snipers have been given considerable buffs compared to ME3
EG:



But every other weapon type has been nerfed into being useless. It also doesn't make sense to nerf weapons even if enemy health had been reduced because there are more enemies on the map.

More enemies, more health......let's nerf everything except snipers!

Yeh, they should leave the balancing to the game that had been around for a long time rather than whoever they have doing it now. Not sure why they thought they should adjust it so much after it has been so much better balanced before.

Though to be honest this kind of extends to pretty much everything wrong with the multiplayer. Rather than just take what was in ME3 and improve it, they tried to reinvent it while using the same skeleton. Weapons, weaker; powers, longer recharge and weaker and less recharge bonus from carrying lighter weapons; combos, almost nonexistent (Lingering effects are kinda cool, but reduced to o nonexistent damage); so many powers removed like warp; and several other things.

They needed to stand on the shoulders of those who came before but instead they tried to stand on their own and ignore it. What we're left with is a game with worse balance than ME3 had on launch.

Before we start comparing ME3 to MEA 1:1, do enemies have the same amount of health? Do they deal the same amount of damage? Are enemy spawn rates the same? What about powers? There's a lot more to consider than just raw numbers. Also, don't forget the nature of the weapons themselves. The Raptor is great on paper, but a full auto sniper with a forced(?) scope is not an easy thing to use. As a SR, you get the non-ADS penalty, and its difficult to use while moving or up close. Then of course, there's recoil. Let's also consider that perhaps the devs wanted the game to be harder overall. We also have to make concessions for first order optimal strategies that are meant to be "low skill : high effect" such as ME3's Harrier, Reegar, vanilla Falcon, Krysae, Turian Ghost, Alliance Infiltration Unit, etc.

I agree with the sentiment that MEA has serious balance problems; the Vanquisher is FAR too powerful, and a lot of weapons invalidate others almost completely (why have a weapon with 100% inferior stats to another with no unique mechanics). The ratio between decent:great:OP doesn't feel 'right' (and let's also remember that ME3 had awful balance at launch too and was only fixed later over a couple years).

However, I don't think the issue is that the legacy weapons are weaker or stronger than their ME3 variants. This game has plenty of Uncommons/Rares that are serviceable in Gold; they just aren't the same weapons as they were in ME3. The Disciple is strong enough once its upgraded, as is the Incisor and Widow. There's at least a dozen Rares that are average in Gold without being OP, which feels like a similar number/ratio to what we have in ME3MP.

Powers and combos as well. Mooks that would of be dead from a singularity and shockwave in ME3 are still running around on bronze. Overload should be stripping a non-elite shield in one go.

I can understand wanting to slow things down except the pace of the game has not really slowed down. Mobility is even more important and more stuff wants to mele players at a faster pace.

How do you know what the intent of the developers was? They never give out this information.

There are design decisions in the game that completely go against what you have described. For example the upload objective. You have to kill everything that enters a hack zone fast otherwise the objective won't progress. How are we supposed to get an ascendant and a fiend out of a upload zone on gold without direct damage? If you run away then the upload progress will decrease and you can't use crowd control against armor.

Making weapons suck is not the way to make biotic crowd control powers useful. ME3 could have easily done this by adding more tanky enemies with just health and less of a boss spam. And kill time has only been slowed on 90% of the weapons, I can still kill a hydra in out 15 seconds with the piranha.

Yeah you should definitely do a video to show how a biotic combo takes off one third the health bar of the lowest ranking enemy on gold (unshielded adhi) in andromeda, whereas a single biotic combo can kill multiple enemies on platinum in ME3. Please show that!

So pulling one enemy, knocking down a second, and dealing with a third was something you reasonably did in me3 opposed to simply gunning down all three with the harrier.

I am not saying the weapons need be terrible, imbalanced, or whatever. But they do not need to have the overbearing power they had in mass effect three, where running a no points spend character was laughably easy with a number of the guns. Powers and weapons need to be on a similar page. Buffed only to where passives are currently, which are better than most of the powers, and are the real reason melee is so good in this game I feel.

Enemies shouldn't be cannon fodder save for a few. And no one enemy should carry the faction. The problem with kett is that the ascendant is too good at dealing damage, on top of an already powerful compliment of troops. Anointed, and destined are very powerful and numerous, and make the faction difficult on their own without the insane power of the ascendant added in. The fiend is somewhat buggy in an unpredictable grabby fashion. Tough units as those two are very good at pushing you around the map into the waiting arms of the troopers, they do not need to be so lethal on their own.

Yes, because I actually knew how to play the game.

And I understand that you're not demanding the weapons be awful. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of them are under-tuned for high difficulties. As for the second part of your statement, powers and weapons are on the same page for the most part. That page just so happens to be a few chapters behind the enemies.

I agree, for the most part. But as I said in my last post, there are a number of ways to do this that do not involve artificially nerfing the players.

You may be able to guess what my answer is for this: The reason they seem so overwhelmingly powerful is because we do not have an adequate amount of damage to deal with them. Another facet of this is how rare piercing mods are for weapons, since the Fiend is an armored enemy, having easy access to armor-piercing mods should make them much easier to deal with in theory. I'm still waiting to unlock one, though, despite having maxed out almost all my other Uncommons.