Don't get me wrong. (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, February 20, 2017, 01:17 (2622 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by Ragashingo, Monday, February 20, 2017, 01:24

You might be right. I played Mass Effect 2 repeatedly and actually went back to it once after ME3 was out. I only played ME3 twice, and that was pretty close to back-to-back playthroughs. I don't remember it nearly as well as ME2.

I was actually having a problem remembering the upgrades in ME2. After looking it up, hte difference between the two games is pretty substantial.

In ME2:
- There were only a handful of guns. For instance there were only 6 Assualt Rifles in the game.
- There were very few armor pieces. Certainly less than 20. Maybe less than 10.
- Powers upgraded from Rank 1 to Rank 4 with Rank 4 giving you a choice between two alternate paths for the power's final evolution. Ranks 2 and 3 generally boosted the power's various stats by maybe ten or twenty percent and did nothing to change the way the power worked.
- For instance Incinerate had two minor boosts to damage/recharge time and the final option was a choice between more damage and a wider impact.

In ME3:
- There were several guns of each type. For instance there were 20 Assault Rifles alone. And they were highly varied from pinpoint accurate to chaingun bullet hoses. The other gun types (sniper rifles, smgs, heavy pistols) had similar numbers with similar wide variety of uses.
- There are several different armor pieces for the head, arms, chest, and leg slots. Perhaps not quite as many as the for the different weapon types, but still ten or more for each slot!
- You had access to more powers per class. Not quite as many as the page full you had in ME1, but several more per class than ME2. Plus, instead of having just four ranks per power, you had six. The first three boosted one or more aspects of the power (damage or recharge time usually) but ranks four, five and six each had two choices.
- Incinerate in ME 3 had its initial three one choice boosts then it had the choices of more damage/impact radius, then ongoing burning damage/faster recharge, and finally double damage to frozen targets/or +50% damage to armor

So, while ME3 didn't completely go back to ME1's level of an overwhelming multitude of options, it did greatly improve on ME2. And, in my opinion at least, it did a good job of making the options more important than ME1's near infinite rows of tiny % boosts and occasional skill unlocks.

Andromeda looks like it will probably do away with the concept of the core classes and let you mix and match powers a lot more. It might also let you build three or so presets you can swap between on the fly so you don't have to rebuild your entire upgrade tree when the situation changes. The powers themselves looks to me ME3 style where there are three or four this/that choices to make as you upgrade each power.