I keep hearing everyone talk about how they have tons of money in this game. When does this happen? I've been playing for 12 hours, have done a good amount of side quests and am almost done on Feros. I only have about $20,000 to my name...1 million seems so far away.
I keep hearing everyone talk about how they have tons of money in this game. When does this happen? I've been playing for 12 hours, have done a good amount of side quests and am almost done on Feros. I only have about $20,000 to my name...1 million seems so far away.
Loot seems to scale with your level. It was about where you are now when I started raking in some bigger rewards, and make sure you sell all your useless stuff.
I'm stuck on Noveria. This Lorik Quin guy tells me to retrieve something from his office which is being ransacked by a couple of freelance guards. Problem being I can't access the elevator leading down to his office. Lorik also says Metsuo, or whatever, doesn't like her guards taking jobs on the side. Problem here being that when I go talk to her there's no option to report anything.
So, finally got a day to really chew through some content.
Eden Prime was pretty great. Nice intro to the game. Man, you really do need to put full ranks in Charm / Intimidate ASAP if you want to be a completionist.
The Citadel was kind of boring and not nearly large enough in terms of player accessible areas, given that it's supposed to have a huge and diverse population - I don't expect to be able to go to every residential zone on the station, but it needed a little more. I really like that Normandy feels like a complete (if small) ship and everything is to scale and you have access to it all.
Individual side quest planets are not varied enough - I'd like to see some terrain other than mountains, plains, and the occasional plateau. I don't know, lakes, rivers, volcanoes, etc. Side quest buildings are not varied enough.
That said, I love the fuck out of this game. Playing on Veteran, going Paragon, as a Soldier, just did the
Luna sidequest to get Shock Trooper
, game is challenging but not impossible. I got lucky enough to nab a Thunder V assault rifle and now that I've got Immunity and Overkill cranking, combat's become a lot more friendly - I think if I wasn't on Veteran, the game would probably be stupid easy at this point.
Geth Collosi, Geth Primes, and Thresher Maws are all plenty difficult. You CAN use the Mako to wear them down and then get out and still get full xp, FYI. And you want to. Because it's a pretty big xp penalty involved to just let your vehicle do all the work.
I've been doing every side quest possible before going on to the plot stuff, as I always do in Bioware games.
In Baldur's Gate, for example, I spent a lot of time avoiding actually, you know, going to Baldur's Gate. :lol
Anyone know what all carries over to the New Game + feature? I'm just wondering what I get when I replay once I beat it.
Atleast for me, the game is massively long. I still have a decent bit of sidequests to complete, and I've only got Dr. T'soni as a main quest (still have Ferros and Noveria), and am well over 15hrs. Very cool. I just have to find more Paragon-enhancing quests, so I can get my charm up to finish a few more quests.
I found a copy of the Limited Edition at Circuit City last night with the intent of flipping it onto eBay. It looks so darn nice though, so I'll probably keep it.
I'm stuck on Noveria. This Lorik Quin guy tells me to retrieve something from his office which is being ransacked by a couple of freelance guards. Problem being I can't access the elevator leading down to his office. Lorik also says Metsuo, or whatever, doesn't like her guards taking jobs on the side. Problem here being that when I go talk to her there's no option to report anything.
He should unlock the elevator for you. I think there's also a terminal in the hotel bar on the lower level somewhere that unlocks it.
And does anyone know if it's possible to save the Thorian?
When you have to destroy each of it's tentacle things, the life bars have those little markers that seem to indicate if you damage each one only to a certain extent something might be different.
I finished up a fourth playthrough today on Insanity difficulty, figured I'd take a break. Fifteen minutes later I was rolling a new soldier character to play through the game again. The classes and the combat are diverse enough to make multiple playthroughs viable, not to mention going paragon one time, renegade the next, different party makeups, etc.
I'm stuck on Noveria. This Lorik Quin guy tells me to retrieve something from his office which is being ransacked by a couple of freelance guards. Problem being I can't access the elevator leading down to his office. Lorik also says Metsuo, or whatever, doesn't like her guards taking jobs on the side. Problem here being that when I go talk to her there's no option to report anything.
I keep hearing everyone talk about how they have tons of money in this game. When does this happen? I've been playing for 12 hours, have done a good amount of side quests and am almost done on Feros. I only have about $20,000 to my name...1 million seems so far away.
Well, eventually the stuff the Citadel and Normandy are selling aren't as hot as what you're nabbing in fights. Well, not entirely. The shops seem to scale up with level, a bit, and you might get lucky on some Alien Armor or some sweet weapon. For me, that point is now, L24ish.
I've got something like $100k just sitting around with nothing desirable to buy, but I'm not worried about that achievement. If I see something marginally better than what I have, I'll buy it. And more grenade / more medkits upgrades are getting quite pricey.
I keep hearing everyone talk about how they have tons of money in this game. When does this happen? I've been playing for 12 hours, have done a good amount of side quests and am almost done on Feros. I only have about $20,000 to my name...1 million seems so far away.
Later in the game enemies drop 4000 credits per kill (Upper 30's), The best way to get money is to sell everything that your party isn't using. I went from 200,000 credits to 9,999,999 credits in less than 5 hours.
Is finding and killing all the Thresher Maws a side quest?
Because there is nothing about that in my journal even though I'm pretty far into the game (level 35) and have already killed four of them...
Ashley is in the engineering deck near the lockers.
I don't blame BioWare completely for the technical issues. After playing Uncharted, I think it's clear the big limiting factor here is the 360. The fact that they can't install anything to the hard drive kind of forces them to load everything on the fly and into memory. Thank god it has 512 megs of RAM or the game would be even worse with the load screens.
Is finding and killing all the Thresher Maws a side quest?
Because there is nothing about that in my journal even though I'm pretty far into the game (level 35) and have already killed four of them...
No, I don't thinks so. They're just regular foes, albeit a little tough. (Hmmm not really, I just keep shooting and jump when it launches its fireball or whatever)
No, I don't thinks so. They're just regular foes, albeit a little tough. (Hmmm not really, I just keep shooting and jump when it launches its fireball or whatever)
Turns out if you give the Paragon reply during the last piece of dialog with Lorik you don't actually accept the mission. WHich I did, continously. Don't know if it was me being stupid or Bioware leaving the conversation a bit open for intepretation.
Well, eventually the stuff the Citadel and Normandy are selling aren't as hot as what you're nabbing in fights. Well, not entirely. The shops seem to scale up with level, a bit, and you might get lucky on some Alien Armor or some sweet weapon. For me, that point is now, L24ish.
I've got something like $100k just sitting around with nothing desirable to buy, but I'm not worried about that achievement. If I see something marginally better than what I have, I'll buy it. And more grenade / more medkits upgrades are getting quite pricey.
That said, if ME is with EA, and has a chance of coming to the PS3, I'd definetly prefer that version... if they can fix up all the tearing and texture popping. God that shit was annoying.
Also the compressed as all get out video... that shit is why Blu-ray is awesome; stick that stuff at a decent compression, as well as a bunch more cutscenes that was rendered in real time, but featured tons of texture popping and what not.
Definetly playing through again with lesbian renegade. Possibly a third time, so I can get with Ashley, as reprehensibly annoying as she is.
I think next time they should focus less on having tons of planet to explore, as they are all the same, big empty planet with some debris, few minerals and one out of 4 base designs.
I really got bored of doing side quests after about 5 of them, as they all played out the same.
The Citadel quest formula was alot better than the explore empty planet one.
I always thought Microsoft Game Studios had a publishing arrangement for all three of the games
Deacan said:
I think next time they should focus less on having tons of planet to explore, as they are all the same, big empty planet with some debris, few minerals and one out of 4 base designs.
I really got bored of doing side quests after about 5 of them, as they all played out the same.
The Citadel quest formula was alot better than the explore empty planet one.
Have 1/3 of the total amount of systems...each system having at least one planet with a small settlement and each system having around the same number of quests as each 'area' (example: the lower wards) of the citadel.
That said, if ME is with EA, and has a chance of coming to the PS3, I'd definetly prefer that version... if they can fix up all the tearing and texture popping. God that shit was annoying.
Also the compressed as all get out video... that shit is why Blu-ray is awesome; stick that stuff at a decent compression, as well as a bunch more cutscenes that was rendered in real time, but featured tons of texture popping and what not.
Definetly playing through again with lesbian renegade. Possibly a third time, so I can get with Ashley, as reprehensibly annoying as she is.
That said, if ME is with EA, and has a chance of coming to the PS3, I'd definetly prefer that version... if they can fix up all the tearing and texture popping. God that shit was annoying.
Also the compressed as all get out video... that shit is why Blu-ray is awesome; stick that stuff at a decent compression, as well as a bunch more cutscenes that was rendered in real time, but featured tons of texture popping and what not.
Definetly playing through again with lesbian renegade. Possibly a third time, so I can get with Ashley, as reprehensibly annoying as she is.
Just finished it last night. Roughly 20-hour playthrough which included I think about half the side quests.
Some random observations:
I didn't like it at first mainly due to three things:
* Annoying, clumsy vehicle combat
* Execrable load system
* Too much back-and-forth busywork (aggravated by load system.)
The loading seemed so bad that it really was putting me off playing in the early going. From the Normandy quartermaster to off-ship, I have to deal with two painful loads, particularly that damn docking bay elevator which moves at a ridiculously slow pace. It made almost every transition from ship to shore and back again a sluggish chore.
(Question: how much would the load problem have been alleviated if the game was able to cache data on the hard drive? I don't think I've ever heard my 360 disc drive spinning so much while playing a game.)
As I knuckled down and played it more, though, I wound up getting into it. The vehicle combat eventually clicked and by going all-out soldier and forgetting about biotics I was able to play the on-foot combat sections just like a regular shooter, which worked for me. I actually enjoyed it more than many dedicated shooters I've played.
I didn't really get into the story too much. I think they tried too hard and it seemed almost totally stitched together from hoary old sci-fi cliches we've seen a thousand times before.
Mysteriously extinct precursor race? Species creates race of robot servants that turn on them, forcing them to leave their home in a "migrant fleet" in search of a new one?
Come on. By the end I had a basic grasp on the story but had tuned out most of the details.
I give thanks to Bioware for sticking with the dialog-tree system they've honed so well. It's like a throwback to the old choose-your-own-adventure books that I loved so much as a kid. It's one of the few systems to acknowledge that major events don't always hinge on an action but a decision. I thought the guy playing the male Shepard came across a bit flat, but I always enjoy how by messing around with the dialog choices you can create some pretty absurd exchanges that make the guy sound like a borderline sociopath.
Weirdly, it was in that mission
on the moon where the lunar landscape was somewhat familiar and I could see Earth twinkling in the background
that I felt most like I was really in outer space, moreso than on any of the exotic far-flung worlds. Isn't that odd?
Maybe it's because I didn't go the biotic/tech route and played more of a "strongarm" game, but I didn't really feel the RPG-ness of this game. Every now and again I'd find a better weapon but once I'd got some good armor with decent upgrades I didn't feel the need to worry too much about points and talents. I'm sure this stuff comes into play more with the different classes, if you play on harder difficulty and if you're aiming for 100% completion of all side-quests.
I don't know where all the comments about texture pop came from, I never once noticed it. I did get a lot of framerate choppiness, however, especially in the final action-heavy levels.
Random question: why do some doors open automatically for you and others require a button press? It appeared to be entirely arbitrary.
Anyway, I mostly really enjoyed it. Found myself sitting up way too late playing it on subsequent nights, just as I did with KOTOR. I ultimately found myself wishing that this *was* the next KOTOR, however. The only thing that really didn't click for me was the somewhat generic (but nonetheless beautifully realized) sci-fi universe Bioware cooked up.
8.5/10 (for score-whores)
And now you all know why I don't review games professionally any more.
I always thought Microsoft Game Studios had a publishing arrangement for all three of the games
Have 1/3 of the total amount of systems...each system having at least one planet with a small settlement and each system having around the same number of quests as each 'area' (example: the lower wards) of the citadel.
GS: Will Microsoft be publishing future iterations of Mass Effect or will EA be publishing it itself?
GZ: We can't predict the future. We'll see what happens. The key thing is we're making a trilogy of Mass Effect games, and we've got a great story arc.
RM: I think people should check it out and just focus on the first game. The team's efforts are going to shine through, since it's an amazing, amazing experience.
I didn't find loading that bad at all compared to most games. Fast travel around the citadel is only a few seconds, the same for going in and out of structures on planets. Reloads are also really fast. Only the elevators in a few spots are aggravating.
Agreed! I actually thought that, despite being almost 200 years ahead with alien technology at humanity's side, that Ashley still believing in God was an endearing fact about her personality. It was different, which is why despite her xenophobia and promiscuity I liked the character.
Yes the difficulty does not really help...i am more then halfway through insanity I started as a level 56 and i have only gone up to level 57 and i am doing all the sidequests...
So I got about 25 hours in, and besides the one day of pain I haven't had anymore technical glitches.
This game is so addicting I don't want to stop playing! I get engrossed with the side missions and searching new planets, even if they all look a bit the same.
I keep hearing everyone talk about how they have tons of money in this game. When does this happen? I've been playing for 12 hours, have done a good amount of side quests and am almost done on Feros. I only have about $20,000 to my name...1 million seems so far away.
What level are you? Also you can choose the order of story missions you play in, so saying your Feros doesn't mean much. I think that the quality of armor and weapons scales with your level, and once you get kind of high up there things start selling in the 10k+ range. And your pretty much forced to sell them due to the item limits.
Also sell everything you don't need. About halfway through the game I didn't have much money but then remembered I was carrying about a hundred redundant items. I had a big sale and next thing I know I had $750K! Finished the game will well over a million.
Really, so there was no screen tear or texture pop in for Uncharted? We must have played a different version of Uncharted, you and I. Also, I would say ME is just a tad more ambitious wouldn't you?
I don't want to start this with a "I'm a fan but..." statement, but that's how I'm going to start it anyway.
I have the LCE, I have the art book, I have the soundtrack. All I need is Wrex to punch me in the face and I'll have the complete Mass Effect experience. Ignoring the gameplay issues aside, the technical issues are just more glaring here than they are in Uncharted.
The devs have admitted that they disabled Auto-save for the most part because it takes too long to save. And if the elevators weren't enough to load in levels, you have random loading screens spread throughout the world as well.
My experience is that BioWare games play 10 times better on PCs than they do on Xbox and I have no doubt that when Mass Effect PC Special Edition is released, it'll run smoothly... hell, they may not even need the elevators at that point. I think the fact that devs don't have access to the hard drive to install is a huge limiting factor that PS3 games don't suffer. Small technical issues for Uncharted aside, it's a game with no loading screens at all. Mass Effect constantly reminds you that you're playing a game every time you take an elevator anywhere... they even had to put an elevator on the Normady (and as Whitta said on his podcast, it moves an inch a minute).
I've put in about 50 hours, but I'm really looking forward to the eventual PC port. All these technical issues will, for the most part, be gone. After that, the only complaint people will have is the fact that the side quest bases consist of the same four maps. And hell, since it's a modified UE3 game, there's no reason why some guy can't just make their own maps and missions, solving that problem too.
If you think the constantly loading isn't a problem, then that's your perogative. I just know that KoTOR1, 2 and Jade Empire were far superior when the loading screens were seconds long rather than minutes.
Gary Whitta said:
Also sell everything you don't need. About halfway through the game I didn't have much money but then remembered I was carrying about a hundred redundant items. I had a big sale and next thing I know I had $750K! Finished the game will well over a million.
Money rewards scale with your level, so you'll hit a point where each kill/side quest you solve nets you at least 50k credits. I ended my first play through with 5 mil.
