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Mass Effect |OT| Alien love in an elevator

immy

Banned
dreamer3kx said:
I just cant get into this game for some reason, I have it for the pc w/ my gtx 260 but I dont know what it is, I love rpg's and I'm a big fan of bioware, shit I think im getting old.:D

I think its the depth of this game that's turning me off, there's just so much weapons, its just overwhelming. If there a way to simplify the game, like auto equip the best weapons on myself and teammates, just so much stuff to do in the game.


don't do the fucking side quest!!!!!!!
 

Hootie

Member
immy said:
don't do the fucking side quest!!!!!!!

Yeah that too. I did them all but for the most part, they're all just "Go to X planet and kill all mercs/outlaws in the rebel base." The DLC mission was pretty good, though.

I think I said this before but story/mission wise, this game is nearly the complete opposite of Oblivion. While Mass Effect's main story is awesome, Oblivion's is shit, but Oblivion's side quests are really diverse while ME's are all completely identical to one another.

Plus ME takes place 130 years from now while Oblivion takes place in another "universe" which is still in the middle ages. :lol
 

informer07

Neo Member
I bought a 360 last week, plus two games (Mass Effect and Lost Odyssey). I decided to start with ME because I'd read that the main quest was relatively short.

Beat ME today in 13 hours. Overall, I enjoyed my experience and look forward to the sequel. As has been stated in numerous forums, they need to make the sidequests in ME 2 compelling, as their existence in ME caters mainly to completionists; there's just no incentive whatsoever to do them--i.e. within the context of the game's world.

The combat is fun as hell, if really player friendly. For example, there's no point in using sniper rifles when your assault weapon can take out enemies that aren't even viewable on screen. Not sure if weapon accuracy becomes more relevant on higher difficulties, but on normal it didn't seem to factor into the gameplay.

Oh and somehow my character ended up looking like Keanu Reeves, which somehow wasn't apparent to me until an hour or so into the game. This added some humor because it's hard not to have a character that looks like Keanu Reeves and not crack jokes.

Yeah, it's a pretty flawed game, but it was fun as hell to play and that's all that matters.
 

DEO3

Member
Gully State said:
No one here is playing on PC at this quality/resolution?

I play it on the PC, at 1680x1050 which is a bit less than 1600x1200, but still I never dip below 60fps with the in-game settings maxed.

Intel e8400 @ 4050Ghz
4GB DDR2 @ 900Mhz
ATI HD4870
Yadda yadda yadda.

I can run it with 4xAA through the Catalyst Control Center, but the UE3 engine doesn't play nice with AA and it the game will occasionally dip down into the 50fps range, just often enough to be noticeable. If your sensitive to that kind of thing, like I am, there's really no need to run it with AA, as aliasing isn't that noticeable in this game.
 

Staccat0

Fail out bailed
dreamer3kx said:
Im not doing any side quests as suggested by many, is there a more simple way of handling my weapons, like which weapon is better on certain characters?
Get your guys all equipped with your best stuff (use the lockers on the ship)
Just worry about the weapons that you have them use the most.

Afterwards: SELL EVERYTHING WITHOUT MERCY!!!

If you arent using it now, you wont use it (especially if you wanna keep it simple) because soon you'll find better shit.

This really helped me. Now I'm constantly tweaking things, but for the first half of the first playthrough I was confused. The second half I did this method and it made things much more managable.

A) ignore your inventory during quests
B) Get it over with on the ship between quests
C) Sell your extra stuff (to keep your inventory managable

I promise that this wil make life better.
Also, I dont generally upgrade an item unless every stat is improved. I just try to ignore the small stuff and focus on obvious improvement. You can easily beat the game this way.

P.S. Just recently started playing this again...
Any news on another downloadable pack?
 

vareon

Member
I'm 15 ours in, I just finished the first 3 planets. I'll go to Virmire tonight.

The sidequest is a total borefest of land on planet -> beat guys -> go on stuff, but the main quest is awesome.

One thing, though : Is the party A.I. bad, or I'm playing it wrong? They stood still in one place and keep getting hit by enemies, and they won't even move when I ordered to. Playing the PC version btw.
 

DJ_Tet

Banned
Alright Mass Effect masters, I need major help. I don't normally play FPS so I'm really having a hard time with the game. I just left the Citadel and I'm rank 11 or so, have all of my characters
except the salarian
and am getting my ass beat. First off I tried to tackle a story planet, Noveria. I made it past the
zeth covering the bridges
at Peak 15 but as soon as I went in the building I was destroyed.

I then started exploring other systems for some fights to level up with. It doesn't matter who I meet, pirates or zeth and I'm killed. It seems like any more than 5 guys in a tight inside space and my crew is gone. I'm a soldier focusing on Assault rifles (since I read snipers were game-breaking) and my toughest crew is Ashley and Garrus (who can heal.)

Did I set my guys up wrong? What skills should I focus on for Shephard and everyone else? I don't have any clue how I should fight, I feel like the game led me off a cliff and the book isn't much help. I'm supposed to be this bad-ass
Spectre
and I'm getting killed by random pirates.

Can anyone help or do I just suck? I looked forward to this game for so long, it's disappointing to find out I suck.
 
firehawk12 said:
Yep. From the OXM excerpt, it looks like it involves Cerberus.

Which is a reason why some of the side quest are far more then worthy of doing....:D

The Cerberus fight with the
Rachni
alone is worth completing that story, imho.

The derelict space shuttles aren't bad either imo, quite spooky at first, and for some reason, the stories on them seem more interesting.
 

Anth

Member
edit: As for some general Mass Effect commentary, seeing how I didn't post here yet: I wanted to hate this game the way I hated Jade Empire, but couldn't. Just about every RPG element is dumbed down from Infinity Engine games, but most of the game is so well executed I can't help liking it.

DJ_Tet said:
Alright Mass Effect masters, I need major help. I don't normally play FPS so I'm really having a hard time with the game. I just left the Citadel and I'm rank 11 or so, have all of my characters
except the salarian
and am getting my ass beat. First off I tried to tackle a story planet, Noveria. I made it past the
zeth covering the bridges
at Peak 15 but as soon as I went in the building I was destroyed.

I then started exploring other systems for some fights to level up with. It doesn't matter who I meet, pirates or zeth and I'm killed. It seems like any more than 5 guys in a tight inside space and my crew is gone. I'm a soldier focusing on Assault rifles (since I read snipers were game-breaking) and my toughest crew is Ashley and Garrus (who can heal.)

Did I set my guys up wrong? What skills should I focus on for Shephard and everyone else? I don't have any clue how I should fight, I feel like the game led me off a cliff and the book isn't much help. I'm supposed to be this bad-ass
Spectre
and I'm getting killed by random pirates.

Can anyone help or do I just suck? I looked forward to this game for so long, it's disappointing to find out I suck.
Location: Noveria is the hardest of the first third planets, start with Therum, that is the easiest. But before that, make sure you complete the quests in the citadel, they are all very easy and give good experience. Side Quests are not balanced properly in my experience, you get access to some fairly hard ones (and a lot of easy ones) right from the beginning, so it's better to do the Citadel Quests and Therum before them.

Party constellation: You might want to have a Biotic user in the group, they come in handy fairly often to draw enemies out of cover. A combat heavy group like yours has its own advantages though, lots of expendable hit points. Don't expect them to kill anything though, they are fairly stupid. (Basically, biotics are useful and get killed quickly, soldiers don't do much, but don't get killed either)

Equipment: Make sure to always have the best armor, weapons and upgrades on your character, they make a lot of difference.

Combat: Always take cover, avoid rockets and red beams of death (snipers often kill you in one hit), if you need to advance, send in an NPC first, they are expendable.


Other than that, you might want to turn down the difficulty level, if I recall correctly, you can do that at any time. I played through the game on both Veteran and Hardcore from level 1, but I died many, many times (Damn those one-hit killing snipers). Quicksave before and after every major battle.
 
how do i access the dlc content once I downloaded it? do i have to have a save thats not on the last part?

also i did all sidequests, completed the majority of the game using the same two characters all the time rather than switching to one of the other four and i didnt get those achievements...
 
alistairw said:
This.

I'm shocked that was a side-quest reward. That's some pretty major shit.

I just played and beat the game recently, well yesterday, and I surprised by that as well. The side quest on Luna was actually my least favorite in the game. It was so boring, but the reward made it totally worth it.
 
Gizmo_Monkey said:
how do i access the dlc content once I downloaded it? do i have to have a save thats not on the last part?

also i did all sidequests, completed the majority of the game using the same two characters all the time rather than switching to one of the other four and i didnt get those achievements...


The DLC will be on the Galaxy Map, so if you still have access to it you will be able to get there. I forget the name of the system.

That achievement is a little wonky. If you're hunting fo rit, I would do a few more sidequests. Also, I've heard that sometimes it doesn't unlock until well after you've reached the requirements. Like, later in the game.

bee said:
PC 1.1 patch and the free DLC just got released

That's good, we were wondering if they were going to be releasing it soon. Hopefully now they get working on the next DLC.
 
Gizmo_Monkey said:
how do i access the dlc content once I downloaded it? do i have to have a save thats not on the last part?

It's on you Galaxy Map. It shows up as something like "Asteroid xxx" or something like that.

also i did all sidequests, completed the majority of the game using the same two characters all the time rather than switching to one of the other four and i didnt get those achievements...

I've never done any of these achievements for this very reason (I heard it's a pain in the ass), from what I understand, if you do it with characters that you have to pick up later on (Like Wrex or Tali and especially Liara), you have to basically get them immediately, and can't do much of anything else before you get them.
 

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
vareon said:
I'm 15 ours in, I just finished the first 3 planets. I'll go to Virmire tonight.

The sidequest is a total borefest of land on planet -> beat guys -> go on stuff, but the main quest is awesome.

One thing, though : Is the party A.I. bad, or I'm playing it wrong? They stood still in one place and keep getting hit by enemies, and they won't even move when I ordered to. Playing the PC version btw.
The pathfinding isn't particularly great in this title. The AI can get stuck in a lot of places. I had this ALL THE TIME. It was freaking annoying, honestly.
 

DJ_Tet

Banned
Anth said:
edit: As for some general Mass Effect commentary, seeing how I didn't post here yet: I wanted to hate this game the way I hated Jade Empire, but couldn't. Just about every RPG element is dumbed down from Infinity Engine games, but most of the game is so well executed I can't help liking it.


Location: Noveria is the hardest of the first third planets, start with Therum, that is the easiest. But before that, make sure you complete the quests in the citadel, they are all very easy and give good experience. Side Quests are not balanced properly in my experience, you get access to some fairly hard ones (and a lot of easy ones) right from the beginning, so it's better to do the Citadel Quests and Therum before them.

Party constellation: You might want to have a Biotic user in the group, they come in handy fairly often to draw enemies out of cover. A combat heavy group like yours has its own advantages though, lots of expendable hit points. Don't expect them to kill anything though, they are fairly stupid. (Basically, biotics are useful and get killed quickly, soldiers don't do much, but don't get killed either)

Equipment: Make sure to always have the best armor, weapons and upgrades on your character, they make a lot of difference.

Combat: Always take cover, avoid rockets and red beams of death (snipers often kill you in one hit), if you need to advance, send in an NPC first, they are expendable.


Other than that, you might want to turn down the difficulty level, if I recall correctly, you can do that at any time. I played through the game on both Veteran and Hardcore from level 1, but I died many, many times (Damn those one-hit killing snipers). Quicksave before and after every major battle.


Thanks for the tips :) I hope someone else has something else to offer.

I didn't realize my teammates were so helpless, should I be casting abilities with them or just let the CPU play them? I'll definitely change the focus to Shepard, though and try to utilize cover better.

For the record I beat both KOTOR games and Jade Empire multiple times, I just can't get a hand on the combat in this game. Do you wait for your timing reticule to get the smallest before you ever shoot? Do you have to shoot in really short bursts? I feel like I empty my clip in enemies and barely do any damage, should I just run in and melee them if I'm that close? The game provides such little instruction in combat, and really gives you very little experience fighting before it sets you off the Citadel.

Hopefully I'll find that other planet a little more hospitable. The only side quest I've been able to finish thus far is the one with the Biotic followers
cause I was able to find a non-killing resolution, otherwise they surely would have toasted my ass too.
 

DJ_Tet

Banned
wmat said:
The pathfinding isn't particularly great in this title. The AI can get stuck in a lot of places. I had this ALL THE TIME. It was freaking annoying, honestly.


At least it isn't like KOTOR (I think) where you have to wait for the lost crewmembers to catch up before you can enter a door.
 

bigswords

Member
DEO3 said:
I play it on the PC, at 1680x1050 which is a bit less than 1600x1200, but still I never dip below 60fps with the in-game settings maxed.

Intel e8400 @ 4050Ghz
4GB DDR2 @ 900Mhz
ATI HD4870
Yadda yadda yadda.

That's nice whoa~
 

Dabanton

Member
Recently started playing this again after not having enough time for it on release. And i'm loving it.

Now i've got
Liara on my team
it's made things a little easier.

I'm still amazed at the graphics and how good they look on a HDTV. And the way the talk systems flows.

The inventory is a pain in the ass though,but i know how to manage that now.
 

Anth

Member
Liara T'Soni said:
I've never done any of these achievements for this very reason (I heard it's a pain in the ass), from what I understand, if you do it with characters that you have to pick up later on (Like Wrex or Tali and especially Liara), you have to basically get them immediately, and can't do much of anything else before you get them.
It's easy to do with most characters, but quite the problem with Liara. I got her before travelling to any other planet, and I did all assignment afterwards with her in the group, but because I already finished most citadel assignments before getting her, I still couldn't get the achievement.

I didn't realize my teammates were so helpless, should I be casting abilities with them or just let the CPU play them? I'll definitely change the focus to Shepard, though and try to utilize cover better.
Your mileage may vary, but after trying to utilize them for a few hours, I finally threw up my hands in disgust and gave up on them. They are good for drawing fire and for support skills, but really cannot kill a thing. In my playthrough with a medic, most enemies were killed by my puny pistol with no skill points in it. Companions aren't half as useful as in KoTOR.

For the record I beat both KOTOR games and Jade Empire multiple times, I just can't get a hand on the combat in this game. Do you wait for your timing reticule to get the smallest before you ever shoot? Do you have to shoot in really short bursts? I feel like I empty my clip in enemies and barely do any damage, should I just run in and melee them if I'm that close? The game provides such little instruction in combat, and really gives you very little experience fighting before it sets you off the Citadel.
It depends on your skills, but generally, the best strategy is to immediately run behind cover and then fire short bursts when the enemy comes out of cover. Sometimes you will need to get closer to the enemy or even charge directly, in that case, command a companion to go there first, so that he will draw all the fire.
Melee never worked out to well for me, but I never put many points in Assault Training, so I wouldn't know.

DJ_Tet said:
At least it isn't like KOTOR (I think) where you have to wait for the lost crewmembers to catch up before you can enter a door.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
Mass Effect's main annoyances are the elevators and the vehicle sections, I'd say.
 
Anth said:
Your mileage may vary, but after trying to utilize them for a few hours, I finally threw up my hands in disgust and gave up on them. They are good for drawing fire and for support skills, but really cannot kill a thing.


One note here, if you have someone with Overload (the one that makes guns explode) I would level it up and use it all the time with my squad mates.

It's incredibly useful, and IIRC, there's no need to aim or anything so you can use it even if the squadmate is behind cover or whatever.
 

Anth

Member
gregor7777 said:
One note here, if you have someone with Overload (the one that makes guns explode) I would level it up and use it all the time with my squad mates.

It's incredibly useful, and IIRC, there's no need to aim or anything so you can use it even if the squadmate is behind cover or whatever.
Overload, Sabotage and Damping all do AOE damage, so automated companions can damage enemies behind cover as long as it is not too thick.

They generally do a lot better with tech and biotic powers instead of weapons, but they still fired quite a lot of those directly beside me at the cover instead of at enemies.
 
umm, wow. I just got to the part in Ilos where I must rush to the conduit in under 40 seconds and missed it by a second because I accidently pressed Y and it made me restart the entire fucking mission? fuck this shit
 
HOLY FUCKING JESUS DOWNLOADING BRING DOWN THE SKY FOR PC IS THE MOST ASS-BACKWARDS BULLSHIT EVER STOP MAKING ME JUMP THROUGH TWENTY-SEVEN FUCKING HOOPS, BIOWARE!!!
 
So guys, I'm having a weird problem. Apparently, my monitor really doesn't like Mass Effect. It was running just fine at first, and my system can definitely handle it, but for some reason, while I was wandering the Normandy, my monitor wouldn't stop auto-adjusting. I turned it off and unplugged it to fix this, but then it would just randomly shut off or go to black. Then, once I quit out of the game (and Steam, since I use it for all my games), everything was fine. This has never happened to me before. Any suggestions?
 
I AM JOHN! said:
So guys, I'm having a weird problem. Apparently, my monitor really doesn't like Mass Effect. It was running just fine at first, and my system can definitely handle it, but for some reason, while I was wandering the Normandy, my monitor wouldn't stop auto-adjusting. I turned it off and unplugged it to fix this, but then it would just randomly shut off or go to black. Then, once I quit out of the game (and Steam, since I use it for all my games), everything was fine. This has never happened to me before. Any suggestions?
turn v-sync on in the game
 

Staccat0

Fail out bailed
DJ_Tet said:
Thanks for the tips :) I hope someone else has something else to offer.

I didn't realize my teammates were so helpless, should I be casting abilities with them or just let the CPU play them? I'll definitely change the focus to Shepard, though and try to utilize cover better.

For the record I beat both KOTOR games and Jade Empire multiple times, I just can't get a hand on the combat in this game. Do you wait for your timing reticule to get the smallest before you ever shoot? Do you have to shoot in really short bursts? I feel like I empty my clip in enemies and barely do any damage, should I just run in and melee them if I'm that close? The game provides such little instruction in combat, and really gives you very little experience fighting before it sets you off the Citadel.

Hopefully I'll find that other planet a little more hospitable. The only side quest I've been able to finish thus far is the one with the Biotic followers
cause I was able to find a non-killing resolution, otherwise they surely would have toasted my ass too.
The game has a fairly steep learning curve. Here is what I do:
1. Remember its a stop and pop 3rd person shooter- Use cover. Dont run and gun. Remember to use the "L trigger" to aim. Crouch during combat.

2. Go to gameplay options and have your characters set up to use skill automatically.

3. Choose what weapon you want each character to focus on and level that up- Sometimes the "auto level up" will want to give skill points to a weapon you dont even use. For example I had WRex focus on Shotties and Garrus/ashley focus on AR.

4. Dont keep trying things the same way- When you die, come at the battle with a slightly different strategy or try to address what it was that you did wrong.

5. Use grenades sparringly, but never forget you have them and remember they can be used as remote mines as well.

6. Use your skill a lot. The firs half of the game I was hardly ever using my skills. I wish I had been using them the whole time.

7. Save between every encounter. The Auto save in this game is ruthless.

8. Dont be afraid to adjust the difficulty. I didnt do this, but I dont see a reason not to if its not a style of game you are use to. Its about making it fun.
 

Chinner

Banned
Seeing as ME2 isn't showing any signs of coming out yet, I'm thinking of making a new main character. At the moment, my main character is a fulled max out lv 60 soldier (yes yes yes, I know). I'm thinking of ditching this guy and making a new character. Same class but I was planning on giving him a extra skill that you only get after completing the game. I was thinking lift. Any suggestions?

Of course, this will all be a waste if Bioware don't allow you to continue your character, but they've been pimping it for so long that they better do.
 

Chinner

Banned
Sure no one cares, but I'll post anyway. Somehwat continues my post above. One of the problems with my main soldier guy is that hes somewhat too much of a all rounder, dont get me wrong he does kick ass, but generally the better players specialise as opposed to being alright at everything. So I compiled a list of what i'll try to excel at.

Assault Rifle
Shotgun
Combat armour
First Aid
Assault Training
Fitness
Shock Trooper
Spectre Training

Been looking up about the extra skill, and looks like Medicine may be the best choice because it'll allow me to heal more, and also because it teaches neural shock which wll be useful against the majority of enemies. If anyone has any suggestions then say!

edit: welps need to unlock medicine. just made a dummy account in preperation.
 

Anth

Member
Chinner said:
Sure no one cares, but I'll post anyway. Somehwat continues my post above. One of the problems with my main soldier guy is that hes somewhat too much of a all rounder, dont get me wrong he does kick ass, but generally the better players specialise as opposed to being alright at everything. So I compiled a list of what i'll try to excel at.

Assault Rifle
Shotgun
Combat armour
First Aid
Assault Training
Fitness
Shock Trooper
Spectre Training

Been looking up about the extra skill, and looks like Medicine may be the best choice because it'll allow me to heal more, and also because it teaches neural shock which wll be useful against the majority of enemies. If anyone has any suggestions then say!

edit: welps need to unlock medicine. just made a dummy account in preperation.
Having played a dedicated medic in my first playthrough, I'm not sure about giving the main character First Aid. I'd rather have a companion specalize in it, seeing how they aren't very good with their weapons and powers anyway. For my soldier, I went with Electronics, because the additional shields help, and the Overload power absolutely rocks, even at the lowest level.

I would also consider going with a Vanguard over a Soldier, and giving him Assault Rifles as a bonus talent, trading Fitness and Assault Training for Lift and Throw.
 

Chinner

Banned
Anth said:
Having played a dedicated medic in my first playthrough, I'm not sure about giving the main character First Aid. I'd rather have a companion specalize in it, seeing how they aren't very good with their weapons and powers anyway. For my soldier, I went with Electronics, because the additional shields help, and the Overload power absolutely rocks, even at the lowest level.
Duly noted. Shields are a important aspect for the player and enemy, so this does make sense. Neural shock on the other hand has no actual benefit for the player himself, and only affects organic enemies. So yeah, your suggestion seems to work better for a soldier class.

Regarding going as a Vanguard: Maybe, probably not. Throw is a useful move, but their usage of weapons (even with assault rifle added) isn't so great. Besides, you can't use heavy armour!
 

kmfdmpig

Member
DJ_Tet said:
Thanks for the tips :) I hope someone else has something else to offer.

I didn't realize my teammates were so helpless, should I be casting abilities with them or just let the CPU play them? I'll definitely change the focus to Shepard, though and try to utilize cover better.

For the record I beat both KOTOR games and Jade Empire multiple times, I just can't get a hand on the combat in this game. Do you wait for your timing reticule to get the smallest before you ever shoot? Do you have to shoot in really short bursts? I feel like I empty my clip in enemies and barely do any damage, should I just run in and melee them if I'm that close? The game provides such little instruction in combat, and really gives you very little experience fighting before it sets you off the Citadel.

Hopefully I'll find that other planet a little more hospitable. The only side quest I've been able to finish thus far is the one with the Biotic followers
cause I was able to find a non-killing resolution, otherwise they surely would have toasted my ass too.
A few general things to keep in mind:
1) Use your special abilities as well as those of your teammates. They can make a huge difference.
2) Baddies typically heal, so concentrate on one at a time until they're dead and then focus on the next. In between you can hide behind a box or something to heal.
3) Use the appropriate weapons (even if you don't have skill points in them). If you're in a warehouse, for example, then the shotgun will be good. If you're out in the open try the sniper rifle (it's hard to use, but once you get the hang of it it's a good way to kill without even being shot at).
4) In some areas you can use the Mako to get kills for you, but that cuts the xp you get, so you'd usually want to weaken with the Mako and then hop off for the kill.
 

Flunkie

Banned
I just stayed up all night playing this game straight through for 10 hours and beating it from ~4 hours into the game. No joke.

I picked it up for the PC when it was released, and saved the colony of Feros and got halfway through the "Find Liara" thing, and then quit for some reason. Decided to play it again tonight, got hooked, and never went to sleep. Played it straight through to the end with no breaks at all. Such a freaking awesome game!

I loved the part near the end where
you'd kill a guy, and his body starts floating around because there's no gravity
:lol

Also,
I had sex with Ashley. :)

Time to start on DLC, and then want the second game to come out ASAP.
 

Cipher

Member
I've been replaying the game and just came across the "Forbidden Planet." I gotta start reading these planet descriptions more often.
 
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