[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[Edge-]

I hated this.

>Get a quest on planet.
"I need to see you on the nexus!"
*watch the video where you take off from the planet*
*watch the jump through space back to the nexus system*
*watch the jump through the nexus system to the nexus itself*
*watch the video where you land on the nexus*
*watch the video where you take the tram to whichever wing you need on the nexus*
"I need you to do X on the planet you just came from!"
*watch the video where you take the tram back to the dock on the nexus*
*watch the video where you take off from the nexus*
*watch the jump through space back to the planet you just came from's system*
*watch the jump through the system back to the planet*
*watch the video where you land back on the planet*
*look at the clock and realize 10 minutes just passed for you to go to the Nexus and have that 30 second conversation*

Jesus, that's more loading screens/cutscenes than SWTOR. And SWTOR was already annoying as hell with that shit : /

[Derah]

So I crafted A Dhan Shotgun like that PC gamer article suggested, and slapped my two best augments on it. Heat Seeking Plasma, and the other one that makes it so that if you hold down the trigger, the shot does more damage.

BIG mistake.

The second mod made it so the shotgun had only 1 bullet per clip, and only 6 bullets in reserve. And for some inexplicable reason, it made the shotgun weak as shit. How weak? remember those one-shottable green roaches in Eos that you can kill by winking at them? This shotgun required FIVE shots to kill them. And I held the button down for up to 3 seconds before each shot.

Thankfully, I saved before crafting, so I just loaded the game, tried again without the charged plasma aug and the resulting shotgun is indeed quite powerful. It fires a single slug (as opposed to a spray of dispersible pellets) and thanks to the heat-seeking aug, as long as you're aiming in the general direction of the enemy, the shot will never miss. It completely wrecks shit up so badly, I had to crank up the difficulty to compensate xD because the game became too easy. I am now playing on Hardcore instead of Normal.

[Jastall]

I have to say, while this game's main plot is not impressive thus far, I'm really digging the whole space frontier aspect. I enjoy being the Pathfinder who gets to find and secure an area so that hapless NPCs can live in it. The best part is exiting the Vaults; where before you had a dreary blizzard, now suddenly the clouds part above Voeld to reveal the planet's rings and the mother of all auroras, complete with the draw distance that lets you see the entire playable area. It definitely feels like a fitting reward for your efforts, I love that. Then you place your outpost, and finally get some friendly faces after gunning down all those smelly Kett.

It's like what Fallout 4 tried to do with its settlements, except actually good.

I also found a Kett sword that restores health when used. Couple with a Vanguard's melee restoring shield, a mod that doubles shields while halving health, Backlash stopping the bullets of half a dozen enemies, and my Charge now maxing shields every use too, and nothing short of the biggest Remnant bots start being trouble. The sense of progression since dying to the first two random Kett on Habitat 7 is real.

[sarahtasher]

I'm probably bad, but on Hardcore, most early fights are a breeze....but a couple nightmarish

[Ilikegreenfire]

One thing that is really bothering me about this game is NPCs being upset if your "first" outpost is a military outpost...

It just baffles me why Bioware would write it this way... Because for starters... Its not the fucking first outpost... There were two other outposts before it... You know... WHERE ALMOST EVERYONE DIED BECAUSE THEY WERE ATTACKED BY THE KETT...

So your "first" outpost is really the fucking third one... And people should not only not be upset about it being military, they should be happy as fuck given what happened to the first two and now having the defenses to prevent that from happening again.

Just irks me, I am pretty far in the game and there are still people who bring it up like "how can we trust you aren't an invader when your first outpost is military!?!?!"

Fucking dumb.

The thing is when you are making decisions that effect thousands people some are going to get pissed off, that's politics. Different people are pissed choosing either base

Imho a military outpost is the most logical choice. you want to be able to deffend your first outpost, not only as a symbol but also because its a source of freshwater and food for a starving population. That's not to mention the fact that you are at war with the Kett who have a sizable base on the planet.

People are rarely logical when it comes to their family's however, especially considering how their family members where scheduled for wake up, but got diverted in favor of military personal.

Are they stupid to protest and want to wake people up without the proper resources? Yes, but thats human/alien nature.

They are also rarely logical when meeting new people, judging books by their covers, especially the xenophobic Angara.

They are supposed to come off as stupid in this instance.

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That's what I am saying though... Why would it be unpopular...?

"How dare you try and protect our colonization efforts!" "We deserve to die just like the first two outposts!"

It literally makes no sense why unpopular given the circumstances of the first two outposts.

And I am talking about people complaining about the message it sends, not the protesters complaining about their families not being awoken, since they only care because it was someone else and not their family brought out.

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There is quantum entanglement communication in Mass Effect, perhaps this implies the cannon is that the Reapers won, or something else wiped out Milky Way civilization.

Since they should be able to communicate instantly with the Milky Way, beacons or no beacons. Unless they only had one system (which makes no sense) and the Milky Way half was lost in some way.

The beacons were probably destroyed in the initial reaper assaults, as they were likely near earth/palavan/thesia/surkesh

[I Push Buttons]

So I crafted A Dhan Shotgun like that PC gamer article suggested, and slapped my two best augments on it. Heat Seeking Plasma, and the other one that makes it so that if you hold down the trigger, the shot does more damage.

BIG mistake.

The second mod made it so the shotgun had only 1 bullet per clip, and only 6 bullets in reserve. And for some inexplicable reason, it made the shotgun weak as shit. How weak? remember those one-shottable green roaches in Eos that you can kill by winking at them? This shotgun required FIVE shots to kill them. And I held the button down for up to 3 seconds before each shot.

Thankfully, I saved before crafting, so I just loaded the game, tried again without the charged plasma aug and the resulting shotgun is indeed quite powerful. It fires a single slug (as opposed to a spray of dispersible pellets) and thanks to the heat-seeking aug, as long as you're aiming in the general direction of the enemy, the shot will never miss. It completely wrecks shit up so badly, I had to crank up the difficulty to compensate xD because the game became too easy. I am now playing on Hardcore instead of Normal.

Yeah the augments, the special ones for guns anyways, are strange in this game. I have tried a variety of them and they are hit or miss; mostly miss, almost entirely really.

Pretty much the only really good one is the Kett one that makes you do 20% more damage when at full shields/full HP, which is good for snipers and I would imagine vanguards since you will pretty much always be at full shields.

The beam one seemingly makes weapons do no damage...

The Vintage Heatsink is definitely not worth... It not only lets you fire less shots than a normal magazine would, but it takes longer to cool off than it otherwise takes to reload. That coupled with every single area having a plethora of ammo crates makes it useless.

The grenade ones basically just turn every gun into a weaker version of an M-37 Falcon.

The ricochet one... What is the point of that? You can throw a receiver on your gun and shoot through cover... Not to mention the ability to aim ricochets is non-existent.

The plasma rounds one go center mass, making it difficult to nearly impossible to hit weakspots...

The electrical conduits one seemingly served no purpose when I tested it. It turned tracers blue and made enemies have little electrical animations on themselves... It didn't seem to do any extra damage, the electrical animation didn't jump around or anything like that. Maybe it makes the gun do more damage against robots? I just shot normal people with it, so no clue, the description doesn't really shed any light on it... It just says when you put it on a gun "streams of electricity"...

---
So in the end I just ended up putting the two extra mods on my gun along with recharge augs, as 20% recharge on the skills I use is way more useful than any of those shit ass augs.

I'm getting really put off by the lack of good options for soldier.

The fusion mods, for example... There isn't a single one made for soldier when there is one made for pretty much every other playstyle.

Then there are the augs... There is only one single augment that affects weapon damage, and only on weapons, the kinetic coils, and only 3%. Meanwhile every skill has damage augments, recharge augments, duration augments, extra damage to shields/armor augments, etc... Guns though and just shooting in general, nada...

[Ilikegreenfire]

Electrical conduit shreads sheilds and synths

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Seeking plasma is good on rapid fire low accuracy guns

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the grande ones are good on high fire rates as well, not so much on semi automatics. theres really no good super rare augment for the Semi auto guns except maybe the charge or beam one

[Super Kami Dende]

Jesus, that's more loading screens/cutscenes than SWTOR. And SWTOR was already annoying as hell with that shit : /

At least you can press SpaceBar in Swtor and skip it.

This game is a fucking mess.

[Very Tired]

Getting a ton of MP games where you join and ready up and the other 3 players act as though they are dead.

Also, yay, more sound problems that should not have made it to launch.

[Lahis]

They are angry if you make it a science outpost too, just for different reasons.

Seems like some people are angry no matter what you pick.

Military outpost gathers more disagreement. The voices for the military outpost are either Krogan or from the militia, though especially the Militia's concern about Kett is justified.

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I just reached the Nexus, and frankly, I would bet a medigel unit or two on SAM ''identity'', considering that Alec personnally programmed it....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYZfeY8Vg0E

Haven't reached into the end of that questline yet, but SAM interacted with Ellen in it's earlier development phases and it's atleast implied that first Pathfinder level implant was on Ellen, with SAM augmenting her body against her disease and prolonging her life. I'm not ready to call SAM digitized Ellen, but they do have a connection.

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Holy shit, had to drop difficulty from Insanity to Hardcore (well, to Normal in between) because of the Kett stronghold on Eos. That place kicked my butt for over an hour straight.

[I Push Buttons]

Electrical conduit shreads sheilds and synths

Yeah I just tested it again, it does indeed do extra damage to shields, but it does it at the expense of doing less normal damage and almost no damage to armor (literally almost none).

I did a save, crafted a Valkyrie 6 with it and all the bells and whistles, modded it in full tier 5's and went down to this mission. One of the first few enemies (in addition to some shielded sharpshooters I saw had their shields shredded by it) was an armored Krogan. Fired about three whole magazines into his face (33 bullets each), the gun does 237 base damage with no skills rolling. He lost about 10% of his health... I was like woah wtf.

Loaded save, put on my normal Valkyrie 6, everything the same just no electrical conduits... The same Krogan got shredded in about half a clip.

So yeah, electrical conduits should be a backup weapon for when you need to shred some shields and otherwise not used.

[Ilikegreenfire]

Yeah I just tested it again, it does indeed do extra damage to shields, but it does it at the expense of doing less normal damage and almost no damage to armor (literally almost none).

I did a save, crafted a Valkyrie 6 with it and all the bells and whistles, modded it in full tier 5's and went down to this mission. One of the first few enemies (in addition to some shielded sharpshooters I saw had their shields shredded by it) was an armored Krogan. Fired about three whole magazines into his face (33 bullets each), the gun does 237 base damage with no skills rolling. He lost about 10% of his health... I was like woah wtf.

Loaded save, put on my normal Valkyrie 6, everything the same just no electrical conduits... The same Krogan got shredded in about half a clip.

So yeah, electrical conduits should be a backup weapon for when you need to shred some shields and otherwise not used.

I have a equalizer with electrical as back up, my main is a sandstorm, using mainly senteil builds.

Beat the Kett base on Eos, fuck me that was rough. Bane Massani told me to hit a barracks and energy satation, easy enough, the main thing tho jesus. It had 2 towers of doom that shredded my shields in one hit even with maxed barrier and murdered the squad, I eventually had to take a sniper in addition to my assault rifle to snipe them down in cover. In the main base waves and waves of enemies keep coming until you activate a shitload of terminals, then you have kill enemies that remain. Finally you fight the boss it was fucking brutal.

[I Push Buttons]

I have a equalizer with electrical as back up, my main is a sandstorm, using mainly senteil builds.

Beat the Kett base on Eos, fuck me that was rough. Bane Massani told me to hit a barracks and energy satation, easy enough, the main thing tho jesus. It had 2 towers of doom that shredded my shields in one hit even with maxed barrier and murdered the squad, I eventually had to take a sniper in addition to my assault rifle to snipe them down in cover. In the main base waves and waves of enemies keep coming until you activate a shitload of terminals, then you have kill enemies that remain. Finally you fight the boss it was fucking brutal.

I had trouble with that one too because it was buggy af for me.

For starters there were a couple enemies that spawned underground, causing my guys to try and shoot at them and fight with them, even when I ordered them to go somewhere, they would just turn around and keep trying to fight them. Fortunately it wasn't like other underground glitches where they could shoot me, but I couldn't shoot back; they were just down there doing nothing.

Secondly enemies kept spawning literally inside my asshole. Like I would run to a console, no enemies in sight, boom four Kett would spawn directly on top of me. Got really frustrating with all this stuff since you only get one checkpoint right at the beginning and gotta beat the whole thing without dying.

[DeadmanWalking]

I'm constantly having problems keeping this game going, it hangs up in loading screens or crashes after 3 seconds after I turn it on. The only way to avoid the crashing after three seconds is to run as an administrator, if I go into it normally it fails. I've had to repair files several times which also seems to help.
Anyone else having problems?

[Sunseeker]

Played another 8 hours of this game. Had an odd bug where trying to place an outpost on Voeld sent me back to the load screen, was all kinds of "WTF?". But it worked the next time so w/e. Been seeing more of creatures getting stuck in a fixed pose issue, I don't mind because I then just stand there and shoot it, but it's odd but nothing major.

The Kett are still arguably some of the lamest bad guys ever.

[Deleted]

Played another 8 hours of this game. Had an odd bug where trying to place an outpost on Voeld sent me back to the load screen, was all kinds of "WTF?". But it worked the next time so w/e. Been seeing more of creatures getting stuck in a fixed pose issue, I don't mind because I then just stand there and shoot it, but it's odd but nothing major.

The Kett are still arguably some of the lamest bad guys ever.

I had that during the trial. Basically when I found dad Ryder in the beginning of the game and the cutscene just before heading into the alien building just ended, I was back at main menu. I thought that was just how much players were allowed to play in the trial, but it worked when I hit Resume and pick off where it kicked me out.

[Sunseeker]

I had that during the trial. Basically when I found dad Ryder in the beginning of the game and the cutscene just before heading into the alien building just ended, I was back at main menu. I thought that was just how much players were allowed to play in the trial, but it worked when I hit Resume and pick off where it kicked me out.

Yep, also the meteor mission on Voeld bugged out on me because I died during the conversation with SAM it triggered. I even reloaded an earlier save and it was still bugged, like WTF?

But I mean, as far as bugs and glitches like that are going, I'm experiencing very few of them and any that I've gone through are all very minor.

[I Push Buttons]

But I mean, as far as bugs and glitches like that are going, I'm experiencing very few of them and any that I've gone through are all very minor.

I've only had one major bug and it had to do with saves/loading saves.

There are some locations where my game simply will not load a save. The flat cliff area above Prodromos (don't remember name) and the area between the fast travel point on the far right and the architect on Voeld.

If I save my game in those locations and then try to load it, I just get an infinite loading screen. Found that out the hard way because I usually just have one manual save that I keep overwriting in games like this and it put me back like thirty minutes when I needed to load an autosave since my manual save would not load.

[Tenjen]

That's what I am saying though... Why would it be unpopular...?

"How dare you try and protect our colonization efforts!" "We deserve to die just like the first two outposts!"

It literally makes no sense why unpopular given the circumstances of the first two outposts.

And I am talking about people complaining about the message it sends, not the protesters complaining about their families not being awoken, since they only care because it was someone else and not their family brought out.

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There is quantum entanglement communication in Mass Effect, perhaps this implies the cannon is that the Reapers won, or something else wiped out Milky Way civilization.

Since they should be able to communicate instantly with the Milky Way, beacons or no beacons. Unless they only had one system (which makes no sense) and the Milky Way half was lost in some way.

Thats the thing though. Ryder's decisions are not immune to the inherent disagreement, politics and arguements that the nexus suffers from. Some people agree with one decision and disagree with the other, then you have some assholes who disagree with both because they have outside agenda's or their priorities are elsewhere. It is indeed stupid, but in the way that people contributing to such situations in dire circumstances are stupid in a way thats very real and very common.

Also, concerning the quantum entanglement. It doesnt really imply anything. The QEC's partner devices could have been lost in the reaper war or lost afterwards, or have been ignored or surpassed after 600 years. Any number of circumstances could exist over why we arent answering back

[Derah]

The Kett are still arguably some of the lamest bad guys ever.

Ohh no, I can think of a dozen others that are much lamer (Iron Horde is just the first that comes to mind). Granted, they do feel like a big step-down from The Illusive Man, but that's on the leadership. Cerberus wasn't that impressive either, on the Citadel DLC, its lampshaded how every single one of their projects ended up in failure and with a bunch of their people dead. Shepard was more or less their one and only success...... up until the point where shepard broke ties with them and likewise began to kill their people.

At least the Kett subjugated the Heleus Cluster before we got there and started kicking ass. As for the Archon, I can't make a proper assessment of him yet, I've only seen the bloke twice, and in the first scene, he didn't even say a line. As far as first impressions go, he definitely didn't make one as strong as Saren did. Now THAT guy knew how to make an entrance.

On another topic: Finally got my first Asari Sword. Love it. Best melee weapon in the game. A little finicky to use, but OHHHH so very very useful for a vanguard. I almost don't have to shoot anymore, between the shotgun perk that increases melee damage, and the vanguard perk that increases shields based on melee damage done, I basically charge, shoot, slash, shoot, charge, slash, shoot, charge :P And I keep repeating this pattern until the fight is over. Don't even have to stop to reload or nothing because my shotgun has the Vintage Heat Sink, so between the charge/slash phase, it reloads itself. I really adore the synergy that this combo brings forth. And since the Asari Sword makes you teleport a short distance to your target, its great for dodging attacks, and saving my bacon in a jiffy.

Lastly, ever since I got into the Tempest, there was something about that ship that didn't feel right, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Don't get me wrong, I like how sleek and new it looks and all, but there's just something off about it that I just couldn't identify, until it hit me just now...... There's no crew on it.

Apart from our squadmates, and the 4 non-squad characters (Kallo, Suvi, Lexi, and Gil) there are no crew members to be seen in the entire thing. In the original trilogy, you always saw nameless crew members in different areas of the ship milling about, after all, a warship requires quite a lot of people to function properly. But on the tempest, there's just your six squad members, and 4 ship crew members and that's it. 11 people are apparently more than enough to run a warship by themselves. And yes, I know the Tempest is technically just a "scouting ship", but even so, its a large spacecraft, you'd think there should be at least 20 or 30 people on it.

The lack of crew makes the ship feel......... empty.