[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[Nazrark]

The real question is... 50k or 100k boxes from multiplayer?

I'm leaning toward the 50k.. got a good run and shot to 100k pretty quick, was disappointed with the 100k box Got a sidewinder so I no longer have to use a Charger but... disappointing.

The best strategy is buy the 5k ones until you finally max out the basic weapons. Then make your way to the higher cost boxes.

[May90]

The strategy I used is this (a week ago moved on to the step 3):

1. Max out the common gear by buying Basic Packs only.
2. Max out the uncommon gear by buying Advanced Packs only.
3. Keep buying Premium Packs only.

By the end of the 2nd stage, you should have enough rare weapons to be able to easily clear out any Gold mission with almost any leveled class, except for some special APEX missions with crazy debuffs. Two Gold missions give you ~110k credits, letting you buy a Premium pack and restock your supply of consumables.

I see little reason to buy Expert Packs. A Premium Pack gives you 2 guaranteed rares, with a decent chance of an ultra-rare, while with 2 Expert packs you just get 2 rares with a tiny chance of a 3rd rare and a ridiculously tiny chance to get an ultra-rare. Pretty much no matter what your final goal is, a Premium Pack seems to be a better bargain.

---

I'm waiting for them to introduce Platinum difficulty now. Gold is way too easy for a leveled character with a proper gear, unless some really wacky debuffs are applied, such as "no revives", or "all weapons -50% damage and pistols +50% damage" against the Kett.

[Vanyali]

The strategy I used is this (a week ago moved on to the step 3):

1. Max out the common gear by buying Basic Packs only.
2. Max out the uncommon gear by buying Advanced Packs only.
3. Keep buying Premium Packs only.

By the end of the 2nd stage, you should have enough rare weapons to be able to easily clear out any Gold mission with almost any leveled class, except for some special APEX missions with crazy debuffs. Two Gold missions give you ~110k credits, letting you buy a Premium pack and restock your supply of consumables.

I see little reason to buy Expert Packs. A Premium Pack gives you 2 guaranteed rares, with a decent chance of an ultra-rare, while with 2 Expert packs you just get 2 rares with a tiny chance of a 3rd rare and a ridiculously tiny chance to get an ultra-rare. Pretty much no matter what your final goal is, a Premium Pack seems to be a better bargain.

The fiends like to eat me through walls and also the fiends

I also just started yesterday so my gear sucksssssssss

[May90]

The fiends like to eat me through walls and also the fiends

I also just started yesterday so my gear sucksssssssss

Fiends are quite bugged, from my understanding... Whenever there is a slight lag from the host, fiends start teleporting around, and apparently their collision mechanics coujld use some improvement. Personally, I'm not really afraid of fiends; the Anointed though are nasty!

With poor gear, I would start with one of the Vanguards. They mostly rely on melee damage and abilities, which mostly depend on the hero level and not on the gear.

[Adam Jensen]

An interesting and objective look at buggy games (we all know what game Extra Credits is talking about...)



Note that he is not defending the release of buggy games, just explaining the how and why, in general, it happens.

[Vanyali]

Fiends are quite bugged, from my understanding... Whenever there is a slight lag from the host, fiends start teleporting around, and apparently their collision mechanics coujld use some improvement. Personally, I'm not really afraid of fiends; the Anointed though are nasty!

With poor gear, I would start with one of the Vanguards. They mostly rely on melee damage and abilities, which mostly depend on the hero level and not on the gear.

I'm human adept right now... started off as krogan engineer, got tired of random collision issues because of the hump x_@

[May90]

I'm human adept right now... started off as krogan engineer, got tired of random collision issues because of the hump x_@

I'm leveling Krogan Engineer right now, actually. Pretty underwhelming so far: the turret doesn't seem to be doing much damage, so she still has to rely on weapons mostly, and her weapon damage is pretty low. Maybe on higher levels will be a bit more useful...

[I Push Buttons]

An interesting and objective look at buggy games (we all know what game Extra Credits is talking about...)



Note that he is not defending the release of buggy games, just explaining the how and why, in general, it happens.

I would understand a lot of those arguments Dragon Age: Inquisition never happened.

Bioware has already used Frostbite. They already have intricately crafted underlying systems that were made for Dragon Age: Inquisition. And Andromeda was built in that environment, hell some aspects of the game are literal carbon copies of Inquisition. And Inquisition itself, while having flaws of its own, was still fairly decent.

Yet somehow Andromeda was worse in almost every single way.

And you can't even argue that Montreal is a new studio and this is their first game because they didn't just hire a bunch of new people and create that studio from scratch... Almost anyone you hear about associated with their studio already worked at Bioware and was just moved to that studio. And the management definitely were already with Bioware and participated in the production of all of their previous game.

And all of that was just from a technical perspective... It doesn't even account for the garbage tier writing and characters on top of all of the technical problems.

[dope_danny]

So all my local game stores today have put andromeda up for "clearance sale" which is faster than no mans sky or battleborn, did EA ship out way too many units to stores again?

[Vanyali]

I'm leveling Krogan Engineer right now, actually. Pretty underwhelming so far: the turret doesn't seem to be doing much damage, so she still has to rely on weapons mostly, and her weapon damage is pretty low. Maybe on higher levels will be a bit more useful...

Yeah, that was one of the major issues... had to combo quick to get ANY damage out there, and level the turret highest just to get it to do decent damage. Combine that with "can't see to shoot, hump in the way" and "can't fit, hump sticks out" and it was just getting irritating.

[Lahis]

So all my local game stores today have put andromeda up for "clearance sale" which is faster than no mans sky or battleborn, did EA ship out way too many units to stores again?

EA were banking on the game not flopping.

With normal AAA sales there wouldn't be any clearances, but internet hate machine doomed the game and killed the IP.

[Valeron]

I see a lot of hate for this game in here. I don't get it, I thought it was an enjoyable game. It started a bit slow but it picked up as the game went along. Is it my favorite ME game? No but it certainly was worth the price for me.

[mickybrighteyes]

I'll be honest... My biggest hate about this game is the lack of control I have over my squad.

I miss setting up plays with some team mates, also miss customizing guns (that they rarely used for the most part) Like drawing a group together to get mowed down by exploding ammo AR or hammered into orbit by a SR from Ashley/Garrus

[MonsieuRoberts]

The updates to the models have really turned out well, but my first impressions are still so poorly tainted with the unintuitive UI and memories of those terrible release models. I'm going to have to give the game more than a few months before I can return with a fresh outlook. It doesn't bother me that this is the last of Mass Effect for quite a while, I can still play and enjoy the game...eventually. While the combat was incredible, REALLY incredibly fun, nothing else I was presented with was as amazing. Felt to me like tons of steps backwards with characters and the UI. That's not fun, that's frustrating.

What a shame though. What a fumble with such a beloved IP. Now no one gets ANY new Mass Effect for a long time.

[May90]

"The end is night, Bioware is dead" has been going on since Neverwinter Nights, at least. Calm your tits, folks.

Yeah, that was one of the major issues... had to combo quick to get ANY damage out there, and level the turret highest just to get it to do decent damage. Combine that with "can't see to shoot, hump in the way" and "can't fit, hump sticks out" and it was just getting irritating.

It is still much better than it was before the 1.06 patch. I don't understand how people played Krogan Engineer before that at all; I gave up on leveling her after two Gold matches, where I got by far the lowest score. There was no redeeming qualities to her; now she, at least, can set up some decent combo detonations.

[Vanyali]

It is still much better than it was before the 1.06 patch. I don't understand how people played Krogan Engineer before that at all; I gave up on leveling her after two Gold matches, where I got by far the lowest score. There was no redeeming qualities to her; now she, at least, can set up some decent combo detonations.

Night and day with the human engineer (figured I'd give it a go given I got it to V because 4 boxes in a row had one....). Even more funny on some maps where I just set up a fully kitted turret at a choke, then run around and /giggle with cryo and overload while it clears that side of the map

[May90]

Night and day with the human engineer (figured I'd give it a go given I got it to V because 4 boxes in a row had one....). Even more funny on some maps where I just set up a fully kitted turret at a choke, then run around and /giggle with cryo and overload while it clears that side of the map

I've actually never gotten to play any of the human multiplayer classes. Humans are boring!

I feel like engineer classes strongly depend on the applied multiplayer buffs. +50% tech damage buff can make them godlike, but aside from that, I don't think they can perform as well as, say, vanguards, adepts or infiltrators.

[Lahis]

I've actually never gotten to play any of the human multiplayer classes. Humans are boring!

I feel like engineer classes strongly depend on the applied multiplayer buffs. +50% tech damage buff can make them godlike, but aside from that, I don't think they can perform as well as, say, vanguards, adepts or infiltrators.

With human Vanguard you can do pretty solid "I'll punch you untill you dead." build. They get the SP shirld regen on melee hit, melee attack bonus and of course charge will save your ass if tgings are going south.

Too bad ME3 style Novaguard isn't as feasible.

[Vanyali]

I've actually never gotten to play any of the human multiplayer classes. Humans are boring!

I feel like engineer classes strongly depend on the applied multiplayer buffs. +50% tech damage buff can make them godlike, but aside from that, I don't think they can perform as well as, say, vanguards, adepts or infiltrators.

You can set off a bunch of vanguard combos and set up a turret on the snipe point for your infiltrator (usually, the sightlines are *very* good for the turret) to help watch their back, or as a distraction for a big bad (fiends & berserkers particularly can't stand turrets for some reason). Femgineer has cryo, so becomes a useful primer for other classes on said big bads too.

And you build for anti-shield with overload so it really just starts to become a super solid "support" for your backbone so they can get their own shit rolling without pesky shields or sneakers.

[May90]

With human Vanguard you can do pretty solid "I'll punch you untill you dead." build. They get the SP shirld regen on melee hit, melee attack bonus and of course charge will save your ass if tgings are going south.

Too bad ME3 style Novaguard isn't as feasible.

Wow, I didn't know that. Krogan Vanguard doesn't get its shields replenished upon melee hits, but with Fortify on he can still take a lot of beating; human Vanguard sounds like a more sustainable damage type.

You can set off a bunch of vanguard combos and set up a turret on the snipe point for your infiltrator (usually, the sightlines are *very* good for the turret) to help watch their back, or as a distraction for a big bad (fiends & berserkers particularly can't stand turrets for some reason). Femgineer has cryo, so becomes a useful primer for other classes on said big bads too.

And you build for anti-shield with overload so it really just starts to become a super solid "support" for your backbone so they can get their own shit rolling without pesky shields or sneakers.

Well, I suppose, Engineers are indeed good at supporting their teammates; the problem is, you cannot get a very high score this way, meaning you get less money and XP than other players, plus personally for me playing a class that can't take care of itself without the ally support feels a bit wrong.

Yesterday I started leveling Salarian Architect, and he (or she, I can't tell from the voice alone) has a lot of damage potential. The fully upgraded Remnant VI deals tremendous amount of damage with the beam, and working along with it, shooting the same targets and using its priming ability, your DPS can be very high. Salarian Architect annihilates bosses such as Fiends, and while he/she still seems a bit weaker against the regular enemies, there is definitely some untamed potential there.