ME3 Multiplayer
I think last weekend may have unduly gotten my hopes up in WoW. We only had a handful of people show up this past Saturday, so no further raiding attempts. We ran a few dungeons, at least. That, coupled with a funk regarding Furryfaire after watching friends go at it (again) on Thursday night left me very "meh" toward my usual weekend forms of entertainment.
On the other hand, I continue to play ME3 multiplayer from time to time, so maybe I should put forth some more detailed thoughts about that...
When I first heard the game would have multiplayer, I really didn't care. When I heard about the impact it has on the single-player game ending (though it turns out the difference between the "best" ending and what you access at a lower EMS total seems minimal), I was offended. But as I neared the end of my primary play-through, I decided I'd bite the bullet and try it.
Surprise, surprise - not only was it bearable, I actually enjoyed it.
It's more of the actiony gameplay that, in the main game, is broken up by large expanses of running around talking to people. While I love some of the dialog in the game and the story in general, I have sometimes found myself daunted at the thought of going through long stretches of it a second time in order to reach parts where you're really playing. So unlike most multiplayer FPS games, it's all cooperative. Four-person groups come together and are dropped into one of half a dozen or so maps up against one of three types of computer-controlled enemies.
Communication is somewhat lacking - which has some ups and downs. There is a voice channel, but most players I've seen don't have it active. There's no text chat. So if you're grouping up randomly like I do, there's almost no douchy comments but also no helpful ones. I believe, but haven't checked that each platform uses its own system, so X360 players, PS3 players, and PC players probably aren't in the same pool. Otherwise, you can invite players you know. Since I don't know any others, though, I've been simply doing public game searches.
Matches earn experience and credits. Characters level up to 20, gaining points to spend on abilities seen in the singleplayer game at each level. Players earn N7 levels: 1 per character level and 10 per promoted class (which resets a level 20 class to level 1 and adds 75 points of war assets to the singleplayer game). N7 levels don't mean much, but it gives you a rough feel for how much a person has played.
Credits are used to purchase various "packs" in the store (which can also be purchased with bioware points bought with real money). Each pack will generally include some expendable equipment (medi-gel, cobra missiles, ops packs, or ammo packs) that are single-use items you carry a limited number of into battle or single-battle bonuses like special ammo types. They also have some rarer "cards" that unlock/upgrade weapons, weapon modifications, certain race/class combos, or respec cards. It's an interesting/frustrating/devious system like CCGs that keeps players hoping to get/upgrade their favorite items while being all random. Potentially-addictive incentive to play, but it adds to the fun for some. It all depends on how you look at it.
The enemies pretty well cover what you see in the single-player game. I consider Cerberus squads the least dangerous as their heavy atlas units are slow and their deadly melee phantoms are rare. Some might argue the Geth are the easiest, being susceptible to Sabotage and Overload, though the cloaking hunters and tough pyros make me wary of them. I think the Reapers are generally accepted as the hardest, though, with a couple big units that can cross a lot of distance quickly and kill in one or two hits. More enemy variety might be good, but it would be tricky to put together further "factions" out of what exists in the game (as far as lore and programmed assets).
You fight 10 waves, plus the extraction. Each wave, enemies will spawn in (often jumping from above or somesuch) at certain points on the map - which can be influenced some by where the players are at the time. During the 10 waves, there will be increasingly difficult enemies - wave one will have mostly whatever "grunts" the faction has, while on wave 10 you'll see some of everything. To finish a wave, you have to kill all the enemies, though some have an additional objective that must be completed in a set timeframe (most matches will include one of each, but there's some randomness to it):
- Kill key personnel: This objective doesn't matter much as you're trying to kill everything anyway, but 4 targets will be flagged, one at a time, with a timer to kill that one.
- Hack/upload: A computer terminal will pop up somewhere and need to be used, creating a lit circle around it. As players stand in that area, the progress bar goes up (faster the more people are there), and it must be completed before the timer expires. This one can be quite tough, especially if it's in an exposed area on a later wave. Even with all four people grouped up, if there's not much cover it's possible to be mobbed badly.
- Disable/enable 4... : Four interactive devices will come up, one at a time, before a timer expires. One person needs to use it, kneeling and being inactive for about 10 seconds. Ideally, others should be covering or running interference.
After completing the 10th wave, a call to extract will go out. A landing zone will light up (about like the hacking objectives) and a timer will count down from (I believe) 2 minutes. When the timer hits zero, the match ends - if all players are in the circle at that time, bonus points are given for a full extraction. In my experience, it's actually best to keep the landing zone clear and hold choke points or fight a slow withdrawal, only running to the LZ in the last 20-30 seconds. Heading straight there can mean getting mobbed and killed.
I started with, and still favor, the engineer class. Playing my quarian engineer up to level 20 felt pretty awesome with a tossable sentry turret that does good damage and provides distraction as well as the cryo blast/incinerate combo. My trusty Vindicator assault rifle (though only at level 1 still) accompanies most of my characters by default, with decent damage output and high precision. Adepts feel a little too squishy to me, but I've done alright with them. And running a turian sentinel felt solid, though I ended up not using their signature tech armor ability very much. My latest character to level up has been a quarian infiltrator. That's seemed kind of rough, but after one particularly trying match, I feel I'm getting a lot better playing around with a sniper rifle.
I've only played on "bronze" difficulty thusfar. A match takes about 20 minutes, usually a touch less. At low levels, that gives enough experience to level a few times, while at level 19 it may take another three matches to hit 20. Occasionally latency may be an issue, as I've had a few matches where I couldn't interact with anything for a minute or more. Also, sometimes people drop or disconnect, but what can you do?
I actually ran one match this morning that was all the more awesome due to technical problems. Starting wave 3, the hosting player disconnected (leading to a pause while the game shifts that over and resumes the current wave). When the loading screen went away, my quarian infiltrator (who I wasn't doing great on and haven't hit max level with) was looking at a lone turian sentinel. We'd somehow lost another player in the transition, leaving just the two of us. I was tempted to bail right there, but as he took a cover position, I decided I'd fight it out too. With Cerberus troops bearing down on us from all sides, we managed to stick together pretty well. My cloaking let me get through the "disable 4 devices" objective without being seen while vulnerable. We did have to pull out missiles against the atlases, but somehow the two of us held through a data upload and actually make it all the way to a "full" extraction. I feel a lot more practiced playing a sniper after shooting through guardian shields. It's times like that when I really wish I was using the voice chat or had at least some way to high-five my teammate.
And as an interesting little addition, Bioware runs special "operations" over the weekends sometimes. I started really playing a couple weeks back during "Operation Raptor." Those who promoted two classes over the weekend received a special pack containing one of a handful of rare weapons cards. And if the community promoted over X (I think it was 150,000) characters, everyone would receive a victory pack that's about equal to a veteran (mid-level, contains an uncommon or better) pack. This past weekend "because of the N7 units promoted to training," everyone got a 15% experience boost. There does seem to be some ongoing drama, though, in that Sony's PS3 network doesn't like how Bioware/EA does things, preventing PS3 players from being eligible for those "gifted" reward packs (though they did get the XP bonus).
On the other hand, I continue to play ME3 multiplayer from time to time, so maybe I should put forth some more detailed thoughts about that...
When I first heard the game would have multiplayer, I really didn't care. When I heard about the impact it has on the single-player game ending (though it turns out the difference between the "best" ending and what you access at a lower EMS total seems minimal), I was offended. But as I neared the end of my primary play-through, I decided I'd bite the bullet and try it.
Surprise, surprise - not only was it bearable, I actually enjoyed it.
It's more of the actiony gameplay that, in the main game, is broken up by large expanses of running around talking to people. While I love some of the dialog in the game and the story in general, I have sometimes found myself daunted at the thought of going through long stretches of it a second time in order to reach parts where you're really playing. So unlike most multiplayer FPS games, it's all cooperative. Four-person groups come together and are dropped into one of half a dozen or so maps up against one of three types of computer-controlled enemies.
Communication is somewhat lacking - which has some ups and downs. There is a voice channel, but most players I've seen don't have it active. There's no text chat. So if you're grouping up randomly like I do, there's almost no douchy comments but also no helpful ones. I believe, but haven't checked that each platform uses its own system, so X360 players, PS3 players, and PC players probably aren't in the same pool. Otherwise, you can invite players you know. Since I don't know any others, though, I've been simply doing public game searches.
Matches earn experience and credits. Characters level up to 20, gaining points to spend on abilities seen in the singleplayer game at each level. Players earn N7 levels: 1 per character level and 10 per promoted class (which resets a level 20 class to level 1 and adds 75 points of war assets to the singleplayer game). N7 levels don't mean much, but it gives you a rough feel for how much a person has played.
Credits are used to purchase various "packs" in the store (which can also be purchased with bioware points bought with real money). Each pack will generally include some expendable equipment (medi-gel, cobra missiles, ops packs, or ammo packs) that are single-use items you carry a limited number of into battle or single-battle bonuses like special ammo types. They also have some rarer "cards" that unlock/upgrade weapons, weapon modifications, certain race/class combos, or respec cards. It's an interesting/frustrating/devious system like CCGs that keeps players hoping to get/upgrade their favorite items while being all random. Potentially-addictive incentive to play, but it adds to the fun for some. It all depends on how you look at it.
The enemies pretty well cover what you see in the single-player game. I consider Cerberus squads the least dangerous as their heavy atlas units are slow and their deadly melee phantoms are rare. Some might argue the Geth are the easiest, being susceptible to Sabotage and Overload, though the cloaking hunters and tough pyros make me wary of them. I think the Reapers are generally accepted as the hardest, though, with a couple big units that can cross a lot of distance quickly and kill in one or two hits. More enemy variety might be good, but it would be tricky to put together further "factions" out of what exists in the game (as far as lore and programmed assets).
You fight 10 waves, plus the extraction. Each wave, enemies will spawn in (often jumping from above or somesuch) at certain points on the map - which can be influenced some by where the players are at the time. During the 10 waves, there will be increasingly difficult enemies - wave one will have mostly whatever "grunts" the faction has, while on wave 10 you'll see some of everything. To finish a wave, you have to kill all the enemies, though some have an additional objective that must be completed in a set timeframe (most matches will include one of each, but there's some randomness to it):
- Kill key personnel: This objective doesn't matter much as you're trying to kill everything anyway, but 4 targets will be flagged, one at a time, with a timer to kill that one.
- Hack/upload: A computer terminal will pop up somewhere and need to be used, creating a lit circle around it. As players stand in that area, the progress bar goes up (faster the more people are there), and it must be completed before the timer expires. This one can be quite tough, especially if it's in an exposed area on a later wave. Even with all four people grouped up, if there's not much cover it's possible to be mobbed badly.
- Disable/enable 4... : Four interactive devices will come up, one at a time, before a timer expires. One person needs to use it, kneeling and being inactive for about 10 seconds. Ideally, others should be covering or running interference.
After completing the 10th wave, a call to extract will go out. A landing zone will light up (about like the hacking objectives) and a timer will count down from (I believe) 2 minutes. When the timer hits zero, the match ends - if all players are in the circle at that time, bonus points are given for a full extraction. In my experience, it's actually best to keep the landing zone clear and hold choke points or fight a slow withdrawal, only running to the LZ in the last 20-30 seconds. Heading straight there can mean getting mobbed and killed.
I started with, and still favor, the engineer class. Playing my quarian engineer up to level 20 felt pretty awesome with a tossable sentry turret that does good damage and provides distraction as well as the cryo blast/incinerate combo. My trusty Vindicator assault rifle (though only at level 1 still) accompanies most of my characters by default, with decent damage output and high precision. Adepts feel a little too squishy to me, but I've done alright with them. And running a turian sentinel felt solid, though I ended up not using their signature tech armor ability very much. My latest character to level up has been a quarian infiltrator. That's seemed kind of rough, but after one particularly trying match, I feel I'm getting a lot better playing around with a sniper rifle.
I've only played on "bronze" difficulty thusfar. A match takes about 20 minutes, usually a touch less. At low levels, that gives enough experience to level a few times, while at level 19 it may take another three matches to hit 20. Occasionally latency may be an issue, as I've had a few matches where I couldn't interact with anything for a minute or more. Also, sometimes people drop or disconnect, but what can you do?
I actually ran one match this morning that was all the more awesome due to technical problems. Starting wave 3, the hosting player disconnected (leading to a pause while the game shifts that over and resumes the current wave). When the loading screen went away, my quarian infiltrator (who I wasn't doing great on and haven't hit max level with) was looking at a lone turian sentinel. We'd somehow lost another player in the transition, leaving just the two of us. I was tempted to bail right there, but as he took a cover position, I decided I'd fight it out too. With Cerberus troops bearing down on us from all sides, we managed to stick together pretty well. My cloaking let me get through the "disable 4 devices" objective without being seen while vulnerable. We did have to pull out missiles against the atlases, but somehow the two of us held through a data upload and actually make it all the way to a "full" extraction. I feel a lot more practiced playing a sniper after shooting through guardian shields. It's times like that when I really wish I was using the voice chat or had at least some way to high-five my teammate.
And as an interesting little addition, Bioware runs special "operations" over the weekends sometimes. I started really playing a couple weeks back during "Operation Raptor." Those who promoted two classes over the weekend received a special pack containing one of a handful of rare weapons cards. And if the community promoted over X (I think it was 150,000) characters, everyone would receive a victory pack that's about equal to a veteran (mid-level, contains an uncommon or better) pack. This past weekend "because of the N7 units promoted to training," everyone got a 15% experience boost. There does seem to be some ongoing drama, though, in that Sony's PS3 network doesn't like how Bioware/EA does things, preventing PS3 players from being eligible for those "gifted" reward packs (though they did get the XP bonus).
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