The Gaming Den

Maxus wrote: The Crusader shotgun, my mainstay in ME3, has been patched and I am now back to sniping people with a shotgun. Yes, that's how that thing works.

That's how any shotgun firing slugs should work. It's almost purely due to mainstream media and digital games where shotguns are depicted as only being loaded with birdshot that people think a shotgun is some sort of magical close-range deathstaff. The reality is, birds aren't targets that you're ambushing in an FPS closet or from around a corner, and shooting them requires being able to aim more than 1-2 meteres away (e.g. with a ~30" barrel hitting 80% of clay pidgeons 10-30m away is certainly possible for someone who hasn't handled a shotgun before). By contrast most media/game depictions of a shotgun present shooting beyond 10m as "impossible").

The real irony is that bird shot has it's range/recoil are affected a more lot by barrel length than the fact that it's birdshot.

Rust is probably the only other game that I've seen that allows for use of slug loads with shotguns (but of course it's Rust, so you're messing around w/ the the dial selection GUI to pick the ammo from your inventory to use; if you have more than one type of round).

The problem with buckshot isn't even that you'll miss your target completely at 30+ meter ranges, it's that you start getting the IRL equivalent of damage fall off due to a combination of lost velocity and shitty grouping--the nasty hole you get from a tight group at 10m turns into several small holes as the pattern spreads. Most states don't even let you hunt deer with buckshot anymore because dumb assholes kept trying to use it beyond its effective range and ended up wounding a bunch of animals for no discernible reason. By contrast bird shot is much lighter but your targets are way less likely to survive getting smacked by a small number of pellets and you have a shit ton more pellets to work with in the first place.

Question, I recently got DA:I and although I enjoyed most of it I felt bogged down by petty shit constantly towards the end (No, I will NOT pick a million flowers to make my castle look slightly less ugly). I don't mind starting from the bottom but when I'm at near max level and annihilating the universe I don't want to be picking flowers or finding weird rocks, I want to either ignore it or send my subordinates to do it (thank you FFTA2 for letting me send my dudes to complete quests for me, it was a welcome addition).

Basically, does Ryder learn how to delegate? Barring that, does s/he try to be less oblivious than Shepard? ("Spectres have to act on their own because they do stuff that we, the council members have to deny officially if asked, wink wink" "OMG WHY R U SO MEEN!" )

Count Arioch the 28th wrote: Basically, does Ryder learn how to delegate? Barring that, does s/he try to be less oblivious than Shepard? ("Spectres have to act on their own because they do stuff that we, the council members have to deny officially if asked, wink wink" "OMG WHY R U SO MEEN!" )

Sort of. You can deploy strike teams which get you resources and free guns in campaign mode.

In practice, a lot of stuff falls to Ryder. You do a lot of diplomacy and running around, and people start looking up to you and asking your opinion on social stuff because you're a neutral party and after getting a few settlements going, people respect your judgment. Except for the salarian exec, he only respects it when you agree with him. Ryder's job is the Pathfinder--to scout out planets and take steps towards making them more habitable.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Question, I recently got DA:I and although I enjoyed most of it I felt bogged down by petty shit constantly towards the end (No, I will NOT pick a million flowers to make my castle look slightly less ugly). I don't mind starting from the bottom but when I'm at near max level and annihilating the universe I don't want to be picking flowers or finding weird rocks, I want to either ignore it or send my subordinates to do it (thank you FFTA2 for letting me send my dudes to complete quests for me, it was a welcome addition).

Basically, does Ryder learn how to delegate? Barring that, does s/he try to be less oblivious than Shepard? ("Spectres have to act on their own because they do stuff that we, the council members have to deny officially if asked, wink wink" "OMG WHY R U SO MEEN!" )

No. It's the game's biggest flaw. It has a huge Savior Complex, and nothing will get done if you don't do it.

Even the people who don't like you and don't believe in you will stand around stroking a dick in lieu of accomplishing anything. This includes not stopping a dangerous protest (of 5 people) threatening hydroponics, and a deadly virus carrier who just wanders around the entire station and then just leaves in a stolen shuttle. Because THOU Must.

Granted it breaks up the gameplay with different types of problems, but it's still really moronic.

The game has a typical open-world game problem in that nothing significant is allowed to change and every quest has to be written as if it could happen at any time. You can get every world to 100% viability and they'll still be full of bandits and Kett and dangerous predators because there's simply no mechanism for that to stop or even to recognize that that, hey, you're not level 5 any more. Fallout 4 has the same issue, as do other games of this kind.

The only thing I did notice as an in-game change that reflected actual accomplishments was that after making peace with Sloan, her goons don't attack you anymore.

That's always been something that rustles my jimmies, I like to feel like I'm rewarded for my efforts. Even if it's something minor, like the robbers on the road in Skyrim recognizing my guild armor and leaving me alone (or paying me tribute if I'm wearing guildmaster or nightingale armor). It feels unrewarding if I do all these quests and nothing changes.