[Mass Effect 3 Muiltiplayer] Save the Galaxy!

They could bring back all the merc groups from ME2 and not break the fiction since they all still exist but I agree with you that they should just bring back the Collectors fiction be damned.

I've no interest in a higher difficulty level, as they end of gold already gets a bit ridiculous, frequently devolving into missile popping.

Maybe if they found other ways to increase the difficulty than simply increasing hitpoints and spawning more banshees. Perhaps tone down the more obviously effective weapons (Plasma Shotgun, Claymore, the best sniper rifles), maybe add some PC like opponents, more interesting objectives, or randomized maps.

I dunno, none of that seems likely, and might not be enough anyway. Short of letting you play the bad guys and having some PvP I can't see getting significantly more mileage out of ME3.

OK, so I've gotten back into it and unlocked a few of the new goodies. I've yet to play Platinum difficulty but have done a lot of Gold. I've just did a quick run with the N7 Slayer, a Vanguard that doesn't rely on Biotic Charge, so you can play it without glitching out. I equipped him with a Reegar Carbine - a shotgun that kinda works like a flamethrower. His powers are kinda neat, as are the animations (Kai Leng!). Biotic Charge works like usual.
Phase blabla - a biotic cannon fired from your palm that drains your barrier but does serious damage on impact. No auto-target, which is both good and bad. It also fires faster than other biotic powers so the bad guys can't evade it.
Biotic Slash - No, it does not involve peeing. My new favorite power I think. Think Shockwave from ME2, with upgrades it can take out silly amounts of enemies up to 30 meters away. I think I killed 7 Cannibals and Husks with one attack once. If anyone in the target area is affected by a biotic power it also makes them go boom for additional mayhem. It leaves you exposed and the animation both moves you forward and takes enough time for you to get killed. The melee attack seems to teleport you short distances, not sure if that's true. But hey, you look like a Phantom!

I also unlocked the N7 Engineer, which has a Supply Pylon (shield recharge, ammo and grenade supply within radius), a homing missile/grenade launcher attack and the Arc Grenade. Haven't taken him for a spin yet but they were an awesome complement to my Soldier and Sentinel on Gold. The Chrysalis Sniper Rifle is basically a very accurate missile launcher that blows shit up. I liked it and would recommend taking the ammo mod for that one.

Do what now?

First off, I called it (cue balloons and streamers and band).

Second - how far behind am I at this point? I already felt like I was doing my Vorcha wrong when I didn't have the blue flamethrower gun to go with his red flamethrower ability.

What did you call, exactly? The surprising thing, to me, is how much fun the multiplayer is like they mention in that article you linked. I am looking forward to playing as a roly-poly Volus character.

Collectors as a new enemy type. More like I demanded it, but, still, I'll take credit for it.

Oh right. I'm a little surprised by that one for some reason, considering the collectors were absent from ME3 main game.

I'd be so much more interested if it didn't feature levels and unlocks. Just thinking about the amount of work involved just to be useful, it makes me tired.

Have we talked about that you can play as a Volus now? No? I'm off to try to unlock one, right now. Before I need to take a nap.

can you play as the biotic god class?

Apparently. I'll need to check but it may be that you need to buy or just download some DLC thingy in order to get the new classes.

Edit: Yes, you need to download and install a free DLC called Retaliation. Which includes Collectors as new enemies as well.

Awesome. I'll have to fire that up and check it out at some point here.

Of course, if you DO update Origin and install the DLC, then you won't be able to connect to the ME3 servers anymore. Apparently this is a widespread problem with no solution available. I'm just sitting here wondering if EA is just trolling us.

Oh cool. Because I just did that.

Sorry, hope it works for you. I'm giving up after spending the last two hours trying to get my game to connect to the game servers so I can play the game. My decision to never, ever buy an EA game ever again seems wise.

I can log in and access my previously leveled up MP characters okay after updating.

I'm not about to attempt to play right now because I have 2 games plus DLC downloading on Steam right now and DLC downloading on the xbox.

Reinstalled this last night to try out all the free DLC I'd missed. Man, there is a lot of new crap to take in.

One thing hasn't changed, though: the Salarian Engineer is still a complete boss.

Yeah I'm kind of in the same boat. At least my krogan soldier is still a tank of boss proportions too.

One thing that has changed - significantly - is the Crusader shotgun. It's not far from doing twice the amount of damage it did in August when I last played. Also, FireBase White has been redesigned. I'm kinda trying to figure out what all the challenges do though.

I had to reinstall the whole lot, then it worked flawlessly. There's quite a few neat changes/additions to the game, one of them is that some outdoor maps will feature sand/snowstorms that screw up your vision. My slobbering Vorcha Sentinel and my badass Batarian Soldier remain favorites for me, Geth Engineer with a Wraith another. Lots of fun.

I haven't played it in months. But I don't know, I felt that was a bridge too far already. I agree that I always found the difficulty to be that depending your spawn/mission luck you sometimes simply couldn't put out enough DPS to clear the big ugly packs at the end of gold before they dogpiled you (hence the missile spam). My other complaint was that for some reason I'd sometimes lose missile lock right before I fired, causing the missile to not home on the target. I wasted probably a dozen missiles over my career that way, which was obnoxious.

All the enemy factions have one added enemy type, which changes up things a bit along with the possibility of Hazard (snow/sandstorm). There's been mention of them spicing up the AI with the latest DLC as well but I don't know about that. I'd hate to face the Collectors on Gold though, Silver is plenty tough with PUG's now.

That's good. It was unimpressive previously, and the wonky aiming it demanded meant that you were always better off with the homing shotgun or something along those lines. And yet the damned game kept giving me new copies of it.

It seems you can't hip-fire it, then you end up missing. I used it for headshots from all across FB Giant a few nights ago, so as long as you use it as a sniper rifle - it's good. Kinda opposite to the Graal which only can be fired from the hip and hit reliably in my experience.
Here's a reference to the Crusader damage:

May 16:
Crusader Shotgun
- Damage increased from [442.1-552.6] to [486.6-608.3]
...
October 2:
Crusader Shotgun
- Damage increased from [573.4-716.75] to [630.7-788.4]

I thought I'd just post some impressions of some of the new stuff EA has put into the multiplayer. Basically, ALL of it is good.

Gameplay thingies:

Hazard. This is just a pure fun addition. Apart from the snow- and sandstorm hazards which just limits your sight, in Reactor the whole central ... reactor gets sealed and roasts anything caught inside. So yes, luring a few Atlases inside and hitting the vent button is a completely viable tactic. It may not kill the Really Big Ones on Silver but it's another thing to keep your eye on. Same with the electrical anomaly thing that wanders around on Glacier, it can hurt both you and the bad guys. One thing about Reactor, I think there's something that puts the venting on hold if you get the Hold This Position mission inside the reactor.

Collectors. The first few times I met these new enemies I thought they were easy. However. It seems that sometimes they get things going so well that they seem to be completely overpowered. There's tons of stuff going on that I'm not clear on - for instance - all troop types can become Possessed (Assuming Control) which makes them twice as dangerous. They also spawn giant icky webs which (I think) spawns mini-swarms that can either attack you or possess Collector units and so on. Most of the time you're just trying to kill the bastuds as fast as you can. They are, by far, the toughest enemy type imo, and I've not even met them on Gold.

Enemies!

Dragoon. New Cerberus storm trooper. Only has Armor (no shields and no health) and charges your position, often in pairs, and attack with a jumping biotic lash attack. When in the company of Phantoms, they're a handful.

Geth Bomber. A hovering geth box with both shields and armor, lays a straight line of bombs that staggers you and gets you out of cover. Can be hard to hit.

No new enemy type for the Reapers.

Collectors should probably get a separate post.

Classes:

Turian Havoc: A mobile charging Turian that uses a jetpack for the longest dodge maneuvers in the game. It also has a Vanguard-ish Charge attack that does NOT refill his shields and a Cold attack. Plus a combat drug that makes him near invincible for six seconds. This is a really fun class to play.

Asari Valkyrie: An Asari Sentinel with the tech armor plus Annihilation Field and Warp. What's not to like? Probably my favorite new class.

There's also lots of new guns and more classes that I've not unlocked or haven't had time to play.

I reinstalled a bit ago to play the multi with all the updates. I still find it the most entertaining horde mode of any game I've played this year.

Still playing intermittently; I'd play more if it wasn't for pesky interference from work and family ;-)

I'm Cassius2002 on Origin.

I've got enough gear, moderately advanced weapons and characters to hold my weight on silver, but I'm a little hesitant about gold.

Hmmmm.....maybe I'll swing back in. I fully expected the collectors to get possessed by Harbinger. In Mass Effect 2, my strategy in those circumstances on the hardest difficulty was always to kill everything that wasn't him, because otherwise you're basically increasing the total health of the opposing force by a full armor/barrier every time you kill him. Some of the other stuff is different, though.

My brother wrapped up the series recently so we're doing a little 2 player gaming at bronze. Good lord this is surprisingly awesome fun, I love the way just changing character completely changes how I approach the battle. My currently favourite is the Alliance Infiltration Unit, but I had my first taste of Vanguard and biotic charge is a hoot!

The way the side objectives keep you from bunkering down, and the cursing that happens when you get one that screws you over, is awesome. Not to mention the maps all play quite different, there are definitely race and map combos which feel more favourable than others. We just random map and race and while Cerberus is a bit of a walk in the park (comparatively), I think the collectors have been the biggest pain, along with that lab map with the damn irritating blue swarm thing.

This will keep me going for a while I think. So many characters, need to catch them all.

Too bad you didn't try it out back in the day. OTOH, they got all (most) of the bugs ironed out by now. Vanguard charge would break the game if you weren't the host etc.
Also, you owe it to yourself to rage/melee spec a Krogan and just go to town. If you're not grinning like an idiot in a minute you're doing it wrong. FOR TUCHANKA!
I'm also partial to a drooling Vorcha with maxed out Flamer and Bloodlust. BIG MONSTER!

I actually just started playing MP again last night. On XBL, it's much less populated nowadays - after one game I had one dude so desperate for other players that he sent me a friend invite, message, and three game invites before I blocked him.

And ditto everything Hammett said about the raging Krogan spec, it's totally and hilariously awesome.

I'm not worried about public games, they don't tend to be my thing.

Well, it should be. I also hate other people on the intranets but in ME3 mp almost no one uses voice (and when they do it's only good) and unless you're playing Gold and Platinum their skill and loadout (or lack thereof) don't matter much. I'd say Silver games on the PC is a very healthy "community" with zero idiocy.

I've got a few people I play with occasionally, and we could certainly use more easy going people to play XBL multi with. Feel free to shoot me a message - I'm Quatoria there, too.

They fixed the vanguard "fall through the world if you die while charging" bug?

I'm probably going to be playing this a bit more after not having played it for a while, so shoot me an invite if you see me on and I'm not trying to assault my backlog this week. (Also: will be tied up with Gears Judgment for a few nights.)

AFAIK, yes. I've been playing Vanguard quite a bit, as well as Shadow, and I haven't glitched out this side of Christmas.

I actually bought this game twice so I could play the multi on PC - the population is much, much better there.

Me multi is all business in my experience, even on Xbox. I'm guessing that the co-op nature reduces the trash talk. Well, more accurately, all of the talk. However I haven't done any platinum runs, where I suppose people have a message board to plan out games.