Interview Mass Effect 2 Statistics Interview

[Rogue]

…More people played the soldier class than all of the other classes combined

Since this game is a bad Gears of War ripoff, I'm quite surprised that most people would want to play a soldier.

 

[Silellak]

 

[Sceptic]

I think he was being sarcastic.

(I think)

Since Soldier is the easiest class to play and has the built-in Time Stop I'm not surprised. It's the one class that requires the least imagination and even less tactics than the others.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Soldier is also default class for default Shep.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I played through the game as Soldier, Adept and Vanguard on Insanity (hardest difficulty), and I think both Soldier and Adept are pretty easy. Soldier has hugely strong offense and the time slowing power, Adept can use those Singularities to stop anyone from coming near.

How did you manage to solve certain quests with vanguard on insane, like the mine with the metric fuckton of husks or the mission where you have to protect the quarian from varrens? My twitch prowess didn't suffice.

 

[Rogue]

I think he was being sarcastic.

That's one sharp detector you have there, good sir.

These statistics will certainly give the whole operation more credibility. Imagine announcing a new game. You tell the press "we've made these changes outlined on the pink powerpoint slide," and you go on outlining the reasons for implementing them. And to conclude you say that all the statistics and number crunching based on player feedback support these changes which will make the game more appealing to the broader audience.

Who's gonna argue? Nobody, that's who. If you cover a large majority of the market, who cares about the few guys that don't really like those changes. I mean come on. Those few outcasts like to play games that are not "shootery" enough and have way too much dialogue and way too little gory effects. It's all about effects and so on these days. And occasional controller button mashing, of course.

But I'm probably wrong, so you shouldn't listen to a word I say.

 

[Achilles]

Yup, I've already said that these statistics are a "get out of jail free" card for every moronic change Bioware wants to implement. Take your pick:

Reduce the numberof classes? " Most people only play soldier so we wanted to streamline the available options in order to make the soldier class the best that it can be".
Remove FemShep? "Very few people played female Shep, so we decided to cut it and focus our efforts and budget on the male that most people play."
Cut lines of dialogue? " Stats showed that people skipped the dialogue so we felt we needed to streamline the lines".
Cut game length in half? " Half the people didn't finish the game so it was obviously drawn out. We wanted to make the game more compact, more exciting and more immersive."

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Its entirely possible these numbers are skewed by the fact that only retards who didn't turn off bioware's data miner are tallied. There is probably a high correlation between people who can't be bothered to take 10s choosing a character and people who don't spend 1 min looking through the settings.

 

[zeitgeist]

Its entirely possible these numbers are skewed by the fact that only retards who didn't turn off bioware's data miner are tallied.

Quite probable but ultimately irrelevant - from their point of view, people participating in the data mining are interested in making the next game cater to their tastes, and people not participating aren't.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

I played through the game as Soldier, Adept and Vanguard on Insanity (hardest difficulty), and I think both Soldier and Adept are pretty easy. Soldier has hugely strong offense and the time slowing power, Adept can use those Singularities to stop anyone from coming near.

How did you manage to solve certain quests with vanguard on insane, like the mine with the metric fuckton of husks or the mission where you have to protect the quarian from varrens? My twitch prowess didn't suffice.

I know those mission but wasn't sure if I had played these with a Vanguard before, but my last Vanguard Insanity game didn't have those missions yet so I just played these literally a minute ago. Both of these were pretty hard but definitely doable.

The quarian mission I failed once when the injured girl got hit too often but got through on the second try. The husks I finished in one go, though it probably helped that I already knew that you need to set off those 2 bombs, otherwise would likely have been a clusterfuck of teammates and me getting swarmed and dieing while looking for what the hell the objective is.

This was with a post-endgame level 30 Shepard and AFAIK all upgrades wielding the Cerberus DLC shotgun and with Grunt and Jacob in team. It's quite dangerous even with all the upgrades, so likely very easy to die once you are unlucky and get swarmed, but then I'm not the best shooter player in the world either so there's probably some dudes who can do this easily even at lower level and less upgrades.

EDIT: in case you didn't know, the Pull power is vital when going up against Husks. Once their armor is gone, you can use a pull on them and it kills them instantly. Without Pull this would have been pretty near impossible I think.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Its entirely possible these numbers are skewed by the fact that only retards who didn't turn off bioware's data miner are tallied. There is probably a high correlation between people who can't be bothered to take 10s choosing a character and people who don't spend 1 min looking through the settings.

I think most people don't really care if Bio knows which class they're playing, and just leave it on the ON default. I wouldn't bother turning it off if I had an original copy.