Ammo: Part 2

Part 2: The gameplay reasons why an ammo mechanic was a great idea for ME2.

This is an amalgamation of three different posts, so I’m sorry if they don’t flow together very well. Keep in mind that I’m a gamer, not a game designer, but here’s how it looks to me. :D

Post 1: To stop players from ignoring their powers completely and just running in with a gun and popping marksman or overkill constantly, they had to make the enemies take a really long time to kill. (Boring) To stop players from just standing there trading shots with that slow to kill enemy, and you know, actually use cover, they had to make it really easy to kill you. One shot snipers, rockets, and even krogan elbows! (Boring AND annoying.)

With ammo in, they can challenge the player to actually be accurate. They can send in more enemies and have them die more easily because we have another limiting factor besides the health of what we're fighting. We can't be too cautious or we won't kill enough things to get ammo, but we also can't be too Rambo-ish because we need to aim.

Having limited ammo also makes it more important to switch weapons, which also makes things more interesting to the player. (I don't know about you, but most of the time in ME1 I had one (2 in case of infiltrator) weapon that I never switched from. However, if you like using one gun all the time, you just need to be careful not to waste it's ammo.

Lastly, it lets them ramp up how often we're able to use our powers. If our weapon use is more limited, that lets us use biotic and tech powers more often without overpowering us. (And it's good not to be overpowered, because then they don't need to make enemies cheap to challenge us.)

Quote: Posted 01/04/10 00:17 (GMT) by Satanicfirewraith
If I only want to use my AR weapon, then I should be able to do just that not end up running out of ammo for it and being forced to switch it now.

The problem with that is if you can just keep firing indefinitely, there is no reason to use any of your other guns or any of your abilities. Especially with how enemies seem like they will die faster in this game. Being encouraged to run around with the same weapon and never use any powers is really boring. Overly simple and boring gameplay styles should be less effective than more involved and complex ones. If it weren’t for that, we’d still be playing turn based menu-driven D20 rpgs!

People say that ammo management makes the game more shooterish and less rpgish, but if I remember correctly inventory and resource management has been an rpg staple since before RPGs existed on video games. Do you remember going into town and stocking up on potions in old final fantasy games? How about collecting arrows in legend of zelda games?

If anything, the fact that mass effect 1 had no ammo (and very little resource management) was one of the biggest departures from rpg form that game had.

Post 2: Being able to spam fire from one gun constantly to solve every problem (albeit REALLY SLOWLY) was a boring and uninteresting way to play the game, but also very effective. Because you never had to stop shooting, the enemies had to be tough not to get wiped out quickly. Because we were super tough too, most fights were just a bunch of people ignoring cover and shooting each other in the face until they fell down.

The only way to challenge us on harder difficulties was to ridiculously ramp up damage so that snipers and rockets insta-killed us. It was cheap and annoying and our infinite guns and activated invincibility had to go in order to fix everything else about the gameplay. For ME1 the devs basically had to balance the game around cheat codes, and it made a lot of other gameplay features kind of suck.

Switching guns is interesting. Using powers more because you're running low is interesting. Sniping something and having it ACTUALLY DIE is interesting and fun.

Don't get me started on those times I was on a world, sniping krogan from outside of their aggro range. They just stood there and took it. 10 shots to the face, they pop immunity, 15 they pop shield boost, 25 they fall down and then get back up at full health, 30 they die. UGH. I'll take a sniper that actually kills stuff and runs out than one nobody will use on harder difficulty modes because it blows.

One more thing: Complaining that mass effect 2 is trying to appeal to shooter fans doesn't make any sense to me. The fact that mass effect was -a shooter- is what attracted shooter fans. It's always been a shooter, between the dialogue and collecting a million guns. It was a shooter with some interesting and creative mechanics to it, some of which worked well and some of which was really clunky and bogged down the game.

Of course they're going to look at other shooters and try substituting things one at a time until it feels smooth. It only makes sense to do that. Because, perish the thought, shooter games have been doing something right to stay interesting all this time.

So anyway, the gameplay and in world science explanations have both been covered. The only argument left is that "I liked firing constantly without ever having to aim and I don't mind the janky and slow gameplay that came with that!" In which case, nobody took away your mass effect 1 disk. Go play that.