Bioware General (Mass Effect/Dragon Age/Other)

[Vol]

Ah, the new map is literally the entryway to every vault. Fun though, small and fast, and with the combo bonus, not too hard.

[SciFlyBoy]

An A button floating in the middle of the map.

That's an Xbox thing, probably why I didn't think it was off. You're on PC, right?

[Someone With Mass]

An A button floating in the middle of the map.

That's an Xbox thing, probably why I didn't think it was off. You're on PC, right?

Yeah. I noticed several small Xbox A buttons floating near each player character for some reason.

[Someone With Mass]

Ah, the new map is literally the entryway to every vault. Fun though, small and fast, and with the combo bonus, not too hard.

I seriously wonder what's stopping them from adding these new maps to the rotation, though. Getting to play them a couple of times a week and then the five same maps over and over is not exactly tons of fun. Mass Effect 3 ended up with a total of 19 maps if you count the map hazard versions. It would have royally sucked if I had been able to only play the new ones once a week or so and then only have access to the six standard maps.

Same with the objectives, for that matter, since I never got to try the boss thing. That alone sounds like it'd increase the fun factor by a lot.

[Vol]

I imagine they'll add them to the normal rotation, since they're supposed to be working on figuring out how to do server-side patches instead of having to go through console certification for every little change. I've seen that you can do the new map outside the APEX mission somehow. Gold kett would be fun!

[Vol]

I'm mildly annoyed I haven't gotten a survey from EA about ME4. Anyone who has, what are some keywords in it so I can scan my inbox?

[DarkStorm]

I'm mildly annoyed I haven't gotten a survey from EA about ME4. Anyone who has, what are some keywords in it so I can scan my inbox?

subject : Share Your Thoughts on Mass Effect Andromeda

email address : EA@e.ea.com

[Raga]

If I got one, it probably got deleted. I'm really aggressive with setting up delete filters on gmail because I'm too lazy to unsubscribe to all the junk I get sent.

[Someone With Mass]

In case you can't tell, I have my newly acquired N7 Crusader equipped and comparing it to my Katana X.

Seeing things like this throughout the entirety if the multiplayer's arsenal makes me wish for the witless hack that did it to get tossed out of their house and onto the street and then die a slow, agonizing death by starvation, because you really shouldn't be paid to be this fucking stupid.

The first game argument doesn't apply here, because all it takes to counter this is common sense and taking a short look at the different stats.

All of the assault rifles with the exception of maybe the Falcon are beyond worthless, since it takes more than an entire clip to kill anything on Silver and above. The sniper rifles on the other hand, are outclassing both the assault rifles and pistols, rendering both categories pointless once you have a decent amount of them.

For example, the Raptor, the fully automatic "sniper" rifle, does 155 damage at rank X for me, which is more than any of my assault rifles (except for the Falcon) can dish out. Even the ultra-rare assault rifles can't keep up with this uncommon sniper rifle.

I also compared my Disciple X to my Ruzad X. The Ruzad does around 50 more damage. Everything else, the Disciple does better.

Did no one test this game's multiplayer on anything above Bronze?

[UNiT]

I can tell you know that the only useful shotgun is the piranha. The Hesh maybe viable but its just basically a weaker piranha. Your right about assault rifles being useless. Even the falcon grenade launcher is kind of outdone by the scorpion pistol. Though the Thokin is viable on gold if you get extra ammo from equipment or consumables or A Revenant with turbocharge.

[UNiT]

I would like to add that the Vanquisher makes gold a joke. You can take any level 1 character with only 1 card and still beat gold no problem.

[Someone With Mass]

I would like to add that the Vanquisher makes gold a joke. You can take any level 1 character with only 1 card and still beat gold no problem.

To the point where it gets boring whenever I see a player with it.

"Ah, there's another player with the Vanquisher. Straight for easy mode, because adding any amount of challenge is for pussies."

Meanwhile, it's a slight upgrade from the Viper in the singleplayer, doing about half the damage it does in the multiplayer. Of fucking course everyone is going to pick the Vanquisher when it's a semi-automatic sniper rifle that does more than 2/3 of the damage of a Widow.

It's the same with the Carnifex and the Sidewinder. The difference in damage is so minuscule that the're really no point in picking the Carnifex.

[UNiT]

I would like to add that the Vanquisher makes gold a joke. You can take any level 1 character with only 1 card and still beat gold no problem.

To the point where it gets boring whenever I see a player with it.

"Ah, there's another player with the Vanquisher. Straight for easy mode, because adding any amount of challenge is for pussies."

Meanwhile, it's a slight upgrade from the Viper in the singleplayer, doing about half the damage it does in the multiplayer. Of fucking course everyone is going to pick the Vanquisher when it's a semi-automatic sniper rifle that does more than 2/3 of the damage of a Widow.

It's the same with the Carnifex and the Sidewinder. The difference in damage is so minuscule that the're really no point in picking the Carnifex.

It is so sad when a Black Widow gets out dps'ed by the Vanquisher. The thing works just as well in a gun skirmish mission that's not a sniper rifle. Even with the 50% damage debuff the thing is still good. If they decide to nerf it maybe cutting the damage in half would be a good starting point.

[Vol]

Damn. No survey for me. Not that any 1 individual matters, but still.

I tried to use the Crusader once, with an amp. It seemed like it's big strength was range, since the pellets were so close packed, but the posted damage per shot is if _every pellet hits_, and that's not nearly enough. Again, the Talon's a better shotgun than any of the shotguns. Though I think there's some latency issue here, because when using one, I'll notice a meatshot will do next to nothing, then a followup in the same place will suddenly do a chunk. The Piranha, oddly, has been useless for me. Doesn't do shit.

The Thokin is useful, if you can compensate for travel time and land a clip, it'll maim.

[UNiT]

Damn. No survey for me. Not that any 1 individual matters, but still.

I tried to use the Crusader once, with an amp. It seemed like it's big strength was range, since the pellets were so close packed, but the posted damage per shot is if _every pellet hits_, and that's not nearly enough. Again, the Talon's a better shotgun than any of the shotguns. Though I think there's some latency issue here, because when using one, I'll notice a meatshot will do next to nothing, then a followup in the same place will suddenly do a chunk. The Piranha, oddly, has been useless for me. Doesn't do shit.

The Thokin is useful, if you can compensate for travel time and land a clip, it'll maim.

What do you mean the piranha is useless? It's my go to shotgun when I want to carry the game with some close quarters class. It shreds stuff.

[Vol]

As in, every time I've used it, with a damage mod and a smart choke, it takes over half a clip to drop a mook with all meatshots. Which is better than most guns, yes, but if I'm at point blank, I need them to die faster, and quickscoping the Vanq, or Talon, or even spraying with the Charger, seems more effective.

[UNiT]

Smart choke is a useless mod because it doesn't even work. On gold it takes about half a clip to kill a bandit unless u get some lucky headshots in. The point is this gun is not meant for medium range you must use it with a character that's always face to face with enemies. Now if smart choke actually worked then maybe you could also use it midrange without wasting ammo.
As for talon I only like that it is quite accurate even longer ranges but it fires so slow that my Piranha finishes mooks faster than it and you need at least 2 well placed headshots to kill with the Talon.

[Vol]

Reading through some old conversations people had about the Rannoch choice, when they couldn't make peace, it's painful to read just how little people thought about the decision, and how poorly Bioware presented the case for either side.

It's all "does this unit have a soul???" and "it was self-defense!" versus "I like Tali" and "if your toaster started shooting at you."

On Tuchanka, especially if Wrex is dead, you get some fair reasoning for not curing the genophage, even if the story pushes you towards it overall. No wonder the ME3 infographic showed Peace>Geth>Quarians in order of popularity if these comment chains are what the average person took away from ME3's story.

[Someone With Mass]

Reading through some old conversations people had about the Rannoch choice, when they couldn't make peace, it's painful to read just how little people thought about the decision, and how poorly Bioware presented the case for either side.

It's all "does this unit have a soul???" and "it was self-defense!" versus "I like Tali" and "if your toaster started shooting at you."

On Tuchanka, especially if Wrex is dead, you get some fair reasoning for not curing the genophage, even if the story pushes you towards it overall. No wonder the ME3 infographic showed Peace>Geth>Quarians in order of popularity if these comment chains are what the average person took away from ME3's story.

It's because the entire Rannoch arc was all feels and no brains. Which is a pretty stark contrast to how it was in ME2, where it was much more logic behind the geth's reasoning.

ME2 Legion: Why were you created. What is you purpose in life. What lies after death. The geth know our answers to those questions. We were created to labor for the quarians. Our memories will be archived after death. We are immortal. Our "gods" disowned us. We must create our own reasons to exist.

ME3 Legion: Does this unit have a soul?

To be honest, Legion's "No geth will be alone when it is done" line invoked a lot more feelings for me than any of the sappy crap they tried to pull in ME3.

[Alienmorph]

The Tuchanka arc is probably the only thing of the original better scripts was salvaged in full. It has an extra layer of complexity in terms of how much it's affected by the player's previous actions, and undertanding of all the factions involved's reasons that nothing else has. The Rannoch arc has mostly pushed alot the "pro-AI" side of things just because of that oh so great final twist, and literally turned Legion in a walking plotpoint that you MUST have around one way or another. It's really unfortunate.

[TTTX]

The Tuchanka arc is probably the only thing of the original better scripts was salvaged in full. It has an extra layer of complexity in terms of how much it's affected by the player's previous actions, and undertanding of all the factions involved's reasons that nothing else has. The Rannoch arc has mostly pushed alot the "pro-AI" side of things just because of that oh so great final twist, and literally turned Legion in a walking plotpoint that you MUST have around one way or another. It's really unfortunate.

yeah well BW didn't really know what they went into by making a trilogy like ME (and having the "we are making it up as we go along" attitude didn't help), you can already see cracks in the story forming in ME2 and then the dam bursts in ME3 because of a number of reasons.

ME2 should have been a very different story if the team had followed the ending of ME1, which basically with Shepard saying I'm going to find a way to stop the Reapers from coming and ME2 he doesn't do that once, he stops the collectors (but before ME2 they didn't even exist in the world of ME), but that's like Luke Skywalker instead of becoming a better Jedi in Empire Strikes Back, goes off to destroy a secret base that's hurting people and then ends with Luke not growing as a character or a Jedi.

[Vol]

@SWM: ME2 has pathos, we see how bad the quarians have it, kinda, we see Tali's team butchered twice, we fight geth just like ME1, and then Legion comes in to provide the counterpoint. ME1, the closet thing to nuance was the 'worship,' the recording of the singing quarian, and Saren saying Sovereign thought of the geth as fools. ME2, we see the results of the conflict, namely, the tidy separation of every single geth we'll ever meet from the good guy geths, who are localized as Legion. As a plot device, fine, I can accept it, since Legion even notes we'd be wrong to anthropomorphize an AI. The game added depth, though it was a little too easy how it all worked out, not a big deal.

Then ME3, we're full on Pinnochio, good little robo-boy, dindu nuffin. Replaying the OT before ME4, I'm honestly not sure if the entire Matrix scene was _intended_ to be propaganda or not. It _was_ propaganda, but you'd have had to think about it to see why.

"Wait, since not all quarians wanted to deactivate the geth, but (presumably) multiple billions, if not dozens of billions, of them were cut down to 20 million, then what happened to the ones who didn't want to fight but weren't part of the fraction of a percent of the quarian race who get away in a ship?"

Don't get that perspective. We get jackbooted thugs gunning down other quarians sheltering their robot friends. Don't get to even _question_ why we're shown the memories we're shown. Just accept it. Then the admirals, one's an idiot warmongerer, Xen is treated like Tann, where her actual actions don't line up with how she's treated, Tali's weary and sad about it (I only ever saw her when peace was an option, so she was more sympathetic to the geth, what's she like if it isn't?), Korris, the complete asshole, turns into a living saint who wants peace and joy. And Raan is neutral.

I could write an essay about this, because seeing how Bioware crafted the arc to make completing the genocide of a sapient species, innocents and sinners all, seem like the moral choice to so many people, pisses me off bad. And that's not even getting in the personal betrayal aspect.

Feels good to vent about it, and not have people immediately disagree with me at least. If it were my arc to write, I'd make the choice Paragon/Renegade. Quarians are the objective moral choice, but you not only don't get war assets, they siphon up some, since they need to resettle and recover from the battles. Maybe you get a boost near the end from them sending a few ships, but it'd be clear that it'd not help you militarily to do this. Then geth would be purely pragmatic choice. Big ole' war asset bump. No morale to break, causalities don't matter, tons of ships and platforms, plot magic so they're totally loyal and not running fucking Reaper software and totally susceptible to being taken over for the Nth time, no sudden reversal from wanting to be one mind into wanting to be individuals. Nice, clean, Renegade, "This war must be won at any cost, if we don't have the military strength for it, then we all die. So I will sacrifice one sapient race to save the rest." It writes itself.

@Alien: I had the absolute best outcome to Tuchanka, Wrex and Eve in charge, genophage cured, etc. And I still had to doubt myself, because a cured krogan _are_ a major threat at full breeding capacity. All it takes is one warlord to get that shit kicked off again. If there'd be an option to adjust the genophage to, say, 10% viability, I'd have taken it.

[Someone With Mass]

I also like how the geth can later in the game just flat out reject the Reapers' attempt at controlling them without any problems, even if it is because of the upgrades.

If anything, the whole trilogy has always underplayed how powerful the geth can really be. You'd think that the "mind the size of a galactic arm" would have had no problems at all resisting the Reapers. But nope, they're easy to hack, because they're computer programs. Just like in Legion's loyalty mission, Overlord and all the other times they've been susceptible to control signals. Just change a one to a zero, herp a derp.

Feels good to vent about it, and not have people immediately disagree with me at least. If it were my arc to write, I'd make the choice Paragon/Renegade. Quarians are the objective moral choice, but you not only don't get war assets, they siphon up some, since they need to resettle and recover from the battles. Maybe you get a boost near the end from them sending a few ships, but it'd be clear that it'd not help you militarily to do this. Then geth would be purely pragmatic choice. Big ole' war asset bump. No morale to break, causalities don't matter, tons of ships and platforms, plot magic so they're totally loyal and not running fucking Reaper software and totally susceptible to being taken over for the Nth time, no sudden reversal from wanting to be one mind into wanting to be individuals. Nice, clean, Renegade, "This war must be won at any cost, if we don't have the military strength for it, then we all die. So I will sacrifice one sapient race to save the rest." It writes itself.

Now, I haven't played ME3 in years, but I'm fairly certain that the entire reason Shepard went to Tikkun (which is a word often used in the Hebrew phrase "tikkun olam", which means "healing and restoring the world", by the way) in the first place was because the quarians had a big fleet they could use to contribute to the war effort. Sure, a moral victory feels good, but going away nearly empty-handed would have felt a bit weak. Especially when one could argue that peace is the ultimate pragmatic route, since both sides are/were willing to attempt it and you'd end up with a hell of a lot more ships than either sides could have contributed.

Funny how BioWare hyped up the game and talked about how you could potentially commit several acts of genocide, but completely neglected to mention the fact that the geth DID commit genocide.

Though, I shouldn't say anything, since I have no idea how I would have done it. Aside from the blatant propaganda and one-sided storytelling, that is.

Also, the dumbest pro-geth argument I've seen was when the whole "they're just machines" angle was brought up and people started to say that quarians are essentially just organic machines and can be cloned/created just like the geth. Yeah. Some people just are that fucking stupid.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goDaYvVCLdo&list=WL&index=11

[magnuskn]

I sometimes wonder if the people who leaked the original script for ME3 realize how much they screwed the community. :-/

[Alienmorph]

It's hard to tell how much damage that actually did. Considering how much different the early scripts for ME2 and the actual game we got are, it's not unlikely that there would have been some radical changes in the ones for ME3 as well. Some stuff, like the whole questline on Palaven and the "Virmire 2.0." set on Thessia would have also being cut anyway due to lack of development time and EA wantig to cut corners and save some budget cash.

The only real chance ME3 would have had to be everything it should have been was probably for it to have the resources and development time that was given to ME:A, instead of being rushed into production while the hype for the second game was still high and mighty.

And even then... the Starbrat was hinted at even in the betascripts. And the Dark Energy ending sounded almost equally infuriating. The way ME3 was planned on a basic level probably doomed it from the start, really.

[HellBovine]

I'm at least glad they scrapped that "Virmire 2.0" event. That part is bad enough with the invulnerable gunship while mall ninja does spin kicks in the middle of the room. I couldn't stand it if any more squad members died because of him.

[Someone With Mass]

Yeah, the dark energy plot was even more circular logic going down the drain, but I would have also been muuuuch more accepting of Javik being the Catalyst.

[magnuskn]

At least the Dark Energy thing gave us an uncertain but hopeful future, instead of three completely incompatible endings which effectively made our own galaxy toxic for future parts of the series.

[Someone With Mass]

Fighting against the kett in the multiplayer makes me want to punch the unimaginative idiot who thought them up in the face until eating solid food is nothing but a fleeting, painful memory. Nothing about them is fun and they all rely on incredibly cheap/dull mechanics to kill you.

The Ascendant. Is invulnerable until you destroy his orb. That alone is lame beyond belief, but then he can shoot spheres that covers entire lanes and goes through cover, because why have cover when you can dodge everything, right? Oh yeah, you can't.

The Anointed. Gears of War-knockoff (Can anyone say "Grinder"?) at its worst. Has a high damage machine gun that pretty much never misses, no matter how much you dodge except for when the player uses it. Then it can't hit the broadside of the Nexus. Its creator deserves a sledgehammer to the genitals.

The Destined. Don't you just love when an enemy cloaks and you can't target him and all he does is prolong the fight?

The Wraith. Annoying cunt creatures with the fugliest attack animation I've seen in decades. I get that they're meant to flush you out of cover (great system, by the way. Never mind that you need to stop getting shot in order to recover shields and health), but it doesn't stop it from being so fucking annoying when I'm about to shoot something and then these freaks jump me and I miss because good luck hearing their growls or whatever over the sound of constant gunfire and shouting.

The Fiend. Why does this thing exist? It's just a big ugly monster that walks around and cheaply insta-kills people without warning from time to time. How many minutes did it take to come up with that? Five?

That doesn't even cover their lame-ass weapons. Why do almost all of them need to have a boring charge mechanic with no good feedback? All it does is limit the rate of fire.

[TTTX]

The Ascendant. Is invulnerable until you destroy his orb. That alone is lame beyond belief, but then he can shoot spheres that covers entire lanes and goes through cover, because why have cover when you can dodge everything, right? Oh yeah, you can't.

he can also kill you in one shot if you get to close, like the fiends.

[UNiT]

Fighting against the kett

I actually feel like the only faction that is a challenge is the kett. The other 2 factions make gold a joke. The only real problem with the kett is the teleporting fiends off host. While we are the topic on multiplayer I finally unlocked everything X that isn't a UR.

[Someone With Mass]

Fighting against the kett

I actually feel like the only faction that is a challenge is the kett. The other 2 factions make gold a joke. The only real problem with the kett is the teleporting fiends off host. While we are the topic on multiplayer I finally unlocked everything X that isn't a UR.

The thing is that the kett is the epitome of artificial difficulty. They're not difficult because they have many counters or fight strategically. No, they're difficult because they're fighting cheaply.

[Dragaros]

Feels good to vent about it, and not have people immediately disagree with me at least. If it were my arc to write, I'd make the choice Paragon/Renegade. Quarians are the objective moral choice, but you not only don't get war assets, they siphon up some, since they need to resettle and recover from the battles. Maybe you get a boost near the end from them sending a few ships, but it'd be clear that it'd not help you militarily to do this. Then geth would be purely pragmatic choice. Big ole' war asset bump. No morale to break, causalities don't matter, tons of ships and platforms, plot magic so they're totally loyal and not running fucking Reaper software and totally susceptible to being taken over for the Nth time, no sudden reversal from wanting to be one mind into wanting to be individuals. Nice, clean, Renegade, "This war must be won at any cost, if we don't have the military strength for it, then we all die. So I will sacrifice one sapient race to save the rest." It writes itself.

This, so much.

Reading through some old conversations people had about the Rannoch choice, when they couldn't make peace, it's painful to read just how little people thought about the decision, and how poorly Bioware presented the case for either side.

It's all "does this unit have a soul???" and "it was self-defense!" versus "I like Tali" and "if your toaster started shooting at you."

On Tuchanka, especially if Wrex is dead, you get some fair reasoning for not curing the genophage, even if the story pushes you towards it overall. No wonder the ME3 infographic showed Peace>Geth>Quarians in order of popularity if these comment chains are what the average person took away from ME3's story.

I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen people say their final decision in the Rannoch arc basically came down to them thinking: "The quarians, without exception, are all racist, xenophobic, pro-genocide, slave-owning bigots, who created the geth so they could be slave-oweners, who made the geth sentient/sapient on purpose from the start, the geth did absolutely nothing wrong at any point and are perfect angels who just want to be loved, and all the quarians that died in the Morning War and the battle of Rannoch deserved it, even the quarians that were non-combatants, underage, or were forced there by their leaders." Not kidding.

Tali's weary and sad about it (I only ever saw her when peace was an option, so she was more sympathetic to the geth, what's she like if it isn't?)

I did a renegon/paragade playthrough where I made my Shep stay vehemently anti-geth throughout the whole series and didn't encourage Tali to change her views either. When I carried it over to ME3, from what I remember (I could be misremembering, its being awhile), Tali is upset about the loss of quarian life, and thinks they should have saved their resources for the fight against the Reapers, but doesn't really feel bad about the geth and doesn't believe peace is possible. If Legion died in the Collector Base, you get similar responses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU0nB72H5FE

[Someone With Mass]

Comparing the reasons why people in our societies are racist to the reason why the quarians are, it's rather petty.

It's thanks to the geth that the quarians and their ancestors have to live aboard old broken-down ships where every day can spell disaster for the whole crew, if not the entire fleet.

If an alien race or our own creations (should I feel compassionate for the Terminators while they haul people away to processing camps too?) drove US away from Earth, you bet there'd be some asinine religions created around the sole purpose of hating them. The human race has loathed itself for less.

So yeah, they have every right and plenty of reasons to hate the geth.

It's just a really sad demonstration of why people have a deep desire to have and defend what they think is the moral high ground on every decision. In reality, it's more bigoted than anything.

[TTTX]

Comparing the reasons why people in our societies are racist to the reason why the quarians are, it's rather petty.

It's thanks to the geth that the quarians and their ancestors have to live aboard old broken-down ships where every day can spell disaster for the whole crew, if not the entire fleet.

If an alien race or our own creations (should I feel compassionate for the Terminators while they haul people away to processing camps too?) drove US away from Earth, you bet there'd be some asinine religions created around the sole purpose of hating them. The human race has loathed itself for less.

So yeah, they have every right and plenty of reasons to hate the geth.

It's just a really sad demonstration of why people have a deep desire to have and defend what they think is the moral high ground on every decision. In reality, it's more bigoted than anything.

Hell the Council is also racist and very hypercritical, they say they don't want to have species to go extinct, but they have no problem watching the Quarians and Krogan die out slowly over hundreds of years, hell they even make sure the Quarians can't have colony in Citadel space (just because of something their ancestors did and hell some of the planets even threatens to blow them out of the sky if they come to close and some of those ships have kids and babies onboard) and the Council doesn't do a thing to try and help them in anyway.

Indirectly the Salarians caused not 1, but 2 galactic wars and they still have a Council seat.

[Raga]

I actually accept the geth are sapient simply for narrative reasons. The game insists they are sapient and so I just believe it for "space magic" reasons in the same way that magic blue rocks somehow make FTL (which is probably impossible) possible.

However, the way that Legion explains geth sapience makes absolutely no sense. He says that a particular geth process is equivalent to a VI and that consensus is formed by aggregating the binary yes/no answers from each individual process. However, VI are explicitly dumb and incapable of producing a response to a question they have not been programmed to answer. If they get such a question they spit out some "I'm sorry, my programming is limited to simple interaction simulations" error.

So 1 of two things is going on here. Geth processes (VIs) are programmed to just pick a random answer when they get such a question, in which case geth "consensus" is literally nothing but several thousand coin flips and thus no actual basis for anything like sapience. Or, the processes become conscious only by networking (as neurons become conscious by bioelectrical networking), in which case it becomes nonsensical to base a decision on anything lower than that networking level. Just like you don't ask me a question and then determine my answer by counting how many neurons are firing (on) and how many aren't (off). The total number firing is irrelevant.

I pick the peace option, but because of that plot hole, I would really not have much of a hiccup picking the quarians if I had to chose between them or the geth.

[Vol]

@SWM: Shepard has the option to commit several genocides, insofar as we're aware at the time and depending on how you define 'species.' To give the most liberal definition:
Rachni
Thorian
Collectors (As far as we know, the base and ship was the sum of their people in ME2)
Geth
Quarian

With indirect mentions to:
Krogan - Doomed by attrition, albeit it's not Shepard's direct fault that they're self-destructive
Hanar - Not completing one of the side quests and they get wiped out
Drell - I assume based on the above
Everyone - Refuse ending, it is entirely valid for Shepard, being half dead, to not believe the magical Star Child is telling the truth at all
Prothean: Losing Jaal would technically finish the job

Of the ones Shepard is directly responsible for, 2 are unavoidable, Thorian and Collectors. 1 is optional, with a follow up to repeat it, Rachni. And 1 is a binary choice that can be avoided with the right choices, Rannoch.

You'll notice that the first 2 are genocide by dint of definition, there's only 1 known living member of the species left, which I'd say is an unfair use of the term, since Shepard is acting in self-defense, and also isn't responsible for the current population number. It would be like saying that if feral cats wiped out a population of lizards, and then I step on the last one while walking in the woods, I've committed a genocide. You could argue that since the queen could start a population up all by herself, it counts, but there's valid reasons not to _release_ her, and given we only have 2 choices, so it goes.

Collectors are puppets, and you're given no choice not to take them down, and we later find out we didn't get them all, so morally clear.

Of the last 2, we have a sapient race of people, 20 million or so, and an AI network. As Raga notes, because of authorial fiat, we must accept the geth are sapient, as we're really not given the option to dispute it. We can say they're just machines, and not people, but off the top of my head, we never get to dispute the _sapience_ of AI, which is a frustrating lack of agency, but we can't dispute it if that's the word of God.

So in terms of actual, by the intended meaning of the definition, 100% aware and conscious decisions, fully able to stop or allow the consequence, Shepard is responsible for _1_ genocide if he doesn't make peace. And the gravitas of that is not given nearly the fucking depth and consideration it damn well should. Forget the little PTSD boy, this is the kind of choice that should have scarred his soul either way.

Speaking of, do souls exist in Mass Effect?

@Drag: I'll give Bioware credit, given the short dev cycle, and how many permutations existed, they did a pretty good job of recognizing a lot of choices. Not what I wanted as the capstone of the OT, but they do deserve some recognition. They also made some pretty huge thematic and character fuckups, but take the good with the bad.

Not every major choice needed to be shades of grey morally. It's okay and good to have moral binaries, but the pragmatic realities overshadow it.

ME2, you _saw_ the human side of quarians. You had Lia getting hassled unfairly, you had Kenn getting fucked over trying to get off Omega, you had the girl selling herself into slavery, you had the Fleet, you had a rescue team _and_ a science team butchered on peaceful missions, you had good people making bad decisions killed to the man on the Alarei (Jonah's mother, Tali's father), you had ambiguously bad people doing what they thought was right (Xen, Koris).

ME3, what do you have on the quarian side to make their case? Only admirals, no common people. Tali, who depends on the world state, and Koris, who becomes a self-sacrificing hero. Koris openly speaks out against the war, and by proxy his people since they're all there and forced to win or die, and Tali can too, if she's pro-peace. Xen is shown as a villain despite not actually doing bad things that I can remember (Something about salvaging tech instead of possibly empty life pods?), Raan is a nothing, Gerrel is a stupid asshole who nearly gets Shepard killed, which is somehow a worse sin than the many, many times the geth actively tried to kill Shepard, and continue to do so until the end of the arc. So of the 5 quarians we really meet, 2 are shown as good people, and both can be against their peoples' effort.

I'm wracking my mind here, what's the pro-quarian argument in ME3 that isn't in the codex or information from previous games?

@TX: The Council is status quo exemplified, and they damn well should answer for the many atrocities they allowed to happen, or caused to happen, because of it. When the shattered remnants of the quarian race, the relative few survivors of an AI genocide, showed up in Council space, what the fuck did those people do for their allies?

@Raga: In most simple terms, geth works by using networking to share idle processing power. So a mining platform would have relatively few runtimes, enough to do its task. Let's say that 10% of it's total processing power isn't in use while working. Get a hundred platforms mining, they link together, all those slivers of processing power can be used to work out more complex problems, logistics, assignments, efficiency. Get a million, they starting finding edge cases in their programming. Get a billion, they get all Asimov and now we have a war of extermination.

So the reason the geth isn't actually an artificial god at this point is because it still has to maintain all those platforms and ships and tasks and plans and considerations. Legion has a thousand something runtimes in order to try to perform independent missions around organics, look at how that goes. It takes a lot of them to get a workable intelligence. Hence the plan for the sphere, then the entire network could be local and fully dedicated to "thinking."

Suppose you could think of it like the monkey/typewriter/Shakespeare thought experiment, on a much larger scale. Hence why consensus takes time, once a monkey manages to bang out A Midsummer Night's Dream, you need to find it, check it letter by letter, then present it, prove your case, and then be accepted.

[magnuskn]

I would actually argue that even in ME2 Koris was not made out as an unequivocally "bad guy", but rather as someone who had no problem destroying someones else career and status for a goal he saw as heroic and necessary. Yes, it's definitely bad that he plans to railroad Tali for the sins of her father, but he wants peace with the Geth and sees the focus of Talis father on destroying them as counterproductive to that.

His characterization lays the foundation for the turnaround in ME3, the same goes for Gerrel.

[TTTX]

@TX: The Council is status quo exemplified, and they damn well should answer for the many atrocities they allowed to happen, or caused to happen, because of it. When the shattered remnants of the quarian race, the relative few survivors of an AI genocide, showed up in Council space, what the fuck did those people do for their allies?

*puts on Tinfoil hat*

I suspect it's because of the Asari, the Council doesn't change much in their ways.

After all it's the only other race that lives for a very long time outside the Krogan, it's like only like 2-3 generations since the Rachni war and there are probably a few asari from the Krogan rebellions still around and there are still lot of asari alive that witnessed the Morning war plus with their mind melding sharing memories means what ever hate that came out from those wars probably won't go away for a very long time, similar to that one asari who was a dick to Zues Hope survivors simply because she lost her mate during the Morning war and daughters during the Citadel attack (side mission Illium).

Put that together with the Asari Councilor who have seen being used by Aria in ME3 to handle issues and that shows the root of the problems with Council more or less get reviled (like say if there are other asari with more power then Aria who carries grudge against Krogan and Quarians well it doesn't take much to figure what the Council stances on those 2 races are) and might even tell us the true nature of the Council.

Basically the Asari is long lived race with some mind powers among other things, who has a seat one of the most powerful governments in the galaxy, which they made with the Salarians and didn't accept any new members until turians and later humans become members of Citadel space. A very little group of races dictates more less over half of the known galaxy couple that with their way of life, how they fight in wars and such along with their mind powers, means they are very likely to get their way with the Council easier then other races, one could even say they rule the Council to an extend, which could explain why they don't allow many races to join as it's a lot harder to control if there are a lot of people to influences and if you let some join they have to be worth it, like the Turians have a strong military.

Which means the Asari indirectly control the Council at least to a degree, most likely through a lot of means.

Conspiracy Theory but ehh it's ME.

*Takes off Tinfoil hat.*

[Raga]

@Vol

Right, I get how the neural network works. That actually makes sense. That's basically just inorganic neurons. But the process described by Legion on geth consensus building in ME2 that attempts to explain how cognition arises out of a bunch of VI level processes makes 0 sense. If they had just stopped at the ME1 level explanation of neural networking, there would be no plot hole. The way Legion explains it, he literally takes a yes/no vote from all his runtimes to form consensus. That's nonsense. It's like me taking a yes/no vote of my individual neurons to make a decision or asking 3000 electrical circuits to randomly return on/off messages and decide based on that. That's not a network. That's just flipping a coin 3000 times and adding the results.

[Someone With Mass]

I'm pretty sure that you don't gain intelligence by increasing the amount of coins to flip either.

[Riptide]

It's not gaining intelligence by flipping more coins. Each geth has a unique opinion and perspective. Legion explains this. One program returns that one is less than two, another returns that two is less than three. Neither is the result of an error. Additionally, while each individual program has the intelligence of a VI (which is to say it has virtually no intelligence) when in a network and more of their processing power is free, those individual progams become sentient, because they share the load and allow for more and more room for independent thought. It's less that there are 1000 neurons inside of Legion, who is a network unto itself, and each one flips a coin and they go with heads or tails dependent on who flips more of what. It's more like a group of people analyzing a problem and offering distinct opinions based on the various conclusions they reach, and then doing that at extreme speeds. But it's only when those programs are networked in such a way that they have the adequate processing power that they become sentient enough to have their own voice at all. Otherwise they are just dumb VI with no capability for independent thought, and that's why the geth were harmless at first. They only became sentient after, as Vol illustrated, they gained enough processing power give each program the capacity for free thought, which Tali explains in ME1.

Legion and the Geth make perfect sense, until you hit ME3 and they suddenly want to become real boys.

[TheodoricFriede]

I mean yeah, and that only really makes sense when you have space magic. I mean lots of computers have spare processing power. Lots of companies let computers share said processing power. That on its own doesn't make something sentient.

[Someone With Mass]

I'd say that it's mostly a hand-wave from the writers, since they probably wouldn't be writing about creating an AI if they knew how to do it.

The answer is: Don't think about it.

[Vol]

@Raga: Oh, that part. Yeah, it's the one I have a hard time working into the model in my head. Because in one scenario, ever single runtime should be identical to every single other one in terms of actual code, hence Legion's confusion that the Heretics did what they did, the only variables would be data available. So a mobile platform should instantly come to the exact same conclusion, instantly, every single time, because it would have all the data as the rest of it self, always. Whereas Legion in the field does not have access to the greater network, and thus has information it doesn't.

To say nothing of how culpable the 'true geth' are for allowing a chunk of themselves to go out, with an army, to help Sovereign start the reaping process. The Heretic explanation is not a "Our hands are clean" deal at all.

So near as I can imagine, the yes/no thing must work based on including all runtimes in a decision, rather than only ones free to fully commit to processing it. Meaning, one of the runtimes partially in charge of steadying the drift of its arm while aiming at a husk, must commit some amount of its processing power to the question at hand, as well as the runtime identifying the visual of the husk, as well as the one in charge of coordinating the aiming runtimes, all the way to the top, where fully idle ones can commit 100% of their resources, which logically return the best answer which should have priority over all the others. In which case you're taking an answer from distracted minds into account, which means either your return must wait for them all to finish or they're using less thorough algorithms to handle it, which could require a visible pause from Legion to parse.

That would mean each runtime has the _ability_ to parse all the data it could possibly receive in any situation, analysis it, and then come up with an answer. Since no mind is different from any other, this would mean that 1 geth runtime, loaded onto a computer with all the data from the entire geth network on the hard drive, unconnected to anything but a screen for output, should therefore be as capable of answering questions as the entire network working in tandem. The implication being that every runtime is in fact an AI on its own, made 'dumb VI' by virtue of being made to do work and not be able to fully commit its innate capabilities.

See where I'm going with this? That would mean consensus building is fundamentally unnecessary. All it would take is 1 runtime, fully committed to the question at hand, with a sufficiently powerful hardware setup, to get the correct answer. Instead of asking every single runtime to use their own resources to work out their own answer, then playing 12 Angry Men until you get consensus, you need a master runtime solely for analysis, to which all the others release their spare processing power to, and logically, the outcome should always be exactly the same as the consensus method.

But then we negate lore and a lot of things that happen. So that can't be it.

The alternative would be that not all runtimes are equal, either by quarian or geth design. You have overseers, you have peons, you have mathematical focused ones, you have military ones, like a psuedo-simulation of organic society roles, and then they would always have different conclusions, and need to swap data and work out a consensus. This would be how we get the 3 is less than 4, 2 is less than 3, moment.

And then that means new questions. It takes 1,000 runtimes in platform to mimic sapience. So...what kind? Any? Is there a hierarchy? Are there "brainy" runtimes with better decision making algorithms? Are there leaders, tailored to directing billions of other runtimes? What's the point in building a consensus that would include the input of a runtime custom coded for regulating the water flow of a Rannoch farm's sprinkler system in a military matter? This would mean the geth network is a society.

Since clearly differences in opinion do occur, we have to conclude this is the case. Each runtime is said to be like a dumb VI, so in the case of Legion, it's a thousand and some dumb minds looking at data and arguing with each other until they get one answer, which would be a pretty funny satire of democracy in the incredibly unlikely chance it was intentional.

At the core, however, this means the quarian designers, the people who literally wrote the software, did not account for scaling processing power. Meaning, whatever algorithms and functions they wrote into geth to make each runtime a dumb VI that networked together to share spare power to work out more complex problems, they did not account for the fact that the geth would do what they had explicitly designed them to do. Otherwise the VI en masse->AI explanation makes no sense.

The difference between a VI and an AI isn't how much processing power is available. It's structural. Hence the quantum boxes and different programming and teaching and shit. So if the runtimes are all VIs, with some degree of different purpose, that are able to become an AI when sharing resources in sufficient number, that means the quarian designs coded AIs, without any fancy equipment involved, and didn't factor in that the max number of runtimes networked at any one time could exceed 1,000.

Which would be incredibly impressive technically, and utterly retarded thematically.

And that's the extent of me thinking hard about things for today.

[UNiT]

Did some math and it would take around 100 million credits to unlock everything currently available in Andromeda Multiplayer. Already spent around 20 million what's left is to unlock the ultra rares. Seems a lot less grindy compared to ME3MP where you needed a fuck ton of credits to max out your manifest.

[Raga]

It's not gaining intelligence by flipping more coins. Each geth has a unique opinion and perspective. Legion explains this. One program returns that one is less than two, another returns that two is less than three. Neither is the result of an error. Additionally, while each individual program has the intelligence of a VI (which is to say it has virtually no intelligence) when in a network and more of their processing power is free, those individual progams become sentient, because they share the load and allow for more and more room for independent thought. It's less that there are 1000 neurons inside of Legion, who is a network unto itself, and each one flips a coin and they go with heads or tails dependent on who flips more of what. It's more like a group of people analyzing a problem and offering distinct opinions based on the various conclusions they reach, and then doing that at extreme speeds. But it's only when those programs are networked in such a way that they have the adequate processing power that they become sentient enough to have their own voice at all. Otherwise they are just dumb VI with no capability for independent thought, and that's why the geth were harmless at first. They only became sentient after, as Vol illustrated, they gained enough processing power give each program the capacity for free thought, which Tali explains in ME1.

Legion and the Geth make perfect sense, until you hit ME3 and they suddenly want to become real boys.

The thing is there is no series of perspectives inside Legion. He follows that statement about perspectives by saying "One platform sees one thing, another sees something else and they make different judgements." Legion is 1 gestalt sapient entity that will remain different until he can network with other gestalt sapient geth entities. He also says at another point "Each individual is equivalent [note *equivalent* and not *comparable* or *analogous*]. Together we form a single gestalt intellect. What you refer to as Legion."

I am willing to concede that he might just be engaging in confusing machine speak and what he really means by all his consensus talk on his loyalty mission is basically "this platform, that is this sapient entity known as Legion, can't decide what to do because I don't have enough information" which is really no different than organic saying "I can't make up my mind." In that case, he really is talking about the overall pattern formed by his runtimes networking just as the network of my nuerons produces memories or emotions or thoughts. However, the way things are phrased makes it seem as if he is going out of his way to count the individual "opinion" of each runtime, which is no different than counting VIs and thus nonsense.

Again for the record, I don't actually argue that the geth lack sapience just as I don't argue that the Normany can't travel at FTL. I just shrug my shoulders and accept both for space magic reasons.

@Vol
That explanation would make sense. As for your second explanation he does mention that his "high-order" runtimes can't build consensus at one point, but again that creates all kinds of other lore contradictions.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_USyimvSpQ&index=12&list=WL

[Riptide]

The thing is there is no series of perspectives inside Legion. He follows that statement about perspectives by saying "One platform sees one thing, another sees something else and they make different judgements." Legion is 1 gestalt sapient entity that will remain different until he can network with other gestalt sapient geth entities. He also says at another point "Each individual is equivalent [note *equivalent* and not *comparable* or *analogous*]. Together we form a single gestalt intellect. What you refer to as Legion."

I am willing to concede that he might just be engaging in confusing machine speak and what he really means by all his consensus talk on his loyalty mission is basically "this platform, that is this sapient entity known as Legion, can't decide what to do because I don't have enough information" which is really no different than organic saying "I can't make up my mind." In that case, he really is talking about the overall pattern formed by his runtimes networking just as the network of my nuerons produces memories or emotions or thoughts. However, the way things are phrased makes it seem as if he is going out of his way to count the individual "opinion" of each runtime, which is no different than counting VIs and thus nonsense.

Again for the record, I don't actually argue that the geth lack sapience just as I don't argue that the Normany can't travel at FTL. I just shrug my shoulders and accept both for space magic reasons.

@Vol
That explanation would make sense. As for your second explanation he does mention that his "high-order" runtimes can't build consensus at one point, but again that creates all kinds of other lore contradictions.

You might of had a point there, but the thing to remember is that Legion gives the numbers for his 'coinflips' regarding the heretics, and notes that, I believe it's like two more or something favor destruction over rewrite. The thing is that Legion doesn't take the majority and automatically go with it, it has the self awareness to understand that the margin of error there is worth reconciling.

Moreover, I think it's erroneous to think of each individual program within a single unit as being the same by virtue of them having the same perspective. The geth are math, and as Legion points out, different geth can deliver different outcomes and they might all be valid. So in theory, a program within Legion that is devoted to negotiating with organics might return that destruction is preferable to ensure the heretics can't come back and continue to damage relations with organics, a program devoted to military tactics might return that rewrite is preferable as it gives the orthodox geth a military advantage, and a program devoted to finding ways to combat the reapers might return destruction again because it means less chance of heretic viewpoints infecting the true geth consensus, further dividing their numbers.

It's never stated to work that way, I don't think, but it would make sense that if Legion is a network unto itself, that each program within might perform a specific function, and when they do so as a unit they are able to make the critical problem solving necessary for sentience.