ME Andromeda Multiplayer - "S" guns and general rarity issues

i open nothing but premium packs now when i've got 100,000e again.  I'm not really opening them for any gold loot as such, but just the chance of an Ultra Rare.  Prior to tonight i was just getting standard boosters and supplies etc, but tonight now getting gold items again, so for now at least its made a modest change to what i was receiving in my loot.  I would love to see a higher chance of getting a UR but in all honesty i'm not going to waste my time asking as it wouldn't change a g'dam thing i reckon.

As i've got all my bronze and silver now up to rank X and every gold except for these new S series weapons to rank X, i can't see it being that long before i rank these up to rank X too.  Looking at my Apex rating i don't play nearly as much as a lot of people seem to  in multiplayer, but i do play as often as i can, and mostly on silver.  I'd rather play 4 games with a good team on silver than 10 games with any team on bronze.. time vs reward etc.

I've really not tried gold yet, in comparison to silver? what is it like?  i know the silver was a big ramp from bronze, is it similar on gold?

These S weapons fall under the mediocre category. They are only VERY SLIGHT UPGRADES to their common counter parts, not worth rare status, hardly worth uncommon status too. 

I believe that MP rewards are built this way as a means of punishing players for criticizing the original ending of ME 3.   I can't imagine how many trillions of credits it is going to take to get all of the ultra rares, especially when they keep adding low end weapons and claiming that they are "special".   the fact that your N7 players at level 20 rank 1 are weaker and have less powers than your commons at level 10 rank 10 is just not right.   Why in the world do I have to get an ultra rare card just to get tints?  Why am I forced to not be able to use my N7 characters / weapons because they are so badly nerfed for powers and hit points?  and why the heck aren't the consumables capped at 255?   I suspect it's probably like 4096 which just adds to the trillions of credits required to earn things.   ME3 MP was sooo darned good, and there is such potential for MEA MP, it's shame that it seems to be a deliberate attempt to make people stop playing

You are wrong. I dropped a 1.5 mil in saved credits and received all of the S versions at around V or plus about 5 or so N7 cards. A few more hours of playtime will cap the S versions. If anything this gave players like me a reason to finally spend credits on premium boxes again without the diminished rewards that happens when you cap common through rare cards. The increased damage on these gives them the functionality of rare weapons and that is the category where they belong. Besides there may be only 4 common weapons but there are 16 common cards counting classes.

So a true count is 

16 common

16 uncommon

34 rare

21 UR

This is more balanced than you claim. 34 rare cards is reasonable versus the 32 easier to get more common cards. Especially since obtaining all of the lessers should increase your success in gold runs increasing the amount of credits you get. Further more once you get heavy into filling out the rares. Realistically thirty or so minutes of gameplay for a premium pack is not bad at all.

@BANDIT440

Aha, and how am I supposed to "get heavy filling out the rares" when they keep adding new ones? You may have already leveled up most of your rare cards but I haven't.

Not 30 minutes but 30 hours of gameplay this weekend yielded Charger S II, M-3 Predator S I, M-8 Avenger S !I, Sandstorm VI, N7 Hurricane III, Sniper Rifle Barrel XI, Turian Havoc Trooper XI, Angara Insurgent VI and a Krogan Mercenary VI for me.

Notice the 5 "S" cards that I wouldn't get if they were not added the other day. Also, notice those couple of level IX cards that I probably would have completed otherwise or even got another ultra rare card (I already had Hurricane II before that).

I hope this time you will grasp what I mean. For people like me who are not at the end of the line but rather still in the thick of unlocking everything, adding more cards to the largest category dilutes the loot in a very unpleasant way.

On the one hand, they want us to play the game for years instead of months. Think sales/profit, popularity/goodwill etc.

On the other hand, if what you say is true and you are the best representative of the player base, I am expected to have finished everything so far and bless the new addition as something that creates incentive for me to keep me interested.

Both options taken together are controversial and illogical.

This is almost identical to games where they keep adding achievements. Initially, you are very enthusiastic about the game and keep playing it 'till you drop.

Let's say you have got 93% of all achievements by the seventh month after release, leaving only the hardest and most prestigious ones to tackle with.

Then comes the first DLC with its own set of achievements, which brings your progress down to 87%.

But wait a minute! What will you do now? Are you going to devote time to complete all the trivial challenges that came with the DLC, or keep pushing for those super hard ones?

Assuming that you are a newbie who hasn't seen this happen a dozen times already and is not yet tired of the endless race, let's pretend you do pay with blood and tears and get back to 92% completion.

Wham! DLC #2 comes, followed by the first expansion pack - the final goal keeps getting farther and farther away from you...

I am not wrong, buddy. I am a realist, with a lot more experience than you, who decided to express his discontent for once.

Oh, and in case you are wondering how is it possible to get so little after 30 hours, well, let me tell you it is getting increasingly difficult to find a good gold party lately.

On Saturday, I couldn't even find people to finish one of the daily silver APEX missions.

Why? Why do people start to drift apart? Maybe some of the players feel the way I do.

If another set of "special" weapons was to be added next month, there would probably be even fewer people left around to play with.

Nobody likes to chase a carrot that never gets closer.

More experience huh? I have more than twenty years gaming, Console and PC gaming. Achievements that less than 1% worldwide have and some even rarer than that. Plus even if you have more game time in ME:A I guarantee I play it better and more efficiently. I smoke people with thousands of more apex score than my 15.5k. I do not have a hard time finding groups and I only join lobbies by myself. I do not need a good gold party just some bullet sponges to soak up fire while I rip it up. Getting rare cards is easy. You are angry just because you can't catch up. Many of us end up sitting on credits because we already capped all bronze, silver and gold cards and have enough N7's to be patient. So yes you are wrong. Also it is pathetic to get so mad over these guns getting placed in gold class. Credits are so easy to get. 

You play on PC? Let me know when you want a demonstration. You can pick map and enemy.

Twenty years of gaming experience but you registered here three months ago? All right, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.

I've been gaming on PC for sixteen years and playing electronic games on all kinds of platforms since 1996.

A total of thirty-seven thousand hours so far. 'Cause two hours a day is not the same as fourteen you know.

Alas, it seems you are my superior after all, so I'll need your advise.

Attached are a couple of screens from last month. I know, peasant bronze, right?

Please teach me how to do the same on gold! Footage and/or pics required of course.

And why did you decide I am angry? As I said, I have seen such things happen so many times in the past that I have been inured.

Anyway, this is not about you or me. Also, I don't care how many or what kinds of achievements you have in games if you can't do anything constructive with your brain and hands IRL.

What I am trying to do here is raise awareness, see if other people will express the same opinion.

It is not impossible to get loads of credits and eventually unlock everything. The problem is how developers set your path towards the ultimate goal.

Is it deliberately and artificially prolonged for years making the journey unpleasant or is it hard but in a very gradual, logical and satisfying way?

P.S.: As for the problem of finding parties - peering does not work the same way across the globe.

It may be easy for you to find other people (guessing you're in NA) but since my location is not considered a prime one, I am the last in line to get matched with and when I start a game on my own I often end up dying during upload or hack tasks because nobody ever joins me.

But this is not something for us two to debate. It is up to BioWare and EA to agree on infrastructure investment if the current one does not provide equal network experience for everybody.

Like I said you pick the map and enemy on I'll show you what's up in person, we can record that. 35k solo on bronze is a pretty basic bronze clearing score let me know when you get to 25-35k gold in a group. I not much of a forum person so I only signed up for this game's and only recently got heavy into modern PC gaming since about a decade ago. If you go to trueachievements.com you can see how much I actually have accomplished on Xbox before I dedicated to PC you won't touch me I have accolades that few can dare touch on actually trying games not movie junk and such. I put in thousands of hours gaming yearly for decades so if I actually knew my total hours your 37k would be intro to gaming in comparison. I have 1000+ hours of Fallout 4 alone since February and I play 4-5 games at any given time just to give you some context. I also just quit ESOnline at the end of last year logging more than 8k hours over 3 years not including extended beta alongside all my other games. You made this about us when you took that more experienced jab at me.

As for my hands and mind in real life. I have was a commercial carpenter for years. I worked on hospitals, schools, high rises and many other projects. Mostly exterior many stories up building walls and such. I have many bookkeeping certifications and a minor accounting degree as well as an associates worth of construction credits from my former unions school. I raise two kids in advanced school programs and have been happily married for 13 years. I read paper books daily. I have been on TV, Radio and on the front page of my cities newspaper however minor and before the internet was a thing. When I was younger I was night manager for a 5 star air LAX hotel's valet service and ran errands/did favors for celebrities/high profile people on many occasions. I've stopped a robbery and several burglaries (My neighbors house but it still counts) and recently broke up a fight in a restaurant. I box and used to play bass. I would have been a Marine but a congenital back defect kept me out. I could keep going.

The bottom line is eventually new weapons will stop coming out and you will finish your collection no matter how slow or casual some of you are. The guns going into the gold category provides a currency sink and a reason for more proficient players to keep up on the game more frequently. Say what you want I'm done with this useless thread.

Here you can have a screen shot from a while ago I was out doing you back then.

Came in on round 3 with bronze boosters. Just so you know.