What's the point in using profiles?
At first glance I was, nice idea, easily makes up for being limited to only three skill slots. Let's do this. Oh well... After many hours I found myselft sticking with just the same profile all the ...
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They really unnecessarily limited the game. Like they thought this was League or something that needed fine tuning and tiny numbers. No, this is a singleplayer or PvE game where you want the players to feel like they're some awesome transhuman with an AI in her head.
They play it up with Alec switching profiles constantly on Habitat 7, but you just cannot do that. The game actively discourages you from switching profiles.
• There is NO reason switching profiles should put anything on cooldown.
• Active abilities from one profile should remain active when you switch.
• Profiles should be shown in the main radial menu and not hidden under another layer (Have to press X when in the quick menue just to see them)
Do these and it'd actually feel really great like part of your character. It's what makes Ryder special, allegedly. With it gimped like this there's little reason to bother switching, and it's actively a detriment to bother in combat. She just feels like any other character as is.
There is no reason not to go all out with profiles. Any little balance change to hold it back? No, don't do it, it's unnecessary and just makes the experience less engaging. I lends to the overall feeling that Bioware preemptively nerfed everything severely before release.
@Sirenapples wrote:
They really unnecessarily limited the game. Like they thought this was League or something that needed fine tuning and tiny numbers. No, this is a singleplayer or PvE game where you want the players to feel like they're some awesome transhuman with an AI in her head.
They play it up with Alec switching profiles constantly on Habitat 7, but you just cannot do that. The game actively discourages you from switching profiles.
• There is NO reason switching profiles should put anything on cooldown.
• Active abilities from one profile should remain active when you switch.
• Profiles should be shown in the main radial menu and not hidden under another layer (Have to press X when in the quick menue just to see them)
Do these and it'd actually feel really great like part of your character. It's what makes Ryder special, allegedly. With it gimped like this there's little reason to bother switching, and it's actively a detriment to bother in combat. She just feels like any other character as is.
There is no reason not to go all out with profiles. Any little balance change to hold it back? No, don't do it, it's unnecessary and just makes the experience less engaging. I lends to the overall feeling that Bioware preemptively nerfed everything severely before release.
Seeing Alec on Habitat 7 doing his "Hey SAM, gimme this profile, gimme that" was so cool! You got the feeling the connection is something VERY special and helpful. Until the moment you try it for yourself...
If BW did that because of the limitation of controllers, maybe. But well, they could have done it better, controller users suffer from it, too. So at least and as you said they could
make it that every ability that is permanent won't stop when you switch to another profile. So we could at least use a profile just for such abilities and that leaves us three other profiles with three fully usable combat skills. This way I could live with the huge cooldown penalty. Why my anhihilation for example has to stop working when I switch to another biotic profile with more ranged attacks is beyond my understanding. Or why should I spent a precious slot in every profile just to use my bot pet? I strongly believe there is huge space for improvement.
It's fun but yeah, the cooldown penalty is a little ridiculous. You basically have to be securely in cover when you do it as you'll get a few seconds of ineffectiveness. There really is no reason for the cooldown, it's a fun feature that SHOULD actually be a little OP like you see Alec doing.
I still use it but I'm definitely super careful with it.
To reiterate what others have said I think the forced cooldown when we switch is definitely the main issue here, if that was gone we could happily flit back and forth in combat between laying down supporting fire and constructs to charging in with biotics just like dad does in the prologue.
Overpowered? maybe..
Fun? oh hell yes!
@Zygon wrote:
To reiterate what others have said I think the forced cooldown when we switch is definitely the main issue here, if that was gone we could happily flit back and forth in combat between laying down supporting fire and constructs to charging in with biotics just like dad does in the prologue.
Overpowered? maybe..
Fun? oh hell yes!
Cooldowns aren't the real issue it's the poor design. Having to stop everything to switch "profiles" is silly.
The real solution:
1) Drop consumables off the wheel and into a menu.
2) Use the top half of the wheel for weapons, and the bottom half for skills.
3) (Optionally) Swap the "scan" and "wheel" buttons on the controller.
This makes so much more sense, and is more fluid during combat. They could still have "profiles" if they wanted, where you could save your hotkey 3-skills and which 6 (8?) went on the wheel.
I take no credit for the above suggestion - I've simply played all the previous Mass Effects where they used THIS EXACT SETUP.
