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Vellari Feb 8, 2017 @ 8:20am

Weapon cooling vs thermal clips

Dang, I did not know this argument made it all the way to easter egg...(how come I've missed this, maybe wrong choices with Conrad earlier on?).

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

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Showing 1-13 of 13 comments

DocStrangelove Feb 8, 2017 @ 10:17am

Blah blah... the reason is they wanted ME2 to become a shooter, not least to make it more accessible to Gears of War and Call of Duty players. It clearly is a downgrade, and of course it's never explained why within two years every race, every organisation in the galaxy switched to thermal clips. And of course, why two-year-old guns completely disappeared from the entire galaxy.

DocStrangelove Feb 8, 2017 @ 10:25am

I've also seen the argument that it forces you to use different weapons. I think that just says nothing good about the game. In ME1, you had to switch weapons because there were different combat situations. And that's the actual reason why there are different weapons in the first place.

Vellari Feb 8, 2017 @ 11:02am

Personally, talking purely gameplay here, I prefer the clips/ammo/whatever because it forces you to think and stop in battle.

Unlimited ammo, particularly toward the end of ME1 when you could easily have weapons that do not overheat at all, pretty much breaks gameplay mechanics. It just turns into a firehose that you point around.

Story/lore wise, they sure got in trouble with it. But I do like they acknowledged that in ME3.

Dreadnought Feb 8, 2017 @ 3:31pm

Originally posted by Vellari:
Personally, talking purely gameplay here, I prefer the clips/ammo/whatever because it forces you to think and stop in battle.

Unlimited ammo, particularly toward the end of ME1 when you could easily have weapons that do not overheat at all, pretty much breaks gameplay mechanics. It just turns into a firehose that you point around.

Story/lore wise, they sure got in trouble with it. But I do like they acknowledged that in ME3.

enemy mechanics/engineers/geth

could sabotage shields/biotics/weapons
biotics limited for some time
weapons limited for some time
shields reduced

sure your assault rifle could shoot 37-83 times before overheat and "overkill" might incriese the numbers of firing but if your weapon was sabotaged you had to switch weapons and ME1 shooting mechanics hmm i can say they are "primitive" (always love making an assault rifle in a machine gun)

and it takes time to reach the point to make any weapon OP

i think there's a vid on youtube someone talking about how thermal clips are stupid (really is when you run out of ammo and realistic speaking why collectors are using thermal to lol)

Last edited by Dreadnought; Feb 8, 2017 @ 3:33pm

Dreadnought Feb 9, 2017 @ 2:19am

weapon modifications and frictionless materials are better than thermal clips...if you run out of clips you cant fire

Vellari Feb 9, 2017 @ 11:25am

Originally posted by Xautos:
then you need to do what you can with the resources you have, not to fire more shots than needed.

Exactly, resource depletion is an important game play aspect. Without it, in any context (fuel, inventory limit, weight restrictions and yes, ammo), gameplay becomes mundane.

In ME case, however, this could have been "fixed" differently.

For lore purposes, maybe this way:
What happens when someone developes a weapon(mod) that negates overheating? Technology to counter that is immediately researched, namely sabotage/overload/damping devices/abilities are put in to field asap. And to counter that? Ejectable thermal clips are developed to instantly overcome sabotage/overheating.

Gameplay wise, they could have just tweaked the existing overheat mechanics, kept sabotage/damping skills and perhaps added thermal clips as rare loot/purchasable resource, not something that's all over the place...

Arkham99 Feb 14, 2017 @ 7:44pm

Most fascinating how this, not to mention the Hammerhead vs. Mako debate, continues on to this day... It never really bothered me personally that they changed things up after the first game... Both systems work fine within the game mechanics for me and the variety throughout the trilogy keeps it from getting tired... As for the lore, well, you could find just as many "plotholes" in any game, but few get put under the same microscope as this one does...

It is a little too convenient how them thermal clips are conveniently just lying around everywhere when you need them though (as with the waist high crates for cover!).... The cooldown weapons have their problems as well... Maybe not exactly a "problem", but I remember being able to spec the first game's HWMA Assault Rifle so that it wouldn't overheat at all and it was overkill, to say the least... I think there's room for both systems in the series, in my opinion... ...:-)

Mr. Washington Feb 14, 2017 @ 8:00pm

Never really had a problem with either the Mako or the thermal clips as a whole beyond a number of times I got temporarily annoyed. Nothing some patience and increased thinking can't solve.