Mass Effect 3’s Multiplayer Stats Are Missing One

52 responses to “Mass Effect 3’s Multiplayer Stats Are Missing One”

1. 

   xXNapsterManXx

   March 19, 2012 at 4:30 pm

   You wernt forced you just wanted the “Master and Commander” Achivement otherwise you can finished game on 50% Readiness.

   Reply
   1. 

      Zar

      March 19, 2012 at 9:15 pm

      Which, bioware states that you dont need to play MP to get any of the trophies/ achievements

      Reply
      1. 

         Frank

         March 19, 2012 at 11:52 pm

         Is there not a 100% Readiness trophy?

         Reply
2. 

   Tristan Damen

   March 19, 2012 at 4:32 pm

   I was under the impression that you didn’t need to play multiplayer to get the “best” ending. Besides, the Datapad and Infiltrator apps can add to that rating without needing to jump into any multilayer matches.

   In truth, Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer felt like a poor man’s Horde mode. Shorter, shallower, and nowhere near as compelling. Not even biotic and tech powers saved it from mediocrity IMHO.

   Reply
   1. 

      Richard

      March 19, 2012 at 4:52 pm

      That depends on what you define as the best ending. At least one ending requires an effective military strength of 4000 which appears to be out of reach at the default 50% readiness rating. In order to get 4000 effective military strength at the default rating you’d need 8000 war assets. Thus far I’ve seen people go to some fairly insane lengths to improve their war asset scores, the best I’ve seen thus far is 7490 which required very specific choices throughout all three games to maximise it. Given that it seems unlikely there’s a spare 500+ points that people have yet to find, I suspect it’s either an oversight by BioWare, or they don’t consider the ending to be the best ending.

      All that said though, I’ve quite enjoyed the multiplayer, I’d recommend people give it a go.

      Reply
      1. 

         Cameron

         March 19, 2012 at 4:59 pm

         I managed to completely fill the war assets effective strength bar thingy with about 3000 points. Not sure if that changes depending on difficulty. But in any case, I was WELL over, I had that about half way through the game.

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         1. 

            Alinos

            March 19, 2012 at 6:28 pm

            Filling the bar means nothing. It’s enough to get the green ending I believe. But not the highest EMS ending, for which you need 4 or 5 k depending on your actions.

            Reply
      2. 

         Shoitaan

         March 19, 2012 at 5:19 pm

         I had over well over 5000 points by the time I finished the Quarian/Geth chapter. I finished the mission on the Asari home planet last night and before I logged off, I like 1-2points under 6.5k in war assets…

         Due to recently moving, i have no internet access. In short, the “good ending” can be achieved with Singleplayer only.

         Reply
         1. 

            Richard

            March 19, 2012 at 5:51 pm

            Yes, you can certainly get high amounts of war assets, however it’s not your war assets score that determines what endings are available to you, it’s your effective military strength (or war assets x readiness rating). In your case, if you had the default readiness rating of 50%, your effective military strength would be 3250 (6500 x 0.5). In order to see all of the endings in the game you’d need to either find an extra 1500 war assets, or raise your readiness rating to 62%.

            Reply
            1. 

               cheesecake

               March 19, 2012 at 10:26 pm

               At the end of the game i had 5047 EMS at 50% readiness….there is no need to play multiplayer whatsoever

               However i was coming from an ME1 save which may have had an effect on it.

            2. 

               Richard

               March 20, 2012 at 7:55 am

               It sounds like you’re confusing effective military strength with your war assets. You’d have to have 10000 war assets to reach that level of effective military strength, but currently the best I’ve seen anyone get is 7490, and that’s starting from ME1 and making very specific decisions to maximise their war assets. Finding an extra 2500 assets that no one else has seems fairly unlikely.

            3. 

               Cameron

               March 20, 2012 at 8:51 am

               You don’t need to have that high EMS. You can get the “good” ending with as little as 3000 EMS. Where did that lie come from?

            4. 

               Richard

               March 20, 2012 at 12:44 pm

               Spoiler:

               That’s only true if you view the “good” ending as being the synthesis ending, in which case you’re correct. However there is a variation on the destruction ending, wherein you’ll see a brief clip indicating that Shepard is still alive, this is only possible with a minimum effective military strength of 4000+, something that can only be achieved by increasing your readiness rating.

               As I said though, this is either an unintentional mistake by BioWare, or BioWare doesn’t view that ending as being the best ending and is ok with having an ending which can’t be achieved through single player alone. It didn’t personally affect me since I played more than enough multiplayer to max my readiness before I finished the game so my EMS was around 7300, but it does seem like something BioWare should address for the sake of those who don’t enjoy multiplayer.

         2. 

            Peacemaker

            March 20, 2012 at 1:46 am

            people have claimed the same as you but have yet to prove it. i too have come off of a legacy import (ME1 and 2) and didn’t even break 3700 Effective Military Strength (EMS). i did miss some minor sidequests in ME3 but not that much. People still confuse EMS with the total Military Strength (TMS) which sounds like what you are quoting. That being said it wasn’t clearly stated but please clarify as its this sort of misinformation that confuses the misinformed. Its EMS thats quoted, not TMS

            Reply
      3. 

         Tristan Damen

         March 20, 2012 at 10:09 am

         I had 53% readiness and 4879 Effective Miliatry Strength when I finished. [SPOILER] I couldn’t get the synthesis ending, but my brother had about 60% GR and 5000 EMS (filled the bar) and could achieve Synthesis. So you don’t have to play MP much if at all [END SPOILER]

         Reply
   2. 

      Cam

      March 19, 2012 at 7:42 pm

      You DON’T need to play the multiplayer to qualify for the readiness/war effort-locked ending.
      This is just a bunch of snark from those ‘we don’t want multiplayer in our ME3’ hold-outs, sulking because they still want something to complain about… even though MP turned out to be AWESOME and not required.

      Reply
   3. 

      Ryan

      March 19, 2012 at 11:09 pm

      You don’t, the trophy clearly states Do multiplayer OR All N7 singleplayer missions

      Reply
      1. 

         Peacemaker

         March 20, 2012 at 1:52 am

         that would be the “Unwavering” achievement. If you look closer there is a multiplayer specific achievement called “Defender”. You need to have 100% readiness in all regions which can only be done by playing MP games

         Reply
3. 

   p tear griffin

   March 19, 2012 at 4:33 pm

   This comment has been reported for inappropriate content and is awaiting review.

   Reply
   1. 

      Comment

      March 19, 2012 at 4:37 pm

      I’m sad to hear that your immaturity stopped you from playing a good game series.

      Reply
      1. 

         Toasty Fresh

         March 19, 2012 at 5:34 pm

         Ignore this idiot. He’s been trolling posts for weeks.

         Reply
   2. 

      Someone more tolerant

      March 19, 2012 at 4:40 pm

      Is that flamboyant fashion sense and great hair gay or happy and carefree gay?

      Reply
4. 

   Rize

   March 19, 2012 at 4:34 pm

   I was annoyed that I felt somewhat forced to play (if I play and RPG, I do everything) but glad that I did. It’s pretty damned good fun!

   Reply
   1. 

      Peacemaker

      March 20, 2012 at 1:54 am

      agreed. it is fun as long as diehard CoD/BF players are screaming at me for not hitting a geth prime with a rocket launcher. that ruins any online play. i can’t help it if a geth shot a rocket hit me! 😛

      Reply
5. 

   Corteks

   March 19, 2012 at 4:38 pm

   Wow, more whining about ME. I’m quite enjoying that the multiplayer has an effect on the singleplayer actually, makes it feel far more relevant than just “Oh LoLs we tacked on multiplayer too”

   But hey with all this outrage going around at least I’ll have something to read after I finish ME3 😛

   Reply
   1. 

      !!BOOM WOOT GALORE!!

      March 19, 2012 at 4:53 pm

      HAVE to agree with Corteks on this one, to be honest im quite enjoying playing me3 mulitplayer. the future of games are online and EA are a incorporating a way for the general pub to view this. From a buisness point of view its a solid idea to increase profit (mini purchases in store) I dont get why people are complaing about feeling obliged to play the multiplayer. You dont have to at all, its purely freedom of choice.

      Reply
6. 

   Neo-Kaiser

   March 19, 2012 at 4:54 pm

   I never felt forced to play multiplayer. As usual I leave multiplayer until after my first single player playthrough and looking it up I discovered it was not required to get a “good” ending (which is recieving a lot of complaints regardless).

   Check out all the achievements, except for maybe one or two, all of them are capable of being achieved in single player.

   Reply
7. 

   Cameron

   March 19, 2012 at 5:02 pm

   I played it twice, got my effective military strength up to about 54%, only to watch it automatically go down again. It was boring as all hell. The combat in Mass Effect was already crappy to being with, then having a multi-player component built around it? Stupid idea. You just sit there emptying clips into enemies that keep coming at you. There’s no story, no variety, no excitement, no amusement.

   Reply
8. 

   Bryce

   March 19, 2012 at 5:03 pm

   Got roped into a half dozen matches when I first booted the game up. I’d heard a lot of praise about it, I’d heard just as much whining, so I went in expecting a middle ground of “yeah, fair enough”.

   Six or seven matches in and I’d had enough. There’s not enough variety. The enemy AI is fairly simple (Let us jump down one at a time) and the draw of “Get the galaxy’s s**t together” didn’t hold out as long as I’d hoped it would.

   Meh. I’m not better or worse for playing it.

   Reply
9. 

   Aidan

   March 19, 2012 at 5:07 pm

   It only took an hour or two of the MP to push my EMS well beyond the maximum required for the best version of the endings. Every ending can be easily achieved in the singleplayer.

   Not sure what the problem is?

   Reply
10. 

    Mark

    March 19, 2012 at 5:09 pm

    Played multi for a bit and enjoyed it, but they do need to expand on it.
    But since I’ve finished SP now, there is no incentive to replay either MP or SP since you know, choices and EMS dont really mean anything…

    Reply
11. 

    redartifice

    March 19, 2012 at 5:16 pm

    I really enjoy the ME3 multiplayer

    Luke, just cause reddit says it doesn’t mean it’s true.

    Reply
12. 

    MrBS

    March 19, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    I’ve really enjoyed my time with the multiplayer. I am doing it wrong? :p

    Reply
13. 

    john mcawesome

    March 19, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    i personally love the me3 multi and had 100% readiness in it before i even touched single player. it is a good twist on firefight/horde mode, once you sink some hours into it its quite addictive. to all the whiners of how easy it was, try playing a game on silver difficulty, it is a challenge and requires team work and skill, bronze is easy mode i can complete it with just one friend…

    Reply
14. 

    john mcawesome

    March 19, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    i personally love the me3 multi and had 100% readiness in it before i even touched single player. it is a good twist on firefight/horde mode, once you sink some hours into it its quite addictive. to all the whiners of how easy it was, try playing a game on silver difficulty, it is a challenge and requires team work and skill, bronze is easy mode i can complete it with just one friend…

    Reply
15. 

    Life

    March 19, 2012 at 5:24 pm

    It’s actually pretty fun and challenging once if you progress beyond bronze stomping.

    Reply
16. 

    Liam DJ

    March 19, 2012 at 6:11 pm

    Multiplayer isn’t necessary at all. In fact, I made a point of avoiding it until I finished the singleplayer. So really what is apparently missing from the stats are “people who ought to know better, what with being games journalists and all, who didn’t actually check their facts before posting on Kotaku.”

    Reply
17. 

    Ian

    March 19, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    Oh? What’s this? Negative comments? I’m shocked.

    Anyway you almost can’t get the optimal ending without MP, really. It’s too easy to miss out on war asset or two and not get the minimum 5000 EMS. Mind you EMS is different from TMS. Sit on it for a while.

    Reply
18. 

    Infrasound

    March 19, 2012 at 6:59 pm

    Doesn’t mention the 4 Billion lost Bioware points which people now can’t get back due to server crashes. This is what ? 37% of the total purchased to date?

    Reply
19. 

    N7 jpicard

    March 19, 2012 at 6:59 pm

    I must be doing it wrong also. I love the multiplayer in ME3, just finished 2nd map on gold. It takes extreme team work and it is loads of fun. I guess you haters are playing boring bronze mode which can be done solo with no skill at all.

    Reply
20. 

    Chrodo

    March 19, 2012 at 7:00 pm

    I like most gave the MP a go not expecting to be blown away. And I wasnt. I liked how it tied in to the single player personally, it strengthened the “we’re all in this together” feel of the game. That said once I promoted a character from lvl 20 and had a 100% rating, theMP wasn’t strong enough to keep me happily occupied.

    I did not, however feel forced to play MP in any way.

    Reply
21. 

    tom

    March 19, 2012 at 7:01 pm

    I like to think the ‘best’ ending is where Shepard survives and you need an EMS of over 4000 which is not obtainable without multiplayer. Maybe some DLC will offset this, which is likely.

    Reply
22. 

    DCB

    March 19, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    What Bioware considers the “best” ending is the third choice that is possible to unlock via single player alone (EMS of about 2600). However, there is a brief additional scene that can play after one of the endings that is only possible to see with an EMS greater than 4000. Thus it is not possible to legitimately unlock this in single player alone (max EMS in SP is around 3500 or so). You need to raise your readiness rating via multiplayer to unlock it. Or just side-step it and edit the save file to give yourself the required EMS.

    Reply
23. 

    DogMan

    March 19, 2012 at 7:41 pm

    Let’s just pretend for a minute you were forced to do this and it’s the worst multiplayer ever. Is that so terrible? Like most great games the series was built on doing things a little differently. Sadly it doesn’t always work out but you take the good with the bad. If you have to scan a few planets for resources to unlock the best ending, you just have to decide if the best ending is worth it.
    You know the worst thing about BioWare’s other recent game (SWTOR)? It’s exactly what you’d expect from a MMORPG. I was bored of it before I even started playing. The story mode kept me playing, and it’s a really well made game, but the core of the game was stale out of the box.

    There’s so much snobbery within the BioWare/Mass Effect community. Makes you wonder how much better the series could have been if it wasn’t for the people going ‘no, you can’t do that, your game has a story which means it’s an RPG, and RPGs have to do exactly X, Y and Z’. All that time spent justifying having to aim your gun and use cover instead of having aim and dodge stats could have been used to make the cover system work as well as Gears of War.

    Reply
24. 

    Kataphrut

    March 19, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    I’m right on board with writer here. The problem with the whole ‘Galaxy at War’ EMS buisness is that it’s virtually impossible to get the 5000k golden ending without either playing multiplayer, importing a save or using one of those iOS apps (which don’t seem to work for me). Granted, it’s unlikely that you would play Mass Effect 3 without having done any of these things, but the fact remains that a game should be able to stand alone, even if it is part of a trilogy. If you can’t get the best possible result playing the game vanilla, then the game fails to stand out on it’s own as a title. I’m not saying getting the best result should be easy if you play vanilla, but it should still be possible. Then the multiplayer, and the iOS apps and the save imports become nice additions, not millstones.

    Reply
    1. 

       DogMan

       March 19, 2012 at 9:49 pm

       but the fact remains that a game should be able to stand alone, even if it is part of a trilogy.

       Should it? I mean if there was an ending that you could only get by playing Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, something you enjoy as opposed to multiplayer, would you see that as screwing over the people who couldn’t access it or rewarding the fans who made the franchise a success?
       At what point does rewarding the players who go the extra mile turn into punishing those who don’t?

       Reply
       1. 

          Kataphrut

          March 19, 2012 at 10:25 pm

          The players who go the extra mile are rewarded in seeing the culmination of 2 full games worth of decisions & character arcs come to fruition. The ones who came late don’t get the same sort of payoff, but the least you could give them is the oppurtunity to experience the game to the fullest extent. In any case, you shouldn’t make it completely impossible for them to get 100% completion without importing a save or playing multiplayer.

          Reply
          1. 

             DogMan

             March 20, 2012 at 2:37 am

             The ones who came late don’t get the same sort of payoff, but the least you could give them is the oppurtunity to experience the game to the fullest extent.

             Which is exactly what they’ve done here. They’ve given you everything you need to get all the endings right there on the disc. Enjoy it or not multiplayer is part of the game. If you don’t want to play that part fine, but you can’t expect to be given the rewards for completing it without actually completing it.
             I can appreciate you not wanting them to shove it down your throat, but they’ve pretty much done everything possible to make the online section of the game matter without making it required reading.

             Off topic, what issue are you having with the apps? I’ve got both working fine so maybe I can help. The free ME3 Database App has a cool Galaxy at War function that will really help out if you want to skip multiplayer/not import.
             I had a bit of trouble with it claiming it couldn’t connect to the Origin service, but after I logged into the Origin website and setup my account properly (it didn’t have a Master ID assigned yet) it all started working. Infiltrator is also like 650MB, so if you’re having trouble downloading it try doing it through iTunes on your PC, then Syncing it over to the iPhone.
             My phone is an iPhone 3GS with the latest updates and both apps are a little sluggish. If you’re using an earlier model iPhone that could cause you some grief.

             Reply
25. 

    Joshy206

    March 19, 2012 at 9:47 pm

    This isn’t an article, this is a footnote to a review. Whether you’re right or not (I disagree), this hardly deserves it’s own piece.

    Reply
26. 

    Peacemaker

    March 19, 2012 at 10:09 pm

    i didn’t like the idea of it but i have to say i really enjoy it and thats coming from a person who usually just plays story based games. its for those who don’t like the seriousness of GoW or B3 or CoD. i did get one person loudly comment at how i missed a geth prime with a rocket launcher but it was all good. if it was more serious i probably would have thrown my control at the tv 😛
    also people don’t need the headphones which is nice. we understand how to best fight the enemies without words and thats the goal, not making people cry lol

    Reply
27. 

    Mr Waffle

    March 19, 2012 at 11:27 pm

    Firebase white is the most played map? Really? At least 80% of my random matches were on Dagger. Seriously, I got it like 5 times+ in a row, it was ridiculous. My galactic readiness was absurdly skewed because of it, hit 100% in its region while the rest was still in the 80s!

    Reply
28. 

    RobbyM

    March 20, 2012 at 9:13 am

    It’s pretty obvious they put more thought and effort into MultiPlayer than they did into the Story at the End.. I suppose they didn’t need to be so worried about being “Artistic” with multiplayer.

    Reply