When To Move Up The Difficulty Ladder On ME3 Multiplayer And What To Expect When You Do

In this final follow up article to my A Beginners Guide To ME3 MP, I'll be talking about the transition to a higher difficulty and in particular what you should expect to face when you do so. (If you missed last weeks articles on my personal tips for buying packs from the multiplayer store you can find it here.) First off everyone is different and will have their own pace of learning, so there is no definitive answer to the question "when?" but if you start to find the difficulty you're currently playing on is an absolute cake walk, that might be an indication that you're ready to move it up a notch. Of course there is no obligation for you to change the difficulty but if you're claiming top score every single match by a huge margin and can quite easily carry a sub-par team, then your time will probably be better rewarded playing the next difficulty up. I can't speak for anyone else but I personally like to be challenged, yes the rewards are greater if you play on a higher difficulty but for me Co-Op matches (in any game) that are too easy, generally become repetitive and then that's just boring. That's not to say that I enjoy taking a beating from the AI with no chance of walking away with a win but having a tough fight on your hands and eventually prevailing after getting battered, often makes matches more entertaining and you get that feeling of satisfaction from doing so (especially if you were lucky enough to be in the game with good team players). So if you think you're ready for a new challenge, there's little harm in testing the water and who knows, you might just end up enjoying the game that bit more. It goes without saying that if you move up the ladder and then realise that it's too difficult or you're just not having as much fun because of the changes that occur with a higher difficulty, then by all means you can just move back down again. I understand that some people play just for fun and so if smashing AI enemies into the next galaxy floats your boat, regardless of XP, Credits and unlocks, then go for it.

Useful Tips and Advice On Buying Packs From The ME3 MP Store (To Get The Most Out Of Your Credits)

Welcome to the second of my follow up articles to A Beginners Guide To ME3 MP, (BTW you can catch last weeks article on tips for completing objectives quickly here) today I'll be discussing the packs that you can buy from the multiplayer store and more specifically what packs are a better purchase option depending on the situation you're in. OK, so you've played a handful of games and now you're ready to start spending your hard earned credits but what packs to buy? Well if you're a beginner or still fairly new to game, the one you should be really concentrating on is the Recruit pack, these are the cheapest and as the in game description says, is a great way to start adding basic things to your inventory. You'll only get a bunch of Common items but with each pack priced at 5,000 Credits, you'll be able to purchase three of these after just a single Bronze game, which can result in a lot of new stuff being unlocked. It might be really tempting to save up the Credits from multiple games and then take a chance on one of the more expensive packs, in the hopes of getting a decent Rare/Ultra-Rare weapon or character kit but I really don't think that's a good idea at all. Everyone thinks about it as a beginner and I'll be honest I actually did it once or twice myself but I'm telling you now, I never got anything worth while and I always ended up regretting my decision to not buy a load of cheaper packs instead. There was already a large pool of items when I was a beginner but the amount of stuff there is to unlock these days is even greater, not to mention the fact that items will repeat until they're maxed, means the chances of you getting something that you really want is absolutely tiny. Take my advice and start out by purchasing Recruit packs until you max out all of your Common items but if you insist on purchasing otherwise, a Veteran pack every now and then is as far as I would go, remember to visit your N7 HQ to easily check out all your unlocks and their levelling progress.

Essential Tips On How To Quickly Complete Objectives In Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer

In this first follow up article to my Beginners Guide to ME3 Multiplayer, I will be talking about the topic of completing objective waves and in particular, tips 'n' tricks that might help you speed up the process. As I mentioned in the guide, any enemies killed before you and/or the team have completed the set task/s will always re-spawn, so my first piece of advice is to concentrate on getting the objective nailed ASAP. Obviously you may need to deal with the odd troop that is blocking your path or a boss that is uncomfortably close to the objective location but where possible, the best thing to do is avoid getting into unnecessary skirmishes. Don't forget that you're going against the clock, so every second spent engaging enemy units is one less spent that you could be working on getting the objectives completed, not to mention you can earn more bonus Credits for faster completion times. In practically all cases it's better if the team stick fairly close to each other and traverse the map as a unit, so any players that get downed can be rescued quickly (thus saving precious time) but more importantly because you will then have all the available fire power of the squad, concentrated on any enemies that might be a posing a threat. There are currently five different tasks that you can be assigned during the objective waves and they are as follows:

1) Hacking - This objective requires the activation of a laptop and then for you and the team to remain within the upload circle, until the data bar reaches 100%.

A Beginners Guide To Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer [Part 2/2]

This is part two of my 'Beginners Guide To Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer', if you aren't coming here from part one, you can read that article by clicking on this link. Now as a quick reminder for readers of the first part, I'll list the contents of what I've already covered and what I will be talking about in today's article: 

---------------------------------- [ In Part 1 ] ----------------------------------

+ Learn To Walk Before Attempting To Run
+ What Is Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer?
+ Credits, Multiplayer Store, XP and N7 Rank
+ Challenges
+ Character Kits
+ Investing Skill Points Into Powers
+ Weapons and Mods
+ Equipment and Consumables

---------------------------------- [ In Part 2 ] ----------------------------------
 
+ Don't Treat MP Like SP, They Are Different Beasts
+ Wave Budgets (Enemy Re-Spawn Logic)
+ Time To Complete Matches and Potential Credits Earned
+ Multiplayer Etiquette
+ Bugs, Glitches and EA Servers
+ Weekly Balance Changes [Read: Weekly Nerfs]
+ Useful Online Resources For Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer
+ Links To Follow Up Articles 

A Beginners Guide To Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer [Part 1/2]

- Introduction

I've been playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer for a little over half a year now and as with any game where there is an MP that I enjoy playing, I've spent many an hour on the title. Until ME3 I wasn't really aware of what the Mass Effect franchise was about nor did I have any reason to learn more about it, that however all changed when a friend of mine (who I played a crap ton of Uncharted 3 Co-Op with), recommended the game to me. I started off by downloading the demo and if I'm being honest, my first impressions were more or less "meh, can't see what all the fuss is about" but I decided to stick at it and play around with the various classes, while also testing out the different powers. It took a pretty long time for me to get to grips with the demo and when I eventually bought the retail version, I realised that this was merely the tip of the iceberg, despite this I decided to forgo the single player and dive straight into MP (in hindsight, even I think this was a crazy move!). 

Being an absolute noob to the whole ME franchise there was soo much that I had to wrap my head around, never before did I have to build entire character kits via skills points as well as selecting and modding weapons. These weapons would then create an additional "cooldown" time for my powers and could be further enhanced via equipment. Don't even get me started on all the classes, I mean what the heck is an "Adept"? "Vanguards" can do what now? The powers themselves had alternative evolutions and each one had odd names (what is "Reave"?!) and provided equally bizarre benefits ("Weaken Armour"?!), I mean my mind was literally reeling from the data overload (speaking of which, "Effective against barriers"?!).