I comment just to thank you for this beautiful mod. It's useful and a very important one if you ran out of money (which is very common in ME2). I use it everytime.
I downloaded this expecting a really barebones resource sink mod, instead what I got was a hilariously written, beautifully touched-up little slice of Illium's cutthroat trading culture. Feels like something that could (and should) have been in the actual game. You clearly put a lot of love into this little thing and it shows :D
thank you! this absolutely was a labour of love and ridiculously extra behaviour on what started out as, yes, a barebones resource sink mod, and then, um, escaped containment. i'm so glad it added to your game, and thank you so much for noticing all the little touches and letting me know you enjoyed them.
May someone explain what exactly this mod does to someone who is preparing to play Mass Effect 2 for the first time and does not know much about the sequel? I read the description, and I still have absolutely no idea what it does or how it adds/changes the base game.
it does what it says - it adds a trading system eezo, palladium, platinum, iridium and credits for each other in order to swap your resources around. it's available via a new store on illium - there's a picture showing you exactly where the store is added and a bunch of images of the interface and what the trading system looks like on the pictures page. there's also a video showing it in action on the videos page.
its probably confusing to you because you don't know mass effect 2 has a mining mini game to get various resources to upgrade your equipment. this mod is useful because it lets you swap around resources you have too much of for resources you're short on.
i definitely appreciate your interest in the mod, but this is part of why i don't recommend modding the hell out of your game when you aren't familiar with vanilla. i think for a first run, sticking to the bugfix patches is the way to go. in addition to being better able to appreciate what mods are adding, my experience trying to troubleshoot for first-time players in extensively modded games has been pretty difficult. it's just functionally hard to have a conversation about what's happening because they don't know "where" they are in the game relatively speaking or what expected behaviour would be.
I understand a lot of mods in this games and others are meant for second and additional playthroughs and NOT for first-time players.
However, I have too many games on backlogs (over a hundred) that I want to play, and I can't possibly play all of them. So I am just going to play through the Mass Effect trilogy ONLY ONCE, and then move on to other games. (This applies to all other games as well. I am NOT going to replay a game with a "different" character, "different" class or "different" path... just don't have the time.) I'll move on to Bethesda's Fallout series, the Witcher trilogy, Batman Arkham trilogy, Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, Horizon trilogy, Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age trilogy (but not this most recent one,) etc., etc., etc. After I finish the ME trilogy once, It's very unlikely I'll ever go back and play Mass Effect ever again. I simply won't have the time.
And I want to "maximize" my gameplay experience with that one playthrough, i.e., install all the "essential" mods (like fan patches that fix whatever the game developers have never bothered to fix, restorations of cut contents) while keeping the modded games as close to the original experiences as possible.
you can play the game any way you like, but i do extensive tech support for these games and my opinion is unchanged. i think it's better to play the game largely unmodded, even if you're only going to play it once. not because i'm a vision purist but because my experience is that it just ends in tech problems and people getting irritated because they were recced a mod they don't like or they didn't realise something wasn't working properly til 20 hours in etc.
i would recommend the unofficial bugfix patches. if you avoid texture mods you can still add some QoL mods later if stuff's bugging you by the time you understand the gameplay loops and what annoys you. the unofficial patch restores content we believe was intended to be included but which was bugged and therefore not playing. cut content beyond that is very subjective and varied in terms of what it does to the game.
i just don't subscribe to this notion of a perfect set of "essential" mods that will give you both the vanilla experience but also more and better. i think the only mod that would fall into that category would be the main bugfix patches for each game. because they really do stick quite closely to fixing issues bioware didn't address and are generally pretty good at not editorialising.
Anyway, I tested your mod in the game. Your mod is excellent.
1. It is non-intrusive; (I generally avoid mods like total conversions that make too many drastic changes to the base games.) Your mod seamlessly integrates into and complements the base game.
2. Shepard, EDI and most every squad mate has voiced lines when Shepard accessed the mineral exchange terminal for the first time. Lots of efforts must have been put into creating and sampling those voices for this mod.
3. The asari greeter at Illuim specifically mentioned that you can trade minerals further ahead past the docking bay, yet the base game implement the feature for players to trade minerals. So in some sense, this mod adds a feature that is supposed to be in the base game.
4. Earning credits is a problem in Mass Effect 2. Mining and probing for minerals is not except for element zeros that are also in short supply. Earning credits and collecting eezos might have been fun at first but then become a tiresome hassle after awhile into the game. This mod is just what players needed to trade excess minerals for credits and eezos so we can focus on gameplay.
5. The interface for trading minerals integrates nicely with the base game. The interface with its awkwardness almost feels like it was designed by BioWare, (i.e., BioWare is actually pretty bad in designing user interface.)
6. Also, this mod does not have any bug or glitch.
Thanks again. I am actually super picky in modding my games. I have recommended your mod.
This mod is so much fun. Get to make use of all those extra mineral I get scanning every planet AND fun new content added. The consequences for not trading smartly are also a BLAST.
thank you! honestly i originally made it just so i could do something interesting with all those minerals i obsessively mine every single time, like you know, turn them into cash to buy all the pretty new armors other modders keep adding? but then it um. kept escaping my original goals and suddenly there are multiple hidden consequences and custom voice acting and and and...
but yeah, SpaceD0lphin totally aced the role - owned the role and so much fun to animate it and set up the facefx to match the performance.
I'm really glad something like this was added to the game. Back in a day I was unpleasantly surprised that after ME1 Bioware decided to forego the economy altogether, in an RPG game no less. The idea had as much sense as having a cold drink in a freezer. I liked being the biggest arms dealer in the galaxy. I get that you don't collect containers of arms anymore, but the amount of raw resources you can gather for upgrades is huge, and it would make perfect sense to trade them. The mod itself is so well done and seamlessly implemented, it looks and feels like a part of a base game. And not without humor too, which is nice touch. I started to read the contract, and was like " What the hell is this? This is EULA, nobody reads those", but then I was thinking, it would be more or less safe somewhere on the Citadel, but this is Illium, and people should probably read stuff, which was also nice touch, aesthetically.
thanks - i'm glad to hear you're enjoying it and i agree, it's fun to place it into the world as much as possible. i thought the EULA would be entertaining given the first thing someone does on illium is warn you not to sign anything. you might find something else amusing if you actually read the whole thing...
there are also some potential consequences to signing it. they were hidden on release, but you can see (most of the) easter eggs and how to trigger them in one of the videos i put up if you're interested. you can actually get yourself locked out of your ship...
I downloaded this just thinking it'd be pretty useful, didn't expect it to be so WELL DONE. This isn't a half-assed mod to simply trade resources, you went above and beyond to integrate it in the world.
I loved signing the contract just after being told no to sign anything, and the dialogues with EDI and Miranda got me chuckling like an idiot, great work!
somehow i missed this comment! thank you very much - i really appreciate this kind of feedback. i had a great time trying to add those details an the immersive details to really ground it in the world and it's always nice to see it appreciated.
not sure what you mean "now that it's fully compatible" - pretty sure it always was as IC shipped a patch? but regardless glad you're enjoying it! if you read the entire contract you might get a hint as to where that language came from... ;)
The last time I personally played the series, the patch wasn't out yet, and per the latest update on IC, it doesn't need it anymore, so that's what I meant. :)
THIS MOD IS AMAZING💯💯💯 The practical aspect is good yes but also all those things you added for immersiveness was so good I am flabbergasted
Like when I first signed on and heard EDI's voice I KNEW I had to get Miranda to witness WHAT A DUMBASS THIS SHEPARD IS Behold the dumbass you invested 2 years of your precious life in!! I restarted the mission just to see Miranda's reaction and It did not disappoint. I think it's a genius move to put the mod right after the concierge's 'do not sign anything' talk.
Also I did the hidden quest quite early in the playthrough and almost forgot about 'the deal,' then invited Liara to the cabin after the suicide mission. Imagine my surprise when I got the letter. It was obvious in hindsight but I did not expect it at all(because I'm a dumbass too).
What a great mod. Thanks so much for bringing joy to my (gaming) life!
yay! i'm so glad you like it so much! it's always so nice to hear all the little touches i added paid off in the way i hoped they would. i absolutely wanted people to mostly forget what they did earlier on and then get that email and be like...oh yeah. oops. that email will actually vary a little depending on your relationship status with liara and whether or not she actually told you she was the one who gave your body to cerberus.
another thing i'm not sure anyone's found is that if you get yourself locked out of the normandy, then go do thane or samara's recruitment, it'll dump you back on the normandy at the end, regardless of being locked out. so if you do that you get a stroppy email from EDI complaining she had to move discretionary funds to cover your debt and you need to file an expense claim form with Miranda... there's a bunch of random edge case emails in this mod that were fun to write.
thanks for taking the time to let me know how much you enjoyed it, it was a very lovely comment to receive.
i absolutely wanted people to mostly forget what they did earlier on and then get that email and be like...oh yeah. oops.
This was me to a T!!
another thing i'm not sure anyone's found is that if you get yourself locked out of the normandy, then go do thane or samara's recruitment, it'll dump you back on the normandy at the end, regardless of being locked out. so if you do that you get a stroppy email from EDI complaining she had to move discretionary funds to cover your debt and you need to file an expense claim form with Miranda... there's a bunch of random edge case emails in this mod that were fun to write.
YAY And there are even more contents I've missed!! I can't wait to read that email in my next playthrough. I love pissing off no-nonsense people with my dumbassness. That Shepard would be losing sleep over whether the oxygen joke is really a joke or not
This is such a great mod. It could've been very simple - literally just a shop with like two buttons - and even then it would've been very useful (I always get more minerals than needed but tend to struggle with credits, so...) However, it's the extra effort with writing and implementing the mod into the world what makes it a cut above. EDI line after signing the document took me tf out
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Jumpits probably confusing to you because you don't know mass effect 2 has a mining mini game to get various resources to upgrade your equipment. this mod is useful because it lets you swap around resources you have too much of for resources you're short on.
i definitely appreciate your interest in the mod, but this is part of why i don't recommend modding the hell out of your game when you aren't familiar with vanilla. i think for a first run, sticking to the bugfix patches is the way to go. in addition to being better able to appreciate what mods are adding, my experience trying to troubleshoot for first-time players in extensively modded games has been pretty difficult. it's just functionally hard to have a conversation about what's happening because they don't know "where" they are in the game relatively speaking or what expected behaviour would be.
However, I have too many games on backlogs (over a hundred) that I want to play, and I can't possibly play all of them. So I am just going to play through the Mass Effect trilogy ONLY ONCE, and then move on to other games. (This applies to all other games as well. I am NOT going to replay a game with a "different" character, "different" class or "different" path... just don't have the time.) I'll move on to Bethesda's Fallout series, the Witcher trilogy, Batman Arkham trilogy, Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, Horizon trilogy, Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age trilogy (but not this most recent one,) etc., etc., etc. After I finish the ME trilogy once, It's very unlikely I'll ever go back and play Mass Effect ever again. I simply won't have the time.
And I want to "maximize" my gameplay experience with that one playthrough, i.e., install all the "essential" mods (like fan patches that fix whatever the game developers have never bothered to fix, restorations of cut contents) while keeping the modded games as close to the original experiences as possible.
i would recommend the unofficial bugfix patches. if you avoid texture mods you can still add some QoL mods later if stuff's bugging you by the time you understand the gameplay loops and what annoys you. the unofficial patch restores content we believe was intended to be included but which was bugged and therefore not playing. cut content beyond that is very subjective and varied in terms of what it does to the game.
i just don't subscribe to this notion of a perfect set of "essential" mods that will give you both the vanilla experience but also more and better. i think the only mod that would fall into that category would be the main bugfix patches for each game. because they really do stick quite closely to fixing issues bioware didn't address and are generally pretty good at not editorialising.
1. It is non-intrusive; (I generally avoid mods like total conversions that make too many drastic changes to the base games.) Your mod seamlessly integrates into and complements the base game.
2. Shepard, EDI and most every squad mate has voiced lines when Shepard accessed the mineral exchange terminal for the first time. Lots of efforts must have been put into creating and sampling those voices for this mod.
3. The asari greeter at Illuim specifically mentioned that you can trade minerals further ahead past the docking bay, yet the base game implement the feature for players to trade minerals. So in some sense, this mod adds a feature that is supposed to be in the base game.
4. Earning credits is a problem in Mass Effect 2. Mining and probing for minerals is not except for element zeros that are also in short supply. Earning credits and collecting eezos might have been fun at first but then become a tiresome hassle after awhile into the game. This mod is just what players needed to trade excess minerals for credits and eezos so we can focus on gameplay.
5. The interface for trading minerals integrates nicely with the base game. The interface with its awkwardness almost feels like it was designed by BioWare, (i.e., BioWare is actually pretty bad in designing user interface.)
6. Also, this mod does not have any bug or glitch.
Thanks again. I am actually super picky in modding my games. I have recommended your mod.
(awesome voice acting from SpaceD0lphin!)
but yeah, SpaceD0lphin totally aced the role - owned the role and so much fun to animate it and set up the facefx to match the performance.
The mod itself is so well done and seamlessly implemented, it looks and feels like a part of a base game. And not without humor too, which is nice touch. I started to read the contract, and was like " What the hell is this? This is EULA, nobody reads those", but then I was thinking, it would be more or less safe somewhere on the Citadel, but this is Illium, and people should probably read stuff, which was also nice touch, aesthetically.
there are also some potential consequences to signing it. they were hidden on release, but you can see (most of the) easter eggs and how to trigger them in one of the videos i put up if you're interested. you can actually get yourself locked out of your ship...
I loved signing the contract just after being told no to sign anything, and the dialogues with EDI and Miranda got me chuckling like an idiot, great work!
...I'm totally gonna get my ship impounded, aren't I?
Like when I first signed on and heard EDI's voice I KNEW I had to get Miranda to witness WHAT A DUMBASS THIS SHEPARD IS Behold the dumbass you invested 2 years of your precious life in!! I restarted the mission just to see Miranda's reaction and It did not disappoint. I think it's a genius move to put the mod right after the concierge's 'do not sign anything' talk.
Also I did the hidden quest quite early in the playthrough and almost forgot about 'the deal,' then invited Liara to the cabin after the suicide mission. Imagine my surprise when I got the letter. It was obvious in hindsight but I did not expect it at all(because I'm a dumbass too).
What a great mod. Thanks so much for bringing joy to my (gaming) life!
another thing i'm not sure anyone's found is that if you get yourself locked out of the normandy, then go do thane or samara's recruitment, it'll dump you back on the normandy at the end, regardless of being locked out. so if you do that you get a stroppy email from EDI complaining she had to move discretionary funds to cover your debt and you need to file an expense claim form with Miranda... there's a bunch of random edge case emails in this mod that were fun to write.
thanks for taking the time to let me know how much you enjoyed it, it was a very lovely comment to receive.
However, it's the extra effort with writing and implementing the mod into the world what makes it a cut above.
EDI line after signing the document took me tf out
Amazing stuff, endorsed!
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Jump