Some new stuff:
There is no longer a concept of light, medium, and heavy armor. There are a few reasons why we no longer have this distinction:
- We wanted class differentiation to be more about offense weapons and powers, and less about defensive items you're allowed to use (by class restriction).
- We wanted less useless and sub optimal items (i.e. you get great heavy armor, but you're an adept)
- It's less expensive from an art perspective. This isn't a money thing, it's a time thing. We'd prefer our character artists making awesome enemy models and cool new weapon models instead of making minor variants in armor models.
One caveat to the above, while base class design is less focused on defense, and more focused on offense, there are some incredibly powerful defensive options in the game but they tend to fall under more advanced class development options. Simply put, I know some people really enjoy building "hard-to-kill" Shepards, so there are some great options for that, but they're less part of core class design.
All heavy weapons are usable by all classes. The blackstorm is a heavy weapon.
There will be no ability to upgrade armor. You will be able to acquire better armor but it will have a different look. I've tried to design things in such a way that you will be less likely to feel forced to wear a specific armor to do a specific build. There should be several options for example if you want to max cooldown reduction, you won't be forced to wear a specific armor.
--Christina Norman
Lead System Designer
Bioware
