Multiplayer question from an ME3 lover

I've been putting off picking up DA3, though buying it is a certainty (I loved 1 and 2. Yes, 2. I'm the guy). It just occurred to me that I might be missing a short-lived multiplayer scene. I put more hours into Mass Effect 3 multiplayer than single player - is DA3 similar enough that I will enjoy it just as much? Does the DA3 multiplayer have legs, or should I get in now if I want to be able to find a match?

I loved ME3 multiplayer. It's easily the best horde besides maybe certain Gears of War games. I don't like the multiplayer here much. The multiplayer feels like a bootleg F2P dungeon crawler that plays like a MMO. ME3 worked because it was a third person shooter with powers. DA:I's singleplayer is a squad based game, you always have at least 4 people with you, in multiplayer you're just one person and the combat rhythm feels completely off. You're way less dependent on your AI squadmates in ME. I'd tell anyone who's into WRPGs to buy this game for the campaign. The multiplayer isn't awful, but it lacks the charm, fun, and depth of ME3's multiplayer for me.

The DA:I multiplayer is very similar to the ME3 multiplayer, with a few important differences. The biggest one is that it is way more dependent on team-work: in order to make progress on the harder difficulties, it is way easier if you have a balanced team of tanks, dps and support guys and everyone is playing their class. In addition to this, if you want to get the most out of the levels, there are certain doors only one type of class (Warrior, Rogue or Mage) can open, with extra treasures behind them.

But mostly that doesn't happen: people are playing the classes they want to play and want to level up, so you often end up with games with 2 mages and 2 rogues (it seems that people don't really like playing warriors, in my experience they're by far the most underrepresented type). On the easiest difficulty, that's pretty much fine, but on the harder difficulties it means that you probably wont survive the final zone.

In addition, I feel like it's much less exciting buying and opening chests in this game. If you bought the biggest chest in ME3, you were pretty much guaranteed to at least get something you wanted. In this game, I feel like most of the big chests I open contain nothing I'm interested in. You unlock new classes (there are 12 of them in total, you start off with 3) by crafting their armor, and you get the crafting material by salvaging weapons you get from chests you buy. That means that most chests contain a bunch of grey and largely useless items that you break down for crafting material. This, by the way, can also be frustrating: I'm one piece of Bronto Leather away from crafting a class that I really want, but I haven't gotten any of it in like 3 chests. It's a real bummer!

Having said all that, the multiplayer is still pretty darn fun. I'd rather be playing DA:I's multiplayer than just about anything else out right now. While it's not as good as ME3's, they clearly learned how to do this style of co-op multiplayer really well. I think it'll have a solid community playing it for a good long while, no need to worry.

I've played more multiplayer than campaign at this point. It's strange, but I have much higher level loot in multi than in campaign. I like that you can sit down and play a match that lasts about 20 minutes, if your group is good and make it through all waves, you get more gold. It works well with randoms or friends, the matchmaking is good in case you don't have 3 friends.

The concept of using gold to buy chests isn't new if you remember the loot in mass effect 3, it's just like it. My strategy is to save up enough gold through matches to buy the biggest loot chest for 1200g, rinse and repeat. At first I was put off by the loot grind like most people. I was getting level 5 gear white and blue items and had played a LOT, like 10+ hours into it, my characters were like level 18 and this loot was only level 5. Eventually I did start to see higher level stuff, and noone knows for sure, but i suspect it starts upping your item level discovery after you prestige your characters. Maybe it just took a lot of duds before I saw good loot coming out of those chests or maybe it raises the quality of loot if you pay real $ for chests? Only Bioware knows! Now that I have prestiged 3 characters I am regularly finding level 20 items, level 22 items (highest level at the moment) and epic items (I still haven't found a levl 22 epic item).

The loot truly determines the strength of your character in multiplayer more than anything though. You can be level 3 and wear the same loot as a level 20. Your loot stays persistent when you prestige. The highest level of play is just popping open more loot chests between matches, eventually you find unique purple loot, some of which gives your characters entirely new abilities. The best unique I have found so far is a staff that has a % chance to apply living bomb. Since I can equip that staff on any of my mages, I can essentially give any of them walking bomb, but the necromancer class is usually the only class that has the spell. It's an interesting wrinkle, and I'm looking forward to finding more of them.

No it's not