Doing my Mass Effect replays to get ready for 3 I realized I must have spent about 4 hours just scanning for minerals in 2. How long did all of you spend trying to fill up your platinum reserves?

I did a lot more maxing than minning. "Chilling out, maxin', relaxin' all cool"? Yeah, that was me in ME2.

Jokes aside, I found the mining oddly addictive.

Not a lot, enough for the dumb upgrades since I could. But I didn't go crazy and try to mine EVERYTHING like some people did.

I don't remember spending a lot of time doing it. I did it a little bit here and there with each session. I didn't spend a ton of time doing it all at once.

too much. worst part of the game. totally took me out of it. hope ME3 doesn't resort to this kind of filler.

Probably a lot. I mined every planet in my first playthrough.

Also, it wasn't really "filler" was it? I mean you didnt have to do it.

They patched it to be less time consuming. I played prior to this fix and spent way too much time (I worried about having too little resources later on). My own damn fault.

I think I at least checked out every planet, but if the radar showed that the mineral count was low I left and never looked back. It must have taken a quite a heap of time, but it was on small bite sized pieces so it didn't feel so bad. On the other hand driving around in the surface of every planet in Mass Effect 1, now that took too much time from my short life and I can't understand why I even did it. I hope that the third one doesn't have any of that kind of boring filler stuff and focuses on talking and shooting because those two things are the reason why I love Mass Effects so much.

@ShaggE said:

I did a lot more maxing than minning. "Chilling out, maxin', relaxin' all cool"? Yeah, that was me in ME2.

Jokes aside, I found the mining oddly addictive.

Same here. On both accounts.

@ShaggE: Yeah I kind of hate doing it but for some reason it's also addictive. I don't know, maybe I just like seeing bars and numbers go up in video games.

Probably a good amount. I hit up 3 or 4 planets between each mission. I found it oddly amusing, even though it should have been super boring.

@Soapy86 said:

Also, it wasn't really "filler" was it? I mean you didnt have to do it.

you do if you want to be ballin.. if they want to make these "bonus" mineral yields an option, they should do a better job at integrating them with relevant gameplay so that it doesn't feel like a chore each time.

Every planet.
 
Every.
 
Planet.

Every god damn planet.

I mined every planet to resource deficiency.

Spent maybe 20 mins mining , I never did feel like upgrading was too much of a thing you needed to do since it was easy enough to just play well enough to not need it.

Uranus? Really, Shepard?

@LordXavierBritish said:

Every planet. Every. Planet.

yeah? including Earth?

thats right, didn't think so.

Enough. My only real goals with it were to mine every planet at least once(meaning send one probe), and to get enough resources to purchase all of the upgrades.

@Mr_Skeleton said:

Every god damn planet.

@Soapy86 said:

Probably a lot. I mined every planet in my first playthrough.

How the hell...? Was your playthrough like over a hundred hours or something?

@ShaggE said:

I did a lot more maxing than minning. "Chilling out, maxin', relaxin' all cool"? Yeah, that was me in ME2.

Jokes aside, I found the mining oddly addictive.

THIS!

I have a notebook somewhere with which planet is rich in what mineral... I spent far too long mining.

Just enough to get all of the upgrades, minus the scar removing one.

All of them.

Enough to upgrade everything available. In other words, too much.

Edit: I'm surprised there are people who had the patience to mine every planet they found.

Oh, no. Fuck no. I had forgotten entirely about mining, until I saw this thread. I am going to be very bummed out if it's back in Mass Effect 3. Sure, it's slightly better than traipsing around shitty looking empty planets in the Mako, but . . . it still was a drag.

Remember getting that upgrade that made scanning faster? Damn, that was sweet.

Far too much.. even w/ the scanning updgrade the mining was arduous to say the least. BioWare took out the planet exploration and replaced it with this. Odd as a cod that decision.

@stryker1121 said:

Far too much.. even w/ the scanning updgrade the mining was arduous to say the least. BioWare took out the planet exploration and replaced it with this. Odd as a cod that decision.

I felt this was far superior than exploring empty and uninteresting cookie-cutter planets with the shitty Mako that handled like roller-skates on gravel. This was still pretty unappealing, which only serves to stress how terrible the alternative was, in the original game.

So many hours. *shiver* After my first playthrough, I made sure to look up how much of each element I'd need for all the upgrades, which planets had element hotspots and then just kind of got all my mining done as quickly as possible in one sit through so I wouldn't have to do it later. Mining hurts so bad. So...much...monotony...

@Branthog: I enjoyed exploring the planets, re-skinned though they may have been. Replacing that w/ a boring mining mini-game was an asshated decision on BioWare's part, IMO.

@stryker1121 said:

@Branthog: I enjoyed exploring the planets, re-skinned though they may have been. Replacing that w/ a boring mining mini-game was an asshated decision on BioWare's part, IMO.

Yeah, but how many times did you get stuck on geometry and shitty physics moving your mouse around a planet while it beeped at you?

In concept, the solution in the first game would have been ideal. The execution was very poor, though. In the second game, the solution was smooth and acceptable, but kind of ridiculously simple and primitive. A strange mechanic to find in such a modern game.

I can only hope that in ME3, they've found a nice marriage of the two, so they neither frustrate nor bore us.

Too much. Well, I didn't really mind it the first time, but the fact that I had to do it again when I new game plus'ed because none of the upgrade stuff carried over was disgruntling. And when you're playing on Insanity, those upgrades help.

@Branthog said:

@stryker1121 said:

@Branthog: I enjoyed exploring the planets, re-skinned though they may have been. Replacing that w/ a boring mining mini-game was an asshated decision on BioWare's part, IMO.

Yeah, but how many times did you get stuck on geometry and shitty physics moving your mouse around a planet while it beeped at you?

In concept, the solution in the first game would have been ideal. The execution was very poor, though. In the second game, the solution was smooth and acceptable, but kind of ridiculously simple and primitive. A strange mechanic to find in such a modern game.

I can only hope that in ME3, they've found a nice marriage of the two, so they neither frustrate nor bore us.

It was more a matter of not being able to scale certain rock formations and such, although that didn't bother me. In ME2 exploration was nixed even in side missions. You'd just get plopped down on a planet and where you needed to go was right in front of you. I love putzing around in open world games so that linearity in ME2 was disappointing to me. Would enjoy seeing a better controlled vehicle and unique planet terrain in ME3. Just bring back the exploration in some form.

All of it.

I did SOOOO much mining. I'm actually kind of disappointed that they got rid of it for ME3.

@ShadowConqueror said:

Uranus? Really, Shepard?

*sigh* probing Uranus...

After you upgrade everything you can, it's useless to get all the resources out of every planet. I was going to scan every planet and deplete their resources, but I again just scanned all the planets instead and didn't deplete them all since it was pointless. I spent a lot of hours in ME and ME2 because of ME3. I've done everything possible with my soldier character and I know more than I need to about the two games.

I actually didn't hate it, I mean, it does feel like a chore after a while, but the two benefits are while you're trying to upgrade things, you feel like you're doing it for a reason, and after you do that, you feel like you've accomplished a somewhat hefty goal. I think my last ME2 profile which I just finished up a few weeks ago ended around 42 hours. Another reason to scan them is because you get to land on some planets for small side missions.

trainers are awsome. but in all seriousness i didnt spend too long doing it as i used a guide to find the best planets for each mineral and strip mined them

@killacam said:

@Soapy86 said:

Also, it wasn't really "filler" was it? I mean you didnt have to do it.

you do if you want to be ballin.. if they want to make these "bonus" mineral yields an option, they should do a better job at integrating them with relevant gameplay so that it doesn't feel like a chore each time.

I was into it. Put on a podcast or some jams and suck the Universe's resources dry.

I mined them...

I mined them all

@evanbower said:

@killacam said:

@Soapy86 said:

Also, it wasn't really "filler" was it? I mean you didnt have to do it.

you do if you want to be ballin.. if they want to make these "bonus" mineral yields an option, they should do a better job at integrating them with relevant gameplay so that it doesn't feel like a chore each time.

I was into it. Put on a podcast or some jams and suck the Universe's resources dry.

unfollowed.

@evanbower said:

@killacam said:

@Soapy86 said:

Also, it wasn't really "filler" was it? I mean you didnt have to do it.

you do if you want to be ballin.. if they want to make these "bonus" mineral yields an option, they should do a better job at integrating them with relevant gameplay so that it doesn't feel like a chore each time.

I was into it. Put on a podcast or some jams and suck the Universe's resources dry.

Yep. That's what I would do.

@killacam said:

too much. worst part of the game. totally took me out of it. hope ME3 doesn't resort to this kind of filler.

It was optional so it is your fault it felt like filler. As for the question I would say a good 6 hours or so over the course of my playthrough.

The ambient background sounds and music Was amazing and just kept me doing it. The only thing I was worried about was the faxt thay the more i mined, the more i fretted the fact that i qas going to have no minerals left if I needed them later in the game for some big upgrade!

@laserbolts said:

@killacam said:

too much. worst part of the game. totally took me out of it. hope ME3 doesn't resort to this kind of filler.

It was optional so it is your fault it felt like filler. As for the question I would say a good 6 hours or so over the course of my playthrough.

i wish i could attribute blame in a similarly haphazard way, but i'm sure it's not your fault you turned out like this

I only mined mined enough to get all the upgrades. Total it took maybe an hour or a little over max on my last play through (which was post patch). It is incredibly boring and I preferred landing on the planets as at least there was interactivity to that even if the planets all look the same or similar. It had more flair.  
  
All in all, while being the most uninteresting part of both games, it didn't really ruin the experience.