There are three starting 'difficulty' levels, as well as an adjustable difficulty level. What exactly do these choices make in the game?
Mass-effect – What difference does the starting choices and the difficulty level make
mass-effect-3
Related Solutions
Based on how it worked in Mass Effect 2 and personal experience in ME3, enemies scale to levels, regardless of how the levels were acquired. As such, the answer to your question is yes and no. Compared to an unimported character at the same place in the campaign, it will be more difficult, but compared to an unimported character of the same level, it should be about the same difficulty.
Edit: Now with science!
I played through the first 15 minutes of the campaign twice, once with my imported ME2 character and then with a brand new character. Below is a spreadsheet with the amount of body shots I counted before the enemy died. All shots are from the starting pistol. Note that these are wild approximations - it's hard to count with friendlies firing as well, and I likely landed a few headshots without realizing it. Note: Both characters attained levels over the course of testing. No skills were spent on either, and only the character level at the start of each area is listed
As hypothesized, enemies on Earth were roughly the same difficulty (it was made as a basic tutorial). Once I reached Mars, though, the enemies seemed to take more body shots when Shepard was at a higher level.
It doesn't show you exact numbers, but if you go to the squad menu and view your character, next to your current level it will show you a progress bar of how far along you are. It seems the best that you can do is see a number come in, then flip over to see how much your bar jumped. You can use this as a gauge for how close you're getting
Ultimately, you're better off just ignoring the actual numbers and simply enjoying the ride. Since there really aren't any mechanics in place to grind experience points, the actual numbers end up not mattering much.
Related Topic
- Mass-effect – the difference between “Total Military Strength” and “Effective Military Strength”
- Mass-effect – What difference does the choice of significant combat loss make
- Mass-effect – ny granular way to change decisions made in ME1/ME2 to see different outcomes in ME3
- Mass-effect – What difference does it make who takes the shot on the traitor
- Mass-effect – What level will a non-imported character be at the end of the game
- Mass-effect – New Game+ vs. Importing again: What will I lose
Best Answer
There are 3 game style modes: Action, RPG and Story.
Action makes all dialogue choices automatically, predetermined by Bioware. Combat is manual, similar to the previous games.
RPG is business as usual, allowing you manual dialogue choices and normal combat experience.
Story is manual dialogue choices, with minimal combat. Story mode is locked to the Narritive Difficulty.
The actual adjustable difficulties are similar to previous games:
To answer your question succinctly: Mode determines manual or auto dialogue and combat difficulty. The adjustable range modifies combat for RPG and Action modes. Story mode is locked to Narrative.