In many ways, the multiplayer mode controls the same as the single-player experience, with some very important differences.
The soldiers you create, regardless of race, do not share Commander Shepard’s same potential. As individuals, they wield fewer Biotic powers or technical skills, and they can carry fewer weapons.
They are not as resilient under fire. Alone, a single mistake makes their death almost certain, even with the best equipment.
Working alongside teammates, communicating with them, protecting them, and helping them up when the fight gets rough, all can tip the odds in your favor.
You can’t afford to be quite as reckless here. Your position in relation to the enemy and your squadmates can be the difference between success and failure.
When you first start up multiplayer, you must create an operative from any of the following classes: Adept, Engineer, Infiltrator, Sentinel, Soldier, and Vanguard.
Each class has three active abilities that you can use in combat, and these skill sets change depending on the race played.
Humans (male and female) are the starting race for all players, with turians, asari, salarians, quarians, drell, and krogans being unlockable over the course of gameplay.
In addition to these powers, each race brings two special skills to every class, which can lean your character closer toward melee or ranged combat.
As you battle through every mission, you gain experience, which goes toward leveling your character and their powers.
You also earn credits that you can use in the multiplayer store to further enhance your fighting ability.
Buying the offered reinforcement packs in the store delivers to your inventory intensely powerful Cobra missile launchers, emergency Ops Survival Kits, lifesaving Medi-Gel, and spare thermal clips; these can all give you a potential out in desperate situations, while premission equipment enhancements can boost your abilities for the next sortie.
You might even score new weapons, enhanced variants of weapons you already own, mods for each gun type, and visual modification options for every race and class, and you may even unlock new races that you can use in future battles.
The peak level for all classes in multiplayer is 20, and these experience levels are shared for every available character in a given class, making it easy for players to switch between an asari or a human in the Vanguard class in order to take advantage of specific abilities.
It is possible to Promote a maxed-out class, which sends them away to the front lines of the Reaper War, becoming a War Asset that contributes to the total effort and increasing your N7 rating.
You’ll have to restart that class from Level 1, but promoting characters continues to contribute to your total War Assets.
Additionally, participation and successful completion of these special operations contributes to the galaxy’s Readiness rating across five different fronts that are displayed upon signing into the multiplayer mode.
The better your Readiness, the better your War Assets contribute to the fighting. Bear in mind that Readiness does fall by a set amount each day, so if you want to keep it in the green, you should complete these battles to offset this decay.
For players without a Shepard to import, this can affect your ending choices during your first run through of the single-player campaign, so to give the galaxy a better shot at surviving the Reapers, you’ll want to participate.