Epiphany

That's why I said there was no way to make it perfect and reasonable. The game makes you think the exile has some unnatural control over the people he's with, making them bend to his will. In reality, you don't, you bend to theirs in order to gain an alignment shift, that in the end has no benefits. If the end result is pointless, then why bother making it difficult? They apparently had this idea when they programed the AI for combat, so why couldn't they continue the theme in the influence system? Regardless, a lie option for every influence system, and turning of whines if they alignment shift would have been perfectly fine. As it is, we're left with a spoon and a can of soup, hell, I'd go so far as to say it's a plastic spoon.

This post will have spoilers to some degree, i'm not going to black it all out, so stop reading now if you haven't completed the game. Due to the game talking about how the exile naturally influences those around him perhaps it should have worked differently: Say for instance, you're playing dark side. You slaughter an innocent, or commit and evil act. In the beginning, characters like Atton will say "wow I don't know what came over me", rather than having to kiss his butt right then, *THAT* should have been an influencing moment. You've just swayed him to the dark side a little. There should have been more than just that instance though, because to me, that's how the exile is described to have influenced people. There shouldn't be a focus on "trust" as you call it, rather a control over their actions, as shown in the tomb on Korriban. Only, you aren't sending your party out to be cannon fodder, you're instead, warping them down the path of the dark side, only you can't do that without gaining several light side points. It doesn't allow for a "roleplaying" opportunity, since you are forced to go out of "character" if you're an evil manipulating sith master, and legitimately care about their feelings. Another example would be beating the handmaiden into submission. Sure, you gain "influence" by knocking her around, but there should have been some sort of mental manipulation afterwards. Instead, if you took the conversation down that path, you lost in the influence you just gained. You show her the power of the DS, and then you can't lie to her, so if you remain "in character" you lose what you gain. Visas actually has influence options that can only be gained by aquiring LS points. Unfortunately, you can't unlock all her dialog without doing so, you have to show weakness by caring about her feelings, which, when you first meet, she claims will be the death of you if you do. Way to go consistancy... Is there really a way to make it perfect, and reasonable? No. But the fact they don't allow you to LIE to party members pretty much breaks the whole system in half right from the start. It's like they gave you a spoon and a can of soup and said open the can with it. Sure, it can be done, but it's a completely flawed way of doing it, despite the fact you'll eventually get the can open. All I'm asking for is a can opener...

What does it matter? Enemies scale in lvl based on your characters level. So a level 50 will have the same difficulty beating a character as he would if he encountered the same character at lvl 15.

Restart now, before you get too far into the game. Seems like a random glitch.

Are you a light sider?

Bah... The way it's implemented now, is not an influence system like the game portrays it, nor as the developers portrayed it prior to release. You're supposed to be influencing THEM, not the other way around, that's why it fundementally doesn't work. The heart of the matter is that YOU have to bend to THEIR will, which shows that you aren't influencing them, rather just kissing their ass and becoming their pawn. It wouldn't be as blatantly incorrect had the game not made mention of how the exile naturally influences those around him. Debating this is pointless because you see the end result as a working "core" system, and I see the path to the end result as being completely flawed and broken, making the end result moot.

How does it work as intended if it doesn't WORK to begin with? Unless of course, their goal was to make people think we could influence our party memebers, when in reality, all we could do was bend to their will so that we could change their alignment so that their portrait would look different... There is no benefit from the influence system, nothing is gained or earned, except sith masters having to go against their manipulating tendancies.

Canderous isn't a cameo, he's a character...

Handmaiden, since I don't play female characters by choice I never got disciple.

I once played Morrowind for 8 hours straight, got so into the game I forgot to save, and it crashed on me. It's so easy to do for me, cause I get to exploring and reading the books, that I lose track of time, and also the fact that it's still a game and I should save every so often.

Only you can't "pretend", which to me, is the broken part, well that and the fact that they only change on their alignment bar, and not their actual personality... I mean, what's the purpose of the influence system as it stands now, versus what people *thought* it was going to be like. I'm not sure about you, or anyone else, but I'd be shocked if someone said they actually expected the influence system to only change the character portrait and nothing else... I was expecting at least a dialog change in behavior, but that didn't even happen. The only thing that works in the whole system is the fact that they visually change in appearance, which to me, doesn't make up for the fact that the handmaiden still cries when I do things that she, as a darksider, shouldn't be bothered with. I've got a quick fix for it all, that can't possibly be added, but can at least show people it wouldn't have been hard to fix this "broken" system. Add a "lie" option to every verbal influence conversation. Turn OFF the whines and cries from NPC's, if you do something against their alignment if they're influenced to your cause. It wouldn't have been perfect, but it wouldn't have been so "in your face wrong" either.

Yeah, the exile is supposed to draw people to his cause, but he doesn't, because the game forces YOU to mold around THEM. Therefore, they draw you to their cause of acting in their default alignment. Once you have bended to them, they will reflect an alignment on the character sheet, but they maintain their default alignment tendancies. It's a flawed system, that would have been better if it was left out, and more time was spent on getting the game quality up a little more.

thats how it should be though. think about the emperor/palpatine. when he was trying to influence people, did he go around acting darkside? no, he acted the way the people around him would want him to act so that he could get them under his influence. name one time where palpatine acted as his 'true' self in order to get someone to agree with him. he acted like the peace loving, kind, gentle grandfather figure to those around him, even though his own thoughts and ambitions were of the utmost evil. thats how this influence system works. in order to gain influence, first you have to befriend them and 'pretend' to agree with their philosophies, then you turn them to whichever alignment you are. the only thing ill agree with is that once youve got them completely influenced, their dialogue should alter to reflect that. but the influence system itself works how it should. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Notice how I said they needed a LIE option? Do you think Palpatine was telling everyone the truth when he was expressing his care for others? The game punishes you as a DS character if you trying to "turn" LS characters to your cause, since you are forced to gain LS points, even though you're just wanting to manipulate.

Return of the King: Extended Edition Hey, it's an '04 film, since it was never in theaters...

"I hate carbonated beverages" I'm one of those water-only freaks.

What, you talk'n bout Wolf Moon? It's not a vampire/wolf thing to me. Each album is unique from the others. IMO, they're getting better with age, Slow Deep & Hard was great, but Life Is Killing Me is phenominal. They've got "themes" for each album, Bloody Kisses being a gothic overtone, while October Rust seemed more Pagan/Wiccan. (w00t)

Gloom Rock, Heavy Metal... whatever you want to classify them as: Type O Negative

Welcome to the internet. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's not an excuse to stop being polite to each other. You're still interacting with human beings on the internet, so some level of courtesy and decency should be maintained. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Seeing as how the forum filters out bad words, swearing isn't an issue. Otherwise, I give the same amount of courtesy I'm given. *I* just don't care what kind of courtesy I'm given, because this *IS* the internet. If someone hates me, or calls me a fat pig, or says **** YOU ****, my feelings will never be hurt.

Yeah, you get 750 exp. To beat them, I used lvl 2 force lightning.

Nah, there's not that many conversations where you can use it, just a handful. I didn't say they were all useless, but the vast majority of them are. Yeah, I had battle meditation too. Used it twice, once to see how it worked, and once in a "cutscene" late in the game. Combat was so simple, who needed to buff? I don't think you understood what I was saying. The influence system is broken because it works backwards. The game talks about how the Exile naturally influences people around him, but the ONLY way you can gain influence with people is for YOU the player to mold around them. The game talks about how the exile naturally effects his allies, but you can't do that, they influence you, not the other way around. Plus, they did not give "lie" options while talking to party members, so sith masters had to actually CARE about someones feelings in order to gain influence.... WTF is up with that? Sorry, but if I'm a sith master, and I'm wanting to convert people to my way of thinking, I'm going to lie to them, and make them THINK I care, when in truth, I'm just manipulating them. The game penalizes you by giving you LS points, which removes your dark mastery bonus. It's horrible. I'd focus on the positives if the negatives weren't so "in your face". As it is, the negatives are so glaring that you can't help but be bombarded with them everytime you play.

Welcome to the internet.

Yeah, you missed something. But just bash the console, it'll save you a lot of time from running around the ship looking for the program you missed.

It was a completely random lock up that happened while Carth was supposed to have some dialog towards the end of the game. Sad part was, it was totally random, but if it happened, there was no work around for it, other than to start a new game from what I remember. I never experienced it, but I remember lots of posts about it.

XBOX version of the first game is pretty good, but if they fixed the "Carth bug" in the PC version, then get that one.