Mad_Scientist

There was an old SNES game I played (an action RPG) with something that might be good. Terranigma.

Slightly off-topic, but something that I've sometimes thought about is how it seems to be a common RPG cliche to have some secret and shadowy cult/group trying to bring back or revive some ancient and evil god/demon/monster, so that they can rule/destroy/conquer the world. Why not have a reversal? Have some secret and shadowy cult/group that is trying to revive an ancient and good god/angel/creature so that they can save/heal/unite the world. Depending on how the rest of the world perceived this group, it could have very interesting effects on the allignment of the character. Let's say that in the world of Anire, legend states that the dark and twisted Daede, a horrible and evil being, was defeated by Ashal, goddess of light, who had the help of many legendary heroes in the battle. Daede was sealed inside an ancient hidden shrine, and peace reigned, etc, etc. But the truth is most of the legendary heroes betrayed their people and sided with Daede, and Ashal was the one sealed. Daede nearly reagns surpreme now, and is working to undo the last of some very complex wardings and protections that Ashal managed to create. Once finished, he will be pretty much unstoppable. He could effect the world greatly now even, but doesn't want to reveal himself to the ignorant population until the last of the wards are gone and it's too late for them to mount any defense. So, there's this secret brotherhood that is trying to release Ashal, but almost everyone who knows of the brotherhood believes they are trying to release Daede. Even those who know nothing of the group believe Daede is the one sealed, and have been taught such since both. There's also a group that serves Daede in truth, and they know of the brotherhood's true nature and ensure that most of the people don't realize the truth. You, the player, will discover the truth, and have the option of aiding either side. But this presents and odd situation. By choosing the good side, you will be forced to do many actions perceived as evil, and vice versa. Such a game would definitely need seperate reputation and alignment systems, and would also need a fairly versitile alignment system. After all, in the process of trying to save the world from total despair and doom, you might often find your self facing off against many innocent pawns who simply don't know better, and how you'd deal with those situations would present many challenges.

I'm highly doubtful about that. KotORIII and KotOR MMO rumors have been going around for ages now, so until I hear something with a really good source (IE and Obsidian exec posting on these boards that they're working on a new Star Wars RPG that will make many people happy, or Bioware posts a press release on their site saying they are doing a KotOR MMO), I'm not going to believe it.

What makes you think Revan and Exile are Uber Force Users? All we know about Revan's skills is that he's a "great" general. I don't believe it, most people do, fine. Revan is a great general. That's it. All the Exile can do is defeat some Jedi Council members and resist Nihilus' drain. Exile has a special talent of Force Bonds, but it is foolish to believe that special talent suddenly makes him a very powerful Jedi. Revan and Exile can both be defeated, and probraly can be defeated by the original Jedi Masters...as long as biases in favor of Exile and Revan (really just biases in favor of the player's egos) are discarded. Neither Revan and Exile are uberpowerful, and I doubt the third KOTOR PC would be 'uber' as well, considering the fact that both Players are only 'powerful' in term of gameplay, and that is being done because the developers want to make the game easy for us to play. Revan at least is fairly powerful, at least according to just about every single person in the games who ever knew him in the slightest. It's hard to judge his relative power compared to Sith Lords and Jedi of other times though. That Rodian on the space station didn't think ether Revan or Malak were as strong as Exar Kun, though Exar Kun was apparently really strong, so that's not much of a criticism. Plus the Rodian never knew Revan's strength at his prime. (By the end game, according to Malak, Revan was even stronger than during his reign as the Dark Lord) The exile, it's harder to know. We don't have a KotORIII, so we don't have as many comments about the Exile's strength to go on. He/she defeated 3 powerful Sith Lords, but there were special circumstances involving the defeat of Sion and Nihilus, and Kreia may not have been that strong in pure 1 on 1 combat anymore. Still, the Exile did something fairly impressive. All in all, I'd say both Revan and the Exile were very strong, but I wouldn't say either was super-overpowered uber DBZ force users or anything.

I understand not wanting to have too many powerful Jedi/Sith in one short time-span, but I wouldn't put Bandon on that list. I mean, did he really demonstrate anything that showed he was that strong? He killed Trask (A non-jedi grunt soldier), strutted around a bit, and force pushed some random guy for fun. He was presumably the strongest guy serving Malak at the time, but that doesn't mean there was anything very exceptional about him. Even among a group of weaklings, someone has to be the strongest. And Exar Kun and the people of his era were about 40 years before Revan, weren't they? So depending on when KotorIII takes place, the we could be talking about people from around a 50 year time period.

Regarding Wookies, just manipulate things by having some pawns lead a fleet in an attempt to wipe out the entire Wookie planet. (Can't remember how to spell it.) Then show up and destroy the fleet and "save" all the Wookies. Give me your life debts, or great walking carpets.

Well, for KotORIII, they can just make the system of changing alignments less abstract, as well as improve the overall influence system. Also make several characters impossible to change, at least change very much, and have the degree you can alter the viewpoint of a character make sense based on the story events and the personality of the character. Here's how I see it: Stage 1, you get influence with a character. Gaining unfluence will be similar in principle to how it happened in KotORII, but will be better handled. As Tale mentioned, hand-picking specific responses in each situation based on your current party, in order to gain influence, is kind of odd, unless you're roleplaying a liar. The things that determine influence will overall be more in-depth and subtle then the way it was in KotORII. Anyways, moving on. Influence by itself doesn't really affect the alignment of a character, merely sometimes makes it possible to later change the alignment of the character. It also makes it more likely for some characters with an opposing alignment to stick with you. For example, let's say there's a character like Canderous in the game. dark alignment, an "evil" character, and you are playing as a Light jedi. This Canderous type character is impossible to change to the light. During a certain segment of the game, you have to work together with him, and he joins your party. He leaves after you have succeeded in doing whatever it was you needed to work together for. But let's say that, like Canderous, this guy has a certain respect for powerful opponents and good warriors and leaders. Perhaps, during the time you are together, you show exceptional skill as a warrior and brilliant leadership, and a whole host of Revan-like qualities. So Canderous-guy developes a respect for the player. You earn influence on him. Get enough influence by the time Canderous-guy would normally leave, and instead of leaving, he'll stay with you. Even though you're a light jedi and he's dark, even though you can't change his alignment, he's got enough respect for you now to follow you for a while and help you succeed in the larger goal of the game. However, if later on you show signs of cowardice and weakness, your influence with him will drop, and if it reaches too low a level he'll leave your party at that time. Also, while you might not expect it, if your character falls to the dark side, this can also cause Canderous-guy to leave, depending on how it happens. While he has no problem with the dark side in general and in fact would join a dark jedi fairly easily, if your character suddenly and inexplicable alters the very core of his/her self, Canderous-guy will wonder if he really judged you correctly, and start to doubt you, as he doesn't really have much respect for someone who would abandan his convictions so easily. Now, as for those characters who you can actually alter the alignment of, this is triggered by 2 things: influence and storyline. Rather than characters automatically changing their alignment just because you have influence, influence is instead needed in order to take advantage of story triggers. For a character that is fairly young and impressionable, who doesn't have a very strong view of the world, these story events might mostly be just spending certain amounts of time following your character around. So in that case, it would be similar to KotORII, but it would still require that you carefully talk to and guide the character towards your point of view, rather than it just happening. This might be especially true if you were trying to lead a more neutral character to the dark, as there would be many doubts you'ld have to assuage. But for most characters, it will be more major events that allow you to change their alignment. For some, these might be hidden. They could make a dark character who is otherwise impossible to change, but have a hidden sidequest where said character goes through a huge and shattering experience, one that allows the player to redeem him/her with enough influence. Or, they could have a light character who suffers a family crisis partway through the game, and by carefully manipulating said crisis, with enough influence you can push said light character over the edge and cause a fall.

Well, I'm sure that some of this has been said before by others somewhere in the 23 versions of this thread, but I have some ideas for KotORIII. First, many people have asked, who should you play as? Revan, the Exile, or someone new? I say all 3, though with the focus on the new character. Let me explain. People are going to want to have the story of Revan and the Exile resolved. This is natural, a KotORIII that leaves players still hanging about their ultimate fates would cause quite a bit of anger. But the problem is, any resolution to their stories is going to cause players annoyance depending on what the devs choose. People will say "MY Revan would never do that!!!!", etc, etc. Even if the devs include something for both Revan and the Exile akin to the LS/DS/Male/Female choice in KotORII, that's not going to be enough when the devs are trying to write an actual ending for Revan and the Exile. So, how do you resolve the stories of Revan and the Exile without pissing off 90% of the fanbase? By allowing the player some control over the end of those characters. And the best way to do that is to make them playable. Make them playable only during special scenes, though, having them in the same party as the main character or each other would cause issues. By having them both playable in their own side arcs, you largely eliminate the issues of voice and appearance. The player simply chooses to make Revan and the Exile look like however they want. And while playing as them, all dialogue spoken by Revan and the Exile would of course be silent, because they are the main characters during those side arcs. The way you could fit this into the gameplay and story is to have the new main character try to encover evidence of what happened to Revan and the Exile, and at certain points encounter logs describing some of their exploits, or encounter a person who traveled with one of them for a while. During these scenes, rather than us just reading about what they did, or the person just telling us about his/her time with one of them, we would actually play as the respective character, and be able to witness and direct their exploits first-hand. These arcs wouldn't need to be very long. The main story should still focus on the new guy. But these side arcs would allow the devs to include Revan and the Exile in the story more heavily, and allow the player to ultimately decide their final fates, alongside that of the new person.

Ah, the patch. I've stopped worrying about it, and have been playing WoW. I still do check back every now and then to see if the patch has been released, though.

Pong? :D

Patience is a virtue, they say. Thanks for replying; it's nice to know that you guys are still working hard on trying to get it released, at least, as some of us were starting to get concerned after the long period with no update.

I do have a question for you, 213374U. What was the reason you made your intitial post. Up until then, this thread had been a mostly lighthearted thread where people who've had trouble with the game could vent a little frustration at the wait for the patch. Almost all the posts were made in a joking manner, and there really wasn't much bashing. So how exactly was this thread the type of thread that goes a "long way toward explaining why the forums were almost closed"? Where was this "blatant effort at bashing OE out of the spite"?

Personal attacks will never win or help a debate. "Brainless buffon!" "Troll!" "You're the troll!" "Attention-whore!" "Troll!" "You trolling troll!" "You're the troll!" It's all sort of pointless, and leads to back and forth arguements of little value. Something people would do well to keep in mind in this thread.

I dunno, judging by the moderator's actions, it probably won't be long before the attention-starved youngster is banned. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> To be fair, remarks like that are just goading him to respond with something... extreme. And I would prefer for this thread to remain open and at least somewhat on topic, though it's probably too late for the latter.

I suggest that people calm down and stop swearing.