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One way of handling things in KOTOR3 might be allowing the player to create two characters (Revan and the Exile) at the beginning and have them control them both through the story at varying times. You wouldn't get as much time as any one character, but it would solve the continuity issues and actually allow for some pretty interesting story/quest lines. The reason I loved Nar Shadda in KOTOR was that the multiple characters each playing their own parts in unison really made it feel cinematic and, for once, made the NPCs stars in their own right as opposed to side characters. I think it added a lot to the game.

So...uh... What does that make the Exile/Kreia bond?

IMHO, the Influence system as it stands now is worlds better and more interesting than the "I'll tell you my life story only if you're high level" of KOTOR. That doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, but being able to interact with your party NPCs in that manner - make them like you or dislike you based on conversation options, rather than just hitting a 'wall' where you can't talk about anything more with them ever if you happen to say something rude one time. No, you can't gain maximum influence with everyone at once, and that is by design - you do have to pick and choose who you'll like, because of your diverse party. That is all roleplaying: making choices based on your character and having to deal with the consequences of those choices. Having all your NPCs tell you stuff and give you items based entirely on your level isn't really roleplaying, insofar as there isn't any choice to be made. You can be rude and cut off any and all dialog with that character forever, or you can be nice and play to their end of their predefined story. The main story of the game isn't actually explained all that much by the party NPCs, Kreia being an exception. Rather, it is explained by the Jedi Masters and other NPCs. However, the main story felt a lot weaker to me than KOTOR's, while the party interaction was consistently interesting and well-written; that being the case, I can see it would be pretty easy to mistake the one for the other. But I think that if you treat the Influence system IC and only make friends with those your character would make friends with it works pretty well. Only if you try to metagame and max everyone's influence do you start hitting problems, because the system isn't (and shouldn't be) designed for that. That said - the Influence system could definitely stand some improvement, particularly when it comes to alignment shifts. In that respect I feel Obsidian just ran out of time, as there were some cases where alignment shifts did make a difference, and some of the cut endings involve NPC alignment playing a role. But calling the system borked and useless is completely unwarranted - again, IMHO of course.

Click Here! That should help out.

It's kind of a fuzzy distinction because of the inherent roleplaying limitations in a single player game and because most shooters aren't designed to accomodate roleplaying beyond combat, but to phrase it another way... Given a choice between doing what 'makes sense' for their predefined character and doing what will best serve them in getting past obstacles and killing enemies, which do you think most FPS players are going to choose? Playing through Half Life 2, I spent a good portion of my time stacking boxes and messing around with the physics. Did that make 'roleplaying' sense for Gordon Freeman? Probably not, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one doing it and having fun.

I love it when players ask questions like "Will your game be good?" and expect any answer from the devs other than "Yes." Seriously. After a developer has poured their work life into a game for over a year, do you really expect them to say "Nope, this game actually sucks. Sorry!" KOTOR2 doesn't suck. The majority of the game is a lot of fun, has some great storylines involved, and implements a lot of ideas better than KOTOR did. If the ending is bad then that's a flaw, but it doesn't make the entire game crap. I agree 100% with the original poster. If people have specific issues they should post them and that's fine, but if they just want to say "OMG OBSIDIAN SUX!" then there isn't much need for them to be here at all, IMHO.

T'is all about The Guildmaster. Well, you asked.

So how 'bout that 'roleplaying' in FPS games? They don't have a stat system like RPGs, yet they're consistently filled with strategy and 'power' gamers far more than they are roleplayers. The simple fact is that you can't force people to roleplay in a single player RPG. You can give them the opportunity to roleplay, and you can give them the best game experience possible, but removing the rules no more encourages roleplaying than it particularly inhibits powergaming. The only reason traditional powergamers would come up with a backstory would be if it gave them more power, and even if you went to the insane degree of some kind of text parser to test for a backstory they'd still find the string of numbers and letters that gave them the highest possible XP bonus, whether or not it made a coherent backstory. As for the idea itself...I see two things it could mean. One is disconnecting character development from the player's control entirely and tying it instead to predefined story events. You only learn the Jumping Monkey style after you talk to Master Kwan in the city of Bob, and however much you jump like a monkey before or after you learn the style will not change your character's skills in the style. This is basically like a goal-based system where character development is chosen for you (or at least, chosen through roleplaying and what skills your character chooses to pursue in the game world), and I think it could work well. One is basically a fuzzified for a Learn by Doing system. If your character spends more time jumping like a monkey the game will eventually grant him Jumping Monkey style, whereas if he spends his time picking locks he'll eventually gain Superior Lockpicking. I don't like this approach very much. Once a player figures out which skill increases what (and if the developers are shooting for realism this should be pretty simple), it becomes like any other LbD system. As I think that Learn by Doing systems are the eternal bane of story-based CPGs, I would likely not be interested in a game that used a system like this. So which did you mean?

It seems like every edition introduces some amazing item that has an infinite number of uses in all sorts of different situations. Oddball utility stuff that isn't directly useful in combat, but can be twisted to absolutely crazy effect with a creative player behind it. The Portable Hole is an obvious classic, and now 3E's given us the Immovable Rod. As the saying goes...with a length of rope, a ten foot pole, a portable hole, and an immovable rod there is nothing a player can't accomplish. So, what are some crazy uses for the Immovable Rod that folks've thought up?

I love copy and pasting. As for Bio's stories being repetitive, I have to agree with Volourn. There's some similarities, but it's not the same story rehashed. If you seriously think the story of KOTOR is based around your 'love interest turning evil' I must honestly question whether you actually played the game as opposed to just reading about it. The game's real plot twist and interesting story is centered around the PC's position - Bastila's fall to the darkside is kept to a sideline late in the game, and isn't really built in such a way that it could suprise anyone. The NPCs are telling you "She might have fallen to the dark side" the whole time. For an NPC sidequest it was pretty good, and more than most party NPCs get in any RPG. were it the main quest I would have been disappointed, but it simply wasn't. And of course, the BG series is all about your character's love interest being seduced to evil by Irenicus through being weak-willled, right? Oh wait, it was totally different. I agree insofar that Bio isn't necessarily redefining the industry with each new game, but that's worlds different from rehashing the same story or not creating any innovation at all. Bloodlines didn't have anything particularly original about it either, but that didn't stop it from being a fun game.

Or they could make a game like NWN, which sold 2 million, or KOTOR which sold signifigantly more. Just a thought.

I meant 'pretty near' insofar as the game appears to be similar to the BG series in style and gameplay. If Bio does have BG3 as an unannounced project it's gonna be even longer than DA.

I believe, though I don't have a quote offhand, that Bioware has confirmed their unannounced new projects are all made using their own IP. This would preclude the BG series. Dragon Age is, IMHO, the nearest you will get to BG3 at the moment and it's pretty near. Other than the FR setting it has all the things which made BG2 fun that can be reasonably replicated in the current market (ie: no 200-hour OC.)

Meh. I might be more interested if I could play the game without turning my sound down for fear of someone I know hearing the ridiculous crappy voiceovers from my computer. There are some things I don't particularly care to remember about saturday morning cartoons.

Bu...but...no! A story? Gauntlet? Any story other than four heros arising to save the world? They can't do that! I'm gonna go cry in a corner now...

His suggestion doesn't sound too unreasonable to me. Rather System Shock 2-ish as far as the skill system goes, and I enjoyed System Shock 2. There are RPGs that do this sort of thing (the upcoming Jade Empire being the best example that comes to mind), but they are not the norm. Personally, I'm happy with either combat system so long as it is done well, but I find the combat in most RPGs these days to be overly simplistic. Anyone who lauds themselves for "Using their brains rather than button-mashing" in a game like KOTOR is kidding themselves, IMHO. Obviously you aren't button-mashing, but the combat is also simplistic to the point where you aren't really doing much else either. KOTOR combat is not very tactical, not because you do not directly control the character but because you simply don't have that many options. It doesn't take any particular brainpower to build or use a character in KOTOR. Likewise, skill in an FPS-style game is not simply 'button-mashing', though it does rely heavily on reflexes and tactics are often secondary. Button-mashing implies random pressing of buttons, while reflex-based combat implies an ability to press a sequence of buttons quickly. If you try to press random buttons in an FPS then you will die - this holds true pretty much throughout the genre. Given the choice, my priorities would be something like this: 1. Tactical Chess-style combat - like certain RTS games, that rely on player thinking and planning rather than pure reflexes. 2. A hybrid system like the one the OP describes. Jade Empire or System Shock are good example. 3. A pure reflex-based game, like Jedi Academy. 4. The simplistic combat of KOTOR - not complex enough to require any real thought, and not requiring much skill on the player's part.

Whenever you have a D20 game, people who intuitively create powerful builds in the system are going to have an easier time. This tends to include anyone who's had a fair amount of experience with d20. Playing through with an Int-focused sentinel with low Con I actually had a very difficult time with the game, and had to use a variety of tactics to get through some battles. I also died several times on some of the boss fights - it was far from an easy game. However, if you expect games to cater to people with loads of RPG and D20 experience then you are, IMHO, certain to be disappointed. Games need to appeal to the average user who doesn't know the system or how to build a character in it, and game developers prefer to err on the side of the easy than hard in these cases. If the combat is too easy because your build is powerful you can still enjoy the story, but if you can't beat the combat because your build is gimped then you can enjoy neither the future story nor the future combat. Here is hoping Obsidian uses a custom ruleset for future games which allows them to avoid things like this.

The other problem with this build is you won't hit your 50-damage mark against anything but a favored enemy. You'd probably get closer if you took your last level in Rogue and threw on an extra 1d6 Sneak Attack against non-constructs and undead, but I haven't got time to work out the numbers at the moment and see if you can make your way back up to 50 minimum damage. Personally, I've always preferred builds that use the Core Books only. Some of the stuff in the supplements just gets ridiculous (like the Ninja of the Crescent Moon and Sacred Fist.)

That's actually going to be relatively in-effective in practice, considering that its final AB is +6. The creatures you're fighting at tenth level generally have over 16 AC, so you're going to need 20s to actually hit anything at all. Sure, you'll be massively damaging when you do hit, but without TWF that's going to be something like once every ten rounds. Great for making goblins explode, but against real enemies that build would be relatively easy to beat.

I vote for Darth "Cookies" Bandon, from the first game.

As I'm always glad to give TGM something to do... There seems to be an issue with the View Developer Posts button if there are multiple posts on different pages of the thread you click on. I believe the button is supposed to show all the dev posts that have been made in the thread (like the BioBoards do), but in actuality it only shows those posts on the same page as the first dev post in the thread. So if a dev posts on page 2 and then again on page 5, you'll only see the post that was on page 2. It'd be cool to see this fixed.

Why am I here? A couple reasons... Because I liked NWN. Lots of folks on this forum seem to think it failed, but I've never been able to discern their reasons because most of them seem to have spent a lot of really enjoyable time on it. NWN gave me more sheer hours of fun online than any other game ever, and while I have my complaints, I think NWN2 has the potential to be even better. Because I enjoy debating game and RPG systems. It's fun to visit the Obsidian boards and bounce ideas off of people. Because, by all appearances, NWN2 will be a good game when it's finally released. Whether I'll be a player, DM, builder, or whatever else will be determined by NWN2's featureset and what ends up being the most fun for me, but at this stage I'll probably end up being some of each (as I was in NWN.)

First off, apologies for writing out such a long post/rant. Learn by Doing is a pet peeve. This is an improvement, IMHO, but only insofar as it isn't a full LbD system at all. It has its own issues though. For one, doing things like this will essentially set you into one path at the start and make you stick with it. Let's say that I have a Fighter who likes swords, and uses them for a good portion of the game, raising his skills all the way. That works both mechanically and realistically, right? So what happens when my Fighter finds, partway through his journies, a really cool axe? In a conventional system like D20 or GURPS, I'd start putting points into axecraft on my future levels and pretty quickly I'd be able to use said really cool axe. As far as IC translation of these mechanics, my Fighter is practicing with the axe in his off-time while he continues to use his sword for actual adventuring. But in your system, I can't do that. I have to go back to the combat dummy, then the rat cellar, then the goblin caves, then the spider forest, ect, ad nauseum. If I try to use the axe on those creatures I was fighting with a sword I won't stand a chance, so I'm left with no other way to diversify then fighting meager creatures to no end. Is that realistic? Maybe. Is it fun? No. Likewise, you still run into metagaming/story issues. If someone is focused in carving things up with an axe and I, as a builder or DM (Obsidian or otherwise), put in a situation where their equipment is taken and they're stuck with a rusty knife, am I forever crippling their character build if they level up and forcibly gain proficency in rusty knife rather than axe? Overall, I think it's a better system, but it still has its issues. I agree with you in part - such a system does work much better in a non-linear environment like Morrowind, and it actually becomes really workable in an MMORPG. In a game like Morrowind, issue 2 (Balance) is resolved because the game does not have a set idea of where the character is at any given stage. In a non-linear world if you run into an area that's too strong or too weak for you, that is just a part of the game and not seen as anything bad in the design. You have some interesting ideas here as well, but I think the best incentive to make players not want to do tedious things to progress is not giving tedious things the ability to make them progress. I quite like this aspect of Ender's system (since you can't learn unless you're actually out gaining XP), and you have some good ideas that could perhaps be used to refine it. Be aware as well that my comments are in reference to linear CRPGs, of the sort Obsidian has and is making at the moment. If you shift the question to another genre, like MMORPGs, then I think LbD can actually work quite well. MMORPG systems are basically designed around making players practice until the social network effect kicks in, and a LbD system makes for a rewarding feeling through practice. Use a skill X number of times and it goes up a tick; this is a reward and can be made addictive quite easily.

Meaning no offense to the Original Poster, I would argue that Learn by Doing is the worst system I have seen used in a CRPG. The problems with this system tend to fall into four major groups: Issue 1 - Tedium: One of the biggest flaws of the LbD system is that it encourages needless practice. That is, it encourages you to use your skills for the sake of raising the skills rather than because you actually need to use them. I can think of few things more tedious than actually going through the fifty push-ups my fighter does every day, and few things more ridiculous than jumping from town to town to gain levels as you could in Morrowind. If an Archer is rewarded for repeatedly shooting a target (even if the rewards are not as great as shooting an actual creature), you are encouraging the player to sit and shoot the target until they are far above the game's challenge rating or the target stops giving them experience. Players will do what is necessary for rewards, but if the path to those rewards is tedious they will blame the designers for it. Unless your system somehow differentiates between practice and reality (which gets difficult - where do you draw the line between killing weaker monsters and practice, for example?) Rebuttle: Says you. Says I, the realism of the system exists only in theory. In practice, LbD systems almost universally require the player to do unrealistic things in order to progress. The player is encouraged and rewarded for taking an option that doesn't make sense tactically (such as sneaking by a monster again and again to raise Stealth), and in most uses of the system the game is uncompleteable without it. A 'realistic' system is one that allows the player to take the best tactical option they are given. Issue 2 - Balance: Another problem with LbD systems is that they are essentially impossible to balance for. There is no way to be sure of how much 'practice' the player has gone through at any given point in the game, or what skills they have chosen to focus in. When the developers design the campaign they must have some idea of where the player's skills will be in order for the game to be properly balanced. If a player chooses to practice and practice until they are 2X or 3X the 'normal' level for that part of the game, they will naturally find it very unchallenging. However, human nature (and specifically Gamer nature) being what it is, they will blame this on poor game design rather than their own choices to practice - after all, if they didn't want players to do it, why would they have allowed it? Or the player who hates tedious game mechanics and never practices at all? He will end up with 1/2X the skills necessary to progress, and again, he will blame this on poor game design rather than his own choices. And this remains an issue no matter where you set X. Y ou will have problems with people at one end or the other - raise X and more players will resent the need for tedious practice, lower it and more players who feel practicing to raise their skills is a part of the game will feel disappointed. In a level-based system with quest-based XP, this is not nearly as much of an issue because skills are given in distinct 'blocks' and you can have a rough idea which 'block' the player will have achieved by that point in the game. At the very least you can usually predict a small range of levels; far more than can be said for an LbD system. Issue 3 - Character Diversity: LbD systems also have the effect of turning out 'carbon copies'. If you continue to raise skills by practicing, all skills will eventually reach a maximum value, and theoretically someone who practices all skills to that point will be identical to any character who has done the same. All characters move towards the same endpoint, while in a system with skillpoints or levels you are given a limited number and must spread them between skills and make choices. Two max-level characters in D&D will only very rarely be identical, but two max-level characters in a LbD system will usually be so. Rebuttle: But you can solve this by capping the total number of skills a player can gain, so someone who is a world-class fighter can't be a world-class mage as well. This is true, but at that point you encourage further metagaming. If players know there is cap coming they will be meticulously only use certain skills and never even thinking about raising any others. A character might not run when being chased by a dragon in order to avoid raising their running skill. Likewise, it sets characters into a specific path early on - if you start using a sword you can't ever even think about picking up an axe, because it splits your points before hitting the cap for no real benefit to the character. Issue 4 - Opportunity: Finally, there is the question of how much certain skills are used. For skills to be balanced in a Learn by Doing system it is necessarily possible for every skill to be used equally in every single module. Consider the implications of that. If your module (or campaign of any sort) has more combat than it does lockpicking you must either add more locks to your adventure (even if it doesn't at all fit the story and setting) or use some arbitrary mechanism. Both will set constraints on adventure design, however, because both force certain skills to be used only a certain amount in all modules, no more or less. The system basically encourages the campaign designer to ignore story and setting and just build so every skill gets an equal share. Rebuttle: But you could fix this by having skills mature at different rates, so raising a lesser-used skill (like Pick Pocket) takes less successful attempts than to raise a more commonly used skill (like Combat). The problem is that this requires a perfect balance in both the OC, expansions, and any modules the community makes if the game includes a toolset. So if you make it easy to raise Pick Pocket because there aren't many pockets to pick in the OC, what if someone makes a module where you play as a thief who goes around picking pockets all the time? The skill shoots up very high very quickly because the OC made it so easy to raise. On the other hand, this makes skills like Combat stagnate because they are more used in the OC and more difficult to raise (as an example) so any module not focused in combat will prevent its players from gaining any combat skill at all. Also, if you weigh skills differently, you kill the alleged realism of the system. There is nothing so difficult about picking a lock that you deserve several skill points for doing so once, and there is nothing to make combat so difficult that it should take many fights to raise the skill a single degree. Challenge: Design and propose (or simply point me towards) a Learn by Doing system that solves the issues mentioned above. One that does not encourage metagaming, maintains balance within itself, allows and encourages character diversity, and maintains an equal opportunity for use regardless of the module. Here's a hint - It's impossible.