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Well, Sith Lords and Jedi Masters get to spam Force powers like there was no tomorrow. For many, that's reason enough.

Even though those are pretty silly comments, I must admit this is one of the funniest thread derailment cases I've seen around here. And man, you guys do like to derail threads.

The problem with that is that the Xbox version lacks the update feature. If they were to release a 'fixed' version of the game, Xbox users (and hence MS) would be very pissed.

No true Dark Lord of the Sith would be anyone's errand boy. And you spend half the game doing unimportant errands. And where the hell are my [Force Choke] dialogue options??? :angry:

Those are good points indeed. I would definitely pay for such an expansion pack.

Um, actually, HK explicitly states that he believes that the battle of Malachor V could have made Revan reflect on other ways than genocide to achieve his goals. Thus, HK-47 was born. Even if HK is wrong, he wouldn't make this assumption if he had been created before Malachor V. So, yes, it's a continuity mistake no matter how you look at it.

Kreia: I'll be in my chambers. Atton: Yeah, I'll be in my chambers, too. But since I don't have any, I'll just go to the c0ckpit, as I always do.

Um, IIRC, there was no explicit mention to to the *exact* moment Mandalore was killed. But that's still irrelevant because HK implies that he was built after the battle of MV, and that was the final battle of the war. A continuity mistake indeed. But that's the price you've got to pay to have old characters back, I suppose. Nobody likes to work with other people's characters and I can understand they took certain... liberties.

That's just you making assumptions. In fact I'm modding the game to put back in the level 20 cap, and adjust the XP-level table and PrC script to reflect that. That, so far. When I get some playtesting done I might get into some more serious rebalancing. That's not 'advanced' in any way, more like the opposite. You see, I'm not too hard to please. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I stuck to unmodded items with my Guardian/Weapon master and still swept through the game without breaking a sweat. And there were a few fights in K1 where you could actually die if you charged blindly (the trandoshan encounter in Yavin, for instance). There is no such risk in K2, as things are. But still, the item upgrades are part of the game, and as such, they should be taken into consideration as part of the game balance equation. Artificial gimping to make the game more challenging isn't any better than powergaming.

Yep. That severely decreases the overall effectiveness of the Stealth mode. A pity, because stealthy characters are a lot of fun to play.

It worked for BGII. Not ToB, but ToB screwed game balance big time, too. A perfect example of what happens when you listen to the whining crowds asking for more power instead of relying on common sense. That is a good point. If the game actually let you configure your own difficulty level from an ingame interface, add on top of that some preconfigured templates, and tada, you have difficulties for everyone. Bottom line is, if people like me are already modding it, it couldn't have been so difficult to include many more skill levels. For some reason that wasn't a priority for them. You are taking the extremes of the sample as an example, which renders the example invalid. Most gamers aren't as demanding as you when it comes to labeling a game 'challenging' but neither are total n00bs. Um, no. While Bio adapted the original ruleset to suit their needs, they were smart enough not to mess with it past beyond the point where game balance would be blown to pieces. Removal of the level cap wasn't Bio's idea, for instance. Incidentally, the first game was more challenging than this one.

No. That's what difficulty settings are for. See, a difficulty slider a la BG would be enough. I know it's impossible to make a game challenging for everyone, since a lot of people powergame and powergaming by definition takes advantage of loopholes in the rule set. But the majority of people aren't powergamers. Not by default, anyway. However not balancing the game at all it's just like saying, hey, since we can't make a game that everyone will find challenging, let's just throw the balance out the window and make combat fully automated or enemies that die automatically after two rounds. After all, people will buy our game anyway. No. We are not talking about mods that add new content to the game. The mods we're talking about just intend to make the game as it was supposedly before the content cuts took place. That changes the argument completely. Let's get back to my original twisting of your argument. If a game was released half finished and the other half was still there, waiting to be put back into the game, there would be modding efforts to do so. Yeah, some people's vision of the game would have it be actually complete. Crazy guys... And tell you what, I don't really like very much the hardcore mods that are out there right now. They just buff up the enemies even more, making the game even more unbalanced and lame if you ask me. You say that making the game a bit more challenging for everyone would be impossible without further deviation from the rules. That's false. It's precisely that deviation that has made the game a total pushover. If the game truly respected the d20 ruleset upon which it's based, it would have been much easier to implement effective difficulty settings. Agreed. But that doesn't mean you can't try to make the most people happy. They haven't tried to do so with the game balance in this game, and you know it.

Get it. You might be lucky and not run into any bugs. And don't pay too much attention to the negative posts. IMO the pros offset the cons by far.

Really, you should quit arguing just for the sake of it. Let's see why. If the game was balanced, there would be no place for rebalancing mods, let alone a need for them. Your reasoning can be applied to a half finished game, too. Hey, it's a waste to actually release a complete game. Proof of this are all the efforts to restore all the content that was cut/outright missing. Um, yeah. Yes, I know. You can do things the right way, and you can do things the sloppy way. Facts prove that even if you choose the latter, that doesn't mean sales will be hurt. Nevertheless, they have a reason to try to do better. It's called customer satisfaction.

As they have done it in K2, you are absolutely right. However in the d20 it's a different story. The Force drawing from VP can seriously hamper a Jedi's fighting capabilities if not used carefully. I've had my ass handed to me more than once for 'augmenting attributes' a bit too merrily. But anyway, Jedi are supposed to be powerful. That's how they are in SW, after all. Still, powerful != invincible.

The 'C' stands for 'computer'. Simple, really. And despite what you might think from reading my posts, I liked K2 very much. I only wish that the bosses at least would be at the power level one expects from such a character. I don't consider myself a hardcore player (hell, I hate powergaming), but I like to play my games rather than just watch them. And that color is killing me.

Then you would be a bad game developer. Small %? Come now. Anyone who has played any other CRPG short of a FF will find K2 ridiculously easy. If there is no significant difference between the different difficulty settings, why have them at all? It. Makes. No. Sense. But anyway, yours is still a weak argument at best. Implementing effective difficulty settings is real simple, and takes little effort and time compared to other development aspects. Proof of this are all the rebalance and hardcore mods that are already coming out. I have modded the game slightly to accomodate my personal tastes, and I have NO modding skills whatsoever, FFS! Sloppiness is the word. Yeah, that's why K2 plays so much like SW d20 right now.

They weren't naked. They were wearing those horrid jumpsuits that pass for undies in SW. Ugh.

Well, this is SW, remember? The place where a bunch of .5 meter teddy bears armed with spears and slings can defeat 'a whole legion of my best men'. Yeah, well. The same could be applied to the Jedi robes, but those you can even upgrade with assorted underlays to protect from stuff. Last time I checked, I couldn't upgrade my shirts with an asbestos underlay. Anyway, that doesn't explain why you consider Mira's *hawt* outfit 'terrible'. "

Well, I don't know what RPGs you have played, but in the ones I played, just 'shooting 'em in the ass' wouldn't do the trick. The GM's task is to create a challenging adventure for whatever party he's hosting a game for. Yes, even if that party is an all-18s. If the GMs you played with were unable to deal with your uber stats, then sorry pal, but they were bad GMs. There's more to being a GM than just storytelling. Since in CRPGs there is no GM, that's what difficulty settings are for. Easy for the newbs/casual gamer, normal for the RPG vets, and difficult for those with a taste for reloading often and hardcore powergamers. That is the minimum one can expect. But in K2, the difference between the different difficulty settings is next to zero. Why? You are still dodging the matter of the different skill settings. If those were implemented properly, there would be no need for powergaming in the lower levels, while it could be from useful to necessary in the higher ones. It's not being done right now, I agree. It's been a long time since I played a challenging RPG, too. But impossible? You have yet to provide a valid reasoning that proves what I'm proposing unfeasible.

That is a simplistic comparison that doesn't hold any water and you know it. In RPGs it's not a matter of pushing buttons but a matter of needing to plan your battles, use some sort of strategy, find the weakness in the AI's tactics, you name it. You can do that as slowly as you want thanks to the pause function. False. If your character is effective they will be able to deal with problems in a wider range of ways. As it is now, your character will be effective no matter what you do. If you just push a button and everything in your way gets slaughtered no matter what, there is something seriously wrong in the game. And of course, I refuse to believe that casual gamers are just cattle when it comes to skills. False again. You see, that's what difficulty settings are for. There's no shame in playing the game in easy if you are getting your ass handed to you every second. But again, if no matter the difficulty setting you can deal with endbosses in two freaking rounds, there is something seriously wrong. I can understand that people like easy games, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But don't try to tell me that it is impossible to make a game which has difficulty settings to make it appealing to all kinds of gamers.

I know you're going to hate me for this but, .

Yep. There are I think 2 different difficulty mods out there right now, but they both need some polishing IMO. Beancounter's Hardcore TSL mod implemented an experimental AI tweaking (that provided feats and such) but unfortunately it's disabled by default and unless you can compile scripts, there's no way of enabling it that I know of. Unfortunately his mod just makes the enemies tougher, and gives them some additional resistances, which IMO renders Force powers useless. But hey, it's better than the game as it is now.

That's exactly my intention. However my lack of scripting skills might make it... difficult.

Uh, it shouldn't be up to the player to artificially rebalance the game, you know. That's the game designers' job. Again, you say that games are for entertainment and that's all what they're for. Let's see how this is a little fallacy, shall we? Games are for entertainment and that's all they are for. Movies are for entertainment, and that's all they are for. Thus, games are movies.