Plutone00

I've explained to you why another KotOR can't be done during civil wars era (well it could really, but it won't be KotOR) and you still refuse to listen (now I also have a cause to suspect that you don't read my posts...). What does you reading wookiepedia 5 years ago has to do with Bioware putting pureblood sith in TOR mmo? Don't answer that. They have not altered anything. Many remnants of the original sith empire survived the great hyperspace war, like the lost tribe, which eventually came to blows with Luke Skywalker's new jedi order (but since you are supposedly familiar with sw lore you should know that much, right?) Seriosly, I'm not even trying to troll you here, buzbey. You just haven't covered all the angles behind your idea, which I point out to you. There is no intentional malice here. Like I've said, this won't happen unless Disney desides to push a "reset button" to clean up the whole sw universe (and God knows, there is a lot of cleaning up needed). But that will probably not happen for quite a while, at least not until they've produced a couple of movies to make money off existing sw universe. Anything before 19 BBY is still technically Old Republic. If KotOR 3 was to happen under existing conditions with preexisting lore, it would make sense for it to take place place during Dragguch Period (2000-1000 BBY). A thousand years after the events of TOR mmo everything is forgotten and doesn't matter anymore. A good place to start anew and what an existing period: reastablishment of a new sith empire from scratch, jedi breaking tradition and going into politics becoming chancellors, kings and princes. And most importantly until Darth Bane's birth in 1026 BBY there are not many critial historical events, so developers of the game would not have to deal with constraints of existing lore much. They'll have a kind of freedom Bioware had with KoTOR 1 to make a true choice-and-consequence game. GTA has done a lot to ruin videogames image over the years. I do not see what it has to do with KotOR specifically though. GTA is an open world action game while KotOR is story-driven non-linear RPG. What you were suggesting would also unmake KotOR. I'm sure we would see everything in a different light, but it would not be KotOR anymore, just simply another sw game. Go for it. That's what I've been telling you all along.

As far as unimaginative goes, the udead have been so overused in modern games and movies that it's hard to come up with innovative ways to make people scared. Most of the time you don't even need silver or holy weapons to defeat them. In the past a town setting with a SINGLE udead being in it stroke fear into people. Nowadays we've got an apocalyptic invasions from hell and everyone just grabs the guns and goes on to fight it off. Undead became just regular enemy monsters.

Once again, the backstories you talking about have already been told in varios SW comics and books. If you want to see a full prequel made out of them, there is no real need for it to be a game.Just movie, TV series aven an anime is enough. Do you really want to destroy everything that made KotOR what it is just to make another game with KoTOR in its title, which would become another Deus Ex HR at best and TOR at worst? Real choice-and-conseqence system doen't exist in either of them and KotOR wouldn't be KotOR without it. In case you are not familiar with SW lore, wookiepedia ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page ) is your friend. Back when KoTOR 1 was made, the timeline after Exar Kun's death (year 3994 Before Battle of Yavin ) up until Darth Bane's birth (year 1024 Before Battle of Yavin) was not yet clearly established, which gave developers a lot of freedom and culminated in a great game. Now in order for KoTOR 2 to happen and more imporantly (from Lucas's perspective) to keep to SW canon and keep Republic alive until Episode 3 (year 19 Before the Battle of Yavin), some constraints had to be put, namely Revan's disappearance (which diminished KoTOR 1 value) and everything falling apart. Obsidian still tried to make the best of it and while not as epic as an original, KoTOR 2 still turned out to be a good game. Fast forward to nowadays and civil wars era is already so established with additional lore that there is no more real room for KoTOR type of game - the constraints from all sides would not allow for a true freedom of choice. So your only real hope is for Disney to hit a "reset button" on the whole SW universe (and it really needs it as all eras have been screwed too much over the years, not just civil wars era).

I completely agree that "mature" sticker on a game nowadays often just means "lots of smut and violence inside". While that's certainly mature content, the story of such games is often far from mature. The protagonist is superheroed all out, does almost all the same things as cartoon hero, but just happens to kill and fornicate along the way "because he is a badass". To me it is just another fairytale and mature is supposed to be closer to reality. Even if you are a superman, you still can't save everybody. Aside from the global catastrophies, superman operates on a rather local level. What about people outside? Every minute around the world there is a new person in need of help. Even if superman completely abandons his private life and dedicates all of his time to saving those in need, he still can't save everyone. What's he going to do? We don't see that in a perfect fairytale world. Virtue doen't always win. There are things even true love can't overcome. Perhaps that sounds too grim, but that's reality and mature games aspire to be "real" (or try to). There are choices, there are sacrifices and there are prices to pay. That's my definiton of mature.

They should implement it for obvious reasons you already listed.

I'll assume when you are talking about prequel, you mean a prequel game. But there is no real need to make a game just to clear up origin stories. A book or a movie is enough. In fact some of your questions have already been answered in SW comics and force guides. What made KotORs great was freedom of choice between LS and DS and how the game world reacted or even changed depending on the choices. The problem with prequels is they have to fit in already established universe and cannot stray away from canon. For example let's take Deus Ex that also prides itself on non-linear system. Deus Ex Human Revolution (prequel to Deus Ex 1) is a good game in its own right, but it could've been so much more. It had to sacrifice much of series trademark freedom of choice: you basically work for the same faction the whole game and at the end you LITERALLY push one of the "ending buttons", not to mention the endings themselves almost don't differ from each other, all because of the constrains preset by canon - the story has to continue in Deus Ex 1 which makes Deus Ex HR somewhat meaningless. I don't want the same to happen to KotOR. If there's gonna be a preqel story, it's better off being a book or a movie.

Can't speak for "the people" or the devs here, but "an old PC" is a very vague definition. It all comes down to hardware specifics.

Think of the sengoku era, which is common theme for many games. Matchlock guns are just starting to spread and majority are still using katanas, spears and bows. At the battle of Nagashino Nobunaga's matchlock corps turned the tide by a annihilating Tokugawa cavalery (which held the reputation of undefeatable), but majority of the battle was still fought was with steel wepons, since the matchlocks were not as reliable yet. There was still plenty of demand for samurai heroism on the field of battle. So as long as they are in moderation, guns do not harm the gameworld, but rather add to it.

I'm rather sure people here are using PCs, not smartphones or tablets to view this forum. PoE does not require high spec machine, therefore unless PC is really old, it should run PoE just fine. There is no need for a console port. If you want to play PoE comfortably sitting on the couch in front of TV then just connect your PC to your TV, it's not really an issue nowadays.

You are totally missing the point here. Adjustable random loot doesn't take away challege from the game, it just drops equipment for classes currently in the party more frequently (how many times do I have to repeat that?) It doen't mean premium- grade equipment is droping left and right, If the game loses it's challenge just because the party is adequately equiped, the overall balance has to be tweaked, not the loot system.

Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal

For the reasons I mentioned above, obviously. Let's not make it go full-circle again, please? No, I don't. If I need the staff in question to the point of not being able to live without it, I'll just cheat myself some money and be done with it instead of wasting time on the lottery. Or maybe ,AGAIN, my loot drops are adjusted if favor of my party classes (again, doesn't mean drops for classes outside of party do not happen, they are just less frequent), my party is decently equiped and I sell the stuff because I do not need it, not because my eqipment is poor and I deperately need funds for an upgrade. I do not remeber EXP ever being in short supply. We are getting totally off-topic here, but quests are not played for EXP. They are played for rewards in form of items, various bonuses, story advancement or simply thrills. There is no point robbing mage's house if doen't have anything you need.

That's a little too vague, don't you think?

What's wrong with that system is it just becomes a store mechanic with radomness factor attached. You are better off going to an actual magic store and buy a good staff then hunt mages and try to win a lottery. Not to mention non-mage players will avoid mage-related quests and areas because rewards are useless. Now what if that crooked mage happened to have a buch of enchanted equipment, usable by non-mages? And we are back to the mechanis I proposed.

Call me dreamer or, maybe, stupid, but drop system you describing must be somewhat depending on logic. If I went into famous warrior's tomb, opened his coffin and found there mage's staff just because I'm a mage and need items like this, it would seem wrong to me. Logically. upd: as there already was said here, random drop's good for money, potions and low quality crappy things of all sorts, but really valuable stuff should be placed manually. @YR Wouldn't it be weirder if you opened that coffin and found nothing but bunch of potions. Is it even healthy? Considering the age of the tomb, they should be wayyyyy past the expiration date Seriously mate, we were taking about random drop mechanics, not treusure in general. Nobody is rejecting the placed drops, which could be adjusted too btw. For example, during the course of DA2 Legacy Hawke gained warden equipment, based on his/her class along with the seal key adjusted in a same way.

@Neo You should read more carefully. I said substracting from AC and THOAC is actually a good thing according to AD&D 2nd Edition rules and nothing about +5 equipment mechanics. You are preaching to choir, mate. @Hunter You should read more carefully too. I repeat that it does not have to be "drop nothing but swords" just an adjustment a roll to gain "swords" more frequently if you have "a party of sword users". I have no idea what they are doing over there now to be honest. I've been trying to put the whole TOR expirience behind me like some kind of trauma.

My party usually consists of multiple characters of the same class - dps mage, healer mage, dps warrior, tank warrior etc If we are talkng about loot system in general, let's say you are playing TOR MMO (which always comes up when someone needs a bad example) and you've been preparing and organising a big raid for week. Now the raid finally happens, after the couple of hours of "blood, sweat and tears" (not to mention preparation process) it's finally over and you are left with nothing, cause the item you were aiming for did not drop and if it did someone else of 16 people got it. You are left where you started, just more frustrated. A truly GOOD system will get the player exactly what he needs. Doesn't need to be a 100% drop, but the roll has to be adjusted in favor of the items usable by party. A high level dragon would be an end-game encouner (most of the time optional even). By that time I would have my party suitably equipped and leveled to deal with it. Introducing a new character with low level and poor equipment (substracting from AC and THOAC is actually a good thing according to AD&D 2nd Edition rules btw) at this point makes little sense. It's been done occasionally though, but the games in question usually offered a quick way to bring character up to speed - rings with 10x XP multiplier, increased droprate etc. Otherwise the character would just stay out of the loop.

The obvious problem with random loot is you often get stuff you don't need. Mage doesn't need bows or heavy armor. System has to perform party checks and give priority rolls to gear that may be useful instead of just throwing completely random stuff at player.

I hope they don't turn it into another one "kill all enemies, find the floor keys, get to the bottom and defeat boss". Each level of the dungeon has to be distict. It does not have to be unique, but there has to be a reason for each floor to exist besides making the dungeon larger. There should be things to do in the megadungeon other then killing enemies and searching for keys. And finally I'd like the megadungeon to have a purpose other then simply single "bonus dungeon adventure". It probably can't be offered too large of a role in PoE world, but it would be nice to see it expand beyond "just a very big dungeon out there".

I use console to primarily deal with bugs - fixing broken plot flags, nps not showing up, characters getting stuck. RPGs nowadays are complex and some of the issues are never addrresed in patches, like Dragon Age 2, which Bioware just gave up on fixing. Debug console should definitely remain in vanilla PoE upon release.

Bioware tried to appeal to "majority" with Mass Effect 3 and look where it got them. Making RPGs accesable to new players in order to expand the fanbase is one thing, but trying to appease casual gamers is a whole another matter. Downgrading to casual level never worked out favorably for RPGs. It's hurting the quality of the product, alienates core audience and casual players don't care in the end anyway. They can be lured by nice graphics and big explosions, but then Battlefield 2001 or Crysis 99 is announced with nicer graphics and bigger explosions. all casual players are immideatly placing preorders, joining the hype and abandoning whatever RPG they were playing for 5 minutes, writing on their facebooks or whatever how awful that casual RPG was (and they are right in this case) and how they'll never waste money (if they even bought it in the first place) on another one again and can't wait for Battlefield 2001 or Crysis 99. You clearly are not famillar with the indepent scene. Just becease studio is independent, it doesn't apply that they are amateurs. You'd be suprised how many skilled people are out there in addition to "ex"pros. I'm not sure if giving other studios a plug is allowed on this forum, so the simplest way for you to become familliar with the scene is to check out kickstarter game projects http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=12&sort=most_funded other than PoE and TToN. And yet another suprise: some of the project descriptons come dangerously close (not close enough, though) to the dream RPG I've been talking about, they've been fully funded and their budgets don't look like a small cup of coffee.

Just recieved my pledge back... They were so close. There simply was not enough exposure.

Didn't get the meaning here... Sounds like shooters. We are discussing RPGs and we previosly agreed that Diablo, it's clones and MMOs don't belong in that category. If RPG developers can't even statisfy one passionate fan of the core audience, how can they statisfy millions? My demands are hardly unique in this topic (you DID read it, right?) and completely reasonable. True branching storylines have been done for years in VN/RPG hybrids, just not in pure RPGs. Your opposition to the concept is rather confusing. Just watch some movies if you are stasfied with decent linear storylines, there is no need to ruin branching storyline RPG concept. No, they don't: Kingdoms of Amalur, Two Worlds, Risen... I talked about Skyrim in different context (once again back to my first post): Let's take Skyrim for example. You can be thane of every hold and head of every guild. "Realistically" that can't happen. What if you could choose only one home and one career? What if guild story arcs were more polished with their own twists and turns and friends/love interests and took about 10 hours to complete? Not talking Skyrim-specific here (just took it as an example, since most people probably played it), but that's the kind of RPG I want to see: a game with a branching storylines that lead to different places, not just to one same final boss. Doesn't even need to be a good vs evil type of thing. Life as swordsman/soldier would be different from life as a mage/scholar - the people in your immidiate circle, the things that you do and want to do would be different. Not just doing an origin story, throwing you in the world, role-playing a couple of converstions and running to defeat the "final boss". Careers of the swordsman and the mage have to be totally different stories and totally different expiriences. TOR mmo attempted to do it, but it is a very bad example since aside from picking your faction and career at char setup, it still followed "from point A to point B" formula, but true branching storyline is impossible with mmos anyway. Couldn't be further from the truth. For the sake of argument, lets say you played Super Mario Brothers (I have not followed Mario since N64, so we are talking fictional world here) as a kid on NES and you loved that game. Nintendo kept throwing remakes with extra levels, improved graphics etc at you and you were happy for a time. But as you grow up sooner or later you are gonna get bored. Nintendo keeps throwing spin-offs at you with different characters like Wario and supposedly different stories, but you go "Jeez, it's like I'm playing the same game every time, isn't there another one out there?" You switch to Sonic series and after a while realise that SEGA is doing the same thing. And now you either keep paying them (as you suggest to us) your hard earned money and they keep repeating the same mistakes, cause they get payed and they don't care OR you stop being their cash cow, go to their forums and tell them exactly what you want and stop paying them (not talking about myself and Osidian here, since they are one of the few pro developers I still support) until they smarten up, because new delepoers are slowly poping up, who have the right idea that gaming has to change, to evolve and maybe you start supporting them. People DO change with the times and gaming does too.

Again, that's exactly my point. Sadly, most of the developers (even japanese ones) nowadays seem convinced that this is the right RPG formula. They could not be further from the truth. And I'm pretty sure I've played them all since these are the only kind I play nowadays. However, as wrote in my first post, they have non-linear, but not true branching stories. You still follow more-or-less the same path, no matter your decisions, from the biginning to one same final boss or crisis point. Along the way some of the events may change, but you are still generally going from point A to point B. And here we go full-circle back to my first post: I want to see a game with a branching storylines that lead to different places, not just to one same final boss. Doesn't even need to be a good vs evil type of thing. Life as swordsman/soldier would be different from life as a mage/scholar - the people in your immidiate circle, the things that you do and want to do would be different. Not just doing an origin story, throwing you in the world, role-playing a couple of converstions and running to defeat the "final boss". Careers of the swordsman and the mage have to be totally different stories and totally different expiriences. TOR mmo attempted to do it, but it is a very bad example since aside from picking your faction and career at char setup, it still followed "from point A to point B" formula, but true branching storyline is impossible with mmos anyway. I've been criticising it, actually. Well, they've already lost one. If RPG developers stick to the same old, sooner or later thay are going to lose others. The same formula with improved graphics won't work forever especially with all the competion on the market, including indie devs, some of which can literally give those "pros" a run for their money.

Yes and most of those classics have been ruined forever, never getting a proper re-release. I would not consider Square Enix, Atlus, SEGA and Konami "small-time"...