Gromnir

"Yes, your character's capabilities increase - at the same level that your opponent's capabilites do. The oft-cited analogy of a treadmill is accurate." hardly. a typical low level mage has a very small spell repertoire. the higher level mage is not limited to sleep or magic missile as his only combat spells. he might have mind dominating spells or fireballs or lightning bolts or poison cloud type stuff... and he will have an opportunity to use those spells in the appropriate situations. that low level mage's party mates is equally limited in their chosen classes. a fighter in d&d may be able to use all martial weapons at level 1, but he can only use basic vanilla attacks with each o' those weapons.... no bull rushes or whirlwind attacks or rapid shots. heck, even if your 1st level fighter does have power attack chances is he ain't gonna use it much, 'cause his bab sucks so bad. the fact that your enemies get tougher as your character levels is a pointless observation. 'course the enemies get tougher... they has to get tougher if game is gonna continue to be challenging and fun. however, leveling for the pc inevitably results in more options for the pc (both in terms of character development and viable tactics) for the character... and more options (if balanced,) is always a good thing. HA! Good Fun!

people like to level. we can take or leave, but if Gromnir were designing a crpg rule system we would have quick leveling... lots of levelling. 'course, there is no reason why a 20th level character need be particularly powerful. a rabid wolf could be a 10th level encounter if that is what you wants. a dragon might be a 100th level encounter. it not matter, but the point is that the you can has as many or as few levels as you wish... the main difficulty would be making such a fast level-up experience rewarding and balanced. d&d is not the only system. d&d has established that a 20th level character is extremely powerful. some demon lords gots CRs in the low 20s. d&d is a crappy system for a crpg in part 'cause it takes so few levels to become Superman in Chainmail. HA! Good Fun!

rpg codex? move this community to codex? posting at codex is like swimming in a big city public pool. little kids not recognize how dirty and filthy such pools is... they not mind. they splash 'bout like happy little maniacs. adults, on the other hand, can't help but cringe at the thought of all those kids pissing themselves in those communal waters

you is nuts... honest. interplay and fergie had to deal with wotc for years... and you think bio is an issue? ask josh 'bout wotc interference with ip... hilarious. HA! is in obsidian's best interest to have an amicable relationship with their partners, but if you honestly think that bio and la is running the boards then you is crazier than we thought. nuts. you is trying to imagine problems for fergie. why not simply take his posts at face value? fergie thinks the fans is too unruly... too rude... and he blames obsidian silence on those fans. 'course it ain't like we ever saw much obsidian/fan dialogue on this board so it sounds like cheap rationalization to Gromnir... even so, your wacky conspiracy theories require us to ignore fergie's explanations and accept yours... and how likely is that? HA! Good Fun!

what the hell does that have to do with the boards? surely you ain't suggesting that bio or lucas is jamming fergie up over the boards. HA! Good Fun!

Correlation, causation, etc. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> agreed. causality is almost completely lacking. we must accept that it is difficult to form a causal chain 'tween troika's general arrogance, their belligerent attitude towards fans, and their ultimate demise. nevertheless, we will admit that such behaviors made us far less sorry to see them fail. ... *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

so, fergie is taking his ball and going home? am disappointed. am not too surprised, but am disappointed even so... you know, the truth of the matter is that we probably wouldn't/won't miss these boards... or fergie's complaining

witch-hunt is not, nor has it ever been, simply a term used to suggest a process for the finding of blame. if is not used to describe the hunting of witches and warlocks, then it gots a very different meaning... is a tool of persecution. ... and you is kinda silly if you actually believe that 1) fergie simply holds the purse strings at obsidian, and 2) the guy who holds the purse strings cannot be blamed for shortcomings of projects. these points should be self evident to 99% of folks who read this board, so we not feel any great need to respond further... 'less we get actual honest sounding questions on the issues. we gots an urge to makes an analogy to ownership/management of professional sports teams, but we know that such sports analogies tend to be useless with the present demographics on a crpg development board. "Because of the politics of business the team atmosphere on a project- any project, not just KotOR II- can't always turn out to be the dream team you might want it to be. And when it's not- things can get ugly. " huh? maybe you reread that. in any event, we not expect or want a dream team. will always be some writers who is better than others. will be some programmers who is better than others. will be qa guys who is better than others. is no excuse for incompetence. regardless, the thing 'bout a team is that when it works as it should, the results is gonna be greater than the sum of the parts would suggest... the level o' contribution of the least capable/able members is raised and the most profficient members production does not suffer. no game development house we know of is really a dream team... and things is not doomed to ugliness 'cause of it. was iwd a dream team? was iwd a good situation for any development team? iwd were a short development cycle and the development team included a number of first-time or largely inexperienced developers. given just how little time and resources they had for that game, Gromnir was very impressed with the final product. the writing and dialogue in iwd (though having less of it than bg1,) were actually superior to bg1. biggest problem with iwd is that it were too successful... and fergie sacrificed other potential products in an attempt to get lucky with another iwd kinda game.. though we understand why he attempted to do so. HA! Good Fun!

am thinking that you misunderstand... a couple things actually. for the most part we liked kotor2... is not like we is looking to blame somebody for the failure of the game... 'cause it were not a failure as far as we is concerned. however, there were a number of characters that was underdeveloped and there was some that had habitually BAD dialogue. if all was bad then we could simply accept that obsidian/bis folks can't write. if you not got writing talent, then you can't write good dialogue. however, some of the kotor2 dialogues and characters was very good. if some is good and some is bad then that means that the good writers did not help their fellows out... which is, in our experience, unforgivable. maybe they not have enough time or maybe they simply not have the inclination to help, but regardless, there were a big gap 'tweens the good and bad writing in kotor2. the question of who is ultimately to blame does not concern us... though according to your reasoning we suspect that uncle fergie is actually where the buck stops. *shrug* also, we not think you know what the meaning o' witch-hunt is. HA! Good Fun!

but she has all the best lines in the game. for that reason alone she is worth keeping 'round as long as possible. ... is worth noting that some of the dialogue and characters in kotor2 is atrocious.... which means that some of the writing in kotor2 was atrocious. the less talented writers no doubt did their bestest, and we not blame them for kotor2's shortcomings. is the good writers who worked on kotor2 who is to blame. is the faults of the good writers who no doubt saw the shortcomings in their fellow's work and did not help or criticize when needed to make kotor2 uniformly good. when bad writers write badly it is cause for sadness, but when good writers allow bad writing to remain in their work... that is unforgivable. the talented writers at bis/obsidian owe their fans their best effort, but they also owe their co-workers guidance and support. just something to consider. HA! Good Fun!

People that realized the BAB is the same for all classes and combat on itself is a joke? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> the classes and skills is broken 'nuff such that we not need all this hyperbole. look in one of those "how did you build your character" threads and show us where somebody honestly started off their character with an 18 int and put every available point into int thereafter. as we said, the classes IS broken, but the silly suggestions we is seeing here is taking away from your point rather than bolstering. HA! Good Fun!

is eight skills... and some of them is cross-skills... even for a sentinel/watchman. is possible that if you put lots of points into int, and then add int at 4/8/12/etc, you might max out all skills by level 30... maybe. but it sure wouldn't be done "*easily*" and who in god's name would do such a thing anyway? however, if game were balanced, such a thing would not be such a ridiculous notion. regardless, we does agree that the other classes should be balanced better, but as we said already, that is another issue altogether. HA! Good Fun!

am still gnashing our teeth when we recall having purchased nwn. were a very buggy game for us. turned out that 'bout half of our bug problems were tied to incompatibility issues 'tween our ati card/drivers and the game engine. pc version of kotor were a pretty solid game as far as bugs went. sure, there were some problems, but they weren't too bad... 'less you had an ati 9600 card. anybody took a look at the tech support board for kotor2? poor ati owners get it in the tuckus again. ok, now we recognize that ati drivers seems to have lots of issues with non-bioware games too... is the reason we went back toi nvidia cards 'bout a year ago. we also realize that obsidian developed kotor2. however, one would think that the biowarians woulda' gone out of their way to show their fellow canucks a little love, no? just seems to be something 'bout games with a bio engine and ati cards/drivers... is like bio hates ati or something... or vice versa maybe. no doubt there is some reasonable explanation for the kanadian incompatibility issues... but we cannot help but imagine that ati's cfo ran down dr. ray's dog with his ferrari (equipped with government approved snow chains

"This bug is crippling to the game because all bloody item drops in this game are random so you have to create stuff to be sure you get good equipment." actually, the fact that you can use your npc

well, no doubt "Darth______" will start up a favorite lightsabre color poll in a few minutes and then you can have a stroke. every game board has at least a few of these things... ain't any worse than the "Demogorgon v. Asmodeus" threads we has suffered through in the past. HA! Good Fun!

don't be too envious. Gromnir has tile in his own crappy kitchen... but if you got 'round 800k burning a hole in your pocket and you wanna move down into the valley, let us know... HA! Good Fun!

did combat actually seem easier than it were in kotor? and we didn't think that were possible. heck, we didn't even cheat ourself up to level 50 to complete the game. oh well. HA! Good Fun!

we never denied that you can find everything, but given the vast numbers of possible stuff available, the likelihood of you actually finding what you want is not all that great. again, the very fact that this stuff IS random makes likelihood of getting the lightsabre and armour and ranged item upgrades you want is highly unlikely. thanks anyway... ace. HA! Good Fun!

"You 8 level difference friend has not played a lvl 50 character. You 8 level difference friend has not seen the DRASTIC difference between the power of a lvl 50 versus the power of a lvl 25. Your 8 level difference friend therefor hasn't been able to observe that enemies that once took 100 damage to kill, now eat 200 before falling. "But why have this discussion with someone who doesn't even own the game?" exactly. Gromnir doesn't have the game. we did play it though and we noticed no scaling. also, we does have actual numeric feedback from somebody who does own the game and they has noted that with REASONABLE level differentials, there is no scaling of enemy bab and saves... you just got gut... and we not have much faith in your gut. "But, again, you don't own the game," again, lord knows how that is relevant. we played the game... and the issue of what is and is not cheating is hardly an issue specific to tsl owners, is it... though maybe you got some bizarre reasons why ownership is so important. is cheating but nobody gets hurt. "There's nothing "wise" about choosing your skills. You only need X amount in each skill to unlock the benefits, and you can easily attain those key numbers without getting to level 50, 40 or even 30." bs... and you know it. is some encounters where you need very high persuade or computer or repair or numbers or other skills... but you can explain away your cheating all you want. as we said, only you is getting hurt, so no harm. HA! Good Fun!

"That's a big negative on that one." rrrrriiiiigggghhhhhtttt. 'cause Gromnir found multiple biorestorative underlays v and we found lots of expert fencing emitters and there were improved beam gems in ever cannok gullet. HA! and the stores... yeah... other than the one woman on dantooine (and if you go to her early in the game she has naught but low end stuff,) most stores had two or three upgrade items at most. we know the 1007 is random, but there just ain't no way you found so much stuff in-game that the work bench weren't useful. HA! Good Fun

not really. it had more to do with wanting to use the characters in my party more often that, otherwise, would have just sat on the ebon hawk. i rarely ever used bao-dur or t3 off the ebon hawk, but because their skill came in handy, i actually brought them along on a couple of missions. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I agree. This is an issue of PC skill use versus party use. If you "fix" the workbench and lab station to use only the PC's skills, you make the PC's skill points more valuable and the Sentinel more powerful. However, this also makes some party members who have skills as one of their strengths, like Bao Dur, less useful. The more you focus on the PC's skills, the more party members with good skills get marginalized. It's a Me vs. We issue, PC class differentiation vs. party member usefulness. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> anybody else feels like they is in the twilight zone? the board has gotten wacky the last few days. the obsidian developers noted numerous times during kotor development that they were attempting to make pc skills more useful... 'cause the party dynamic and limited number of available skills in kotor meant that the only skill that were really worth taking in kotor were persuade. in kotor you could tank intelligence and spend you single skill point on persuade and never miss a single thing in the game (save for upgrading hk-47 and using one computer console.) ... this is just getting weird. is like the last year never happened. HA! Good Fun!

"There is a significant difference, whether your 8 level difference friend sees it or not. " ah, so this is a gut level thing from you. our friend actually checked the feedback screenie to observe if enemy bab or saves had improved... and they did not. is much more accurate a measure we would say, but we has not as yet verified. "Wow how is it cheating?" in the same way that using console cheats to increase level or gold or stats is cheating... is no different. 'course, as we noted already, is a sp game and only person you cheat is self. HA! Good Fun! p.s. we know that some of the munckins may not have noticed, but there is more to this game than combat... and being level 50 kinda makes having to be choosing skills wisely a pointless endeavor.

is much less munchkin if you can only use workbench based on pc skills. the stuff you can make on workbench is stuff that rarely shows up in stores and is almost never found in 1007 caches. is game hard w/o workbench? 'course not, but coming from the guy that wanted differentiated bab tables to makes the classes more individualized, we cannot see how you is managing to pull yet another 180 on a similar issue that enhances and encourages diversity... especially since the way it is in game now is a mistake. some folks is stranger than strange. HA! Good Fun! p.s. worst argument seen this week: the game is so unbalanced that doing anything to fix balance problems should be ignored.

a major difference is 'cause the game were intentionally balanced with the notion that party members would and could disarm mines and open locks... but the 1007 you can get from a workbench were added into game and balanced with the notion that only the pc would be able to create. you not getting this whole balance thing, is you?