AcornArmy

I feel like I-- like we all-- have been patient. But it's been four weeks since the poorly-phrased "Coming Soon" message was put up, and Obsidian can't even be relied upon to give us a clearer estimate of when the patch will be out, much less put up the patch itself. So, given these points, I've decided: screw the Patch, screw Obsidian, screw LucasArts, and screw KotOR II. I won't be finishing the game, and I won't be wasting my money on KotOR III, should it ever be developed by Obsidian and published by LA. That said, I feel much better for having made this decision, as if the echo of a hollowness in the Force had just filled up within me. I think I've made the right choice, here. Much better at this point to just cut my losses and move on, rather than continue to dwell on my disappointment. Farewell.

Well, here's one from 3 days ago. There may be other posts made by Developers this week, but if so, I'm not sure where they would be.

You may be right about that. It's the only explanation for this extended wait that really makes sense. There are posts by Developers here, and at least one official announcement on the LucasArts forum, that the patch had been sent to LucasArts and was going through Q&A, so we know that the patch DID at least make it there, and it's probably done with Q&A by now. Since it hasn't been released yet, I think it's a safe bet that more work is being done on it. On the bright side, from the Developer posts this week, it sounds as if they think it'll be finished... soon.

Myself, I'd love the option of buying an Expansion Pack, but, as has already been mentioned, I doubt that Obsidian has the time to create one right now. A content patch would be even better, for PC users if not Xbox users. This would also make up, to my mind, for the three-month longer wait that PC users had to endure before we could play the game. Although, while I know that Xbox Live users can get content upgrades-- this was done with the Yavin IV station in KotOR I, which came with the PC version but not the Xbox version-- to my knowledge, KotOR II for the Xbox is not Xbox Live enabled. So, Xbox users would really be SOL there... but you could also consider that to be the price of getting games months earlier, beside the fact that static content is one of the major drawbacks to playing games on a console. I tend to look at it as a choice one makes when one decides to play games on a console rather than on a PC, but there will undoubtedly be a lot of ill will from Xbox users, regardless. In my opinion, though, the only truly likely way that we'll ever see the un-added content of KotOR II is if a modder scrapes all the pieces together from the unused code already in the game, and makes a player mod of it. It would be great of Obsidian to lend support to players who are willing to do this, as Bioware did with the Baldurdash mods of Baldur's Gate II, but with LA's position on player mods, I don't think we can necessarily count on Obsidian's active support. Not that I blame Obsidian; I'm sure that, like most programmers, they have an almost obsessive-compulsive need to make sure their software is as good as it can be. LucasArts owns the rights and writes the checks, however, so the decision is really up to them.

GDC I expect. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That was more of a desperate, plaintive rhetorical question than a serious one, but thanks for answering anyway. I find that sometimes it's a relief to express frustration, rather than hold it in and let it fester into bitterness.

I know it's only been three weeks, but the wait seems interminable. So, in the words of the late, great Chris Farley, I have to ask, "Sweet mother of God! What is the hold-up??"

I think this may be due more to an ATI driver issue than Obsidian's programming. My PC is quite a bit less butch than yours and I have -no- framerate problems whatsoever on Dantooine. I'm using: Athlon 1.4 Ghz Thunderbird Biostar M7MIA-R motherboard (AMD 761 chipset) ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, 128MB 512MB DDR + 256MB DDR RAM With the ATI Catalyst 4.12 drivers. So the only things that I can think of that might cause such a difference are either graphics driver problems(depending on which drivers you're using, you didn't mention them) or, possibly, the 512MB of PC RAM instead of the two 256MB-- but the RAM seems less likely, with all of the other hardware upgrades on your PC.

Haven't finished the game yet, but these are the bugs that I've seen so far(not including the occasional weird graphic bug, of course): 1) Someone has already mentioned the irritating quality of certain armor which causes some of their bonuses not to stack; i.e. if you add a Ballistic Overlay to certain Mandolorian armors which already have protections against Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing attacks, the protection from the Ballistic Overlay will not stack with the protections that are already part of the armor. This bug has already been mentioned, but I thought I'd add that, logically, I can see no reason for the protections not to stack. If you take a piece of metal that will protect you from a knife, and then add another piece of metal to it which will also protect you from a knife, then the resulting object is equal in strength to both of its component pieces. 2) In addition to this, it also seems that Keen bonuses don't stack. If you take a weapon with a 19-20 Critical Threat range, add a Keen bonus to it to make the Crit. Threat range 17-20, then add another Keen upgrade, the weapon will still show a Crit. Threat range of 17-20. I can understand why the developers might intentionally prevent Keen bonuses from stacking, since a lightsaber can get to be pretty disgusting with the right upgrades, but Keen bonuses DID stack in the original KOTOR, so I thought I'd mention it. WARNING: The next two bugs contain SPOILERS. 3) When you complete the Skill task for Kreia, in which she supposedly increases both your lowest and your highest skills as a reward, this doesn't happen. You still get the Force increase and the XP, but not the skill increases. 4) I'm not certain that this is a bug, but it seems like it might be, so I thought I'd mention it. On Onderon, if you have the Handmaiden with you, there seems to be a bug with her influence increasing. There are two best Light Side choices to give your two visas to: Telryn and her children, and the Republic agent. When you give the first visa to either of them, the Handmaiden will make a comment and your Influence with her will increase. When you give the second visa to the other person, though, the Handmaiden will make the comment, but not give you the Influence increase. For example, I give the first visa to Telryn, and get the compliment and Influence increase from the Handmaiden. Then I give the second visa to the Republic agent, and she still makes the comment, but there's no Influence increase. The same thing will happen if you give the first visa to the Republic agent, and then second to Telryn; you'll gain Influence with the first visa, but none with the second. EDIT: Heh, I found out what the problem was with the Handmaiden's Influence, thanks to the damned-handy KOTOR Saved Game Editor. Later on, on Dantooine, she wasn't gaining Influence when she was supposed to, either, and I started to become concerned that she was bugged. So, I downloaded the Editor, and discovered that she was already at 100. Oops. In my defense, though, I had no way of knowing that, since she still refuses to answer some of my questions with "Influence: Failure" as the given reason. Guess I'll have to kick her ass in training again first, or something.

Out of curiousity, is anyone here working on an HK-Factory mod? I don't know anything about modding, so I don't know how much of the original factory code is still in the game, but if Obsidian and LA aren't going to add it back into the game with a patch, then it'd be great to know there's a player mod for it somewhere.

I'd already read some of the complaints of Xbox users while waiting for a PC version to come out, which dampened my enthusiasm to play the game a bit. I didn't get the PC version until after the Patch announcement had been made, so I decided to wait for the patch(which was supposedly "coming soon") to play the game for the first time. I loved the original KotOR, you see, and some of what I've read about KotOR II made me think that I might not enjoy the sequel nearly as much as the original, mostly due to technical problems. If waiting for the patch to come out will allow me to play the game without going through all the frustration and disappointment that so many other people seem to have endured-- and thereby allow me to enjoy the game as much as possible-- then I feel like the wait is worth it. I'd rather not have my love of KotOR be tarnished by the memory of a sequel whose technical problems annoyed the hell out of me. I'm already trying to get over the disappointment that the PC version doesn't have any extra content to make up for PC users' longer wait, even though the first game had some, and the previews and articles leading up to KotOR II said that it would, as well.

There have been a lot of extremely pessimistic and snide comments so far about the up-coming patch, which I think is unfair since we have no idea yet what the patch will contain and how the game will run after the patch has been applied. That said, I'm becoming somewhat impatient for the patch to finally be completed, because it's been two weeks now since it was announced and I've been holding off playing the KotOR 2 for the first time until the patch was released. I've waited quite a while to play the game already, so I was prepared to wait a little longer in the hope that a patched version would be much more enjoyable(since I'd read some of the complaints that people had had with the game so far). I'm running out of patience, however, so it'd be nice if Obsidian could make with the patch, already.

A Developer answered some questions in the PC forums, and this was his answer to a question about additional content on the PC: "I don't believe there will be bonus material. The timeline we were given to finish the PC version is pretty short and does not include time for making changes to the interface other than fixing any bugs QA finds." The full post is in the "Questions to Devs - PC Style" thread. I'm a PC user myself, and the belief that there would be added content in the PC release was the only thing that really made the two-month wait worthwhile, for me. This news came as quite a disappointment. This, combined with what I've heard of the Xbox version of KoTOR II, is starting to make me think that Obsidian may have taken a truly great game, and brilliant starting material, and turned it into a sequel that's just... pretty good. The game seems completely playable, but I'm afraid that the PC version, when I can finally play it, will turn out to not be anything special. Considering how good the original game was, that's quite a drop in expectations of quality.

I didn't mind the two-month wait so much when I thought that there would be extra content on the PC version, like there was in KoTOR 1. In my opinion, something like the Yavin IV station would make up for the delay. Yavin IV certainly added quite a bit to the original game, and if something comparably valuable were added in KoTOR II, I thought it would be worth a shortish wait. Apparently, though, there won't be anything like that with KoTOR II. The delay is being used on bug fixes and such. While fewer bugs will surely be a pleasant addition to the game, I have to admit to that I'm already sorely disappointed with the game now, and I haven't even played it yet. I've seen reviews of the Xbox version, and, although most of the problems with it seem to be technical ones which shouldn't occur in the PC release, a universal complaint seems to be a disappointing ending. I don't know any details, but what I've heard doesn't bode well. That, combined with the two months of waiting, combined with the let-down of finding out that this time isn't being spent on adding extra content to the game, but rather on fixing bugs which by all rights should have already been found and corrected before the Xbox version went gold, has brought me to the point where I'm no longer nearly so eager to play this game as I was a few weeks ago. I can't help but think that Bioware wouldn't have let the fans down like this if the development were in their hands, and I hope that Obsidian does more justice to the NWN sequel than they seem to have done with KoTOR's.