My New Giant List of Suggestions

[Shdy314]

All the arguments about strength checks with a lightsaber are completely fallacious because the saber's ability to cut is not dependent on strength at all. Comparing a saber cutting through anything to an axe trying to break down a steel door is ... weak.

I came up with a few ways to make security viable without silly arbitrary gameplay restrictions on lightsabers.

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=727&st=0

It also is not likely that anyone would screw up and destroy the whole lockbox. Cutting with the LS doesn't require fancy wrist flicks. You just ignite the saber hold the tip to the lock and voila.

No one bashed your idea of getting rid of the "you must gather your party." I was the only one to mention it and all I said was it might be necessary for some reason I don't know and it's realistic you can't just ditch some party member. It wouldn't have been so annoying if NPCs didn't sometimes stop following you or do stupid things. Id much rather THAT be fixed than the area transition.

[Opus131]

and all I said was it might be necessary for some reason I don't know and it's realistic you can't just ditch some party member.

You are not ditching anybody, they are just lagging behind not far form you, you defenatly don't need to wait for them to cross a stupid door, how realistic would that be ?!?

 

It's not like they don't know where you are going, stop threating your NPCs like children...

[Shdy314]

and all I said was it might be necessary for some reason I don't know and it's realistic you can't just ditch some party member.

You are not ditching anybody, they are just lagging behind not far form you, you defenatly don't need to wait for them to cross a stupid door, how realistic would that be ?!?

 

It's not like they don't know where you are going, stop threating your NPCs like children...

As soon as they stop acting like little kids. Lagging behind the group. They need leashes. They start running towards a mine Ill give it a sharp tug. And Mission is a child.

[Shdy314]

Your "Giant list of suggestions" is easily the largest post Ive ever seen in a forum lol. Why did you write your post in thesis format? lol...The time it took a dev to read your post, was time that could have been spent on the game.

You have never read a post by Saberist then.

[sniggy]

hmm. here's a suggestion:

 

how about summing up our suggestions / ideas / comments in the forum into single threads (such as: lightsaber-thread, party members-thread etc). all side-comments or responses should be left out in those threads.

 

that way, the dev crew can just skim through these summaries instead of wasting valuable development time here on threads that just grow bigger and bigger...

 

so... are you a DEV reading this right now? what the hell are you doing??? go back to work! develop! SHOO! SHOO! B)

[tripleRRR]

Um, don't we want them to read our suggestiongs?

 

 

TripleRRR

[lordcecil]

I forgot to add a moderately important (and probably too late to fix if it hasn't been done so already) point about the light side. So, here is my additional point

 

 

-Light side Jedi in KOTOR are a bunch of sissies ! Obviously you kill a whole lot of dudes, but dialogue is sooo corny and lame it hurts. Lets take a look at Luke in RotJ, he was pretty much a badass. He strolled into Jabba's palace with full confidence knowing that he'd would politely ask for them to be freed once, and if that didn't happen he would unleash a monster can o whoop ass. Having strolled into town with absolutely no bubble gum he proceeded to kill every person in his path and then he turned the barge's cannon onto itself for more wanton destruction.

 

I think my biggest complaint with the light side was just the dialogue, especially with Bastilla / Carth, it was just sooo corny that it hurt at times. The chance is issue an ultamatum that DOESN'T result in automatic combat would be nice. Typically speaking if you say "do it or we're gonna rumble" its just fightin words.

 

So in summary, make the light side less cheezy and allow for more badassness. Luke was definately not afraid to show emotion and have passion.

[Cord]

-Being able to open every chest and unlock every door with a lightsaber is silly from a game perspective. If in BG2 you could do that with your Paladin's sword of godly awesomeness +5 (forget what that thing was called...) that would be just plain rediculous.

 

It is silly, but it would get rather frustrating if you went deep into an area without a character that can pick locks and then found yourself blocked by a couple of locked doors/chests you couldn't bash open. The current system avoids this frustration while providing a motivation for players to act in a realistic manner most of the time. (i.e. Save time by being/bringing a scoundrel to pick locks.) Sure, this system isn't the most realistic one possible, but it's the lesser of several evils. Try NWN out to see how useless lock-picking is there. A magic missile spell or two opens anything in the game. (And keeps you from getting fried by traps at the same time!)

 

Plasma nades / thermal detonators are still to expensive. When your buying Fett body armor, fancy guns, high tech peripherals, and saving 45k for crystals your not going to spend 2000 on a single use grenade (TD). I didn't say make it cheap, just cheaper.

 

I think the idea was to force players to use just the grenades they find. If you're good at getting by without using grenades, you can sell some to buy body armor, crystals, etc.. Lowering the price would penalize some players and reward others. It's a tradeoff. Don't just assume everyone plays the game the same way you do.

 

Now I don't know much about programming (yet) but I think the same applies to you. Your 'local' argument doesn't really make any sense.

 

One of my BSC's is in CPSC actually. Let me try to explain this better for you. You can't load every model in the game into memory at the same time without having rather restrictive system requirements or a very simple game. The obvious solution is not to load everything. True, some models (e.g. player models) have to be available at all times. (Sometimes these are called global models) However, most other models (e.g. the buildings in Taris) only have to be around in one level at a time. (i.e. local models) You have to make sure that the memory used by local+global models never exceeds the system memory available. (Paging to disk would be brutal even on a PC with a nice fast RAID, let alone the crappy drive that comes with Xbox's!) This means that if you add more droid models to the global models, you effectively reduce the maximum complexity of levels that didn't have those droids in them to begin with. Remember, you're planning for the worst case scenario here. If someone managed to collect several different droids and then went to a really complex level their XBox would slow down to a crawl and people would think the game engine is total crap. There are obviously a lot of different ways for engines to deal with memory management, but there's no getting around making trade-offs when you want to have a whole lot of complex models on screen at the same time.

 

I stand by my rancor argument, blasters would be fine and you could still hit its abdomen and possibly chest area with a LS. You guys are reading *waaay* much into my posts. The point of that was NOT 'lets fight a big rancor !!' instead it was 'lets fight bigger scarier monsters !!' Fighting bipedal creatures that are about 90% human can get a little tiring.

 

Size and and human-like are two different things. Note that the juvenile rancors were not a problem with existing animations. Hacking at a monster's belly as it towers over you *is* going to require new animations however.

 

Before you comment again I think you should reread my posts a little more carefully. I'm honestly trying to be polite here, but it just seems like your trying to kiss ass or something. I'm sorry, but the cut scenes in the first one were LAME. Watching Taris get blow'd up was pretty cool, and the final cut scene was pretty nice, but everything inbetween sucked. Can I hit escape? Of course! But I'd rather point out that they need improvement so I don't even want to hit escape. Instead of cut scenes landing/leaving Tatooine how about a nice cut scene showing some hardcore battling (or more like me dodging and running for dear life) against the Krayt dragon. That would be a lot more entertaining than the Ebon Hawk landing on...a landing pad !

 

I liked the cut scenes actually, and I'm not alone. They did an excellent job of establishing setting and fit in well with the games cinematic feel. Apparantly you didn't like them, and that's fine. Live with it. It is unreasonable to expect OE to cater to your tastes alone. BTW, your mother probably had a good point when she told you about the differences between honey and vinegar.

[lordcecil]

Cord: good explanation on the droid bit, I commend you for that. I still think my idea was solid and I also believe it to be an implementable option. As you said there are various forms of memory management. A possibility would be for the droids to simply be clones of each other (there are only a couple of variations anyways) and thus not much extra would have to be loaded. That would be fine because it doesn't matter which droid came from where.

 

Fallout 2 how hundreds upon hundreds of locked chests and doors that require the lockpick skill to get in. Some can be bashed, some can be unlocked through keys / computers, but many require the lockpick skill. You seem to think it a crime for a chest to require any extra effort to get into. As far as I know the only door in KOTOR that really required lockpick was Uthar's chamber in the Sith Academy. Had the special dark side only mask in there as well. It was just a metter of running outside, getting the little small droid, and going back in to unlock it. That didn't frustrate thousands of players from what I can tell either.

 

Excellent point the reward/punish aspect of grenades. Guess it is kind of a toss-up. Due to the greatly reduced pricing for selling back items I'm going to stick with my approach, but I'll now agree with you that either is perfectly viable. Well stated argument.

 

Lets just agree that more interesting non-human monsters are wanted. If a big scary monster can be done, then GREAT ! If not, oh well. We'll let the devs figure out what they can and can not do, but so long as they understand a mutual desire for non-human critters, big or small, then we all win.

 

Good discussions here, albeit a bit hostile. I'm happy for the fact that you enjoyed the cut scenes, but the majority of gamers that I've talked did as much. They were pretty, especially Dantooine, but there is definite room for improvement, and I believe *most* people would agree with me here.

[Cord]

Good discussions here, albeit a bit hostile.

 

You have to expect a little back-sass when you use the "arrogant bastage" persona. No hard feelings though. :D

[Shdy314]

Fallout 2 how hundreds upon hundreds of locked chests and doors that require the lockpick skill to get in. Some can be bashed, some can be unlocked through keys / computers, but many require the lockpick skill. You seem to think it a crime for a chest to require any extra effort to get into. As far as I know the only door in KOTOR that really required lockpick was Uthar's chamber in the Sith Academy. Had the special dark side only mask in there as well. It was just a metter of running outside, getting the little small droid, and going back in to unlock it. That didn't frustrate thousands of players from what I can tell either.

Those characters didn't have a lightsaber. And you could use the tons of dynamite in the game to blow open doors. And it did frustrate me a lot that I couldn't break open a dumb wooden door with my crowbar.

[Opus131]

-Light side Jedi in KOTOR are a bunch of sissies !

You can thank the new prequels for that, and Bioware for basing their game off them instead then the original trilogy...

[severxsever]

People continually state the supposed greatness of flurry, and I just don't get it; it simply isn't true.

 

I'll assume that every sane jedi/sith will be getting two extra attacks every round from the awesomely overpowered "master speed" when he or she fights. Logic dictates that as the amount of attacks per round go up, the extra attack added by flurry becomes less and less meaningful, while the extra 10 damage gifted by master power attack becomes more and more significant (This is assuming that power attack adds 10 damage to each and every attack, a fact that I am reasonably sure of).

 

A dual-wielder can expect to deal an additional 40 damage in a round from using master power attack. In order to equal that damage output using master flurry, that same jedi would have to do an average of 40 damage on each and every smack of his lightsaber. Even the most powerful guardian wielding a lightsaber with the best combination of crystals (best in terms of sheer damage output) won't be able to do that.

 

Similarly, a single-wielding guardian with very high strength (around thirty or so) can only do about the same amount of damage using flurry as when using power attack (except, of course, if the jedi is using the Baragwin assault blade, but that's an entirely different issue).

 

There might not seem to be too great a difference between power attack and flurry from the perspective of a heroically strong guardian, but most jedi characters simply don't focus on their ability to deal damage with a saber nearly as much. However, these characters also almost always (at least, to some extent; force powers just don't work that well against some opponents) still depend on their proficiency with light sabers to do damage to opponents, making power attack the obvious choice of feat.

[lordcecil]

Interesting argument serverxserver, but I just don't buy it. A lot of assumptions are being taken into place here such as a) extreme strength (30 ?!?) which can only be given by force powers, which last 20 seconds, which is 6 rounds. B) knight speed is assumed to always be on, same problem as part A c) your also assuming ever hit lands, thats of enormous importance

 

I'm gonna get some trainers on the PC and do some investigation.

[Shdy314]

Im not so sure power attack adds the damage to each hit. Someone check this please. I think it is just the first one.

[severxsever]

Interesting argument serverxserver, but I just don't buy it. A lot of assumptions are being taken into place here such as a) extreme strength (30 ?!?) which can only be given by force powers, which last 20 seconds, which is 6 rounds. B) knight speed is assumed to always be on, same problem as part A c) your also assuming ever hit lands, thats of enormous importance

 

I'm gonna get some trainers on the PC and do some investigation.

No, you misunderstand; as strength goes up, the power of flurry increases. The lower the strength, the more effective power attack becomes. Power Attack holds a slight edge over flurry even at 30 strength (which can be gotten quite permanently, by the way: with a base strength of 20, a +4 strength implant, the dominator gauntlets, and Revan's Robes, you can even get 34), and this advantage only increases as strength descends to more moderate plateaus.

 

As to master speed: yes, I think that most use it continuously during combat. Without it, power drastically decreases. The extra attacks and ac more than make up for the paltry round that will be wasted casting it.

 

Whether every hit lands or not is irrelevant, as the amount of hits landed while using power attack will be basically proportionate to the amount of hits landed while using master flurry. The minus three to hit penalty administered by power attack is relatively as insignificant as the minus one to hit penalty extolled by flurry. It can be argued that this difference of 2 AB actually means something, but, all things, including flurry's ac penalty, considered, the penalties associated with both feats and the % chance to miss while using either one doesn't really give one feat any tangible advantage over the other.

[Shdy314]

You're argumejnt is flawed because Im 70% certain power attack only adds damage to the first attack. So an extra attack virtually gauranteed to be above 10 is better.

[severxsever]

My argument is based upon the supposition that the ten extra damage is added to each and every attack, as I already stated. I'm also similarly certain that this is so, though I haven't been able to narrow this belief down to an exact percentage. I probably should test it out, eh.

[Shdy314]

I know what your argument is based on. Which is why we definitely need to find out for sure. Otherwise it'd be silly to keep discussing it. The description of the feat in the manual and strat guide is very unclear. It may even be different in the PC and X-box versions. We need to verify this before we talk further. If you're right then power attack is useful.

[jaguars4ever]

Here you go folks, You can get the rest at gamefaqs.com

 

 

MELEE FEATS - Flurry vs. Power Attack (and Critical Strike, Too)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The debate for Power Attack versus Flurry is just as complicated. Power

Attack gives you a set damage bonus at the expense of -3 to your attack

bonus, with Master level giving a +10 damage bonus. This is pretty decent

damage, but it doesn't scale with your weapons, and you'll hit less often

with the AB penalty, so by the time you reach lightsabers and other high-

level melee weapons, the extra attack you get with Master Flurry will more

than compensate in damage than the +10 from Master Power Attack -- for a

standard single weapon attack, at least. Once you factor in more attacks,

things get more complicated...

 

First, let's consider the trusty vibroblade again and calculate average

damage between flurry and power attack.

 

| Average damage/round with 1-10 vibroblade,

| 19-20/x2 threat range

|

| --------Flurry feat-------

Chance | One Weapon Normal Improved Master

Diff To Hit | (0) (-4/-4) (-2/-2) (-1/-1)

---- ------ | ---------- ------- -------- -------

2 95% | 5.75 9.08 10.29 10.89

5 80% | 4.84 7.26 8.47 9.08

8 65% | 3.93 5.45 6.66 7.26

11 50% | 3.03 3.63 4.84 5.45

14 35% | 2.12 1.82 3.03 3.63

17 20% | 1.21 0.00 1.21 1.82

20 5% | 0.29 0.00 0.00 0.00

|

|

| -----------Power Attack feat----------

Chance | One Weapon Normal Improved Master

Diff To Hit | (0) (-3,+5 dmg) (-3,+8 dmg) (-3,+10 dmg)

---- ------ | ---------- ----------- ----------- ------------

2 95% | 5.75 9.24 11.88 13.64

5 80% | 4.84 7.51 9.65 11.08

8 65% | 3.93 5.78 7.43 8.53

11 50% | 3.03 4.04 5.20 5.97

14 35% | 2.12 2.31 2.97 3.41

17 20% | 1.21 0.55 0.71 0.81

20 5% | 0.29 0.00 0.00 0.00

 

With a standard vibroblade, Power Attack does better against lower defense

enemies, as advertised, not really losing effectiveness until higher

defenses. Now let's consider a more powerful weapon, such as a lightsaber,

which does 2-16 damage with a 19-20 x2 threat range. We'll save some space

and just consider the Master version of each feat.

 

| Average damage/round with 2-16 lightsaber,

| 19-20/x2 threat range

|

Chance | One Weapon Master Flurry Master Power Attack

Diff To Hit | (0) (-1/-1) (-3,+10 damage)

---- ------ | ---------- -------- -------------------

2 95% | 9.41 17.82 16.72

5 80% | 7.92 14.85 13.59

8 65% | 6.44 11.88 10.45

11 50% | 4.95 8.91 7.32

14 35% | 3.47 5.94 4.18

17 20% | 1.98 2.97 1.00

20 5% | 0.47 0.00 0.00

 

Here Master Flurry beats out on Master Power Attack at every level, and the

difference increases as the opponent's defense increases. What happened?

The main difference here is the damage that the lightsaber does, an average

of 9 points of damage normally. Since the weapon does more damage, the

second attack that Flurry provides also does more damage. Factor in

Strength bonuses or specialization for extra damage per attack, plus

possible special effects such as stun per attack, and Flurry pulls farther

ahead.

 

This illustrates the weakness inherent in Power Attack: the extra damage

given by the attack doesn't scale with the power of the weapon. Power

attacks will always dish out an extra 10 damage, but your weapon may do

more than that on average as you gain better equipment, thus allowing

flurries to eventually surpass power attacks in terms of damage. The -3

penalty that power attacks impose also never improves, further limiting

Power Attack's scalability.

 

Of course, Flurry has its own disadvantages. The -4 to both attack and

defense to start is nothing to sneeze at, either, so at least take

Improved, if not Master, for the Flurry series if you're going to use it,

to reduce both the penalty to hit and the defensive penalty. Note that

Master isn't necessary when using a single weapon; take Dueling first,

since it'll give you a permanent +1 attack and defense and will make up for

the difference between Improved and Master Flurry. Of course, if you've

already mastered Dueling and don't have anywhere else to put your feats,

mastering Flurry won't hurt...

 

However, the tables turn somewhat when considering multiple attacks through

dual wield or speed powers:

 

| Average damage/round with two 1-10 vibroblades,

| 19-20/x2 threat range, master two-weapon fighting

|

Chance | Two Weapons Master Flurry Master Power Attack

Diff To Hit | (0/-2) (-1/-1/-3) (-3/-5,+10/+10 damage)

---- ------ | ----------- ------------- ----------------------

2 95% | 10.89 15.73 25.58

5 80% | 9.08 13.01 20.46

8 65% | 7.26 10.29 15.35

11 50% | 5.45 7.56 10.23

14 35% | 3.63 4.84 5.12

17 20% | 1.82 2.10 0.81

20 5% | 0.29 0.00 0.00

 

While Flurry always adds one attack, Power Attack applies to *each* attack.

Thus, when using two weapons, Power Attack adds +10 for both attacks, and

thus a potential +20 total. Of course, the -3 penalty still applies for

each attack, thus making Power Attack unusable against higher defense

opponents, but at lower differences Power Attack easily outstrips Flurry.

This difference gets larger as more attacks are added (Jedi powers); Flurry

continues to add only one attack, but Power Attack adds its damage bonus to

each new attack. A Jedi wielding a double-bladed lightsaber or two

lightsabers with Master Speed and Master Power Attack could potentially do

a whopping extra +40 damage each round!

 

So, the lesson here is that the preferred feat depends on how many attacks

you have:

 

Flurry's relative effectiveness decreases as you add more attacks, while

Power Attack's effectiveness increases.

 

For single weapons, Flurry will give a nice extra attack for (eventually)

minimal cost in attack and defense. With more attacks due to double

weapons or powers, the advantage of an extra attack decreases. Power

Attack has a larger, and permanent, attack penalty, and the damage doesn't

scale, but it applies for every attack you make, so those wielding two

weapons and Jedi planning to get extra attacks from the Speed powers can do

some major damage when buffed.

 

So where does Critical Strike fit in? In terms of damage it can't compete

to Flurry or Power Attack. This is because even with Master Critical

Strike and a 19-20 threat range weapon, you'll only threaten for a critical

hit on 11-20, or 50% of the time, and even then you have to make the second

roll to hit the target again, which further reduces your chances of scoring

double damage. Here we'll compare average damage for a standard vibroblade

between the three feats:

 

| Average damage/round with 1-10 vibroblade,

| 19-20/x2 threat range

|

| Master Master Master

Chance | One Weapon Critical Strike Flurry Power Attack

Diff To Hit | (0) (0, 13-20/X2 TR) (-1/-1) (-3, +10 dmg)

---- ------ | ---------- ------------------ ------- -------------

2 95% | 5.75 7.32 10.89 13.64

5 80% | 4.84 6.16 9.08 11.08

8 65% | 3.93 5.01 7.26 8.53

11 50% | 3.03 3.85 5.45 5.97

14 35% | 2.12 2.60 3.63 3.41

17 20% | 1.21 1.32 1.82 0.81

20 5% | 0.29 0.29 0.00 0.00

 

Master Critical Strike will do more damage, but not as much compared to the

other two attack feats, which makes it a poor choice for just its damage.

 

However, Critical Strike is useful for other reasons:

 

* The stunning effect can quickly turn the tide of battle if successful.

The stunned opponent can't retaliate and loses their dex bonus to defense

as well.

 

* Certain weapons and upgrades do "massive criticals", where extra damage

is added when a critical hit is scored. This obviously can skew the damage

average back towards Critical Strike, especially if the weapon has or can

be upgraded to a large threat range. This, in addition to the possibility

of stunning the opponent, makes Critical Strike exceedingly dangerous.

 

Depending on your preferred weapon, it may or may not be useful to upgrade

Critical Strike, since this increases the threat range, but not the stun

effects. If you have a weapon with a small threat range, it isn't really

worth it to upgrade. If you plan to use criticals often to stun your

opponents and have a weapon with a decent threat range, however, the

upgrades to critical strike will increase its effectiveness.

 

Of course, Critical Strike exacts a high price: -5 defense, which doesn't

improve. This translates to a full 25% loss in defense, which can

potentially painful. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose...

[lordcecil]

Excellent find jaguars4ever - which file has it because I have been there often checking saber crystals and what not but never noticed anything that had that comparison chart. It seems they all have thier use in certain situations, guess we didn't give Bioware enough credit. I'd really like to be able to just create two characters in a trainer, give them whatever stats and abilities I like to test different scenarios, give them about 800 health each, then just let them go to town on each other. That way you can see if one is doing more damage in the long run (on average where a few poor rolls or critical strikes won't matter) and see if there is a significant advantage.

[severxsever]

Yes, very nice find, Jaguar. However, I think that the article seriously overplays power attack's "to hit" penalty. In kotor, in general, I'd say that decent AB is fairly easy to achieve, while decent AC is fairly difficult to obtain. I never concerned myself with connecting blows, as I simply assumed that it was self-evident that my attacks would nearly always find their mark.

 

However, I also assumed that attacks by higher level opponents would always have a fair to more-than-fair chance of hitting. I made a scoundrel 6/guardian 14 that single-wielded a blade, wore the best robes available, used masterspeed, got a +10 to AC from inherent class feats, and had a +8 dexterity modifier. All these bonuses gave him an AC of 40, which is the second highest AC achievable (You can get 41 AC from using master force aura or whatever it's called). Yet, even with defense set this high, enemies such as: tarenteks, holy sand people, rancors, and master dark jedi all hit me a fair amount of time. Malak, of course, -- even when under the affects of "plague" -- never really missed.

[AlanC9]

Yes, you can't get enough defense to matter against high-level attackers, especially with the undocumented defense stacking cap.

 

lordcecil, you don't need to build a simulator to check builds against each other. Statistics don't lie.

 

That chart's from Sherwin Tam's faq.

[lordcecil]

What undocumented cap is this ?

[pharcyde]

I'll make my own little whishlist/suggestion type thing in this thread.

 

This pertains to party interaction. I'd like to see a younger brash/hard headed jedi that behaves similiar to Anakin in Episode II. Throughout the course of the game this younger jedi will challenge you to lightsaber sparring matches. After every sparring match depending on if you win or lose can affect your character as well as this younger jedi characters lightside/darkside shift. For example: If you beat this character in a sparring match you can either belittle/taunt him for trying to duel with you, which will cause you to get darkside points and cause this jedi to dislike you even more, driving him further into the darkside. Or you can give him pointers and help his saber techniques, which will give you both lightside points. I feel this could add a whole new dynamic to party interaction especially with a fellow jedi.

 

I'd also like to see some kind of side quest where you come across Exar Kun's spirit/ghost. This would work for darkside users. Have Exar give you orders and certain tasks he wants you to perform. Then after you are finished he can give you some darkside only goodies such as a lightsaber crystsal, lightsaber, armor/robes, a sith armulet that gives some pretty sweet strength/dexterity bonuses.