Skills - what's the point?

[Darth-Kibbles]

Hello, I have played this game twice now. I enjoy the game but I am frustrated by certain unbalances. One of them being that "skill oriented" characters are rather pointless. I used a Soldier-Guard in my first game and
most fights were quite easy. I had many feats including full power attack. But in my second game I used a Scoundrel-Consular and constantly received skill points. Here's how I see it: (I'm hoping to be proven wrong about skills so go ahead and do so).

Security - Most doors or lockers either can't be opened or can be bashed open and there's no need for security. T3's high skill score can be used early in the game if there are any exceptional areas that need security.

Pursuade - Good for saving/making credits here and there but I find going as a dark jedi and using threats or buying force pursuade - are easy ways to avoid needing Pursuade as a skill.

Demolitions. - Valuable to acquire free mines but not very practical. There aren't many situations where laying down mines is a better solution to loading up on stims, shields and force augment powers and whacking at your enemies.

Treat Injury - Since you have easy access to healing either from yours or a partners' Force healing ability and the free healing when returning to the Ebon Hawk, treat injury only helps really early in the game. By late game it's nice to save on force points but you will have found dozens of medpacks by then.

Computers - Skill with computers will allow you a discount on spkies, not a big deal. You just get a few "free kills", but none of the more difficult enemies or situations are affected.

Repair - Similar to computers, a discount in repair parts but usually not much need for droid assisstance when this is allowed.


So in general, skills are not valuable because you can usually get a party member with a high skill score to replace you and a little extra combat can get the job done.

I suggest changing skills around for KOTOR 2:

1st - Lump Computers, Security and Repair into one skill "Mechanics" or something like that.

2nd - Move some feats into skills. For example "implants" could be a skill.

3rd - Remove Pursuade as a skill and have "pursuade checks" just based on charisma.

[Admo]

I partly agree on your third point, but I think with the rest you have missed the point of your own argument. There is absolutely nothing wrong with skills on offer, only that they are, more or less, useless in game.

Solution for Kotor 2? Make the skills more useful, and more difficult to decide between. For example, its not long before you realise that the only useful option is to spend all your skills points on Persaude and Treat Injury. Treat Injury especially I find is a very useful skill, because although there are tons of med-packs around, you are forgetting that there primary use is in combat. If you spend all those skill points you don't need for anything else on treat injury, you'll get a lot more use out of each med-pack, so you might need one less turn to heal yourself up, very useful in the heat of battle. Gives you more time to beat him down, and less time for him to take away all the HP you're trying to replace. It does also save a lot of FP.

Some skills help a little bit, just in small ways. It would be nice to pick a lock rather than spend 5 minutes bashing it. Its just that the bashing is an easy alternative to commiting skills points to that skill. Some nice dialogue with HK as well

[MalaksBane]

Well, I could ask a different question, (lightsaber) combat, what is the point? You can rely on your melee-tank-party members to kill of most enemies, and the rest can be force-spammed to death. So what is the point in increasing your combat related stats?

You like to play with a combat oriented melee tank, without skills, that relies on partymembers to perform certain tasks, or just skips them, other people prefer skilled force users that rely on other partymembers to do most of the combat. And you can build middle-of-the-road characters that are good in combat, force use and skill based tasks.

KotOR can be played in a lot of ways, with very different builds. This allows anyone to choose a build and playing style they enjoy, or vary between different playing styles. Reducing, or even removing, the skills part of the game would only serve to make it less fun to play, at least for some people.


I think, btw, that TSL puts more emphasis on skills, has more variation in skills, or at least some skills have a wider 'range-of-effect'.

[Xandax]

One of my issues with SW:Kotor was that skills didn't matter enough in the game because most of the time, easy switching between party members was allowed.
Also there wasn't really any consequence in foregoing many of the skills because of the liniarity in the game, but that dosen't mean they were useless by far.

The game was just to focused on combat, so it didn't essentially matter that you could hack the computer or pick the lock on the door.
There were a few situatioans where skills were put to good use, but most of the time it was just "flavour".
But that is also where it is used in this game - skills offered flavor to the game in my oppinion - and that is why they aren't useless eventhough they are marginalized.
Instead of going head first - use computers to look around via security camerars, overload powercircuts etc. Use persuade to get out of a fight or just to get cheaper goods.

If skills were removed even more - it would simply take the game even further away from the RPG genere the game then it already is. Then it would be pure action.

[fable]

I'm definitely in agreement with Xandax on this. I think Bioware made a calculated effort to dumb down the game, making its puzzles ridiculously easy, inventory weight and volume nonexistent, and skill development insignificant for your character, so as to focus exclusively on what they felt was the action orientation of their perceived pre-teen and early teen audience. I certainly hope skills are more relevant in KotoR2, but I'm not counting on it.

[Jack Dell]

Oh absolutely, that's probably one of the reasons it became so easily digested by non-RPGs players. It certainly lacks challenge for most experienced players familiar with the genre. Skills certainly lacked in usefulness, and also I was surprised at how all skills were non-battle oriented. I hope KOTOR 2 boasts more combat-based or combat useful skills that justify investing in them. Also to have more situations in which your skills become more useful, or more areas where you are forced to go solo and depend only on your own skills. Actually the character that can manage the most skills, just to clarify on what MalaksBane said, are actually middle of the road characters. Sentinels get the most of the jedi classes, and if you play with it and a decent intelligence you can fill all useful skills no problem. This should have made sentinels more popular but for the fact that there is no real use to such high skills, making them lose their appeal. It would be nice to see skills given the appropiate importance.

[Migromul]

As one of the poster said, skills add Flavor to the game. But there are certain situations, where special skills are usufull. For a light character, persuade is very usefull, as with force persuade or dominate mind, you are in danger of getting dark points. And often you get more exp, if you solve a situation without combat and without force...

Computer can be useful in certain situations, where your astromech-droid may not be available, or you are the only person, who can use the computerconsole...

And Repair - well this may be a

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with Repair, you can get HK-47 stronger and get cool storys about his former owners... (and certain deaths of them...) You need a very high repair-skill for this, and only your character can do this....

But except of this, skills are not realy important.

[Darth-Kibbles]

Why does force persuade create Dark Side points? In the movies, good Jedis used force pursuade all the time.

[UserUnfriendly]

Originally Posted by Darth-Kibbles

Why does force persuade create Dark Side points? In the movies, good Jedis used force pursuade all the time.

not always...some options using force persuade will not get you dark points..

[Migromul]

Why does force persuade create Dark Side points? In the movies, good Jedis used force pursuade all the time.

It depends on the situation:

If you for example, try to get a head-bounty rid from a girl and have no success with the normal try, and then use force persuade, this, of course, won't get you dsp.

But If you try to buy a droid in a shop and force persuade him to go down with the price, without even trying to bargain, this will earn you dark points.


But if you have the feat, you are more likely to use it. (at least, I am more likely to use it...)

--------------Spoiler--------------













Both examples are in the game. The first at Taris, only with Bastila, when you try to get the bounty rid from Dia.

The second at Tatooine, when you buy HK-47.

[Darth-Kibbles]

Well, in the movies, Qui-Gonn Jinn tried to use force pursuade to get the ship parts but failed at it. In Ep II Obi Wan was kind of just playing around when he used it in that Cantina.

Anyways, in the game, violence is usually an option to replace force pursuade. You can threaten at various times and the end result is just the same (Dark Side Points).

[Jack Dell]

Actually, what really matters in real life are your intentions. Qui-gon Jinn had to get those parts because he had to get out of Tatooine ASAP and his mission was way more important than fooling around. Obi wan in the cantina was, well, in a way playing around but he wasn't exactly harming anyone, after all that guy was selling drugs. It really is about the intention. Because you can't tell the game what you are thinking, it is determined by actions and if they look evil, even though its not your intention to be evil, you will get dsp points.

[UserUnfriendly]

Originally Posted by Migromul

It depends on the situation:

If you for example, try to get a head-bounty rid from a girl and have no success with the normal try, and then use force persuade, this, of course, won't get you dsp.

But If you try to buy a droid in a shop and force persuade him to go down with the price, without even trying to bargain, this will earn you dark points.


But if you have the feat, you are more likely to use it. (at least, I am more likely to use it...)

--------------Spoiler--------------













Both examples are in the game. The first at Taris, only with Bastila, when you try to get the bounty rid from Dia.

The second at Tatooine, when you buy HK-47.

so an npc can use force persuade for you?

[Jack Dell]

in some situations they do use force persuade for you but it is purely built into specific conversations and you can't trigger it at will. Also it is extremely rare. I can think of maybe three conversations in the game in which this happens, and only if you have the right jedi in the party.

[AVENGER]

Yeah it is very rare but it is possible. I don't remember which conversations I've encountered this with, but it's definitely not a lot. Most of the time when you use force persuade it's alright and you won't get ds points unless it's like lowering the price of something from a needy person(examples:tatooine/droid shop owner lowering the price of hk-47 with force persuade/lady selling rare desert wraid plate) Their are other situations but that is just to name a few.