mechanics Thought Experiment: Fixing KOTOR II's Mechanics

[JediMindTrix 0]

Welcome to my thought exercise that might someday turn into an actual mod! Here I will infodump my organized thoughts and maybe promote useful discussion.

The Hypothesis

KOTOR II is a great story attached to an otherwise broken-mess of bad mechanics that lead to a game experience that feels like a 'Story Mode' switch was accidentally flipped on & forgotten about in the source code before the game shipped. I hypothesize that the tools exist now to remediate most of this mess, and am engaging in this thought experiment to mentally workthrough what such a mod might look like and tackle, while promoting discussion in the same vein. This is not a promissory note that I'll do anything, even if I am motivated to make my next playthrough less of a drag, mechanically.

Where To Begin?

The first step is to identify what is broken and how/why. During my last playthrough I started taking notes and came up with the following:

1) XP is dumped on the player and you do not go for very long between levels ups.  At a certain point, they feel tedious and unrewarding. This is partially because of the class progression and what's available for feat selection, but also because level-ups exist 'in abundance' and thus it's difficult to get excited about them.

2) No class will have ever have to struggle over which feat to take in their build, and will only ever struggle about when to take it. Eventually, you run out of 'must-haves' and start picking random feats that have marginal effects on the character sheet simply to get rid of the 'level up character' screen.

3) Jedi classes - Jedi Guardian is skill-starved in a game where having skills is directly correlated to the amount of content you'll see in a playthru, Jedi Sentinel is essentially a Jedi Guardian w/one less feat and a lot more skill points, and I see this to be a problem. Consular's are probably okay but I think all classes should have slower power progression. Jedi Prestige classes need love as well, especially the dedicated caster prestige classes.

4) Items, Upgrades, and Cybernetic Implants - all dump tons of ability score bonuses/skill point bonuses onto the wearer in obscene amounts. For humanoids, skill point bonuses on equipment are less of a problem, but thanks to Droid Upgrade's I was able to craft endgame upgrades with T3 before leaving my first non-Telos planet. All of these stat bonuses means that it doesn't really matter which class you take because you will end up with the fighting ability of a Guardian and comparable Power DC's of a Consular without hardly trying and the meta leans heavily towards putting your points in CON to use implants to further rocket your player character's attributes into the stratosphere.

5) Lightsabers - they're OP. Their current implementation means they basically trivialize the game even moreso once you obtain them. They should certainly feel strong, but being able to pump out 400dmg in a single flurry is insanity. Lightsabers are a sort of barometer for the state of the game's mechanics as many other systems tie into how effective they are: enemy AI and whether or not they use items and powers that mitigate lightsaber damage, Master Critical Strike & Master Flurry providing potentially gamebreaking power every six seconds, excessively powerful lightsaber crystals and upgrades

6) Force Powers - they're also OP...or useless, or somewhere in between. When a force powerful is powerful, it's *powerful*. When it's weak, it's weak. I believe the issue within the scope of what already exists within the game is fourfold: npc's do not have saves that have hope of resisting force powers, crowd control force powers are limitless in the # of individuals it'll effect within an AoE, NPC Jedi do not cast Force Resist (or Force Breach).

7) Immunities - Although I haven't really seen any enemies use attacks of any kind that'd cause fear/horror/stun, if they did then the immunities found on several items and automatically supplied to Jedi would be an issue

Eight) Artificial Intelligence - We all know it sucks, even with the Enhanced AI mod. Even so, I will list some of what I've observed - NPC's won't activate their shields (if they're even spawning with them), NPC Jedi aren't specc'd/don't use force resisting or crowd control powers... or from what I can tell, buff's of any kind. AI doesn't use stims either. They don't make intelligent targeting or movement choices either; Calls for Help need a boost (can snipe Ubese in a room, one at a time, as long as only one can see you), etc etc droids don't use their cannons/shields

9) Battle Precognition - I think either the highest WIS or DEX score should be used when calculating AC, not both; that said however, this might possibly be hardcoded

10) Feats - My main issue with feats, aside from their rapid acquisition, is that there are clear winning choices and clear losing choices. Honestly, even if all the loot drops didn't blown Gear Head out of the water, would you ever pick it over the saving throw or flurry line?

11) Combat Feats - Suffer from Winner/Loser Syndrome as well as offering a lot w/out much, if any, drawback. Master Flurry worst offender12) Broken economy - Too many credits and not enough options to sink them into

12) NPC Character Sheets - though I haven't peeked about I'd be willing to bet that the builds of various enemies are equally in need of attention

So Everything's Busted?

Pretty much, yea

What do?

When faced with a potentially large project it's best to keep one's goals small and reachable to avoid the feeling of drowning/"insurmountable mountain" burnout. For this, I feel it's best to take a look at how other modding communities have handled similar projects. For our purposes, we'll take a peek at peak mechanics modding: Item & Spell Revisions + Sword Coast Stratagems for the Baldur's Gate Trilogy.

These mods operated under a design paradigm of 'no resource unwasted', 'do not cheat', 'spells and items must be interesting/useful/occupy a niche', with 'balance' the foremost objective of these mods. More importantly, they all have a determined scope, all of which synergized w/each other but could also stand on their own. Also important to note is their modularity in installation: if you don't like the part of the Item Revisions mod that imposed a movement rate penalty on full plate armor, you didn't have to install it. Something like this is imperative for a mod that would make potentially controversial changes to the mechanics such as a rebalancing mod.

So now we pick an issue to tackle. For purposes of this experiment, I've decided to 'rework' KOTOR II's items.

The Process

First, we'll want to sort through the items that exist in the game into a list (possibly a workforum thread somewhere) that allows us to easily identify which items need rebalancing and which don't. We'll use a tool like Kotor Tool to populate the list with information such as tag/resref/name, description, and the items effects.

Then, we'll want to establish the general criteria with which we'll be rebalancing most our items under. Ideally, a loot system is designed around tiers which correspond to certain level ranges. Each tier has a lower and upper bound to how much power an item possesses. They can occasionally bleed into the tier above or below them in terms of usefulness.

Sample Criteria:

Tier III (levels 13 - 18)

Max bonus for an individual skill is half the skill bonus cap.

Max Item Value: x

1. Max Ability Score Bonus (total): 2
2. Max Skill Point Bonus (total): 6
3. Max Attack Modifier: 2
4. Max Damage Bonus : 1d4
5. Max Defense Bonus: 2
6. Max Saving Throw Bonus: 2 Specific, 1 Universal

Tier V (levels 25 - 30)

Max Item value: x

1. Max Ability Score Bonus (total): 4
2. Max Skill Point Bonus (total): 10
3. Max Attack Modifier: 4
4. Max Damage Bonus : 1d8
5. Max Defense Bonus: 4
6. Max Saving Throw Bonus: 5 Specific, 2 Universal

Max item value in this criteria determines what combinations of bonuses items can have. For ex, there might be a tier V item that grants +2 to WIS and CHA and +5 Persuade and +5 Treat Injury, +1 Uni save. There might be a Tier III item that grants +2 CON & +3 Demolitions.

There are exceptions to every rule, and in order to keep it fun and novel some items should break the mold of our established criteria. These would be the game's S-tier items held by powerful bosses (lol) and locked behind Tower of Hanoi puzzles. Other ways to keep it interesting would be for weapons to have custom on-hit scripted effects, granting custom feats or usuable abilities, etc

--------

 If we follow the paradigm used in the BG2 mod, Item Revisions, then we'll first want to decide what 'theme' an item holds based off it's description, name and bonuses before we apply our criteria to it. Some items will have a very obvious theme, and others you'll have to pick your own for. Once you've sorted out what changes you want to make to the item's stats and description, we'll make sure we record the changes to the item's worklist entry before actually committing/testing them.

The End

Well, that's all the thoughts I have for y'all on this topic. Now it's off to bed. If you've thoughts on anything I've written here, feel free to comment.

[LoneWanderer 103]

You raised important questions about the problems of game mechanics. Some time ago I got interested in 2 particular problems and what was done to solve them: level ups after a while became a routine and boring fights. Both problems get worse by the end of the game. Below I will express my thoughts on this matter.

On 10/23/2020 at 10:25 PM, JediMindTrix said:

1) XP is dumped on the player and you do not go for very long between levels ups.  At a certain point, they feel tedious and unrewarding. This is partially because of the class progression and what's available for feat selection, but also because level-ups exist 'in abundance' and thus it's difficult to get excited about them.

I think it is not such a big issue by itself, rather it reveals shortcomings in Feats and Force Powers Systems. New feats, force powers should add new opportunities, new tactics, new ways of interacting with the game world, the player should look forward to them. The level cap has been raised to 50; by the end of the game, the player can be over level 30. But there are not enough unique, interesting, useful feats and force powers that can change the game flow or be effectively used in new combat tactics.

The Feats:

There is not enough useful/interesting feats for player to acquire. Feats should add new opportunities, game experiences for the player. Instead, player can easily get all important feats by level 20 or so, and then just waste points on random, mostly useless stuff. Some of the new feats in TSL are okay, but most of them player acquire automatically.  At the same time, the developers removed Heavy Weapons Feat and Implant Feat. Making implants dependent on Constitution attribute is a cool decision as it gives importance to this attribute that it lacked before, and Heavy Weapons Feat was redundant, but those feats had a significant impact on the gameplay in K1, so at least Heavy Weapons Feat deserve restoration.

I think that in an ideal situation, new feats should allow the player to receive new gameplay experience or at least be meaningful for player while not overpowered. There should be no situations when player acquired all good feats long before the end of the game.

As an example of “New gameplay experience”, the grenades aren’t that useful after beginning of the game. However, there is a mod called “Fumble! Grenades” that allow anyone who ever uses a grenade to have a chance at fumbling the throw. In addition, it restores Weapon Proficiency feat chain for grenades (makes them more powerful) and modifies it for fumbling.

There was also a mod “xc_grenades” by Xcom (if anyone have it, please, post a link or PM me edit: found it) that made the Demolition skill to increase the damage of rockets and grenades. Together, these mods can change the way players view grenades, create new tactics based on grenades, be used in new builds.

On 10/23/2020 at 10:25 PM, JediMindTrix said:

3) Jedi classes - Jedi Guardian is skill-starved in a game where having skills is directly correlated to the amount of content you'll see in a playthru, Jedi Sentinel is essentially a Jedi Guardian w/one less feat and a lot more skill points, and I see this to be a problem. Consular's are probably okay but I think all classes should have slower power progression. Jedi Prestige classes need love as well, especially the dedicated caster prestige classes.

The solution could be: adding a new feat chain to Feats which give 1 additional skill point to the player every second level and then every level after the feat is upgraded.  In addition, TSL already has feats that make cross-class skills cost 1 skill point. The Jedi Guardian has more than enough feat points, so trading a few of them for skills can be an interesting alternative option. This idea may be contrary to D&D rules.

 

The Force Powers:

Some force powers are fundamentally broken. Heal, Speed, Force Storm – A player with any two of these force powers can become nearly unstoppable. And every player can use them without drawbacks: LS or DS, class, lightsaber/force form are not important, the cost of power is usually acceptable. Others are weak or rarely can be used effectively. It makes no sense to use most of the force powers, when it is easier and faster to spam Force Storm. Again, by level 20, the player has all good/interesting powers and is not motivated to try new ones. There is also lack of high-level force powers (even if they unnecessarily they can at least provide SOME motivation to level up in the late game). Almost all force powers become accessible by level 18.

 

Boring fights:

All new feats, force powers, new tactics, improvements in mechanics won’t find usage in the game if every battle can be won by spamming Master Flurry or, even worse, a standard attack. There are several high difficulty mods that make enemies tougher and more dangerous, but I think that this is not enough to make the fights interesting.

Aside from the AI issues you mentioned, most fights are too similar to each other. There are not enough force users in the game and even they rarely use force powers (and again, most of the time they only use Life Drain), so some force powers/tactics are almost useless. The tactics of the enemies in the middle and the end of the game are the same. The most noticeable change between mid-level battles and level 50 battles is that enemies have more hp and can survive 1-2 Master Flurry. The bosses are indistinguishable from each other, the sith are bland and uninspired (most of them even don't have lightsabers), the various factions and groups of enemies differ only slightly from each other. There are not enough memorable situations (I can remember many more interesting fights in K1).

There are many types of damage in TSL, enemies could use different weapons types in various regions, parts of the game, then the player will be motivated to try certain armor and upgrades. But fire-based weapons mostly restricted to droids and cold and electrical damage is clearly underused.

 

I thought about mitigating these problems by using existing mods:

1) Feats:

• Heavy Weapons Feat Restoration
• JC's Feat Fixes for K2
• Fumble! Grenades + xc_grenades
• Content Pack: Feats And Powers BY TamerBill

2) Force Powers

• High-Level Force Powers
• Force Zeal
• Force Power Lightsaber Floating by Darth333

3) Boring fights

• Thematic Sith Lords - interesting mod that adds much-needed differentiation to fights against Sith Lords. I would like something similar to be done with other bosses and entire factions, sections of the game.

These mods are good at what they do (improve certain aspects), but I feel that a more complex solution focused on addressing all aspects of the problem, could potentially achieve more.

 

On 10/23/2020 at 10:25 PM, JediMindTrix said:

4) Items, Upgrades, and Cybernetic Implants - all dump tons of ability score bonuses/skill point bonuses onto the wearer in obscene amounts. For humanoids, skill point bonuses on equipment are less of a problem, but thanks to Droid Upgrade's I was able to craft endgame upgrades with T3 before leaving my first non-Telos planet.

Is the problem that serious? As I recall high-tier upgrades cost several hundred components, and merchants can have crappy droid items in their inventory, so which upgrade T3 can do and when is partly a matter of luck. The point is, if T3 loses his status as a ‘skill master’ in the party, he‘ll become something like G0-T0, a character who has no gameplay purpose.

 

On 10/23/2020 at 10:25 PM, JediMindTrix said:

12) Broken economy - Too many credits and not enough options to sink them into

As for the merchants: the stocks of the merchants are random (from their lists of possible available items) and are generated only once when the player visits them, right? As a result, merchants often have poor inventory. Moreover, it makes no sense to buy equipment: standard items can be easily found in loot, and high-level items are in any case not available from merchants. So, the obvious choice is to allow merchants to sell non-unique high-tier items and update their inventory in similar manner to Suvam in K1 OR to add new end-game merchant with high-tier items to the game.

I can continue with other issues, but think that is big enough text for now. Thanks for reading!

[JediMindTrix 0]

On 10/24/2020 at 12:59 PM, LoneWanderer said:

As an example of “New gameplay experience”, the grenades aren’t that useful after beginning of the game. However, there is a mod called “Fumble! Grenades” that allow anyone who ever uses a grenade to have a chance at fumbling the throw. In addition, it restores Weapon Proficiency feat chain for grenades (makes them more powerful) and modifies it for fumbling.

There was also a mod “xc_grenades” by Xcom (if anyone have it, please, post a link or PM me) that made the Demolition skill to increase the damage of rockets and grenades. Together, these mods can change the way players view grenades, create new tactics based on grenades, be used in new builds.

Indeed, grenade usefulness falls off rapidly outside of Peragus. Having Demolitions impact grenade's is an excellent design choice! I am personally of the belief that if an element is introduced to the kit of a class, or is available to all classes universally, it should maintain a modicum of usefulness throughout the game or it's just a 'gimmick'.

For ex: Baldur's Gate has a lot of low level spells who's usefulness ends after level 5. For example, Shillelagh, a Druid Level 1 spell, gives the caster a magic +1 weapon. Great for the first chapter of Baldur's Gate, useless thereafter. Spell Revisions changed it to a +1 enhancement bonus/6 levels of the caster (I think), so at level 12 you have a +3 weapon, which is useful well into Baldur's Gate II.

Giving longevity to mechanical elements should be a priority in any redesign.

On 10/24/2020 at 12:59 PM, LoneWanderer said:

Is the problem that serious? As I recall high-tier upgrades cost several hundred components, and merchants can have crappy droid items in their inventory, so which upgrade T3 can do and when is partly a matter of luck. The point is, if T3 loses his status as a ‘skill master’ in the party, he‘ll become something like G0-T0, a character who has no gameplay purpose.

In regards to components, if you have been putting points into your repair skill you can breakdown any mid-tier and above item and net an easy 1k+ components, which you can then turn around and spend to construct at least two endgame weapon upgrade components. Since, as you mentioned, a lot of stores end up with total junk, the Exile has little incentive to really sell their loot for credits when it is far easier to break down half or 2/3rd's of the loot you gained by completing a planet and then use T3 to max out your EQ before you've left your second planet. There's also a few unique issue's here:

Strong melee weapons in the loot matrix are as a rule, non-upgradeable - consequently, their stats do not outweigh the bonuses achievable (maybe one sith sword exception?) with an upgradeable vibroblade/lightsaber and thus the gameplay incentive is to breakdown the loot for tons of components to upgrade a standard vibroblade/lightsaber, because that'll net you a far stronger weapon.

Unique blasters suffer from the same issue, though some have a individual slots available for upgrading.

In regards to T3, I think if his only calling card is 'Skill Master' then he's already likely a bit of a G0-T0 character and needs a rework to become viable. The issue here, in my opinion, is that T3's singular use would be to game the upgrade system and get end game upgrades constructed in the early game. There's not a lot of reasons to bring him with you:

1) You can already obtain max or min influence with T3 w/out ever needing to leave the ship

2) His narrative contributions outside of the ship are limited to 'Dwooooo' 'beetdeepreepdeep'

3) With the exception of crafting and a few security checks, there are no skill checks that Basic-speaking party members cannot succeed in either through leveling and/or equipment, so T3 as skill master is semi-redundant when you can spread the same skills he's a master of across your party already. If the Exile is a Sentinel he only need 16 INT to render T3 entirely redundant (Again, except for crafting)

4) Though he actually is not useless in combat, there can be a perception he is. Even still in the party member calculus, it's narratively more interesting to bring along someone who can speak basic.

All in all, I think he's already G0-T0.

[LoneWanderer 103]

On 10/28/2020 at 5:17 PM, JediMindTrix said:

Strong melee weapons in the loot matrix are as a rule, non-upgradeable - consequently, their stats do not outweigh the bonuses achievable (maybe one sith sword exception?) with an upgradeable vibroblade/lightsaber and thus the gameplay incentive is to breakdown the loot for tons of components to upgrade a standard vibroblade/lightsaber, because that'll net you a far stronger weapon.

I think it is actually a clever decision: you either use the upgrade mechanic (improve skills or use specific gear, buy parts or equipment for breakdown, break items, craft upgrades) or don’t bother with it and use the already predefined (adjusted) equipment. If high quality equipment could be upgraded, said equipment could become too powerful and further break game balance. And it is not like the upgrades are limited only to standard weapons: Zabrak vibroblade, Ryyk Blade, Echani Vibrosword, Verpine Droid Disruptor and more are upgradable. However, more of the not overpowered weapons could have at least 1 slot available for upgrade (some axes, staffs) because some weapons types aren’t strong and cannot be upgraded for no apparent reason.

On 10/23/2020 at 10:25 PM, JediMindTrix said:

For humanoids, skill point bonuses on equipment are less of a problem, but thanks to Droid Upgrade's I was able to craft endgame upgrades with T3 before leaving my first non-Telos planet.

From a logical point of view, droids should be able to better understand technical issues (computers, security, mines) than humans, so it makes sense for T3 to have highest technical skills in the party. If you rebalance droid items to equalize them with human gear, it may deprive droids of their important advantage, as they can’t use force, they are unaffected by LS auras and have less available skills than humans.

In theory, humans have even more chances than droids to become “skill master” as they can equip 4 items of importance beside the armor: implant, head gear, belt and gloves. Droid have only 3 item slots: 2 utilities, 1 sensor. Therefore, it makes sense for droid items to be stronger. The human characters have bigger pool of items and more possible types of bonuses, so chances of finding different types of equipment with the same bonus and equipping them on one character are smaller.

Ideally, droid equipment should have more possible types of bonuses, this way you won’t have a situation where shortly after Telos T3 have several items of every types that give him the same kind of bonus.

As a workaround, I suppose some droid equipment (mostly from “Utilities” category as you can equip 2 of these items) can be slightly toned down. For example, Droid Memory Upgrade and Droid Optimized Interface, Droid Lockout Bypass, Droid Exchange Interface can each give 1 bonus point less of “Computer Use”. This way, combination of Droid Memory Upgrade + Droid Optimized Interface will give 6 “Computer Use” points instead of 8, Droid Memory Upgrade + Droid Lockout Bypass will give 7 “Computer Use” points instead of 9. Or Droid Memory Upgrade can be weakened to +3 “Computer Use” instead of 5. Droid Remote Interface can be weakened to +8 “Security” instead of +10 and so on.

On 10/28/2020 at 5:17 PM, JediMindTrix said:

In regards to components, if you have been putting points into your repair skill you can breakdown any mid-tier and above item and net an easy 1k+ components, which you can then turn around and spend to construct at least two endgame weapon upgrade components. Since, as you mentioned, a lot of stores end up with total junk, the Exile has little incentive to really sell their loot for credits when it is far easier to break down half or 2/3rd's of the loot you gained by completing a planet and then use T3 to max out your EQ before you've left your second planet.

To prevent T3 from creating best upgrades too early, you can theoretically take the following measures:

1. Slightly increasing the cost of best/highest tier upgrades.

2. Make best/highest tier upgrades available starting from certain level (for example, level 18). As an alternative, you can tie availability of best upgrades to the count of completing planets. I don’t like this idea because it reduces the advantage of tech specialist and tech droid classes over other fighting, jedi classes in that field, but, perhaps, it might work as extreme measures if it ‘ll affect only very small number of really powerful endgame upgrades.

3. Increasing levels at which droids gain Droid Upgrade II and especially Droid Upgrade III (items from tier III are very powerful). May require moving some droid armor and, maybe, some equipment from Droid Upgrade III section to Droid Upgrade II.

 

Actually, the whole Droid Upgrade system is its own thing that need to be revised.

1) Droid Upgrade III is granted too early. After completing Telos T3 level is 11-12. In the middle of the first non-Telos planet T3 will get level 13 and will be able to equip very powerful items of tier III. Thus, the usefulness of Droid Advanced Upgrade Slot (grants Droid Upgrade Class 3) and some other items of tier I, II is very limited. The player just doesn’t need to hunt for rare items of lower tiers. I think Droid Upgrade III can be moved to level 15-17.

2) Droid Upgrade feats are granted automatically. This depreciate the value of lower tier armor when you can use armor of Droid Upgrade III in all cases without disadvantage. There are some cool high-end tier 1 and 2 armors (Droid Agrinium Armor, Droid Quadranium Armor), but by that time the player can get them, the droids will have next level of Droid Upgrade feat already, so what the point of lower requirements of these armors? There is no advantage in using lower tier armor over higher tier armor. There is no disadvantage in using higher tier armor over similar lower tier armor. The same question can be asked regarding droid utilities.

It may be appropriate to make Droid Upgrade Feat system more similar to Armor system for humans, where the player decide when to acquire armor feats and if he want them at all. This will require moving some gear to Droid Upgrade II tier, so that droids that choose to not invest in Droid Upgrade III won’t feel outclassed.

3) Some droid armors have strange costs. The good armor of lower tier (Droid Modular Plating Mark I costs 130 credits) should cost more than similar starting armor of higher tier (Droid Impact Armor Mark II costs 400 credits). Otherwise, there is no point in buying it (there is no point in it anyways, as T3 automatically acquires Droid Upgrade II before Telos).

[TheNonMan 18]

Under-powered Melee Weapons

I'd add to this that the game is somewhat balanced around players using lightsabers and force powers.

As a result melee weapons are under-powered, and require really power-gamey heavy armor strength characters to be near effective in late game. This is most likely why they gave Hanharr his racial ability which allows him to double his attacks.

While it makes sense that basic swords/blades should be weak compared to lightsabers, I'd suggest...

• Allowing all three upgrade slots for all melee weapons, except for stunsticks and others which don't have blades, extended hafts or which aren't really weapons.
  • This comes with a categorization issue, since some upgrades would add slashing damage where it doesn't make sense, but non-bladed two-hand weapons (e.g force pikes) should have their own upgrades.
     
• Giving unique weapons a damage buff, adding more unique weapons, and adding more intermediate weapon variants.
   

Force Powers

• Remove force heal. (optional, but it's mainly there for cheesing fights and bypassing health packs / regen)
• Force lightning needs a serious debuff. Third level force lightning shouldn't be able to clear entire rooms. At best it should have cone target selection like the 2nd level version (with a slightly wider cone), it should target maybe 4 or 5 enemies max, and the FP cost needs to be increased.
  ^ At max dark side alignment, you can practically use this ability as much as you want against groups.
   

Lightsabers

• Stronger lightsaber crystals need to be drawn back a bit.
• Remove character crystal. Seriously, it only exists to give you a massive stat boost which gets better as you level up.

Edited November 3, 2020 by TheNonMan

[ZeldaTheSwordsman 40]

Unless the NPCs, monsters, and bosses in the PC version are nerfed compared to the Xbox version, I think your perspective on some of this is off as far as balance is concerned. Granted, I've never played Dark Side, so you may be right about those being OP offensively.

I know from my experience that even with the levelups the game drowns you in, it's still very capable of murdering your face as you progress through it. Especially when you get to Malachor, and especially especially when you get to the bosses on Malachor. No matter how overpowered you think you are, Darth Sion and Darth Traya will give you a run for your money.

I think the amount of levels you can get is also to make up for the progression-choking in the first game, and to spare the Jedi-potential party members from the same depending on how long it takes you to convert them.

Force Heal substituting for health packs is essential to survival at times. And late-game, you'll find yourself using both - especially when you need your Force power that turn for something else. I'd hardly consider it cheesing. Especially not in the early game.

Lightsabers are rather powerful, yes, but you have to go through a fair bit of crap before you can get one. And the game is still quite capable of butchering you - even with that character crystal.

NPC AI... Assuming you mean party NPC AI, there's only so smart you can make them in a game like this I think. Playing with turn-based combat on helps so much.

[InSidious 237]

I've attempted to address a couple of the points raised here (specifically, the XP overload and the overpowered lightsabers) in my Gameplay Rework mod. I'd certainly be interested in adding some more features to it to diversify the play experience a bit/ make the game more challenging, and hearing suggestions.

I'm not especially thrilled at the idea of removing features, but I have been considering altering/reducing the number of startup feats, introducing some stat prerequisites for some feats (e.g., minimum strength for power attack), and possibly locking skills or feats out for certain classes or altering which skills are class skills, etc.