Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Biggest problem with DOS currently and other notes

I've been playing DOS since the first backer alpha. But one problem is still sticking out and needs to be addressed.

The combat is fiddly in the extreme.
Scenario:
My group of 4 takes on 3 zombies outside Cyseal.
I initiate the encounter and wait turn for them to come to me. What happens?
I delay my turns to let the zombies close the distance. Use my ranged casters/archer to weaken the zombies then charge in with my melee characters. Zombies actually die rather easy, I take some damage both from attacks and poison but survive. But once the battle is over the problems start.

If one of my melee characters performed the last turn and I move all the ranged characters will move toward him to form up. Consequence? they all get poisoned. Furthermore my already weakened melee characters when trying to leave the poisoned field constantly take poison damage with every step.

Result is 2 dead characters and wasted resurrect scrolls. All because I WON a battle. This happens in virtually every conflict. Especially on hard.

Even worse is when you resurrect a character that happens to be standing in some sort of elemental AOE. Instant death, resurrect again.

New players will not find this fun and it's starting to get on my nerves as well. Especially with the increased lethality in the more recent versions which I otherwise like.


Other random notes:
Dead characters not getting experience sucks. It' makes me want to insta reload every time. I see no corresponding benefit to this system either.

In many areas another level of zoom feels needed. I'm constantly reaching for the mouse wheel to find nothing. And I know the engine is capable of it because of the camera bug.

Weapon skills are still useless. 4 damage for 3 points is a horrible horrible trade.

The Whetstone should tell you that yo do not have enough crafting skill instead of seeming inanimate.

Sometimes a staff on Jahans back appears to float.

Crazed Maze puzzle - Not sure why you can't use an object on the plate instead of a character.

Items that add constitution are not persistent through reloads. You must unequip it then put it back on.

Ghosts should be immune to poison.

Braccus is too easy.

The skill Richochet is overpowered.

Sometimes the item compare pop up blinks rapidly.

Water arrows are broken.

Telekinesis +skill items are broken.

Stock companion gear labeled by their name like "Jahan's Staff" is overvalued at merchants.

Sometimes a character using rush will stop well short of it's target yet the target will still take damage.

Stun arrow tips are broken too, they actually make regular arrows instead of stun arrows.

Camera bug yes, you can fix it by double clicking the character icon. I think this camera bug is caused by the terrain height changes like when characters go down hill the camera won't follow them and you can zoom in anymore. The only fix is to double click your character and camera will reset to the proper level. I bet they are aware of it.

Yeah, the regrouping into formations still needs work.

I think that if they're going to have the XP penalty for dead characters, then the AP cost of a Resurrect scroll is unnecessarily high. Best case scenario, I need someone to skip a turn to get enough AP to cast it, and I have to hope that the resurrected guy isn't targeted and killed before I can heal them.

Weapon damage skills add 10% damage a rank. They could be better.

EDIT: Clairification - the AP cost of the scroll.

Until formations and pathfinding are fixed, you can break the link between characters after entering combat, so they will not try to join up with whoever is active at the end. A bit of a hassle, but not as much as having to resurrect repeatedly.

I agree on XP and zoom.

The weapon, elementalist and 'way of the' abilities are getting an overhaul (Lar revealed earlier today in the D:OS chat).

Raze, could you please post the "short version" of what Larian said during today's chat re: the planned changes to the weapon, elemental, and "way of" skills? Thanks!

Yea, this is one of the most annoying problems I've encountered as well. Even more so when it is the dumb formation AI that leads characters to step on hazardous surfaces. I've made a thread earlier about some suggestions concerning these problems:
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=492953#Post492953

Btw, any news about rings slots? Right now only one of them works if you wear two. Is that a bug or the number of slots is planned to be decreased to one?

Yeah, I like your "Follow the exact steps of the controlled character" formation idea - also added it to the "Beta UI Wishlist" thread, by the way. But the real way to fix all these complaints on the forum about party members pathing through damage environments is to set their AI to avoid those environments in the first place, regardless of the currently selected formation. Of course, that's much easier said than done, but that's really the root of the issue.

I could, but keep in mind this is from memory, there were a couple different conversations going on in chat at the same time, and I was also doing things on another computer, going back and forth on the D:OS chat.
The main thing was that currently the abilities encourage too much specialization (sticking to certain 'classes'). The 'way of' and elementalist abilities will be changed so that their level determines how many of that type of skill you can learn (twice the ability level, for the examples given), and some of the bonuses from Way of the Warrior will be moved to talents, etc. The intent is to still have benefits to specialization, but to allow more freedom in character development.
There will still be (reasonable) requirements on skills.


The issue with rings is a bug.

Cool, thanks a lot Raze. I'm looking forward to the details in the next(?) update.

XPs: What about having "party XP" (because that's what the party has accomplished to date) rather than tracking it per-character? Apart from the dead/alive issue, it would also avoid the problem of hirelings ending up well above or well below the PCs' level depending on when you meet them.

Area Damage: This is problematic in another way - if you're out of combat and the NPC is stuck in a zone created by a PC during that battle, they're liable to trigger the "Stop that!" dialogue... but they keep taking hit after hit from the zone while you're stuck in the dialogue. If this doesn't kill them before you close it, it'll still have pushed them well past the "I hate you and will kill you now!" point (the dialogue for which promptly pops up after closing the other one, as they continue to stand in the zone taking damage...)

This can affect other situations where an NPC is considered 'out of combat' while one is going on around them. (Spoiler Warning) It happened to me in the Evelyn fight last time around: Jake is lying on the floor, not taking part in the combat, as expected... until an NPC's fire zone ends up covering his space. He burned to death very quickly in real time even though the scene around him was turn-based (and no turns were being taken).

Yea, that was very annoying last time I played the game - as a melee character who gets close to the enemies, it was Madora who was frequently mad at my pc caster.
I think there are some solutions to this problem, like:
-companions shouldn't turn hostile at all from recieving friendly fire, except on hard difficulty
-companions anger meter should rise only by 1 point per hazardous surface (that way they will turn hostile only by getting themselves into more than one hazardous surface, which is less likely to happen)
-there should be a dialogue option to apologize to them to lower the anger meter or it should lower automatically over time, or more interestingly, by gaining reputation points.

Thst pretty much a list on which most of posters already agree SniperHF.

Its very probable all that will be taken care of.
Doesnt hurt to make sure it is noticed.

Well, let's talk about that. The basic idea of XP per character is to reward characters for what they actually accomplished. That might sound pointless in SP but it's important for co-op. Only characters which engage in turn-based combat should get XP points for killing enemies.

But that's only one part of the XP and level system. I agree that the whole party sould be rewarded for solving quests (because this is clearly a party engagement).

Another problems comes with companions and henchmen. They should indeed level with you, even if they don't actually be part of the party. This is a "hot topic" already caused almost dogmatic fights between RPG fans but imo the pros outweight the cons. Of course it doesn't make sense if you look at it from the outsight (aka "it's not realistic"). But it makes a lot of sense if you look at it from a design perspective. It's still a game and it should be fun to play it. Not giving companions or henchmen the ability to level with you there would just never be any incentive to change between them after a certain point, as you've said.

Hm, in my playthrough companions never turned hostile in case they received friendly fire. They just started a dialogue in order to remind me that we are fighting on the same side...

Im not sure im getting the nature of this complaint.
or i do and cant agree with it at all.

Why should a dead character get XP? he/she is dead.
There should not be any xp for them.

Thats a small and appropriate punishment for letting them die.

Try an encounter where they are staying on hazardous surface, created by your caster, and continously taking damage. First comes the warning dialouge, seconds later comes another and they become hostile.