Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General So...the puzzles in Original Sin

Are terrible. The end. They have no redeemable quality i can think of.

In spite of the HORRID puzzles i still would give D:OS a 9.5/10. So i really love the game.

But i would like to explain why i think D:OS's puzzles are really poorly designed.

There are to many looked doors/forcefield/chest puzzles. Many times the key(of whatever form it may be is on a completely different map). This is bad for a number of reasons:
- it stops progress for no reason at all(at least i don't see the reason)
- it is not fun to come up to a closed door that you can't alter in any way. Considering this game is suppose to be open there should not be a single door i can't brute force my way through.

Spoiler alert:

Example: The force field in the Cyseal Church. There is no way to bypass it(as far as i am aware of) unless you have an item called a Enlightened Amulet. You get said Enlightened Amulet from a hidden dungeon in a different quest, in a different part of the map. Now if you did the quests in the Golden path order, you will most likely have the Enlightened Amulet and the force field might as well not exist. If you didn't do the really cool, but really convoluted quest line to get Enlightened Amulet than tough luck. You have one impassable force field which will stop you. This is stupid for the following reasons:
- it kills the hype to the boss fight( which is awesome btw)
- it forces the player to backtrack to find something he has now idea where to look for.

End of spoiler

Most puzzles in the game are just like the example above. So whats the problem.
Larian sucks at puzzle design. Now has anyone played Portal?

Portal is nothing but one giant puzzle. And somehow i managed to not get stuck once. Ever. In both games. Rarely have i heard of people getting stuck.

Now if you listen to the developer commentary in Portal you start to get how they managed that feat of game design. Because designing puzzles is insanely hard. Almost all puzzles in all games suck. Yes this includes all the old adventures games. In was not fun to figure out Grim Fandango.

However Portal is widely appreciated. Why?

Valve explains at length how the game was designed in the developer commentary. I will spare you trouble of replaying Portal and reiterate the main ideas they used:
1. Always have a solution to the puzzle in the location of the puzzle
2. Near a puzzle the graphics need to be as bland as possible to allow the player to focus on the problem at hand. In D:OS many times the clutter heavy graphics are the puzzle. You have to pixel hunt some button or some portal to solve it. I don't know if you heard Larian but pixel hunting SUCKS. I can't overstate this enough.
3. Every puzzle should have more than one solution. In D:OS this is sometimes the case. Many time it is not.
4. Every puzzle should be solvable in stages. In D:OS this is sometimes the case. Many time it is not.
5. If any of the 4 rules above do not apply to your puzzle the puzzle is not fun.

At the end of the day i had great fun playing the game but the puzzle part of the game:
- i either solved randomly,
- i didn't know there was a puzzle( i had the required item in my inventory from somewhere).
- i screamed horrible invectives at the screen for one our( things like Fuck your ugly mutt of a face Swen Vincke!) and other things in the same vein. Not my proudest gaming moment. Than i solved the damn thing and went: Finally! Lets have some fun.
- never felt smarter.

Conclusion

Valve solved puzzle design. Portal 1&2 proves it. You either follow their rules or don't make puzzles at all. Yes this means Broken Age puzzles suck ass. They do. I wish they didn't but they really do. A PEACH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ?! THATS THE ANSWER TO THE RIDDLE? AAAAAAAARRRRRAAAAAAAAGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

P.S.
I love you SWEN VINCKE! I really do. Please keep making games:))

Not sure it's fair to compare DOS to Portal, but ok.

In your one example I kind of like the fact that if you didn't do the quests in the correct order you can't get past the barrier. Now imagine if they hadn't had done that. How many people would have finished the game without knowing there was another quest area where you get the Enlightened Amulet? It's their way of saying 'STOP', you're not ready for this yet.

I will agree though that the traps could have been a lot better. My issue however is that some traps don't make any sense. For example if I'm the person that made the trap, and it's protecting a place I want to visit myself, how difficult have I made it for myself to get it? For this reason alone most traps are just going to have an off switch, some that may require a key, etc.

However, if I feel like solving puzzles I will play Portal. I don't play DOS for it's puzzles, so it's ok that they are not so great. If they were ... then I'm playing the wrong game.

the only issue I have with "puzzle" in this game is the button hunt.

anyway, your primary example of bad puzzle isn't really just a puzzle though, it's about a quest item essential to the story, which is quite common in RPG. oftentime in RPG, you need certain key item to move the plot along, and those items are mostly all over the place except for the particular place you'll use it.

D:OS is RPG, Portal isn't.

the pure, straightforward puzzle area in D:OS would be underground passage and Bellegar's Maze and the like.

I think it's a German thing. Seriously.

For example, I absolutely adore Drakensang series. I love Aventuria and wish dearly that there were more English resources about it (or my Deutch skillz went farther than "Ich bin ein Krankenhaus"). But the puzzles in it (River of Time in particular) are horrid. The one that takes the cake requires two components from two completely unconnected boss fights on two opposite ends of the world map, followed by a 15-puzzle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_puzzle) that requires you to arrange the tiles so that they form a picture. I guess I'm not a reincarnation of Bobby Fischer after all, because I went at it for a couple hours, gave up and used the solution from the Internets. It wasn't fun, it was tedious and boring. I can play a 15-puzzle in real life with a real 15-puzzle. In an RPG, I want to slay dragons and find treasure.

D:OS has the same symptoms. Puzzles that are tedious and infuriating and add absolutely nothing to the game other than the player's frustration.

But... Larian Studios isn't German? And why are you a hospital?

I do not agree, puzzles are fine, also those that involve different parts of the world.

Most puzzles are ok, some lack some hints - that is a no go, imo, for plot relevant riddles.

I dislike "search the button"-puzzles.

I think comparing Portal with this is utterly besides any point. Portal is highly linear and far from an open game, Divinity (*any* part!) is meant to be explored, you have to *think* somethings in broad strokes and you must live with "I can come back later". Those are fundamentally different approaches what is to be done in the game.

If you just want to linearly hack at monsters and solve puzzles that are here and in the spot, then Divinity-games might even be wrong for you. And note that most puzzles in this game *can* be solved right where they are.

I do agree the "PUZZLES SUCK! My example isn't a puzzle!" is rather... weird.

I also agree they are rather good, besides the button hunts. Think of the twin dungeons... many people seem to have a hard time with it while it's easy... good puzzle
Bellegar's Maze is seriously easy, but doesn't make it less fun.

The only puzzles that seriously got on my nerve where those at the endgame... you probably know the one I mean if you've finished the game.

The pixel hunting aspect of CERTAIN button puzzles was extremely annoying to me as well.. but to me there are only 4 puzzles that were absolutely horrible in my opinion.

1) The end-game, sorry, the entire temple, every single part of it. Was this not target group tested? Because this temple sucked. The solution to get through was convoluted and testing your new theory required endless walking.... and this entire temple sucks even more if you play with 3 or 2 chars.

2) Bellegars maze, The dog/cheese/fish puzzle. Random puzzles are never fun, ever. I solved by pure luck (the game was duplicating bones and fishes meaning I couldn't tell where to even switch to what animal...

3) The blood puzzle (the room where you fight a bunch of heavy hitting demons) with the 4 buttons at the corners. Just.. UGH

4) Brazier to the hidden entrance. Sorry, but in a game where every brazier is clickable, making this one brazier do something when you turn it OFF is bad design ;P

Generally speaking, I didn't much like the puzzles but the real problem is the design of the puzzles and the clutter and lack of clear visual hints... oh well

2. You do know that you don't have to wait to switch till they're still. The random element makes no difference since you simply switch on the spot what you need, it's rather easy and fast to get them to the point once you know what to do.
Sounds like you made it yourself needlessly complicated. No wonder you hate it then

Not sure what 4 is... hidden entrance to what?

And yes, I totally agree that the Temple sucked.

I liked the candles part, though the hints are way too obvious. The random opening door to reach the waypoint and the random pixel hunting for switches throughout the game in general are really stupid though.

There is only 1 hidden entrance that you can access by putting a burning brazier out By now I forget where it was though.. some ritual in some temple? You could "prevent from sacrifices" or something

And as for 2.. I simply dislike such "indirect control + timing" puzzles in general I solved it in my first attempt, but imo a puzzle that you hated while solving even if you solved it instantly, is imo a bad puzzle. Maybe that's just me though.

Of course it is an easy puzzle, I mean the solution is obvious, but puzzles where I can see the solution that make me essentially watch the solution unfold in slow-motion... (a slow-time event?) are simply aggravating to me

I think there's also that one in the pub in Hunter's Edge, though there's another way into the area in question by chucking a pyramid through a hole in the wall.

The candles one for me and the tiny switch to get into Hiberheim are probably the biggest culprits. I'm just not sure how the game expects you to do it. I feel like I search the answer to 90% of my stuff now I'm in the last zone whereas in Cyseal I only did it once.

The thing is in Cyseal there's plenty of areas where you'll reach and it'll be gated in some way so you have to go away and come back. Things like the amulet in the church or the reveal scroll for Evelyn's lab. Because of this I found myself treating Luculla forest the same way. "Not sure what to do here, I must have to come back later" then getting demolished by much higher level enemies and being really confused.

The game just doesn't make clear what you need to do where. The only "old school RPG" experience I'm feeling here is King's Quest - where the game would be only a few hours long so you'd have to keep repeating yourself because you'd not clicked on a branch at the start of the game or whatever.

Agree with OP that pretty much every puzzle was mediocre at best. Elemental caves one was probably only good one. But he said it himself. Good puzzles are insanely hard to make. It takes a special kind of brilliance unless you have some amazing mechanic like physic-based portals. Larian should have had more intellectual and dialog-based puzzles that require you to think hard, but not in an esoteric, insanely specific way. But really, if you can do that with any consistency, you're probably not making video games. Because there are so few good puzzles in a vast majority of games.

Divinity for the most part lacks the mechanics for good physical puzzles (Bellegar maze was ugly and boring), with its minimal physics, though I'm sure someone could make it work. But it's fine for intellectual puzzles. But those take a genius. Someone prove me wrong and tell me a good intellectual puzzle they've come up with. Of course, I'll probably not know if you've stolen it from somewhere. But I'll take your word for it and give you kudos. I mean, even finding a really good intellectual puzzle is hard enough. And if you're puzzle is good, maybe it'll make its way into my (future) module

It would already satisfy my need for "thinking" if quests had no black/white solutions to them. If I had to think about what I want to do, basically That said I do not know how to make good puzzles... but I can tell when a puzzle is bad. Not very helpful...

If you make me care about the characters in my party or companions or specific npcs, you would have already found someone who loves your module no matter it's puzzle design.

The less I care about the characters, the more I look at the design of quests and situations. It's in my blood as modder or something....

I feel i have to clarify why i picked Portal as an example of good puzzle mechanics. Thats because there are no good puzzles in RPG's or in adventure games. Very rarely have i seen smart, interesting puzzles in old adventures. And i played them all as a kid. But it was always a group effort. Five friends or more would come up with increasingly insane ideas to solve Monkey Island or Grim Fandango puzzles. That was actually the best part of those games. The friendships we'ed create trying to figure out some BS, unintuitive puzzle.

However these days the only game adventure game that did puzzles well is Resonance. There is a puzzle at one point when you come to laboratory door closed by a standard 10 digit keypad. When you examine the keypad you realize the digits 1,3,4 are a bit faded so they are most likely part of the password. You try out a combination only to realize the password is made up of 4 digits not 3. So one digit must be used twice. You search through the lab and find a broken down PC whose only working application is the Calculator. The Calculator is also kind of messed up except for displaying Pi correctly. Most people know that Pi is 3.14. Fewer people know Pi's 3rd decimal which is 1. So the password is obviously 3141.

The example above is a great puzzle. And it follows all the rules of the "fun" puzzle as figured out by Valve.

Sadly smart, interesting puzzles like the one above are almost never found in adventure games or RPG's.

Now please give me an example of a similarly intelligent puzzle in D:OS. Almost all are either pixel hunts or trial and error puzzles. Both types are horrible and should never ever be done by anyone ever again.

as I've pointed out the obvious, D:OS is RPG, but Portal isn't. so, why ask for higher quality puzzle from D:OS while you find most RPGs have bad puzzles? since when is good puzzle part of RPG genre?

Planescape Torment is the best game I've played and BG2 is my favorite game, both are RPGs, and neither has spectacular puzzles...

one last thing, pixel hunts are plenty in D:OS, but there's no trial and error, there're only clues unnoticed.

So you agree with me its probably time to either find a better way to do puzzles in RPG's or just stop doing them altogether. The weight pressure switch puzzle is nothing is not trial and error. I mean until that i didn't even know where to look for the weight of items.

I don't have problem with the puzzles in D:OS (except for button hunts), it's you who do~ I'd say leave it as it is?

the pressure plate, the weight of "difference", discerning the difference is the clue. the normal objects in the area is vase, so there'll be one of them; and the appropriate vase is in the exact room where you need it to be. then the unique items, plated candles (lightest), water bucket (second) and barrel (the heaviest). knowledge of (discerning) different items, different weights.

Yes but you have to try all those things out so thats why that puzzle is trial and error. There really isn't any clue to decipher as to why some things work and some don't. There isn't a Evrika moment. Its just try random stuff until the button clicks. Quite literally.

Maybe you liked it. Thats fine. It doesn't make a good puzzle. It makes it a very bad puzzle because even if you somehow figure it out you still have to try things in the room to find the one that are the correct weight. That sucks because there is no intelligence required. Just patience, and masochism i guess. I guess patience is a virtue so thats good, right?