Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta First impressions, Suggestions [Co-op]

Overall Impression: As a fan of Fallout, Arcanum, and the Baldur's Gate Trilogy, I have to say that I'm loving this game so far. It captures the feel of these old-school cRPGs but goes one step further by creating a 'dual story' mode for an enhanced co-op experience. So far I've played the game exclusively in co-op mode...and I'm never going back.

I enjoy the writing, it's silly and snarky and makes me happy. The graphics surpass my expectations (although that isn't hard), and the style/colour theme sort of reminds me of Diablo 3. I love that you can talk to animals. The artwork for the sheep is so incredibly adorable, I may die.

BUT. I do have a couple of suggestions, mostly involving the co-op experience. I hope you take these into consideration because these are the 'little things' that would make the game so much more enjoyable for me (and probably many other people who exclusively play multiplayer).

• PC Voice Acting
  
  This is one of those features that you don't really notice until it's gone. In Baldur's gate, whenever you clicked on your character (or an NPC), they would make some kind of comment (typically snarky), and it really helped establish their personality (and occasionally broke the fourth wall). When I click on my character in D:OS, she is silent. I am disappointed. If there are no plans to involve voice actors, I think simply implementing a 'custom player voice' feature (similar to the one in BG2) would work. Players can import their own voice sets and enjoy the game that way.
• When you speak to an NPC, make the Dialogue Box Pop Up for your Co-Op Partner as well (instead of forcing them to read the white blurbs)
  
  LARIAN PLS. Make this an option that you can toggle in the Gameplay menu. I hate having to read the little blurbs of white text that appear above you and the NPC's heads. Sometimes this is white text against a light background. Eye-straining? Oh yeah. Annoying? Infinitely so. What I suggest is having the dialogue box pop up for your co-op partner as well, but make it minimizable so that she can do other things while you talk to an NPC. Or she can listen in on your conversation. When I play this game with my friend, we typically like to go our separate ways and teleport to each other (using the teleporter pyramids) when there's special player dialogue, but it sucks to miss out on all the conversations just because you aren't there. This minimizable dialogue box will make it a non-issue.
• Fix the Trading Window Bug
  
  When both players are in a trading window simultaneously, the window bugs out and you can see the other player's items in the barter window. Sometimes you'll even notice that you're no longer trading with the merchant you were talking to!
• Make the Mini-Map icons for you and your co-op player more visible
  
  Right now it's just a blue and green dot, which is a bit hard to notice. Maybe enlarge it a bit and make it an arrow? I don't know.
• Allow us to close/minimize the Trade window and Dialogue Box with the ESC key.
  
  Right now if you're in the Trade window, you can't close it by pressing ESC. You have to click the [X] at the top right corner. Pretty sure this is just a bug.
• Make custom map markers visible to the other player.
  
  Pretty straightforward, this way we can label things on the map and refer to it, instead of giving the other person ambiguous directions about where an objective is.
• Teleporter pyramids???
  
  I haven't progressed very far in the story, so I don't know if this is the intended use for those Teleporting Pyramids, but my friend and I each have one in our inventory and we just activate it to teleport to the other person. It's pretty awesome. Hope I don't need to use these for a quest, because this feature is too convenient to pass up.

More to come if I think of them. Any thoughts on these suggestions? agreement? controversy?

- I don't think voice acting was ever planed, mainly because it's probably a costly thing - and when you hire cheap actors, quality takes a toll. However the custom voice set is an interesting idea. I myself am alright with silent protagonists.

- Definitely need a better chat window!

- The UI doesn't seem quite right, indeed. It's not a big deal, but some features doesn't feel polished or final. As player we got accustomed to certain habits, including closing panels with ESC. A few other of those small but real issues have been discussed on the forums, like switching inventories by clicking on the portraits ( instead you have to either re-open the inventory or use the arrows at the top of the panel ).

- Trading window, a recurrent bug since the alpha

- I've seen worst minimaps... I think it's okay.

- Teleporter Pyramids have been a constant feature since the early days of the game promotion, so they are absolutely working as intended, yes. Since you can virtually go your separate ways, it's nice to have the option to regroup at will in order not to miss interesting or important events.

When will character's get player's voice ? Could be so cool .

I agree for the ESC key, but it's surely a bug so let's wait update (hope today).
Minimap is not so bad, and teleporters are a great awesome thing for co-op.

Voice acting was planned, and mentioned during the kickstarter, for key dialog from main characters. Exactly how much, Larian has not said.