Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Various feedback (mostly UI)

Background: I played Divinity Original Sin for the first time after the April 25th patch. My one and only play-through has been with two characters: a ranger and a rogue, using no abilities from other classes or hiring any companions.

General feedback:

The game needs a difficulty setting above hard.

This was my first time playing this game or any one similar to it. I was using two DPS classes that rely on the same type of gear, don't have healing, deal the same type of damage, without companions, and don't have any way of using the environment to their advantage (no fire spells or lightning to stun). Despite all of these sub-optimal choices, all save 2 fights were an absolute breeze. For a notable example, I fought the 10 level-7 orcs when both of my characters were level-5 and had to use one potion each.

The dialogue between your two characters after level-up, healing, etc. needs to be made less binary.

All of the dialogue when a decision is made has been fantastic, but the random two-line chats upon events such as leveling up are way too extreme. The only two options you are given are that of expressing extreme adoration or utter disdain. It feels very forced.

Murder mystery quest

The first time you talk to Evelyn, she ends a perfectly normal conversation with something along the lines of "Soon, you'll wish you were dead source hunter, with ____ coming." Then the conversation ends and your characters say something seems suspicious.

A person just told them they were going to wish they were dead soon and says something about some form of demonic entity, but you have no response?

Also, you have literally no dialogue options with any characters after you find Evelyn's journal. It seems odd that you can go rushing to talk to everyone about a random love note from the duke but not an entry thatｴs confessing to the crime.

UI feedback:

1. We need a key that cycles through your characters (e.g. Tab).

Controlling each of your characters doing while different things is a pain right now. This would eliminate all of that issue.

2. We need an easier way to transfer items between characters.

For example: a key that transfers an item to another character. (Ctrl+click on an item brings up a small circle of portraits around the item. Clicking on one sends the item to that character.) This is especially needed for identifying / repair inventory management.

3. If you are in a trade screen with nothing loaded, there is no reason to display the warning that your current trade will be cancelled when switching party members.

4. Identifying items should work even if you don't have the character selected.

Currently, if you open up Carl's inventory, then click on Alice's portrait, Carl is no longer able to identify items in his inventory until you have him selected as well.

5. The color of the minimap is very out of place in dark dungeons. Looking at just the minimap, there seems to be no difference between the city and a dark cavern.

6. The chat box should neither include the random line each NPC spams every 10 seconds nor automatically scroll down whenever a new line is added.

I missed an important line in the Murder Mystery quest because I accidentally clicked twice. Immediately, I attempted to scroll up to read the line in the chat log, but I was next to the marketplace at the time so I couldn't even scroll up to reach it because the log kept scrolling down. I was virtually unable to find anywhere in the town where this was not an issue. Had to reload a previous save in order to go through the dialogue again and read it.

7. It would be extremely helpful if items that were placed into your inventory since you last opened it were somehow highlighted.

Agreed. There should be some sort of super-hard ironman mode. AND there should be a real incentive to not put all your leveling points in combat skills and stats....


Agreed. Right now the decision between only two extreme options seems somehow strange. Black and white thinking is the best way to describe it. I think many of these dialogue lines should be re-written to actually sound more like a real conversation with nuances in opinion instead of only extreme position, totally agreeing or insulting the dialogue partner...


Agreed. But that isn't that easy because it had to work in co-op as well while you don't control every character.


There is already a context-menu implemented (which is deactivated by default so far) which can be opened by right-clicking. In that context menu you can send the item to another character.


Agreed. That's maybe a bug.


I think the problem here is that by clicking on another portrait while in the inventory screen the inventory should change to that character as well. It works the other way round (changing inventory -> changing character), so there is no reason why it shouldn't work like that (changing character -> changing inventory).


Imo the minimap isn't very good after all. It's all very blurry and doesn't really look like the real game world.


Partially agreed. There should be an additional filter for NPC chatter.


Agreed. That would be nice indeed. But with the sort button already coming new items should just be added to the bottom of the inventory, making their identification quite easy anyway.

Did Larian actually confirm this? That'd be awesome.

Yes, that's confirmed. Swen said so himself on the global chat last night IIRC.

Nice, thanks!

Here's approximately how it works now:


Char_A: Neutral opening

Char_B: VeryNice response
Char_B: VeryAngry response

Char_A-Char_B_VeryNice: VeryNice response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryNice: VeryAngry response

-OR-

Char_A-Char_B_VeryAngry : VeryNice response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryAngry : VeryAngry response


Each of those possibilities has a unique line. This is four possibilities from two responses. If you up that to four possible responses to grey the scale up a bit...

Char_A: Neutral opening

Char_B: VeryNice response
Char_B: Nice response
Char_B: Angry response
Char_B: VeryAngry response


Then you get...

Char_A-Char_B_VeryNice: VeryNice response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryNice: Nice response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryNice: Angry response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryNice: VeryAngry response

-OR-

Char_A-Char_B_Nice: VeryNice response
Char_A-Char_B_Nice: Nice response
Char_A-Char_B_Nice: Angry response
Char_A-Char_B_Nice: VeryAngry response

-OR-

Char_A-Char_B_Angry: VeryNice response
Char_A-Char_B_Angry: Nice response
Char_A-Char_B_Angry: Angry response
Char_A-Char_B_Angry: VeryAngry response

-OR-

Char_A-Char_B_VeryAngry: VeryNice response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryAngry: Nice response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryAngry: Angry response
Char_A-Char_B_VeryAngry: VeryAngry response


And you have to do that for all of those instances in the game. Just doubling the options gives you 4 times the workload.



That's a dialogue bug, she shouldn't say that.


***


I agree that the NPC dialogue log can contain a lot of utterly worthless background chatter that it probably shouldn't. I don't need to hear Kelvania's shopping list, or that it's a nice day on the market or that a vendor has a clever line.

Making the answers less extreme would already help a lot. There is just no need for a "very angry" and a "very nice" answer for each and every topic. Why not making a "nice" and a "not so nice" answer? Or an "angry" and "less angry" answer for another dialogue...

Nobody says that if you are limited to two answers/options (because of time/workload constraints) you had to choose the two most extreme positions. That's just bad writing/design imo, black and white as I've said.

Then it would simply cycle you to the next available character (one that is controlled by you).


This is exactly what I was going for. I should have been more clear in the original post.

The dialogue that triggers when one of your characters wins a fight without the other participating is a great example of both characters having an appropriate response to the given situation. Dialogue such as "Carrying the team on my shoulders." on the other hand...