Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Feedback after playthrough

Now that I have completed the beta I would like to give some feedback.

We were playing coop as two battlemages both two-handed, one fire and witchcraft the other water and air.

It was way too easy, nearly every fight was over within three rounds.

We hardly ever attacked with our weapons, there where too many skills to choose from (Charge, Charge2, Fist, Fist2, etc)

So this leads to my following radical suggestion:

Ditch all skills. A fighters "skills" are his damage dealing weapons nothing more.

Instead I would suggest a system similar to Fallout. There you can choose how you attack, if you swing or thrust for example.

This could also be ability depended.

Normal 4AP Damage Normal etc
Swing 6AP can hit multiple enemies
Thrust 5AP is armor piercing etc. Requires two handed weapon 3 for example

Next:
Remove skill point saving at the end of the turn. If you wait too long, then you simple wasted your time.
Powerful spells which require many aps should be casted over as much turns as needed. This way a mage could be interrupted, which leads to many options and tactics on the battlefield.

Equipment:
I don't like it that every thing has a level. That a level 1 sword does 6-20 damage and a level 5 sword does 50-70. I don't want to play diablo or any action RPG, I want to play a real rpg and not something where I am always on a treasure hunt.

Or when I find something unique, that this item will only be about 2-3 levels good and then it will be replaced by a common sword because it simply does more damage.

Give every weapon a base damage and adjust that with the characters strength and skills/abilities/talents.

Spells:
Make them more powerful and let them need ingredients to cast a spell. This way you could limit some of the casted spells throughout the game. Maybe something really powerful but it requires a wersheeps heart and there will only be two to find in the whole game. This could also lead to some sidequests.

That's it for now, other than that it is a great game.

Yeah, no.

What you want is to completely change the combat mechanics and item system and magic system. The game is being released on June 20th. That's not happening. What you want is a completely different game, sorry.

Doesn't sound like a completely different game to me, but those basics features added from the very beginning would have been nice in some coherent ways, instead of that big unbalanced and unbalancable blob we have now.

However, I agree, it's probably too late to add these good sense ideas.

Yes, melee weapons were the stepchild weapons of Fallout - swing and thrust, could it get any more bland ? But normally, you could attack eyes, head, groin, arms, legs, torso (and more, depending on the enemy), you could use several attack modes, hurl explosives, had a great variety of hand-to-hand attacks etc.

While the current system in D:OS certainly needs some balance work, i am very happy that fighters, rangers and rogues do have skills in this game.

Yes some skills are ok, but most are overpowered especially the warrior skills.

Right now it just feels like a turn based action rpg. And this is just wrong.

Most of the balance problems result from their poor rpg system, everything is level based. To Hit, Damage, Armor, Dodge, Hit Points. The level is just a factor for everything. This makes balancing a real problem, because this system is only ever balanced if both opponents are the same level.

This system gets really fast hard if you face some higher leveled enemies. And on the other hand becomes quickly too easy when you face some lower leveled enemies.

This makes the open world also redundant because you can't walk where you want. As soon as you face some harder enemies the fights become impossible. This makes the whole experience more or less linear.

The main stats should be much more important then the current level. If one choose to focus only on strength, then he should be dealing massive damage, even if he is level one.

Hm...I think the way he mention it could be added it in as a feature extra feature where players who want a extremely hard mode just to challenge themselves as a unlockable feature and it could be added when in the future patch but not sure how balance it will be...

Lets hope that its not gonna be lvl based for the encounters though...

Larian knows there is a balance problem. However, when you get a minor cut on your arm, the first step you take should not be "amputate".

Some of the issues are that skills do too much damage, and that they ignore enemy resistances and armour. That makes normal attacks much less interesting to use. Once that's fixed, normal attacks will look much better.

Getting better weapons and armour as you level up is standard for RPG's. This game is not a completely radical departure into bizarre and unfamiliar territory.

Part of the reason for the beta is to balance the game. You can do that without scrapping basically all the game's mechanics and starting over.

Minor cut? I don't know but I thought they wanted to create a open world non-linear rpg. With this system, this is just not possible. Some even complained that they had to do some quests in Cyceal before they can venture into the wild and have some battles because the fights were too hard. The strange thing is their stats didn't change much but just their level and the weapon they used changed. So the only limiting thing was one or two levels.

This could be fixed by leveling everything to the same level. But that would be rather boring.




Is it really? Sounds to me more like an arpg. Yes you find magic items, yes some are better. Look at Baldurs Gate you can find a good weapon in a side quest and you will not find any better weapon throughout the game. Does it bother you? No! Because you are that dwarf with the almighty battleaxe.

RPGs should be about a good story, a nice combat system and about problem solving. This non-stop treasure hunting is just plain and simple an action rpg.

I mean right now weapons only last about 2 levels before you have to replace them because the damage is way too low. Why look for a magic weapon if Esmeralda will have better stuff next time you visit her.

I think a better way of balancing is to remove the lvl of the monsters so you don't think you hafta match the lvl of the mobs to win...

It makes more game more challenging than actually know what lvl you need to get to just to beat a group of monsters

Sorry, but the idea of having only one weapon the entire game, and all that changes about it is that numbers automatically go up as you level up sounds really boring to me.

An "Action RPG" is not defined by the fact that you can get different pieces of equipment instead of upgrading the same one. An action RPG is not defined by the fact that your warrior characters can use skills instead of just repeating the same basic attacks over and over again.

Minchi that idea of hiding the visibility of the enemy's level would not in any way solve seggor's complaint.

I think we get way too much stuff from loot.
My level 10 characters got over 40% of their ability levels from their equipment, despite the lonewolf talent.
Plus they get a dozen of 10% or 15% resistances to various effects and 8 points of stats.

My mage has already filled its 3 skill bars and has enough money to buy the other skillbooks.

Because you have easy access to skills you don't need to buy scrolls. And because you are powerful you don't need to buy potions. So you get no money sink in the game.

I want less loot from low level combats but good loot from bosses, many scrolls for sale and more expensive skillbooks.

I always assumed that the purpose for scrolls was that they have the flat item use AP cost, whereas spells can potentially cost far higher AP. In addition to characters with no ranks being able to use scrolls.

Also I too found that I had more gold than I knew what to do with, because there was very little I needed to buy and rows of stuff to sell.

ORRRRRRRR.....you could wait until they release the final game as any new suggestions will likely be ignored being so close to release. Any balancing and other considerations have probably already been considered and have been ignored due to the vision of the game that a lot of people here seem to want changed.

Let them make the game. Enjoy it. Or not.

While your point on being so close to release that these suggestions are likely not going to be heeded is valid, the whole point of being in a beta and having beta forums is to voice our opinions on the current system and contribute feedback onto how we believe it can be improved. Even so things said here and now may eventually be incorporated into future patches and modifications.

This forum isn't simply to compliment the things we like and to ignore those that we don't or just say "Well, I guess they have a different vision".

There are going to be skill balances in this week's update, as well as changes to the elementalist and 'way of' abilities that will limit the number of spells/skill a character can learn from the associated category.
I would expect loot balancing at least to address the rarity of lockpicks.