Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta [Feedback] "way of"class change.patch 5/16/14

Larian I must first say that this game is truely something special, you have a masterpiece here and I cant put it down already.I really believe this game can win several awards and go down as one of the greatest rpgs of all time. ive beaten the beta 3 times now with 3 different friends, who i have all conviened they were going to buy it from the great co-op exp. I felt getting this great game for only 40$ was a steal and all my money was well spent. it reminds of a top down,co-op, turn based version of Dragon Age(which I hold in the higest regard because its an amazing take on the RPG genre). and I REALLY want to guys to succed and get all the awards you deserve for this game.

BUT this lastest patch has really made the game horrible, please do NOT leave the class/ability/talent system as it is in this new patch update. I will go on record as saying had I bought the game after this current patch update had been implemented I would have never even finished it one time, I would have tossed this out as another bad rpg attempt.

First I will go into what are actually "fair" changes.
1. level restictions on certain abilities, fair change.
2. weapons taking more action points to use if you are not at the correct level, fair change.

thats about it, everything else class related has really changed the game for the worst.

I really enjoyed the "way of" class system it allowed for much more custimaztion than the system that is in the current patch update today. Having the "way of" system allowed for you to be given bonuses for focusing in one thing which should be your choice if you want to play that way. The "way of" system also allowed for more custimaztion because if i wanted my fighter to have a spell to heal himself all i had to do was put an ability point(not stat point) into water and boom I have a fighter who can heal a bit. there was no need to put points into intellegence and I could use that stat point where I saw fit, if i wanted a warrior who could heal more I could make the choice myself to put a point into intellegence.BUT forcing me to a point a stat point into intellegence just to access the heal is very restrcing .I really really really loved you could focus on one thing right from the get go in the charecter creation screen, and fully build the charecter you wanted, without anyone forcing you to do a certain thing. I LOVED that about this game I really did. please change the system back.

With the new system I now am forced to put stat points into things I dont want to just to obatin abilities before which were not restricted that way,the previous system locked skills behind abilitiy points NOT stat points. If i want to lower my crit rate by not having any perception, that should by my choice; or if i want to have lower speed on my warrior so he goes last in combat,but still be able to have "oppurtunist" should be my choice.
I really loved that your game gave the option to truely build the charecter you wanted. but this lastest patch has turned your game into a hand holding system(hey,put this here and put that there)which has been done 100x times over.

take back your originality and give the players their freedom of choice back.

I liked the previous system, I don't even understand why they changed it.

I agree with all of your post.

I agree as well. I bought it this week and I was so psyched to be able to play a true spell blade: being able to control the field slightly with magic and be able to bash faces in. I just went in game to see what had changed, and, sadly, I have to say I stopped at character creation. Please bring back the old way or at least be less restrictive.

Partly agree.

Maybe we chose different classes, because I've never made any of my melee class character to learn a healing spell. And, spells need some basic int points, aren't they reasonable? How could a class with poor int cast various spells?

What suffered us a lot in previous versions were: not enough points to learn various skills. For example, to learn lv3 ranger spells, we need a lv3 way of ranger first - there would be (1+2+3) points spent on the skill! But now we could use lv3 spell at first. The Expert Marksman determines the number of the skills you can use is really weird.

But the skill points still need some improvement. A ranger, roger, or warrior spends less skill points to get class bonuses than a mage. As we know, a single kind of magic isn't enough to face all kinds of enemies, so mages need 2+ kinds of magic skills. But higher int points never provide more skill points.

They wouldn't. They would use limited spells due to their limited intelligence. Limited and none are very VERY different things, and going from one to the other is gamechanging.

Also, you have 5 base intelligence.
Basic intelligence for basic spells. Want to make a character with no spells? Add a talent that lowers intelligence completely to zero in exchange for something else as a tradeoff for not being able to use any form of magic on that character.

hmm I must say I love the new changes. now I can make a warrior tank type who can pickpocket also. So now I can have a warrior/thief and then my support healer/buffer. The old system made that not possible til well..end game O.o

actually thanks to the new system I was even able to convince a few more friends to play. (they play dungeons and dragons as dual class characters. they would not play Divinity as the class system was to strict)

So far the change to limit you to only X skills per ability rank has mostly seemed irrelevant: the limiting factor to how many skills you can use is actually the required level of the skill. Maybe it痴 a factor later on once you have enough levels, but right now, it痴 pretty difficult to have enough skills at one time that you can hit your cap.

By the time I can get those skills, my ability points should be high enough from the levels I've gained.

At early levels, I'm not "playing with a deck of skills" and swapping some in and out, I'm getting literally the only skills my level allows me to get. I don't have a choice what skill to prioritize getting. There simply aren't enough skills for me to build a deck.




I don't think that is correct. Yes, they only have one tree for their skillbooks, but they do have other abilities to fit their class: weapons specializations, crafting, repair, lockpicking, loremaster, bodybuilding, armour specialization, sneaking - it's not like Warriors, Rangers, and Rogues have no places competing for their ability points.

Hey, there's no need to make a ranger, roger or warrior to learn the skills which you listed above. For example, a ranger could add some loremaster and lucky charm skill points while his mage companion adds some crafting and blacksmith skill points. We can't let one character learn them all right? So far these skills haven't been set some limits as magic skills.

As regards bodybuilding and some similar skills, if you have carefully read their descriptions, who could say that they are useless for a mage? Our Conquest is the Sea of Stars. LOL.

p.s. If they add more limites on all the skills, the game is likely to be a DnD like game. Hmm.. I'm wondering if this is a good idea.

So far I see this as the common.... Start post by really positive speak, then But ending with it's so bad I won't play it. Very common to read things like this.

To me this hasn't made a great game a bad one, even if I didn't think it was as good as before, which I'm not saying that at this point. I have more to play, I did feel a lot of mechanics needed fleshing out and assumed this change was all about that.

Some general feedback...

Thanks for the North indicator on the mini-map. That said it would be grand if we could get an option for a non-rotating mini-map. Pretty common feature.

Inventory sorting was needed, but it seems the main one is missing and that would be sort by Class Type.

Getting caught even in sneak mode in general NPC area's should have more negative consequences.

Need a Key Bind for one key that can cycle through the characters you control. Right now it takes up to 4 (F1-F4) to get to each character without mousing. I'd prefer the ability to set one key to then just cycle through ones controlled characters.

Agree with the talk about the option to speed up combat. Pretty common function for turn-based games.

Still feels weird getting affected by terrain in real-time when the main combat is turn-based. An option to pause the game when a player takes terrain/DOT type damage when not in combat would be ideal for me. So we don't accidentally have them die because of twitch mechanics in a turn-based game.

Not sure what the gameplay purpose is when zooming all the way in, to me it's a useless view. What would be super sweet is when you get zoomed in close, you start moving more towards a shoulder view show you can see out instead of down. And a double scoop of ice cream, when zoomed all the way in, it also puts the camera in follow mode. So basically it is an over the shoulder view that sticks. That would give the game a very cool second perspective one can play the game in. More immersive one.

But overall, totally looking right on schedule now, everything imo shaping up quite well. It's interesting to watch some of these EA games, and how much can be done when things go into final crunch time. It's like for the first year or two glacier pacing, but as you near the finish line things start to really hop.

It's a vanity-cam, so you can check out how your character looks with whatever new piece of armor you just equipped. If you turn it into an over-the-shoulder view, that pretty much kills the vanity-cam.