Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General A long time Larian stalker and his thoughts

I will start by saying that I have been stalking you since the beginnings. The first Divine Divinity was one of the best RPGs.

I had immense hopes for this as there haven't been any big good games for quite some time.

Love almost every aspect of the game: the physics, the art direction, the particles, architecture, creature models etc.

It's just one tiny element that disconnects me so hard from the epic experience this should and could have been: the combat.

First time I heard you were going for turn-based I thought "I don't think this will be that bad."

For me, personally, the turn-based combat in this game is by far its greatest flaw. Although I am a turn-based fan in general, where turn-based can be used to enhance to depth of strategic decisions, in DOS this only cripples the flow and dynamics of the experience.

Every encounter starts too slow, with people unsheathing weapons and getting into combat positions in a very awkward manner. Then the giant text informs me that I am going to get into a fight like I wasn't already informed through the gravity of the fact that everything stopped and experienced warriors need more than enough seconds to get prepared.

The way every fight is introduced consumes too much time and is disconcerting. For me, at least, it rips a giant gap between the experience until that particular moment when everything stops because everybody has to get ready for combat and the combat itself which is mostly boring. True, I have not played that much yet and turn-based could be more awesome for a boss encounter but still.

I cannot understand why you did not go with the classic real-time rounds based combat that worked incredibly well for all the great ones.

Having the possibility of pausing in a complex rpg combat scenario is a must but the flow of the combat must not be interrupted by any other factor than the will of the player. Why did you not let us decide when to pause and reorganize?

I am also sure that a lot love the system. This is not a general blame that I bring. But, in my opinion, this game would have been HUGE if, at least, you gave the possibility of having the choice between the two systems.

Who knows, maybe you'll implement it at some point in time. I really hope you do. As this has immense potential and the forced turn-based combat just takes away from the "ZOMFG, I forgot to go to work moments."

I love your studios. I hope you continue making great games. You are a dying bread in an industry taken over by greed.

Thank you for staying on that crumbling wall of big dreams and great games. And please, for the love of everything fluffy, add real-time rounds based combat as an option.

Thank you for reading a completely random, completely lacking cohesiveness, ramblings of an old stalker.

I second the idea of real-time but honestly, I thought worse. the turns are fast, and not very slow.
And I have been following them since 2002 too

Everything is too slow during combat. Every ability is like the conjuring of the greatest planar being out there, whilst the swings themselves are always awkward.

I don't know why that happens but it's just my feeling whenever I am in combat. It feels like all participants are just upset and don't really want to fight. Stupid joke: it's like all of them are potheads.

Don't know why combat was not thought out to be more fluid and natural. When using a one-handed sword feels like hitting with some 100 kgs maul. The character puts so much effort into everything that it becomes silly. And slow.

One of the things I took away from the entire RTwP vs TB discussion in the Torment: Tides of Nemenera Kickstarter is that the different systems are simply not interchangeable. A game that wants to be both TB and RTwP would need to basically have two version of every encounter, which is simply unfeasable with a KS budget and most likely a waste of money on any other budget.

I'm no game designer so I would recommend searching for those threads concerning Numenera to get insight as to how what you are asking is just not realistically possible.

On a more personal note I'm enjoying the turn based combat, even though I'm generally a big RTwP fan, it allows for far more creative use of the surroundings in combat to gain an advantage (or just to kill enemies in a rather creative/funny way)

Well, I might not have explained it as I wanted.

For example, the Infinity Engine is basically working on a round basis whilst showing the succession of rounds in real-time. You do have the option to auto-pause after each round.

Whilst I agree that isn't a true "turn-based" game, the engine allowed for enough strategic depth whilst offering enough fluidity.

What was wrong with that? To be honest, the IE was the best tool for rpgs. If it is not a hack&slash (let's ignore IWD for a moment), then it does not need a diabloesque tempo. Having that in mind, forcing turn-based where there is no need for it seems a bit silly.

From what I have played so far, DOS is not turn-based material. You can also manipulate surroundings in DAO.

My issue with Pause Base is you can have a variation of someone playing pause all the time to another that never pauses. It makes balancing well not possible. It is also messy, especially in coop if you are constantly pausing, in the pause base games I've played, you also have issues where some PC's are faster at execution than others, so you never have a clear feeling of which PC is going to be able to execute next. It sound noble the idea, but imo it was never as clean as a true TB game.

I'm not sure you knew but Larian mentioned they wanted the Divine Divinities to be TB as well all along, it was the publisher that told them there is no market and make it real-time. It's a design choice and also reading Swen's forward in the manual he states he's always wanted to create a PnP experience on the PC, which is true turn and this game allowed him that dream.

Oh yes, I didn't (and neither did inXile since it's a non-issue for them) consider the multiplayer consequences of a RT based system. The Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate and friends) had one of these, multiplayer was rather...annoying... to say the least (suffice to say, we quickly went back to each playing our own individual single player game).



QFT

The Turn based combat is annoying me a lot less then I thought it would. I expected it to be jarring, but I like the strategic aspects of it. It moves quick enough not to be annoying, and allows for easier multiplayer. I do understand why it might bother some, but I'm personally happy with Larion's choice.