Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Viewpoint from a new player

First, thank you guys for making this game. Many of the core parts are great, and you definitely have good story. With that in mind, I want to bring up alot of quality-of-life things that bother me about the game.

1. The total skill set is overwhelming at best
The many MANY skills you can invest points into is strait up confusing. When you make characters, you see a list, and unless you spend an hour or two just to get a good idea of how each skill matters and which ones to invest, you end up allocating skills poorly. I had to restart my characters because I did not know you needed to save up points to advance skills beyond level 1. I have to play a few battle before I understand initiative and other things, and even with the tutorial I had a tenuous grasp.

2. Merchants are a mess.
You had a great idea: make every NPC able to trade. Unfortunately, it just causes frustration for me. e.g. The merchants are spaced far apart and I had to look up online just to see where certain skill books were. I understand that you want the players to explore the city, but it should not require 1 hour of concentration to figure out where all the best merchants are. Also, it is annoying that when I trade, switching characters will reset the trade window. If I am pooling items to pay for a skill book, it is annoying to have to exit the trade window, move items then, trade again. The same with gold taking up space. There should be shared party gold.

3. All the enemies are higher level than me
This could be my own fault, but I swear enemies are 1-2 levels higher than me. I did the side quest with the cave with a skeleton riding a huge machine (that was cool stuff btw). I was able to kill him, but the men in the cave did about 2/3 of the damage which is not fun in and of itself. I should have felt like the hero, instead of the help. As far as enemy difficulty, I have no idea how I was supposed to do it differently. I did all the run around quests in Cyseal, started with the lighthouse and northern league expedition, and when I ran out of places, I explored new ones. Never were the enemies AT my level, always above. Again, maybe I am incompetent, but I have no idea what I could do differently.

4. Combat can be very confusing and you end up not making many choices
I understand that you want players to have Loremaster before learning about their enemies weaknesses, but in reality, it would be very nice to know enemies weaknesses and immunities. I have Loremaster 2, and all I get to see is their HP and AP. It would feel more frustrating to actually know how well a spell will work before I use it. The undead machine thingie I mentioned before was apparently weak to air (I think?), and did not know until I used an air spell just to spice it up. Knowing their weaknesses is fun, but keeping them hidden will make it frustrating.

Along these same lines, I have been seeing things take damage and not know why. I know walking over a terrain will cause damage (like fire and poison). But more than once I killed a zombie boar, which exploded to do fire, poison, and air damage. Or it went to an enemies turn, and a ghoul exploded in fire even though they were not on fire. This could just be me being stupid, but more than once I've had a hard time understanding everything going on.

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So here are some suggestions that would make things better (only suggestions):
1. Put all the major merchants in the town center, possibly creating new NPC's. Intuitively, I go to the fletcher to buy bows, and I can infer that I can buy marksman skills too. You can still keep the other ones (like captain Aureus holding on to man-at-arms skill books), but add extra NPC's so when I decide to upgrade my party I know exactly where to go.
2. When a player already has increased a skill from 0 to 1, when they hover over it, have a text say, "you need 2 points to increase this skill". I had a level 5 character with 1 skill point in many things before I realized how badly I messed up.
3. Just list all the stats on a monster no matter your lore master. You can hid HP and AP b/c those allow choices to be made from turn to turn, but if I can see who is vulnerable to what, then my choices feel meaningful.
4. Somehow, organize merchant's trading window so that books are in skill order (i.e. level 1 skillbooks, then 4....), b/c i have to hunt for the skills. It also wouldn't hurt for the tooltip to show an icon to help me see what it is.
5. Why do you give me so many level 1 companions in the hall of heroes, when I am level 3 by the time I can afford one? Also, why are there so many companions for each level? Why not have a set number of companions (2 rogues, 2 shadowblades, 2 archers, etc.) and allow them to be at your level, no matter what it is?

I apologize for length, but many of these things really got to me as I was playing on my day off, and feel like they could be much better.

Hello and welcome to the community!

1.) Yes, this is about as confusing as playing Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 3) where you really need to read over a guide to get a real good understanding.

2.) For the merchant mess, I simply rely on my main "dominant" character. I have him as a warrior mainly to carry the stuff around. Also, in Cyseal, just south of the fletching shop and near the back door to the healing house, there are some crates. Put the real good and expensive weapons in there (for now) to free up some space/encumberance. No npcs should disturb you going into these crates. If one does, have the "side-kick" companion talk to them in a manner that has that NPC facing the opposit direction.

3.)
I'm hoping Larian resolves this issue, it keeps the game from being free-flowing like it should be.

4.) Some common sense actually goes a long way. The electronic machine can't deal with surges of electricity. Fire elementals will be weak to water. Enemies that are wet have a much easier chance of being frozen.

Poison and Fire is a very deadly combination in this game. Fire will cause poisoned areas (or monsters) to explode. Often I find setting the ground on fire and using teleport on a zombie and drop them in the fire to cause insane damage to them. Anything that is a puddle or steam will cause shock damage. You can also cause an explosion by setting an enemy on fire and then casting a poison spell on them.

Your suggestions are said, some already made by others. I'm sure someone from Larian will get to reading them during the week. There is a large update coming very soon that should address a lot of issues with the game. This is forum is also owned by the actual developers, and here they really do read every (constructive) post.

Feel free to ask for help here, there are many that will offer it. We also have some fantastic guides in Help/Tips/Tricks for crafting. Crafting in this game is awesome, but so robust that it is best to use a guide that many people worked on for the past two months.

Thank you for your elaborated post, but I have to disagree with all your points.

1. I wish there were many more skills, and that actually future games will improve on that. Skills = choices = new way to play the game and have fun. If you find them overwhelming, take your time and learn them.

2. Merchants are just fine, it is a pleasure to deal with so much variety and uncertainty. It gives us the illusion of a big world full of 'real' people.

3. High level enemies is a bless. Maybe they can introduce easier levels for people who don't want to invest in combat and tactic that much, but also a higher difficulty (and higher enemy levels) for people like me that like a challenge and don't want to be able to steam-roll everybody the first time.

4. Combat is so clear and well done that (well polished, well thought) that I don't even see how this could be improved.

Thanks for the good feedback.

I spent some time playing again today and here are some revisions to my statements:

The BIGGEST problem I feel is not entirely in design, but rather the depth of the game is not appropriately explained, then it becomes confusing.

For example, I did not know that poisoned enemies explode their fire. Maybe there was a blurb somewhere, but that is news to me.

My suggestion is that Larian make a "cheat sheet" on the tutorial that explains all the finer points. This is a game that does not spoon feed you and that is OK, but having to hunt and record simple information is a hassle.

The cheat sheet would include the following:
-What each status effect does and spells or abilities that can counter them
-Where to find merchants that will give you what you want
-Generalizations for enemies on their resistance/vulnerabilities (skeletons are immune to bleed and poison)
-Short guides on how to build a character: e.g. a guide for the archer would say things like (you can find skills for marksman at the fletcher in the town square. The archer skills provide mobility, damage, with a little support. When you are investing your skills, try not to invest between bows and crossbows as you will benefit much more from investing in only 1)
-Finer points of battle e.g. If you apply a continuous effect to an enemy, it will trigger on your turn, not the enemy's turn.

I realize this comes off as "noob-ish" but it merely brings new players and people less familiar with RPG's up to speed on how this works.

OP my biggest pointer to you is just play it more, most falls under familiarization and to skills, just wiki for more detail, as well as things like conditions.

"it would be very nice to know enemies weaknesses and immunities"

I found the game plays better once you have a solid enough understanding of the game, say 1/2-2/3'rds through Ctseal, to not see resistances, so I no longer put 5 in lore. It adds a little more to encounters figuring the enemies out as you battle, instead of just knowing and doing exactly what is ideal against them. I do surrender that as a personal preference which others may not have.

Yes, there would have been something very wrong with the game if you had been able to jump in with both feet and just play the game by clicking the mouse here and there...;)

You don't need to spend "an hour or two"--you can mouse over the descriptions and select the ones that most appeal to you based on your limited understanding of the game. You will, in all probability, start over more than once. It's part of a normal learning curve in an epic game.



The idea in these games is that you explore the countryside and the towns. When you find merchants you *map them*. In fact, you should be actively mapping everything you don't want to have to remember. Mapping is also a common practice in rpgs. A miserly hour spent exploring won't uncover much in this game, it's so huge--and you won't be able to progress until your party advances sufficiently to be able to defeat the natives...;) Take the time to map--you'll be glad you did.

Having every npc you meet offer to sell you anything you wanted---terrible idea...;)



Your problem is that you aren't willing to take the time to learn how to play the game according to its rules--rather, you are deciding how you think that you would like the game to play and you are trying to force the game to play that way. Square peg in round hole--the game will not comply.

(You are not supposed to "manage to kill" the robot in the cave. If you were taking your time playing the game and exploring and building your quest library you would *know* what you are supposed to do with the "skeleton riding the robot" before you walk into the cave for the first time.)



You cannot win in combat in this game *without* making a large number of choices during combat. You are simply demonstrating, again, that you haven't yet learned how to play the game. You really need to pay attention to the tutorials because you've missed a lot, obviously. If you aren't making choices for every player in every turn in every combat, you are not playing the game correctly. (This is not a click-fest like Diablo and thank goodness for that...;))



This sums up your problem. You don't know what you are doing in the game and only dimly see that as an impediment to playing the game.

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Trying to be diplomatic about this...but attempting to make suggestions about a game you clearly don't yet know how to play is...ridiculous...Come back when you've learned how to play the game, is my advice...

One final tip: if you think this game is or should be about "killing stuff" and that the quests are incidental and unimportant then you need to go ahead and stop playing and save yourself much more frustration. Like all epic rpgs worthy of the title, if you don't discover & work the quests you cannot get very far into the game until you start doing that. The largest rewards of XP, by far, come through quest completion. Indeed, if you are not curious about the quests in the game then it clearly isn't for you. Flip side is that if you discover and complete the quests you grow in the game world to the degree that you can complete the game--that's the whole idea. All decent rpgs work this way. Without entertaining quest lines the game would bore me senseless...;)

Personally i think the skill list is somewhat limiting. You almost always choose the same skills no matter what achetype you play. If it's to difficult, why don't you play with a generated class, and increase the skills that is already choosen. I really hope Larian don't dumb it down since it's already very streamlined.


What you descibe is called metagaming. Why would you know a monsters weakness before you even encountered it. You have to experiment on your own.




I don't want to sound rude, but if you've played the tutorial dungeon, and still are clueless, it's really not Larians fault. In the tutorial dungeon, just after walking past the room where you get the option to estinguish the flaming floor by either attacking the water barrels or using the rainscroll found next to it, there is a tutorial about fire against poison.

Agree with your points.
The start of this game nearly turned me off, I didn't have anything else similar to play, so I stuck with it. It gets better once you read a Walkthrough guide, and a guide that tells you how to build your characters.

The initial character profiles don't give you enough info to make a choice, and some of the classes are gimped, or less than effective in-game.

The Merchant system is a mess, yeah. I think you are expected to put down little flags on the map and make your own notes as to which merchant has what. OR, consult an online game guide (since the game is obtuse with this info, I think this is "old school").

And yes, combat in Cyseal (start of game) is terrible. The game isn't a sandbox type game, so not gating and guiding the player is just going to be frustrating to new users.

ANd don't listen to the other posters. If you went through the "tutorials" and didn't understand it, that isn't your problem. It's the developer's problem, because you are probably not alone in not understanding and that means they could have provided better tutorials, and more information. Or, altered the way they taught you how to interact with the various elements and spells. I understood because I am accustomed to playing Computer RPGs, and pen and paper RPGs and I know what to expect. Not because the tutorials were sufficient, or great. This is compounded by the fact that, of course, there is no game manual.

There is probably a reason that less than 5% of players have actually finished the game according to Steam's Achievement stats.

In short, I'd prefer that "Old School" did not mean dated UI and game design decisions from a over a decade ago.

I can also say that if you use some mods such as RunSpeed, putting the Resistance Cap back to 200%, using the savegame editor for spell books so you don't need to consult a separate website or write your own notes to find much needed and required spellbooks...you can enjoy the game. I do...pretty much.

I would admit, if there was another RPG out now I would be playing that instead and wouldn't have spent the time getting to learn D:OS. The fact that there was nothing else is why I bothered. And once I got around the little archaic interface and other issues, the game is enjoyable. Great graphics, nice turn based combat, and a decent story!

Yes, it frequently happens that if one is sufficiently inclined so as to be willing to take the time to learn how to play game A, not being put off because it isn't a copy of game B, that game A will many times provide an unanticipated bonanza of fun and entertainment...;)

I know that I risk (risk?) sounding pedantic, but it is remarkable the number of complaints I read about games that boil down to "I don't like this game because it doesn't play like some other game I liked and I think it's *too hard* and not worth the trouble to have to learn *this game, too!*" People of that persuasion should not be buying and playing rpgs, then--simple as that. A robust game of Spades, Go Fish, or Scrabble *might* be simple enough for them...maybe...;)

Mm..no. That's not my issue.

It's more like getting around the annoyances and figuring out the mechanics, rather than "learning how to play".

Learning how to play in a racing game would be figuring out how the car handles when I steer it around the track, what sort of physics model does it have...how do the tires feel? When I adjust the rear suspension what happens?

"Learning how to play" in D:OS is like , oh my god, where are my brakes? How do I stop? How do I turn this car?? What is supsnghty and sizrpghty? what do those do? Can I get another car...can I buy another car? No...Oh I need to drive through hoops three times before I can do that. And then I need to drive for ten miles looking for the gas station to refuel my car before I can go on another race.

And then, after I do all that, I might find out that the car handles beautifully, supsnghty is Boost pressure for the Turbo, and Sizrpghty is Rear Suspension height. And the graphics are gorgeous, the music is dynamic and wonderful, and when it all works together it's one hell of a game. But at the start , I still need to drive around 30 miles searching for a car shop to buy another car, and then remember where they all are because there are no map pointers ;-D

See the difference with this analogy?