Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Small Improvements that could help a lot!

I love the original divinity original sin and I am really thankful to Larian for the experience they have delivered. I wanted to share some thoughts on little things that could greatly enhance the experience.

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- Easier enemy targeting. The enemies keep shifting about all the time and at times you would normally shoot, the target dodges the click and you move instead..

- Less junk items please.

- We need an auto-arrange button and easier item grouping. The game already has a form of those but I mean something more intuitive, with less micromanagement. For instance a pack for ingredients/vials/arrows/books so that they are placed directly in their respective pack instead of cluttering the inventory.

- A way to automatically distribute potions amongst the team instead of checking each inventory separately.

- A button for auto-collecting loot!!!

- A more extensive quick bar for spells/abilities. Multiple tabs are nice but your essential abilities should fit in the first bar which is not possible for mages.

- Automatically pick the most qualified character for any given task, whether in diplomacy, bartering or whatever. It is a chore to switch characters all the time.

- Smooth out the character initial movement when combat begins. They often go to inconvenient places and worse yet they waste action points for that movement. It feels erratic and often you have to restart a battle to get a formation closer to what you'd have liked.

- Contents of character packs should be possible to access when interacting with a merchant.

- Merchants should always have gold to buy your items. It is logical for merchants to have limited gold but why should the player have to seek other mechants with more gold? It is reasonable but not very practical.

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That's about it. I wish you the best and looking forrward to the next game :)

Some ideas are nice but others I don't agree about.

- Less junk items -> This is not a batman game here in which you get only useful things. Divinity is an old school RPG and junks are as much important as useful items.

- A way to automatically distribute potions among the team -> again, no. The management of your team is one of the important parts of the game. So why would you have it done for you?

- Automatically pick the most qualified character -> No obviously. It's your role, as the player, to pick up the right character. We are not children so we don't need to be guided in our choices.

- Merchants should always have gold to buy your items -> completely irrelevant to a real sense of economy. So I am completely against this one too.

The others are good ideas I think.

Well, this feature has been implemented already. It works for Identify items and Repair items.

However most of OP ideas are junk. I guess that he bought console edition recently. It would explain "I_want_a_game_which_plays_himself" mood.

I disagree with you.

I don't agree with all of his suggestions, but inventory management is not my idea of a good time. No one's promoting D:OS as the year's best inventory-sim. I like a bit of micromanagement, but it should be quick and painless.

It's not unreasonable to ask that we spend less time fighting with the interface, and more time enjoying the best parts of the game.

Like Ayvah said. I love old school games but gameplay is constantly evolving, we ought to keep the good parts and improve the inconvenient ones. The important part is to recognize what the majority of the fanbase wants or expects.

You guys don't realize how much you are actually sacrificing by getting rid of inventory management.

You are reducing the game's world and your character's involvement in it and thus sucking the life right out of the game.

I know Gamers don't always see it, but sometimes a negative quality in a game actually genuinely improves the game. Sometimes an annoyance enhances the experience.

The fact that each house is littered with objects for you to pick up, sell, or use enhances the game far more the inventory management hampers it.

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I'll tell you a story. A long time ago I used to go to a restaurant every Wednesday.

I would order the same thing every time it was the Nachos with cheese, tomato, and lettuce. I was kind of annoyed because the only part of it I liked was the Cheese, the tomato and lettuce didn't really taste good. It was weakening the dish.

So one day I ordered it with only cheese and... It wasn't good, suddenly the cheese was overpowering and just wasn't pleasant to eat. What I thought was ruining the dish was in fact improving it the whole time.

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A lot of classic games have annoying aspects to them. Yet notice how modern games basically took everything from them and streamlined them to the point where it just stopped mattering anymore?

You need to fix the problems with the game, but make sure you identify the problem first.

Now the less you involve the player the less they will feel involved. Which is the major issue with a lot of these suggestions.

YES a automatic switching mechanism to the most competent character would be very convenient, it would probably save a few minutes of gameplay. Yet that also makes your characters more interchangeable and less unique in their eyes because the game already switches them for you.

You fixed a problem by creating a much bigger problem without even knowing it.

I actually agree with OP's point on inventory management. I actually thought that bags would serve as folders in say windows explorer. But they're more like compressed folders that you have to extract out items all the time.

Another thing I also thought annoying is that at combat start, the game would always push my guys about 5 m away from an enemy even though I planned on surrounding them right onto a guy for a perfect defense.

As to automatically pulling a proficient character to do a skill check or whatever is kind of "iffy" for me. A game that did that recently for me was Wasteland 2 - Director's Cut. It had a dropdown menu for any applicable and leveled skill checks when you right click on a point of interest. And in that menu it'll show you which characters can do which skill check the best. I thought that was a nice convenience thing that they did because it picked up the pace of the game. However, though convenient it did put me in the mindset of oh, I'll just pick the best percent chance and damn my "roleplay" choice on a skill check.

For the rest of OP's points, I'd say they're needless streamlining that's easy to get over with. The things I do agree with aren't easy to get over with though IMHO.

You are aware that "Less junk items" is a suggestion on inventory management right? :P

I obviously do not feel strongly about everything I have written. My main issues are inventory management, the random initial encounter placement and lack of auto-collect loot. Sometimes you get 20+ items after a long encounter and picking them up click by click is tedius.

I do not mind the concept of junk items, I actually kinda like it. Torment had it, baldur's gate had it, dragon age had it and along with them so many other games. But in divinity's case, maybe too much?

I just posted about the targeting issue. Highly agree with you!

I also strongly agree about the AI positioning. I will painstakingly get my group just how I want them and then as soon as combat begins, they scatter into horrible, move-wasting, positions behind skill blocking terain, or out of range.

I also like the auto-collect suggestion, but that could take some work. We would need to be able to specify what to auto-collect. I.E. potions, scrolls, ammo, gold, etc. Some people won't want plates or even some items you and I consider valuable. At a base, they game should assume to autopickup all gold ;) But even then, they can't move our characters to the items, so it would have to be in range of normal pickup only.

I would like to be able to view multiple quick bars at once. I am not a fan of scrolling quick bars often. stacking 2+ hotbars would be handy IMHO.

Unlinking your characters before combat starts should prevent them from moving to stay in formation.

Yet that presents its own range of problems.

Heroes of Might & Magic handled it well with the "Tactics" skill allowing you place your troops into formation immediately before the beginning of combat, but this wouldn't work for D:OS where adventuring and battling all occurs in the same environment. I can't think of a good solution.


The UI for looting with a controller makes looting extremely easy. I don't think it needs to be made any easier than that.

This isn't the issue I'm seeing. They aren't regrouping to stay in formation, they are already in formation, and then after combat starts, they re-arrange. It might be a few weeks before I can fraps it so I'll try and get some screen shots

Also, while I appreciate the workaround for DOSEE... I hope a better solution is in the works for DOS2. At least, that is my suggestion.


Don't assume everyone can or even wants to use a controller. It would be wise to make a UI that is fun for everyone. give us choice, choice, and more choice. That way, one person's definition of fun doesn't dictate it to everyone else that doesn't agree.

You misunderstand. I'm simply saying that this feels like the ideal looting experience.

If they can provide a similar looting experience for keyboard and mouse, I believe that should be enough.

I think that automatically looting everything in sight is when the game is starting to play itself. Later you'll be checking your inventory and you won't remember where you picked this stuff up because it just magically appeared in your inventory.

And you're going to be stuck back in the inventory-management sim when you start hitting your weight limits.

ah, I see. Good point. When I talk about auto-looting, my reference is games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, LOTRO.

They don't scatter loot all over the ground. You click a corpse or chest or you get an option screen when the mob dies. From there you can predetermine what you automatically take and what is left for you to manually decide.

For instance, in LOTRO, you can choose to auto loot any item of rare or better.

In the Elder Scroll series you only click on the mob corpse and you get a nice "loot all" button that is optional.

I always want gold. I always want every scroll and potion. I always want any magical item. If I could check those boxes to auto loot, I would. I would never not pick them up, so hunting for them on the ground gets tedius. Any other items, I would still see normally and get to choose normally whether to grab or not.

That is more, what I was referring to when I agreed with the OP.