Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General My 3 suggestions for Original Sin 2, who agrees?

Me and a friend of mine have been playing couch co-op RPG's for quite a while. From Dungeons and Dragons Heroes to the Champions series. From Buldurs Gate 2 to Diablo 3. We even turned XCOM and XCOM 2 into couch co-ops. But its Original Sin that is King so far, the turn-based tactical combat sees to that. With that said there are a few annoyances that I hope will be rectified in Original Sin 2.

These are my 3 suggestions:

1. At the moment we are unable to access the contents of rucksacks during a trade. If we wish to sell the contents of a rucksack we have to (as far as I'm aware) back out of the shop, open inventory, open rucksack and then manually hold and transfer all items we wish to sell from our rucksack into our inventory before we can sell them. This is an annoying system that will hopefully be rectified.

2. I think that when assigning items to the hot bar, they should stay assigned until manually removed. At the moment I have one character with all his grenades assigned and another with all his scrolls assigned but when I use my last scroll or grenade the slot automatically un-assigns the item from the slot. So when I replenish spells or grenades that were assigned but are now not, I have to keep re-assigning them back to the hot bar. I think it would be better if all items assigned to the hot bar stay assigned until manually removed. If you run out of an item that is assigned to the hot bar it should just dim grey to signal there is none left. Then when you pick up more, they will already be assigned to the hot bar ready to use. Again, nothing major, just a little tweak that would make our lives easier.

3. And finally, I'm sure others have mentioned this, but tracking quests. I like that the game makes you figure out where to go by yourself and not holding your hand but sometimes this can be a little irritating. Maybe when a quest is being tracked, a huge circle should appear on the map, showing you that your next objective is somewhere within that area. That way by talking to random NPC's like some guy in a tavern who might have additional information on your quest could reduce the size of the circle when tracking a quest, narrowing down the area. At least this way you would always have a general idea of where to go.

Anyway these are my 3 suggestions. Let me know what you think! :)

1 and 2 are on ok, I have no objections nor any passion towards it being a thing (I never put stuff in rucksacks)

Yet 3 is kind of a no given that the point of Divinity: Original Sin is it removes the sort of hand holding that has been saturating the market... giving a sort of refreshing take.

Even a "It is kind of here" is a bit too much and is something MMOs have done to annoying degrees.

Then again my memory is amazing and terrible at the same time...

So how about as an alternative... If you find out what a location is... It is labled as such on the map? So the church is labled.

So when you read a quest that says "north of the church" you can just find the church and go there.

Yeah, I actually think it would be a big help for landmarks to be properly labelled on the map.

Hm, not a bad idea probably.


Being able to lock bars would have been golden in EE already. That whole controller development screwed mouse handling a lot and a lockable bar would prevent us from ending up with a skill icon stuck on the mouse cursor so many times.
(The bar not responding to mouse clicks at all, requiring several clicks, is another problem but the cause must also be the controller development, can't remember this happening in Classic.)

I'd consider it an ideal solution to have bars lockable but still modifyable by dragging something on it while e.g. Shift is pressed. I think that is how it worked in WoW ages ago (and probably still).

Remembering items in a slot even after a stack has run out is also a very good idea. Most want to keep items in the same slot the whole time.
(From what I've seen in videos though, the skill bar seems to have changed a lot in D:OS2.)


Well, how much more quest help is needed ?

I've watched people ignore quest markers (the yellow ones) and the quest log, I've watched people skip exactly THAT dialog option that is quest relevant, I've watched them ignore books, quest scrolls and a lot more.

Do you really think that adding even more quest helpers can help ? People ignore what can be ignored.
Happens with quest text, happens with dialogs, happens with already placed markers, even happens with skill descriptions.

The very biggest problem Larian has is that a lot of players start playing this game thinking they know everything from other games already and even expect a lot of things to work like in those other games.

Original Sin is dialog and text heavy by design, EE had all information somewhere in the texts and did a much better job at presenting this information than classic had done. If people don't read in a read heavy game, then it becomes a problem, but the cause of the problem is not Larian, although they have to 'fix' it ...

This. I felt the pain again and again in D:OS EE xD
The suggestion of FrauBlake is good tho.


I only took items in sacks I didn't want to sell so I wasn't even aware this. But if it is like that, then the perfect solution would be the same as was with the crafting window in EE, when you open a sack while trading then it replaces your inventory window to the contect of its own - having a 'Close' button to be able to go back to the original view.


This is the subject of the most arguments on forums The majority of people (including me) is against it. Yeah sometimes it can be pain in the arse, but at the end of the day, it feels good to find things out on your own. This is my opinion at least.

I'm generally of the opinion that visible quest markets should be a toggleable thing: sometimes it's fun trying to find the next part of a quest, sometimes it's a lot less so. Though I'm aware in my own case that it sometimes takes a bit of self-discipline not to leave stuff like that turned on the whole time (though I think that's probably a subset of "don't play while overly tired").

This is one of those situations where the choice eliminates the point of having a choice...

Because of... what was it called? Optimal Choice theory?

Because having a cursor is more powerful then not having it... the vast majority of people, nearly all, will turn it on.

I actually have no idea why people don't seem to grasp that having a choice doesn't mean you get both options with none of the cost to the gameplay.

We are humans after all, the illusion of free will is an important thing for us
I was thinking about this too before, and I know myself that much that after a while I would just let it turned on, and that would determine my play experience even if it is not what I want. That's how most of us are coded haha

I really have to reiterate that we often had to refer to walkthroughs because we got lost in what we were supposed to do. I don't think quest markers should be necessary, but I think the quest log should provide a strong sense of direction. For example, when you're stuck in the prison it might say something like, "Explore the prison to find a way to escape." and then update it with any leads you find. Combine this with a good map with landmarks labelled and as long as the map isn't too big, I think quest markers will be unnecessary.

I remember one time there was a quest where the clue was that we had to find a cave that was north of a beach... And we were like -- which beach? 70% of the map is north of a beach. >_>

It's no 'Original Sin' if you consult a walkthrough ;-)

I support better directions and more clear and sometimes less cryptic quest log entries.
Cleaning up dialogs and moving already read topics to a clearly marked subsection would help decrease the 'too lazy to read' problem.
Their main solution in EE to the 'problem' was mostly the introduction of the many more map markers. Some quest texts were improved but there is still room for more improvements.
Information in D:OS is distributed in many different places. Sometimes even conversations between NPCs give story background or can help in quests. That should not be changed.


I watched people not even try out the most simple things because they were convinced before even trying that it would not work. ('Need "Crossbow" ability to use a crossbow', nonsense.)
So while some texts - and dialog organization - could (and should) be improved, the most required device would be a brain washer that washes experience from other games from players' brains, because that is in very many cases the single biggest obstacle. (Also keeps people from trying out things, even if it would be only a single mouse click. Reading seems to be the most unpopular thing in games, that includes even tooltips in the character sheet.)

Who knows, that a PDF game manual exists, at least on Steam ?

Laziness (reading), impatience (Original Sin really requires learning how riddles and quests are done) and most of all 'bad education' by other games are what make Original Sin sometimes seem harder than it really is.

I also make all those 'mistakes' again and again but still would not want the style of the game to change. Once you learned some kind of pattern, how riddles and quests are designed in OS, you have an easier time with new stuff. I never had to look up any walkthrough in EE anymore, although for example the immaculate fort in Phantom Forest changed a lot from classic to EE. The fair in Cyseal had changed. But in EE I no longer thought I knew everything better than the game, because classic had taught me otherwise. But I had learned patterns in classic.

I guess I have a similar point of view, though with mixed results. Another example is the fast travel option with e.g. Oblivion and subsequent games: "don't use it, then", being the obvious response, though in my case it did take a mod to disable it to make sure I got out of the habit of "meh, I can't be bothered to do this". Not using it actually gave much better paced gameplay and I enjoyed it more overall even if I didn't always enjoy travelling, and now I've got out of the habit I can use it more sparingly and not pointlessly inconvenience myself.

But I guess like anything, we tend to take the path of least resistance, even if that path isn't the most ideal.

Recall for quest related text would be nice.

You're lamenting "bad education" from other games ruining the experience, but at the same time, D:OS doesn't have much in the way of hand-holding. You know how practically every FPS basically has a tutorial on how to just look around?

It's kind of silly to lament the "bad education" from other RPGs while also relying on that education.

The worst is actually the slippery slope.

From getting actual directions in Morrowind (since you need to find them), to getting sloppier in Oblivion to just not bothering actually telling where to go, just tell the quest, and let the marker do the rest, in that disabling markers just gets you stuck.

See, "progress" in RPG's.

If it's there, people will use it.

However, a deep enough waypoint system - built upon the current Diablo 2-like one - could be a good compromise.

There was certainly an element of "follow the cheese wedge" in Oblivion: I can't say how much the quests relied on it because I never got out of the habit of doing it.

Then again, there was trying to find Punabi in Morrowind. While I had an entire horde of cliffracers queueing up to screech at me. For hours. I nearly threw my PC out the window in annoyance.