Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Suggestions My thoughts so far on BD

First of all a big congrats to the BD development team. Great job, and a large mug of Dwarven Ale to each of you.

I just picked up my copy of BD yesterday, and am only in BattleField Dungeon level 2 right now. There are some things that are driving me absolutely nuts already, and I hope DD2 will benefit from suggestions from the fan base.

1. Character creation: I played DD 5 times all the way through and several times part way through. Every time my character always looked the same, and no matter how I started the character at creation it always wound up as a very powerful BattleMage in the end. I liked the very powerful part, but it always seems like I end up with the same character at the end of the game. Usually at this point in a game I am planning my next character for a replay of the game. But with BD my choices are Muscular or thin, light or dark hair, and always the same DeathKnight. There should be a choice of the character you are soul-forged to, some characters who add fun to the game like Private Sparkle in Wizardry 8, or Deekin in NeverWinter Nights. Surely this cannot be changed now, but I am thinking DD2. I would hate to play DD2 attached to such a macho-bore as this nameless DeathKnight.

2. The inventory screen: It is a bit... ummm... intrusive. I would rather pull up a seperate window for the paperdoll, stats, and inventory than to have one humongous window that takes over nearly the entire screen.

3. Vendors: omg, this is heresy, and I will have to break it down into small chunks.

a) The vendors do not have enough gold to buy all the items you pick up in the game. The result is always carrying around tons of stuff that keep you on the verge of encumbrance most of the time.

b) When you buy something or pay for training the money is not reflected in the vendor's inventory. Example: Annabelle has only 5 gold (for a long time) so I train for 5500 gold so I can sell some inventory items. I train and check Annabelle's gold and now she has... 5 gold!!! I identify items, and sell what few items I can and the vendor's cash level only goes down... never increases.

c) Vendor's inventory never seems to change. This takes a huge fun factor, and a reason to replay, away from the game. If the items in the vendor's inventory are nothing you would want or buy, then they are totally useless when their money runs out. I have spend many hours of fun searching vendors for just those items I wanted to purchase in DD, but that fun has been removed in BD. I came very close to quitting my BD game and going back to the current DD game I have going, just because of this aspect of the game. But, being curious, I will probably play all the way through once.

d) Items that I have equipped should not appear in my trade window. Most people have probably accidentally sold some items they are wearing in DD and now the same thing in BD. If I want to sell items that I have equipped, I will unequip them. I would rather do that then say "omg, I sold my fully charmed sword by mistake."

4. Too many insta-deaths at very low levels occur in areas meant for very low level characters. I can understand being severely wounded in a low level area, but half a dozen insta-deaths (and reloads) while you try to figure things out is just not fun for me. At least in NWN your henchman would help you out a bit early in the game with some dialogue like:

Deekins: "ummm... Boss... can I ask you something?"
Hero: "Sure Deekins, what is it?"
Deekins: "ummm... Boss, if you so smart why you not see that trap over there?"

5. I would like to see a print function available that would print out your full automap for the level you are on at the time. I can't imagine that would be very difficult, and would sure clear my desk of a lot of post-its and a pile of notes and crude maps.

I hope this post is not viewed as a rant, it is not. I love RPG's above all other games and just want to see more fun put into the games, not taken out of them.

Thanks again to the development team... you all rock.

[color:"orange"]a) The vendors do not have enough gold to buy all the items you pick up in the game.[/color]

I think that is by design. Jump to the battlefield and trade for some charms or expensive jewelry; they are lightweight and you can get most of the value back trading them (much more than you would leaving stuff behind, anyway).


[color:"orange"]b) When you buy something or pay for training the money is not reflected in the vendor's inventory.[/color]

I was disappointed by this at first, also. However, in practice I have lots of gold (have only used it for teachers), trading loot for potions and equipment.


[color:"orange"]d) Items that I have equipped should not appear in my trade window.[/color]

The price on equipped items is displayed in a different colour, and I have not sold anything I had equipped by accident.
Actually, I would like both character's equipped items shown, rather than just the one doing the trading. If someone is selling a good ring, for example, I have to exit the trade window and either open my inventory or switch active characters and trade again if I want to check the stats against what I already have for both characters.

Yeah I totally agree there, Dev's please look into those traps in Act1, most of them are unneccasary and the only way to detect them is to do that water quest with the prisoner who has a hissy fit about which water he's going to accept.

I think there needs to be two changes to Act 1:

1: Either remove, or downgrade the traps, I died (rough estimate) about 15-20 times in Act 1 to traps, it was beyond challenging, it was annoying and unneccasary. You want your players to be aware that traps are dangerous, and thats well accomplished, but it was overdone IMO.

2: Fix the prisoner who wants water. He should take any mug, pitcher, glass, cup, bottle, ANYTHING that has water...If it wasnt for this forum I would have never figured that out. I find it a little odd that a prisoner dieing from thirst is so picky about which one's he will drink and not drink.

Combine this with the fact that he is the only way to get the detect traps skill in Act 1.

I've been using crtl-S and ctrl-L as my primary trap detection method. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for your comments Raze, and Hello <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I pretty much figured out some workarounds, the thing about the vendors is that a lot of the fun (or is it just wasting time <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ) involves the hunt for treasure and selling and buying items. Sure money is very plentiful, but to me the more options I have in a game (especially for multiple replays) the more I like it. For instance when Might & Magic IX came out it took me about 1 year gametime to make it through the first time... Then I figured out how to do a speed game, and completed the game in about 10 - 14 days gametime (forget exactly now - and no cheating involved either, just careful planning). As bad as that game was, the developers left many options to let you play some pretty unorthodox runthroughs.

Hope you are having fun with BD. It is a must-buy for RPG'ers IMHO.

Some stuff I would fix as of end of Act II:

1. Attacking animals (frogs, the pig things, rats) make them all unattackable please!

Theres no need to attack them, they are level 3 or lower and yield no exp, they are just a nuisance as I have to deal with them in major battles and sometimes my guys waste turns on them and I die as a result.


2. Include more information in the quest entries, more often then not it will not mention who gave you the quest, just that it was A Imp, and that doesnt help much, and results in me having to dig through my conversations (which are at about 175 right now) for half an hour, or look to the forums.


3. Provide more information (If only basic) on charms and crystals (And Alchemy plants for that matter, something like, "Beneficial to your health" on the red plants), its one thing to let the player experiment, but with absolutly no clue as to what they do, you become reluctant to use them, and that defeats the purpose of having them entirly.

I remember theire was a thread some time ago that suggested that when you play with a male char you would be soulforged with a succubus and when you chose a female character you are soulforged with a DK. But I think it was not impemented because it would have hard to implement. (story related, voice and such)

Maybe in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" />²

I agree with the suggestions in this thread so far. The inability to figure out what charms, skillbooks and alchemy plants are for is just plain annoying. I cannot for the life of me understand what Larian was thinking when it made the decision to remove even the most basic information from these things. All it does is make me save before using a skillbook, since I have no idea which party member I want to use the book until I know what the devil it is, or before I buy a charm, which ends up having several reloads until I end up with a charm my character can use. Bah. Irritating in the extreme.

The traps didn't bother me, probably because I did the water quest. Nonetheless, with the danged traps hidden so well I still managed to die a dozen times. It seemed excessively sadistic to me.

The merchants, now that bothers me. No change in inventory? No increase in gold ever, and not enough gold to sell the loot so tediously gathered, and the only way to open skill paths is to spend lots of gold? Duh? I'm not overly thrilled by this new skill system to begin with... got to waste one skill point to open something, two skill points to maybe be able to use the skill. Again, apparently the characters must evolve to various levels to put a certain number of skillpoints into a skill... but with our new, improved "Don't tell the player anything, make 'em sweat, Mwahahaha" design decisions, we have no idea when our character will finally be able to identify those Level Three items.

I thought the Battlefields were a great idea... until I hit the second Battlefield in Act I and found the danged thing empty. So much for that.

I'm just finishing Act I, so it's pretty early in the game to be so annoyed by it, and I'm hoping that things will pick up as soon as I move into Act II. But the things I've noted appear to be permanent parts of the gameplay. Having been a shameless DD fangirl who has personally converted nearly a dozen new DD players, I cannot understand some of the deliberately frustrating changes that have been made to BD. Can't understand them at all. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspicion.gif" alt="" />

need a CLEAN INVENTORY button like diablo has. get's very cluttered

It doesn't matter who reads a skill book, the new skills will be available to both characters.

With respect to gold, there are really only two kinds of RPGs: those where gold is so common as to become meaningless (everything that is for sale is essentially free), and those where gold is restricted in availability, which means you have to make some choices. BD has taken the latter path, and I personally think it's the right move. I have to think carefully about which skill paths I open up, at least at this stage in the game.

It's not required to pick up every leather helm you see and cart it around, you know <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

I agree that those games that give you millions of gold make earning money meaningless, but the problem I'm finding in BD is that the merchants don't have much equipment for what my party is skilled in, and they don't have enough money for us to "trade our skills" so to speak, so it turns into a catch-22 situation. You can't benefit from the equipment they offer because of the skills you chose (and their inventory never changes, apparently), but you can't change your skills because you don't have the money to do that either.

They should either lower the fee for learning and un-learning the skills in the battlefield, or update the merchant inventory on a regular basis. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Diablo had an alright solution to the gold hoarding situation. They included the Gamble option to let you buy unidentified items. Sometimes they were rare items, sometimes just +2 to Strength. At least it gave you a chance to spend your money on something decent.

My wish is that the gold one pays for training appears in the NPC's inventory (which would really make sense), so one could trade back some or all of it. Either that or the ablility to pay for training with goods.

i love Deekin in Hordes of the Underdark!! he's such a cute kobold as a kobold just can't be cute at all. Larian, can we have him as special guest in the upcoming patch? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />

note: think i'll call my new kitten as Deekin. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />