These past few days there have been many previews of the pre-alpha version of Original Sin so we had the oportunity to get a good look at least on the part of the game that was shown to the press and youtube personalities. Based on that I have a few simple suggestions to make. Knowing that the build shown is pre-alpha you may already know about them or have fixed them already but I thought to make a topic just in case.
The first is about a problem in coop. When there is a dialogue between the players it may end with the players expressing opinions. Like for example the dialogue with the guy that fell off a cliff trying to fly. There is a short exchange and then the first player gives his opinion and then the second and these opinions alter some stats that describe their character. The problem is that the choice by the second player that ends the dialogue isn't visible for the first player. In single player that's not a problem since you know what you've selected but in multiplayer I think it would be better if the line was shown and then there was an "(end)" response from the first player to end the dialogue.
The second is a quality of life design decision. Since the dialogue system is based on keywords and it seems with every new one you unlock you can ask everyone about it, there is bound to be some repetition. I actually saw that there is in the preview by Total Biscuit. Two npcs had exactly the same responce about Jake's murder (I hope I got the name right). Of course with the volume of npcs and conversation topics that's something to be expected. However there are players like myself that are extremely thorough when playing rpgs and like to ask everyone every possible question. Just for our sake can you change the keywords somehow (make them gray instead of white for example) to indicate that if we do ask we'll get an answer we've already seen? We should still be able to ask the question (we may have forgotten the last answer or we want to see which opionion that particular NPC has of the situation) but let us know there won't be any new information gained on the subject. I don't think this makes the game any less hardcore. As I said it's a "quality of life", something for example that I'd want Morrowind to have.
Third and last. You've said that there won't be level scaling and there won't be any respawns. Those are both decisions that I agree with of course. There is a third one though that has to go in hand with these two (and if I remember right Divinity 2 had that problem). Experience gains shouldn't diminish with level. Let me give an example. Let's say a level 4 orc gives 100xp when you kill it at character level 1. It should give 100xp even if you kill it in character level 10. The triviality of low level encounters in higher levels should only be represented by raising the xp needed to gain levels as you level up and not lowering the gains. What I'm saying is that the total experience pool within the game should be constant and not changing with the order you do things. Otherwise you force players to move through areas in a certain way to maximize the experience gain. That takes away from exploration and letting players experience the game in the fashion they like.
I ended up making a long post again for a few simple issues but I do hope you take them under consideration. The last two are personal observations after playing hundreds of rpgs on what works for me and what doesn't. Of course not every rpg player has the same preferences; even those of us who are categorized as old-school have differences of opinion. However these views on those two issues I think are broadly accepted and I think most companies don't implement them not by choice but because they are small issues and they either don't think of them at all or don't think them significant enough to spend time towards. I can assure you though that diminishing xp has a serious impact on how much a player can enjoy the game while the dialogue choice thing just makes life easier without having any significant drawbacks, as far as mechanics go. Codewise it may be difficult to do, depending on the way you have your conversation system set up. If you have a database of responces and each npc just has a pointer to a responce based on what was asked then you can just set a flag the first time that responce is given and then use a simple if clause when starting dialogue to gray out choices. It may be much more difficult or easier than that but if it's not too much of a hassle it would be appreciated if it was implemented.
