Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Feedback after playing Beta 1.0.288

-Scarlett looks a bit cross-eyed with this face:

-Way of the Ranger is too ranged weapons oriented. It should be called Way of the Survivor, following Way of the Warrior logic, and it needs to be reworked so that it gives bonuses to any weapon type using survivor.

-I think Raistlin talent should be renamed to Glass Cannon. Not everyone knows who this Dragonlance character is, but Glass Cannon is common enough build for mage characters in rpgs. I also think that there should be stat giving talents similar to Know-It-All for warriors and survivors. There is only Bigger and Better now for them.

-Character archetypes lack warrior+survivor combo. Shadowblade seems like a jack of all trades and rogue has no warrior points whatsoever. An assassin archetype maybe? Or swashbuckler like in AD&D?

-There needs to be a "hold left mouse button" or arrow buttons option to rotate characters in creation menu.

-There needs to be a tutorial explaining how to open both characters inventories simultaneously.

-Overhead text that protagonists are saying should be a bit slower.

When several types of onscreen messages occur at the same time (conversation +damage effect +journal updated) they obscure eachother and get rather difficult to read.

When a time-sensitive out-of-combat situation occurs (fire-based situations so far) I would want a way to pause the game, but I can't see a pause button, and P/pause do not get the job done. Getting more familiar with the game can reduce this problem (I act fast enough not to need pause.)

I haven't played far yet; is there a purpose to entering combat mode manually? (TAB key, active character draws weapon) I tried using it as a stand-in pause+command feature, and it didn't work that way. (Didn't activate turn based actions.)

In the tutorial dungeon, I got the impression that any spark or flame should set the oil ablaze, and there are candles all about the place... but putting one on the oil field caused no flame. "Using" it unlit it. Reusing it relit it. Attacking it caused 0 damage and did NOT topple it...

How real should candles feel?

- Should they ignite anything easily flammable?
- Anything that they can be held directly under (tablecloth, window drapes)
- Should you be able to light candles without carrying a matchbox/equivalent/spell?
- Should you not then also be able to light oil fields by the same means that you light candles? (using a few Action Points at close range, perhaps with speed/luck-based risk to burn yourself).


Question regarding skill use / result prediction: All skills I have tried to use so far, have had a show-area/effect and confirm-action phase. Except for the stances, but starting/canceling them carries no cost and has no direct effect. Will all abilities that directly affect the world/creatures or cost something to activate have a stage where you can see areas/effects and confirm/cancel the action?

Visual / interface:

I can see my character, but not what my character can see. Natural in isometric top-down view, yes, but still troubling at times. Could we have a toggle or press&hold button that reveals the area near the cursor, or a similar key to lower all obscuring walls/environment?

I also find it slightly impractical to attack in melee from an angle where my character obscures the target. Could we have a button that "fades" the active character out and let's you select other targets/items more easily?


Maybe things will feel different once I get familiar with the game and controls. I see a few not-that-clearly-stated hotkeys (skills are numbered, F1/F2 does character selection) and note that the control menu seems incomplete at this time. It seems apparent that things will also feel different once all interface/input is implemented and explained.


"Inventory" seems a bit misleading. It's more of a "character" screen, and it took me a while to realise that it concealed more features behind a few icons. (Discovered at levelup due to green dots.)

I feel quite disconnected from the characters at this time, and their in-passing-realtime remarks pass unnoticed when I'm looking for some UI element or other. I review them in the log, but it is not ideal.

Can we filter on-screen-messages like we filter log-messages, and can we filter them separately?

Could we, by preference or default, relocate messages that are not tied to an object in the world, so that they do not fill the central area of the screen, where so much else is going on?


EDIT: By the way - entering the tutorial dungeon does feel a little unnatural. Making a character say "maybe we should look inside" sounds forced. Maybe it's just because we don't get to know her expectations; I thoughtfully assumed that she hoped to discern something about the enemy's interests by observing the place, or that she thought they might have left some big clue behind. But I never really got that impression. I just looked at what she said and came up with passable reasons for her to say it.

When you get a more complete tutorial dungeon, perhaps you can also:
- Make it more relevant (ie. veterans should also play it). The characters go in because they are looking for something, and they find something of interest. Or because they need to sort out something obviously bad inside.
- Let the players pick veteran-mode when entering
(similar/same dungeon, more/tougher monsters, no tutorial popups, random loot instead of perfectly placed fireball scrolls and water arrows, a way to complete the main objectives and get some cool loot without needing to try out specific features that depend on specially placed scrolls)

Well, If you offer me 500 xp and 700 gold worth in items at the start, I would never pass them over but I think I constructed my sentence badly.

Tutorial Popups/Hints = ON/OFF

Is the option I mean. ^^

The cave itself is fine. I just don't wanna be forced to click through tutorials every time I start the game anew. (a legitimate fear, considering that's how all Bethesda games ever work.. and many others too /NWN2 )

-Fire extinguishers at the harbour still have no buckets in their hands.

-I can't seem to switch between characters in the barter menu - the arrows icons are greyed out.

-Mobile kitchen still has no icon.

And I don't want to have to search through every barrel and crate in the town of Cyseal every single time I start a new game, but I still have to do it if I want the stuff inside.

Why should this dungeon be any different?

You can change the pan speed (or disable edge panning) in the Game section of the Options.



For now, zooming can help with that, or rotating the camera (scroll wheel or holding the middle mouse button down, respectively). With skills/spells you can use the portraits at the top of the screen to target opponents, but not for melee attacks.

I believe the point of "Way of the Ranger" (and "Way of the Warrior") being added in the first place was that Warriors and Rangers typically didn't have as many uses for ability points as Rogues or any flavor of Wizard, thus they got "Way of the..." abilities which had benefits for Rangers (and Warriors). If you remove the bonuses for rangers from Way of the Ranger, then you're kinda removing the incentive for Rangers to use Way of the Ranger, which leads almost back to the original problem of Rangers not having as many places for Ability points.

The current problem is that Way of the Ranger is required for a lot of skills, most of which don't particularly care about what weapon type you use. If you want to use those abilities with a non-ranger, you have to spend ability points on Way of the Ranger, which is a great ability for Rangers, but offers only "Initiative +5" and "Sight +5.0 meters" for anyone else.

I am talking about tutorial messages and the option to turn them off in general, not just in that cave, but everywhere. Optional tutorials literally means, the option not to have any tutorials.

I won't mind if that leaves the cave just as it is, to play through optionally like any other content in the game. Without tutorials.. then

Ah, yes, definitely. The game should have an option to disable tips. They can get annoying (and slow things down) for people who have played before.

Indeed That said, I am sure there'll be a mod around post-release that shows in which boxes and crates there is loot to be found before opening them... because I can see your point there as well... I did play the start up to the end of jacks murder mystery plenty of times now, and searching through the boxes is not my idea of fun. (Also It still bugs me there is no clear warning or indicator when something is "property" of someone or when something is just "loot" )

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And while talking about it I was testing something out, and I apparently also have a technical issue with resolutions.. where would I be posting that? Mhh... I guess here?

So my problem is this

Let's say my desktop resolution is 1280x1024 but my wanted game resolution is 1600x1200 because I like seeing my icons in windows or whatever but I like the way sharper look this brings on my old as hell display when I play at 1600x1200 ;p

Let's say I start the game now with 1280x1024 desktop res, the resolutions I can choose in-game are... 1280x1024 (+lower) and 1 (16:10) option higher. But I can't choose 1600x1200 for example, nor any other "step" in-between that. Doing so via ini-editing resets the in-game resolution back to that 16:10 resolution (1380 or something). Even though I am on a 4:3 or 5:4 display. And it supports a lot higher resolutions!

But I set my desktop resolution to 1600x1200, now the game correctly starts at 1600x1200 with proper font and everything......

Basically, the game does not read the capability of the screen info windows provides properly and assumes that desktop resolution = max resolution. My screen goes up to 2048x1536 and this bothers me greatly (Yes, I am still gaming on an high-end 24" CAD certified CRT) mainly because as 3D-designer editing textures is a MAJOR pain on gaming lcd's....

This is a very particular issue I have there as you can tell. I want to play higher res than desktop res, and the game doesn't support that. I have to literally change my desktop res to whatever res I want in the game, or it doesn't work right. Not optimal.... Is that a technical issue?

I?m amazed by this build. It realy lifts the game to whole new level and adds a gigantic amount of polishing in the game. The game now feels much more "professional" with more and more attention to detail.

I'm realy sure now this game will definately be a worthy sucessor do Divinity but with a whole lot potential to lure every kind of players out there and not just the "hardcore fans". Kinda like a perfect mix between pleasing fans and having the ability to reach new markets at the same time.


About the build itself on a more down-to-earth feedback there a few minor things that could improve to add that "extra somthing":

a) Starting weapon(s) should be based on the abilities you choose on character screen. Feels weird to pick a one handed+shield talents and start with a 2handed for example.

b) Sometimes it's realy hard to point your mouse into a target. Imagine you want to aim for target #1 but target #2 (or even environmental objects) are right next to it, and you have a realy hard time aiming your cursor and select what you want. It seems targets should have a larger "hitbox" for your mouse to touch them and the cursor change to an aim cursor.

c) Action points are weird atm. For example as a starting warrior you use your attack and always have a lot of free action points, but not enough to do something at all. Seems like melee is too limited atm. Even if you use a special ability, you can't attack most of the time because of lack of AP. Also feels weird to ALWAYS end a turn with 2-3 AP and not any option to use them. Perhaps it's just a starting game issue, but if it's not fun in the beggining some more casual players might put it aside soon.

d) Sugestion, use tab not to seathe weapons but to swap between chars (next char button). Tab it's a common button for that function to advance to the next window and will feel very intuitive for a lot of people. I can't count the amount of times i pressed TAB for quick tabbing between chars, ofc it doesnt work, but feels "intuitive" and fast.

e) Dialog text seems too quick to disapear from the screen. (those dialogs that the action keeps flowing) Yes it stays then on the chat textbox, but a lot of times i didnt quite get the over-the-character text and had to switch to the other place to end reading everything.

f) Please add AI personalities. I can't stress how important this is in a phase that a lot of people are curious about this game and might just want a rich single player experience. By far the worst thing in the game so far is CO-OP dialog in single player mode, it feels so bad, so artificial that i had to disable it, wich in turn makes me lose one of the best features of the game, if done properly with AI personalities in. Please hurry up

g) AP management feels like more control is needed. In a lot of combat situations with a ranged character i had to make head-calculations like "so i have total 8 AP, i have to move into range and still have some AP for my spell that costs 5, so lets move 1... 2....3....4... dammit i moved too much, not enough AP now and i sit still with 4 AP", end turn.

Sugestion, right click on an ability to "reserve" AP for that turn, that would show as yellow circles on the AP bar.


Long text i know. Sorry. Keep up the good work folks!

I just tried it out real quick and am anxious for the final version. There are several issues that I have with the game at the moment.

1.) It seems like you can move via point and click but it doesn't work very well so you have to use click and hold. I'd suggest an option to disable/enable either of them based on preference.

2.) Moving objects is a little cumbersome at times and it seems like objects sometimes attempt to moved into the foreground or impossible areas rather than where your mouse is located.

3.) A lot of the skills aren't intuitive, you start w/ a base class but it doesn't really tell you what abilities are available for the skills they use or what they mean right off the bat. It might help listing all of those within the UI so you can make an informed decision.

4.) I'd appreciate the drag and drop for items in the environment having a tiny bit of a delay. It seems when I try to quickly mouse over a chest/barrel and click, I ended up throwing the object around rather than opening it.

5.) Combat targeting is really hard in a lot of circumstances with items in the foreground or clumped up enemies. It seems to require too much precision. Occasionally I end up walking around enemies instead of attacking them.

6.) Having an auto-sort for the inventory would be really nice!

7.) I'd suggest having the AP totals appear above your characters heads. This is likely just personal preferences but it seemed a bit clunky looking at the AP bar since you're trying to focus on the action.

8.) It'd be nice if you could click on a character portrait and have it switch the inventory screen to that character rather than having a separate toggle within the inventory screen itself.


Well, that's all of the feedback I have at the moment

Have you tried rotating the view and/or zooming in after panning the view over to your target?

Yes that does work somewhat, but i understand completely what he is saying.

Even in a "let's play" video i checked recently people were complaining about it, it's not easy to target atm, you need to be "dead-on-top" of the target nearly to a pixel precision and sometimes you need to micro-slowly-move your mouse to target stuff. Moving your camera it's a workaround sure.

Haha, yes, I've done that a *lot* of times too already.
I can agree with pretty much all suggestions here!

It's not just targeting either that requires weird voodoo magic, sometimes when you want to pick something up, the character does an pick-up animation but doesn't actually pick it up, you have to manually move closer and try again. Happened to me in the cave on that table with the arrow heads with nearly every single item there. Nearly as if reach character think he has is not actually what the actual reach is.

And placing area of effect spells in crowds dead-center is also hard work.... because of the lock-on and targeting thing mentioned... would be neath if we could disable lock-on for such spells (if they collide with enemies while cast that's fine.. but we should be able to target anywhere we want)

Indeed, I've been waiting for them to make it in this build, but it's not there yet. This really needs to be implemented - it's not convinient when items within a tab are all over the place. Also, why there is no number of gold coins shown on the gold icon? I have to hover over it to see how much I have and how much I take as loot.


That too, what is there now is rather counterintuitive.

Exactly, maybe Way of the Ranger should be a requirement only for leveling Bow and Crossbow? That way it would make sense at least. I wanna be a pure mage loremaster, but if I have to spend points in useless Way of the Ranger to level Loremaster then I won't have enough points for mage abilities. Same goes for other non-ranged abilities.

So what's with the weird rock-paper-scissors mini-game? It plays itself automatically in singleplayer (so, kinda pointless) and, all in all, looks really out of place. I understand it is to show the mechanics of who's going to win in the debate, but it can be done quite simpler with just showing some numbers in that history window in the lower right corner of the screen.

Yea, that not quite working yet. I also think that advanced character editing should allow us to choose starting skills, because it's a classless system after all.
And, btw, will armor colouring will be implemented? There was something on that front in the earlier builds.