Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Larian rant

Because I will try to respect The bug forum...


So, Mikus, does "Lying" and "Stealing" sound pointless to you ?

Kickstarter always includes certain risks like delays and/or changes to the final product. It is a donation platform not a shop. You can be assured that D:OS WILL be released eventually. If you are already so disappointed in this game, then just sell your kickstarter game keys once you get them. There are more than enough people out there who missed the Kickstarter campaign and will gladly buy your keys.

Cromcrom - although you'll probably just attack me anyway, all I'm trying to say is this: you may be disappointed in the lack of certain reactivity features in the game (and as I've posted myself elsewhere, I am as well). You (or others, including again myself) may also be disappointed that the developers apparently don't have the resources to add the hoped-for NPC schedules, while still maintaining enough cash to feed and house themselves.

That said, there's no need to engage in personal attacks and name-calling. They don't solve anything, and just pollute the forum (and the internet in general) with yet more anonymous negativity.

So, for the final time: if you have something constructive to add that could realistically make D:OS better before release (and from reading a few of your posts from a couple months ago, I believe you might), please stop clogging up the forums with insults, and just go do whatever it is you do when you're not posting here. Peace.

Kickstarter and the likes are not, as Elwyn stated, shops.

Donating on such a plateform does not make you an associate, a stock holder, or an owner in any way. It just makes you a contributor, sometimes you get goodies out of it.

The project creator's only responsability towards you is too eventually deliver a product that fits the specifications if the funding period is successful, and they, in fact, take the money you pledged.

And that's it.

So many misconceptions about what crowdfunding really is about. Inform yourselves, no one will do it for you!

Now, on timing and schedule, I think Larian kind of tricked themselves and realized that a little too late with the stretchgoals. They wanted to add many many things, but these things take time and every stretchgoal was a delay in disguise. I'm not really surprised some will not be there in the end.

On the fact that you seem disapointed with the game, well, I'm sorry to hear that, but you know, sometimes you buy a game and it's not as good as you'd hoped or doesn't fit your play style/preferences as well as you thought. It's the obvious risk when pre-ordering or pre-buying games. It's also a risk when donating via crownfunding, although if the dev team is doing it right, you get more info on what you are putting your money into before you actually do. That's if you keep yourself informed once again.

Sometimes you go to a restaurant but the food doesn't correspond to what you were hoping for. You have every right to be disappointed and upset about it, but it's just silly to start accusing and pointing fingers. "Those lying, stealing, cheating cooks! They said the best food in town when it's in fact only above average! Scandal!"

There is an important thing regarding this:
The project DIDN'T reach the 1 million stretch goal! Everyone was happy as Swen told us they want to implement it even then. Nobody complained: "hey, this is not fair, you didn't got enough money, you have no rights to implement the million goals!" But now that they cannot do everything, some people turn to babies...

@Elwyn:
I early accessed based on kickstarter "commercials"
@ Mikus:
I actually finished modding Rigale V0.10, just taking a break before some bug hunt. Whatever.

Actually, I am not mad at Larian for not delivering the schedules (I was against this from the beginning anyways), even if the lack of cycle is much more a pain for me. However.

I gave plenty of ideas, and I have the weakness to believe that the "Lone Wolf" talent came because I proved there was no real choice has to what to do in the beginning if you wanted to get out of town. But this is again not the point.

@ Maali
Indeed, I might have a misconception about what early access means. But I have no misconception about RPG, be them computer or pen and paper, or even heavily modding some to make them deeper and more interactive.

I didn't even "play" the beta. Well, I did, but seeing it was the "same game", I stopped pretty fast.

I am mad at Larian, because they lost their imagination and their passion.
DOS is a "big budget" Hollywood movie, full of explosive barrels and "witty" dialogues.
I am quotting Early access here:
"Become part of a reactive, living and vast open world. Explore many different environments, fight all kinds of fantastical creatures and discover tons of desirable items."
THIS IS PERFECTLY TRUE.
However, nowhere does it say deep or/and interactive, and this is what I am reproching to Larian.

Larian is going a certain way, with such grand ideas as "Slashing specialist" or the confusing "way of the whatever" talents.

They are missing some RPG points (crafting/world interactions systems/respawnable areas...). And it's not because a handfull of fanboys are praising every step in the game that the game is great. And the fact that they seems to be nice persons won't prevent me from saying I think they are making a mistake.

When they are done with the game, I might mod it. However, when I see such system failures like the only "mental" attribute is "intelligence", and they didn't add more mental attributes because "they didn't use them that much" is ridiculous. How am I gonna mod my dragon dreams if the player don't rest, my shaman/spirit world if the player has no wisdom, and so on ?

Why are the quests plain old boring quests ? Why don't each of them increase what my character can do, beside giving boring XP that dumbly allows me to put a point in a talent or an attribute ? Can't we have a little imagination here ?
But actually , I might be wrong, as I didn't complete the beta, but does a quest give a talent ? I even doubt that.

I am mad at Larian, because they traded imagination for special effects and so called utopic "freedom".

Right, everyone except for you is a "fanboy" because they're capable of suggesting improvements to D:OS without resorting to calling Larian and others "idiots," "asses," etc. I'm done with you - have a nice life.

P.S. Don't feed the troll, folks; nothing to see here.

As for the ones calling me babies, try to build any kind of argumentation beside "You suck because you whine".
I am sorry if I am expecting "to much".

I actually FINISHED divine divinity when it got out, and I loved it. Why do games have to get dumber as time goes ? Can't we have a nice AND deep game ?

@Mikus, I don't "SUGGEST" improvements, I mod them if I can. (Same old stories, NWN2, Legend of grimrock and Mount and Blade, so far, even a little bit of Skyrim, but coding system proved to hard for my autodidact "skills") However, we are in Beta, aren't we ? Game is done, so now, is tweaking, balancing, and bug hunting, right ?
The improvments I am talking about are not sipmple tweaks or balance issues.
Contrarily to you, I can admit errors, and debating never made you more stupid. Thinking you are right and others are idiots might, however.

So, do quests give talents or other stuffs beside XPs and gold (and maybe items) ? I might ask on the "general" forum, as this is a very genuine question.

I can't resist. You just continue to make yourself more charming. Keep going, this is great stuff.

You are welcome, here it comes. You are making a fool out of yourself, and didn't answer my question, do quests give anything beside XP's, gold and maybe item ? But I must admit this is complexe question for someone like you. I will probably have to check myself.
As for my modding skills, indeed, I try to make my mods very deep, but they are usually buggy, because of all the features I add.

Maybe Larian's universes do not come with such things as "mental" attributes to begin with, and maybe you are just mistaking what they are doing for a D&D clone. Dragon dreams, spirit world? I'm not that sure such things are relevant to the Divinity lore, but if you want to mod them... Well, just use your imagination to force the player into resting. Maybe mod a rest system and cleverly weave it in the vanilla gameplay.

Crafting is present, but I agree it needs more love. As in, more explanations, more info on how your skill will improve items. World interaction systems, I'm not sure I'm getting you. Respawnable areas, no-no, that's not a standard " rpg point " as it entirely depends on one's conception of rpgs and there is already a whole thread dedicated to the debate on handplaced and finite enemies vs respawn. I could also agree with the fact that quests are "only" giving you XP, BUT here again it's personnal opinions. It's also ignoring the fact dialogues and specifically arguments are improving stats based on how you chose to resolve them.

I think your issue is that you're mistaking D:OS for ... something else. An Elder Scrolls game, perhaps ( which I'm okay with, I love them ). But in truth, I don't even really get your point, as I don't see how your examples pertain to the "freedom" you speak so much of.
To be honest, I'm not even sure pure freedom is a good thing in a video game anyway. It's probably okay when you're playing pen and paper with skilled players ( I saw some open-worlded P&P games, if I may say so, fail because the players had no idea what to do and deliberately chose not to follow the plot despite the GM's best efforts to set them on the right path ).
And while I didn't play Divine Divinity, Divinity 2 was a very straightforward game, which wan't preventing it from being a fun, clever, and ultimately very good game.

Yes, tell it like it is!

But since you did hide something relevant to D:OS among the devastating sarcasm, and your natural charm has convinced me to attempt (with my limited mental faculties) to answer this "complexe" question, I can confirm that in the beta, no. As for later game content, I believe it was mentioned elsewhere in a Swen blog post or something that there may be ability/stat etc. quest rewards. As you say though, feel free to check yourself.

But please, continue to enhance both your blood pressure and social skills by continuing to call me stupid. This is some good, clean fun!

I'm beginning to think I should abandon this forum of late. Toxic bullcrap is inversely related with good feedback and conversation, and what do you know? We've got a lot more toxic bullcrap lately.

@Dr Koin

Definitely. I must be to old fashioned. However, I thought some incentive for playing DOS was a back to the roots stuff... Anyways, ok for no mental stats beside int, and having talents/abilities replace them, and I already expressed myself about this. But still, I think it is an obvious design flaw.



What I mean by freedom is, is there anything to do beside solving the main quest ?
Being a Bounty hunter, a bard, a scholar, a cook, a mercenary, a trader ? I am a source hunter. And that's it. Indeed, I was expecting more from a game where I have the freedom to kill every NPC. So what is the point of making a "vast" open world, I the only thing I can do is being a source hunter, and solve XP quests ?


Indeed, I think it is a great feature, something that makes the world more interactive. However, the 1-5 abilty system makes this very tricky.


This is an utopy, IMHO.

Some example of freedom/interactive/living world.
Lets say I go cut a tree for crafting (which is already ridiculous in DOS's finite world).
I am good, I gather some more proper crafting wood (even more ridiculous).
I am bad, I gather a very few poor crafting wood, and some fire wood. I could even go to a critical failure, and hurt myself, and/or break my tools (even more more ridiculous in DOS proper skill level/automatic success system).
And then, sometimes, randomly, I could awaken a sylphe, that would either attack me, ask for retribution, or whatever.

Of course, if I can, I will probably mod these kind of stuff, but still, I wish Larian had added it natively.

I don't think this would have removed anything from the game, and it could have added so much, even on a co op RPG point.

@Mikkus
See, you can answer a simple question.
So my suggestion improvments is "make tons of fun new quests that give more to the players than plain XPs, gold or items, but also increase their world interactions, and their feelings to grow in possibilities, not only power. You can do that, for example, by giving specific quest related talents."
I still think that "putting a point" in animal speech is an utterly wasted opportunity.
This is a suggestion I made a long time ago, but Larian went the "pile fighting skills upon fighting skills" option.

@newfreshnewbie "Larian Rant" is pretty obvious, don't read it if you can't stand it.

My deduction is that you're not really interested by D:OS, you actually want your own à la carte RPG and now feel upset that Larian is not delivering it to you. Well that's too bad I guess. The fact that many people are enthusiast about the way the game is doing doesn't make anyone a fanboy either, by the way. Why do people always have to be so dramatic about everything...

Also, the best RPGs are those who can make you dream by getting the best out of what they have, and not the ones that multiply blabla mechanics to fit every nerd RPG fantasy.

I had no wisdom in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, I never slept either. Hell, there wasn't even any day/night cycle, that kinda sucks for a vampire game doesn't it? Well... Bloodlines was a killer RPG, one of the best I've played to this day, and still true today even if it came out buggy as shit in 2004.

Greatness in video games does not come from absolute freedom. That is a lie. A marketing trend that has been going on the past years and saw an abundance of empty, lazy titles promising freedom just because they had loads of side activities, empty open worlds, and endless collectibles. What makes a RPG great does not come from being able to chose through a thousand different stats or being fastidious about everything, but from the correct balance of interaction, gameplay, writing, good programming, and art direction. If I have that, I'm satisfied, and have little interest for cookie cutter dragon gimic mods and cliché Earth Mother pseudo-philosophy.

See? Everyone has different expectations and views as to what makes a good game good. You don't like D:OS? I'm really sorry, I think you're missing out, but fine. These are the risks of early access. You don't want to indulge companies in praticing early access schemes? Stop buying early access.

And you can continue to choose to be polite to Larian and others. Isn't that better?

So now that we're getting back to constructive discussion:

Never mind. I can see from your subsequent posts that you're still a miserably negative person. Good luck with that.



This is the type of thing I'm really looking forward to. Larian has a huge community with some great ideas, and I can't wait to see the features and content players may add to the base game. I especially like the example of cutting a tree - a simple example that shows some ways the world can be made to feel more interactive/"alive." D:OS didn't have the budget for all of these kinds of touches, but modding might change that.



Although I like the additional dialogue/exploration/quest options this talent opens up, I always thought the binary "can't talk to animals vs. can talk to animals" choice made via the investment of a simple talent point was a weak - or at least strange - mechanic. But eh, it gets the job done, I guess.

@Maali
Most of your points are personnal, so I won't argue about them.

I fully agree. However, I think greatness comes from increase in possibility as the player experience grows. And not only fighting possibilities.

or talents...

I probably mostly agree, although this lacks facts.


lesson learned.

My ass. Core engine seems terrible, because only thing that doesn't have a bug/ isn't unbalanced in this game is going from a point A to a point B. And even then, the two points have better be very close...
They just didn't think at first about these kind of details. It looks like they went "hey, lets make a game engine where we can open and move crates, and set oil aflame - OMG THIS IS A GREAT IDEA, WE COULD EVEN MAKE AN RPG OUT OF IT !"

Other point, I am really concerned about modding, because right now, I don't know if bugs will come from me or the engine, and this is very disheartening, because looking for sometimes hours for a bug is a terrible experience, and can be even more terrible if you are not the culprit.