Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Persistent issues which MUST be fixed

I hope that changes and fixes to a lot of these are already in the works and so my words will be wasted, but I’m typing them anyway. I do not use the word MUST lightly.


1. Traits

(Trait) Bonuses for Conversation are Ambiguous



Back on Jan. 26, Swen said that the existing Traits system was just a test and the intent was to make them better. Well in the two and a half months since, the only change is that now there’s a coloured bar indicating how strong you are on one of the pairs. Can we at least get an update on when (or if) change is coming to the Traits?

I’ve long since stopped using that to roleplay, and am using it to min-max for the +1 Ability boost. That results in my Enchanter telling a fish thief to stand down and if he does it anyway, I cover up for him. If my sneaky guy wants to keep his +1 Sneak bonus, he can’t be suspicious of the events in Thelyron’s clinic. It's also throwing off the balance by letting us get ability points for free.



2. Surfaces Not Working Properly
This is a pretty big one since it dramatically affects the combat system. Right now surfaces have some big bugs and issues that affect their usefulness. The combination of Fire + Ice should produce a water surface, but it does not. It produces whatever the projectile type was, reducing the number of ways you can make a water surface.

Water surfaces have issues of their own. If you cast Ice Shard on them, the radius of the effect is the same as it would be on dry ground. If you cast lightning on them, sometimes it stuns enemies standing in them, sometimes it doesn’t. If an enemy doesn’t have to move to attack, they can perform attacks or attacks of opportunity without getting stunned. On the other side, many times I’ve stood an ally in what seemed like a dry spot only to get them stunned.

Another problem is that chunks of barrel and crate are considered targetable objects and can harmlessly absorb shots you thought you had aimed at a surface.


3. Missing Weapons Merchant in Cyseal
This may not strictly be a “MUST fix” issue, but I'd still call it a good idea.

There are only two dedicated weapon/armour merchants in town: Anna of the Fabulous Five (Who will skip town as part of the main quest), and Esmerelda, who you can have arrested (and it makes little sense for her to be a jailhouse merchant, and she won’t like you anyway). That could potentially leave you with zero merchants who are guaranteed to sell weapons – at least between the Sparkmaster encounter and the end of the Black Cult Hideout. Bad Design Decision. If you haven’t got a weapon up to snuff, then you’re in trouble. Weapons still make a big difference in your damage output.

Recommendation: Add a Legion quartermaster upstairs in the mess hall. There’s no one there now, and little except a locked chest. That area was only added for schedules, so you may as well make some use of it. The hypothetical quartermaster could have a high repair skill as well.



4. Double saving throws
Say an enemy mage moves first and casts Silence on Jahan. It passes Jahan's Willpower check, and then lands on him, so now he is Silenced. Later on in the same round, Jahan's turn comes up, and he gets a second roll to determine if the silence affects him, which he passes, and then he can cast spells on that turn. Jahan got TWO chances to save against Silence before it had a chance to affect him at all.

It really takes some of the danger of status's landing if - without any interference - they can be nullified before they do anything.

Recommendation: If a status lands, it should stick for at least once turn before you get a saving throw (obviously except when deliberately removed by one of your own actions).


5. Earth Damage and Earth Resistance should be removed
No really, they’re worthless. The Complete and Total List of skills which do Earth Damage (not poison damage):

• Boulderdash
• Earthquake (Maybe?)

I’ve looked at the list of skills the beta added, and a bunch of them are not in Cyseal. That’s fine, those we’ll get later, but I’ve been told that no additional skills will be added to the game. I do not see anything on that list which looks remotely like Earth Damage (instead of Fire). If you’re not going to have the Earth Damage type in the game for more than one skill, chuck it, Earth Resistance and make Boulderdash do Crushing damage instead.

There may be some value on Earth Damage weapons (although very little), but once you at least remove useless Earth Resistance from the pool of affixes that can be attached to an item, that will improve the quality of the affix pool.


6. Limited options for dealing intelligently with traps
This may not strictly be a “MUST fix” issue, but I think it’s pretty important. I don’t mind traps, I don’t mind deadly traps, but I do mind when intelligent options to deal with them are missing. A lot of the time, it seems like even if you see the touchplates, all you can do is just dumbly walk over them.

Recommendation: Moveable stones, blocks, or possibly statues which are immune to destruction by fire, explosion, or burning which can be found near some trapped areas.


They don't have to have big flashing arrows pointing to them, you may need at least STR 7 to budge them, you can make the player work to move them from a different room or 100m farther away, or make them have to pass by the traps at least once, they don't have to be around for every trapped area, but I think those kinds of things placed around will offer more clever solutions to dealing with traps BESIDES "I hope you have a skill that lets you teleport/rush over them" and "No? You'd better stay behind".


Two or three examples come to mind:

a) In the Blacksmith's basement


b) Trap House southwest room


c) The Withered Gardens


Again, I don't have any problem with traps, not even dying to them, but I do want to have smart ways to deal with them, and fragile, flammable wooden crates and barrels are not a great choice as the only objects you can place on surface-spreaders.


Thoughts?

Is there an earthquake spell in the game? (I didn't play earth mage yet) It could do earth damage, but I like it better your way, Stabbey, so earthquake could do no damage (or physical) just stun all who fail the saving throws, or even destroy some crates/barrels, which can be handy. Otherwise I cannot think any other earth spell which would do earth damage. Since earth is connected to fire, there could be some earth spells doing fire damage, or so..

I'd like to be able to disarm traps. I realise it's late in the day to mention this, and it will never come to pass, but still.

On a related note. The act of spotting a trap is fine, I understand why that works how it does, but after spotting a trap and calling out "I've spotted a trap" everyone then walks straight into it!

On an extended related note. I've noticed a couple of times that one of my party will say something similar to "I've spotted something". However, they don't indicate what that something actually is. And sometimes it's not immediately obvious what is being referred to. Is it possible to somehow highlight the something that's been spotted? Or indicate in the log what it actually is? e.g. "<character> notices a secret switch on the wall next to him/her." I had it happen to me in the harbour warehouse and I still have no idea what was actually spotted!

May I join ?

I did forget about that one because it's not available in the Beta (bumped to a higher tier, probably). If I recall it did knockdown with a chance of poison, but there may have been some Earth damage as well. But two spells isn't worth an entire resistance category dedicated to them in my opinion.




From what I can tell, it's usually a place you can dig.




Yes.

Tx, I won't. already made my views clear, if somewhat rough. Beside, although I don't share your views and priorities, you are doing a very good enough job.

There indeed are more than a few traps we'd like to be able to disarm or pass without having to resort to pyramid throwing or plain damage-tanking. Not to mention mines. I have the feeling such a thing should be added to any of the "precise hands" skills, like lock-picking, pickpocketing, or crafting. That would probably make crafting too useful, pickpocketing isn't really that coherent, so why not lockpicking ? Since it's not a very useful skill in the game right now, that would give a good enough reason to take it and use it.

Maybe a high enough Loremaster check could be made, some form of trap knowledge. having to pass both a Loremaster and Lockpicking test to disarm a trap doesn't actually sound that harsh. The biggest downside is that you would need the same character to upgrade those skills as they go. Luckily, Loremaster IS a very useful skill ( even more useful when it will display stats during the encounter again ).

On the topic of weapon merchants, while I get where you're coming from, I don't think, during our sessions, that we ever really needed to buy things in town. I for sure didn't, but maybe my partner did. Loots are plentiful enough and the very first encounters are easily beaten even with basic weapons. It's possible to steal a few very good 1handed weapon in the barracks down by the port, or even some 2handed in Esmeralda's shop, there is a low tier bow right on the beach with the very first Orc attack, another bow in the fields with the bomber and archer skeletons, etc.
That being said, I can see how a player discovering the game for the first time would maybe have need of merchants. To be honest, I think a NPC with a good enough repair skill is even more needed. Or well, you know, not *needed* but would be quite damn useful.
But at the end of the day, unless drop rates are lowered, one can quite easily progress with no merchants available.
It may be harsh to go into combat with the Sparkmaster with Source Hunter standard gear, though, agreed. :p

Yeah, arguably another merchant may not be as big a "must fix" as the other things.

It's not so much the time between the Harbour and entering Cyseal that I'm concerned about in terms of weapons, it's what happens if you beat the Sparkmaster, but one of your guys's weapons is lagging behind, and you have been unlucky with drops. I can assure you that when I ran a rogue, he required revisiting the existing shops a few times because with an out-of-date weapon, his damage output plummeted badly.

Beating the Sparkmaster is the trigger for Anna to leave, so if you can't, then she'll still be around.

The hypothetical quartermaster could have a high repair skill as well.

I quite like the idea behind the trait system... or what I assume the idea was. In most RPGs I have a hard time rationalizing points into social skills. Sure they are fun for role playing purposes and can unlock more storyline and help flesh out your character but computer rpg always come down to combat. If you can not kill the next pack of mobs in your way your can not advance no matter how sexy your character happens to be. With the trait system it lets you raise social skills in a more secondary manner without hindering more combat useful skills and all the while you are able to flesh out your character.

I think the system should mostly stick to social skills because while I completely accept that my characters 'reason' would improve because he feels jumping off a cliff because a statue told you to do so is stupid I have a hard time with the idea I get better at 'water magic' because I stopped someone from stealing a fish.

Hi
I always have those barrel lids with me and they do disarm those traps really fine (not the walking plates) and are not burned (I don't know why because they are wood but maybe fireresistant wood ???)

the wither garden one with the 2 traps was really tricky.
I think I did the fire resistance potion (70%) and a magic item with 15% and 10% fireresistance and last but not least the skill which boosts your resistance 10% makes 105% fire resistance and then I placed my lids on them to get to the chest (this was my solution after dying really often ;D)

but the chest ....