Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Beta criticisms after near full completion

Before I get in to criticizing the game I want people to understand that I really enjoy this game and just want to see it become the best it can before release. I also understand that my view is subjective and not everyone will/should agree.

After playing through most of the beta and completing all but several quests that I was able to find this is my general impression and critique:

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Abilities/Talents:

-It seems a little too easy to max out abilities like "way of the warrior" or "fire elementalist" to access the high tier skills/spells. If the game is a good deal longer than the beta and there isn't a higher tier of abilities than 5 the progression would seem wonky.

-Crafting is very strange in this game and I generally don't bother with it. Having to search through a journal for random recipes and the click and drag combining seemed tedious. Can't cast too much judgement on crafting because I didn't delve into it much.

-Lock-picking doesn't seem enticing enough. Nobody in my party had lock-picking and I didn't really miss it. Most chests/doors have keys nearby or you can just blast them open with spells. Also lock-picks seem to never drop or appear in the world outside of the tutorial cave.

-All social skills are poorly described and I have no idea what I am receiving for the points I spend in them. I have seen definite benefits from barter and had lucky finds with lucky charm but I still have no idea what leadership and charisma actually do for me.

-Body building is pretty much the same deal as social skills. The description gives a vague idea of what it does for you but you can't actually see it effect your stats.

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Difficulty/Gameplay:

-Playing the game on hard makes the first 5 levels very challenging and enjoyable if you're willing to reload every time mistakes are made. However, if you are a completionist and know how to build characters well the game becomes trivial even on hard. Once I hit around level 7 and was well established in terms of spells and gear I began steamrolling and was actually able to beat This was mainly due to being 1-2 levels ahead in most situations and buffs/debuffs just being extremely powerful.

-Clicking on enemies can seem strangely difficult sometimes and if you try to rush combat you can end up walking around an enemy instead of attacking them.

-While standing near hazardous terrain if you select another party member to control the formation will "reform" around you often causing them to step on whatever deadly substance.

-In multiplayer there is a lot of visual desyncing especially when using a spell like rush. Characters also appear to be firing in the wrong direction rarely.

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Classes:
Here I'm just going to focus on mages as I only tested warriors/mages enough to be informed about. Warriors receive no complaints from me.

Elemental Mage (I didn't use witchcraft at all):

-Fire was very powerful and fun, but there was a bit of an overabundance of enemies immune to it.

-Earth was the same way with 2 of the 3 damaging spells I was able to get (only reached rank 3 earth elementalist) being poison damage and a majority of the enemies being undead.

-If you are a fire/earth elementalist when you get to the flaming ruins area all you can really do is buff party members and use staff of magus if you happen to have a water/air staff.

-Air felt the weakest to me with none of the spells doing great damage and the relatively low status effect chance and duration on most of them.

-Water was good, no complaints.

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Thanks for reading if anyone does!

Good points.

- I agree that Crafting could probably use its own UI. Some of the recipes require you to combine things from different categories, which you can only really do from the "All" tab. I think something where you place the two items you want to combine and hit a button which wither produces an item or doesn't would be good.

- I agree about lockpicking.

- I agree about Leadership, it's very poorly explained. Charisma increases the amount of points you get from winning a round of Rock-Paper-Scissors in the minigame, or the chances to win if you skip the game.

- Again, more explanation could be done. Bodybuilding increases your saving throws versus physical status effects, like bleeding, knockdown, cripple...

- So far it's been pretty consistent that after you beat west Cyseal, it gets much easier. That may be a case where you now have enough resources to get skills/spells/gear and such. The XP gain and level spread seems out of whack as well, as you can quickly out-level enemies even skipping a bunch of content.

- It's a common complaint about the formation system. A good suggestion is to not have the shuffle take place until you start to move.

- Fire I think is okay, it's only really in that one area where it's no good for attacking.
- Earth I agree with, there's only one Earth-damage spell in the beta, and two Earth-damage spells in the entire game. That makes Earth resistance seem pretty useless. You can use the poison to create surfaces to attack with fire, but other than that Earth isn't used for damage much in Cyseal.

- Air I think is still on the side of okay. It makes a fantastic combination with water, letting you do mass-stuns pretty cheaply. There's a "Become Air" spell which has potential, but it only affects the caster, so maybe there's a higher-tier ranged version of that later.

I ran a pair of Air/Water mages and did very well, it was only the Black Cove with water-resistant enemies which was troublesome.

Even better, party members should never path through damage terrain/environments, period - and in tight areas like narrow corridors, the player should be required to manually move any party member through a damage area. Also discussed in the "Beta UI Wishlist" thread.

I wanted to start my own but since I 99% agree with what OP already said I will chime in here.

I made several play-through sessions (4 mixed easy, 2 lone wolf rangers normal, 2 lone wolf warriors hard) and must say warriors once they develop are serious powerhouses.

Maxing out ability trees isn't an issue it's more about the order in which you want to unlock highest tear of abilities and this renders the rest unavailable until later when you save up enough points. Besides abilities tend to have long cooldowns and are generally only usable once per encounter short of few exceptions.

Crafting I only used extensively on warriors since you make or improve much better weapons and armors than you can find in beta. For weapons I stuck with 2H axes (1 large steel bar on anvil) and then improved on whetstone for dmg. For armors you generaly just improve it on anvil to get rid of the movement penalty and instead get a slight bonus. I never figured if armors can be crafted tho. For the rest of crafting (bows, leathers, potions, scrolls and cloth) I find it almost completely worthless (will reserve judgment until I get to experience whole game). Same goes for crafting or even using food.

Abilities tooltips don't give enough information I agree but through testing I figured that abilities like Singlehanded, twohanded, shield specialist, Bow, Crossbow, ...) they cost the same amount of ability points as your more important ones yet what they provide would make even a baby Jesus cry. They will need to revisit those bonuses before they are worth putting in even a single point (maybe at last level if you have spare points and your build is fleshed out).

I'd prefer not to comment on difficulty, someone might think I hate the game

Party AI for following in formation is real dumb. Bummers will go through every poison cloud, lava or fire field or any other detrimental terrain.

[Bug?] At one point I was fighting that fire elemental in burnt forest and upon its death when I was about to collect loot one of my team members wandered on lava patch and died. Resurrecting him proved to be a fail since character get rezzed at the spot they died (which was lava patch you cannot douse with rain) and just died again. Luckily I had quick save just before the fight.

And just like the OP I had numerous occasions where (due to enemies animation) I did not click an enemy to attack but missed it and made my character walk next to it. [Suggestion!] Usually game like this allow for the skills to target enemy portraits if needed after all that works for your party members but for the enemy attack queue bar that doesn't seem to be the case.

In regard to class power I must admit I was quite shocked at ranger - mage - warrior discrepancy in power. 1H (this includes bows) vs. 2H vs. spells in no contest. From what I've seen 2H trumps everything by 100% if not more. Might give 2xMage combo another try but for the record I killed Braccus at level 10 with just 1 warrior in one single round (applied max debuff -50 slashing, invoked Oath of Desecration, had warrior power stance active and used 3 level 4 or so warrior single target abilities on him). Damage (of top of my head) was something like 550+, 400-500 and 300-400 on hard and he was down.

I also made some shots at the end of my last playthrough with 2 warriors.

Stats1
Stats2
Stats3
Talents
Traits

My 2cents
On lockpicking:
* There should be a vendor for lockpicks, or even better: lockpicks should be an item like the repair hammer or the magnification glass (multi-use). After all, real life lockpicks don't magically self-destruct after one use.

* There is almost no incentive for taking the skill at all! Every locked door has a key nearby, and destroying a chest by force doesn't have any negative consequence. I think destroying a chest should change the loot table (broken bottle instead of potions, paper scraps instead of scrolls etc) to make lockpicking somewhat useful. Also, adding some chests that don't have the key in the same room / have no key at all would be great.

On immunities:
Don't hand out immunities like candy! It's completely sufficient to increase resistances, otherwise you completely remove the challenge from certain enemies and tactics. My tank is immune to knockdown, stun, fear, curse and environmental damage, which completely removes those challanges from the game. It would be better to add e.g. +40% resistance to those effects.

As I have said in other posts I'm TERRIBLE at using forums and don't know how to quote parts of people's posts, so I'm going to awkwardly reply without that.

To Stabbey:
Perhaps it was made worse by my fire/earth mage having several more points in intelligence than my water/air mage but most fire spells were doing over 100 while air spells hit around 60-70. Fire can also burn for much more damage while stun chance on blitz bolt/lightning strike seem a little low and the stun duration is only one turn(? It felt like that but I'm not sure ?). While stunned enemies don't have increased armor like they do while frozen though. I don't think air is really cripplingly weak or anything but I do believe it to be the weakest element atm.

To Stormchaser:
You make crafting sound quite useful I'll have to put more effort into it. I was ridiculously lucky in finding this Concrete Two Handed Battle Axe of Disfigurement that does 102-260 damage. Warriors did outperform my mages in the later levels when their gear was so powerful, I would just use wildfire, bless, and fire shield on Madora(she received the axe) with my fire/earth mage, have my tank use nullify resistances and encourage, and have her use melee power stance and rage. All those buffs boosted her damage to about 400 at the high-range. Groups get destroyed with rush, battering ram, dust devil and whirlwind while single targets get hit with the bleed and flurry.

To pts:
I completely agree with your opinion on immunities. Becoming immune to most status effects seems too powerful.

Thanks!

Good point about fire's high damage AND burning status being better than stun, which also requires water for effect. It's possible that the balance still needs tweaking in that area.

I also agree that it can be really easy to get immunities. You can even get immunities with a single point into certain Traits, when it would be more reasonable to get increased saving throws which increase as the points in that Trait goes.

I do kinda like though, that you an get Immunity to Stun, because it makes the Enchanter build much more useful - you can drop a water surface, and then some lightning, and then have a melee character immune to stun walk over the surface, whereas if they didn't have that Talent, they couldn't really do anything to the stunned enemies.

That does seem like an entertaining use of the lightning rod talent. An alternative suggestion could be a temporary spell/ability you could use to make a character immune to stun? Would be similar in gameplay but not permanent immunity.

I know how to quote now!

If you teleport somewhere (waypoint, teleporters, stairs) the body of a dead party member will move with the lives one(s) they are linked to.

You can already use the portraits at the top of the screen during combat to target opponents for spells and skills, just not for regular melee/ranged attacks.

Shouldn't that be lightning immunity? Usually immunities help against the cause and not the effect...

It's called fire immunity and not burning immunity for example...

Lockpicking works with witchcraft skill. I dont know about lockpicks themselves, there is only 2 lockpicks in whole beta, one in the beginning of the tutorial dungeon (as I call it, where 3 enemies come out of when you head from beach to the town) and second lockpick you can buy from one of the NPCs on the market in the middle of town.

Also I don't know what you guys are talking about that breaking doors/chests has no consequences. You probably never tried to do it before level 5. Try to break lvl 10 door or chest with your lvl 5 melee weapon and see what happens...

Also a lot of these reviews here are based on certain way of playing the game. In one situation your review works in another it doesn't. Not everyone plays the game like you, in their case they encounter different battles since their characters are built differently. Also a lot of you guys seem to know a lot of cons and pros of specific builds and setups. There will be quite a few players who are not pros in building the ultimate death machines so for them things that you might find making the game too easy they may not even think about it.

I haven't tried on Hard, just medium and only once. I am afraid if I play more playthroughs I won't have interest for release. So my personal opinion is - I partially agree that game becomes much easier around lvl 8. And I didn't even try to make an "ultimate deathmachine". I've never crafted a single weapon/armor, never used whetstone, I haven't completed half of the quests and by the time I killed all the mobs on the map reachable by exploration I was lvl 8.

I think game needs a bit more balance. Its more challenging first few levels but you still can end up overleveling yourself by going to the 'wrong' side of the map leveling up fast there and then slice through mobs on the other side of the map like through butter.

Maybe it would make sense to actually have mobs scale to your current level, thats the only way to make 'every' battle challenging. I dont believe any other balancing will allow that type of challenge in game.

But then again D:OS is sort of a "find whats better works for you game". Some people who play games all their life fly through even hard as it was easy. Others maye find some battles challenging even on easy (not me). Does the game need to guide player through giving the quests to avoid overleveling?

Also quests all pile up on top of one another. There is little guidance in journal to understand if you actually have completed the quest or not. The journal just said what you DID. But was it appropriate part or maybe you just stumbled upon some enemy that was some part of the quest is unclear.

While overall this may be interesting for people to find out on their own in some instances this is actually quite frustrating. You don't want to run around the whole map and go through endless dialogues with every NPC (which is frustrating on its own) to find out if some new dialogue option appeared.

Digging through same dialogue options is very annoying when every NPC has pretty much same choices.

So my biggest complaints then:

Magnitude of annoyance in order:

1. Messy Inventory (where is the sort button???) You have to dig through inventory so often that this is the most annoying in my book, even though there are specific tabs that allow to switch to specific type of inventory the "ALL" tab is just hateful.

2. Quest journal and dialogues. Oh let me tell you. I understand why so many people like to kill town inhabitants. Because they are sick of clicking the same dialogue options over and over and over again. Every selfrespecting game deve tool has an option in dialogues to FLAG already used choices and hide them if they've already been used on that NPC and only show NEW choices next time if there is something new to talk about. I kinda find it a bit shocking to see such mess in dialogues considreing how good the rest of the game is. I really HOPE this is just overlooked ALPHA feature that will be fixed very soon.

3. Difficulty balance. So yeah, beginning of the game is challenging especially when you show your nose at the side of the map where enemies are several levels higher. This is ok though, but imho this is not the way it supposed to be done. Too late to change anything now of course but devs were supposed to put more challenging mobs further away from town and not have clusters of mobs of different level in different part of the map. Like for example it is now - (not actual representation) south are mobs level 2-4, north are 5-6, east are 7-8, west are 6-7...

4. Crafting. Well... I didn't really feel at any point in time other then first 3 or so levels that I really needed anything at all except some healing potions during those first few levels. As soon as my archer could heal, I didn't need healing potions either. I got all the euqipment and most of the skills/spells from drops. And to be honest I didn't really use the skills/spells I got from the vendors much.

Other weird things.
Maybe its me being used to other games I couldn't figure out until probbaly level 5 where to sell or buy things until I've barely noticed a button to access trade interface on every NPC. That is quite an unusual spot for such a button. Maybe its because in other games not every NPC in game is a trader or salesman. You have merchants in other games. In D:OS I guess everyone is a merchant.

I understand of course whats behind the idea. Its like every person has something to trade or keep in inventory. Some has 15 gold, others have 15000. Some has only a fish and pitchfork others have full inventory of equipment to sell. Its a bit weird. But nothing that you can't get used to.

I believe in Baldurs Gate that made this game genre so popular they've had merchants who could only trade with. And other people were just that - people.

PLEASE remove the annoying repetitive dialogue options and flag to show only the options that open depending on quest progress. Or will I really have to do it myself when game tool is out?

Actually, (by design), the Witchcraft open locks skill only works on MAGICAL locks, not normal ones. Lockpicks can kinda show up in loot and on vendors, but I agree the chances are far too low right now. There are four lockpicks pre-placed in the tutorial dungeon.

Opening chests has no consequence if you use magic to open them right now. They've at least made it so you can't use summons for that (out of combat). I've heard that it will be changed so smashing a chest will lose items.

Well then its a bug. Because when you try to use witchcraft skill to unlock magically locked items it actually does a pass and checks how high is your lockpicking skill.

I actually found a fire/earth mage to be just fine in the flaming-undead area for the simple reason that the fire elemental summon is invincible against Mr. Two-Head, which makes it an excellent blocker, both there and in the Braccus battle. The wolf summon is also a pretty strong attacker even without the AP reduction from rangerish stats. (I'm not sure if that's intentional - the spell requires earth magic 1 to learn but apparently falls under survival skills instead of earth magic?) Sure, he won't be doing very much damage personally, but between summoning and buffing (and by that point you have some really strong buffs), the F/E mage certainly isn't going to be left twiddling his thumbs there.

No matter what level, you should never use a melee (or ranged) weapon to break down a door/chest, unless you want to use the repair hammer every 5 hits. If you want to break something, use magic (well, that is true for any game mechanic )

I think they could change "lock picking" skill to something like "mechanics". So it would affect:
- lock picking
- disarming and setting traps (even pressure plates)
- recovering components from said traps
- giving insights when using mechanical puzzles

Good idea! Or maybe something like thievery, with lockpicking/pickpocket/disarm/sleight of hand, since they all require manual/finger dexterity.

Actually, I think that would be really great.