Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Difficulty vs Final stretch of the development

"A large part of the reactions about the game presumed difficulty that you can hear being talked about is actually coming from early players, beginners and various casual players who simply dont bother with any of the game numerous features or options.
Or have missed some of them by accident."

thats the most important part of the OP's lengthy post-- I just started playing the game myself and have it set to normal, and being that I'm still learning, I am finding a lot of the combat scenarios difficult- for example i thought i was stuck when i fought an enemy that put fire on the ground (that doesnt seem to be going away) and roderick died on said fire only to be resurrected and instantly die again from the fire- I then learned going to the homestead brings his ashes there and I could res him-- but i still cant progress beyond that fire on the ground because it fills the corridor and there are no water barrels and i dont have any rain spells or scrolls and haven't seen any in town.

Now-- I'm sure there is a solution but i haven't discovered it yet, and thats the point. Of course a game is going to be a LOT easier when you've cleared it 2-3 times as the OP has.

Just saying I think the difficulty is pretty well balanced from what I've played so far.

Agreed.. but fire is bugged right now.. that will be fixed.

Thats not the "most important part" of my opening post, thats just a part of the introduction.


My post does not talk about changing a single thing about the difficulty of the normal mode, which you are playing.

I dont care about the normal mode. I dont want to have anything to do with it.



Thats because this thread IS. ABOUT. MAKING. A. HARD. DIFFICULTY. MODE.


Which has been said, stated and repeated several times so far.

Well, maybe the title of the thread is not THAT clear.
I thought this thread was about asking the devs to take their time to make a hard mode, and so not release it at launch.
Silly me.

A game developer who doesn't know about coding, flags, triggers, basic permanent world issues [regarding spawn radii etc], mechanics or even feasibility of adding additional features to an existing base? Using something like RPG Maker doesn't make you a game developer, but I'm sure it goes down well in the hipster cafe / hackathon.

Hint: Most AAA studios won't let the dev team within a million miles of the public forums (with good reason - with something like Diablo III, there would have been suicides, or at least post-gold blues). Indy teams who are successful usually don't bother to rush in either... something newbies like Chucklefish need to learn the hard way


Edit: to make this concrete - most AAA studios simply aren't built (work-flow wise) to allow the core teams direct feedback. Take a look at a recent Rare job - http://uk.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/10229524

We have the power and responsibility to push back on end user requirements and help define and drive the asset workflow for the whole company. Rare tools programmers often get their hands in the engine code too, working with content creators (artists, animators, musicians, designers & gameplay engineers) to develop a smooth end-to-end workflow.

Also, there are probably 5+ people @ Larian who don't read the minutiae of the forums, since they're currently crunching.


/zoooom

Oh, look. SteamUser has dropped into another thread to do nothing but drop wild assumptions about other people and add to the trolling! No surprise there.

As ever, you didn't refute the facts, nor did you attempt to answer the allegation, you went on DEFCON 5 immediately*.

Never go full retard...


All too easy. /out

Wow, you even tried to be sneaky:

Edited by SteamUser (6 minutes 25 seconds ago)

#496931 - 3 minutes 18 seconds ago

And yet... you didn't quote the entire post, for some reason? Makes it look at first glance like there's an edit war? Who knows? Your bullshit piles up so fast you need wings to get out of it



*This is also known as "aggressive stance when called out on bullshit"

Well, that's just because I prefer to just point at nonsense and giggle rather than grace it with an unnecessary response.

Edit: Did you seriously just send me a PM asking me where I worked? That's rich. And creepy!

SteamUser in public: troll-troll-troll-insult
SteamUser in private: "..I'd be fascinated to know where you work.. "

Thanks for the chuckle.

Actually i believe all larian's ppl are aware of these forums and read them and thats what i love about them... and hate about AAA studios... who listen to publishers not thier customers

Yes, I'm not sure which "AAA" studio he's stuck at that still works under the outdated mode of keeping developers and the community separated, but I'm glad I'm not there. I'm going to guess "EA".

Edit: And I actually feel bad for Hiver now (who seems to be trying to get this thread back on track) and feel like I owe him an apology now. I had no idea SteamUser would swoop in and divebomb this thread with garbage because of some trivial statement I made. He's apparently still bitter from a different discussion that didn't go his way and seems to carry a grudge. Let's get back on track with the difficulty discussion.

Publisher - This sold well.. and this.. lets do this again it sold well.. just change the story add a new element rinse repeat..
Studio: What about this...
Publisher: Wtf..... omg.. something new... noooo we can't do that we don't know if it will sell.. no we have to do this again.. it sold.
Studio: Damn they have us by the balls.. oh well maybe one day there is a way we can do this.
Kickstarter: Your right... lets make the customers the publishers... let them pay in advance so you know you have the funding returned.
Studio: Publisher your fired... now back to new idea.
Customers: Hellz ya finally.
Studio: Wow this works and all the bug testers and feedback is awesome.. its awesome to actually read the forums interact with the customers.
Publisher: Shit.. call EA we need em to make another one of those to compensate for this lost studio.
SteamUser: Devs don't read forums...
Me: Larian does.

LOLz

Well, I just posted you a job blurb from Rare (you know, now forced to churn MS titles out like candy), and I'll let a man with more experience than I tell you some wisdom:

If I have learned anything from writing Indie games for a living for fifteen years (and there are plenty who would say that I haven't), it is that it is usually a bad idea for creators to visit online forums discussing them and their work. It doesn't lead to happy ends.

Jeff Vogel - three reasons creators should never read the forums

I'd also urge you to actually read this excellent long piece via Polygon - Plague of game dev harassment erodes industry.

"A lot of developers just sit and make their games," he said. "Not everyone is Jonathan Blow, who is willing to engage. The vast majority don't, so they're almost constantly surprised when something happens.

Stephen Toulouse, 6 years @ Xbox live policy & enforcement.

After Dragon Age 2 came out in 2011, Hepler told Polygon, many of the people involved in the game's development received angry emails, abusive forum posts and petitions calling for them to be fired. About that time, someone dug up an old interview Hepler participated in six years earlier. In the interview Hepler mentioned that her least favorite part of working in the game industry was playing through games and combat. Some of the interview was put in the official forums as evidence that Hepler was to blame for changes in the game's combat. The forum post was removed and Hepler went on maternity leave. But then the following February someone created a forum post resurfacing the interview and called Hepler the "cancer" that was destroying BioWare.

Hepler was lead dialogue on DA2 / ME2.

Or even...

Josh Olin, the community and eSports manager at Evolve developer Turtle Rock Studios, is no longer with the company in the wake of a series of remarks related to vilified Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.

Olin, a former community manager at Treyarch Studios (Call of Duty: Black Ops) and Riot Games (League of Legends), said on Twitter on Wednesday...

http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/1/567...anager-josh-olin-twitter-donald-sterling

Admittedly, that's an outside issue leading to a firing, but the common rule is that you don't use company headed Twitter / social media accounts to post anything.

Pro-tip: major AAA studios have strict guidelines on public interaction, that's why community managers / PR exists. I can tell you for a fact that 2K games, Ubisoft, and Bioware all allow only carefully vetted public interaction from the dev team.

But, as ever... a single line, unsupported by any "fact" other than "new hip studios do it" [note: they don't, esp. in the growth industry that is social media games a la Zynga] will suffice our brave young game developer!


I'm out - continue the fantasy!





Take a look @ Larian's public posting ~ you'll note a community manager, a QA manager and Forktong posting. The person(s) doing content or coding the fixes that are being reported in bug threads... perhaps not so much, they're probably crunching

Please do continue though, I'm sure you know how workflow works at an AAA studio.

Agree to disagree.



Quick tip, rockstar: when you keep dropping the mic and saying "I'm out" repeatedly (and keep coming back) it sort of loses its impact.

Obvious the one just coding doesn't interact.. but the ones designing do.
And these AAA studios have so many problems with the public because the public want one type of game and they give what the publishers want instead... thats the real reason all the friction exists between devs and community.. they don't get what the want out of a series.
Look at these forums and the relationship larian has with its community.. its very happy because larian is making the game how the community wants not the publisher so there virtually is no friction.

http://www.lar.net/2014/04/25/the-power-of-crowd-funding/#more-958

Read entire article swen praises this as his best time as a developer... this time with kickstarter and early access and its based on his interactions with the community and lack of a publisher.

Against the words of the industry, you have a crude snipe / personal attack. Maybe some day you'll learn...

Btw, this "rockstar" at least knows who Jeff Vogel is, and has played (been lead content) on an RPG this side of Diablo III / Skyrim



...off to "level scale" my new FPS.

Swen is lar... sure they probably have one person appointed to maintain these forums... as they are busy.. but they all read them at times and interact with the community.. swen has directly talked to me before as head of studio.. they don't just have one drone interacting with us.

Are you seriously name dropping now? You came back from your "I'm out x 2" just to do that?



Thanks for the humor!

Sigh, you're so inauthentic.

1) You were the one who name checked Diablo III / Skyrim as your experience of "level scaling", and stated you'd not even played Skyrim (much) nor had you played at least five earlier games, including all the big ones like Amalur, Oblivion, Fallout 3 which started the craze in RPGs.

2) FPS' generally... well... not sure why you'd be "level scaling" in a pure FPS. S.T.A.L.K.E.R does it, but not in a manner tied to player level.

3) To make the joke really clear: I was making fun out of the "RPG elements" of current gen shooters such as Warfare / COD / BF. "RPG ultra-ultra-ultra-lite" and I was comparing your knowledge to this comparison. i.e. your posts are thin, poorly supplied with content and fresh and new in terms of experience / depth.

So, yes, you did indeed miss the humor. My brain is now slower thanks to this thread. Note: I am not currently working on a FPS, if you need a tad more elucidation.





I won't.

Was just looking for a single fact in your last... four? five? replies, never got one. Thinks level scaling = Diablo III = been "so long in the biz".


Sorry, my bullshit Geiger counter just maxed out, I gotta go before I need to spend 100 caps clearing my system out. [Hint: that too is a RPG reference, in case you missed the humor.]


p.s.


"Long in the biz" =/= played Oblivion, Fallout, Alamur, any early RPGs. I guess you're in social media gaming?

Holy heck.. you really are dragging a disagreement from another old topic into this topic (and, as usual, getting all the details wrong while actually branding them in red font)! Just how long has this been eating away at you? Have you been monitoring my responses waiting for the right time to start this argument again? At this point I'm putting no amount of ridiculousness past you.

I couldn't even read the rest of your comment before responding to the above. That is rare for me. Bravo. /slowclap

Edit:


Oh no, I made the mistake of peeking further. And now you're quoting complete replies from the PM's you're bugging me with, and posting them here to respond to them in public, without clarifying that you're citing a private message - as if to make it look like you're quoting something I said in public. Well that's.. really weird and desperate of you.

Be careful with that - while I try my hardest to obey the rules of conduct out in the public forum, in those PM's anything goes and I'm not going to be so polite. If I say something offensive in private and you repeat it in public, that's going to be on you, not me.

The sad thing is you already replied to that comment back in the PM's (where you started asking me creepy details about my personal life).



I guess you thought up more comebacks after you hit "send", and felt the additions were good enough to air in public. Awkward..

By the way, you've said some variant of "I'm out" like four or five times now. And yet, just like a recurring rash.. here you still are. Maybe you should reconsider your sign-off.