Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Really bad early experiences

There is a huge difference between a market and a gigantic market. I'm backing Torment as well. I love the old turn based games. However I realize that I'm not representative of the general population. Its common error on enthusiast forums of all stripes to assume that everyone is like them.



The main issue is that the "hardness" of the game shouldn't be fighting the UI or fighting against something that you have no realistic way to know. Take a room full over traps. Making them impossible to detect and having you find your way across the room by reloading after each one you find is the wrong way to do it. The right way is have your party have a chance to detect them on perception and maybe there is a skeleton nearby with a jounral mentioning traps his party fell to. Maybe even enviromental stuff like a bone here or there or a tripline that a play with a good eye might catch. One is requiring thought and skill to get through. There other is just "you'll learn eventually" Yah I know that some old school games did pull the complete blindside on you. It was bad design then too.

2 weeks nr 1 on Steam (and counting)... nr 1 on GOG currently as well...
Tell me how many other games did so well recently?

It's called Perception... and the same thing can be said for not brining a rogue in D&D/Baldur's Gate. Should we just remove traps since people don't bring rogues or think "meh, perception"...
Nope. Their fault, their consequences.
Not bad gameplay...

Oh, big giant neon signs, good idea. Let's do MASSIVE red warning signs around them. I mean, we didn't plant traps to TRAP people, right? What would be the point of that...

I went back to a room in the Black Cove I had been through at an earlier stage and was amazed as I ran through with how many times my characters said "Careful! I've spotted a trap"! I ran through the room at least three times in different directions at a lower level, didn't spot any traps and yet didn't trigger them either. Later on, my now highly perceptive mine sweeper cleared up...

Difficulty definitions vary so much between games - and may also depend on how good you are at certain things. I started Normal here and got owned so went to Easy and have had some challenge, though I might up it a notch now I am more experienced. I see no issue with that - I'm just glad when devs give me a range to choose from so that I can enjoy the game.

He never said remove traps. You're presenting an argumentum ad absurdum with your massive neon signs. His point was simply that to design a room full of traps, as in an inordinate amount of traps, and to give a player no real way to detect them other than trial and error is absurd. And it is. Perception in this game is one such way to deal with this. I also like they way Larian has handled traps.

And as a side note, in Baldur's Gate I generally just ran my high HP character through all the traps and healed afterward. Probably lame but it's what I usually did. Detecting and disabling traps was tedious. I'd rather trigger them and just rest and heal up. It was much more efficient.

You lost about 3m XP in BG2 if you really did that What is tedious to you, is neat additional gameplay option to others.. especially since planting your own advanced traps is one of the best ways to kill high level enemies (dragons etc.)

The only thing missing from D:OS is maybe a real detect traps spell. (+2 per for 15 seconds is not a real spell ,p)

Well, if you want visible lines, body warnings and a journal (cause hey, we cant have a character invest in perception, need to max some other stat more... but I still don't want any negative benefits of that), you might aswell write in neon letters TRAPS here.
Or remove them, since no-one would step on a trap that even a PER 1 character can see due to all the hints strewn around.

Also, your strategy would be good, till you suddenly get disintegrated, plane locked or all the other trap types there can be than just damage.

The problem with traps is always that if you don't make a game where rogues have any value (and imo they don't have any in D:OS) then nobody plays rogues. The real trap heavy modules in NWN where always modules focused around rogues, and in BG2 it was a open secret that you should always have a rogue with you. (Kinda weird that there only were 2 but that's 2 more than D:OS has by default...)

And let's face it.. if D:OS had a rogue like this

dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Rogue

That didn't require wasting the few precious ability ups on PER, then people would not have a problems with traps because chances are they'd play that already themselves ;P

It really bothers me anyway that trap detection is a MAIN stat in D:OS. In DnD it's a Class Skill and for good reasons. Aside from the fact that you could level that skill when and IF you wanted it to level, it didn't waste the few precious main stat ups that you get. And finding a trap and disabling a trap are really 2 very different skills, and should be regarded as such... and why would a rogue skilled at disabling traps, suddenly be skilled at disabling MAGICAL traps? (In DnD that is a use-magical-device skill check and not a disable-trap one)

And that's the real problem why class-less RPG's will never achieve any kind of fundamental gameplay depth when it comes to sneaking. A sneaking skilled warrior will always succeed at sneaking, even when he's wearing 5 tons of plate armor and metal boots that make giant boom sounds whenever he takes a step....

As you can no doubt gather, I really like the DnD style of rogue and sneaking. It's a bit complicated and so on, but it always made PERFECT SENSE in the ruleset. (Listen (WIS) vs Move Silent (Dex)) or ( Spot (Wis) vs Evade (Dex) )

It made you skill your rogue in WIS and DEX, which gave you a character that had a lot of other skills too.... if you choose PER in D:OS over INT or STR or CON or SPEED, you end up with a useless character that can't sneak properly anyway ,p

Sorry for the lengthy text.. but the sneaking in this game really bothers me. They added sight cones which made me super happy, until I realized the enemies are dumb as bread. And all the sight cones are binary detection grids. (Which is not how sneaking should ever work in a game....)

What if you don't want your rogue to be your trap detector?

Perception adds to initiative, initial AP and critical chance, which any class can use. You make is sound as if giving a character perception makes him suddenly paraplegic or something...

And Initiative is exactly why I never skilled PER on any of my chars beyond 9. If anything it is beneficial to not move first for the melee chars (sadly it seems the game is hardcoded to always have you move first when you start combat, unless enemy initiates combat) so even less point to skill PER

But when I boosted PER on my char that had highest PER by default he ended up moving first and that was exactly what I didn't want. I want my mages to move first so that they can teleport melee guys into combat, and they can then attack without all the enemies having a go at them first, and mages in this game end up with very low PER thanks to the books.... so you end up having to manage initiative through the PER points you spend...

Initiative is actually not a positive point of PER... Initiative is literally why I hate PER ;P

Since you've been lingering around the forums and checking in since you wrote this I will assume that you've continued to play.

How is your experience now?

Have you figured out that you do not speak for the "average player" and that you should never attempt to do so again in the future?

A lengthy look at Steam's forums, where the majority of average players live by virtue of that game being available only on Steam for a period of time, and you will not see anything remotely similar to what you were claiming here.

You initially found the game hard and that's okay. Not everyone can master a computer game on their first go around. Sometimes a game's systems will click and sometimes it takes a bit to figure out.

But, regardless of that, I am curious as to how your experience with the game is now. How is it going thus far?

If you don't want your melee to go first, you can bank ap or delay his/her turn. You have the ultimate control over your strategy, including character movement order.

Besides, if your melee can go first and you do want to use up your AP why not inspire/encourage/any other buff/summon?

Reading this whole thread has taken awhile. To make a point that would have been better stated earlier.

I enjoy when i accidentally rush into a battle (Dietmar), realize I've compromised my position, and manage to succeed, or better, get that "Ah..ha!" moment and understand what needs to be accomplished in order for me to win.

Life is about learning as you go. If you aren't growing as a master mind strategist (or person for that matter) then what is the point of living? Grow, and expand your understanding so that you may win before the first move of the battle is even taken.

As one of my good friends once said, "They say people can change, but is that really true? If they decide they want to fly, will they grow wings? I don稚 think so. You don稚 change yourself. You change how you do things. You have to make your own way. You have to create a way to fly, even while you stay the same. "

There are many ways to win fights on any difficulty since this game gives you so many options.

1. Start fights by sneaking to max attack range with one unhooked char while rest of party is behind a rock or otherwise protected . Run unhooked char back to party after initiating battle and watch range enemies run into melee range for slaughter.

2. Start fights by sneaking in and cast summons in the middle of groups. The summons will most likely act as an aggro magnet allowing you party to pwn.

3. Fireball.

4. Have two chars with Teleportation. Sneak both chars with Teleportation as close as possible to boss while rest of party lays in wait. Teleport boss as close to group as possible. Have second char with Teleportation teleport boss to melee for slaughter.

I was able to sneak-kill 4 of the 7 dimatar thugs before engaging the boss.

Tldr: More like Metal Gear less like Dragon Age.

Those are just examples of things you could do and they all can be executed subtly. You don't have to do them all. Despite your mis-reading of my comment I am in favor of having perception and other out of combat skills be important. I even said as much.

If you delay the turn you end up moving after all enemies... when you manage proper initiative, your warrior moves after the mages that teleport and crowd control (ice-wall/fireball/firefly) but before the enemies... and thus can deal damage and stuns BEFORE enemies move....

To me, Initiative control was always more important than perception ,)

hello all,

i only registered here to reply to this thread (and i sincerely hope the devs read this)

i was about to buy this game, but this thread has made me wait. i want to see how the developers react to these whines and if they cave in, i will not buy the game. i have a long history in playing RPGs and i want a game that is hard even on the easiest difficulty (i love a good challenge).

i will not buy a game only to have it ruined by developers who would cave in to people whining about it being hard.

just saying

thanks for reading.

cheers

skuko

I found the whole area with Evelyn to be ridiculously easy even on hard. I mean seriously, it wasn't even remotely a challenge and I could have done it without armor and crap weapons.

Chess, go, bridge, and poker, most people would agree, are among the most complex and challenging of all games. Yet the rules for each are simple and known from the beginning. Imagine trying to play chess without knowing how the pieces move. Or trying to play poker without knowing the rank of the hands. Yes, you can learn these things by playing, making mistakes, and losing over and over again. But why should you? The problem with D:OS, imho, is not that it is too hard, but that even the most basic rules--such as how to craft, to name but one--are not documented. The User Manual is so basic as to be useless, and the online tutorial is not only incomplete, but haphazard in what it covers. FAQs are now beginning to appear, but this is simply the result of Larian foisting the job of documentation onto users, who have paid good money for the "privilege." Please don't tell me stumbling blindly through the early game is good for me or that I am too lazy to die a hundred times in order to learn. I don't mind a hard game, just one where the basic rules are a mystery.

Nothing in the game is really "new" in terms of cRPGs. People who are experienced with them aren't having problems with the game. In fact, this game was designed as a spiritual successor to Ultima VII. It also is far more intro-friendly than Ultima VII was.

Anyone who takes the time to read the manual will be fairly well prepared for the game. Sure, there are things to learn on the way, but... well... that is the point of these types of games. If they could teach you everything possible in the game with a quick tutorial, why... it would be like every other shallow piece of mainstream garbage out there to which this was specifically designed to remedy.

Does that make any sense now?