The major flaw in this thread: assuming that hand-holding and stream-lining are necessarily bad, instead of objectively analyzing the issues. Oh, and ad hominem arguments.

In fact, a game with no hand-holding whatsoever is a game that can only be beaten by trial and error. What is relevant in this discussion is what amount of hand-holding is best suited for what Larian is trying to achieve with this game, and the argument "they were aiming for an old school feel therefore no hand-holding!" is a poor one because that would only make sense if old games were perfect. They were anything but, and some were purposely designed to be esoteric so as to artificially increase the length of a play-through (due to storage deficiencies; I'm sure some of you remember what it was like having to juggle several floppy disks).

Several old school RPGs did not even have a map, and forced you to memorize labyrinthic areas or draw them yourself. D:OS would undoubtedly be more hardcore if it had no world or mini-map -- and if I were like Hiver I would call you all devolved fools for not criticizing the maps -- but would it make it a more enjoyable game? That's what you have to ask yourselves when you think about game design decisions: how does this make the game more fun? Why is the game better for it? Not: is this how they did it in the 90s?

With all that said, here is what I think about some of the OP's points.

1) New and improved journal for better orientation/questing

Imagine a chess game where each square of the board were stored in a separate part of the room. Would it make the game more challenging? Absolutely. Would the game be better off for it? No, because the challenge and allure in chess is not in how you obtain the information in the ongoing game, it is how you interpret that information and draw upon your memory bank of previous games to plan your next move. Making it more difficult to obtain the information would add a new layer of complexity which is incongruous with the game of chess.

Likewise, in D:OS, the spreading out of information creates artificial difficulty which you might expect in a puzzle game, but not a role-playing game. It doesn't help the game any when you happen to miss one book and get stuck on a puzzle for half an hour, when the information in said book could instead be displayed in the puzzle's area either through text or some other, more creative fashion. Same goes for the quests and the information required to progress in them. The fun is in assembling the puzzle (a clever puzzle), not searching every nook and cranny in your room for the last remaining pieces.

2) Hotkey for the hotbar and more hotbar space

This has been widely requested and it is difficult to argue against.

3) Add "repair all" and "identify all" for the whole party

Indeed this is not fun because everything is done through the UI, so immersion is not even a factor here. If you could drag an item from one character onto another in the game world, and a context menu appeared, with the option to identify or repair, then I would argue that your proposal would be detrimental to the game.

4) Apply sneak command to every linked party member

Agreed. Clicking on each character and activating stealth is repetitive and monotonous when you have a full party. Imagine if you had to order each character to move individually. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that linked characters should be smart enough to sneak when someone else in the link does it. Besides, it doesn't help immersion any when your characters enter sneak mode one by one instead of simultaneously.

5) Enable shared gold between linked characters

Again, the current mechanism forces mindless UI work which further distracts you from the actual game world, so I agree with your suggestion. I suspect that it is the way it is due to co-op, and they simply haven't gotten around to making this happen yet.

6) Enable walking on the map

Agreed, mostly because this game has so much back-tracking that it would be great to occupy my brain during long journeys with more interesting things such as reading the books.

7) Add inventory sorting filter for "item type"

There are too many usability issues with the inventory as it is and I really don't want to go into that right now as it would warrant a whole post.

8) Relocate crafting/blacksmithing notifications to the actual inventory screen

Agreed, but it's a tiny issue.

9) Display equipment comparison of each party member in bartering

Agreed. Can you tell I hate fumbling with poorly designed UIs yet?

10) Make quest items unsaleable and undisposable and give them a special tab

Wait, you can sell essential items? I seriously doubt that.

11) Disable crafting if no further improvement is possible

I have little experience with the crafting system for reasons which I will not expound here so I can't comment on this.

12) Add legendary/unique stuff to boss drops and treasure chests

I'm of the opinion that fixed loot is a terrible idea but I don't have time to go into that here.

As for the dual-tier proposal, that would only make not finding a useful high-tier item on a boss hurt you much more than it does now. I'm assuming that they will eventually fix the fact that you can simply reload the game to get a new item roll, as that has no place in any serious RPG.

That's all the time I've got for now. Sorry.

Last edited by artemis42; 10/07/14 04:49 PM.