Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Items that cannot be upgraded in Divinity: OS

Haha, that video is comedy gold. Knew this guy had mental issues from his earlier posts, but...wow.

I ... Wow. What a curse filled rant. Expecting a text heavy game to be available in American English rather than British English is a bit much. His rant about the customise scream is hilarious, particularly as he is ignoring the green minus signs. I see a little about what he is trying to say regarding Action Points and such but equally it was very intuitive and you could see everything on screen that you needed to understand it (unless your colour blind I guess) and I'm incredibly curious if he bothered to read the manual. (Queue "I'm a modern gamer you can't possibly expect me to read the manual unless it's included in the game, and even then I need everything spoon fed to me")

That video made my day! BLOOD PRESSURE is definitely my favourite!

He represents a rather extreme element of the "hold my hand with explanations/tutorials" crowd. Extreme to the point of being frequently wrong. However, since the game is designed with somewhat the opposite mentality, I feel there are a few occasions where he's actually right: the game doesn't quite hold the player's hand enough.

In that video, at 6:40 or so, he starts going on about how Action Points aren't explained. Although of course he goes overboard, I think that first combat screen should include a mention that the green bubbles on top of the skillbar represent Action Points. I'm just talking about adding one sentence to the dialog box, explaining what you're looking at when you look at the combat interface; I don't think it's necessary to explain that you click on monsters to attack them.

Crafting also is something which honestly isn't explained very well. I'm not talking about a huge tutorial or anything, just spending one second -- literally one second -- showing that dragging one item onto another is how you craft. It would be as simple as showing one drag-and-drop, but it's conspicuously absent from the game.

These are both moderate positions, together adding less than 2 additional seconds of tutorial to the game. I want to emphasize that I am not nearly as radical as tx3000 is when it comes to handholding, and I think most of what he has to say about the game's accessibility is counterproductive. But I also think the crowd here tends to lean slightly too much in the other direction, blinding themselves to problems which can be caused by a sometimes counterintuitive AI, a crowd which blames players for things which are sometimes the fault of missing or incomplete in-game tutorials. I feel the best way lies somewhere in between.

Two things genuinely bother me here: first, that the tone which someone uses would blind our community to critically analyze the content of his message; second, and more importantly, that someone with a good point or two would become an extremist with an excessively caustic demeanor.

Or maybe it's just trolling. Doesn't matter; good point's a good point, even when not intended to be. And surrounded by bad ones.

Far as I can decipher the issue raised around the AP bar, it looks like a question of "should the game draw attention to the obvious?".

A lot of people have had their first experience with the game, I've had my first time playing the game, back in beta (before the little tutorial screens were even made). And yet I could differentiate between foreshadowing, a humorous "that looks important" remark, and understand where the AP bar was and how it worked just by seeing what changes when a battle starts and noticing the bubbles going red as I planned my first move. I am willing to bet a lot of people did.

So I do ask myself, what is it that differentiates those of us that can figure the game's basic mechanics with just the short, but ample information the game gives in text, all the information it gives as feedback to your actions, and those that would ask the developers to make the game tell them what to do when new, previously unexplained information suddenly shows up on the screen.

And just to be clear, everything on the screen is information sitting in front of you. It's simply up to the user to interpret it.

Well, from all this, my personal conclusion tends to go towards "the issue is between the chair and keyboard" rather than towards the game not explaining enough. The devs said they want the player to think and make decisions, though the game at times sends a conflicting message.


In closing, I reiterate that this is just how I see things, and I suspect a number of others do as well. Am I utterly wrong, am I off the mark, am I too damn intolerant, am I onto something, I don't really know.
What I do know is that I fully support Larian's path of making the game challenge the player not just to beat it, but to also understand it.

The AP bar thing isn't quite obvious. It's deducible, I'll give you that much. But I think I was about level 4 or 5 on my first playthrough before I realized what it actually was and what it meant. I thought we were supposed to track available AP in our heads, which is totally doable using the character sheet but a little memory-intensive. It wasn't until a battle involving an oil barrel spilling on my characters (thankfully not ignited) that I noticed the difference.

And in terms of crafting, I read the recipe books and knew crafting existed, but I had no idea how to actually do it until I was multiple rerolls in.

This is a game with a lot of puzzles in it, and when it comes to those, I'm totally against holding the player's hand more. The UI itself shouldn't be one of those puzzles. There are some things which are truly obvious, but some things aren't. I'm also a tutorial minimalist -- really! -- but this doesn't mean I'm anti-tutorial. I believe in them, fiercely; I just believe they should be made as brief as humanly possible. I'm not talking about a slow walkthrough where you need to click multiple boxes as the game goes over everything as if you're an idiot. I'm talking about quick, painless explanations of simple things which can be missed otherwise.

One additional sentence added to a dialogue box which already pops up; one second of showing an item dragged onto another item and the crafting dialogue popping up. That's it. Maybe three seconds total of added "tutorial," because important second of the crafting demonstration might need a little bit of setup.

I think your key block here is that you realize the "issue is between the keyboard and the chair" and you immediately assume the game is explaining things enough. I'm not debating that Sherlock Holmes wouldn't need more tutorial; of course he wouldn't. But is it an "issue" that I'm not Sherlock Holmes? "Between keyboard and chair" doesn't mean everything is "obvious" and that the game shouldn't help the players out in certain occasions. Not everything is supposed to be a puzzle.

That video had me cracking up laughing. That guy is a complete moron. He hates turn-based games, so he bought a turn-based game? Oh, too funny.

This man's brain seems nonfunctional.

I don't quite agree on the AP-balls (especially now that they light up and have all kind of other indicatrors added since beta)... but crafting, sure.

My own suggestion was to add a locked door to the tutorial, 2 broken half-keys and the player should combine them to open the door... tutorial added.
I'm not sure how you expect the game to show drop & drag; nowhere does the game uses video-tutorials (like Divinity II, and those were a waste of resources mostly), so I hardly doubt they would start for crafting, would be too breaking...

The best part was in the comments.



Better get cracking on those instructions, Larian. Cause, you know....law.

I can respect that opinion. I figured out the AP-balls on my own much faster than the crafting; that should give some indication as to priority.If not a video, then a dialogue box, just like the ones the game already has (ex: "Press i to access your inventory"). A simple line of text such as "Drag and drop one item in your inventory onto another to craft" should do the trick.

Take a look at some of the utter rubbish he's posting at the GOG forums.

The fun thing is that GOG's forums include a reputation score, and this loser has the lowest I recall (even spammers score higher) - maybe he's trying to get below -100.

I thought it fairly obviously with his first reply that he was nothing but a WUM.

*looks*

Nah, this one is funnier;
http://www.gog.com/forum/divine_div...n_exactly_what_the_the_hell_sourcery_is/

You would expect how badly it's informed what Source is till rather late in the game... but no, it's about Sourcery being a misspelled British version of Sorcerory...
Yeah... it's as funny as it sounds.

He hasn't been replying to us. Do you think he finally gave up? That would be such a loss for the forum. We could use a town fool.

If he keeps this up he'll become a legend in the RPG community.

I hope he doesn't stop, his posts are too good, I always look foward to a good laugh.

What is most surprising to me is that that guy looks to be over 40 but behaves like a 12-year old. :S
Sad...

This may be the internet, but presentation still matters.

Heh, well spotted. Thought I'd provide an appetiser and let someone else find the main course.

C'mon tx3000, get back online - the world needs more caped crusaders fighting for consumer rights - especially when that cape is a dunce's cap.

I find it hard to find it funny. When I actually comprehended what he's like, I was filled with a strong sense of bafflement. I've seen stupid, dumb, outright idiotic. I've seen pathological retardation (literal mental retardation). I've seen trolling, I've done trolling (rarely).
But all that I have learned about the way a human being can be, well... broken... this guy just makes my mind scream for mercy. What machinations brought him into being? Unfortunate genetics? Trauma? Faulty Upbringing? I can't piece enough defects to form someone like him.

While he may set a new internet standard (more like minimum), I'd rather he not come back around here.