Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Can't tell DOS is THAT great (fanbois look away)

"You walk until you can barely see enemies in the distance, and you put your mouse cursor on top of them. You should be able to see their level well before getting into their sight range."

But, no! When I point at an enemy it usually indicates "???" instead of the level number. Thx for your tips and patience, anyway.

I'll be back.

If it indicates level - ??? , that means that they are too strong and high a level for you.

Indeed !

It is strange. If you were BG fan, i tough you would read dialogues, i started few weeks ago and i can feel how naturally I am telled what to do. Not by game, but by npcs. After arrival into cyseal, i got notes to who should I talk, then got information about other problems, then completed few sidequests in the city, got suprised by homebase and imp and wondering "wow, surely it will be somehow related, but can't seem how" and then (maybe luck was involved) i went through the right gate. No walkthroughs needed, all is said ingame.

(after while i think, i went to the right area because I tough, that there i could find some necklace to bring two kitties together or something similar).
I mean guards at the wrong gates says you, that you should'nt go there, other quests are pointing you into the right area, so why bother going wrong way unless you don't pay attention to the story (in which case you are probably playing the wrong game)

I have a hard time believing the OP has been playing RPGs since the 80s and is a fan of the BG games, with his complaints in this thread. Getting to an area where he died quickly because he wasn't high enough level? That's old school RPG right there. (BTW, if you use the oil barrels to your advantage in that orc area, you can pretty much 1 shot the entire band of orcs, including the boss at level 3 easily. Straight up toe-to-toe combat isn't always the best way to fight). Not having a detailed step by step quest log? Old school again. Talking to each NPC, picking up notes, reading what is in the journal, etc gives you all the information you need to move throughout the game. Not seeing stats on mobs? The Loremaster skill tells you that's what it does, raise it. There is no grinding in this game, following the story and quests moves you along in levels quickly enough.

Sadly, the last few generations of games have been so dumbed down and/or use level scaling mobs that I think people have forgotten how to play a proper RPG anymore. Folks are so used to basically having arrows pointing them to the next objective, they've forgotten how to figure things out for themselves. This game does hearken back to games of old and does it well. Some thinking outside the box makes this game so much fun.

You lost me on the word fanboi. Aside youngsters, only persons immature, complexed, unintelligent or a combination thereof should use the word. Trending...trends..., which will probably be your justification for it, are as well but a tool for the above categories to delude themselves into a semblance of belonging/acclimatisation.
Since however i too started here with a negative post, and of a personal tone, i thought i owed it to myself to read on regardless

Now you purport to knowing your RPGs, but your text shows anything but knowledge, or the experience through which it is attained;

- you highlighted gameplay issues that while perfectly surmountable, you yourself relegated to a personal failure (yours) to overcome by lack of critical thinking/taking advantage of the tools provided to you. Will not focus on what that entails any further, as it would only paint a bleaker picture. Of yourself, not the game's

- you mentioned a lack of bells and whistles (ie fluff, visuals, further personalisation of avatars) when, coming to this game with the experience you purport to have had, you should have known in advance they would have been absent. Since you did know, again, in advance, that this was an Indie title. Indie does not equate "hip", west coast, or daddy's money. Indie entails
1) lack of funds
2) lack of funds

- you find a lack of quest logging problematic, yet appear to have had no problem playing the GoldBox titles. One assumes pen and notepad should not have been strange a concept to you. Most especially in a title that harkened old school, in a title that consciously attempted to ---attract--- old schoolers in its KS. Most definitely in a title that was Indie, where funds would, and were indeed, best spent elsewhere

- your issues with having only 2 PCs are a matter of personal opinion, and i would be unfair to criticise it. My thoughts on the matter however are:
1) both wasteland and PoE had full party turn based. Larian therefore needed something different, will once again remind you they needed a successful KS (see incomplete past games)
2) unlike both inxile and obsidian, larian (graphics are a good indication towards this) also tried to attract a newer, younger audience. I am of the impression that they consciously limited it to 2 + companions, so as not to over-alienate the newer audiences. They need to both attract, and maintain a clientele

- everything else which you probably think i am neglecting falls back into my first bullet point. Including "abstract". Unless you have a universal, homogenous list of what rules there are for the term 'perception' to have a meaning, even within itself, do refrain from practicing use of the term. I assure you it has been overused, molested and abused to death.

That aside, welcome. Really

Ok, you are partly right. In fact I quit playing this long time ago and not planning to ever return, but I'm looking at this thread to see whether there are butthurt people apart from me

I won't counterargue, as we are all entitled to our own misconceptions (or so they say), but making an 'old-school' game does not imply taking the worst parts from the games of old. For example, the absence of a proper quest log is indeed old-fashioned, but is also inconvenient. As a result, I have to meta-figure out what a designer would want me to do, instead of going my own way. Wouldn't it be easier to give me a direction at least? BG dealt okay with that. And Realms of Arkania either.

Apologies for tl;dr, I'm just off to sleep. And thanks for replying.

Well, obviously OP, you'd be better off with what so called AAA developers fork out by the numbers these days. Games where you're taken by the hand for every step of the way and some flashy combat as the cherry on top.

The absence of all of this makes DOS a great game in my books. Sure there are flaws, but to go to the most basic level, I didn't have a single CTD in 240 hours of gameplay. That's an entirely new experience for me.

And to complain about the chest behind the rope is a bit of ridiculous. It's there to show you the potentials. Use telekinesis on it to draw ut within reach. Use the frigging pyramids.

The only point I give you is that instant death is frustrating. That could have been handled better, but nothing ever is perfect.

I actually like the instant death harsh lessons are ones you dont forget or repeat, and I immediately knew I should be somewhere ( nearly anywhere but here, but hey the gate guards tried to warn me), the Orc fight outside Black Cove is another early game encounter that will kill you unforgivingly if you are not ready yet. SO you re-load and try something else or somewhere else, lack of determination is a players fault not the games. If you really want no challenges watch some TV.

This game never made me say "frak it, I give up, it is impossible and broken". WHen I died and I did many times on my first and second playthroughs, I just changed tactics, went somewhere else to get stronger and did every single thing I could before I left Cyseal-Town.

Even on Easy this game can be challenging, but it is worth it, if your really stuck get the walkthrough and use it when stuck ( I did), but crying about it wont make you enjoy it or be a better player and it wont fix where your stuck. You wanted to have fun, you still do, sulking isnt fun, but rising to the challenge and figuring out another way is, and there is always another way.

Buddy give it another try, be patient and determined, I think you can do it but dont expect it all to be easy or obvious, it isnt. If you ask for help on the forum someone will help you, Raze has helped me quite a few ways.

YOU CAN DO IT. You want to know some electronic program beat you, and quietly accept and live with that????

It's obvious that OP isn't into that kind of game. For the same reasons I gave my money to Larian, he obviously would be more content with what EA, formerly known as Bioware, forks out these days. We're just approaching the matter from opposite viewpoints.

Cossayos-

Maybe. And you are not wrong, the stuff that most game companies put out is crap and aimed at the brain dead utterly shallow mass market, D:OS is so much more and so very good and deserves to be liked, every one ( gamer) we save from dumbed down moronic FPS candy-crunch mental level games is an improvement for the gene pool and gaming's future. I hope for 10 more games by Larian as good and like this one.

Sometimes a bit of positive is so much more effective than a ton of negative, encourage not disparage, I guess.

LIke when an old soldier takes a boot under his wing, markedly increases the odds of his survival, having been the boot in the past....I saw the other side of his coin. Just because he is the FNG doesnt mean we cant fix him and help him.

Eh your probably right.

I'm not pretending to be clever, but ridiculous are such 'riddles' that are ridiculously unnatural. Because I want to step over the rope, instead of figuring out whether it's a bug, or bad mapping, or whatever but gameplay-related. Or are such things supposed to be funny?

One way or another, speaking of AAA games, I've switched to Dragon Age Inquisition, and I must admit this is the most boring game I have played in years (maybe even worse than D:OS is my eyes). So no, AAA games are not always my cup of tea, either, although I liked Mass Effect 1-3

Speaking of other contemporary real RPGs, I liked pretty much the Inquisitor (Czech RPG) lately, Legend of Grimrock (being an old EOB fan); also looking forward to play M&MX (I played these series since M&M1) and also looking forward to Age of Decadence. Of course Pillars of Eternity and Torment 2 are on my radar as well. Maybe that would imply I'm not that stoopid as I may appear on these forums

Different taste doesnt make you stupid. But being persistent does make you smart or just stubborn thats me stubborn. I was having a lot of difficulty when I first started playing D:OS as well, it was crashing a lot and freezing, but I also was frustrated since it did, so I didnt want to waste time redoing anything wrong or out of order becasue I was kicking ass in combat despite anything or everything else, so I did the research, I got a walkthrough and studied what to do and in what order, I wouldnt normally (especially on the first playthrough) but it was so frustrating when it would crash ( my system is win-7 32 bit so I looked at it as my machine so my fault) but after the patch on 01/30/15 it stopped freezing and crashing. Huzzah! Now I play everyday and I am on my 4th playthrough, sorry you dont love it as much as I do.

I am also looking forward to Pillars of eternity, I was a backer in an upper tier on that so I am waiting for it, but I am glad I have D:OS which I discovered by accident to kill time while I wait, we will see which one I like better, so far I am probably firmly in the D:OS camp. I also heard from some beta testers that Pillars looked pretty but was dull and needed a lot of tweaking and that combat was unexciting, I hope that is wrong or has been fixed by the time I start playing it. I would have backed D:OS if I had known about it.


In D:OS, the combat and spells and character development are among the best I have ever played in any game, the roleplaying, quests, and game environment and world are also really good. Probably my favorite games of all time were Baldurs gate 1/2 and TOB, Ice Wind Dale's 1 and 2 though 2 has a lot of issues, and Fallout's 1 and 2 and tactics. I used to Love Starcraft and Starcraft-2 but Blizzard is such a lousy company, and I hate their DRM and battlenet, so I will never buy another one of their products again, and in truth they havent made games that reward you for being a customer in a long time, and I bought my first computer to play DIablo-I back when I first got out of the service, so yes they are distancing their long time loyal customers with their self-aggrandizing business practices.

I have not liked Dragon Age as a franchise, anyway, I took one look and went back to BG2.

So enjoy...what you like. I backed Wasteland 2 hoping it would be like Fallout's 1 and 2, oh man was I dissapointed, talk about dull and unengaging, not sure how Wasteland-1 inspired Fallout because Fallouts 1 and 2 and tactics are better than Wasteland 2 and they are 15 years old now!

thats sad and disconcerting.