Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Thoughts on single player experience

Heh. Been avoiding them like the plague ever since DA:O. Although mostly for their stance on DRM. But there wasn't anything about the games to make me reconsider either.


Exactly. I do have hopes that with the competitive gameplay present in D:OS 2, there will be more opportunity for failure in single player mode. Simply because there'll be alternative solutions available that allow for failure to be fun.

Actually, the things I remember most from D:OS were my failures:

All of those were great (because unexpected and therefore surprising), but still, chances for failure were few and far between. Having more of them would definitely make for a more intense experience.

Well, Larian has a design philosophy that you can always complete the main quest, even if you kill everyone. So the only ultimate fail state would be death of the whole party, yes. Which is fine, but I also like how they're letting you resurrect at the graveyard so long as not everyone in the party has died, though that of course has to have limits to not make death completely trivial.

I say on death, you lose all source points you had, and you lose some reputation, and maybe some gold or something. However, not sure if deaths at the hands of other players should affect you the same, especially in the likes of the arena. And maybe the more times you die, the more punished you get.

I also think some kind of intangible punishment for death would be cool. Like, every time you die, your soul slightly fractures, increasing the chance that your soul will be destroyed when you finally die permanently (instead of reborn into a new creature, like most souls). Could have little or no gameplay effect, or maybe it affects something at the end of the game, like the final outcome of your character.

Yeah, but the outcome of the main quest should be different if you kill everyone, I just used Morrowind as an example where you *could* screw up. Also "punishing" is not a concept that should be employed. Incentives should be given for characters who don't die, rather than punishing those that do. It may sound like "dumbing down", but the reality is that most "punishments" in games are cheap and annoying more than anything. It's enough if you have to go and resurrect characters at the GY.

True, but how many would still be in the area of Fort Joy? I would think most would have fled when the purging first started, if not when Bishop Alexander gained control of the Divine Order (since his anti-sourcery stance wouldn't have been a secret). I suppose there could be a safe house somewhere collecting sourcerers, who can only leave port when the weather is bad and the night dark enough a ship can sneak in and out of port without being searched, or something. I don't see how that would be any different than having a selection of companions in prison, though.

I agree the outcome should be different if you commit genocide, but you should still be able to beat the game, unlike with Morrowind. Either way, where you fail if you kill a main character, or if there's always a road forward because everyone keeps journals in their pocket, it can feel a bit contrived and immersion breaking, but I'd prefer the latter.

I think we can have both the stick and carrot for death. Sure, punishments can be annoying, and it's a hard balance between trivial drawbacks and punishments worthy of reloading, but I'd rather there be even a minimal, tangible drawback to death than nothing. But rewarding people for never dying is also a good idea. So 3-4 deaths in a game wouldn't punish you much, but you wouldn't get any sort of reward, but dying over and over again or never dying would have more drastic effects on your character, perhaps mostly in an intangible way.

I meant, "other prisoners FROM Fort Joy could get out during the escape". As in "Other potential companions who you meet in prison but do not end up on the ship you escape from".

Who cares if some people die a lot, though? If there are incentives for not dying that would be enough deterrent for people not to want to die. Arbitrarily punishing people for death smacks right into old-school MMO territory (Everquest) where the point was for you to play as much as possible. In a finite game like D:OS/2 (i.e. non-respawning mobs for example) that isn't such a good idea. Your argument is that it somehow cheapens death, but death in games IS cheap in general. The reload button exists so death is trivial. The question shouldn't be "How do we punish the players?", but "How do we make this more fun, challenging and rewarding for all tiers of players?".

Failure should be a possible outcome of decissions and not all (but maybe some) outcomes result in game over. As said in the video (not sure if this one or another one of him) he said that something that would fail definitely in the real world should also fail in the game. The most simple example is if your lv1 char meets some lv99 guards and tells them "Run or I cut you to pieces (attack)" and he ends up as a pile of meat on the next wall.

In another discussion (at obsidian? I am not sure) somebody gives an example. There is a game and somewhen near the beginning somebody asks you to meet him alone in a dark alley. If you go there you will be attacked by some strong thugs and you will most likely die. Many people complained about that because they expected a quest. the devs answered: "If you cannot fight well and you follow a stranger into a dark alley alone you are an idiot and deserve to be killed. The game works as intended." I do not remember what game it was and I did not play it.

I dislike that you cannot fail the main quest and that people drop a note when you kill them. This feels unrealistic (Oh no, I use the bad R word (realistic) again). When you kill somebody who is significant for the main story or if you make things that go extremely against your main goal (genocide of several towns would be one idea, your rep is so bad that nobody wants to deal with you), then you should fail the main quest. The question is how you deliver this to the player. Two obvious choices would be the Morrowind style or the game over screen (both not so good). The best way is to stick to choice and consequence.

In case of D:OS2 this would mean, if you do things that are obviously bad for your primary goal the inquisitor will rule the world and he will purge everybody including you.
In case of D:OS1 if you kill the weaver of time (was this her name?) than the void dragon will destroy the universe.

By the way, in Planescape:Tides of Numenera the death of the main char will send him into a "mind maze" where he may discover new things and he will eventually return to the normal world. I think I saw in a video that normal companions (= they are normal people and not a XXX (what was the main char again, castoff?) they will be gone forever (like PoE). However P:ToN is a very special setting and this would not work in a more "normal" world.

Just to be clear on this as well - in a properly made RPG you won't find level 99 guards. In single player RPGs you/mobs aren't powerful because you/they have levels, you/they have levels because you/they are powerful. Witcher 3 is absurdly bad in this. Randomly stumbling on 30th lvl bandits that are tougher than mythical beasts you fought 5 levels ago. High level trash mobs are MMO design and it works good there, but is nonsensical in single player RPGs.



That's probably the Tortured Hearts module for NWN. A Dance with Rogues may also have such a sequence.



I think Swen may have missed the point on this. The main argument for the main (and all other) quest/s in RPGs is that it can be completed in multiple ways, NOT that it can't be failed. However that may simply be his design choice, though I can't understanding the reasoning behind it.

I don't understand that fascination with "you can kill everyone" at all. I mean, that has little to nothing to do with actual roleplaying. It's just fooling around with the systems and you shouldn't expect that you will be able to continue the story as intended after you killed a whole town or so. I think you should definitely be able to fail the main quests and side quests if you make really wrong (and stupid) decisions.

On this I must completely agree. I never got the killing frenzy that seems to befall certain gamers, and in some very story driven games that should be, say, punished. Like not being able to complete a quest anymore or a system of reputation or I dunno. However it's hard to say what is a "killing frenzy" and what is a " mere error", possibly because of the UI or because we were expecting a different result.

Well, in most other RPG's, you don't have random Level 2 Helpless Civilians declaring war on hardened Level 99,264,823 warriors because a warrior picked up an apple which was not his.

I just imagined, as a bridge with the level-scaling topic, the Helpless Civilian actually also being level 99,264,823 and proceeding to beat the hardened warrior into a pulp because of an apple.
"Well, that escalated quickly".

They should probably concentrate on more elaborate choice - consequence paradigms and not think too much about "killing everyone".

Sorry for the lv1 char vs the lv99 guards.
I like extreme examples to demonstrate general concepts.

When I read your stuff I think of this:
lv99 villager: I give you the epic quest to kill a lv2 wolf.
lv1char: Why? You could kill it by just looking at it.
lv99 villager: Because I could crush you like a fly. But I prefer to see you suffering.
This is complete nonsense, but players would not commit genocide anymore

Exactly :p All villagers would be 1st level, because that's what they are - untrained villagers. Levels are just a representation of power, not the power itself. That's why 99 lvl villagers giving you quests to kill lvl 2 wolves break immersion :p

Just gonna repeat what I said in the topic I made on the matter.

PLEASE give me the chance to make and fully control (as in fully roleplay) multiple characters.

I genuinely enjoyed making duos in DivOS and roleplaying them both and I feel that DivOS2 would be a lesser experience if I couldn't do it again.

Hell, by Swen's stated goals of making it to where the MP doesn't have anything in it that the SP can't have this makes the most sense, since the AI won't fight you on anything you can't have any competitive questing unless you are able to fully control and roleplay more than one character.

Easy: competitive questing for MP, love&hate for SP.

That's against Swen's stated goals that both MP and SP be essentially the same.

Also no, that's pretty bullshit.