Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Solving problems with murder

"Are you expecting a party member to pickpocket contraband into your avatar's inventory, snitch on you to the guard, and then you are stuck in jail forever, game over? Because I don't think that will happen."

In that case you can pay it off, fight the guard, or possibly some sort of community service...

I actually find the theft system in the game to be pretty much fine all things considered especially since there are far lasting consequences of getting caught AND people finally notice if you ransack their houses even if they don't see you do it.

I am talking about players going on murder sprees, getting arrested, and getting a slap on the wrist.

A game over at that point (if you cannot get out of jail somehow) seems like a pretty fair and natural result.

And the thing is... I highly HIGHLY doubt Larian will impliment anything but a "slap on the wrist" system for murder/genocide because all games do that now if they have any justice system.

Yet I can hope they won't weasel out and shatter immersion like everyone else does.

How are you going to be immersed while staring at a game over screen? I'm very confused here.

And what's your next step? Close the game and never play it again?

In the real world you have to live with the consequences (or die with them). You can't just load a save game.

I understand that there are certain situations you think should result in death or inescapable jail, but consequences should not be game breaking, especially in co-op.

Load the game.

Death happens in the game too (such as the NUCLEAR LANDMINE!). Maybe we should just implement the Fable 2 system where you can never actually lose and die.

In this case, the punishment is the death of the person you stole from. Which is completely asinine.

Which is completely asinine.

Tell that to the people who complained (or at least were looking for a workaround) about not being able to complete quests in D:OS after killing quest related NPCs (in one case, indirectly related).

In all fairness a FEW quests didn't make sense that they just stop when you kill a few people.

The Head Quest I believe still didn't let you take him... even if you killed everyone (I REALLY hated that quest... luckily the improved version fixed it)

1. Steal wooden spoon.
2. Get spotted. NPC attacks you.
3. You defend yourself. The NPC attacks you.
4. Their bloodlust is limitless. Nothing is more important to them than getting justice for that wooden spoon. There are no options for resolving the conflict except MURDER.
5. Psyche! You can't complete some random quest now because the game forced you to murder an NPC for a stupid reason.

Do you feel immersed yet?

I don't think that is QUITE what Raze is referring to.

Fleeing is an option. Not steeling wooden spoons is also an option.

NPC AI is not going to be completely immersive in any RPG for the foreseeable future.
For D:OS 2, improvements are being made to the generic AI and the security system added, etc, but it is never going to hold up to NPCs in a particular situation acting realistically all the time.

Stealing is a crime. So there must be punishment.
As Raze said, not steeling is an good option.
The second option is, don't get catched.

Fleeing is not an option. As far as I understand, if you provoke someone into combat, then it's over. You can't just run away and then engage them as an NPC again. They will attack you on sight. In some game this has the potential to cause even worse bugs.

Imagine an NPC that that turns up at another location. They join in a dialogue talking about how they want to help you. Once the dialogue finishes, suddenly the game engine remembers that the NPC wants to kill you. Once again the NPC enters into its suicidal death match, potentially dragging nearby NPCs into the same state. I remember having a similar experience in one of the KOTOR games after a friendly was accidentally hit by an AOE and then later in the game he reappeared, dragging other NPCs into his aggro, ruining quests and breaking the game.

We've talked about how Larian is designing D:OS2 so that you can kill everyone and still finish the game. What are the chances that they'll design the game so that you can finish it without killing the NPCs, even if they all want to kill you? I'm guessing those chances aren't great.

I like that they got creative with this in the video example I included. The problem is that while you do get a chance to talk your way out of the situation, the only outcomes are 100% forgiveness or 100% bloody death match, which all rests on the outcome of a single persuasion check. You're either best friends or worst enemies and there's no middle ground.

You know, she could simply take her wooden spoon back and then refuse to talk to you again. (If you keep stealing her spoons, then cue bloody death match.) It's not a particularly difficult outcome to design. There are plenty of much better ways to implement consequences, but this one is cheap and much more effective than murder.

I think it is possible to be quite inventive in finding ways to deal with this type of situation. For example:

- allow the offended NPC to negotiate financial compensation for the offence at a rate which will make a dent in the PC's finances (perhaps 50%, enough to be a nuisance but not totally crippling);

- if the NPC is killed, all others in the region learn of this, increasing the price of goods and refusing to give details of side-quests;

- have a number of powerful NPCs turn up (e. g. the enforcers in the prison camp) at an indefinite time in the future to exact revenge and improve their status, possibly at a time when the PC is already involved in a fight (who says the enemy has to fight fair).

(My favourite would be - a large number of assassins turn up in the night and kill all party members in their sleep. All saves for this character are deleted. Laugh that one off. But somehow I don't think any games maker would have the nerve to do it.)

But that was what I was referring to. But I was more leaning on accidentally clicking on the wrong door or walking into an area that didn't know was going to cause the NPC next to you to immediately fight to the death (of himself).

Yes, it is. You complain about unreasonable NPC reactions, but the player has to kill much weaker NPCs, because 'they started it' or they could hold a grudge than might possibly cause some inconvenience?



Because that would be totally immersive?
Personally, if I wandered into a neighbour's house and started looting, a little old lady caught me and came at me with knitting needles, after running away (an arguably more reasonable reaction 'defending myself' with deadly force) I think I'd try to avoid her for a while.



You mean like already exists in D:OS, depending on the situation, NPC and (primarily) your reputation?

If reasonable punishments for minor crimes are in the game, that will probably substantially reduce the number of "OOPS I MURDERED THE WHOLE TOWN" instances.

There are any other number of creative penalties which could be applied, depending on how much time and effort Larian wants to put into them.


Gold fines for minor crimes (possibly even creatively coded to prevent "ha I am not carrying gold, what now"? (Answer: "You now have been cursed and have negative gold equal to the unpaid amount of your fine. Pick up any gold and it vanishes to pay off your debt.")

Some form of Community service tasks could be required for middling crimes.

If the party or someone murders a town, that could even trigger attacks by a Divine Order death squad. After all, it makes sense that if a town gets massacred, that will draw a lot of attention, and bring more heat on the party than they'd otherwise get. The items the Divine Order death squad carry could even be enchanted to become useless on death, broken and worth only 1 gold.

But that's probably all way too elaborate and none of that will happen.





An instant-death-and-save-wipe with no options for doing something the game cheerfully allows you to do is not good. That should only be reserved for anti-piracy punishment, so if the game detects that it's been pirated, it plays out normally for a good 10 hours or so, then ZAP, you get that outcome.

Any other use of it would only be good if the developers loathed their customers and wanted them to suffer.

Although it is probably too late to implement for DOS 2,I hope it is something which Larian (and other developers ) would think about for the future. It would certainly make a "steal everything in sight" approach more risky, even more so if the more extreme retaliations were randomised. Then the decision on whether to steal a trivial amount or non-plot item might become harder.


Having seen the attitude of some gamers, I could understand if developers did end up loathing some of their customers.

The attitude which annoys me is "I want to be able to role play any kind of person" combined with "all my party members must do what I want". This is more like "Stepford Wives" than RPGing.

D:OS:2 hasn't even made it to alpha yet. There's time.

No. As demonstrated by my example, fleeing is a non- resolution. You rightly identified that once meeting the NPC again, they should continue trying to resolve the issue. As discussed, the murder is not a reasonable resolution to "You stole my wooden spoon", yet it is essentially the only resolution available to them.


Isn't that the point? The system's there. Why can't they use it?

If you don't want to flee, then don't, but it is an option.
Not being able to resolve conflict to your satisfaction in the manner that you wish doesn't make it not an option. Sometimes people in a violent rage don't calm down if you run away and come back a minute later.

Why can't they use what? The system that is dependent on the situation, NPC and reputation?
The system was used in D:OS. In D:OS, at the beginning of the game, stealing could trigger combat, depending on the NPC and situation.

The biggest problem with the flee system in D:OS 1 is that its "systemic" nature doesn't match other systems in the game content wise. Too close to a get out of jail free card and many NPCs don't react in a suitable manner if you go back and encounter them again.