Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback problems and stuff and things list

ur words are sexy n true and i want u 2 know i agree with them so much that i haf nothin 2 add

waitjk

I don't know why they did that vote in the first place, they need to make a fully balanced game before they can do fun things like letting the community choose what will go into the game. If we had actual physical skill trees and maybe one or two more magic trees than the physical ones (since mages should have more versatility, just not too much) then two random trees from the community wouldn't mess anything up too badly and it would be a fun addition. The way it is now it's just making preexisting problems even worse because Larian wants to skip the work and go straight to the fun.

Sounds about right. Stat system should have been completed and tested before the final boss was designed. Now we'll have stat imbalances and unsatisfying encounters that were designed with another system in mind.

I get wanting to have fun with designing a game... but this is just causing more problems.

I did try that too. It still told me the target was blocked. Also tried from different angles. The target's center point was completely covered up by the furniture, so no matter where I cast from there was a problem. I didn't think to try to move the stool either. At this point I'm not sure if it is movable or not, some of that furniture isn't. Like the benches. I can try it next time I get in that area again.

"...and animations for lizards in general are stiff"
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It's not that the animations are poorly made by the way. I'm pretty sure they are using the human animation sets for some lizzard activities, making the tail freeze and they take on a posture that looks very strange on them, because they aren't rigged for it.

Yeah they did a lot of the same things with elves. It's perfectly fine, it's an alpha it's cool if they wanna get it out earlier by reusing some animation scripts, we just gotta write it all down so nobody forgets.

Larian has a lot of potential, and they've shown in the previous game and this game that they are capable of making some amazing things. (All of the models, the world design, the writing, the animations, the combat system)

But then they just keep throwing things on top, things that start to erode at what was amazing, and it really comes off as what I'd expect from a streamer. They're just having fun, not really thinking too deeply about the things they do, and getting paid to play around. This can work (Divinity: Original Sin) and really, I can't tell some developers making such a unique game to "stop having fun", I just wish that they would think about what they're putting in the game past whether it's fun to code or not, because with thoughtfulness this could be so much more.

The durability thing is upsetting to me. It's obvious what is wrong with it, it's used for immersion, it's not making us immersed, how do we fix that? The fact that they are asking the community says that they don't understand why they put the mechanic in the game in the first place, it says that they put it in because it seemed like a fun idea.

So much of my list is balance and quality of life. 162 topics currently, and probably 70% of them are. Larian needs to talk with its writers, and they need to think about why the things that don't work are in the game, what these broken things were supposed to achieve. And I'll list the biggest offenders for repetitions sake.

Too much Intelligence focus
Too many player made ground effects
Too many actions in a turn
Too much elemental hard cc
Horribly overpowered skills (And not just for intelligence)
A terrible armor system to try and balance everything above
A load of weapons and play styles that have no skill trees
A dissonance between the game design and the story
Gimmicks or jokes being used as puzzles

If they didn't keep trying new things, I wouldn't be here. I avoided the first Original Sin primarily because they implemented all the same cliche player species and races I see in the majority of role-play games these days. ( Humans, Elves, Dwarves or similar creatures with funky skin colors ) I grew tired of these races years ago, and they are all too much like being human, which I am for real as much as I hate to admit it. I bought the game instantly when I could be a lizard. That wasn't previously implemented. They would attract more people if they implemented some more unique playable races or species.


As for the rest of these things, these all seem to be detail aspects that would normally get adjusted and balanced over time. Considering they have several more visible issues as well as these, it seems to me that the game is still very much in an immature state, and I expect the problems you mention will improve as the game matures.

Things like playable lizards are good new things, they don't ruin previously good things, they just add to them. Things like adding more magic when the game is already suffering because there is too much magic is a bad new thing, and part of that "just keep throwing new things on" mentality.

I'm not saying it doesn't work, it's just random and thoughtless, and if it were thought out we could have only good new things instead of just hoping for more things like creatively made races. (I hate elves and dwarves, but the way they did elves is so strange and abnormal that I'm completely OK with this interpretation.)



That's the thing though, these were all problems in the first Divinity: Original Sin, and still are, in the finished game. I wasn't there for the first games pre-release, I don't know if maybe the community was just silent so Larian didn't notice all of these problems, but I don't want the second game to just be repeating history. When I saw Divinity: Original Sin for the first time I was so happy, and then immediately saddened by the potential that wasn't taken advantage of. But I only found it after release, it was too late to complain about it's issues in any meaningful way.

I don't trust that Larian will fix these things if the community doesn't make some kind of noise, and I don't know if Larian will even read what I say or care enough to balance their game based on community feedback. But I wasn't there before, so until they prove to me they don't care I'm going to assume that they do, and that they just never thought about it, because the community was either silent or too busy arguing with themselves.

There was feedback for the first game early on, though I don't recall if it was as in-depth; after the event, what I mostly remember is people complaining that combat wasn't hard enough, which I always felt was a rather, erm, "focussed" view of what the game was about. Though my memory isn't renowned for being especially reliable.

And even when there is a balanced view of what should and shouldn't be there, it's going to be tricky trying to keep everyone pleased: I would like to keep the ladder animations and piggies and would like additional silliness and cheese vendors, whereas some would like the game to be much more sensible and generally srs bsns.

I don't really care if the game is serious or silly I just want it to work together instead of its parts fighting each other. Things like torture and suicide shouldn't be brought up if the game is going to be over the top silly, because over the top isn't smart humor and doesn't mesh with serious subjects.

The community as a whole needs to really consider what "pleases" them. People get expectations. They think things like, it's Divinity, it has to be a silly game. I don't care about Divinity's past, all I care about is now, and I care about the game being a complete experience regardless of how silly or serious that experience is.

A lot of the community, in any community for any game, doesn't actually understand what they want or why they are complaining about things. They are just looking at things on the surface, for example:

Oh hey, I really hate this durability thing. It should be removed.

It shouldn't be removed, it should be fixed. But perception is tricky, how do you explain that to someone who fundamentally doesn't understand game design? It's a mess. People just need to think before they make decisions, and keep thinking even after they've made decisions, and always understand that it's impossible to know everything. It's okay to be wrong, I'll be wrong, I'm human. But we are intelligent, we can realize that we are wrong and then change.

We need to talk to each other to try and come to conclusions we can agree on, instead of refusing to accept that our opinions could be wrong, or that the whole thing could be too complex for any one decision to be perfect. Us agreeing with each other is what will cause any actual change.

I think I agree with the implementation: although I'd like to see more silliness and humour in the game, I'm also appreciating the way that they seem to be making the core story darker and more serious: there is room for both, but I think there needs to be a respectful distance between them. Using the pigs as an example, their actual location is right in the middle of having just progressed through a major part of the MQ: perhaps they could be viewed as light relief, though I admit I thought they felt a little incongruous. I don't want to get rid of them, but they might be better off moved to a location waiting to be discovered rather than in a location that is the nexus between several more serious and sometimes nasty bits of storytelling. Plus they're just a bit of a pain to navigate around anyway.

And I feel the same way about durability. The implementation is tedious and annoying, but removing it altogether also feels wrong. It needs to be changed rather than scrapped. I'm generally uncomfortable with scrapping something altogether unless it really is entirely useless and has no potential to add anything positive.

I still want to keep the ladder animations, though. Even if not for their presence in ED, I like them.

The pigs would be a hilarious easter egg if they weren't easy to find. I'd accept that even in a brutally realistic game, and be happier for it (the cow level in Diablo, for example.)

And with you wanting the ladder animations so much, that's where it gets tricky. You're wanting something specific over wanting the game to be a cohesive experience, and I can't say you are wrong because it's not wrong to like something.

My best advice is to get a solid response from the devs on whether they want the game to be realistic or over the top, and if they say realistic then give up on the ladder animation because it's not going to help to hold onto something that's hurting the game.

And if they say over the top, then they have a lot of work, because the entire story right now isn't over the top. And I'll miss the amazing writing currently in the game, but like you should with the ladder if they say they want it to be realistic, I'll give up on my opinion about the writing if they say they want it to be over the top.

I'll always personally like realistic things more, but we should care more about the game succeeding than our personal tastes, since we aren't the ones developing it.

I'm not sure why people say things like "We should all come together and agree". I mean, name me one single instance in all of human history where everyone agreed. What that translates to really is "everyone should agree that MY idea is the best".



This is the wrong way to think about it.

A game which is all serious or all silly doesn't work well. There needs to be a balance between the two or else they lose all the impact. So no, the burning pigs do not need to become yet one more item of horrible morbid pain on Braccus Rex's Isle of Damnnation. There's already plenty of that on the island as it is. More is not needed just because the pig-mages not being insane is one thing when you randomly and arbitrarily decide realism must be adhered to.


That said, vometia is right that there needs to be a respectful distance between the two parts. For example in D:OS 1, shortly after hearing one of your party members give an account of a horrifying, terrible ordeal when their village was attacked, you reach said village which had been invaded and most of the innocent people slaughtered. Right outside. though was a cheerful skeleton picking through the corpses and making witty comments. That just flat-out didn't work at all. That was not at all a good time to try and inject some light-heartedness, it failed.




So only YOU have the Right Answers and anyone who says otherwise obviously doesn't understand what they're talking about?

This is awful. Never use examples for things that don't exist to prove your point. Wow, so people can never agree in our history, so that means we should never agree? Awesome point. All games right now are made for entertainment? Man, games as a medium must be specifically for entertainment. Awesome. Let's never change.

And as a rule, since I'm bringing so many problems with the game and its community up, I'm not giving any opinions. Everything I say needs to be changed is based on decisions that the developers made, not my own tastes (although I'm sure it's somewhat affected by my personal biases since I'm not a robot), and when I make suggestions in my list I mention that they are my personal feelings and I'm not very good at coming up with these things. Because it's Larian's game, nobody can be better at coming up with what should go in the game than them, but you don't have to be developing the game to see what is wrong with it.


The game doesn't need to be all realistic or all silly, but its elements need to work together. Having all ladder climbing animations in the game be one over the top animation means the entire game wants to be over the top. Having the entire story be realistic, without even a single over the top dialogue or story arc, means the entire game wants to be realistic.

Having the over the top burning pigs says that just this one part wants to be over the top, that's the kind of thing that can be worked in with some thought, and it's also the kind of thing that won't work if it's just thrown in without thought. But the ladder animations and the story objectively don't work together, there's no way they ever could because they are too global, so one of them needs to change.

I'm not randomly and arbitrarily saying the game needs to be realistic. I'm basing it on the story, I've already said I don't mind if the game is silly, its parts just need to work together to confirm that.

What you are doing is arguing, personally attacking me instead of thinking about what I wrote. I don't understand exactly how you could read all of that and then attack me, but perception is weird, so who knows.


This... isn't even the right or wrong answer. It's just how game design works, and it's part of what I was saying about explaining these things to people who don't understand game design.

If something isn't working in a game, the solution isn't to remove it, it's to understand why it exists in the first place, and then understand why it isn't working towards that purpose. There's no opinion there, that's just how this works. If I thought I had all the answers, I would have said a specific way it should be fixed. Knowing it should be fixed and not removed isn't an answer it's just knowledge.

And yes, if someone thinks that durability should just be removed, they don't know what they are talking about. That's not insulting, it just means they need to understand it better.

If one person thinks durability should be fixed this way, and another thinks it should be fixed in another way, then that's just a difference of opinion like vometia liking ladders and me liking the story. A difference in opinion isn't where someone doesn't know what they are talking about, it's the area that we need to talk to each other about and come to agreements on.

I'm saying that it's futile to try to get everyone to try to agree, especially the smaller the details which you're trying to find common agreement on.




Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Of course you're giving opinions! The choices about what things you decide should be brought up are a reflection of the opinions. There is nothing arbitrary or objective in that.




To declare that the ladder animation has no place in the game and destroys the entire tone is wrong. It makes no sense. It is absurd reductionism.

It's like saying "my brand new $30,000 car in perfect condition got a scratch, so now I have to buy a new one".

I'm also not sure why the burning pigs are over the top, but the eternal burning historian, the eternally trapped jester, the eternal card-playing skeletons, the pit of horror fertilizing the roses of damnation, and the shriekers are not.




There is nothing at all wrong with the ladder animations or the pigs fitting in with the rest of the game.

Larian has always, always had a mix of serious and silly elements in their games. It usually works well. It does not always work well, this is true, but the hits overwhelm the misses (although Original Sin 1 had more misses than hits, I think).

If you can't understand or accept the idea of different tones having a place, well I don't think you understand balance in writing that much.




You call what I said a personal attack? Hardly.




Because only you understand game design? Because only people who are masters of game design should be allowed to give feedback?




Thanks for proving my point. Look at the ego on you. If someone wants durability gone, than they are dumb and need someone smart to explain to them why They Are Wrong.




How can you and vometia come to an agreement between "The ladder animations completely ruin the tone of the entire game and must be removed" and "I like the ladder animations, they are fun"?

Also, you are being incredibly insulting by implying that vometia doesn't care about story because she likes a silly ladder animation.

In my original post, my message was not to say "one tone, one game". I think Stabbey has a more nuanced outlook on this, and I think I agree with him.

The issue with the burning pigs, in my book, isn't related to their non-insanity or silliness or whatever. My issue with them is that you can't really interact with them in any meaningful manner. You turn them back to normal, they do and nothing much happens mechanics-wise. To reinstate my opinion, I think these mages are really interesting lore-wise. They are ANCIENT! There's so much you could do with characters like that!

A personal attack isn't based on intention or any amount of implied hostility, it's based on specifically bringing up the person in your response and then insulting them rather than what they wrote.


These are all personal attacks:





Not to say you are personally attacking me more than I am attacking you, or that maybe you care more about proving me wrong than proving that my words are wrong, that would just be... oh my god, is this becoming a personal attack?

Seriously, stop with that childish back-and-forth wallquoting. It's not constructive and you're both just going to get pissed off at one another with no gain to be had. This is a bug reporting thread and apparently a thread for discussing the storytelling of this game; please do so in a civil manner or not at all. Remember that we're here with the premise of being useful, in some manner, to the development process of this game.

I'm aware lol but I can't stop people from coming in guns blazing

Sometimes it is more effective to simply dodge, instead of counter attacking.

guh you're right im srry 2 dissapoint u my idol kalrakh

This is a public forum for discussions. People, being individuals, have different opinions. Expressing those different opinions is not necessarily a personal attack. Disagreeing with your opinions is not necessarily a personal attack. Pointing out that sometimes the way you phrase your statements is dismissive of the opinions of others - that is not a personal attack. Asking you to clarify your own statements is not a personal attack.