Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback First Impressions and Feedback/Suggestions

As a precursor let me say that I know this is Early Access and that I am a fan of Divinity: Original Sin and the Epic Encounters mod so you at least know where I am coming from. Now that that's out of the way.

The game is very pretty, visually stunning for sure, but one thing I noticed from the start of character creation is how limited I am. For example:

- Each race starts with a talent that gives a stat buff. This pigeon-holes people into picking the right race for the right class, not just the race they want to play. I wanted to do a scoundrel/warfare lizard but they gain 2 Intelligence... useless to my build, and would be more beneficial for me to go either elf or dwarf.

- All custom characters have time warp as a special skill, this seems like it could be a selected skill or another race skill perhaps, instead of the same for every race.

- Visual looks are quite limited though I assume that's going to change by release but still, where is my mo-hawk and basic goatee/moustache combo from the old game? That was my favourite and neither are here which saddened me. Also where's the face tattoos?

- I found trying to play my favourite Scoundrel/Aerothurge combo from last game almost impossible with this game, as every time I leap over someone with Vault it causes a blood spray where I land, meaning my following shocking touch then stuns myself and all blood around me. Like wise with Contaminate from Geomancer turning the blood to poison. Makes it pretty hard to play those classes alongside melee classes.

- Then there's the topic of skills and memory slots. I like the idea of being able to learn them all but only taking some into combat, but starting with 3 slots and only having 3 slots til you level up to put more memory points in (if you don't invest in more primary stats instead) seems very limited, combat wise. I blew most of my cooldowns in combat and had to resort to other things after that to fill in my turns like basic attacks, or scrolls, or grenades, etc. This made me feel like my class was a side-note. This is in comparison to the first game having a possible 6 spells over two skills (scoundrel/aero for example) and by level 3 or 4 having up to 10 spells each skill. That was variety and freedom and was nowhere near as limited as this feels.

- Now this isn't exactly restricting but it's something of a pet peeve since the first Original Sin, why does Zombie not change your appearance? Why can I look like a healthy human male when I'm meant to be undead? Also with the Undead Race coming out I don't know why this isn't just a talent that they can take as an optional race talent or something.

- After these particular grievances, getting into the game/story was quite fun, (though I was confused at first as to how the armour and magic armour works) though I also felt the dialogue I was in had no real impact, in comparison to the earlier game that gave you results from your first convo about chasing the sourcerors and gaining traits from it (visible impact on character).

Now my suggestions might be un-achievable or just down right ludicrous, or already in development and I'm just unaware of them as I am late to this party, but I feel it necessary to give feedback and suggestions on a game series I adore. Here they are:

- I would much rather have their race talents not be stat based as even if they were optional to the race it would mean *that* race still had benefit to certain classes over other races. Stat buffs on talents make them too necessary to certain builds. Have them be something more flavourful. Also I agree with many that Corpse Eater just seems out of place on Elves lol. The talents that give perception and wit that most builds can benefit from are fine, but main stats make it too rigid. Even just allowing 3 talent choices from scratch at the start would be preferable to me.

- I imagine Time Warp is just a place holder atm but if not I think this could very much be changed to add more flavour to the races while still remaining neutral to classes to allow freedom of choice, even having a few different race skills and talents to choose from so you can further tailor your character to your build would be nice but is probably asking too much at the moment.

- Visual looks are always going to be the sore point in RPG's, too many variants and then too much time is spent in character creation, too little and every character looks the same. But as it stands I think there should be many more skin tones, hair styles, heads, hair colours and face features on every race to vary it up. Now this is probably one of those already happening things but I wanted to suggest this just in case as nothing makes me more immersed into a game than making my character look just the way I want him too! A dark blue skin for elves so you can make a drow look-alike for example :P

- Personally I love the elemental combo's and reactions to skills but if you can't use a basic rogue skill without ruling out spells that affect blood then something is going wrong. Every time I Vault and cause blood I also end up shocking or poisoning myself. Either Vault needs to not cause blood spray where you will land or something else has to change because that puts a wall between those skills groups in my opinion.

- Now I know memory and that whole skill system was obviously a lot of time and effort but the old skill system worked in my opinion, I would suggest either going back to that system or making memory attribute points count for more slots so that you can have a variety of skills in combat. On that same note I hope there are more skills coming in for certain skill classes so that that choice is vast, as there was nothing better than sitting there working out which skill would work best in this situation with my friend in D:OSEE as there was so much to choose from!

- With my favourite talent, Zombie, I think a visual overlay that makes your character look slightly more dead than alive would be a nice touch. It's such a unique talent that I'd like a unique look to go with it lol. Nothing too gross, just not so alive as the normal looks are. Or, as I stated previously, make it specific to Undead race so you can be a zombie undead instead of a skeleton lol.

- As to dialogue choices, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of negative responses when I answer like a smarmy bastard or give people sass or choose what would have given me negative personality traits in the last game. It seems very low in how many responses will actually change certain things. The narrator point of view in the dialogue options is odd in my opinion but something I can get used to I guess, just hard to read it saying "you" on an option and realising it's the narrator talking about *you* not the person you're addressing lol. Like the one with Lohse, saying "Lohse, you presume?" Where it's quoted like you are saying it but it's the narrator saying your quote, was really uncomfortable to read lol.


I hope I haven't wasted any time going over old topics or giving feedback on things already in development but I felt these things were important things that the game was lacking that helped me fall in love with D:OSEE and I want to fall in love with this game like I did that one, but I feel there's a lot more that needs to happen before I can.

I don't mean to re-post or rehash old threads here or upset anyone in any way but I am fairly new to the early access and so can stand to be corrected if necessary haha. Feel free to share your thoughts on my feedback!

"I would suggest either going back to that system or making memory attribute points count for more slots so that you can have a variety of skills in combat."

Thats exactly how it works. (they cannot go back to the previous system, only improve this one)

You can take a "mnemonic" talent early for your character or other companions, which gives you more spell-skill slots.

Besides that i am also of the opinion that default and locked racial talents that give +2 in attributes should be removed or made into normal talent choice. (preferably removed completely) I already made same suggestion that racial talents should be something colorful and we get to pick two talents at the start, instead of the current situation.

Personally, i find the new dialogue style quite refreshing and i quickly started to like it.
It enhances the sense i am playing a character, - not myself, which i prefer in RPG games.

You gave some nice and useful feedback i think.

On the memory points issue, I was unaware at the time of base slots also seemingly increasing with level as well as the availability of items with unlocked skills on them not taking memory slots either, this makes it a lot easier I think.

I get how memory points work but what I meant was have one memory point unlock maybe 2 slots, but with what I know now that would probably be overkill haha. I still feel somewhat limited in choice of skills during combat, I'm used to having many different abilities to choose from. Never had to use my basic attacks so often before haha.

What I have realised more as I get into the game is aoe or surfaces are not the best, in fact I try to avoid them more often than not, and pass them up for the simple single target spells. I am playing with a friend who is in melee range and I am playing huntsman, I find most of the time I can't stun an enemy he's facing without affecting the blood under him and stunning him or reducing his magic armour and this makes it very hard to help him out mid combat, I can't really affect the enemies he is facing without him having to get hurt in the process... I can't really say what was different about D:OS1 that I didn't feel like this, but it feels very restricted (again) in this way. Also bloodspray seems entirely excessive as one attack seems to spray a 1m by 2m pool of blood under the enemy, and you, and behind you...

When it comes to dialogue (I'll agree it's definitely a unique style that you can somewhat get used to) I am still feeling like it has zero impact. Also being unable to leave a dialogue when playing with someone else can be bothersome. I tried to leave a conversation early with an NPC and chose an option that I thought would allow me to leave but instead ended my chances of ever speaking with the NPC any more and that I was not aware of, no real warning. I was honest with another NPC because I thought that was best, but then she just stopped talking with me rather than let me help her and now I can't change that or take another shot at convincing her I can help which feels too final when there was no indication it would go like that. Though some conversations feel like no matter what you choose to say they are still going to end up the same way and you can be a jerk every time and not have any repercussions for it at all.

Tagged options sometimes seem really good or seem to have more effects but even then they seem few and far between and sometimes don't seem to change anything in the conversation at all either. Except Jester which just seems mostly to cause fights when you don't really need to... I miss having consequences for your choices in conversation. Also the fact that when in multiplayer we each have to talk to someone separately and select to share our quest logs is pretty annoying to be honest. There was a sense of togetherness with D:OS1 that this does not emulate. Which has ended up in a couple of quests being missed by me and my friend as we weren't there at the time and weren't sharing journals. Though I think we both still get experience for completed quests regardless of shared journals, but still.

All in all though my friend and I are enjoying it and we have had some really hard battles and really easy battles (definitely miss lone wolf talent haha we like playing without companions) but I don't feel it's quite as awesome as D:OS1 was, due to limitation of spells and smaller AP pool limiting per turn actions, was a lot of fun being able to do many things per turn in the original, felt like a badass haha.

I think the amounts of skill slots is fine for the beginning of the game.
Because it is a beginning of the game.

Stunning your own characters standing in all that blood can be bothersome, but magic armor is supposed to prevent that. I dont get that situation a lot so i dont mind it. But those blood pools should be smaller and electricity shouldn't affect them so easily when we are aiming at an enemy character, at least when weapons are used.


If you mess up a conversation, you can always try it with another character and that solves most of such problems, except those that are specifically tied to the main character, maybe. I dont get any specific confusion about replies and consequences... but maybe thats just me. I like that not everything is easily obvious.
And you can always save before some significant dialogue.

So far i can make approximately as many action in one turn as i can in DOS1 so AP change doesnt bother me yet. We can still save some APs for the next turn which is the best mechanic that was needed in AP based systems since long ago.

So since playing more I have realised the slot allocation is not too hard to deal with, considering the amount of attribute points you get and if you are really desperate you can take the Mnemonic talent too. My new issue with this is it has felt almost pointless to up your skill classes due to the bonuses being quite situational. Huntsman is only active on high ground, Aero does not affect non-magic armoured opponents, Geo only buffs poison damage/physical armour restoration, etc. the only ones that feel worth it are the melee ones and Pyro as they buff damage as a whole, Poly as that gives a free attribute point and hydro can be ok as heals getting bigger is never bad but if you don't need to heal or don't end up versing magic damage opponents it's bonuses are also worthless. Hunstman particularly feels pointless as you can just put points in Ranged for the damage increase.

I have been watching the blood spray interaction more closely and to be honest it's ridiculous, to the point of me and my friend laughing til we cried, because my friend got tongue licked by a frog in the cave in Fort Joy and he sprayed almost half his characters body worth of blood around him lol. Like a stupid amount of blood for the attack that hit him, it would most likely have bruised severely but not shed that amount of blood lol. He had like a small cone of blood under him and behind. Way too much lol.

In my opinion conversations have been the worst done part of both D:OS games, with the first game if I was not around in time for a dual-dialogue to start and a trait choice happened, I would miss out on it entirely and that seemed silly to me. It was a two player game with no air of competition and so missing trait choices seemed pointless to me. In this game currently, dialogues are not easily predictable as to when a choice will matter or not, special tag choices often don't change the outcome at all and sometimes normal choices can end the dialogue early and stop you being able to talk to them again without a clue that will be the result.

To me conversation seems all over the place and unclear half the time, when I first talked to Sebille I ended up with only the option for her to join us or the option to tell her to stand down and let me defend myself (which could have given me and option to resolve without a fight but the dialogue again was not totally clear on that) and at the time my friend and I did not want anyone joining our party and so ended up in a fight and killing her, which leaves a companion down permanently on that save file, never to be able to join us in the future. That's not terrible as we don't usually play with companions but if that had happened on my solo save file I would have been marginally upset as I would have had to load again, but again the dialogue was unclear and for that I ended up at that option which I did not want. I like to follow logical paths a lot of the time and this conversation pattern for most situations does not seem to progress in a logical pattern at all, which while being true to life, makes it very hard to achieve certain goals or aims in a game. Like talking to Migo and having any path you choose end up in a fight, bar giving him a yarrow flower, seems pointless to have so many options if they all end up at the exact same result... to me, conversation mechanics and flow just feel weird and messy.



I don't feel that's the case with this game, having a base 4 AP per turn, playing Wayfarer (Huntsman with crossbow), you can do approximately one basic attack and maybe a 1 AP skill and that's it. In D:OS1 you could do at least 2 basic's a turn plus a skill early game before the town, very big difference to me. It was made pretty clear to me when I went a Geo/Hydro Elf and got adrenaline from the body at the start, and in one turn I did Adrenaline, Flesh Sacrifice and only then did I feel like I was playing like a normal start on D:OS1. I felt like I had options then, like I could move and do a couple of skills and a staff of magus, compared to not even considering movement more than maybe 1 AP worth and having a single basic attack. The start feels horribly restrictive. My crossbow user still doesn't quite feel like he can do enough in one turn as I haven't been able to buff his AP in any way as there isn't a stat to improve it at the moment and he doesn't have haste or adrenaline or anything yet and so is stuck on 4 AP start and per turn leaving him very few options with a crossbow costing 3 to do anything with... bows are far superior in this way as they only cost 2 meaning crossbow's will be left in the dust again.

Saving AP is great but as I've been saying with this, there is barely ever AP left over on a turn and I need to take both Adrenaline and Flesh Sacrifice and then maybe even haste to feel like I did in D:OS1. I understand later game being more restrictive so you don't win the fight in the first turn before the enemy moves but early game it just feels like you're a lump with a single action and minor movement lol.