I have a bit of a gripe with the civil skill system in this game. I can't shake the feeling that most of the 'civil' skills should just be baseline, or baked into other things.

F. example:

Why are barter and persuasion separate skills? In most canonically 'classic' RPGs they'd be represented by one stat called CHARISMA. I do know that a lot of games tried to split them, but let's be real -- in 95% of RPGs barter-type skill is either useless because it's easier to just grind more stuff to sell, or mandatory because for some illogical reason every merchant in the world will demand the entire GDP of their country for a shoddy leather vest no one in their right mind would even look at, were they not a level 1 protagonist in dire need of covering their bare self!

-- Divinity doesn't have the latter problem, but I found that by late game I can buy upgrades from merchants on every level and still end the game with close to 200 thousand gold.

Persuasion. The skill requirements presented in brackets for persuasion dialogue tell me that the system was changed either last minute, or some time in development to tie into the Persuasion stat, rather than base stats; And I think it was the wrong decision. Now, of course, an all-strength dwarf with the eloquence of a troglodyte won't sway many hearts and minds with his 'oog'-like speech, but if he makes a good point -- why do NPCs still refuse to let him solve a strength-based problem?

The game's brilliant writing genuinely threw me off when instead of persuasion being a puzzle where you as a player figure out what a select NPC wants to hear it is instead a bland skill check; And I do think the game would be better off if the former was the case.

And if you don't want to play a diplomat -- nobody is stopping you from just giving them the axe if you choose to play that kind of character. It just makes no sense to me that a psycho axe murderer can't intimidate their way through some things they don't quite feel like getting their hands dirty with, without a full course of how to verbally influence people.

Sneak. I can't for the life of me think of a reason anyone would put points into it. Perhaps it's too strong with 0 point investment; But my real gripe with it is this:

Why are Sneak and Thievery separate skills? I think them being one skill would make the most sense.

What purpose do unidentified items serve? Gold sink? I do understand that most games do it because Diablo did it way back before anyone knew what a diablo clone was, but... Honestly, does Loremaster stat add anything meaningful into the game? The answer is that it doesn't and nothing will be lost if both unidentified items and the skill just go away. Or maybe you could simply make intellect / wits take its function (whichever is higher) to add some flavor to base stats.

What's left... Lucky Charm? In my opinion it should either just be a baseline chance to find random extra loot (because that's the name of the game. loot.), OR it should only be on items / runes. As things stand Lucky Charm just serves as "Barter Xtreme Edition" because the 10% you save on vendor-deals is easily outweighed by just having 100 extra gold found in a barrel, or 2-3 green+ items you'd find at a location to sell for extra profit.

tl;dr:

Civil skills are boring and add very little to the game. Make them baseline.

Last edited by Sil; 28/01/18 09:23 PM.