Uh.. Hi there.

Just writing down what would be cool, just in case. Starting with a classic wish of mine, which so far I have only seen done this way in one game.


Different fonts for special occasions

Case in point: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

They did a lot with different and color-coded fonts to highlight special dialog choices that were outside the usual path, like intimidation or seduction. I found it to be a very nice touch to have fonts convey a mood like that.

Examples for the skills Intimidation, Seduction and Persuation:

1. You will do as I say.
2. Pretty please, with sugar on top ...
3. Help me help you.
4. Would you do this for me?

These were skill based dialog choices, i.e. if your skill was too low you wouldn't even see the choice, and you could still fail. There were also sure-fire talents (read: spells) like Dementation or Domination, which would, when used during a conversation against you, turn all dialog options to a certain font/color/text.

(Dominate)
1. Yes, master.
2. Yes, master.
3. Yes, master.

I've only seen this once in Bloodlines, but it felt very natural. The game also featured different fonts associated with the various clans, but I guess that's irrelevant to Div:OS...

Anyway, there are many ways to play with typography in dialogues that might enhance the overall experience and make conversations more natural or simply more fun, which in view of Original Sin's theme -- co-op dialogues, finally! -- could be quite endearing, don't you think?

Other day I'd suggest/ask for a two versions of a battle system, tactical and real-time one (like in DA2), but in case with Divinity it wouldn't be a good idea, kind of ruins the consistency of the gameplay. Oh well.

We're still thinking about the decision making in dialogs and we're going to try different approaches, but this is indeed something we had in mind. Using the different primary stats to act as a bonus on the decision roll, and you choose which stat bonus by choosing the corresponding option (as you said, e.g. get a bonus from STR if you choose an intimidating option).

Hello Arhu,

I'm happy to see you take interest in one of our games again One day you'll need to tell me all that happened after last I saw you @ Larian !

Looks like I'm back aswell

Seriously, I didn't believe it the first time I read about it. After watching the teaser trailer, well, I still can't believe it :p

Glad to see Larian is back on route again!

Really liking what I've seen so far: interactivity, environment interactions, spell+reactions, turn base combat and of course the level editor / community modding support. Oh, and it's not called Divine Divinity... just

Hello. I'm very excited about Divinity:OS. I'm an old-timer who grew up with Ultima and Wizardry. Got my first IBM PC 8088 back in the prehistoric era. I've been following the Divinity:OS news and very happy to hear that U7 is being used as 'spiritual guidance' as U7 happens to be my favorite game of all time. With that said, here's my 'wish list' for Divinity:OS:

Object Interaction:
Ever since U7 I've been waiting for a RPG to include this as one of the main features although I did get a brief taste of it again with 2002's realease of Arx Fatalis as well as brief glimpses of object interaction found in Gothic's 1 & 2. And of course there was some object interaction to be found in Divine Divinity as well.

This time around I'm hoping that object interaction can be taken to 'the next level.' I'm hoping for very creative ways to combine objects that not only create different objects but perhaps impact the game world itself - perhaps by revealing secrets of one kind or another, removing barriers, or creating some other kind of special and unique event.

World Simulation:
Given the technology of the time, U7 really was a 'world simulator' in a class of its own and truly met the standard of Origin System's - then motto of 'We Create Worlds.' Some features of U7's world simulation included:

Day/Night Cycle with Sun and Moon Rise/Set
Different Phases of the moon
Sunshine, Rain, Lightning, & Thunder
Animals and other non-aggressive beasts
NPC Schedules
Roaming NPCs
*Moveable Objects
Doors & Windows that can open and close
Light sources that can be turned on and off
Reagents that could be harvested (these days its called alchemy ingredients).
Secret and hard-to-get-to geographic areas

*Of particular note is Moveable Objects. I loved how in Divine Divinity you could move some barrels and crates and find a trap door. Or move some debris and find a key. That kind of thing is very FUN and I hope there will be some experiences like this in Divinity:OS. But what else can be done to take this idea to the next level? What other reasons could there be for a player to move an object? I think with a bit of brainstorming there could be quite a few creative reasons to move things around without a reward of finding a secret location or item. Perhaps to trigger some kind of world event, quest, or just something else that is different or otherwise useful to the player.

These are just some of the things I can remember off the top of my head. I hope that Divinity:OS will expand even further on the whole concept of 'world simulation' as it is sorely lacking in modern day RPGs and nobody has knocked U7 off its pedestal in terms of its world simulation featureset since it was released back in 1992.

Equipment:
I really enjoyed Divine Divinity. It had a 'U7' vibe to it with a dash of Diablo 2 and good smatterings of Baldur's Gate-quality storytelling. In the area of equipment, while I enjoyed the variety of equipment that could be found or bought, with Divinity:OS I'm hoping there will be an even greater variety. In addition, I'm hoping for hand-placed equipment that can be found by the player who carefully searches out remote and otherwise hard to find places.

The World Is An NPC:
Another aspect of U7 and Ultima lore in general that made it such a great game is the lore ascribed to different geographic locations. For example, each dungeon in the Ultima universe had its own, unique name as well as its own characteristics and 'personality.' While dungeon crawling in Divinity:DKS was satisfying, I felt the lore for the dungeons was weak and dungeons really didn't even have names let alone a personality you could learn about before even finding the dungeon in-game. I remember the dread of actually finding the dungeon Hythloth - dread because of how the dungeon had been been built up in my mind from all the lore that came before discovering the dungeon. I'm hoping that geographic locations in Divinity:OS will be named and given character and that lore will be available to the player to learn a bit about these locations before they ever reach them.[/b]

Books:
I really like books in RPGs. They can add quite a lot to the game in terms of lore. I also enjoy it when books provide perks to your character (an attribute or skill increase for example) or even initiate quests. That kind of thing really creates a strong incentive for players to treat the entire game as a treasure hunt in order to find as many books as possible. However, refrain from including information in books that do not coincide with the game. For example, books in Divinity:DKS sometimes referenced night time when there was no actual night time in that game. They also sometimes mentioned how people fell to their deaths when there is was no fall damage in that game - stuff like that.

Music:
Music in RPGs can really alter one's perception of the game for better or worse. Divine Divinity had some of the best RPG music since U7. I absolutely loved the tavern music in that game. I hope Divinity:OS will include music that will add magic to the game.

Well, that is quite a bit so I'll take a breath for a moment.

That will really add to the Fallout similarities. That's a great idea, to give multiple possible responses which would get benefits from different stats, instead of basing everything on Charisma.



DebateMe - Divinity 2 didn't say this outright, but I assumed that Dragon Slayers learned some innate magic that prevented them from falling to their deaths - a really practical thing for fighting a flying enemy, I imagine.

I'm a little confused by the equipment screen in one of the screenshots, it looks like there are two chest pieces, but no pants piece. Is one of those chest pieces actually shoulder pauldrons?

Here's a wish: Let us read books without having to add them to our inventory, that was a bit annoying in Divinity 2.

Also, please tell me that the player can use the FLAMETHROWER that one of the skeletons is using in the concept art.

I went through all he screenshots - can't find it.

Actually, you are correct. It's been a while since I played Divinity 2:DKS and my memory is not as clear as I thought. There were no books that stated or implied falling damage or death due to falling.

Where I became confused on this is that in at least one dungeon (I believe more than one dungon, but at least one) in DKS, there is an area where you must make a verticle ascent using platforms and teleporters.

If you make an error, you end up on the ground floor and have to start over. But in these locations you see the bodies of dead people who, I guess, previously tried to make the ascent, but fell to their deaths.

This is a similar inconsistency to mentioning night time in books.

But I guess if Dragon Knights have powers to not fall from death, that perhaps doesn't extend to just any NPC which might explain why there were dead people in those areas.

The bodies in that room in Maxos temple were Black Ring members and dragon slayers (as well as one priest). The dragon slayers presumably should have been able to handle the fall, but the Black Ring may better explain their deaths. Besides, even if they tried the platforms, I'm not sure they could make it very high with the lesser jump you have before you meet Talana (and essentially become a dragon knight initiate).

I've read that the game will have support for modding and was very happy to see that.
However the explanation continued with: "it will be very easy and no programming is required".
Will there be also support for programmers to change more fundamental things on the game?
(as featured in Warband - Mount & Blade for example).

That means, being able to create quests, spawn random monsters, make levels (or even generate random levels), change/add 3D models. Since it seems the more freedom you give the users in modding, the longer the game stays active.

Here is something I always wanted with a modern turn based game and to make it feel fresh.

You play turn but record the entire game. In full and last combat sequence. Works better if the game is a 3d world. So play the game out in turn based. After a battle have an option to watch it as a movie in real-time, if 3d make it cinematic with various camera angles. At the end of the game you can then playback the entire game, cutting out the unneeded stuff, axe the dialog decision making, just show what the player(s) choose. Any type of inventory management is cut. Cut out all the fat. Just sit back and watch it as a movie, each play-through would be different, perhaps even an option to burn it to the DVD format so you can watch it on your TV.

I don't know about random level generation or opponent spawning, but you should certainly be able to create quests and levels. There aren't any details yet on how fundamental you can get with mods, but it seems the intent is to allow fairly elaborate construction.

From the RPGWatch article (from immediately before the part you quoted)

In the video on the D:OS site, Swen said

In the blog post Divinity – Original Sin revealed ! and one of its comments


Welcome to the forum.

Of course there is night time in Divinity 2. What a silly idea that there isn't.

There just isn't a day-night cycle, so it all seems to take place on one day. But you can see night time at least twice: After you meet Talana, you pass out and Damian wakes you up at night, and later on, it's night in Broken Valley when Damian is razing it to the ground.




This one.

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/screenshots/images/00045/00045054_000.htm

There are a LOT of screenshots on that site, including some really neat concept art, and shots of the editor in action.

I'm sorry, but I still not seeing an inventor/equipment window on the screenshot you linked.

Here is the direct link: http://image.jeuxvideo.com/images/pc/n/o/nouveau-divinity-pc-1338210648-001.jpg

Sorry. That was the base page. Here it is.

http://image.jeuxvideo.com/images/pc/n/o/nouveau-divinity-pc-1338210648-004.jpg

I see now. Hm, I think I know what it is, but I lack the lexicon to explain it. The first slot is basic armor place, the second is, ugh, that thing, the addition to plate. Like roman's full armor set - plate, armor skilt/kilt and the leggings. No actual trousers (but it has a cloak).

Great to hear it! I guessed as much from the video. Some Infinity-Engine games had that as well, like Planescape: Torment. But they only put a keyword like (intimidate) or (persuade) in front of the player's extra dialog options, which was slightly boring to look at. And that's why it's actually the different fonts and colors that intrigued me so in Bloodlines.

Some JRPGs or Anime fansubs go even further with typography: instead of simple white subtitles you'd get differently colored ones associated with different main speakers (protagonists), or subtitles from off-screen speakers would have another color or a different position. Typesetting can be an art in itself, if used wisely.


Heh, sure. Guess I simply have been out of the loop for a long while.


That does sound sort of cool. An instant replay feature. You could script scenes with the editor and later record in-game movies. *ponders*

What I would like to see:

1) Darker & more realistic graphics and grimmier atmosphere

2) Being able to switch between real time and turn based combat

3) At least 4 class trees to chose from [first Divinity lacked a bit in this department]:

a) Woman can specc to become either sorceress [dps/healer] or thief [dps]

b) Man can specc to become either paladin [dps/healer] or warrior [dps/tank]

4) Kiril Pokrovsky's score

5) Randomized loot system

1) Darker & more realistic graphics and grimmier atmosphere

From comments in the blog post Divinity – Original Sin revealed !



2) Being able to switch between real time and turn based combat

Those are fundamentally different designs...


3) At least 4 class trees to chose from [first Divinity lacked a bit in this department]:

Four of the six skill trees are magic (Earth, Wind, Fire and Water). Both characters can be developed as you wish (thieving skills have not been mentioned, but I'd guess will be available; warrior/paladin skills are pretty much guaranteed).


4) Kiril Pokrovsky's score

Of course.


5) Randomized loot system

Also a given.

Yep. I hope they change the lighting. The current lighting makes it look too cartoony and much like Diablo 3 and Torchlight. That artstyle is so over-used and Original Sin should have an art-style which is more like Divine Divinity.

Agreed.

I want to be able to switch between 2 weapon sets, like in Diablo2 (yes, even if it's turn-based :p).
I really miss this in Divine Divinity, as I use sword and bow.

Here's a thought: In Serious Sam:BFE, you could customize the graphics settings, so if you liked things bright and colourful, you could select that option to dial it up, if you didn't, you could select a more normal option, and there were also multiple greyscale and destaurated options.

Here's a video to demonstrate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFxYkIPogj4


If Larian did something like this, then both people who want it dark and gritty, and those who don't mind bright and colourful could get what they want.

I guess, silly me, I was thinking about the actual gameplay - when the player has control of the game there is no day/night cycle - it is perpetual daytime.

But yeah, if you factor in the cut scenes you refer to then I suppose you can point to evidence that night time eventually comes to the gameworld.

My real issue with the "cartoon" look isn't with the brightness and saturation, I just thought those were elements that could be easily adjusted, either by the devs or the users.

My real concern is the graphics themselves look child-like, as in a game designed for young children. It just comes as a surprise after hearing the descriptions of the game from devs like "A bloody, deadly war with orcs."

I don't want grim and gritty, just something with a tone like original DD or DD2. DD was all 2D art of course, so it's going to look different no matter what, but still, the graphics looked crisp and detailed. There was also an element of realism in enemies and weapons. Same with DD2. Right now it looks like I'm fighting monsters from Pixar films and Super Mario games.

Evolution of Trolls in DD-->DD2-->D:OS?

Will we have our own housing? Maybe an estate or a castle? Especially with the enviroment being interactive I'm sure we could decorate our own castles.

Also, maybe enemies can attack our castle. Age of WOnders turn-based seried had great siege battles.

I think you confused this game with Dragon Commander.

Not confused, just saying that it would be cool to have a house or castle (ala Skyrim and Neverwinter nights 2).

Just read Lar's article The Grand Idea Behind [Div:OS] again and was reminded of a completely different game from my good old days -- Ambermoon.

Now, I'd like to think that Ambermoon was for Amiga what Ultima VII was for the PC. And it had a unique feature that I've never really seen like that anywhere since:


Some UI elements have to be acquired as actual items.

The benefits were twofold:

1. gradual increase in complexity, so the player isn't overwhelmed in the beginning and always gets new gameplay elements throughout the game, i.e. less boredom

2. reduction of micro-management, like an item that makes you not worry about food anymore . A boon every once in a while.


Items from Ambermoon:

• Clock. Shows the time of day (duh). Before you got it you had to guess (the game featured day/night cycles and you could wait for x hours if you needed to in front of a store that was closed for the night).
• Monster's Eye. An Item that was fairly expensive, so required a certain amount of investment before it could be acquired. It added an element to the UI that warned of nearby monsters.
• Compass. Helped you navigate on 3D maps (the game was 3D in towns and dungeons, but top-down in houses and on the world map).
• Locator. Added coordinates to your UI/map so you could easier track your location in the game world and reference them elsewhere. You could literally fly around the whole world at some point, so eventually you'd be back at the same coordinates.
• Wind Chain (?). Enabled you to use ancient wind gates for quick travel around the world.
• Map. The world map was an actual item you could get in the first or second big town you visited, which was a bit of a unique case as it just told you that you were now allowed to use the actual, physical world map, which was a big, hand-drawn poster (the automap in towns and dungeons on the other hand was always available). Before that you had to remember where you were on your own, although that wasn't difficult since the first area was pretty small and there was no real danger to get lost. So you got access to the world map when it was necessary.

Most of these items you got relatively early, but only when you started to feel you really needed them -- and then were happy to have them.


Another feature from the game: Mounts.

Same deal: mounts served as gear checks and made the world easier and faster to navigate as it opened up. They were both fun to have and necessary.

First you had to walk, which was slow and didn't get you far during a day. To reach the second town you needed a raft, which let you cross a shallow part of the ocean to the next isle, but you couldn't cross the deeper parts. For that you needed a real boat, which you got even later. You gradually got gates to quick-travel to certain points in the world (they had to be visited first?) The ultimate form of transportation was a huge eagle you could summon with a flute. So gradually you could reach more parts of the world that were previously closed to you, but at the same time you could revisit older places quicker.

I tend to rather believe that the impression of "it is over-used" comes from persional bias.

Me, I have the other bias : To me, the "dark & grim" art style is over-used.

Skyrim, The Witcher series, Deus Ex, Demonicon, Blizzard, of course, Gothic series, Risen series, and especially shooters.

To me, therefore everything looks actually entirely different : If I look around me, I can see no light-themed (both in terms of graphics style ANd in terms in in-games themes) for the PC sinleplayer platdform anymore.

For consoles, it might be different. But we're talking about the PC platform here, I almost assume.

I begin to have the feeling as if this argument called "it is over-used" is being instrumentalized by BOTH sides now. Whichh each one wanting THEIR taste to be implemented.

Gothic : Arcania already had 2 different sets of graphics/textures. It would be a LOT of more work, but it would please more players. Imho.




In the old forums, someone (not me !!!) wrote that - in this sense - ACTUAL REAL grass isn't as dark as presented within Divinity 1 ...

Just go out and compare the colours !

@Alrik: I'll reply in your thread about Dark and Light.

Arhu
Divinity games always had issues with really unqiue items that have actual weight of usefulness (I don't count singular examples like Dragon Stone - this one dictated by story; in DD there was only the Pyramids). I approve of such suggestion.

Ronin's Wishlist:

1) Story driven game-play with tons of dialog with or without voice acting. (I prefer little to no voice acting for my hardcore role-play)

2) Same skill tree as DD where I can choose abilities from all character types to make a real badass force of greatness.

3) Single player mode to play lone wolf so I can explore at my pace without the buddy rushing through everything(I dislike your kind hahahaha!!)

4) Day/night/weather cycle.

5) Option to switch to Classic DD Textures ;D

6) Quick Time Events!! Lmao jk I'm joking, seriously!

7) Bring back the teleporter pyramids!

8) Get rid of the partner, I wanna go at the world by myself! Joking as long as she can be memorable like your pals in DA:O. If not, please make it optional.

Immersion immersion immersion!!

Thank you Larians!

Raze you can't get away without giving us your wishlist! Your opinions are mandatory in all threads.

All the other Divinity games have had classless character building, this one probably won't be different.

A Day/night and weather cycle sounds good, but the weather cycle is the least important part. It could make for interesting gameplay, if rain makes everything wet and susceptible to lightning and strong to fire.

I don't really agree with the idea of making it dark and impossible to see. What's the fun of that? Don't make it impossible to see without a torch, you can't sneak when carrying a torch.

Giving guards torches will also make sneaking difficult, unless you could cast rain to put the torches out (without alerting the guards.)

Crafting, robust and as much depth as possible. Let me break items down and improve my current equipment. Look at Dragon's Dogma or better Vagrant Story. I highly dout we'd get crafting that is so important to combat but I'd love to see something like Vagrant Story done. Just read the paragraph on how it works I LOVE it. As for Dragon's Dogma you can only enhance your loot with materials you've found in the world which is also fine with me.

I am very excited about this game, having played the original Divinity.

I would like a world where objects stand out and look vivid, I hope that it isn't all bright and shiny because too much lighting effects make things stand out less - a good example of this is in some of the Original Sin artwork, you have red within gray-scale and the red clearly stands out and looks vivid. When everything is bright things stand out less basically. I do not want a grim world, I want a world with variety but is not over-saturated.


I would also like a flexible skill system which has a lot of variety in the way that you can combine skills, even if they are not similar. I do not like it when you are given options, yet a lot of them are pointless, this is usually because of balance caused by the bad skill tree design. An example of this IMO is Kingdoms of Amalur, I didn't really feel the need to experiment after trying individual skills, running a hybrid was very simple and there were not many real hybrid options worth exploring other than those for combining different weapon combos.

If you haven't seen it yet, there is a bit on combining magic spells in the video on the D:OS site.


Welcome to the forum.



NightRonin;
I wish I was going to be at E3, but I guess I'll just have to wait for the announcements and previews like pretty much everyone else. Maybe with more details I'll have a wishlist for the game...

I just got this idea from playing DayZ, but I was thinking more of what you said, not impossible to see without a torch, but still really dark so when you light the torch, you can get some nice fancy lighting! I'll remove it form my wishlist because you're right it does affect your sneaking ability

I think the game is in good hands. My only gripe is that it's multi-player. I'm a solo player especially in strong story driven games with tons of dialog to read everywhere you go(assuming it's like DD). I hate being rushed through quests and knowing I may be slowing the other player down because I stopped to read lore...

My wishlist:

Toolset:
1. Custom campaign/module option (ability to string modules together to form a huge campaign). I hope the toolset is not limited to making small scenarios.

2. Allow custom movies by the user to be inserted in their custom campaign/module .avi, .bik, .wmv or whatever format as long as it can be put in. When I mod a game I usually have this urge to also make my own animations to use for cutscenes. Unless the ingame camera system is top notch then I can do with game rendered cutscenes. I remember DKS has .wmv movies isntalled in a video directory so that it uses video files for cutscenes.

3. Allow users to insert their own music compositions for their custom campaign/module. No doubt Kirill can make music better than me. I'm just a hobbyist game modder. However this just adds more personalization to the campaign I'm making. Usually I make my own animation with my own scoring.

4. Scripting aid, the Electron toolset for Neverwinter Nights 2 was much more accessible to me in that it had gui for conditional/action scripts. Of course, after the gui you still have the option to access the script itself that was automatically generated IIRC. Unfortunately, I'm not an avid programmer even though I still manage to make custom scripts for the Aurora Toolset.

5. This may seem obvious but I'll still mention it: ability to make custom items.

When I saw the shot for the toolset, it reminded me of the Electron and Aurora toolset and I'm just listing some of the capabilities of both. Ok, maybe to be more succint, I'll just have to wish that the toolset is as powerful as the Neverwinter Nights series toolsets.

1. The way our story system is set up allows you to link as much levels as you want together and still put them together in one storyline, so you can make 100hrs+ RPGs if you want (which tbh will take you some time )

2. From within the story scripting system, you can tell it to play a movie. We're using bink now because it fixes compatibility issues we faced in the past with .wmv files.

3. Modding of audio is something that we're going to have to look in to.

4. As we get closer to release, we'll start showing more of the functionality of the editor & you'll see it's quite straightforward.

5. You can

Thanks! Definitely looking forward to this

I hope the community will pick up on the customization and see it breathe a life of its own.

The editor looks almost exactly like the Morrowind editor, and I know how to use that!

I also hope we'll be able to put in conversations with choices between the party members into the user-generated maps.

I'm a storyteller at heart ... I wonder if I will be able to tell some stories there ... ?

I only play a game like this with people I know who's like minded. If you like SP or can't find another like minded, then play it SP. Simple, no?

Yes, of course, I dunno why I'm going crazy if it also has a SP mode Everyone is happy, lol/

Something for the wishlist: Better balancing of skills.

Divine Divinity had problems - mostly with redundant skills (but with 96 skills in the game, they can't all be winners). Beyond Divinity had incredibly overcomplicated and specialized melee skills, and incredibly underpowered and over-priced magic skills.

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis was an improvement, and Dragon Knight Saga even more so, but there were still some balance problems.


Examples:
The Firewall skill was very unimpressive. Even with 15 points, it did a terrible amount of damage per second, and even accomplishing the dangerous and tricky feat of keeping enemies in the flames for all five seconds does literally 2 more than a single Level 15 Fireball tossed from maximum range. To top it off, Firewall's 30 second cooldown was double that of Fireball.

Splitting Arrows was crazily overpowered, if you follow good advice and build to maximize critical hits and critical hit damage - which Ranger builds steer you towards automatically. Add in +488% damage from Way of the Ranger, and you can do tens of thousands of damage spread over a room of enemies. The cooldown: 5 seconds.

Explosive Arrows were hit too hard with the Nerf bat when they were changed to no longer use normal damage from Ranged attacks. Even maxed it did maybe 500 damage with a non-critical hit. The only reason to invest is because it eats a second or two of the Splitting Arrow's cooldown time.

Life Leech made fighting a bit too easy, especially for Warriors who get a health regen buff from natural points into Strength. It worked with special attacks, and it was an instant heal - the only instant heal in the entire game. I think the biggest reason for it being overpowered was that it worked with special attacks, like Fatality (which could do up to 52% of an enemy's HP in damage) and Whirlwind (which could hit a lot of enemies around the player at once, that's a lot of life to leech).



Try and watch out for minor things like that.

There were some really good balance things, though, like how points into Strength and Intelligence didn't do much in ones or twos, but if you build up a big pile, the regen bonuses really started to shine.

I used to knock the Summon Ghost, before I understood it - it is quite effective as long as you put points in to keep it at maximum level, if it falls behind it dies quickly and the healing isn't as effective.

UPD: totally missread that

The attribute system of Dragon Knight Saga really shined. It sets a good precedent.

However, there were much fewer skills than Divine Divinity (96 down to 55), with much less offensive magic and summoning. So I'd like to see more of that.

I wonder this:
playing turn based combat,
can I interrupt a fight (stop the fight by running away or whatever) ?
It will be nice it can because if my hero is too weak for the fight and so I want first go for more healing potions, take an extra skill or wish to buy/find some better gear or weapons ...

I hope gear & weapons have also "durability" like in DD ! I like it my weapon is not unbreakable !

It looks like this game will already have more offensive magic than the four spells of Divinity 2, which is good.

But I'd rather have 55 well-balanced skills than 96 ones which were not very good or were redundant - Remember Elven Sight and Ranger Sight in Divine Divinity? Both increased your sight range, but Elven Sight went up by 2 units a rank, and you could get it at a lower level - there was literally no reason to ever choose Ranger Sight over Elven Sight.

For D:OS, I would prefer a very high attribute cap (like 200), but if you're going to keep the base point cap of 100, at least let bonuses from equipment exceed the cap.

Lots of skills are a feast of micromanging.

Alas, micromanaging has died out. Blizzard saw to it (that it happened).

Since Blizzard, everything has been reduced to ther absolute minimum. People feel overwhelmed by a lot of skills and talents like in Drakensang, for example. They are used to builds & skills like in mot Action-RPGs, reduced to the absolute minimum.

People have unlearned complex thinking. Blizzard's fast-food of RPGaming rules the world now.

The beauty of the NLT (Realms Of Arcania games) was of having a choice. I loved that. I loved having lots of skills vailable at my disposal.

In real-time combat, too many skills and talents don't work very well, though, imho.

I think that having lots of them is rather the domain of turn-based combat - which requires imho much, much *slower* thinking in general - than real-time combat, where everything must be quick and fast - and not thorough and well-thought.

Other day I wold agree with you, but honestly, I just tired and not interested anymore in the game with tons of menus and characteristics and values, where you literally spent 30%-40% of the game doing math. Had too much of it. And since I rarely play games - I'm still thirsty for some nice actionish RPG with nice story and consistent, well-made gameworld/setting (as DD1 was).

I don't like math either. I'm not looking at the numbers, merely at what can be done.

It would be great if D:OS had ways of defeating opponents without killing them.

First of all, it's not realistic that every single enemy will fight to the death. Animals, even the hungry and aggressive ones, might try to flee when it becomes obvious they're losing. More intelligent opponents might surrender in order to save their lives.

I think you should get XP for every defeated opponent, including those who successfully flee or surrender. In this case, it might be necessary to tag those opponents, so you cannot generate an infinite amount of XP by attacking fleeing opponents over and over.

Of course, you'd miss out on the loot of fleeing enemies. Those who surrender could offer you all their belongings in order to get away, though. Some might even offer additional loot, like telling you about a secret stash of items if you let them live.

It would be really cool if your reputation influenced the chance of surrender: As long as you're an honorable person who is known to show mercy, enemies are more likely to surrender. If you kill people who have surrendered, future opponents will be less likely to make the same mistake, and their resolve might even allow them to put up more of a fight.

Of course, this shouldn't happen all of the time. Mindless creatures like some undead should never run away or surrender. Fanatics and soldiers who know that their superiors will kill them if they lose the fight should also have a very low chance of giving up. Untrained citizens, on the other hand, should be quite likely to beg for their lives instead of fighting to the death. It would also add a lot to the credibility of the game world if a heavily wounded opponent became very likely to surrender after you've obliterated the rest of the group without taking much damage yourself.

I'd also like to have a way of disabling opponents even if they don't surrender. You could knock them unconscious or wound them in a way that doesn't allow them to fight on. Why would you want to do that? You might be convinced that your opponent is out of his/her mind (e.g. when possessed or mind-controlled) or you might want to give him/her a chance of seeing that what he/she's been doing is wrong. That might lead to the NPC remaining in the same area, but becoming non-hostile afterwards. It could also leave him/her totally unimpressed, or he/she might even try to track you down in order to avenge the defeat by "purging" this "dishonour".

Yes, I want finally ONCE in the world/in the lifetime a full-fledged fantasy-themed RPG with a complete non-violent path !

Thief is there, I know, and Deus Ex ... But these game are not fantasy settings RPGs ...

Yeah, it would be great to flee from combat yourself or your opponent(s)!

Maybe also a nice and funny(!) thing :
using a skill or combination of skills can immobilize one or more opponents so you have time to flee like for example : let it rain + blow a ice cold wind so all opponents that are standing in the poul of water are now frozen statues
It remember me clearly what Mardaneus did with Lanilor in DD ...

As a (sur)plus you can persuade them to give you nice or special loot if they want free again ! Or you first pickpocket(is this possible in D:OS?) them and run away ... probably the sun melting the ice after a while and they're automatically back mobile, or some other funny/cool thing that can happen ?

Planescape: Torment!

I think he was talking more about "classic" fantasy ie "Tolkien-like sandbox."

Both of you are right. I haven't played very deeply intop PS:T yet ...

Hi everyone. Long-time lurker here, but finally registered and posted because i am quite excited about divinity: os.

Count me as one of those who prefer the turn-based combat and isometric view (it's isometric, right?) that you are planning to implement for original sin.

I played dd and bd before, and recently the dragon knight saga, but quit after the battle in the tower with the necro and his demon. Combat is too frantic, frenetic and hectic button-mashing for me in that game, and i found out it is not to my liking (though i love the other qualities of the game).

Also, and this is on my wishlist, i hope you also put in the extra effort to balance the difficulty in original sin, just like in bd, which was thoroughly discussed here:

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=296381#Post296381

That being said, i wish you luck in original sin.

I don't know the exact camera angle, but D:OS does pretty much have an isometric view. There is a video of the E3 presentation in the Gamespot article.

For DKS, since you got to the battle tower, you could unlearn your skills at the trainer and go for a build that utilizes a less frantic combat style (and/or reduce the difficulty level). An archer shouldn't need to do much frantic button mashing, or much running around after learning Splitting Arrows and Explosive Arrows (Stun Arrows and Poison Arrows help early in the game). Some people keep their character mostly out of direct combat, and let their creature, a summon and maybe a charmed opponent handle most of the fighting.


Welcome to the forum.

Thanks for the welcome, raze.

When i asked if it's isometric or not, i actually meant if it's not going to be changed anymore. Between now and Q2 2013 is still a year away and lots of things can, well, still happen. i hope they keep it at that iso angle for the final release.

The char i finished the battle in the tower in DKS was actually an archer, w/ an undead summon and my creature in the mix. But i found out that i still handled most of the fighting even from range as most of the enemies just ignore/run past my summons and target me. Prior to playing that archer i had a two-handed warrior (found out also that wearing a shield confers minimal benefits in DKS), but stopped playing her. Enemies do too much damage imo. Now i would understand that if i were playing on hard or nightmare diff, but i was playing it on normal. I've played a handful of rpg's, and i feel a bit uneasy sliding the diff to "easy" in DKS. I might, one day, but i am playing other games and would like to finish them first.

Thanks again.

When D:OS was first mentioned (as Project E) more than a year ago, the only detail we got was the top down camera view. I think it is too late to change now; there may be a year before release, but changing the camera would require changes to the UI, controls, level design, etc.


In DKS with my archer I found a mage head worked best with my creature. It didn't run off much that way, or draw many opponents into the fight who could have otherwise been left for later, and provided more of a shield than with a warrior head.

With a few levels into Splitting Arrows, it becomes a one hit kill for non-boss opponents at close range.

I usually don't bother with temporary boost spells in games (an occasional potion can help in tough fights), but at level 40 bought a bow with +5 Way of the Ranger, which I found very helpful, and put another 5 points into the skill right away, and maxed it later.

I stopped distributing stat points after level 15 (playing on nightmare) and found that up to level 9 of Life Line on most pieces of armour, plus any vitality or hit point bonuses on equipment, and a couple level 10 Healing Auras on jewellery gave me plenty of hit points. Level 1 of Healing came in handy, and there were few places I had to use more than an occasional healing potion.

Good to know that the isometric view is there for keeps.

Thanks again for the add'l tips. I might make a new post in the DKS forums about my char, lest i be accused of hijacking this thread.

Back to Div: OS, is there a plan for a class that utilizes shield skills? The defender/conqueror class in titan quest was one of the best i've seen in an rpg at using shield skills. Couldn't recall any rpg i've played in recent memory that came close to the way the defender class was developed in that game.

We know that 4 of the 6 skill trees in D:OS are magic, but nothing about the other 2 yet. There should be a weapon + shield expertise skill, but at least in previous Divinity games there were not a lot of defencive skills specifically tied to shields (some skills have been similar to Titan Quests' defence mastery skills, though, from a brief description of them that came up when I googled).

True that. I vaguely recall one skill, shield expertise, in dd, but that only sets off on a 5% chance iirc. In bd, i played as an archer with the death knight as a warrior, so i can scarcely remember any shield skill in that game. In DKS, shields didn't matter much at all to my limited time playing it.

it'd be nice if there will be a weapon + shield in D:OS, if only to increase the survivability of melee chars. Don't know how well that can be implemented in a turn-based game, but we can all have wishes.

The only wish I've is that Original Sin has those 4 magic skill trees (fire, water, eard & wind/ear) to use in turn based combat or also to burn wood or make a pool of water to do your dishes ...

And that the other 2 skill trees are for NON-combat (or passive skill that can be useful in all kind of situations, combat too), like lockpick, stealth, etc ... such things ! Maybe also a very special skill Larian Studios is making (like they did with Mindreading for DKS, that was o so nice, fun .. very great !)

My wish is that you can do amazing things to your weapons. I have seen some examples, but I am hoping that there is even more.

Examples:
1. Pour oil on sword, cast fire spell on it and then attack.
2. Cast water on enemies iron sword/axe. Cast freeze and shatter their weapon when it is next used.
3. Polish/sharpen weapon with found whetstone. Increases weapon damage.
4. Cast spells on arrowheads before firing, similar to above.

In E3 video all special kinds of arrows were as skills (like in DKS)

You know what would be a cool spell? Exploding Arrows.

No, not the kind where you take a bow and fire an arrow at the enemy, which explodes when it hits. A spell you cast on enemy archers, so when they try and fire, their arrows explode. In their bows.

Please, bring again into the game the way one could make honey from the first Divinity game !

Keep on going guys - some of these ideas we didn't think of but they'll make it in the game!

Variability in decisions - in situation with Sarah we, for example, may extinguish the suicide bomber. Or teleport Sarah out of the house. Or protect her with the kind of invincibility. Or convince bomber not to blow up. Or just kill them both. Or... well, only imagination of players is the border, in fact. Should we expect this?

Yes. There's multiple ways to deal with the bomber from what I heard. There was a video showing the gameplay on Gamespot and the player later killed Sarah afterwards to steal an apple from her house for the greater good.

Just go to the bomber and ask him, why he is there ?

Or even worse : Ask him a question/riddle/philosophical something that is so difficult that he will vanish like the two skeletons from early within the first Divinity 1 dungeon ?

Or something like ... making him believe that he doesn't exist at all (sililar to in PS:T making people believe the Nameless One exist - or like in the Discworld where things come into being by people simply believing in them ) ? - Would requite a persuasion skill check, I believe.

Someone in another thread mentioned cards (altho, in a totally different context) and this gave me an idea. Is it late to implement something like that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=264wi-_Yxmw

In FF8 universe/gameworld, Triple Triad was a popular game card you could play with almost anyone, win rare cards and fill in your collection or transform cards into nifty things later. I really loved this small addition to the game series (later it evolved into Tetra Mist in FF9). Any chance we can see something like that in D:OS? I'm not talking about some primitive dice-rolling game, a-la Two Worlds, I'm talking about the min-game that repays for your effort and dedication later. Just like some kind of unspoken sidequest - it is not just enough to play it, sometimes you will have to find the person to play with, and only he/she has rare card. Or may be, with your social skills (convince/intimidation), you can turn a deadly encounter with some menacing villain boss into a card fight (and thus get a chance to win something rare)? Ah, the opportunities.

That would be really awesome and it would add some depth to the setting and gameworld.

Larian I think I remember did "Casino Games" in the past - why not implement a simple card game as an easter egg ?
Perhaps even a Solitaire game within a Tavern ?


Edit :

... If you leave wine too long in a barrel, then it turns either into

- better wine
- vinegar

on a random dice roll.

A trading card mini-game? Yuck, yuck, yuck, no thanks!

Think of it as a bestiary.

I think it would be fun to have some mini-games as easter eggs.


On a different tangent, what about mounts in-game? As a turn based game, this may be pointless, but the world seems big enough to support it.

It could be chess. Or it could be totally different game. I was taking about the concept itself, thee is no reason to be mad.

If you include any mini-games, please make them strictly optional. I think at least 90% of the mini-games I have seen are a terrible waste of time (and the developer's resources), and in my opinion, tying mini-games to the player's progress along the main storyline (like it happened in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) is a severe design flaw.

However, I would appreciate a few well-placed puzzles, mysteries and/or riddles. And in a game with turn-based combat, they should not be time-constrained in any way, please. As you might call them mini-games as well, they should only appear in side-quests which you don't have to complete if you want to beat the game.

Solving crime mysteries is something I think would go very well with D:OS, it can offer a lot of interesting dialogue options and it's not that often a part of role-playing games.

It was in DD for example, with dukes murder, elrath and the plague, and so on.. I have no doubt there will be at least the same level of thorough thought-through questing, it's (i believe) one of the things larian is best known for, good and decent storyweaving.. Imho anyway ^^

What are you people most excited for? D:OS or DC? As long as no new content is released I'm going for D:OS. DC still has a lot of potential though. I just hope the battlefield won't be too repetitive.

More excited about Original Sin definitely. Although Dragon Commander will be something weird and fun and out of my comfort zone and I may very well not even like it, but it's worth a shot.

I thought of something for the wishlist, and it has to do with quest depth and outcomes. I like multiple ways to solve quests, but not just good/neutral/bad (Bioware) or succeed/fail (most other games, including many but not all quests in previous Divinity games). What I'd like to see is "failure," so to speak, not be something you reload to avoid a "failed quest" entry. Instead I'd like it to be something that creates a new path through the game. Life in the game-world just keeps going on, certain "mistakes" are just things you did and learn from.

The best example I can think of offhand is in Chapter 2 of The Witcher. There's a whole mystery quest with suspects, evidence, and eventually an autopsy. It seems like there's about 20 different ways you can solve this quest, and many of them involve getting stuff just plain wrong. Drawing wrong conclusions from evidence and accusing the wrong people. Missing evidence and clues entirely. Not learning about anatomy and botching the autopsy. Or stumbling into a crypt and discovering the truth by sheer accident.

Each path has its own way of guiding your character towards the truth. No matter what, as long as Geralt is still alive, you didn't mess up. The kinds of quests characterize both Witcher games. You always progress, just often by very different paths (and not the shallow good/evil stuff). I guess I'd like to see an approach like that in Original Sin.

Yes that was a very nice one. I let myself go and accuse kalkstein the alchemist. It took an hour or so to reload an fix that. (semi) irreversable mistakes are loveley. They force to start a game over and over again... This time i'm gonna do it right!

What I don't like is that good/evil is balanced. I'm just saying cause I just can't help myself from playing the good guy. And because good/evil rewarding is balanced I do it over and over again. Can't help it! I believe this was mentioned before: balance good/evil reward but not in every choice; this one evil more interesting, this one good more interesting, so only the total picture remains neutral.

Finally, I hope there's gonna be some randomness. When I was a kid I liked playing humongous entertainment games. Some quests altered each time it was played, forcing the player to have go trough a different adventure each and every time, until you has seen it all.

I believe all 3 of these should enhance the replayability of any game.

Yeah, cool, I think you got what I was saying. Except part of my point was that you shouldn't feel like you have to reload to fix things (and in your case you didn't have to. You could have still solved the mystery and Kalkstein would still be available for other quests). But it definitely enhances replay value.

Can we have a house again which the players can own ? And decorate ? Just like in Divinity 1 ?

And a chest there where we can store our trophies ?

Or decorate the house with our trophies ?



Edit : Taken from a Rewview (linked at RPGWatch right now ) :
http://www.gamercast.net/e3-2012-original-sin-preview




Question : If we can have 4 different players, then,

why not give them editable dialog fields where they can insert their own replies ?

(And need to press the "Okay" button to send them to the other players who currently participate in the currently ongoing dialog-based discussion.)

That's an interesting idea, but it might be a little TOO much like a Tabletop RPG. I mean, in the single-player mode, a dice roll determines which choice is picked. Players could type anything in, but would the game translate that into consequences, or would it just be a chat program which doesn't influence outcomes?

D:OS hands down, been waiting for that one since DD and BD

..although DC seems very interesting, and I for one don't mind venturing in strategy from time to time..I think what they can accomplish with DC is very special, a whole lot of people I know that are saying, wtf is that game, I must try this ^^ . Maybe one of the hardest things to do is get certain types of players out of their comfort zones (me f.e, now I'm playing DKS and loving it, but waited for ego draconis from the moment it was announced, played 15 mins and said yuck no these controls are not my cup of tea, although I wanted to love it so much) willing to try something imho completely wacked and not their regular gaming experience..

Ofcourse it helps that Larian is building a firm reputation of stepping up to the plate with it's games, and if it's not good enough (D2:ED) they just fix it <3 awesome

More on special items, inspired by another Gameplay Classic, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Using items to pass boundaries

RPGs usually have soft and hard boundaries woven into them, to keep players on a more or less certain path. Soft boundaries are things such as level, loot, or coins. The players would have to invest a certain amount of time or work before they could reasonably progress in the game, i.e. beat a boss or traverse a higher level area without getting killed on sight. They are called soft boundaries because players can get past them eventually, maybe even earlier than the intended point of time in the story. Hard boundaries are impassable cliffs or invisible walls or story related blocks (the town's gate is closed because -insert arbitrary reason here-) that keep players where the devs want them to be.

Zelda featured objects in the game that were hard boundaries, which changed into interactive elements once you acquired particular items.

An example: You'd have boulders sprinkled all over the game map that block paths. Some of them would block interesting places you want to get to. You'd wonder how to get there. Once you acquire the Power Gloves in one of the dungeons, you can, from that point onward, lift all white rocks all over the game map, allowing you to get past them, opening up new areas, shortcuts or secrets. It's not a one-time thing either.

Most of the items in Zelda had a special gameplay function that were, once found, used throughout the game (bow to activate far-away switches, harpoon to haul in items across a distance, lamp to ignite torches or navigate in completely dark rooms, bombs to blow up cracked walls).

Now, I realize that in an RPG those functions would probably be replaced by skills and spells. But still, the boundaries themselves were refreshingly different from story- or engine-related boundaries we usually find in RPGs, making the game world more interactive in a fun way.

Reminds me of how maps and compasses were used in earlier RPGs : You had to aquire/buy/find them in order to get their benefits.

I miss these times.
Hell, first Gothic haven't had a player marker even, if I'm not mistaken. The only RPG in 200x that used this concept. Everything else is from 90.

I like to see in D:OS maps you can find for finding your way out of a maze .. without finding the map you can lost your way !! But of course, a 'note' at the entrance of the maze give you a warning it's a maze
Or even at first start NO maps of the world: but if you fidn or buy some maps they're automatically included behind the buttom "maps" or something

In Skyrim you've also treasure maps, but not good done . I hope a treasure map give some "written info" by a drawed map too ... or like in DD it was nice done !

I could imagine a map which one/you can buy or find ... It marks the place of a very good, yet very well hidden Inn in he wilderness (this seddenly reminds me of a certain house in Divinity 1 ... )and it remains hidden (read : unspottable) without the map ... But with the map there suddenly pops up a dialog option within this game : "Look, honey, are my eyes daft or is this really an Inn over there ? There, where the rocks hang almost over that cliff ?"

like this story, magnificent idea Alrik ! Hope Larian can include most (or some of) of all the ideas that start appearing at the Original Sin threads
At least I hope we can make many kind of adventures with "the Editor", many options for fantastic & funny things to include ourself

The more I think about an Editor for a RPG the more I'm delighted about it !!
It times I was a child playing with LEGO bricks I mostly "building up" things and break them down agian to build up something new ... again & again ... and sometimes I played a kind of roleplay game with my LEGO knights ! (still, I have all the LEGO bricks stored, it's nostalgy )

Looks like you're writing a quest.

Please also include that one in the game as tutorial.

Hey Larian, is there a chance for a "side quest" competition?

The best idea for a side quest would be included in the game as a reward [obviously]

Five stars post.

Did "he" really say that ? I mean the "looks like you're writing a quest" remark ?

Concerning mini-games/puzzles that might be a part of D:OS - I think it would be nice if you could say "I let my character do it" if you don't feel inclined to do it yourself. In a game with several different components, the player doesn't have to like all of them, but might still like to finish the game or a particular quest.

For example, there might be a puzzle - the player isn't keen on solving puzzles and doesn't want to bother looking for a solution, but says "Hey, my character has high intelligence, so he should be able to figure it out." You include an option to choose an attribute check instead of solving the puzzle manually.

If a card game is part of D:OS and the player doesn't want to play it, she could say "My character is so dextrous, she tries to win by cheating." Again, an option with an attribute check could be chosen to replace the actual game.

High dexterity could also lead to automatically being successful in a jumping challenge or a race, while high intelligence could replace anything that involves using your brain as a player.

High strength, on the other hand, could be used to instantly win fights if the player doesn't want to actually play them. I know many people consider fights to be integral parts of role-playing games, but some don't. They are more interested in the story and in questing. There are also some people who don't like turn-based combat although they would be generally interested in D:OS. For those, it could be an option to create a very strong character, allowing them to skip all fights.

With such a system, every player could focus on the parts of the game they like best.

"I don't feel like playing the game today, but hey, my character has high intelligence and stats, he should be able to do it himself! We need an option to let him finish the game while I sipping a cup of a hot coffee."

The game that plays itself.

For the more unpatient or brainless players ... it's indeed a good idea to give one or more options to solve a puzzle ! I'm in for this option although I prefer to solve the puzzle myself, without the quick(er) solution !

And if their is such an option, please give the patient player, who solve the puzzle himself, at least a better reward for his/her effort & time spending on searching for the solution of a puzzle or side quest, etc !

This is not Dragon Age 2 forums.

Flowers on Jake's grave. More of that awesomeness please.

LOL not that kind of aid. I've written enough custom scripts myself in toolsets that I would get annoyed with that kind of feature.

The scarier truth is that I think there will be some who would appreciate that feature. Just give the option to turn it off

On the game itself:
I would prefer that there will be less of the "search" puzzle. I would like to spend time thinking instead of searching every square inch of the place for that elusive button/key/lever/item.

since I'm a bit bored now, I just imagined the continuation

ProgressQuest ?

Please give us characters we care about.

Apart from the other excellent suggestions, i'd like to add to that list, characters that breathe life into their existence. What i'm trying to say, though i may not put it as eloquently as i could, is that: please bring back the "role-playing" in rpg.

Some of the best and most memorable moments i've had were not found in the combat mechanices and in the biggest and baddest equipment i've found from killing monsters. They were found in the various adventures i've had in fleshing out the story of the game and in the companions i've had in the journeys.

baldur's gate games made me feel that way. off the top of my head, neverwinter nights ii (not the first) also, likewise its excellent expansion "mask of the betrayer", and dragon age: origins. khelgar and grobnar's dialogues were downright funny. motb, in my opinion, contained some of the best writing i've experienced in playing an rpg. it had one of the most unique companions in "one-of-many"; and how can i forget about gann? i really did not understand why he acted the way he did initially, not until i slowly began to peel layer after layer of his background story that i truly understood him. my original feelings of contempt towards him gradually turned to pity as we travelled together. now, that is one unforgettable experience.

dragon age: origins brought me similar moments also. the characters, both companions and sometimes adversaries, in that game evoked diverse feelings that are hard to shake long after i've finished playing. in the dlc "return to ostagar", i felt a certain tinge of sadness when i gazed upon the body of the king.
there's a truly heart-breaking scene in there.

quite a long wishlist now...

What Lurker said has already been implemented in other games (specifically in D&D games). A specific example would be chapter of the Hordes of the Underdark expansion for Neverwinter Nights. Exactly as Lurker described (I'm even suspecting he drew that idea from D&D), a door is locked wherein you should guess the next number of a sequence. The options include the possible answers and an intelligence stat check. Since my character was a wizard I had the option to breeze through it however I've been hacking and slashing so much that I needed a break and solved all the door puzzles manually.

Many suggestions here remind me of a lot of classic pc Rpg games. And I'm not even a fanatic on RPGs there are many I've missed like Fable, Gothic 1, Dungeon siege 1... Even my suggestions for the toolset are staple features shared by many (to the point that one can read it and say "duh! generic toolset").

Oh, the "Let my character do it" option has already been implemented? I didn't know ... I've played most D&D games, but not the Hordes of the Underdark expansion, and I don't remember anything like this being possible in another game. However, I do remember that certain dialogue options in D&D games require certain stat values, otherwise they don't appear. I always liked this because it added replay value.

Modern RPGs often include aspects of other genres - first-person shooters, adventures, jump 'n' runs, race games, shoot 'em ups, card games, or even flight simulators. This can be a nice variation, but it can also be annoying if you don't like the genre. As long as these aspects aren't part of the main storyline, players can simply avoid them, but there are also many completionists who want to finish every quest. That's why I suggested the "Let my character do it" approach.



There are games that almost play themselves - interactive movies with a minimum of interaction. I wouldn't want D:OS to be like that, though I guess there might come a day when you can determine the protagonist's looks (and maybe stats and skills) and then watch a movie-like game fully playing itself. And it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Circling back around, still very excited to be getting a true turn-based coop game. Not sure that I can think of the last one made. Has their been one? (Not counting some semi-crappy mmo one's)

1. A couple of things from playing some of those pause based coop games, NeverWinter Nights that I didn't feel was right was you needed or had a fighter and a mage, common sense. Someone suffered boredom being the fighter, with having next to no fun options from turn to turn. The wizard was a true joy to play, as you could meticulously choose a wide range of options every play. Fighter, swing, block, cleave, swing. Wizard about 25 options.

Even the Wizard was a lot more fun than a sorcerer and their limited spell-book in the DnD world when you play it out turn based.

I would prefer the characters to be Battle-Mages of sorts (aka well rounded). Where they have the full gambit of options. So all players playing coop can have a lot of choices at hand and not just the guy who's the wizard. And even trump DnD by allowing your character first not be a total squishy spell caster but also allowing the bonding ritual of sharing pointed steel face to face.

2. Other things with turned based that is problematic is Resources and Sleep. I would suggest that your characters are fully replenished automatically after every battle. That way you can balance encounters knowing the players will be fully balanced and alas also give us maximum choices each time. Games like Knight of the Chalice (DnD) or TOEE had issues with this, they couldn't make a lot of balls out scenarios, because they wouldn't know if you were rested or depleted as you are 5 battles deep from rest and low on resources.

I say give us full restores after a battle and give us epic battles knowing we are fully capable each time.

3. I also find in turn based games, which led to why they sort of got lost in the mix the past 10 years is the interface never made it elegant enough to make a quick choice each turn. I love turn base and if I need a lot of time to think what to do, I want that and have that. But a lot of times you have a plan and just need to play it out. So the UI being ready for you in a clean one click manner would imo redefine the genre and open it back up to a wider audience.

Wizardy 8 for example and again a Mage, someone with a lot of options turn to turn. The interface in that game would stay the same if it was the fighters turn or the mages turn. The fighter, click one icon, attack. Next turn. The mage, I want to do magic, click once open up magic, click school, click spell, click amount of power and finally it fired off. Playing coop this is timely. It's tiring enough single player for the 1000'th time. The genre seemed to peter out before the UI's (resolution) became advanced and high enough to really find it's panacea. More advancement from this genre is needed, I think there is breakthrough potential here.

Using the Wiz 8 example above, when it becomes the mages turn or anyone's turn for that matter, a part of the screen should be adapting and showing all options for a quick one click execution, less obvious tactical moves on the screen. Something like a drop down list of all possible options, sexy/elegant in looks and functionality, if you had something like power, those would be displayed with a gradient and click to the left is low power consumption and output, while far right being the most resources used and most damage done. So 4 clicks now becomes one for a mage, like it was one for the fighter.

Now I have no idea what Original Sin is planning, but please keep in mind to see if you can create an adaptive UI that can still get to almost all combat options per turn in one click. That will make coop that much smoother and make people reconsider that turn based while strategic, doesn't have to be tedious as well.

I also dream of a coop Wiz 8 with an improved UI.

Also want to shout out, I loved Divinty 2 DKS, I hope you also go back some day to that style of game as well. I loved the action combat in it. As good an action first/3rd person RPG that I've played and imo the next installment will do well, it took a lot of us RPG'ers and Steam Sale searchers a while to find that gem. I don't think I'm alone here and wouldn't need to wait for a sale for the follow up.

1. All of the Divinity games have been using a classless system, so you should be able to turn your character into as much of a battle-mage as you wish.

2. Only combat will be turn-based. Within the real-time exploration it should generally be possible to fully heal your character between battles. Unless you run out of healing stuff, maybe.

3. In turn-based combat, there's no need to quickly press a key, but I'd still like to have a quick-key bar. This way, you can assign keys to the skills, spells, or items you use most often and only need to open a full menu for accessing the rarely used ones. In my eyes, that's more convenient than clicking, plus it allows you to quickly use something in preparation before entering combat.

1. Yes, all of the Divinity games have been using a classless system, but [in my opinion] players should be rewarded for sticking with one particular tree. They should be rewarded with a very good and unique skill that is on top of the talent tree [because people who mix skills tend to pick up only the best ones from each tree which is kinda unfair].

I disagree, personally, because I don't like sticking to one particular tree.

The real master transcends the given rules, the given paths. Sure, he or she must have walked them before, but transcending is only achieved when everything is left behind.

I have just seen the movie "Rango" on DVD this evening; it is an good example of this transcendence of a given thing. It is a "Hero's Journey" in literature.

And in real life a master of let's say crafting is only then one when he or she has transcended the given and needed rules needed to produce craft-work so that it becomes art.

Because Art is transcended Crafting.

Unless one very evil game programmer decided to make it impossible for anyone stupid enough to invest in only one skill tree of course

Maybe this sounds crazy but I liked the mixture of worthless and powerful skills next to each other. Forced me to consider very carefully.

He wasn't talking about forceful sticking to the particular class, he was talking about the reward for dedication to this class and tree.

And if you want a demagogy - fine then. Learning one specialty takes a lot of time and effort, becoming a master in it takes almost entire life (art, composing, writing, etc; and even if you dedicate your whole life to it you still can't say you have mastered it fully because there is always something to learn). And it is just one profession/direction. You are talking about many.

Such talk is just water under bridge.

The result of such an reward will be the spreading of "what's the best build ?" "which build should I take ?" "build suggestionss" threads and build herem, build there, build everyywhere - like in any action-RPG. It even spreads over to non-action RPGs ! Several people (an astonishingly lot for my impression) asked in the Drakensang forums "what's the best build for this game" ! Even although everyone should have known already that these gmes didn't require builds !

When he gets an reward for complete dedication for sticking to class and tree -

- THEN I want my own reward for non-sticking to ANY class & tree !

Then I'm fine with it.

This will be the case in literally every game with skill/talent system [be it defined classes or classless design]. There is plenty of Divine Divinity guides in which you can read what skills are good and what skills should be skipped.




Your reward is versatility. You are jack of all trades, master of none.

There always will be such threads no matter what. No reason to be mad about that :p


That was kind of the point of my post - each build has its own reward, multiclass as well.

But that's just the personal meaning and/or preferences of the maker of that guide !
In my opion their are NO skills a player must skipp BECAUSE of that SUBJECTIVE meaning !!

Then the character should get an reward for that, too.

In what respect should this be "unfair"? No Divinity game has ever had a PvP mode, and neither will D:OS have one, as far as I know. There's absolutely no need for characters to be (roughly) equally powerful, regardless of which skills they've learned.

In all of the previous Divinity games, the weakest characters were created by newbies who accidentally spent their points on low levels of the weakest skills from all trees. If anyone, it should be those characters who are getting a boost.

The classless system encourages playing unique characters and experimenting with unusual combinations. If choosing skills from different trees automatically meant that you'd miss out on "a very good and unique skill", many people would probably stick to the role models like in most other RPGs where you don't have this choice. Larian would be encouraging players not to use the freedom in skilling that has been an important feature of all Divinity games.

Let everyone choose the skills they want, whether these are the most powerful ones from each tree or the most powerful ones from one tree or the ones that suit best to the character the player has in mind. If specialization gets a unique reward, versatility should also get one.

TBH I find Estrogen's idea intriguing when applied to the divinity series. I'm imagining the DKS saga with a skill that will be available for warrior/priest/mage/ranger class whenever you have a given number of skills of certain levels in their tree. (e.g. 5 level 15 skills on the ranger tree unlocks an ultimate ranger ability etc.) It would be very interesting whenever you respec.

We can perceive it a glass half full or half empty. If the game was designed without heavy reliance on these overpowered, class specific/unique skill then everyone will still be happy and it becomes just a "bonus". However we can also see it as a limiting aspect that might discourage players from cross classing.

Also, there is something dangerous with the idea. If a developer does this on the per level basis then that would be very bad (like, the next skill requires x levels of previous skill). I wouldn't like that of course.

Well, the usual layout is that if you follow a certain skill tree, then you will get some sort of bonus. Almost every game has that, nowadays, even King's Bounty.

The underlying philosophy is that people should get rewarded if they manage to specialize. And stick to their once chosen path, no matter what. Flexibility, however, is not rewarded. The common view on that is that "anyone can do that" - and thus "Jack-of-all-trades" are always regarded inferior to specialists. Just look at (A)D&D games. I currently perceive it with DDO. Build Masters frown upon Multiclassing, "except when you really know what you do". Plus, Multiclassing in DDO doesn't get a a certain feat called in community a "capstone". Even worse, the game apparingly seems to be built so that non-specialists have a very, very, if not impossible time in what they call "end game", at least everyone there says so.

Is this a mirror of real life ? especially of the "nerd" cliché ? That specialists (and sometimes even *extreme* specialists ! are rewarded, and flexible ones not ? Who needs a flexible person in Nerd Life anyway ? You don't need to learn cooking, for example. There are Pizza delivery services.

Argh. But I disgress - in the end it's the Larian team's decision anyway.

You seem quite upset, Arik.

*Barrel rolls into thread*

The dragon tower in Ego Draconis was cool. Will there be anything like buying property or even castles? I believe Neverwinter Nights did this expertly and I would like to see this in other games (possibly this one?)

Then again, I guess I could just buy Dragon Commander for that lol...

Come to think of it. I didn't REALLY like Neverwinter Nights but somehow I always started a new game just to get to the point for me to run the castle...Commanding your peasants, soldiers and whatnot.

Yes I am.

And angry, too.

And no doubt.

I still love ya.

I dont know about the bonusses. The hidden "danger" is that being diverse and just trying/taking skills that you like etc, is being punished. Since you don't get any bonuses that way and thus its not worthwhile to be a jack of all trades.

Being diverse is probably already a bit punished trough gear. A pure warrior can go for strength+vitality and the heaviest of armors. A mage is going for intelligence and stuff. But a jack of all trades also needs to have all kind of stats.

And there are only a limited amount of skillpoints one gets, thus choices have to be made. Yes a battlemage is a bit of a warrior and a bit mage. But only a few specific mageskills etc.

As there probably is Food and Drinks in again, is there any Reaction planned on being drunk because of some heavy booze? I always wondered that the characters can drink wine, beer, and such stuff, and never seem suffer from ebriety. No fumbling, no staggering around, slurred speech, no hangover, no hiccup, and so on. There might be some level of intoxication that the char can handle, but has to be careful when getting over it. While it might endear you to the bartender, it doesn't improve your relations to the officer round the corner.
Probably a bit hard to get that into a good balance as not to be too annoying for the player...

Good idea.

All of the Divinity games had random loot, which is generally fine as it can add replay value. Divinity 2 introduced the concept of being able to choose certain quest rewards, which is a good idea. I suggest to expand this concept onto a skill that allows you to choose between different possible contents of barrels, chests and the like.

Random loot can often be useless for a specific character, e.g. when an archer finds lots of close-combat weapons or when a physically weak character gets many things with strength requirements. You can circumvent this by saving the game before you open containers (and reloading if you don't like what you find). Many players actually do this.

I'd like to have a skill that can magically adapt the random items in containers to the character's liking by offering more than one selection. The skill could be called the "Grasp of Fate" or "Adventurer's Luck" and leveling it could both provide more precise information on the objects and increase the number of options to choose from.

For example, at level 1 you would only get two options to choose from, and the game would only give you very general information about them, like how much gold, how many potions and how many other objects there are. At level 3, you could pick one of three selections, and the game would display the rarity and type of items, but not the effects they have. At level 5, you'd get four options to choose from and you could see which items exactly there are.

Technically, this would be a bit different from the choice of quest rewards, as you couldn't select single items, but the game would determine two to four full sets of random loot, and you could pick one such set.

Of course, the save-and-reload method would still be possible (and yield similar results if you don't want to spend skill points), but using the skill would be more convenient. And in comparison to someone who never saves and relaods before opening containers, it would allow you to get some random loot that better suits your character and playing style (or is just a bit more valuable, if none of the options contains anything that is actually useful to you). That's why I think it should cost skill points.

Our party members have dialogue with each other, and what I'd like to see is them having different expressions. If they're happy or joking, their character portrait in the dialogue should be smiling. If they're angry, the portrait should look angry.

I don't mind being restricted to a fixed character appearance in any case, but seeing actual emotions on the portraits faces would be great.

I admit that this is partly because I'll probably make a Let's Play sooner or later, and having different portraits would really help with that.

Didn't they mention in interview the ability to bake bread and invent your own weapon? Someone already suggested the ability to deconstruct weapon to simple pieces and use them to build new one (a-la Vagrant Story).

I do support this one. A lot.

To create a fearsome fourhanded sword? Together they can wield it

I'm not sure if you can actually create weapons. You CAN enhance them however you please though.

I loved random loot system in Divine Divinity and I would love to see it's improved version in Original Sin [mainly because it extends video game shelf life].

I like this idea of Lurker !! Good idea !!

I was first worried about the fact that Larian change to make a tactical RPG, but finally that could be à wonderful game (as the previous divinity). My only concern is about the skills and the evolution of the characters, the devlopers seems to give a great importance to magic in the next divinity and I think that one of the key point of divinity sucess is that you can build your character the way you want : if you want to create a ranger with only archery skills you can, if you want to create a warrior with spells you can, and both can be balanced. the non-fighting skills (for example the one that reduce the cost when you read someone thought in divinity 2 or hooking) are also interesting to progress in the adventure.

I would also like a scenarion as interesting and with all the divinity's humour.
I have great hope in the game editor too (I posted on the topic dealing with that)
Finally, I hope that we will have a good collector version !! the divinity 2 collector version was wonderful (even if the french one did not include the figure), the cloth map is a very fun goodie and the cd with divinity 2 OST is wonderful. So I hope that we will have such a good collector edition with divinity original sin (good luck to find a goodie as fun as the cloth map^^, may be a rivellon coin?...)

EDIT : I forgot something that I would like to see in divinity original sin (but il is impossible because it takes place before divine divinity) it is the crusade of the draconis order. I am very fascinated about this

Will Original Sin have an auto-mapping feature? In my eyes, exploring is much more fun when you can't see the whole map from the beginning. And after you haven't been able to play for a few days, it's much easier to continue exploring if only the map areas you've visited are revealed (whereas the rest of the map is black).

In-game maps should help with finding your way, but they shouldn't provide too much information too soon. If there are multi-level areas, like caves with an upper and a lower level, I'd like to suggest that the game provides separate maps for each level.

Unfortunately, the mini-map in was of so little use to me that I hardly ever looked at it. I liked the way handled mapping much better.

I also prefer that only the part of the map that you have explored is revealed.

+1

So the "flog of war" like in DD ?
+1

Yes, D:OS will have a fog of war on the map, like DD.

I one word :
SUPER !!

Some more ideas:

When water trickles into a crack in stone and freezes, the pressure from the ice makes it expand, damaging the stone. What would be neat is if an enemy is wet, you cast an freezing spell, and that damages the enemy's armour, making them easier to kill.


For sneaking (sneaking should be in the game, right):

A rain spell to put out torches and such outside, and a wind spell to put out lights inside (or outside), so you can put out lights. Obviously, there'd have to be a chance for enemies to detect or not suspicious activity.


I'd like to see a freezing spell that is cast in an arc around the character, so if the caster holds position, enemies that charge have a chance to slip and fall.


I think the Summon Rat spell from Divine Divinity should make a comeback as well. It could be moved by the player (while the player is controlling it, they can't move themselves) and used to check for traps, or to squeak on command to distract guards for a moment. This time, it really IS "just rats".


Spell combinations:

Rain + Earth = mud that slows movement and grants a chance to fall.

Rain + Ice + Air = Blast of hail

Rain + Fire + Air = Concealing steam(?) (Probably not that great an idea.)

Hello, I'm from Russia, I apologize for my English
I was surprised by the simplicity of the interface, more suitable for ordinary second-class RPG, but not suitable for old-school RPG. I think a lot of support, the interface needs serious treatment, special attention should be paid to the skills panel and display of life / mana.

While the user interface may be intended to be relatively simple, it is unlikely the artwork is finished even if the design is mostly set (and at this point in development the interface design is probably not finalized).


Welcome to the forum.

I hope so.


Thanks

I had to register to comment about this. Please do an interface close to the original Divine Divinity's one, if possible. Just seeing that screenshot makes me want to replay it. It was a great UI and hopefully the one for this new game will be just as nice and refined.

Also, the recent game play videos have been making me very excited, it looks as if you guys have recaptured the magic that made Divine Divinity such a special and great rpg with this new game. It is looking very tantalizing and can't wait to play it!

The menu bar could stand to be a little smaller than it was in DD. Aside from switching skills I rarely used any of the toolbar buttons, since keyboard shortcuts were easier.


Welcome to the forum.

Three requests at the moment :

• more information about the game, more PR, the games needs and deserves better "visibility" across the web
• more information about the toolset, some technical pointers about what formats you'll be using and such
• even if it's probably a bit late, go Kickstarter!

More will probably follow in time.

Best wishes.

I don't think you quite grasp the concept of 'kickstarting' something :P

Feel free to share your wisdom. I am sure it will prove to be enlightening.

EDIT : In the time that it takes to deliver your wisdom, I will just paste this here :

http://www.lar.net/2012/10/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-unexpected/




Please don't mind me.

That wasn't for DC or DOS. They are being developed on Larian's own money and will continue to be developed like that. Swen was talking about possible other project(s).

Well because the two games have seen so much development and aren't quite in its early stages anymore I'd say. Kickstarting a certain project is usually done to show big publishers that there is interest from the market.

And like Kein said, Larian is funding OS and DC on their own.

That doesn't mean that Larian hadn't considered crowdfunding even for DOS at one point. I'm fairly sure that Swen mentioned something along those lines somewhere. There are propably very good reasons motivating the decision not to use Kickstarter, don't get me wrong, but since I'm not aware of them, I simply brought it forth as a suggestion.

EDITED : It is my impression that there would be quite a number of people with the desire to show Larian their support. If it can't be done for DOS, that's fine. Maybe could it be done for their future projects instead. That's really all to it

As I reflect on my original comment it does come over as a bit rude, for which I aplogise if I caused any irritation.

In any case, I really dislike peanuts. Especially peanut butter. It's gross.

No harm done, and all to your credit. After consideration, I've edited my own message above.

They... didn't? Did you read Swen's blog closely? The whole point of his torments is to be undependable and make things on their own money. Kickstarter is something he was discussing in the concept itself.

I'll just acknowledge: the UI is stub. Especially the mana/health balls left and right...

No offense, but I am not interested in arguing with you for the sake of it over the Interwebz.

Yes, I regularly check and read Swen's blog, but neither you, nor me can read minds, or foretell what the future has in for Larian.

Last time I checked, this is a list of wishes, or suggestions if you will, and if you can't see what that implies, I can't help you.

I just wanted to clear up possible rumors/implications that DOS and/or DC will require backing via Kickstarter.
I never said they don't consider possibility of using Kickstarter for some project in future.

What I want to know is ... what will be the (minimum) system requirements for this game? Grosso modo is fine allready. It's just that I've got now a laptop that's getting old & needs his retirement. It would be nice to know with what I could play this game....

No! All things are possible. You played Arcanum?
I think that makes the game purely turn-based unnecessary. The ability to switch between turn-based and real-time must be available. If not in the game, at least in the editor.

Personally, I don't like the word "must" here.
It's like the Borg : All games will belong to us - the RTS genre defenders.

I agree with Pointman. I do not understand why all modern RPG-makers are eager to make the interface almost Paint. What could be easier? Or in modern developers do not have the money to pay the artist for the normal interface?

Excuses such as "not to be distracted from the game" is not accepted. This is as absurd as the statement piranha bayts "we make music in this part of the Gothic gnarled , so it does not distract from the gameplay."

Sorry, I'm just an uneducated student from Russia. Russia. Have you heard about that? Well, vodka, balalaika, bears ...

Hi there,
I would appriciate it if my two main wishes could be realized:
1st: I would like to install and play the game offline und without steam or others directly from CD as I did it until up to now with dd, bd, Ego Draconis and so on.
2nd: I use the mouse with my left hand and the keyboard with my right hand. So it would be great if i could choose the keys of the keyboard without restrictions for the use of the keys and in the best purpose for the handling of the keyboaard with the right hand.
With my best regards

It's great to have a wealth of components for formulas/recipes/enchantments/potions. It's even greater with a comprehensive in-game help function.

1) There should be a list of known formulas that is always accessible, so players can check which options they have and which components they should be looking for. Numbers for components you have might be highlighted in green, numbers for those you don't have might be highlighted in red.
2) When placing the mouse over a component, a tooltip might list the known formulas it is used in, so players quickly know how useful it (currently) is. This should work both in the inventory and in the trading screen.

Combined, this would make it quite convenient to use the whole system. And these are just the basics. If you want to get fancy, you can

3) add tick boxes to the list of formulas - if ticked, players won't use the corresponding formula (anymore) and don't want it to show up in the tooltips.
4) enable accessing the list of formulas in the trading screen, and clicking on a formula lets you buy all components for one use (shift-clicking might let you buy only the components you are still missing for one use).
5) add general tooltip infos for unknown formulas depending on your alchemy [or other appropriate] skill, like "Used for brewing powerful healing potions" or "Used for enchantments providing additional fire protection".

Very good idea Lurker ! I'm in for this !
In Divinity II: I missed such things like this a bit while busy with Formula's for Alchemy, Enchantments, etc ...

My attitude towards this game has changed but I would immediately buy it if Arhu is in it

That cat has really intrigued me since Divine Divinity.

Wow, that is one awesome avatar you have there, J747L!

And I'd love to expand upon my wishlist, but I can't, since I can't (don't want to) play Divine Divinity because of the music bug. Please fix ... please?

Actually Arhu is in the game again. A much younger version of Arhu. Although he isn't a cat yet when you meet him.

Thanks Arhu (oh boy that felt a bit weird, I'm having a conversation with powerful mage-cat ). Story behind that avatar is, that's supposed to be "you"(arhu) but I blundered on the blue eyes. I was a bored that day so I added Zandalor's hat.

@Myrthos, that's good news but something crossed my mind... err... I hope the players aren't/weren't responsible for turning him into a cat and all.

Woah nelly.

I hope we are. Arhu isn't Arhu unless he is on all four and furry

I don't know if it's possible, but I'd appreciate a graphical filter option to tone down the chromatic values in the game. Colors seems too saturated and therefore the look borders on cartoony. I prefer a more realistic aesthetic. Something closer to the original Divine Divinity color palette would be ideal.

It will be possible to customize the characters in the raw game? (without mods) I like the original two characters, gorgeous and interesting both, I just wonder for more physical variants, the name, and those kinds of aesthetic things.

Yes, there will be character customization (and possibly more of it, depending on how the kickstarter does).

From the D:OS FAQ:


Welcome to the forum.

My current wishlist (most important issues):

+ character, morality and background history for henchmen/companions (could react on player's actions)
+ more and even better dialogue options
+ more well-written quests
+ even more funny and interactive things to explore
+ even better world coherency and NPC reactivity
+ weresheep

I want CLOAKS and HOODS plz u cant make game without them they are just too awesome.

Stuff over here for my Wishlist: http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=462189#Post462189

I want Cursed Abbey 2.0.

Masochistic and unforgiving.

Me too !

Or a Castle to explore, a castle maked of Ice or in wood with a diep dungeon beneath the castle walls, but well hidden entrance to the dungeon ! But let's say some books and/or NPC's know a few things a dungeon exist, but where? That up to the player to discover and collect all the clues and bring them together to find out How to open a secret dungeon ... behind a wall of ice or whatever ...
O sorrry, my fantasy take a loop with me

Maybe we will see Cursed Abbey before it was cursed?

That was one of the most atmospheric locations amongst all the RPGs I played.

_

Hello,

So I'm new here (though I've been following the game almost since its announcement), and though I don't like to intervene on forums, I feel it's time to do so. The game is in an advanced state of development and we can reasonably give ideas without influencing the developers too drastically (fans might have good ideas, but I don't believe these ideas should systematically be followed, to preserve the identity of the game).
This game have such potential, it would be an heresy not to share ideas. Who know, maybe it can help.
A lot of ideas I wanted to share have already been proposed anyway, so I won't contribute much to the subject.

Here we go :

- Treasure hunts, with load of secrets, traps and powerful hidden skills (which could only be used once or twice a
day, given their power).

- A Coliseum where you can fight powerful opponents (and, why not, other players). You could place bets on fight, establish rules (with penalties if they're infringed), recruit new henchmen, win rare items/skills, which could be part of a treasure hunt side quest.
I guess you understood where the idea comes from (Final Fantasy).

- We don't know much about combats. When about to hit an enemy, do we know how much chances we have to hit it (in %) or is it an unknown parameter ?
Are there different kinds of positionning (height), and can it influence the chances of hitting ? Can you use items during combats, and if yes can you give them to your partner while fighting ?

- You said there would be no mini-games (Project Update #9, I quote "(27 min) No mini-games. Lockpicking will be item based and dexterity based.".
Will it be possible to design mini-games through the editor, or does it require a modification of the game coding ?
Talking about the editor, I assume you can design your own combination of items with it, may they emanate from the Vanilla game or from mods, right ?

- I might have missed it somewhere, but is the magic only elemental ? Aren't there neutral spells ? I believe it would allow a much more creative content to provide us with non-elemental affiliated magics (I'm not only talking about the wizard but also the warriors/survivors, who can use Source magic as well)

- You said we can "sneak". How does it work ? Are there stealth sequences ? That would be awesome ! But then, how does it work ? NPCs have a radius of sight, right ? Of hearing as well I believe. Are there indications regarding this radius in-game, or do we need to guess it by ourselves ?

- The possibility to become a merchant, to develop a commercial empire. With your money, it could be interesting to help people...
Or to become a tyrant, to corrupt people, buying real estate, to expel citizen not buying their rent...
Ok, maybe it's too much. We're not playing a SimCity-like game after all.
But the idea of doing something else with your money than just buying equipment should be considered in my opinion.

- J747L talked about the editor on page 2, to which you answered that "The way our story system is set up allows you to link as much levels as you want together and still put them together in one storyline".
I might have misunderstood it, but does it means that 2 people can share their works and put it as a single campaign ?
Ex: 2 or more people want to make a huge campaign, so they split the work. Person A works on the northern part of the map, person B works on the southern.
Can they, at the end of the day, gather all what they've done into one single file ? If yes, how ? By "copy-pasting" everything that has been modified on a given scale ?
If not, well that's definitely something I'd want to see in the editor.

- Stabbey pointed out the balance of the skills on page 3, I support this as well. Please don't give us skills "for beginners"
that we will put aside by the end of the game because they're not powerful/useful anymore.

- Lurker, still on page 3, mentioned the possibility to spare ennemies, I must admit that would be awesome IF it has consequences.

- Kein on page 4 asked for a card game (taking the example of FF8, which I loved as well), I support this idea, it'd be cool to add such a side quest/activity, on the model of the good old FF VIII/FF IX where you had to hunt for cards. It wasn't just for the fun of dueling NPC, it also had a point since you could create rare items from them (though I must admit, I never did, I loved my cards too much to sacrifice them).
If you don't want to make such a complex system, it's okay, but a simple card game system would be good anyway, since it would add a basis on which modders could work, if they want to make their own card game (be it another simple one or a more complex one on the model of FFs).
Well, I'm thinking of the cards, but it doesn't mean another system of collectibles would not do the job.
However, considering you've excluded the presence of mini-games, I guess it won't be taken into account.

- Still on the good ideas, the mistakes. Flixerflax talked a bit about it on page 5. I completely agree with him, there should not be errors which you could undo. You should have to deal with it, and progress despite your faults/behavior. The system of failure/success often ruin the fun of playing in my opinion, making you feel you have to complete the game in one single way.

- As for "boundaries", stressed by Arhu on page 5, on the example of Zelda, the idea is awesome, I truly wish it could be integrated but I don't think it reasonably could.
Let me explain : In such games as Zelda/Metroid/Metroidvanias, you're not controlling an almighty being.
You might be extremely powerful by the end of the game, for sure, even godlike, but it's really a deep-end achievement.
Taking the example of Zelda, there's this rock you can't move. Link will need his gauntlets to lift it and throw the rock away, granting him the access to a new area.
In Divinity, you're imbued with elemental powers since the beginning, though they might be "nerfed" and not deal much damage. There's a fire blocking the path ? You summon a rain.
A rock ? Telekinesia.
A tree ? Fire.
You need to interact with a distant object ? Here's this long range spell/weapon.
There aren't much situation in which you could reasonably be blocked by such trivial things, since you powers make you an almost godlike entity. So unless you put a huge obstacle on the path which your magic could not influence, I don't see how such an idea could be implemented on the world. If you can lift a moutain, what keep you from throwing a village in the ocean ?
Now, I think it could be by-passed with objects somehow immuned to magic, but there need to be a solid explanation as to why there are such immunities.
You can also play on space and time (dungeons-only, to keep the world free from these kind of... Drastic changes).
Anyway, I'm not creative, if there can be plausible boundaries, I wouldn't spit at it.



Ok, enough for today.

P.S. : I almost forgot, big support for the Abbey 2.0 !

We should know at least an average chance to hit. If we are fighting a new type of opponent, we may not know enough to be given the actual chance to hit.

You can use items during combat (loot, drop gold as a distraction for some types of opponents, etc). I don't know about giving another character items in combat, but normally you can just drag and drop an item onto a character's portrait to place something in their inventory.

There are other forms of magic, like curses or warrior/survivor skills.


Welcome to the forum.

For my part, I really liked Fallout 2, so I would like Divinity: Original Sin to take its very good parts:

.I know it's your second stretch goal, but I think it is really really important: A complete way to define traits, talents and skills. See Fallout 2: you have many choices, and that influence the way you play without making the game too difficult or too easy. Also each 4 levels you can pick an new talent that help a bit more to make your character better.

.Prevent the issue of leveling: I'm not sure I'm clear, but the issue of leveling (as in DKS) must be fought. In Fallout 2, I think there is no levelling issue because when you are skilled enough to use weapons correctly, you give your skill points to less useful attributes (but that attributes still are interesting). When your level goes up you have more HP, ... but the damages you do and your resistance are mostly the results of your weapon and your armor. Since you find the best weapons and armors with the main quests, the issue of leveling is prevented: A weak character that did the main quests can finish the game (maybe not the funniest way for example).

.Add several way to do quests: For example in Fallout 2, if you have a clever character you can convince people of doing things instead of you, not to fight, ... or you can do the quest by killing all ennemies. There is often an evil way and a good way that are quite different and that can lead to other quests.

.Have the ability to change the armor of your companions (you name them henchmen?) and their weapons. Also have some options to define the way they'll help you. If you can't change the armor of you companion, you know that he'll die at one moment so it's sad. They must also have the ability to use potions if you gave them in their inventory.

I know that you planned to do some of these in your stretch goals, but I deeply think that they are extremely important to make the game fun to play. For example in Fallout 2 you have pleasure to do again the game but with a stupid character or by playing evil, ...

If none of you played Fallout 2, then I advise you to have a look at it: see the way you can define your character and have a look at the solutions to see the extend of the influence of these choices on the quests (examples: 'if you have 8 in intelligence, you can also solve the quest by...', 'if you play a stupid character then that part will be quite different: ...', 'with 80% in science you can do ... with 125% in science you can do...') . Also have a look on the diffent way to solve the quests (evil/good/good but with not a very good result/...)

Good luck to make this game the best ever!

EDIT: So about leveling, in my mind it would be better to use skills point to diminish the chance of missing the target when sending a fireball and to diminish the use of mana, whereas the power of the fireball would be decided by the level of the spell you use (you find better spells when doing the main quests),
instead of having the skill points that decide the power of your fireball.

A suggestion pilfered from youtube regarding the Larian Studios - update song.

quote by origosis

There needs to be a door in the back of some building. hidden in the middle of a city in the game. Or a village off the beaten path.. There is nothing that makes this door special. You cannot even open it, but if go up to it. and i mean as close as you can get to it.. you will faintly hear this song playing.. in game.

A few more thoughts :

- The possibility to merge two pieces of armor (or two weapons), provided they're of the same type, into a new one, which retain the skin of your choice between those two (you choose the stats as well).
Ex: Armor A looks good, but has low stats. Armor B is not my type, but it has much better stats. I fuse Armor A & Armor B to get Armor C, which looks like Armor A, but with the better stats from Armor B.
This way, you can play with your favorite armor/weapon without having to care for efficiency.

- To put buckets on the head of NPCs to blind them, so as to rob them with absolute effectiveness.
No... No ! Not the fireball, I'm kidding ! But, a joke about it would be cool.
(For those who didn't understand here is an example of a bucketheaded NPC).

- A duck of imperial wide. Because the time has come.


Now it gets fancy.


- A "Hardcore" (call it the way you want) difficulty, with hunger/thirst/rest to manage. And even your washing.
I don't need to develop any further the concept of thirst/hunger/rest, it has already been made in other games, you got the idea.
Hunger/Thirst = Less stamina, health, strength,...
Not sleeping will make you slow, you'll often miss your target, your mind will be weakened, ...
As for washing yourself, it's simple : The stinkier you are, the more agressive some NPCs will be toward you. You'd have a "Scent gauge", which would range from "Fresh flower" to "Olfactive nuisance".
Basically, if you take a shower regularly and use fragrances, NPCs (humans mostly) will take time to talk with you, but should you "miss" your bath time twice and they'll start being hostile, walk/run away from you, chase you or hire an assassin. You can be such a problem for citizens that the "legitimized use of force" would be necessary to prevent further civil disorders.
At the mean time, your smell can help you socialize with other races, such as dwarves, orcs, ...
...Or unlock scent-related interactions, whatsoever. For instance, you could be sneakier in a camp of orcs, but as furtive as an elephant in a city.

- Something I've thought of, which sounded fun to me, would be a "Dread gauge".
To sum it up, your character hide himself and start to terrorize the NPC/group he wants to attack (hurl things out of nowhere, scream, imitate a monster, no matter the artifice as long as you scare him).
The more you scare him, the more you fill his "Dread gauge".
Then you can decide whether to attack, once the first level of the gauge is attained, or to further play on his nerves.
You then can jump next to him and yell "MOOOOO !" (Yes, like the cow !), making him run away from this location for two turns (or more depending on the filling of the gauge).
Your partner can jump at the same time for a bonus debuff, such as a weakened mind/speed/whatever, or wait and jump to your foe a turn or two later, yelling "MOOOO !" as well (or "BAAAAAH !" for deeper panic) to extend the running away for a bonus turn.
Now for the requirements, you must be perfectly stealthed. Should your mind game be discovered, and you're good for problems (a penalty of any kind, a warm and welcoming place in jail if your target was a citizen). The more you scare your target, the more paranoid will he turns, making him suspicious to anything, which will increase the difficulty of scaring him without being discovered.
Do not expect hiding yourself in a barrel and rolling on the floor as if it was inconsequential.
You can also choose not to attack your prey, but still yell "MOOOO !" at him and toy with him, out of sheer sadism, but beware of the consequences .

Choosing the Main Characters Race.

It's a major bugbear of mine in Fantasy and Sci-Fi games that have other races, i don't want to play a human. I Just don't like playing as humans.

I'd like to be able to change the skin color of my character, maybe make him or her brown or black, with hair options, possibly.

As for me:

1)visible footsteps
2)panic - everytime an opponet(humans mostly) will be hit by a specific ability there will be a chance that he will start to panic, run around screaming and thus losing his fighting capabilities for a few turns

and most importantly:

3) additional reward for every backer(or every one that pledged enough to recieve the game) - an ability to change the appearance of currently worn armor and weapons into unique backer-only one. The pants and potion sound great but they look like something of one use only, whereas I think that backers would love to show off with awesome-looking armor or weapons.

Tbh, I'm against the idea. The bonus rewards (and cheaper prices) from Kickstarter are more than enough to me, and I think it'd be unfair to widen the gap between us and normal customers.

1 A armor of dark gods and a two handed flanged mace of evil and a quest chain associated with the 2.
2 A lot of bio-diversity i like hunting big game and crafting armor from monster and beast hides and bones, animals should hunt to and do other things not sit and wait :P.
3 The power of the great lich unlimited necromantic knowledge.
4 A series of quests for a take over of the under world from the current Satan.
5 Sit on Satan's throne singing "The devil is a loser and hes my #$%!^.
6 Enslave all of those pesky tree huging elves!
7 A tall foreboding tower in the swamp, where i can make freaky experiments on living subjects.
8 Build a powerful mercenary unit to collect taxes from all my conquered lands.
9 Open a portal to a unknown world and throw a undead dragon in it .
And a lot more "EVIL" things

I want to see a stronghold/fortress assault with a bunch of NPC's fighting each other and you helping them out (or not). Like your avatars could be the designated special forces unit during a siege to assist in the most endangered points...

I just love stuff like that!

Stronghold 1, Stronghold Crusader, Stronghold 2 and 3 awesome games. RELEASE THE BOILING OIL!
OH and who can forget this! Please add a new Pandora's box PLEASE!

Other things I've thought of :

- Weight-based puzzles . It'd be cool to take advantage of this feature (weight) and to propose enigmas revolving around it. In addition, I think it'd be an equally good idea to design puzzles which need to be solved with both of your characters.
More globally, I like dungeons where you need to use your BRAIN and not just vanquish them, get a key, open a door and keep on vanquishing. The perfect balance between riddles and battles were the good old Legend of Zelda, to me.
Add to it a pinch of exploration, a fitting music and a solid lore, and you get a perfect dungeon.
Oh and, btw, disable the use of pyramids inside the dungeons ? It could be easily exploitable don't you think, if you can just throw your pyramid to a point otherwise unreachable, thus allowing you to artificially bypass the puzzle ?

- Is the presence of "emotes" considered and can it adds to the gameplay ? I guess it could be exploited, provided it'd have a concrete impact (or just for fun, though I think it'd get boring on the short-term).
For instance, NPCs could react to a "Menace" emote and trigger new dialogues. You could push your partner off a cliff (to learn him the arcanes of flight if he asks you), scream in the middle of the fair to distract people while you're robbing them with your second character/partner (but then you'd be considered nuts and get arrested for further inquiries), etc...

- Considering the lore behind the Phantom Forest, I'd love our characters to be hunted down by one powerful foe (on the model of the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, if you've had the chance to play it you know what I mean by "hunted down"). Something invincible, relentlessly stalking you, appearing when you expect him the less, and that you can only hope to knock out (assuming you have the guts to fight him).
On a similar subject, I wish there could be an intensely creepy music associated to the Phantom Forest, something disturbing, unforgettable (if you've played Super Metroid, you probably remember this ).

- Knowing that enemies won't respawn at all, the following suggestion is quite useless, but if the editor allows the possibility of an "infinite respawn", then it mights be interesting : If a foe is no match for you, you could kill him instantly, without having to engage a fight that we know is already won. It'd be a save of time.

- I don't know if the following idea is already implemented (I guess it is) : In multiplayer, clicking on your partner's portrait should center the camera on him. It'd be useful to help him if he needs your help to solve an enigma, or if you're waiting for his help in a battle but have nothing better to do than to spy him.

- Don't make items glow to make them more visible. It'd ruin the feeling of exploration.

- If you flee a fight, the enemy replenish his health/mana. I think it's the most viable option to prevent the abuse of the feature.

- It'd be fun to make a few NPCs (essentials to a quest) run away at your sight (if you look intimidating for example), and that the only way to catch them would be to cleverly trap the area (by viciousely placing obstacles such as barrels at key points).

Interactivity

Something I'd like to see about interactivity is that NPCs talk about it more, or about items and mundane, but real things, in general. I mean, we can do all sort of things in the world, move all sorts of objects -- but I'm wondering if it's "just there" or if it actually has meaning for the NPCs in relation to the player characters.

Simple things, like "Could you fetch me that stool? I'm feeling dizzy." And you do, because you can. Or a master smith telling his prentice about various weapon types, or guards practicing with them on different types of targets.

Usually RPGs are very pragmatic in that regard. You got your quests, NPCs that talk about quests, locked doors that need to be opened and enemies to be killed. Most of it is story or combat related, the artwork and items themselves are only "there" (since there is no interactivity anyway).

While reading through the Codex preview and the bugged bed in Divinity ...


- Bedrolls & Resting

Can we have bedrolls? Need to have that if you want to camp outside -- if you don't, you'll get frostbite (or mana/health won't refill to full after a not-so-good night's sleep).

Different qualities of rest places could be interesting, too. Sleep in a premium bed in an inn and get stat bonuses for an entire day (could choose the quality based on $$ like in real life); sleep in cold, damp corner of a dungeon and get cranky in the morning.


- Bucket helmets & Pumpkins

If you put a too large bucket on your head without working on it first, perception is reduced to zero.

Same for all other sorts of things you can put on your head, like blankets or white sheets to dress as a ghost.



Maybe different types of helmets should reduce perception too, somewhat -- shouldn't matter too much for a melee fighter, but a ranger would be better served with a simple skull cap or leather cap than a full plate helmet with shut visor.

The other PC will react to silly hats upon seeing them (laugh, for instance).


- Darkness effects

If your PC is affected by a darkness spell (or big bucket on their head), the screen gets really dark. Some other UI effects for various spells could be fun, too. Like fear disabling all but the flee buttons, crazy illusion spells and so on.

Embrace the darkness, if they get the 1M dollars wether will afect spells so maybe on a fogy night necromancy will be more potent. That would be nice

Amazing animal isnt it I wish Larian has gryphons next to dragons.

I'd like to ask a question but did no found appropriate topic. So let it be here.
The question is about co-op game.
How it would be implemented- i mean if i have one copy of the game and want to play with my wife - will it be possible to install the game on two different PCs and play co-op? or it would be installed only on one computer and we'll need to play from different controllers? or co-op regime is accessible only with 2 copies of the game?

You should buy two copies (which is quite cheap if you buy during the kickstart). The general rule of thumb is that if you have a drm free copy of the game you can install it on multiple computers but you should only be running one copy at a time.
-
I think that is why they are selling the dual-pack so cheap on the kickstart; for people like you....

I'd love to see some sort of combat log. Also a hex grid made out of the terrain instead of typical bright lines.

In some cases, there are items that are supposed to be hidden for the player to explore and actually search. What I think would be a good reward to teach players to search would be a flag for pickupable/interactable items: "Does not show up on press of ALT key".

Yeah I too believe that the alt key shouldn't give away everything because otherwise you'll be pressing that thing the entire playthrough.

I'll repeat what I said in the other thread, PLEASE put in optional keyboard movement outside of battles! WASD would be nice

- What about the possibility to modify the inclination of an item while holding it, using the arrow key ? That could lead to even trickier puzzles.

- A return of the Animal Statues, from DD, but with an improved usefulness (not hard I guess) : With the animal empathy feature incoming, we could have more developped interactions with animals if they recognize you as a peer. Let's say that they'll be inclined to help you if they can trust you, leading them to share a few secrets.
Another use of it would be to access new parts of an area which would otherwise be out of reach (Ex: Holes, sewers, anything that require you to be tiny).

- Blood should have the same properties as water (I have no idea to what extent will the gore be added, but if you cut an enemy's member, it is to be expected that the ground will be covered by his blood. It could be interesting to use it as a tool rather than a stylized effet).
If you can turn the gore off, the effect would be disable as well, of course.

- Deeper interactions with some objects (Playing piano for example, why not even singing while your partner is playing).
Yes I know it's useless (unless it's integrated in a quest ?), it's rather for the sake of having fun for a second.

- I remember some foes from Final Fantasy that requested something from you, an item, while fighting. If you did help them (it was part of a side-quest), you would get goodies.
It lead me to think, could you help an enemy while fighting, and if yes what would be the consequences ? Would he change his mind ? What about if you could do something else than fighting ?
Maybe... It could be an idea for a side-quest.

- An auction house, which would sometimes organize an auction and where you could have the chance to buy rare items.

- UFO ? (Mardaneus, watch out for your statue next time)

I think that this is not much of a cost in term of time and money, and it is very important for immersion.

I am talking about variation of avatars, 3d models and responds from irrelevant (or less important) NPCs. It really broke my immersion when I see that all citizens, merchants, gards, bandits and other npcs look all the same and have all the same answers about particilur topics. I think it is really not much of a job to ask a couple of Larian artists to spend a couple of days in creating a bunch of small avatars icons, that will be linked to those npcs.

The same thing is for items, I don't like when I see that all items look identical (having a dozen of swords that are identical , and the only difference is in stats isn't cool at all).

I think work on this does not require a lot of resources in terms of people needed, time and money, and will do a lot for the immersion.

I'd love flying companions like a Gryphon, Dragon/Drake (dragon probably too big) or something similar. Also pet naming too?

I wish to be able to rotate the camera (at least a bit) in game.

Zep--

The camera angle is fixed. Once that decision was made the artists were able to take some shortcuts (not creating walls, etc, that would be hidden), so officially supporting camera rotation would trigger a lot of extra work. Someone from Larian did say that it would probably be possible for someone to use the editor to mod the camera, though.


Welcome to the forum.

Hotkeys, lots and lots of hotkeys. Let me press 1 to choose the first dialog option, things like that.

I know the game will not support controllers, but if we have everything hotkeyed it makes it easy to cobble together a profile in Pinnacle or Xpadder.

When they were showcasing the editor in the stream, they have shown camera rotating and I think David mentioned that in custom created modules, there will be no restrictions on camera rotation unless specifically set in the options.

On combat

In the play videos it was shown that a player could fire for example a fireball at an NPC, which would then start combat mode. Hopefully this same feature is going to be available to NPCs and monsters too. Some ideas:

The local merchants ask you to collect debts from some guy. What they forget to tell you is that they have asked a few other people to collect the same debt and none have been seen since. You could ask around to learn the truth, but because you're not very smart, you just go to guy directly. So you question him and maybe threaten him and so on and he says that OK, he's going to get the money because he doesn't want any trouble. So the conversation ends, but instead what he does is throw a Bomb of Paralyzation at you and kill you.

It should also be possible for enemies to escape combat if you don't know where they are. For example:

You're strolling through the woods when all of a sudden your best-buddy companion Richard the Noble Knight hits you with his sword, starting combat mode. He won't give up, forcing you to kill him. Combat ends. So you're wondering what happened, when your character all of a sudden starts walking by himself into the mouth of the Controlling Brain. Since you were exploring the woods by yourself and your companion is now dead, there won't be combat mode and you cannot bring Scarlet in time to save you from this fate.

So...
1. Allow NPCs and monsters to get a first shot at you before starting combat mode. Even if it's only through scripting it would open some possibilities.
2. Allow bad things to happen outside of combat mode if there is no real combat happening. Like your character gets paralyzed by a trap but no one is attacking you, or your character get mind-controlled.

I second this. Hopefully, they are considered as pets in the D:OS game.

Optional bikini armour.

I already have my wishlist which can be found here:
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=27954&Number=450451#Post450451

Since this game is a prequel, most of the suggestions I made cannot be implemented. To summarize and without including the sequels, here's the list (I'll cross out what is going to be implemented):

Mini-games - There's a fishing rod, a harvest moon kind of fishing game could be nice.
Romance or relationship development - dialogue interactions w/ your companion implements this

Mind reading - Source hunters can also mind read too?

Hunting we shall go - Phantom forest seems to implement it.

More "plays" - I hope the 400k stretch goal will implement more quests like this.

Battle tower companions - Shelter at plane homestead implemented this.

Side quest consequences - It happened when the fire of the burning ship in cyreal got extinguished and people celebrated it. I know other parts of the game will have this.

Good ending/Bad ending choices - self explanatory. increases replayability.

In addition, Kirill sidequest could be nice.

Since there was a lot of drama about the above.

Why hasn't anybody commented on Scarlett wearing high heels yet?

I noticed this yesterday and it bothers me more than the "armour" ever could (but I'm still not going to whine for it to be changed) and am sort of surprised the "bikini armor doesn't protect" guys/gals haven't talked about high heels not being very practical on cobblestones or beaches (I live in Ghent and I can tell you that high heels + cobblestones can be quite funny for the onlookers but decidedly less so for the person wearing them).

I think larian said on reddit that this is not possible, the ending is fixed since its a prequel and you cant change the story of DD or D2.

All I want now is a female orc companion. Maybe a windmill companion, too.

Cmon People. I WANT CLOTHING! Remember old Morrowind, where u could wear any clothing you wanted and above it armor? That's like my favorite part of the game. The ability to change the character in the way you want it!

Well, a bit better than Morrowind since every item of clothing in that was just a different coloured rag. But I agree, different clothing choices is a surprisingly fun part of RPGs, and fits right in with roleplaying. I quite liked how Phantasy Star Universe handled it, with quite different styles for the different cultures in the game, as well as different brands for clothing and weapons depending on what planet they originated from.

I also liked how in Morrowind you had different slots for left and right glove and left and right pauldron. Makes for a great feeling of a ragtag group when the other guy has leather left glove and a left sandal and the other has an iron right pauldron.

Context-sensitive mouse pointer

This one is from adventures, mostly. Divinity 1 didn't have this and sometimes it wasn't clear at all what a click did. With Original Sin being highly interactive, a context-sensitive mouse pointer would make a lot of sense and provide "tactile" UI feedback.

• Moving
  
  Click anywhere & hold: arrow pointing in the direction you are walking; larger arrow if you are running (Ultima VII apparently had three speeds and used RMB for moving, LMB for world interaction)
• NPC interaction
  • hover over NPC: mouth --> talk (default)
  • sword --> attack
• Item interaction
  • hand --> click = activate (default)
  • gripping hand --> click & hold = move (like in Adobe Reader, feels very natural)
  • eye or magnifying glass --> inspect object (default for unmovable objects that can be inspected)

Sight range & light sources

I'm not sure how sight range is being used in regard to the Fog of War, but as mentioned in the Primary stats thread I'd like it to be removed from skills & stats if possible. Then it can be used for purely atmospheric reasons, depending on time, place and weather conditions, now that the final stretch goal was reached. Using hearing (or awareness, as I'd rather call it) should be enough for skills / stats purposes.

• Daylight: full sight range (whole screen, but at least a comforable max sight range)
• Dusk or dawn: diminishing or increasing sight range
• Night time or in dungeons: close sight range.
• Heavy rain or fog: medium sight range

Amberstar (screenshot), Ambermoon and Albion (?) did it like this.

Using light sources such as torches, lanterns or light spells would increase the sight range. As they diminish in power, so would the sight range be reduced slowly.


Bonus: more atmosphere during the night and in dungeons, fun possibilities with blindness spells etc.

Skills

- It could be interesting to "merge" two summons into a single one, more powerful, with differents effects.
The pool of HP would merge as well.
Also, there could be "special summons" (Obtainable through side quests), with special attributes and effects.
I've put these ideas into a rudely drawn scheme (with a few ideas on what fusions could be envisaged) :


About the evolution of skills :
- It'd be cool if their visuals could evolve (let's say every 2 levels) to reflect the gain in power.
- Each skills could have two branches, a variation of the skill with a slightly different effect/AP cost/Mana cost.
- I guess it's trivial, but maybe we could be given the option to choose which level of a skill we want to use (mana management) ?
Here's another scheme :


- Special spells/summons which would require to be cast in duo/trio/quatuor ? The effects would slightly vary according to everybody's affinity toward each others.

- Diversity on the objects which can be thrown (By diversity, I mean "effects". If you throw a sword at an enemy, the damages would increase if your sword is powerful, for instance ; some items could contain powerful and unique spells of single use).


Fights

- The ground influence the cost of AP (Ex: Moving on sand, mud or snow should slow you, which lead to an increased cost of AP).
I'm specifically talking about the environment here, not the "modified ground" which result from spells.
Tactically speaking, we would gain in depth.

- I'm 100% sure it'll be added, but the cost of AP for each actions should clearly appear.


Miscellaneous

- Instead of sending your companions to the homestead where he'd do nothing and turn wild, you could decide to send him somewhere in the world, where he'd sell his services to someone (Ex: Working as an apprentice for an alchemist, who could then discover new potions and sell you his goods at a discount price).

- I remember cats hunting chickens and rabbits in DD (Common sense, they're the masters of the Universe).
Now that we have a schedule for NPCs, it'd be necessary for these NPCs not to talk to you when they're in danger, or at least not to stop running away from the threat. Their dialogue should also reflect the menace.

Sitting

Haven't actually seen this, but characters and NPCs who can walk, run, fight and sleep in beds surely can sit on chairs and benches, right? With a highly interactive world and day/night cycles, it would seem a bit strange if all they could do was stand around ...



Ultima VII had it. I think characters in the game would sit automatically when they moved over a space that had a chair or the like on it.

-----------------------------------------


Like item combinations, but with summons. Combining elements, essentially. Sounds interesting!



Yep -- like the "Rain" spell in the D:OS presentation videos was like a real tempest. Could start out with smaller versions, like a tiny rain cloud, evolving into bigger versions.




Yes, this was one point mentioned in the 12 ways to improve turnbased combat thread. Lots of possibilities there. And yes, there needs to be good visual feedback as to action point cost for various actions and circumstances.

I hope our frineds at Larian are taking this thread very seriously, because there is a lot of excellent proposals

I found this annoying as well, but after all the fuss over the concept art, I thought bringing up the issue was more trouble than it was worth. I'm assuming there'll be non-high-heeled armours in the final game.

I'm going to reference Final fantasy a lot.

I'm just curious what is the 5th element when combining fire, earth, water, and wind. Will we summon captain planet (perhaps we need heart) or are we going to create a FF spell such as Ultima (non elemental spell).

I second the evolution of skill and the effects are apparent as with Arhu's statement. Fire, Fira, Firaga from FF or blizard, blizara, blizaga...

Well to me the fifth element would be the Aether, but I restrained my thoughts, for if I consider we can merge more than 2 types of summons, the possibilities would be way too vasts.
Moreover, I have no idea what would result from a combination of, let's say, Water + Fire + Earth (if I stick to the 4 classical elements).

You can probably add a Water + Earth combination (Wooden or Mud Elemental), but then I have no idea what to do with Air + Fire.
An Incendiary Elemental maybe ? But it'd be close from the fire one I think.

It's unlikely that there will be both flat and high heels, it fundamentally changes the character's posture (which is why women wear them, the change of posture makes your legs appear longer and in today's world long legs == sexy) so it'd be a lot of work to change.

Not wanting another round of drama is why I posted it in here, rather than in another topic btw, because then all the trolls would come crawling out of the woodwork...

1. Since there are NPC Schedules and such, it might make waiting for a specific NPC to show up irritating. When you click on a bed, there should be a rest option with a slider for how long you want to rest. I wouldn't mind a wait option like Skyrim where you can wait in place until a specific time (although that might involve an interrupt if you wait in a store when the owners want to close, or if day changes to night and monsters show up where you're standing.)


2. In turn-based combat, there are little circles under the characters. The current player character whose turn it is is white. Enemies are all red, and many probably have the same name. On a player turn, I'd like to see the enemy red circle be pink (or something) for the next enemy whose turn it is, as an easy visual indicator of exactly which enemy will move next.


3. If you're going to let players delay taking their turn, an easy to do that in the UI might be to let you drag your portrait on the turn order bar farther down the list.

Though a "Rest" option would be interesting (as long as it can't be abused of, else there would be no point in buying potions), there's a major problem about it (in multiplayer) : How will it affect your partner, especially now that we have a true day/night cycle ?
I mean, what happen when you want to sleep and your partner is kilometres away from you ? Does it means she HAS TO sleep as well (which wouldn't make sense) ?
Do you both need to be close to each other in order to rest (which would really restrict its usefulness ; moreover, what if your partner is in perfect shape and doesn't want to sleep ?) ?
We can't seriously envision a time-gap in multiplayer, so is the "Rest" feature viable ?
There's only one solution I can think of : You can only rest at the homestead, where you're unaffected by time. By if time has no sway on you, does it mean we can sleep as often as we want (and we get back to the abusive use of the feature) ?
It'd be nice to have an answer on this matter.


UI

To simplify the use of the UI, maybe we could have two modes :
A "Free" mode, in which you can swap your skills and change their position in your bar BUT can't use them. Regarding the change of skills, something à la DD would be nice (a list pop up above your current skill), but a window is OK as well, as long as it's simple and clear (a semi-transparent window preferably, to prevent from hiding the environment on a large scale).
A "Combat" mode, which allow you to use your skills BUT lock your bar.
You'd automatically get in "Combat" mode after a minute, if you haven't touched anything in your bar, or if you enter a fight.
There'd be a tiny icon next to your bar to switch from Free to Combat, and vice versa.


NPC Schedule

I have no idea to what extent will the schedule be envisaged, but as I conceive it, it'd require a huge work.
Here's an example of what kind of depth I hope to see :
If you kill a NPC, it affects its relatives, and it depends on the circumstances of the murdering. If they've seen you, they should react consequently (Running away, screaming, attacking you, alerting the guard, hiding in fear). They also need to REMEMBER your deeds. It'd make no sense at all if, the day after, you could pop in and say "Hello !", as if nothing happened.
On a side note, maybe we could also try to explain ourselves and reason the NPC (or even intimidate him. For instance, threaten him of death if he talks about what happened to anyone).
If they haven't seen you, they'd desperatly search for him, an inquiry would be set up (maybe a "Clue" feature could be implemented, by which you could leave clues behind you, which would force you to be careful when you murder someone ?).
They'd eventually find the corpse (or not, if you can move it), the death of their reliative would affect them. They could refuse to sell their goods for a time, seclude themselves and refuse to talk to anyone, why not even suicide themselves if they've lost all those they loved, or sink into alcoholism (why not even become a bum ?).
The other side of the coin is : All these modifications have to be taken into account for the redaction of The Transcript of Unravelled Destinies. Massive amount of work.


Misc.

- Frozen NPC can be moved (It sounds logical, though it'd be quite weird if you could drop him/her in your backpack).
The consequence is that you can kidnap them (why not even sell them afterward. A necromancer sure could have a use of a subject of experiment. It could be part of a side quest).
To be honest, I don't think it's such an useful feature, but my unadmitted dream is to freeze the lady in her bath during the pyramid quest, move her to the town centre and watch her being humiliated while she slowly thaw. .

Aww come on, I want to collect frozen NPCs in my secret pocket plane!



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You can't rest in combat, you have to go to a bed. To heal in combat you need potions or special spells or abilities (which consume action points). You can't rest for a while after resting - that was in Divine Divinity as well to prevent abuse. If you rest up, any enemies who were damaged also heal back to full. That's all you need to prevent abuse.

But that's a really good point about resting in multiplayer. I don't have any solutions on how to fix that other than "both players need to agree before they can rest."


I completely disagree with your idea of locking the skill bar in combat. This game is not using a Vancian magic system where you only have X slots and can't change them until the next day. It is a quick skill bar, you can know more than nine skills. If it's your turn, you should be able to open your skill menu and switch out your quick bar skills as much as you like for no cost. The quick skill bar's purpose is for convenience, not INconvenience.

I don't know. Instead of a simplification it sounds like a complication. I think it's more simple when the mechanics work the same regardless of situation.

Besides, you won't ever need to switch out skills since you'll have 12 quick-action bars! Well at least a few, hopefully.

Options

It would be nice to have an option to specify where the save games will be put. Practically no game does this and you have to look in 10 places to find the saves for a particular game. Would make backing up simpler, too.

Microsoft seems to have a standard for this, alas, few games follow it. Still leaves the question of where to put them on mac/linux wide open though.

The Microsoft rule isn't all that good either IMO, it's hidden under appdata somewhere. I still prefer savegames to be in your "Documents"/"My Documents" folder, because for support reasons, that is the easiest.

And for technical reasons, it's bloody hard to get them saved in "Program files" or the game folder itself. Same reason why we cannot just ask you where to save them: security, access, and multiple users...

Arhu: we have the cursor graphic thing changing depending on what you're gonna do with the item/character/whatever. I'll have to read this thread cause I saw more that I wanted to react on.

Can you shatter frozen opponents (ala mass effect) ?

Afaik it's actually "My documents/My games" or the language specific version thereof. Of course lots of lazy devs hardcode the path (so it breaks on non English Windows versions) or dump it somewhere else in My Documents.

Regarding combats, I didn't considered the possibility to rest while fighting, I think we all agree on the fact it's unacceptable.
Same on the fact that monsters should get back to full health/mana if you rest.
What I had in mind by "abuse" was the fact of sleeping after each fights. It'd clearly diminish the need of potions.
DD limited it, indeed, but it wasn't clear as to why you couldn't rest for a while. Your character wasn't tired enough to sleep, I guess.
One thing I forgot to point out, you shouldn't be able to rest your your partner is fighting (for the same reason I stated earlier, i.e. the time-gap).

As for locking the bar in combat, I understand your point. Maybe it's not such a good idea to lock it automatically in combat, however I maintain the idea of locking it if needed (for convenience purpose, for it'd prevent the "drag-and-drop-by-mistake" effect).
Anyway, I doubt we'll often change our skills in combat, especially if a time-limit is imposed for each turns (which I hope will be implemented, to preserve a relatively fast-paced action).
It'd be interesting to add a second/third bar however, so that we could easily switch of builds and quickly adapt ourselves to the enemies.

Thanks for reading the ramblings of our diseased brains, Forktong.


For network play, the host has the option to set a time limit for turns. I suppose that would work in single-player if you started a multiplayer game and didn't let anyone join, but I don't want that mandatory, as it defeats the entire point of a turn-based combat system in the first place.

Sorry if this was mentioned but PLEASE can we have an item compare. It is so annoying to have to figure out what things are better. In almost every video I watched there was a point where this feature was needed.

YES. Honestly, this was a godsend in Dragon Age (the only other game where I've seen a feature like that).

Tooltip compare will be in eventually, but it isn't ready in the pre-alpha.

Helena its actuallu in many many games in the sameish(yes I made that word up =P) genre as D:OS.. one reason why I even brought it up lol. @Stabbey ty for the response and good to hear!

Cool. Got to admit I haven't watched the videos too closely due to lack of time and quietness. Have fun reading.

Actions should have lasting consequences on the game world, both large and small. This can take many forms; some examples:

- NPCs recognize you and react to what they've heard about you, e.g. by cheering or fleeing in terror.
- Objects get built or destroyed. In the course of a quest, you could get NPCs to build a shrine or burn down a house, and the shrine or the charred ruins stay there for the rest of the game, a visible reminder of your influence on the world.
- Objects or even the landscape change depending on what you've done. You've helped a farmer against some bandits? Maybe his fields are in full bloom because of you. You've sided with the bandits, killed the farmer and plundered his belongings? The crops may wither and the animals may starve to death or perhaps the bandits move in and prove to be better farmers than the original one ever was

All of this provides the feeling of having achieved something and can even be a better reward than some XP and some gold.

Magic

- About the special attacks, if they're implemented : A short combination of keys (arrow keys for instance) have to be entered to activate it (On the model of a QTE), within a limit of time.
It doesn't particularly enhance the tactical part, I just think it adds a "rewarding" aspect to the process of casting a powerful spell, along with an extra difficulty.

- I've thought of 2 types of magics, nothing new but I've tried to put a name on preexisting spells, to gather them into a single school :

• Matter magic : Gather everything revolving around the idea of matter and everything which influence it, such as weight/gravity (Spells which weigh down or lighten something/someone, slowing an enemy or making him move faster; gravity-modifying spell, which would attract enemies/friends/projectiles alike to a given point), levitation (which make the target impervious to environmental effects), psychokinesis, teleportation.
  
• Optical magic : Illusions, lighting modifications (making himself invisible, globs of light, veil of darkness), perception of the world (unveiling magically-hidden objects/traps/enemies, seeing through the walls).

I've not mentioned Necromancy cause it's already envisaged IIRC.
If not, well you can add it to the list.

- Another way of learning skills could be to figure them out, through the monsters, by watching them.
Apart from the accelerated learning of normal skills, in conjunction with the regular process, we could learn special attacks otherwise unlearnable.

- The possibility to merge himself with an element (with a new visual appearance).
For example, if I conflate myself with the element of Fire, I momentarily gain a higher resistance to fire, my fire skills gains additional effects (or I have a new set of skills related to fire ?), I cannot be frozen and leave a trail of fire behind me.
However, I'm much more vulnerable to water spells, which inflict me more damages and blind me because of the fog which result from its contact.

Environment

- It's probably already considered, but using water on lava/ice on water should create a platform to walk on, for a few seconds.
If it's connected to a bank, it stands still. If it's not, it's carried away by the flux of the lava/water.

- How far can the environment be modified ? It'd be cool if we could dig a trench, connect it to a stream, thus deviating it and flooding an entire village .
Interesting perspective...

Fights

I have to shamelessly advertise for Arhu's "12 ways to improved turnbased RPG combat", because I guess it'll have more visibility here and because its first 2 pages are interesting. I hope it'll be read.

No. That doesn't really fit with turn based combat, and is a horrible idea anyway.

I'm not even sure what you're talking about, but I think that a series of button-presses with a time limit to cast does not fit the style of this game in any way at all. This game is about careful positioning and thoughtful tactics, not rapid-fire button mashing.




Maybe. It depends on how many other magic skills are around. Some of these are probably planned in some form.



I'm not sure that fits with the way you learn skills. The other Divinity games had all available skills on a list and you spent skill points on them. I'm not sure concealing skills by forcing them to be learned in a specific way will be that helpful.




Elemental power booster spells sound okay, although it doesn't need to be flashy. For example, the trail of fire is also problematic. If it's only a visual effect, it could be confusing or visual clutter. If it's an actual trail of fire, it will be annoying for allies who will get injured and have to work around the trail.




Not THAT far, certainly. There's only so much stuff that is reasonable to put into an RPG, and that's beyond the scope.

QTE don't fit very well in a turn based combat game (or most games imo) but it does remind me of the spell-casting mechanic in some roguelikes, you have a rune tablet and depending of the different runes picked you can cast a variety of spells (the more recent example is probably legend of grimrock), is not a QTE but it has some of the difficult and rewarding aspects that Asyreon is talking about, probably a slow mechanic for this game and not something that i would like to see in it, but looking for new spells books is always a nice incentive for exploration and, if learning source magic is a really important part of the plot, it makes the learning process more tangible

More ontopic, the option to personalize the protagonists portraits

I think I clearly explained what I meant by QTE, example which I took because it's one of the simpliest operation to implement, within reach of the average human aptitudes.
I guess you extended the concept to the whole system, which I actually carefully limited to the special moves (i.e the most powerful skills), because it makes perfect sense that the strongest attacks should require something else than pure mana management.
It's certainly not just "rapid-fire button-mashing", it's also about managing your time, which is already a ressource in itself because of the limit per turn, hence the idea of the QTE.
Thus, a QTE (or whatever you can think of which would induce another kind of ressource management) strictly limited to the special moves is not only in adequacy with the game mechanics but also add another aspect to the time management.
It doesn't break the rhythm of the fights at all.


It's supposed to work in conjunction with the regular way of learning, no matter its form in D:OS, in no way should it force you to choose between both. It'd only be a requirement for "special attacks", which we could consider as a side hunt.


The visual alteration affect the character's appearance to reflect the change, but the "trail of fire" idea would not just be visual, it'd have actual effects, but in the end it's just another kind of environmental effect, it wouldn't break the balance.
Allies, should the trail not be retained, would have to deal with these kind of mechanics anyway.
I forgot to mention it should be cast only once per fights, else it'd make some fights way too easy against certain enemies, should they be specialized in fire spells for instance.


I don't think they're reasoning in term of what's reasonable and what's not but rather what can be implemented, its usefulness and what ressources would it require to implement it.
As long as environmental modification is taken into account, any idea can be risen. It's up to Larian to decide whether or not it'd require too much ressources to be implemented.
Digging could have other utilities, such as infiltrating, hiding or unearthing treasures.
Moreover it was a question more than an idea, I just want to know how far does the system allow us to influence on the environment, to get a better overview of the possibilities offered to the player.

I don't care how special or powerful the moves are. No QTE's in a turn-based combat system.

I don't mind an elemental booster skill, or a trail of fire skill, but separate them into two skills so I don't create a fire barrier between my allies and the enemy when I just want to boost my power.

This game is not Minecraft, so I'm quite sure that letting players modify terrain to divert rivers would indeed require far too many resources to implement. I'm sure you know that they didn't have the resources to do a traits and talents thing until the KS, and that seems far less complicated.

I don't like QTE because it tends to be tedious and annoying. Don't also suggest something like this (Arx Fatalis Spell casting) just look at how failed the spell casting system @ 1:22 (it is due to real time though). Again, it will be tedious.

Journal

I don't know if it was suggested already, but it's better to have a journal that is organized not on a first come first serve basis. It's hard to navigate when there's a lot of info in a journal that is disorganized. I suggest something like from a summary perspective -> details (own notes of the adventurer *pre made notes by the writers for convenience*)-> dialogue of the key NPC. A sample below:

• Four statues
  [-]Statue on the west side of the beach
  [--]Old man said: "It can be found on the west side of the beach"

It can also create an opportunity to confuse (IE troll) if there are inconsistent quest points (IE one said it's on the west. The other said it's on the east), but those inconsistencies will likely trigger the player to explore the other side of the coin even if it is for naught just for curiousity sake.

I do hope the notes on map will still be implemented.

No QTEs at all *ever*. QTEs need to die in a fire, get buried in a pit without bottom and just generally disappear along with whichever moron thought them up.

So you're saying QTE should go away or what?

Yes. They're an uninspired unfun mechanic.

In that specific example it'd require to manage the flow of liquids and the possibility to shape the terrain in real-time.
I have no idea how hard is it to implement these feature but they're not that uncommon, so we can reasonnably believe it can be envisaged without consuming much ressources. But well, it was an example and I didn't think it'd actually be taken seriously.
I doubt we'll have an official answer to close this debate, it's a particularly precise question, but it's worth trying.


I appreciate constructive answers, and I can't help but expressing my sincere gratitude toward your intervention.
Now calm down ? If you want to pursue on the "moron" topic, let's do it in PM where we will liberally discuss about our respective opinions.
Subject closed on this point.

I really dislike QTEs and I thought the reason why they suck would be more obvious than it obviously is, so here goes:

QTEs are a "mechanic" that makes you mash buttons during what is essentially a cut-scene to make you feel "actively involved". They detract from actually watching said cutscene and can lead to loads of frustration if they only allow for a very short timespan in which to mash said buttons resulting in you spending more time watching for the QTE than actually enjoying the cutscene. This quite obviously interferes with immersion. In the worst case they require mouse buttons mashing, which I, as someone that had to go to some effort to not acquire RSI, especially can't exactly appreciate.

QTEs are never a good idea and are imho a direct result of bad game design and as such they need to go.

Note that what you suggested in your earlier post aren't really QTEs, but I dislike such mechanics anyway in these kinds of games. They are something I associate with beat-em-ups where you have to create combos. This game is turn based, forcing timed button mashing of any kind into a turn based game is just a big no-no in my book.

I understand your frustration regarding QTEs for I myself don't appreciate not being able to watch a cutscenes in peace, however the fact we have a turn-based game pretty much obviate this feeling in the sense we're not spectators but actors and that we're already involved in the fight.
Given the fact they're situationals, their role would mainly be to implement another kind of management.
The idea here was to take advantage of the time limit and exploit it as a kind of "ressource", though the term is improper I admit.
If anyone have a better idea (item-based management for example ?) I'd be glad to discuss it, but I sincerely think the use of the most powerful skills should be somehow limited.

Thanks for clarifying your thought anyway.

The most powerful skills can be limited by things that don't require a QTE.

Action points, mana cost, channeling time (more than one turn needed to prepare before a spell can be cast, cooldown time (number of turns needed before a spell can be cast again).

Powerful spells will require more than on turn, Swen mentioned this during one of the playthrough sessions (afraid I don't remember which one though)

I like this idea.

Id like a power fist please like in warhammer 40k

One thing I've always wanted to have is a game which completely changed the quests depending on your alignment. Usually I find that regardless of your choices you still follow basically the same quest lines regardless if your playing as "good" or "evil"

I hope someday someone is going to make a game where you really change good vs evil and that the quests reflect that change.

example would be a good player would be sent to help someone in a certain situation, an evil player would be sent to kill someone. Same quest just completely different objectives.
But I understand from a game perspective this is pretty much like making two different games in one.
Still would love to see it done someday

I finally had the opportunity to watch the first hour of the kickstarter countdown video. Cool stuff.

Mouse pointer & running speeds

Mouse pointer changes according to what action you are performing. Most things are already in apparently, although it might be worth trying out using arrow graphics for movement like in Ultima VII (see screenshot a couple posts back). Also, how about different running speeds? We have walking and jogging (like in Divinity 1) -- another one would be sprinting for a short time.


Talking, Yelling, Whispering

When Swen and David were at the market place, various NPCs offered their goods for sale.



They all were simply talking and there was no way to distinguish between different types of utterances. There's gameplay enhancements in here, somewhere. Consider this:

• Talking
  Standard overhead text that appears above NPCs heads, like in the video. If the player character is offscreen, you don't see the text.
• YELLING
  ... or even just "Yelling!" in a different color. This is for NPCs trying to sell stuff on the market or damsels in distress calling for HELP! You can see the text over NPCs' heads as usual if you are nearby, but you can also see the text when the NPC is not on the screen. The text would be at the side of the screen in the direction the shout is coming from. This would make for a busy market place / town and a quieter wilderness. You could add the name of the NPC yelling (to account for voice differences).
• whispering
  You need to get closer than normal to be able to hear an NPC whispering, like a shady dealer in a corner, or a wounded soldier trying to tell you something with his last breath. This could even be tied to the hearing / awareness stat: If your hearing is good enough, at normal range you might see the text "(whipser, whisper)" -- if you get closer, you can hear what's being said.

Item (graphics) progression

In the video one character had a bow and soon equipped a better bow. The new one looked a lot cooler than the one before, IIRC. I'm not sure how long the game is supposed to be, but I'd expect to only find really cool looking weapons much later in the game. For a better sense of progression, I'd think there'd be only very simple looking short or long bows and other items in the beginning, getting fancier and more powerful-looking later on. I'd even go as far as removing magic weapons altogether in the first few hours -- much more fun if you do finally find magic weapons.

I can only speak for myself, but I never walk when I have enough stamina to run. And when I don't, I drink a potion/check my inventory or quest log until my stamina is full.
I don't think a third option would be that useful, except for hardcore role-players (maybe).



I like the idea regarding the "whispering text" which would fade/brighten according to your distance from the NPC.
As for yelling, capital letters or an exclamation mark do the job well enough, so the colour is not needed imo. It could even be annoying.
The text at the sides of the screen, on the other hand, sounds cool but, esthetically, in a busy market, it would result in a gross overcrowding of the edges.
But well, not every NPCs are shouting and not every places are congested, so why not.

Something that I hugely wish: A library in your home. In DD, I love the number of books, but it's a shame that you need to pick up the book and place it yourself in the library of your choice. And once placed, if you need to re-read a specific book, you need to reread a lot until you find it

So my idea: you still need to pick the books (or steal them), but once in your home, you can put all your books in the library with a single button. And the library shows the list of book that you have discover, and read them. Though, you still can take the books (By example: A treasure map: To avoid the need to return to your home, you take the book with you.)

PS: Maybe all of this is already include with the notebook.

Yessss... a library! I love that idea. Basically no games have that unless you build it yourself, and then it's usually not very organized.

After you upgrade your homestead to a certain point, there's a library, and every book you've read is added to it - except for some special books usually associated with quests. Even books you read from before finding the homestead.

To keep things simple, the keyword system would be very useful there:

• A-F
• G-K
• L-P
• Q-U
• V-Z

With as many subdivisions as are needed, until there's an alphabetical list of titles. You wouldn't be able to take them with you, though (so you couldn't sell books infinitely).

Oh, related, I'd also like the ability to read books without picking them up. I missed that in Divinity 2.

Yes, great idea about the library !

hmmmmmm from a personnal point of view, I like QTE because it is a way to being involve in cinematics and choose the faith of your character. But I understand people who just want to play and tend to skip the cinematics.

The main problem with QTE is that when the editors use them, they tend to put soooooooo many cinematics in their game that you do not know if it is a game anymore or an interactive movie... (God knows that I trully love Mass Effect but it is a typical example of abuse !!)

So wether they implement it or not I will be glad, but I think that the dialogue system replace this "QTE" system, you have the choice, you just do not have to react in en certain amount of time and in a game such as Divinity where a situation can end up in different way depending on what you say, QTE would be a loss, the player should have time to think the consequences of his acts

+1 for the library.

That would be much better than Skyrim's ten books repeated and then a few skills books scattered throughout the world, also better than DAOs book-badge-hunting.

Also, +1 for reading letters, books and what not when you click on them in situ, that's a lovely feature in DD, just make sure that font sizes and the like are scalable and adaptable. So many CRPGs are hurting because of the lack of that as they have aged and monitors have become more highrez.

+1 for the library, considering the amount of books you can find, it will be really good to have access to an library in your shelter.

Yep +1 to library

nice one, I do not want to stock all my books in my trunk anymore !!

What would you guys say to an action camera à la XCOM:EU?

I could do with or without, but I like how it gives you a sense of being in the thick of a skirmish.

There is a fixed (though zoom-able) isometric camera in D:OS. I have not played XCOM, but from a couple reviews I'm not really a big fan of the overhead camera bobbing and panning around; the third person camera could be effective at helping immersion, but at least in the tutorial (I assume) section in a Youtube video, the switches for a second or two were just annoying.


Welcome to the forum.

Glad to be here

/bow

Agreed, anything which adds more customisability to the character is great!! Especially features which are wholly unique to a character alone. Different clothing is just fun and can change the mood completely. Jewellery, hairstyles and tattoos are cool too. Having some permanent changes to a character with consequences is also good because it makes you have to think seriously about whether you want it or not and adds to the fun and replayability. I can't think of specific examples but to make one up....if you have your eyes changed to red you can never join a certain faction or some such.

Yep wonderful, exploration has to be worthwhile and doing what you said makes it so. If it's optional that's okay. I also like hidden areas and secrets which take a lot of skill to find and cannot be found without persistence. Exploration bonuses are sometimes good too and to keep it logical to story perhaps someone can pay you to find something hidden or map an area.

I'd like it to feel like women are included as players of the game. In some games it feels like it is made for men only and with no thought to female players.I haven't found this with DD. I'm not saying go all feminist or over the top but just have consideration. An example is another game where there are hundreds of love interests for male characters and 3 rubbish ones for the female characters. Personally I find gender irrelevant to most things but when a choice is provided it's nice to be included. Dialogues that say 'he' and 'him' or 'sir' to female characters although sometimes amusing are just sloppy. I don't know maybe just turn everyone into hermaphrodites!!

I know some people have asked for grimmer and darker graphics but to be honest I like colour and colour is more lifelike. Life is colourful. Some areas are naturally grittier and darker. I love how the game looks so far from the videos I've seen and think it's just right. The blandification or boringness of dingy brown and washed out grey in most games is just getting cliched. Probably a nice balance is okay. Variety is great too.

Yogic skills for a sort of paladin or clerical class...the flying yogi..maybe related to the air element causing levitation perhaps to avoid acid on the floor. Sufi whirling dervish causing area damage. Thinking of other elements: Walking on fire or hot coals damage free, walking on water or parting seas, maybe mana can be gained from chi in rocks or something. Magic mantras and chanting could be related. There could be spells to channel your ancestors to do heap big damage or gain universal energy.

I usually play a roguiesh type (certainly first playthrough if not most). Teleporting to the back of enemies to backstab is nice. I like some loot to be only available to rogues through lockpicking or pickpocketing and likewise with traps and disarming. I saw those funky suicide bomber characters and it would be fun if you could sneak up on them and sometimes rewire their bombs and sneak back and when they are running into combat maybe you can detonate them yourself when they are near a group of enemies.

Well, these ideas have already been proposed earlier in the topics, nothing new, but :

- Gender recognition is already part of the game.
- Generally I prefer darker graphics, but currently the balance is good imo, there's no need for a serious modification. It fits the spirit of the game, which balance soft and darker tones.
As said earlier, countless times, an option to change the graphics will certainly satisfy the crowd.
- There are no classes, so you're free to make a "rogue" or whatever you like to play.
As for the skills, this is a western inspired fantasy universe, and though it can occasionally be inspired by eastern concepts, there can't be such things as yoga, mantras or chi, which are completely off the spirit of fantasy stories (I mean, the names, not the concepts).
Maybe a kind of martial arts can be considered, but I don't think confusing the player with other forms of spiritual energies (mantras/chi/whatever) when mana is already doing the job is relevant.

P.S. : Merge your ideas into a single post next time.
P.P.S. : This is not adressed to you catelee2u but to the crowd : Read the forum before posting, or at least the thread you're posting on, a lot of your "ideas" have already been suggested and debated. Debating further the subject is okay, but re-posting it as if it were completely new is... Boring. This is one of my biggest "wishes".

- Map markers! I am currently 25 hours into Divine Divinity (never played the series before, want to have played them all before D:OS) and I really like setting custom map markers for all interesting npc's/locations
- Return the pyramids: It's a lovely method of transportation, even though I keep forgetting to pick them up again

Map markers are in, and if you forget to pick the pyramids up, it's your own fault, just like last time.

- I do hope there's a right-click "drop-and-use" option for the pyramids.

Yeah, nothing more frustrating then accedentally activating the pyramid

In the Pre-alpha videos, there was a scene in the market where a guy takes a fish, and a guard asks us if he paid or not. We don't know Our only two conversation options are:

[Lie] We saw him pay.
[Lie] He didn't pay. (We don't actually know this.)

You're forced to lie and say you saw what happened. It's not a big deal, I probably wouldn't miss it if it wasn't in, but I'd like for more options in addition to those ones:

"I didn't see, but with no proof of wrongdoing, you should let him go."
"I didn't see, but he seems suspicious of me. You should detain him."

Those are functionally identical to "we saw him pay"/"he stole it", without you lying.

I haven't the time to read all these great pages, but my question is : "Will be Dragon Kights present in Original Sin ?"
Ok, may be some gamers are really fed up with them, but not me. =D
And I imagine that the story will take place at the time of the war between the Wizard Council and Behrlihn and Co, so Dragons, Maxos in particular, took aside of this sordid story.
I hope that many obscure points in Rivellon history - and also in each character history too - will be revelated. (Who is Bellegard's mother ?)

In a different gameplay video it was shown that the guy does make a comment about the merchant being gone and steals the fish. They may just need to adjust when that gets triggered and make sure it has focus, so the guards don't ask you about something you didn't actually see.

I wish by the magic of wishing this game was available today instead of 6+ months from now.

In one of the Youtuber videos, someone mentioned that the ground effects - water surface, fire surface, ice surface would stay on the ground forever once placed. Leaving aside the issues that could cause for traveling NPC's, it's not that realistic. In our world, eventually, the lava will cool, the ice will melt to water, the water will evaporate.

I think that the surfaces should also return to normal about 24 hours after they were created. Maybe there could be four stages. By default: Hours 0-6 - full strength, hours 7-12, 75% strength, 13-18 50% strength, 19-24 25% strength.

Different environments could have different rates of degradation as well. Cyseal looks to be warm and sunny, so ice will melt faster, water will evaporate faster, but fire won't be affected and stay the full duration. That snow level I saw a screenshot of once will have fire degrade quickly, water freeze, and ice will stay longer. The Dark forest is damp, cool and gets little sun, so fire degrades a bit faster, ice remains a bit longer, water evaporates much more slowly.

Capes!!! Capes which cover armors and capes with hoods that can be switched on and off. That's one of my biggest wishes....

A cape with a wheresheep on the back would be amazing! haha

The master sheep likes that.....but then it has to be a woolen cape!

I think it would ruin the game

I can see myself making a ton of additional content when I get my hands on the editor.

yeah or a cape with the skin of the king of weresheep !!
that would be a really cool eastern egg hahahaha

Yeah ! Good idea !

Weresheep are fanatically non-thinking evil. The only sort of player that would whorship such a beast would be one that goes on a rampage pillaging towns. While you are free to play such a character; it clearly won't (in culture sense) be considered a hero.
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Wearing a cape made from the skin of the slain weresheep is very different than wearing a cap with the picture of a weresheep.
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And this is why I am anti-weresheep and dislike the idea of an official cape with the image of one; they are fanatically evil and contradictory to the previous portrayal of the hero.
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You all (sheeper's) should be the society of Weresheep slayers; not society of weresheeps.

Black Dragons tend to be chaotic evil. I think I can relate to Weresheep just fine.

Bahhhhhh, I tend to stick to my skin....

let's make weresheep tatoo^^

has the gauntlet weapon type been requested?

I want to see in D:OS a cool alchemy laboratorium in a secret cellar of a house or castle somewhere (to discover) ... owned by a Archmage or Wizard or Sorceress ... who give you a strange quest you defenitely must search and talk with some NPC's to find more out about that crazy old wizard (or whatever he, she or "it" can be!) and about the quest description ... it will be great if a NPC or a place/statue/book give you such a strange/crazy sounding quest-description that you in first place certainly think : "What to do ... WHAT TO DO .... ??!??!??"

And btw, I've still nothing heart about "Alchemy" : very curious how alchemy/herbs/making potions will be implemented in D:OS ! Hope something funny like in DD & even better and a more freaking awesome alchemy system !

One of the characteristic that i loved in Divine Divinity was the dark atmosphere everywhere, so i hope so see this element in this one.

I don't know well the Divinity saga but I really love summons !!

Im sure there will be a lot of secret area's and magic locations, like caves behind water falls, doors hidden behind bookcases, lost vaults that can be open only with a lost key. I cant wait

Love your idea Joram

Yeah, summons are cool !

DD & DKS have both cool summons !

A new idea can be music.
As you know not everyone likes the same music and same NPCs "might not like" the normal tavern music, and they have to go into a cellar under a pub in some random village where the people play with magical instruments some metal, techno, goth or rap. It would be just funny wo walk into a cellar and 25 people/monsters headbang to some metal.

My wish is to find a nice girl who likes rpg games as much as me, so we can play Divinity original sin.
The last gamer girl left me cuz her parents sent her away with studies.

Larian-meetic.com hahahaha

I do feel completely with Lurker as I am so sick tired of the same old, same old life or death and nothing in between.
Having those suggested options would add some maturity to a game, especially if those alternative solutions also can have their own effects for the future.
As old it is, I did loved the idea in 'Ultima IV - Quest of the Avatar' that you could also point with behavior which most games never really touched.
The reputation system from DD was ever a major part which I loved in the game as it was not just all about points but about making an impact in the gaming world.
It would be great if it is possible to even have localized reputation like in a village or even personalized, making your own arch-enemies and close friends, might it be by choice or by chance.

How about the best of both worlds?
Using the alt key to highlight obvious items like we know from DD, etc. like loot and/or visible items on a table.

Adventure games use a key to highlight objects in case you stuck. Such a 'hint' key for harder to spot objects could be simply another key.
Then you can decide yourself if you want just convenient help with the ALT key or when you are frustrated or just too lazy to explore you can use the 'hint' key.
It would be just nice if they would be not right next to eachother

Most companies try to appeal so much to their main group of players which seem to be puberting, hormondriven munchkins, that they keep recycling those obnoxious cliches of chainmail bikinis and Barbarians which seem to eat every day anabolica for breakfast for years ;p
Maybe Larian can break that bad habit and show that the average player age raised since the last decade?

So, if you are against high heels, honk. *HONK,HONK*

I just love your ideas, I also veer thought there must be more in an adventurers life then just stab and loot, stab and loot. It's like going to work to pay for all the bills for all the junk you don't really need in the first place ;p
Doing some lasting things in a game could be so much more rewarding.
I ever wished for a game scenario like 'The Seven Samurai' where you can train and/or help defending some local place and build yourself a local rep.


Sorry for all those postings, just came to finally dig through this long thread and replies pile up.

Hey, that was a GREAT game and the magic system was refreshing different and quite immersive
A good mage knows his spells and does not panic and in the process confuse his runes like that guy in the video which got molested by the rat and died from his panic reaction

But every idea works for certain games with different style and pacing and I agree, for DOS it would clearly not the right system, not to mention that one is first person view and the other isometric.

I never played Arx Fatalis, is it similar to DivDiv. please?

Is this game going to have unarmed combat?

The main difference is that Arx Fatalis is a first person perspective game, pretty much what most people just know from shooter games but more and more other games discover as well to combine with other genres like Adventure games.
The best way to get some impression is to search on Youtube for some gameplay videos.
Arkane Studios was ever known for trying something new and created classics like 'Might and Magic Dark Messiah' and 'Dishonored'.
the whole game plays underground and you start from breaking out of a jail cell. If you liked Ultima Underground then you will probably like the game.

My wish list IS Divinity Original Sin will be at November

If to be serious I would like

- BIG world with different atmosphere quests,NPCs,secrets like Divine Divinity and further more Homestead Plane etc...(promised)

- A lot type of monsters like Dungeon Siege 2
with different behaviors and Gigantic bosses for example Four-Headed Dragon who have been mentioned at Kickstarter trailer http://youtu.be/weUPfejQ7xE (10:40) or monsters like Butcher from update video (promised about behaviors)

- Great music of Kirill Pokrovsky (promised with Orchestra!!)

- Intrigue plot with unexpected things and events (promised) PLEASE guys don`t make plot about world`s salvation another time it quite annoying,I think it will better tell story about main heroes and make it more private story at least likewise Beyond Divinity...

- Impressive crafting system (promised)

- Full dialogs not keyword system (partly realised) I can understand about such restrictions- Good example is Morrowind there is HUGE amount of text and topics

- Ragdoll physics (not promised because not important)

- Independence single from coop (promised)

- Possibility to see and interact with 7 races

- Possibility to kick ass Lord of Chaos before Divine Divinity,at least not directly but by crashing it`s plans(perhaps you did it casually and actually you don`t know about exactly what consequences will be ) or something else (I know you wouldn`t say anything it`s maybe HUGE spoiler)

Or possibility to see Seven Gods in the flesh)) Or\and to see familiar characters such as young Bellegar,Maxos.

-Possibility to travel through HEll or another dimension not(only) Homestead(like Mehrun Dagon`s Oblivion\Sheogorath`s Shivering Isles) for quest purpose and again casually For example you casted new unknown spell and here we go ....

Uphh that`s all for now and I hope that Divinity Original Sin will Dwarf not only your previous games but other RPGs too)
Thank you)