I don't know if this is the right place to put this, but I'll just leave this here. If it's placed wrong and you (the reader) find this post to make a fair point, feel free to repost in the right spot. If not, feel free to ignore it.

Many good things about this game. Especially, the combat interface works well.

There are three design-flaws I found throughout the alpha that I feel stand in danger of impacting the game in a particulary bad way. I disclose them without much in the ways of padding, so if you feel that negative review equals trolling you have the option to stop reading now.

Two non-compatible themes.
On one side the Divine setting is dark, mystical and serious. On the other side, you have this Monty Python humour displaying inappropriate absurdity. In the alpha this is most clearly manifested in the talking sea-shell. The Python-effect derives not from the fact that it speaks, but rather the personality it displays and the manner of the player characters' response. It appears roughly as if in the middle of Legonas', Aragorn and Gimlis tracking of the Uruk-Hai the spanish inquisition would jump out from behind the rocks to perform an unexpected singing act for our heroes. It is inappropriate (although, try telling the sea-shell that..). While some would find that entertaining, reviews would perhaps not average at the present metacritic score. Since I assume you yourselves rather like your own humour from your developers perspective, and also want to stay loyal to the fans who disagree with me, I have a suggestion to make: Please flag all your attempts at humoristic content, and make a toggle-button to simply disable/enable all of it. While I don't mind meeting talking sea-shells in general, I would rather not have met this particular one.

Dialogue void of personality.
The dialogue in the alpha is really inept. Every line displays less personality than the dialogue of Diablo. Where Diablo was entirely combat-centric, D:OS display ambitions to be something more. Still, the only personality I encountered in the alpha was the speaking sea-shell, and that one seemed like it had inadvertently escaped from discworld. If the alpha proves representative for the dialogue in the release, you're gonna' have quite a few reviews giving average or low scores referring to a decent tactical game with dialogue that makes you wanna' carve your own brain out with a small fork. Dialogue must be written in a way so as to show the characters' attitudes, values and jargon, if you are to cater to role-players. The player characters should be the main priority here, but no NPC should be given a line to say without having a sense of personality to put behind it. Otherwise, it would be much better to cut away all dialogue and spend the resources elsewhere, as the current dialogue just make the game worse. In this spirit, and because I assume you yourselves and loyal fans feel the dialogue look both smart and meaningful, please make a toggle-button to disable/enable absolutely all dialogue in the game. Where removed, clicking NPCs should simply auto-complete all dialogue through a pre-set route, updating the quest-log and progressing the game. Ideal? No. Better? Yes, worlds apart.

Loot-galore?
The armour and damage numbers, and equipment names and properties makes me suspect you plan a diablo-like loot-galore. I think this is a design choice that lends itself poorly to a tactical game. Diablo progress very fast which makes you impatient for new stuff and prevents you from thinking about how inappropriate it is that the epic belly-button lint you just picked up gives you 4000 extra horse-powers for chopping with hand-axes. Turn-based games set a very different stage, and so you should consider a fallout-like design for equipment. Also, you should scrap the heaps of trash-items (what is the point of populating the game with useless junk anyway?).

Anyway, good luck with the further development. I'll give it a shot once it's completed. The tactical combat-elements of the game seem to be coming along nicely.


Kindest Regards and Best Intentions,
Emil

1) I don't agree with this complaint. As in all video games, there is tonal inconsistency in the Divinity games, but I cannot think of a way to 'fix' this without making things much worse. These jokes and light-hearted moments against the backdrop of an overarching threat have always been present in Larian games, and that's a good thing. Everyone remembers the existentialist skeleton in Divine Divinity's starting dungeon. It's funny when your character proclaims the Duke of Ferol to be the worst poet in the world, or when Billeh Ghar can't find a word that rhymes with 'orange'. And when I don't find something funny (e.g. the mayor being hard of hearing which means you have to repeat everything*), it's not annoying enough to take me out of the game.

2) I can kind of see where you're coming from with this one. To be specific, it's not that NPCs don't have personalities, it's that they all have the same personality: that of a perpetually smirking aristocrat. The writing is obviously extremely competent from a technical point of view, and the dialogue contains words and expressions that even some native English speakers might not be familiar with. However, the purpose of game dialogue is not to show off the writer's prowess, but rather to create compelling, relatable characters that fit in the game world and are internally consistent. I feel like this goal is not achieved when even random plebeians are spouting pompous lines that sound like they're straight from a Shakespearean play. I want to be able talk to actual human beings at least some of the time. Tongue-in-cheek caricatures are absolutely fine, but I don't think it's necessary for 98% of the NPCs to fall under this category.

Your 'solution' is silly, though. The better solution would be for some of the dialogue to simply be rewritten or toned down so that it is more in-character, which is absolutely feasible. The writer has a very impressive command of the English language, he just needs to learn to control his verbosity when appropriate.

3) I am not a game designer so I don't know what the best loot system would be. However, the ubiquitousness of 'junk' is a deliberate design decision on the part of the developers to make the world feel more alive and to encourage interactivity, similar to the old Ultima games. I fail to see the problem with that.

* actually, now that I think about it, this is a really lame trait to give to a character and it serves no purpose that I can think of. There must be a better way to convey that the mayor is supposed to be an absent-minded, narcissistic character.

I hate the loot system so far and hated the random loot systems in the other games. I know in DD when I was playing through I got a legendary/epic drop off of a random orc in the orc camp. I took a few steps and a mini boss comes out of the tent. The fight was tough and I thought I was going to be rewarded for it. I was not I got better rewards from a mob standing mere feet away. I actually turned the game off and didn't play for a few weeks because of it. A mob I one shot gives something great a tough fight gave a couple heal potions and some gold.


A random Diablo loot system does not make sense in this type of rpg. The design around the Diablo loot system to to keep chasing the next best thing. However, in this game we have limited number of encounters, no respawns and no chance to chase the next greatest thing. I would much rather see hand placed loot systems because of this or at least on important fights, like the light house horror. Players shouldn't feel compelled in an area such as the treasure vault under the burial mounds to save and reload to get an item they want in the chest. This is a fairly detailed world that is being crafted and random loot in these places breaks the immersion and risk/reward for exploration.

May I add a few ?
** Skill system is boring SO FAR. I may have never touched a lock pick in my entire life, and blam, invest 10 points in it in a row, and become very "proficient". The geometrical requirement of skill points saves it to some extend...
** BUYING skills in shops ? That is ridiculous. Even with some imagination that the guy maybe giving me some lessons, it is a mood breaker for me.
** Loot system is indeed ridiculous too. I stopped playing the alpha (until next big patch), when I found silver in some barrels. Come on... On the other side, I still want to recover wood, or even some iron, when I destroy a crate...
It is weird, because Larian goes to some very realistic détails (to the point of having empty or full goblets, and so on), but can't have a logical or quite realistic loot system...
I wouldn't be ashamed to have an undead infested mine near Cyseal, and be able to recover Ore from it once I clear it from the undeads. Would make sense to me to recover silver ore, not randomly find it in crates...

It makes the world feel more inconsistent, IMHO. And being interactive with crates is so boring. On the other hand, they made the fish stacks right IMHO. Every loot should be like them. Finding some fish on fish poles or stacks makes sense IMHO.
IMO, the problem is it is not THAT realistic, while it could easily be more realistic.

** crafting is Meh. It has the roots to be very good IMO (randomness of results, profusion , but not so much, of ingrédients, variety of crafting recipes), but it still lacks feedback, maybe some success levels (You know, I want to char some fish I am cooking, could be fun RPG stuff), and some use of workshops IMHO. It feels like 25% power, while it could be 100%.
** What are source hunters ? Basic wandering rag tag noobs ? Because the first piece of armor I loot or sword I buy is so much better than source hunter gear... Not saying that the first pack of undeads outside cyseal kicks my ass hard time if I go "alone" fight them in the beginning. I may have missed something, but I have rather have them clearly be basic source hunter recruits, things would be clearer IMHO.

I am really aware that this is an alpha, and that Larian makes huge improvments every patch. Just sharing why I play 10mn of the game every new alpha, and then wait for the next big patch (or editor, ahem...). So far, DoS is a frustrating inquiry RPG for me.

I've seen a lot of odd requests for toggles in option menus, but a "humourous dialogue" toggle is certainly the most ridiculous (and impossible to implement) one yet.

Maybe the game at the moment does stray a bit too much into comedy or farce, but it

The important NPC's that I've seen do all have a distinct personality, and most of them don't use clever wordplay, they talk normally.

That's one of the most well-thought out arguments against random loot that I've heard, arkand.




Are you asking for an Elder Scrolls "use to improve" system? (Just a question, not an attack.)



Do you mean you want a point-buy system, or NPC's to train you? NPC's might be more realistic, certainly, but also more inconvenient.




... Videogame!

Starting out as low-level guys with crap gear and powers is how all games do it, really.

I think that the Source Hunters are indeed pretty fresh graduates from the academy, and they've been sent here because it seemed like a relatively easy assignment (there's even a big army in the city for backup), and it wasn't even clear if Source Magic was used.

There might be an optional "Source Hunter Academy" tutorial level added at the start that could make it clearer. (And I'm still waiting for the "Source Hunter's Manual" to be added to out starting inventory.




I don't recall where I heard this, but there are basically two guys working full-time on getting the editor ready for release. It is powerful, but complex, and I think they want to make it a bit more user-friendly.

I hope you have something that can read Excel spreadsheets, because that's how some of the stats are stored.

Some more flaw at character creation. Classless character creation ? Steam advertising is utterly false. This is definitely a class system, at character creation at least. Rogue, wizard, knight...
I should be able to build my character as I "want" in a classless system. Can't choose skills so far.


I don't know, I played Skyrim a long time ago. "Use to improve" could be part of the answer in giving some consistancy to the skills system.
Look at the character creation:
Attributes
Abilities
Skills
Talents
and even traits afterwards...
Thats too much stuff around.
Moreover, in character creation, I have no indication, is some cases, of what does what.

I created many character improvments systems over my numerous mods , the skill system I want to create in my mod is ready, but going over them through useless/pointless walls of text is not the point here.



Could be. The issue is realism/"fun".

Oh, and I really wish a legendary talent will feel like a legendary talent, not a level 5/5 talent. (That is, a lot of dedication to gain it (maybe cost 10 talent points or whatever), but then, some badass effect)


Lol, bring them sheets.

You can change all the attributes, Abilities and Talents you start with. Yes, I would like to be able to select my starting skills as well, but it is Alpha.




Hmmm... Since the game world is a certain size and doesn't respawn like the Elder Scrolls games there would be problems with some of the abilities, though, like Lockpicking, Leadership, other social skills. Some skills would shoot up like a rocket, but for others you could run out of ways to advance certain skills.

1. I really have to disagree here, I like all the humor that is in this game.

2. I think the dialog is ok. I skip through most dialogs as well, the only thing that bothers me is that there's no sound with it. But I guess most important dialogs will have sound later on. The only games where I thought the dialog was really great are the Gabriel Knight games, but dialogs really have to be perfect in those puzzle games. I wouldn't want to say DOS is a boring game because of the dialogs. It's more the combat and the questing which for me defines this is a really solid game.

3. You got a point there, I think the best thing now is to collect as much junk as you can and then sell everything and buy epic gear at Esmeralda's shop. I bought 2 Flammenschwert (dunno why German) 87-141 dmg and 40 armor metal armor, those were much better then the one's I found in all the alpha quests. I discussed in another topic, you can already get pretty epic gear from 30 minutes in game, being lvl 2. I don't know if that's the problem of getting good gear or being able to already wear it in early levels, because the strength requirements are pretty low if you put many points in str from start. It's kinda weird that Esmeralda (and I guess all shops) will get better items as well as you progress in levels. You shouldn't get like really good items from shops imo. They should just be good enough to start off in that part of level. If you're really lucky you will find better items though. I noticed however that big bosses DO drop better gear, the big spider in black cove dropped 2 legendary items for me, so that complaint isn't really valid. Overall I'm not really bothered by it, but I don't like it as well. I also like everything the old way (fixed loot, fixed shop items), where in the first town you can just buy beginner gear only and get maybe something special from doing quests. It's a bit weird to reload a bossfight, because you weren't satisfied with the loot. But yeah, in most cases Esmeralda does have better stuff anyways.

In earlier versions, fixed shop items were a problem for me because my Rogue's dagger broke, and the only things in stores were inferior versions, and those started to wear out. No daggers were dropping from enemies, so I was going to be out of weapons soon.

In most rpg's the shopkeepers can also repair your weapons for a small fee, being able to repair weapons when you're not around a shop could still be nice.

Starting out as low-level guys with crap gear and powers is how all games do it, really.

D:OS is getting compared to Ultima 7 now and then (the trailer included), and that game - and most of the rest of the single player series - handled gear quite differently than is typical of today's games. A sword was a sword, full stop. You didn't start with a level 1 sword and then upgrade to a level 2 sword with better stats, etc, etc. Though there was a little bit of gear improvement (a magic sword or a fire sword or whatnot was slightly stronger better than a nonmagical one), character power increased mostly through character stats.

This also meant that if you did find something like a fire sword or juggernaut hammer early on - quite possible, especially if you knew where to look - it was actually a meaningful acquisition, as opposed to "okay, but I'll be replacing it in a couple of levels..."

Improving your ability through your stats increasing still counts as "low level ... powers".

You missed my point. My point was that games don't usually start out with you outclassing the enemies completely (unless it's a taste of power before abruptly de-powering you).

I don't have a problem with the idea of starting at a lower power level generally, nor the idea that the characters are relatively new to the trade (although the fact that someone undergoes a meteoric rise in skill/power in such a short time frame is also a bit odd - something that was again a bit different in U7 where stats generally started ~18 and didn't go higher than 30), but it isn't necessary to have a Diabloesque gear system in order to have character advancement or even to have a sense of improvement re: gear.

OTOH, in the case of D:OS, the characters not only don't start out more powerful than the enemies, but they don't even start out on par with other people who should be similarly skilled. Those legionnaire grunts you meet at the beginning of the game are already far stronger (and far better equipped) than the source hunters, which seems a bit odd given the way that the story presents them and the NPCs talk about them (there's even a comment about them having been given the best available stuff in their orders).

For that matter, it's not unheard of for the PCs to start out much more powerful than the opposition, but that usually means that some other factor is at play, such as stealther-style games where fighting sets your mission back even if you win easily. Not so applicable to D:OS, since it doesn't seem set up to allow avoidance in every situation.

King's Bounty series also had a humorous tone, and has been successful. KB: Legends has 79% metacritic so I don't think humorous RPG = bad metacritic scores.

Yes these legionaires are pretty strong, you can still defeat them though with help of the explosive barrel for some neat extra exp. I actually would like if they change the story by just a little bit, so that you are just some peasants trying to make a name for themselves and then get recognized as source hunters by level 3 or so. Maybe just by talking to Aureus or Ahru. It's just weird that the 1st couple of legionaires are like, 'wtf you're not source hunters we will need to escort you and then the legionnaire defending the gate is like, 'ok so you're source hunters, you may pass the gate'. I really like the old style slow progression, where in the beginning you can defeat nothing but a small crab or something. Like the 1st fight against 2 legionnaire's at the bridge for me is supposed to be very difficult towards near impossible, but it's instead a piece of cake. Well, they are drunk, but still, those are armed soldiers, you wouldn't want to try this in the old Gothic series. It also feels more rewarding progressing to the game I mean, from a dude with a dull sword, ending up with a dude that can slaughter the whole town if he pleases. Btw I would really like if there were some like lvl 15-20 dudes in Cyseal, where you had to get back to once you're almost done with the game to get some extra treasures.

Please remember that Cyseal is only a small part of the game. They proposed it for alpha to fix system and gameplay bugs.
I think fine tuning of difficulty/balance will come with Beta, when the whole game is finished.
However, I agree, The story/power of characters feels a little weird.

I have to admit that I agree with some of the criticisms above. Being at the Alpha stage I didn't expect it to be slick and polished but, after reading the Kickstarter pitch which talked of wanting to add some special extra icing to an already good cake, I didn't expect it to be quite as cliched and unoriginal as it seems at the moment. Seems more like the same rather stale old bun we've seen before, rather than a delicious new recipe.


Every stereotype and cliche from past rpgs seems to make an appearance, from the orcs, zombies, skeletons, etc through to vain aristocrats, wicked wizards, stuffy military types, dull tavern patrons, price gouging market traders, and - well, you tick them off they're all there. And then there's the endless bloody junk loot. "Oh goody, that giant spider just dropped a piece of armour. Or somebody has left another chest or crate in the street with 3 gold coins, a cheap shirt and an apple in it" or whatever devices are used to keep the steady flow of rubbish coming. I've just about had enough of games that treat you like a four year old with an attention span of ten nano-seconds and think you must have some pathetic little treat every few metres, regardless of whether it make the story look ridiculous or not (For the record, my attention span is at least eleven nano-seconds and I can walk past several whole houses without needing some stupid barrel to peer into to check for random rusty daggers.)

I enjoyed Divine Divinity a lot , and thought that the Dragon Knight saga was really excellent. For my money, it struck a good balance between traditional rpg elements and adding some fresh and original touches. But this one feels uncomfortably like Beyond Divinity, which had the smell of a pot-boiler cranked out to a budget to keep some cash coming in while they worked on a new engine for their other project. Unfortunately, stuff that was fine in games ten years ago risks feeling dated and flogged to death now.

This one certainly does look pretty but the content just seemed cliched and, well, uninspired. Just one example: You arrive in town on a quest to find somebody - the commander, the wizard or whoever it was and can you ask all the NPCs the most obvious question "Hey, where does X hang out?". No. Instead, you can ask them all the same generic lines of stuff and get the same boring answers, over and over. Then you can search every pixel in town until you locate your quarry. Surely it can be done better than that?

And the battles didn't really fire up either. Half the time it felt like the same lumbering pack of enemies were shuffling toward us but with different faces painted on them.

I guess it's my own fault for being too willing to believe all the pre-game promises, and there will obviously be lots more improvements made before the final release. But the keen anticipation I felt a few months ago has certainly evaporated. Maybe I've just maxed out on this style of game and others will love every click of it?

And who knows? In a few months the final game might look all sparkly fresh and enticing! For Larian's sake let's hope so. Good luck Larian and keep working hard.

I agree 100% with all the previous comments regarding the loot system. I dislike randomized loot in any game. I'd rather loot be relatively rare but useful. Scrounging up random bits of junk so I can possibly sell them and buy something useful isn't fun, it's a chore. Now, if they made it so the class of my character / companion are taken into account with regards to what loot I get, that would OK, but pure randomness doesn't add replay value, it just makes inventory management a pain. I hope Larian can change this. It's my main concern at this point.

personally, I like randomness.... Sorry

I'm a little confused on some points. I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm genuinely uncertain about some things.

If you get rid of randomized loot, what does that mean exactly? Does that mean that every chest, crate and barrel has the exact same stuff every time? Bosses always drop the same items every time?

Or do you just want more preplaced items and unique items?

IMHO, "loot" should be realistically skill based randomised.

Realistic: don't find piece of armors on animals, for example, but only animal parts.
Then you could craft leather armors with animal parts, but realism here.

Skill based: a butcher should find meat on animals. A pillager could find more gold on corpse, a miner could get some ore from metal veins. An alchemist could identify that this skeleton's skull is just the perfect one for some alchemical powdering, for example.

Randomized: a corpse could spawn a usable basic armor and some cloth rags and a few gold pieces, while the other, only a dagger but a little more coins, while mining a vein could sometimes spawn a precious stone. A skeleton should obviously drop some bones or a skull ALMOST every times (because sometimes, its skull gets smashed. So the random factor. Shit happens.)

Skill based randomized: the better the skill, the more/better the loot. So a legendary Skinner could recover 2 or 3 perfect patchs of skin from a dead doe, while a basic Skinner would probably make a mess out of it, and recover punctured skin bits...


However, I am aware that this is definitely not the direction Larian is taking with its loot/skills approach. Just sharing ideas here.

And "bosses" could have a limited "hand crafted" loot table of high value realistic items, among other mundane skill based loot, for interest and replayability's sake.

@Hakea
I really agree with you on many points, like cliches, navigating in cyseal (I opened a thread about this "issue"), "boring" battles, the risk of the feel of the game being outdated, and maybe some basic realism issues.

However, Larian has always delivered great RPG's. So I really trust they will do the same with DOS. There are still at least 4 months before the final release (spring ends the 21st of june...).

I am very confident, but can't help being overly critical about some features, hoping that it will keep them on their toes (if they give a shit about what I think, which I reaaaaaaally doubt ^^). It's not unheard of seeing great studios fall over overconfidence, or doing the same stuff over and over again, and losing sight of the good stuff (like Creative Assembly did for Rome 2, or Dragon age 2, for example...).

Just found a malachite and a pearl in the beehives. Maybe honey would have made sense. Then, because I am nice and imaginative, I can say that the bee tender hide his belongings in the hive. Why not. But well, you know...

BTW, and I am picking up all the crates, barrels, water barrels, I can. Really funny. Hopefully, weight of items and effects of weight will be added later (actually, it HAS to be added, come on) Because some nicely crafted or bought bags could be nice too, if I want to keep my things organized. Couldn't find any in the vendors of the market.

Ah, I see, so loot tables should be more in favour of what your base skills are, so if one of my characters has several points into Two Handed, then the odds of a random two-handed weapon dropping are increased. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. It doesn't sound TOO hard to implement (although things are rarely so simple).




You can get honey out of beehives. You need to drag a Jars over it. Otherwise, it doesn't seem like a bad place to hide small valuable objects.

Indeed, this is not exactly what I had in mind, but it is easy to imagine that someone who is very good at two handed weapons would pay special attentions (in a kind of a "professionnal" way) to two handed weapons he/she comes by in the world, and so find/loot them more often.
But then, NO RANDOM two handed sword if the enemy you were fighting did not use one...

Another example. Sometimes, I find teeth in the world. Why the hell would any sane PC be interested in teeth ? But, as a crafter/alchemist/jeweller/whatever, you might know a recipe that requires some teeth, and so pay more attention to suitable teeth for your recipe, and so start to loot them on corpse, or "loot" them more often.


A proper loot table, taking into account all skills as variables, the looted item/critter, and so on, could be a real challenge to create.

IMHO, loots are a great way to increase the feeling of growing capacities and skills for a PC, but it would requires a lot of fine tuning, dedicated gathering/looting skills (for the PC, not the devs ^^), and so on, to be really interesting. But that would be another game.



Inadequate/unrealistic loot tables are a design flaw IMHO.

It really makes sense. So realistic in some ways, so unrealistic in some other ways :-(


Yeah, lol ^^.

Other than bosses, Enemies DO drop the proper loot types. Animals drop bits, never swords.

Here's an old, but relevant link to this topic, I think.

This is something I would like. Keep the random in but have some drops be predetermined or (the better choice in my opinion) have them be randomized from a set list. That way there's still the random thing but there's more control over just what you might get.

@ Stabbey
Again, a nice proper answer from an inquisitive, knowledgeable and tolerant spirit. Thanks.

Right, we are only criticizing because we feel (or at least I feel) that it is already a decent game with the potential to be a fantastic game, with more polish and some important tweaks. Otherwise we wouldn't bother posting here. Steam says I've sunk forty hours in D:OS so far; despite all the bugs and 'design flaws' I just keep coming back for more.

Exactly. Good suggestions.



To me, The Dragon Knight Saga felt like a creative advance on a game format that was already getting tired and derivative. Many other game makers seemed to be dumbing their output down and just making kids games with endless random loot drops and a conveyor belt of enemies with pretty graphics and sparkly effects to cover up the basic simplicity and repetitiveness of the design. Fair enough, there's obviously a market for it, so why not? But some companies, such as Larian, seemed to be trying to go forwards into new territory.

This game currently feels like a big step backwards. It's an old fashioned RPG with prettier graphics added, a lot more stupid crates every few metres, the same old parade of stereotypes, and some pretty dull dialogue. It feels like something they found in Black Isle's old waste paper basket and added a fresh coat of paint and a few hundred more crates and barrels to.


After reading the Kickstarter hype I was hoping for something fresh and original. What a major disappointment this is!


Improving your equipment and developing your skills is always going to be a big part of these games, but does it have to be so darned cheesey? I'm certainly not asking for hyper-realism but at least I'd like to be able to suspend disbelief long enough to be able have some involvement in the story. Yes, I would like to earn my improved equipment and skills in a way that was at least vaguely realistic, not by collecting a torrent of randomly generated rubbish in containers that clearly would have no reason whatever for being there except to keep giving the player another little present to open every five seconds. It gets so lame very quickly.


I'd like to be able to walk into a town that actually felt a little bit like a community. Here, we have the usual locations - docks, tavern, shops, town hall, etc but not even the pretence that it might actually be able to function as such, or that more than a handful of the NPCs may have some sort of home in the area. It all just looks plonked down to tick the location boxes and provide a backdrop for some more barrels and crates.

Then I'd like to be able to have some conversations that were actually worth reading and get involved in some interesting action that would allow me to get better equipment - either through getting paid and being able to buy items, being offered a specific item as repayment, or perhaps looting equipment from a dead enemy's corpse or camp that might conceivably have been used by them, and so on. I've no problem with finding some equipment randomly but couldn't it be better done? An occasional hidden coin purse, a chest with some old armour in an attic, etc. but not in barrels every few metres.

Ditto for improving skills. Make it more realistic - have the improvement connected to both training and to actual performance. Currently it looks as if Larian are trying to put in something for everybody - the old school rpg fans, the puzzle solvers, the Diablo crowd, the barrel smashers and loot junkies, and all the others. But if they get it wrong they run the real risk of pleasing nobody.


One would certainly hope that the uninspired dialogue and cliche characters would be improved considerably before release date but the basic loot system seems to be entrenched in this game now - and, to be fair to Larian, in many others too - which is a pity. Of course, many players will probably like it, and I wish them all the best. It's probably my own fault for persisting with a genre that now mostly seems to aim at younger players in a mass market. Maybe it's time I finally accepted that it's time to grow up and move on to other entertainments. It was interesting to have the chance to see what a game looked like at the Alpha stage and I don't grudge Larian a single cent of the Aus $46 it cost me. But I certainly hope that they can turn this from something that looks suspiciously like a turkey into something closer to an eagle before release date.


End of rant.

+100

@Hakea:
Again, I agree with you on many points:
skills, community, locations, stupid crates...

The difference might be that I am still hopefull Larian will deliver a great game in the end. Keep in mind that this is only an alpha, not even a beta. So I suppose you are as frustrated as many of us, by the lack of scope and new game elements. I think they fix the biggest issues in the alpha, and will use the beta to fine tune the system based on the whole game, not just boring Cyseal.

And then, I am hopefull the editor will allow us to craft the world and features we like if they don't.

Keep hope indeed. We all want to watch this game soar instead of fry...

I believe the designers have said that this game is more about reactivity than simulation, which is why it doesn't have a million "simulation" skills like Cartography and Skinning for a ton of professions.

I'm sure that a lot of people would love to have to spend hours doing every stage it would really take to craft a piece of armour but personally, I like the play games for the fantastical and the strange, not the tedious and the mundane.

You do have a point that clicking on dozens of crates isn't very interesting. In part that's probably not helped by the amount of times you repeatedly play the same areas after the game gets patched.

The crates are the only real source of crafting materials at the moment. Obviously right now the amount of crafting materials that exist is far too low - they're going to go over the game and add in more hand-placed materials once they've taken a look at what things are required the most in formulas and such. They should make use of NPC merchants to sell crafting materials.



I also was unimpressed by the lack of housing. They had a big video some months back where they said that because of the schedules, they had to add in second floors of houses to accommodate where the NPC's would sleep, and it turns out that even several of the named NPC's have no known houses. (Maybe it's possible they're past the development barrier on the bridge, but I doubt it.)

On the other hand there are good reasons why that can't be the case. The engine only allows for so much stuff per map, and I'm heard that Cyseal's map is extremely full, there's little to no room to add additional upstairs/downstairs rooms.

Another reason is that if they did have the room for a zillion houses, it would get insanely boring and repetitive. It'd take forever to get anywhere. Most games have that problem. You only have the resources to make so many interesting characters per town, but that's not enough to give a town the feeling of a real town instead of an empty near-abandoned one. You need generic multitudes to make a town feel right, but there's no way to realistically house them and make it interesting and fun.

There should be a difference between "realistic" and "simulation". I agree, I don't think DOS should be a crafting simulator, definitely not the point. I too have rather live adventures than spend hours crafting ONE armor. Anyways, Larian stuff.

OMG NO. Mundane DOESN'T HAVE TO be tedious. Mundane skills should be very streamlined, and only help you feel your power and world interactions grow, IMHO. Then maybe add in a few "professionnal" choices, and you have a great replayability, and many new character development choices. It really really all depends on the systems you create. Anyways, Larian stuff.


OMG, are you suggesting that Larian will add more crates O_O ^^. The Nightmare invasion of werecrates from the greater Plane of crates and barrels...

+10 for the housing issue. waste of time IMHO. It seems that Larian HAD to find a stretch goal. But this one really doesn't seem interesting. However, I am really looking forward a night/day cycle, which I haven't seen yet.

Maybe a "Survivalist" Ability or Talent that lets people loot from corpses a second time, and lets you get additional uses from plants/mushrooms when crafting?

In the story, you play inquisitors hunting down and eliminating users of banned magic, not pioneers. Lots of monster and bad-guy killing will be required, so the base game is probably going to focus more on abilities that support that part of the game and story.

The idea of skills improving through use is certainly possible - a build the weresheep played before the alpha release had ability caps of like 100 or so. Implementing all the changes required to support such a system would be a tremendous amount of work, though.




No no no, not more crates, they'll add more pre-placed items in the world, like branches and herbs and shells, stuff like that.



Just adding a cosmetic day/night cycle is easy - they did it in Divine Divinity. But in this game, that's something Larian wanted to tie together. They do want their world to make sense, so they weren't going to add in a day/night cycle just to have everyone sitting in the same place 24 hours a day. The stretch goal was for the schedules and reactivity required to make an actual day/night cycle instead of just a cosmetic one.

I'm thinking of the difference between Morrowind and Oblivion with that one: in Morrowind, it was just cosmetic, shops stayed open all night, NPCs continued to wander about aimlessly, but in Oblivion it did actually mean something: shops closed, streets cleared etc. It was sometimes a really inconvenient pain in the bum, but I liked it overall. I'm not so keen on games that just have perpetual day (or night, for that matter).

+1 . Larian stuff.

Day/night cycle should dn't be cosmetic. There should be a way to tell the difference from a Scripting point of view. Some creatures go out at night only, and stuff like that...

But I really don't know what to do of all the mobs during night. They would have to go to bed at some point.
Maybe then, for simplicity's sake, day/night would have no influence on citizen's behavior.

Yeah... that's the idea behind the schedules. Yes, you can do pretty much anything with enough scripting, but the idea is to make a system that handles that sort of stuff so you don't have to make a million scripts. That one of the reasons for the delays - they're making systems to handle things instead of scripts.




That can't happen at this point - not since Larian started taking people's money in promise for implementing that idea.

I disagree with OPs first two points - the mixture between serious and humorous content has always been part of Larians games, and I therefore never expected anything else. Actually, it's one of the things that make their games special.
The dialogue is not always exceptional and great, but it's ok, and i think there are several characters in the game that show a distinct personality. My biggest issue with dialogue has been that the writers like to use a few too many modern-age expressions that derive directly from real world history and therefore seem out-of-place in Rivellon.

I can agree with the complaints about itemization, however.
Personally I always prefer hand-crafted meaningful loot to randomized and largely unmemorable stuff (meaning, we all remember Lilarcor the Talking Sword, but not the xth iteration of Adjective Sword of the Noun +Number).
I don't think that items have to be necessarily in the same place all the time (although I do think that some guaranteed rewards/placings are good). E.g. Icewind Dale combined guaranteed loot with random loot, iirc, so you would always find the same unique item in a certain chest, but the chest might also contain anything out of a list of a few other items.

Somewhat connected to the issue of random items is the scaling of items.
Here again I guess I'm somewhat conservative, but I don't really like systems where you start with weapons that do 1-2 damage, but end up with weapons that have 500-900 damage, MMORPG and Diablo-like. I prefer weapons to stay within a more narrow and plausible range over the course of the game, e.g. the way D&D and many other RPGs based on PnP systems do it.

My main experience is with Bethesda's stuff, but yeah, a simple schedule was enough for the vast majority of characters and creatures, most of whom weren't scripted but were just given a timetable and whose AI filled in the rest.