Something I found incredibly frustrating about the first game was the inability to be pro-active about solving quests. My quest log very rarely gave me any information that could be used to actively go and solve that quest. It felt like the game wanted me to do very specific things but absolutely did not want to tell me what those things were. Most of the quests in DoS were progressed purely by wandering around and stumbling onto the correct solution. As someone who is very stubborn about not looking online for the solution, this results in a game that is chock full of aimless wandering. My first playthrough (almost completely unassisted) ended up being something like 120hrs and if I'm honest, I was pretty glad the game ended when it did. Not a great feeling to end on. In hindsight, I would've looked at a walkthrough more often. That isn't a good way for a game to be really.

I'm not going to say that it's a good thing, but I actually believe that the lack of direction encouraging you to wander around was an intentional choice by Larian. They want you to wander around and discover the solutions on your own. They certainly did not want it to be about making a bee-line for a quest maker on your map.

That said, the quest log could definitely have used more detail and recorded hints which you had found through dialogue or investigation.

You're probably right, and I'm not one for hand-holding and following quest markers in games. I just think DoS takes it a step too far. It didn't help that I often felt confused as to what my overall goal was at any point in time. Am I going after this guy or am I trying to find this item?

My quest log often looked something like this

I spoke with this person
We found out that...
This person is trying to do this

More of a diary of what had happened and not what the game wanted me to do. After all, there are only a few sets ways to progress the story, it's not like I can decide on my own what would be the best way to progress.

I have mixed feelings. Personally I would like a clue about the quest I'm doing, especially if there's a risk I may permanently stall the quest in the meantime (similarly, I remember somebody describing Unix as having a bit of a "you asked for it, you got it" attitude: although it's my preferred user environment, it's frequently very annoying) but I don't want excessive amounts of "follow the cheese" either. I hasten to add that, for once, that's a legit use of "cheese", as the pointer in Oblivion's compass was often referred to as a cheese wedge.

The whole hand-holding argument is an issue in itself though, and a bit of a balancing act between people who arguably want too much direction and those who are unable to stop themselves if apparently unwanted assistance is provided.

I wonder whether it would be practical to have different levels of guidance in game, comparable to the different difficulty settings. For example, the most detailed help might be a "Go here" marker with the last piece of relevant text, the next level down would be relevant text only and finally the "you're on your own" setting.

The historical order of the dialogue record is not very helpful, especially if, like me, you tend to go from place to place like the ball in a pinball machine. It would be much more useful if quest-relevant conversations were tagged with the quest name and searchable in game. This would be a great help if you only play for short periods at a time and have a poor memory - I fall into both groups particularly when playing after a few drinks.

There were plenty of points in the game where I had to refer to a walkthrough to work out what I was supposed to be doing.

I probably would have been fine if I'd played the game from start to end in one go, but when you come back to it after a couple of weeks, the quest log does NOT give you enough for you to pick up where you left off.

I can't remember which games did this exactly, but I remember playing games where you would talk to your companion and they would remind you about what they thought you should do next. I agree that the quest pointers and compasses, possibly makes things too easy.

Witcher 3 had quest pointers and compasses though. God, can you imagine being lost in the massive Witcher 3 world with D:OS's quest management? You could literally spend the rest of your lifetime wandering aimlessly in that world.

It could also update with new information while showing old information.

I'm not the kind of player who goes full-rage mode when someone criticizes his favorite game, but - for Christ Sake!! - the lack of hand-holding is exactly what made D:OS quests fun to solve (even with the mediocre writing and the 2d characters)!

Every single quest in that game was perfectly doable without external help (If I made it. Everyone can). The maps were not that big, the hints were all there. Ok, the quest log could have been organized in a more efficient way. Ok, you were provided with more than one main objective at the same time. But, seriously: a quest log that thinks for me or a quest marker that mimics Google maps is everything I DON'T WANT in Orignal Sin II.

The refreshing feeling of not being treated like an idiot was exactly what I liked in Original Sin quest design.

But there is a difference between a stupid marker on the map or a questgiver pointing directly to where one needs to go and giving hints or a riddle in order for the player to actively solve a quest instead of stumble over the solution by chance

I dunno most of the time it makes total sense (outside one or two broken quests... but those would have been broken even with a map marker)

Someone's house is locked? check outside their house, check where they work, check their pockets.

Also, I'm not sure if the EE fixed this, but in the vanilla version, sometimes clues and information you got from dialogue didn't show up in the quest log. You've earned that information from investigation, so it should be put into your quest log.

You got enough hints to solve every single quest in D:OS I. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to do that. You were forced to explore in order to solve many quests. That's true. But exploration is among the highlights of the first game, and this is also due to the quest design.

Don't forget Baudolino that those original fans of the hardcore games are 20 years older now with more responsibilities, and less free time.

Sometimes people don't have a lot of time to play, and they can put the game down for long stretches and forget where they left off when they pick it back up. I often find myself playing a game for a month, then moving on to the newest shiny thing. I don't always remember where I left off when I get back to the first game.

While I didn't have problems remembering what to do in D:OS 1, it's not a bad idea for Larian to remember that not everyone will play through the entire game in a few weeks. That's especially important for co-op when the difficulties of coordinating schedules means that it might end up being only one playing session every one or two weeks.

I'm not against the idea of a quest log that organizes efficiently the info you get through exploration and dialogues, Stabbey. I'm definitely against the idea of a quest log that solves the quests for you, which is basically what you get when you play a run-of-the-mill RPG these days.

In EE, yes. In vanilla, not so much, IMO.

I beat the game 2 times: One Vanilla and one EE. The hints were all there both times. The log was more useful in the EE edition though. I admit that.

No quest hints, please. I'd rather look into a walkthrough when I am really stuck (did this once or twice in vanilla D:OS) instead of having _every_ quest spoiled from the very beginning.

Luckily, I think with D:OS2, when there are multiple ways to solve quests and so it seems less likely that we'll be told how to proceed.

I couldn't agree more, holding hands maybe would attract new players, but on the long run you would just lose more. This was the essence of the first game and this is the main reason why people will surely speak about it for a good while. It wasn't easy but it gave a lot of joy to follow common sense and actually find things out by myself.
I admit it too, I was persistent but had to check walkthrough occasionally

I like the way it is done in Divine Divinety: You talk to Bob and he tells you to kill some wolfes in a cave to the north (just an example, I dont remember names and quests from there). In your quest log log appears a note: "Bob wants me to kill some wolfes in a cave north of his house." I have a map and I can make markers on the map. In this case I would make a marker at Bobs house "Bob, kill wolves cave north". No markers or anything. Great feeling of exploration.

Of course, the quest log must be well organized. A think that it was not always perfect in D:OS1. Right now I play DA:O again and I like this: Quest are sorted by area and they are divided in open and solved quests. I do not want a diary where things are written in the order how I find them and different quest status is shown by different text color (I think it was like this in DD, it was hard to find a specific quest, especially if you started it a long time ago).

Divinity2 was a fun game, but the ! and ? over peoples heads felt immersion breaking for me. And I defenitely do not want an arrow that shows me the way. If you add those things, please give us the option to turn off quest markers.

This is something I have learned from the elder scrolls (I am sure for Morrowind, not so sure about the rest): Please give every char a name, not just commoner, merchant or noble. In most games I press tab and I only talk to chars with a name because only they are relevant for quests. I think it feels immersion breaking if only 10% of the people have normal names while the rest had names that just describe their job or status. In TES only 10% of the people had a quest for you too while the rest said some usual lines, but you did not know until you talked to them. In Morrowind even normal bandits in a dungeon had names and when fighting them I was thinking if I could have talked to them if I did things different before. Yes, this does make it harder to find out who has a quest for you, but Morrowind was on of the most immersive game worlds ever, even if the gameplay was very repetitive (walk a lot, click things to death, jump and run like crazy just to increase your skill)

I started computer gaming with realms of arcadia 3 in 1995, so I am used to being lost on a giant map without having much direction.

Honest to death: this is the ONLY kind of hand-holding that I want in my RPGs. I know this is a quite immersion-breaking feature, but if most of the characters in the game just tell me generic stuff, I want to know up front which characters don't (this saves me a HUGE amount of time. Hours of pointless clicking that doesn't add ANYTHING to the gameplay or to the story).
Of course, they could name all the characters and use a different font (or color, of whatever) in order to highlight the relevant ones. And of course, if every character in the game has something interesting to say, there's no need to name only a handful of them. But as long as generic characters are in the game, generic names are a useful tool for the player.

Ah, this argument. Close to my heart since I get a lot of complaints about one of my story-mods that people need to wander and are lost. And that they pretty much DEMAND of me I make the quest-log a walkthrough. Sad days for the RPG.

Making things intentionally vague or hoping people explore isn't appreciated anymore in this day and age. A quest isn't done along the way, it's done right from start to finish and then onto the next A-to-B follow a pointer. Even if a questgiver explictely states where to go, and people can re-ask them if they forget, that's apparently not enough, it all needs to be in the questlog. Named the NPC in the log? I'm asked to also include it's location, since just a name is not enough.
It makes me very sad.

I really like D:OS method myself, and I rarely had any troubles continuing, and if I did I went elsewhere and usually along the way found what I was looking for again and finish or move on the quest. Good times.

Maybe there could a scaling of this, and by making a smarter use of quest markers.

Kind of a shame that people just want games to be a snooze.

Which wouldn't be a problem if people didn't demand it of all games.

It was fine in D:OS. "Explore and you shall find."

Larian has to train players to engage with a quest even through they have to do some leg work to work things out.

Suggestion 1:
Reward the player for figuring things out with a tag such as 'resourceful'. The player could instantly lose this tag if they don't try to figure things out and instead hire a guide to find a person of interest/location for them. This would prevent players simply finding the location by saving/loading (on hiring a guide) if they want to keep the tag they would have to waste a lot of time loading back to before they hired the guide making it untenable to do so all the time. (I know some players will simply look at wikis but bear with me ~ some players can't be saved from themselves)

Also a tag provides interesting role-playing opportunities that some players will surely need to progress in a quest. The more you figure things out yourself the more impactful the tag attached ie. 'detective' which could open up some quest lines.

Humorous Suggestion:
I think Larian should have a quest in this game just to toy with people who want to be guided to an objective.

A mischievous imp who can shape change into a different appearance could turn up occasionally offering to guide the player to their objective and lead them to an ambush. ;-)

When I was young, boredom was a very different concept. Boredom meant having nothing to do.

Now, boredom means that there are better things I could be doing with my time. I could be washing the dishes, planning my finances, watching Netflix. I could read a book. I'd happily play Witcher 3 a fourth time. The kind of boredom I had when I was young now seems completely foreign. My time is a finite resource, and if Larian want my time then they have to earn it.

There are times in D:OS where it starts putting strain on this. When I return to the game after a break, I expect to be able to get into it again quickly. I don't expect to get all the answers, but I expect to know how to start making my next step towards the answer.

The path to the answer should not be boring. Exploration is all well and good, as long as it is entertaining. If your idea of "exploration" is talking to every NPC in the village until you talk to the right one , or searching the 60% of the map that's "north of the beach" and checking every cave until you find the right one... If you expect that to be entertaining, then you and I have very different expectations.