Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta The ungodly charcater developement/leveling.

There is still the matter of you being very obnoxious. You said you wanted to help make the game better, but you sound like you KNOW HOW TO and YOU SHOULD BE LISTENED TO, which is a terrible, terrible way of expressing an opinion and a feedback.

Why do you think you're being called a troll ? Think about it. Think again.



The Lone Wolf case was a proof that not only were you sounding like a prick, you also were completely missing the point. The overall issue with all your propositions in this thread so far is that you just seem to want to get moar points per level to level faster. Problem is, what you see in the character panel is what you will get for the release. What you're suggesting would get the character almost maxed in whatever is deemed necessary in the early 10's ! Talk about completely disrupting the already not very well established balance ...

Bravo! You missed the point. I specifically said this was mainly about game mechanics and leveling. Also being obnoxious helps. It gets the thread read.

It doesn't help. Being read doesn't equal being listened to. I thought this was a simple thing to understand ?

And why did I miss the point ? I said your suggestion was precisely disrupting leveling and game mechanisms. Because your suggestions boil down to "getting more points per level".

Oh and please do tell me how is having 1 combat related skill per level instead of 2 going increase your characters fighting potential?

Or have you missed something important?

Nolanoth:

I think the Lone Wolf is not planned to fully replace the companion. It is simply a possibility if some player don't want to have too big parties. This is an RPG after all and they wanted to give the chance to play without companions if some better like it that way. So in my point of view it is wrong to compare the ability and its effect. Quid pro quo.

As I know all skills have only 5 levels, so it would be extremely overpowered to give so much points just because a character took Lone Wolf.
Your idea would also ruin their concept regarding foe levels, since the enemies have fix levels, they don't level up with the characters.

Look. I couldn't care less about Lone Wolf. It might as well be removed as long as other traits get buffed.

I was talking about gaining different types of skills per level - 1 skill point for combat 1 for a job like skill and one for a social like skill.

I think the design philosophy behind this mess is to force people to have flaw, so they can complement themselves. So you are forcing players to make choices as to what character they want to create, and having them fill the gaps.
However, I agree, the system is utterly flawed, and doesn't work so far. Proof be the difference of difficulties depending on the "class" (-less, nevermind) you choose, frustration some players might feel regarding character "development", fight oriented builds only (never read about something else than fighting builds in this forum), useless/broken/boring abilities and skills beside fighting ones...
However, please keep in mind: this is beta. Things are being balanced, and/or may still change.
Maybe, as weird as it seems, it is what Larian wants (and shooting their own foot, btw...)

It's like you're suggesting a category system but don't even aknowledge that Survival and Social skills are real character advancement skills. They are!

Character progression in a RPG isn't entirely defined by combat related skill. In the current state of the game, a character gain 1 point from level 1 to 6, and then 2, and maybe more later. You have to choose whether you want to invest this point in any combat, social, or survival abilities.

What you suggest is gaining 1 point per category, which equals to 3 points per level minimum, effectively removing any kind of hard decision you had because you're gaining thrice as much points as you did from level 1 to 6 ( I'm nice here, I don't even account for Lone Wolf ).

In the current state of thing
"shall I invest in Way of the Warrior or Loremaster?"

What you suggest
"I will invest in WotW, Loremaster, and Barter"

Sure with 1point per level per category, you will be forced to wait a LOT before buying anything over rank 1 ( 2 levels woth of capitalizing then 3, 4, 5 ... ), removing your ability to actually invest in another combat related ability ( like WotW + Armor specialization, or two magic schools at once ). Actually, come to think of it, it even kind of kills your options.

I don't necessarily think that's an inherently terrible idea. I do think that balancing it would be quite difficult, and it complicates the problem without solving it.


A while ago on the forums there was a similar one. It split the abilities into two categories: Primary and Secondary. Secondary would contain Repair, Telekinesis, Crafting, Lockpicking, Pickpocketing and the Social category and all its abilities. So there would be 17 Primary Abilities and 12 Secondary Abilities.

The idea would be that you’d get a separate pool of Primary and Secondary ability points each level. But that idea has its own complications, like the free Ability points you can gain through story/quests. Is that a point for both, or just one, and which one? Can you pick?

And simply doubling the ability points isn't quite so simple, because even though there are 12 Secondary abilities, the odds are that you're not going to want to use more than a couple for each character, but if you got as many ability points as the primary abilities, then you'd have a glut of points. So to be balanced, you would need to receive fewer points.

Ultimately, that wouldn't really solve the balancing issue of a lot of abilities and few points, it would just change it to a different balancing issue.

You can easily tweak it.

Since you have different category skills you could for example receive a 1+ combat skill point every two levels.

lvl 4 - 2 combat skills , 1 survival skill, 1 social skill
lvl 5 - 1 combat skill , 1 survival skill, 1 social skill
lvl 6 - 2 combat skills , 1 survival skill, 1 social skill

Or it could also look like:

lvl 4 - 2 combat skills , 0 survival skills, 0 social skills
lvl 5 - 1 combat skill , 1 survival skill, 1 social skill
lvl 6 - 2 combat skills , 0 survival skills, 0 social skills

It gives more options, more balancing and it does not overpower combat capabilities.

Your character won't be gimped in combat and still advance certain role play related stuff like charisma. It gives 0 benefits to combat. Same with reason or charm. It's all just RP related stuff.

And at the same time you can spend a few points on blacksmithing or crafting. It's not like you can ma out everything this way.

I guess only leadership would have to be moved to the combat skill section with warrior or survival abilities.

Forcing the players into compartmentalized categories isn't very alluring and is kind of choices-killing.

I think first and foremost, they should work on making secondary skills more interesting. Players will just choose whether they want or not to use them. We already discussed Lockpick in another thread, crafting is a very debatable one, Loremaster is buggued but I think is already in a pretty nice spot, Repair needs love.

With those fixed, well, no need for categories, really.

edit :
was writing this while you posted the above post.

Written like this, devoid of "I know you don't" comments and with a tad more reflexion, this is way more interesting. I still think it's giving too much points, but we will have to refrain on that one and wait for the vvery upcoming beta build. In the end it's all about the "secondary" abilities worth...

Not working.

Case A/ 1,1,1 or 2,1,1

You level up combat skill faster than you do now, and you get to sort of level up the rest on the side. So that's basically saying "give me 3 to 4 ability points per lvl or give me death !". I fail to see this kind of "tweak" bring the game from 6.5 to 8.


Case B/ 1,1,1 or 2,0,0

You level up combat skills faster than now, and probably won't lvl another skill above 3 before the very end of the game. So combat skills lvl up faster and the rest is random filler between those levels where you will actually level up something that matters.

Now, understand this correctly, you apes, it doesn't mean that combat skills are the only skills that matter, it means that in a paradigm where combat skills are the only skills that will consistently improve, they will become even more of what you and your mouth-breathing sidekick Cromcrom want to avoid.


Now, I've just made 2 points here :

- 1, just because you have a different opinion doesn't make you right. It doesn't make you wrong either, but it certainly doesn't make you right.

- 2, being aggressive, rude and dismeaning doesn't help at all carry your argument or ideas, it just makes you a source of amusement and/or discomfort.


You have yet to provide, in my sense, any constructive criticism and feedback. What I've seen so far are tantrums, attitude, and far-fetched reasons to link that FMJ video that you like so much. And I firmly believe that you have not played this game through enough to realize just how much your thoughts so far have been meaningless.

So how about a little less rant and nerdrage and a little more behaving like a grown up, now. Much appreciated. Same goes for you Cromcrom, in case you were wondering.

Sir, you are making your point very clear, Sir !
Lol.

And BTW, will solely depend on your appreciation of what constructive mean, I doubt we ever will, indeed.

Well at least I made that part clear enough.

You can't really believe it, can you ?

I really don't like the idea where each character would receive dedicated points in social, survival and each categories. It would mean that everyone is equally specialized in each field and remove the interest of having different characters with their own fields of expertise...

Besides, I like the fact that if you want to be a good thief-rogue type with high pickpocket or social skills, you'll have to sacrifice a bit of your combat prowess. Assigning points into each categories at each level would also remove that choice.

@Maali.
I am so glad we have come to an agreement, that you are as much a monkey as I am. That is recomforting, really, to see that we share the same bullying values. Thank you again.

Man it gets tough to wade through the posts to find one that actually discusses something interesting without bickering, taunting, and egotistical ranting.

I don't think we've fully seen the long-term ramifications of character development yet. I was able to get to level 10 or 11 and so far, I didn't notice any negative effects from making my knight a single-hand wielding, shield using, way of the warrior 5, with a few points into some social skills to help with dialog. There was a moment or two where I lost a rock-paper-scissors due to having a low charm for example and I went "hmmm, maybe if I had put a point into charm instead of body building". But to me, that's a good system. It should force you to make choices. It should allow for jack-of-all trades, but that should come at a disadvantage when compared to someone who maxes a skill or two.

I'm actually happy with the character development so far for the first handful of levels. Time will tell if this system works long-term.

The things I would like to see fixed are specific items-- such as:

• lockpick (I want it to be more useful, not sure how to fix it but there have been some good ideas... I'm one who likes the idea of possible damage to contents of chests that are destroyed... if you burn a chest, there's a darn good chance the wooden shield inside would burn too)
• repair/durability (since it is definitely being addressed this week, I'll withhold comments until I see the changes)
• stealing items (I shouldn't be able to steal from a vendor and then turn right back around and sell to that vendor... however, if changed, and I can just walk five feet to a different vendor, it really doesn't address what I want fixed)
• crafting (please oh please make a separate crafting interface... and I would love a book where learned recipes can be jotted down in-game instead of my pad and pen on my desk)
• inventory sorting (both for personal and shops... this is a must)
• targeting (sometimes hard to target enemies... had my ranger start walking toward the enemy instead of firing several times)
• exploits (there are many, but I'm mainly thinking of the "way of the ____". While I do enjoy finding a piece of gear that only requires INT 6 but adds-- for example-- Water Elem +1 so I can have each char cast Minor Heal or get Way of Ranger +1 and have everyone be able to have Arrow Spray... The character can simply put on the item, get the +1, learn the skill, then remove the item and the skill remains... I hope this gets changed even though I enjoy exploiting it)