Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Egregious suggestions

This is a topic so I can let free my thoughts about what I would change in this game and finally forget about them ^^


1. Slightly nerf the XP in tactician mode (since more ennemies are added)

2. Merge some abilities into one, highlighting more clearly the different ways of playing the game (resolving specific parts):

- The way of the talker: merges barter and charisma. Get rid of the RPS minigame and just show extra choices for thoses who have high enough charisma. This way is relatively peaceful and should unlock the best dialogues. For unavoidables conflicts, players get XP through achieving the charisma specific dialogue (with OBVIOUS but hilarious wrong choices) in charisma specific dialogues and get gear through barter (difference in cost should be significant).

- The way of the sneaker: merges furtivity (should not reduce the cone as much though), telekinesis, lucky charm, pickpocket and lockpicker. This way is the most peaceful (not the most honest though), but silent and fast (if you know what you're doing). Players get XP and gear by through lucky finds (which should be buffed).

- The way of the hoarder: merges crafting, blacksmithing and loremaster. Players are helped in combat by the loremaster skill, and fight harsh prices by making most of their gear themselves. Crafting and blacksmithing be serverely nerfed as far as the enhancing of gear is concerned (+damage buff, +elemental resist buff, + elemental damage component ON TOP etc...), or alternatively those buff-crafts should be available with 0 in "crafting" (in the way of the hoarder).



3. Get rid of the traits.


That's it for now, I'll probably edit this thread for myself in the future.

Well I wasn't going to even respond here, but since you've directly asked about it in a thread I was paying attention too, starting with traits.

Traits are one of the best new features this game has. They make roleplaying have an impact on gameplay, or from a powergamer point of view they force you to actually engage in roleplay. I don't think I'd ever even consider playing a cautious or blunt character, but with the trait system that's exactly what I did, and because of it I tend to feel like my characters are more "characters" and less "me". It's especially important since I'm controlling two characters. Odds are they'll be different classes and therefor want the benefit of different traits, so they end up diverging and becoming different characters BECAUSE of the trait system, when otherwise I would just roleplay them identically.

While I understand wanting the game to cater specifically to different paths of play, you lost me almost the instant you said "merge". You are trying to take out depth from the character system and turn it into a set path with hardly any choice, and I can't get behind that. There's definitely some bloat in the skills as it is, but nothing quite so drastic.

Tactician mode simply doesn't need an xp nerf. There aren't actually that many "extra" enemies, I don't think it even amounts to one whole level by the end of the game. It's still too easy, and there are other things that do need nerfs, but not the XP rate.

Seems I can't edit my initial post.

2. Merge the non-combat abilities into three groups, and make a new stat currency for them (that is non competing with combat abilities). I will call these groups "ways" of playing.
For this to work even better, two debuff should be made (that both do the same thing):
- "Mugged": This unit has been mugged. Doesn't yield loot or experience anymore.
- "Pacified": This unit has been pacified. Doesn't yield loot or experience anymore.

The way of the talker

Merges barter and charisma. Get rid of the systematic RPS minigame and provide the "intimidate"/"charm"/"convince" choices only if you have enough "charisma" (if the way of the talker is the way you chose). Of those three choices, only one gives Charisma XP, and once it does the NPC unlock his chest and/or gives items to the player, then get the "Pacified" debuff.
Typically, in most situations, only one of the choices make sense (intimidate, charm or convince), so it can work (some NPC even hint sometimes that other NPC are weak to charm or whatever, like the Spider Queen).

The second choice is neutral (does nothing, as if you didn't have the charisma) and the third is a fail (which usually result in immediate combat).

This way should give less money/loot directly (since you don't kill mobs), which should be appropriately offset by tuning the bartering component.

This way is relatively peaceful since you avoid some charisma-based encounter.

The way of the sneaker

Merges furtivity (should not reduce the cone as much though), telekinesis, lucky charm, pickpocket and lockpicker.

This way is the most peaceful (not the most honest though), but silent and fast (if you know what you're doing).

Players simply get Sneaker XP by accessing chest/door/lockping without having been seen by monsters nearby. Once those chest/door/lockpicks haven been opened, the linked mobs get the "Mugged" debuff.

Sneaker XP and Charisma XP should be simply the equivalent of the experience you'd have if you killed the mobs (very simple).

Since the sneaker way doesn't get huge discount from bartering, nor loot from killing monsters, it should be offset by both pickpocketing merchants and lucky charm.

The way of the hoarder

Merges crafting, blacksmithing and loremaster.

Players are helped in combat by the loremaster skill, and fight harsh prices by making most of their gear themselves. Crafting and blacksmithing should be severely nerfed as far as the enhancing of gear is concerned (+damage buff, +elemental resist buff, + elemental damage component ON TOP etc...), or alternatively those buff-crafts should be available with 0 in "crafting" (in the way of the hoarder).

This way of playing doesn't need tuning, but maybe merchants prices should be higher.


Two players, two ways?

I don't think it can work. So conflicts are resolved through the RPS minigame in a best of 3 or best of 5.

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


3. Get rid of the traits.


That's it for now, I'll probably edit this thread for myself in the future.

I think exactly the opposite, but I think it boils down to how you define roleplaying and powergamer.

A powergamer will skip dialogs, and simply chose the ones that give the best outcome in term of game power.
A roleplayer will... roleplay, even if it gimps his character in term of gamepower. As a side note, please consider exactly what kind of "roleplay" is involved with the trait-related discussions (they are inconsequential most of the time, outside of the trait bonus themselves): character A and B talk amongst themselves and give their vapid opinion about something, which yield bonuses.

If you are stuck in a dilemna opposing powergamer and roleplayer, a powergamer will choose powergamer against roleplaying.
You are saying that you would not consider consider playing a blunt or cautious character, but since it gives bonus you are. So you are a powergamer, and you disregard roleplay because you adapt your character personality to what yield the best bonuses (you put roleplay second to powergamer).

I see the "ways" of playing more of a roleplaying thing than the current "traits" system is. If you are roleplaying a cautious character, then the sneaking or talker way is for you (you try to avoid fights). If you are roleplaying a blunt character, then the talker way isn't probably for you. Those are roleplaying choices that really affect how you approach the game and interact with things.
The current trait system is currently inconsequential and boring to read chatter that gives OP buffs.



If you agree that there is some bloat, you can't be lost at the "merge" word. Which is it?
Also, depth isn't the result of bloat. You don't necessarily remove the depth of a system by making it simpler and less bloated.
I think Extra Credits made a cool video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg8fVtKyYxY
(or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45PdtGDGhac )




Which level were you at the end of the game?
Anyway, maybe the XP rate is not that big of a problem (I still think it does because I tend to overlevel enemies, which is actually a big thing and makes the game easier due to the hit and armor mechanics).

And which things do you think need to be nerfed?

But the powergamer will be forced to roleplay eventually to get the bonuses he wants. If he still wants his bonus to Leadership, he will have to choose the APPARENTLY "obedient" answer. He will be forced to read and understand and choose accordingly to what he needs, which isn't very different to reading, understanding, and choosing accordingly to the principles we want the characters to follow.

Essentially, I agree with Sotanaht that traits are a huge, HUGE, roleplaying motivation. I thought for a time that they killed Roleplaying, but I couldn't be more wrong. They actually force RP.

I was level 20 exactly when I fought the void dragon, gaining level 21 from the kill. I may have missed some quests (quest XP is kind of pathetic), but I killed every hostile mob along the way and even made sure to clear out both sides of hunters edge. The void dragon was also level 20. There were plenty of underleveled enemies along the way though, which probably need to be brought up rather than bringing the players down.

As for the merging, I would work more towards making each skill more interesting. The only things that I personally think should be merged are crafting and blacksmithing, since they seem to be both required to do basically the same thing and it's not even clear which one you need for a given task (did you know it requires crafting to make plate boots but blacksmithing to make plate chest armor?). Maybe lockpick and pickpocket too, especially since pickpocket often leads to getting keys.

Generally, I would like to put some combat functionality into non-combat skills. Add crit chance to lucky charm, make loremaster a requisite for the "examine" function, telling you more information about the enemy, sneak needs to be viable again (didn't deserve the nerf to begin with, given the other damage mechanics). Charisma could add a bonus chance for Charm spells to work (which need a nerf anyway, so this would bring it back up to useful after the nerf) maybe even a random chance to charm an enemy when they attack. I don't have ideas for everything currently, but this is the direction I would be going.

@Dr Koin
Well ok.

It's hard for me to understand, because in all honesty when I was playing the first time as "powergamer", I quickly noticed the trait-related inner dialogs, and was simply quick-saving as soon as I detected the start of one, choosing any answer, examining the result, reloading if needed and choosing other options.
Especially since some dialogs give opposites traits to what expected (it's maybe the translation that was switched), and especially since you can't always know if it shall be about compassionate/heartless or altruistic/egotistic, or others (some surprised me originally).

Obviously the powergamer is forced to choose the dialog options that yield the best bonus, and you can call it roleplaying but I don't. As I suspected it's just about the word "roleplaying".

If I roleplay, I set up the personality of my characters at the start of the game, and I do my best to act in accordance. Adapting the answers to get the desired bonus (and not the desired personality) is not roleplaying for me. What you call forcing to roleplay I call forbiding to roleplay (if you play as powergamer). Strange as how when we don't see a word as meaning the same thing, we end to opposite conclusions ^^

@Sotanaht
When I was playing the original, I ended up at lvl 22 and a half.
I am playing multiples instances of the game in enhanced now (all difficulties level to gauge the difference), and on the explorer I just ended Hunter Edge (not entered yet the Forest, nor have I killed yet the immaculate village) and I am 19.5. I already knew the game though and how to maximize experience gained (charisma, order of quests etc...) though, so if you ended up 20 in front of the Void dragon in tactical, I guess it doesn't need a nerf (a lot of experience can be missed in this game).
On a side note, yeah I killed aswell both faction which is kinda fun to do if you try to do it while they fight each others and the humans are friendly (bastardly!), but you have to land the killing blow.

I think Loremaster is already a requisite for the examine function (well, at least to get the resistance informations). Nice suggestion for Charisma, and maybe Lucky charm.

I ended up thinking about those ways because of the disparity of experience you get. Two telling examples:
- The two drunk guards at the very beginning of the game. Agree to follow them in dialogs, and get a lot of XP. Kill them then and gain a lot of XP.
- The various Charisma XP you can gain by talking to immaculates, then you kill them once pacified (Hiberheim, Luculla).

For me, that is more roleplaying (or anti roleplaying), than the traits (which is why I was surprised you mentionned the trait as the worse offender).
Killing the humans at Hunter Hedge is mostly inconsequential because they disappear anyway, but killing the immaculate village really affects the world: it's a little bit soul crushing to empty your world of its inhabitant ^^ (but hey, they take slaves! kill 'em!).
Mostly inconsequential trait-related dialogs: you forget about it.

I actually attacked the humans in hunters edge when they all gathered up after killing the last orc. Was fun, killing fighting 20 guys at once, took a great deal of setup to get right.

Anyway, back on the topic of skills. My idea only really lessens the problem. I'll put it like this:

Problem: players want to avoid using non-combat-optimal skills during combat while still gaining their full noncombat effects. There are 3 main methods to go about this: Item swapping, Respeccing, and companion swapping.

My proprosed solution attempts to address the "nonoptimal" part by making noncombat skills desirable in combat. However, this only goes half way. At some level, either some other skill will become more desirable in combat, or else the newly buffed noncombat skills are by definition overpowered. At that point players will again rely on these other methods to max out the non-combat skill when the situation calls for it, without keeping it that way at all times.

The obvious full solution would be to remove noncombat skills from items, skill respecs, and extra companions from the game entirely. This solution obviously does more harm than good. Alternatively, we can nerf option 2 and 3 so that they are far less appealing. If companions don't auto level (henchmen already don't), making a skill mule becomes detriment to your combat effectiveness (less XP to go around, lower level for your designated combat companion). Instead of removing removing respecs, we can make repeated respecs far less managable by increasing the cost of each respec exponentially. That way you can still change your build mid-game, but if you try to respec every other level for crafting, lockpicking, bartering etc, you are going to quickly hit a wall.

The item part however requires a bit more finesse. If you flat out remove the item bonuses to noncombat skills than making good use of them becomes entirely too difficult. There are so few points to go around that 15 is too much even for many important combat skills. I think ultimately the solution may be to divide skillpoints into seperate combat and noncombat pools

Ultimately though, I'm still not sure the benefits outweigh the costs. This requires removing and nerfing a lot of major features as well as putting restrictions on character building that may reduce depth. It may just be better to live with the item swapping and put in tools so the act itself detracts less from the game. If you can't beat it, legalize it. By this I mean making one-click gear sets and maybe even automating the process of swapping for certain actions like identification.

I think there are two ways of envisonning Roleplaying ( and something I myself struggle with to be honest! )

- You choose your own role and stick to it.
- You are given a role and should play it as best as you can.

Basically that's why I was thinking the powergamer is also actually roleplaying, he just falls into the second category. After all, "roleplaying" literally means "playing a role", just like an actor - and actors don't often write their own roles, they just "improve" it. =)

But I digress.

That's interesting, and I would agree that you could be given a role (like an actor), and your mission would be to play it (that would be roleplaying aswell too), but which one of these two visions of yours match with the traits system?



That's was were I was when I started the thread ^^


How is dividing into two different pools removing and/or nerfing major features, and how can it reduce depth?
Pick a number of combat point that would optimize according to you the depth, pick a number of points for non-combat, and that's it.

Taken as a whole, the solution involves removing a lot of features. If you only take a portion of the solution (dividing skillpoints) it won't actually solve the problem as stated.

Anyway, anything that removes choice reduces depth. By defining some skillpoints as only usable on noncombat skills you are entirely removing the choice of putting them on combat skills. By dividing up the skills into these two groups there are far fewer choices to make with each skill point.

The question is about whether solving the problem by adding limitations and removing features will ultimately be a net improvement on the game, or whether the changes themselves will do more harm than good.

Here is my egregious suggestion which *GASP* Reduces Depth And Choice:

Merge Leadership into the Charisma ability. Ta-da! It combines one skill only useful in combat with one skill only useful in non-combat into one skill useful for both!

I dont know.. I kindve like it the way it is..I like that i have to choose, and sacrifice to make a well rounded character... I didnt want a combat/action game.. There are plenty of those.. We were sold an "rpg", and thats exactly what we got.. Those non-combat abilities, are just as useful, as the combat abilities.. Alas, too many people build characters with combat only, in mind...

I think, "Wasteland 2".. Sure, i might have a teammate specifically for combat.. But i want my Barterer/Negotiator, Thief/Assassin, Crafter/Packmule, Control Wizard, Ranger, Tank, Mage/Wizard, Berserker, etc..Many of these classes have very little combat effectiveness...

And because i DO spec classes with real life skills, combat is not always a breeze, thus alleviating much of the complaints from those that claim "the combat is STILL too easy"..Ofcourse it is.. If you build a 4 man wrecking crew! If the game was built around a 4 man assault squad, any rp elements would be null and void..

If you like having to choose and sacrifice in order to have a well rounded character (combat and non-combat), and that you like the way it is right now, then I have bad news for you: you don't need to sacrifice anything in order to be well-rounded. Do you think "combat-oriented" players with a 4 man wrecking crew lack non-combat abilities?

They don't, because you can swap gear outside of combat (in town).

Do you have a problem with single dots as punctuation mark?

Gear swapping.. Not exactly my idea of rp'ing.. Sounds more like playing dress-up.. That wouldnt be my "character" anyway.. I fail to see how this addresses anything i stated in my post.. You can do alot outside of combat.. Theres lots of ways games can be broken, exploited, or cheated through.. Why bother playing the game, if youre gonna do this? Ruins the fun imo...

As i said.. If the characteri designed isnt a thief, he wouldnt equip lockpicking, or pickpocketing gear... If my characer isnt a crafter, i wouldnt give them blacksmithing, or crafting gear.. If im going to use gear, to fill in "holes" in my character, then i wouldnt make my character that way..Thats why we have6+ characters.. Each has a place on the team, and bringsa something different to the table..

"Do you have a problem with single dots as punctuation mark?" -Wha? The hell does that even mean?

You mean that your idea of roleplaying a charismatic and charming character is for him not to pay attention to his attire, and not pick the clothes that fit the social situations he's in?

You have a weird notion of roleplaying, but whatever.

And changing gear isn't exactly cheating, or even exploiting the game: it's how it is intended to be played.
I suppose you have a fighter in your group, and wouldn't he think that maybe his fire sword is inadequate against fire ennemies, and that maybe, just maybe, he should take his ice sword (and his fireproof gear)?

Seeing that your style hasn't changed, I guess you indeed didn't understand the punctuation remark and I will simply reassure you: you will not be affected by any suggestion I make (especially since they aren't likely at all to be taken seriously by the devs), and I'm not really interested by your viewpoint because you are I are different kind of players.
It would be difficult for anyone to make any suggestion if those had to cater to everyone's style of play.

I think there's something fundamentally different between swapping combat gear based on the expected situation and swapping for things like looting chests and crafting. I can see how you could couch it in roleplaying terms, but it feels wrong.

It's very basic: a jeweler puts some magnifying glasses to help him cut precious gems, a blacksmith puts on special clothes to prevent dirtying his normal clothes, and use the best tools he has, a customer selects a good attire when buying stuff so the assistant seller looks at him as a good potential client and treat him well, etc...

I suppose it feels wrong to you because, as Rizziliant put it, you both expect to make sacrifice in order to be well-rounded, and in fact I could potentially agree, but it's not the player fault if gear swapping is enough. Obviously, in roleplaying terms, getting dressed as a blacksmith does not make you a blacksmith. But in Divinity, per developper design, it does.
There are too much non-combat bonuses on gear.

One way to adress it would be to severely reduce the non-combat bonuses on gear, but that wouldn't be sufficient because most non-combat abilities are useless (even if Rizzilian says otherwise). You'd also need to buff the non-combat abilities. Either by adding combat bonuses to them (which goes counter to Rizziliant's philosophy, because she want to make a well-rounded character and make sacrifices, and mine because it would then reduce choice to a mathematical analysis with one good choice and one bad choice, not different choices), either by buffing their native effect by a lot (bartering and lucky charm are very ineffective ways of earning gold, esp. compared to crafting/blacksmithing).

Another way to adress it would be to separate them and set them on different budgets. You would then roleplay according to how you want to roleplay, not according to what you are ready to sacrifice in combat abilities.

Did you read, at all, what i wrote?



Meaning, A jewl crafter WOULD use a magnifying glass..A blacksmith WOULD use blacksmithing gear.. A Thief WOULD wear gear with Lockpick, Pickpocket, Sneak..Getting dressed in Divinity is not "enough" as it can only add up to 2 ranks in any skill.. Hardly enough to make it a class change..Theyre used to 'enhance' and already existing skill, for myself.. I dont see how i can be any clearer..............

My Thief would NOT, however, wear crafting gear, or blacksmithing gear to save time, or fill in the gaps in skills he does not have slotted.. I have other characters for that..It breaks immersion, ruins the experience, and feels cheap.. I never said it was cheating, exploiting, etc..

I was under the assumption that you wanted to have a discussion, a back n forth, adult conversation.. Its clear now, by your repeated attempts to initiate emotions, that you simply wish to argue... If all you wanted was mindless agreement, and praise of your "suggestion", than youve gone about it all wrong..

Good day...........................................................................

I pretty much don't care about your gaming choices.
If you don't care about mine, you can leave my topic alone, and discuss elsewhere with friendlier people.

And getting dressed in divinity can add up to more than 2 ranks in abilities, you aren't paying attention is all.

Note that I don't think you've been disrespectful nor am I angry at you, it's just that I feel there's no point hearing your opinion since your angle is much different. It is the second time at least I'm pointing at this.