Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Feedback after playing Beta 1.0.288

Hiho Didn't see such a thread yet so here it goes....

few things I noticed (first 15 minutes of the game ,p)

- Bringing water barrels from Tutorial level and throwing them at the burning ship / then destroying the barrel with long-range spell or attack does not extinguish the flames ;/

- Using Hammer on bones produces... nothing? Yet shows crafting progress and all

- Depth of Field gets royally confused sometimes

Screenshot
# http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=245136040

- Funny blue glowing shader on stones, doesn't seem to be there intentionally, and wasn't there in Alpha

Screenshot of 2 places where it happens

# http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=245136075

# http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=245136105


Ps.: And about the Tutorial Level... ehm.. this is not so much a tutorial as it is quite chaotically structured set piece. For one, the player has no immediate reason to go in there, there should be dual dialog to guide players in and a clear 4th wall violation mentioning that this is, in fact, the Tutorial. And there should be additional (optional) dual dialog for each and every element. These floating text lines are not enough and disappear WAY too quickly (not to mention they spawn behind / off-screen when you are panning ahead)

Then there is the lockpick thing, which is odd to say the least, because it says you can "spend points to lockpick" .. well that's nice and good, but a tutorial should probably go over spending skill points and the entire level up process as well. While we do get plenty XP in the cave, it's not enough for a level up.

Also I want to mention, that I am not a fan of tutorial levels that give XP at all unless they are a major part of the plot. With this you are forcing completionists to always play the tutorial level and even me, who is not a completionist, feels compelled to run through it to get the xp and earlier level up thanks to it.

Finally, the tutorial does not teach crafting nor inventory drag/over functions. Or if it did, I did not see it. (Which would be even worse, as I explored every nook ,p)

I know we said many things about the beginning of the game in that other topic, but I am not seeing how this is in any way improving it The intro sequence is nice and well enough to establish reason and guidance, but after landing the characters should talk with each other to establish proper back-story. Don't go all out spoilering if it's content for late-game (i don't play that far ahead) but some minor details need to be told. Characterization, it's called, i think. ;p

Finally,

- GFX Options need a gamma setting

This should make a good general feedback thread.

I've got some now:

I like the overall improvements, the UI looks much better now.


Tutorial
I know the Tutorial is a work in progress. It is a neat area to explore, but I do have to agree that it feels mandatory to do for every character - not necessarily because of the experience you get there, but because of all the items you can find. All those vases produce a lot of stuff that's too tempting to pass up.

It also does nothing at all to explain the mechanics of the turn-based combat. I had a ranger, and killed all three skeletons at the start on the first turn with the arc-of-arrows skill. It was strange, because during the Q&A video, that combat seemed to last a few turns, but my ranger ended it immediately, which doesn't really help make it work as a tutorial. Inside there's only one combat encounter (which doubles as the stealth tutorial and triples as the use surfaces in combat tutorial).

There's a spot where crafting could be explained, there's a side room with arrow shafts and arrowheads, but you can't craft those with Crafting 1. Maybe if there was a Stunning Arrowhead in the pile - you can do that one at Crafting 1.

I don't completely agree that it needs to go over the mechanics of spending skill points, that seems like a really obvious thing, but then again, maybe it isn't.

The tomb is a nice place to explore, but one of the reasons I suggested a Source Hunter's Academy tutorial is because you could gain no XP and lose all the items you get there, and then it could truly be an optional tutorial. An optional dungeon full of free loot is essentially impossible to pass up.


"Rock-Paper-Scissors" dialogue minigame
I’m not sure that minigame is fully implemented yet, because I’m a little confused. It says “choose your weapon.” Should I be picking something? It seems to be playing itself. Even if I could pick something, it's rock-paper-scissors, so does it really matter what I pick anyway? Right now, this is not an improvement over the mere dice roll, it just takes up a bunch of time (way too much time) for no good reason.


Way of the Ranger required
Only three of the "Way of the Ranger" skills actually require you to have ranged weapon. For the rest - the majority of the skills - what weapon you have is irrelevant. Requiring you to have points in Way of the Ranger to use them is an issue, because three-to-four of the five Way of the Ranger's bonuses are basically only good for those who use Ranged Weapons.


The Observatory
Using the telescope will actually SHOW you something strange and fantastical in the final, right? Just saying you saw it somehow doesn’t quite work. It should be awe-inspiring, not a paragraph of text. "Show, don't tell."


The Crime Scene, Sourcery, and Source Hunters
The boards over the window outside the King Crab are nice, but put some more on there because you can still clearly see that the window which the murderer escaped through is completely intact.

I still would like the evidence of Sourcery to be changed from a generic burning patch to something much more unusual. That's not screaming "black magic" to me, it's saying "it's a burning patch". My recommendation are strange and bizarre runes, possibly written in blood. As a bonus you can use those runes again and again in the lairs of Sourcerers as a shorthand and to make the connection clearer.

Along those lines, even though I am playing a Source Hunter, there is a problem: I do not know what the Source is, why it is bad, what the signs of it are, etc. I lack this knowledge, and yet my characters walk around saying things like "yep, that's Source Magic all right", and "that looks like the murder weapon", when I'm just confused. It's like I'm an actor shoved out onto the stage of a play, without being told what part I'm playing or what my lines are, and everyone is staring at me expecting me to perform. I am stuck outside their heads, and it is making me feel disconnected from the characters I'm controlling. That is not a good thing. Give us the "Source Hunter's Manual" in our inventory so we can understand who we are, what we're doing, and why we're doing it. (Maybe this is already coming, but I just want to emphasize that it's really important.)

- Depth of Field gets royally confused sometimes

Are you teleporting between different elevation or panning the camera fast, or something, when this happens?


- Funny blue glowing shader on stones, doesn't seem to be there intentionally

I believe that is a highlight for shallow water. It could probably be more subtle.


the player has no immediate reason to go in there

One character does say that the leader mentioned escaping with a stone, and the other replies that it was probably stolen from the dungeon and asks if they can get inside. It could be a lot more visible, though (I missed the first comment as it happened as combat was ending, and I had to scroll up the log to see what the other character was referring to).


I am not a fan of tutorial levels that give XP at all unless they are a major part of the plot. With this you are forcing completionists to always play the tutorial level and even me, who is not a completionist, feels compelled to run through it to get the xp and earlier level up thanks to it.

Perhaps when the tutorial is done you will have the option to seal the dungeon, rather than enter it, which would give the same experience points and loot as completing the dungeon. Alternately, there could two paths in the dungeon, and a dual dialog triggered about whether to take the shortcut or fully explore the dungeon (that would make a pile of loot more reasonable than just sealing the dungeon).

Really like the new things in the beta. Many nice new things.
Also agree with what is said over regarding tutorial.

I also feel that the walking speed is to slow, is it slower now than in the alpha?
I also have the impression that there is less ambient sound an music now, but that
is probably just me...

A few quick answers -

-The minigame is aimed at multiplayer first and foremost - we added it to the single player but consider that an experiment. There will be tweaks.

-The tutorial is currently a very basic version of what our ambitions are on that front. The most important part is that it's there now, but expect *many* tweaks. The purpose is also not to explain everything in the tutorial, but just enough to get you experimenting. There will be tutorial sections throughout the beach and in cyseal still.

-The observatory will obviously show you something

-You have a point on the Source being too vague in there.

About character building: starting skill selections, attributes, action points etc

• when u go over attributes or when u add points to attributes there has to be a pop-up message about how much will adding a point/your current attribute:
  increase max action points, decrease cost of action points for certain actions, increase health etc.
  
  You can't just say what certain attribute effect u have to present real numbers by how much!
  
  
  
• same goes for abilities and talents - numbers we need numbers, % etc. !
  for example by how much will fire elementalist ability improve our fire spells
• why cant we select our own starting skills - we can modify almost everything but no starting skills? why? -
  just put all starting skills of all current "classes" and let us pick what we want
• since action points are the main thing in combat it is essential to have a little window (or smt similar) in character building telling us how many AP we get at beginning of battle, how many we get each turn and max number of AP of the current build. This is very important info without which i find it very hard to build character that i want.
  
  
  

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yeah, the minigame would work better against a human player. Computers can't bluff well.

If that tutorial is what you consider "very basic" then I'm sure I will be really impressed by the final version. I don't really have any problems with the tutorial, I just note that "loot + XP" is pretty much an irresistible combination for RPG players. Maybe toss in a couple books/bits of story giving a little lore on whose tomb this is (it's not King Braccus', I'm certain).

I'm glad to hear that about the observatory will show something. Things aren't always obvious, just making sure.


I've said this before, but the biggest gripe I had about the Source being vague is when the Source Hunters find the apparent murder weapon, declare it to be the murder weapon, and then when you present it to the suspect, they go "what are you, an idiot? Jake was killed by magic." I really did feel like an idiot, and it made my characters seem like idiots. I think it was supposed to be an indication that the suspect didn't know about how Source magic works, but because I didn't know either, it had the opposite effect.

Ooh, maybe the Source Hunters manual could contain a section about what signs you should look for on the body of a person suspected of being killed by Source magic/a Sourcerer. That ties in with wanting to see Jake's body to be certain.




You can put points in without committing, and that does show you the effect. It could be made a bit clearer, though.




That is coming, it's just not in yet.




In your inventory screen, you can hover over the "Action Points" indication and it will tell you exactly that information, and what affects it.

No I was literally just zooming in on that stone to see whether it was a angle dependent effect or a general shader artifact. If you move the camera slightly "higher" ie to the character, he turns in focus but it's a very very narrow range, i nudged it too far several times, but I zoomed in on the stone to begin with. Either way, that should not happen ;P

Yeah I think bright blue glowing stones is a bit too non-subtle



The loot is too high value to pass up which means it's essentially "free loot and XP". Even if we sealed the door when we just walk straight through and gain the XP, we'd still be missing a lot of loot. And especially the beginning of the game, where you can't afford a lot, "free loot" is impossible to pass up imo. 2 Fireball scrolls, 2 lockpicks, armor and weapon. 2 Healing potions and generally just loot you can sell.

The reason I mentioned the level up process is because it's unintuitive as Level up is clearly visible on char-icon, but you can't click on char icons to get to the level up screen. And in the INVENTORY (I) you have to hit tiny green checkmarks to lock your selection. Something new players can easily miss. Not saying that is bad, but it needs to be said.

Ps.: Also a major pet peeve of mine. When I change the character selection in SP, the Inventory should change to that character I selected. Currently it's like 2 different game systems (Selected, vs open Inventory)

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So yes, an academy that plays as Prolog would be superior, because you can show all gameplay elements, NOT give out XP, not let players keep items (apart from maybe, a trinket) and integrate every gameplay element into a witty and funny small story. This cave is literally impossible to ignore because of XP and LOOT. Anyhow, yes, I missed the dialog completely, because I actually was panned elsewhere and didn't even see what happened. Are we supposed to play this game panned over our characters all the time?

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Im talking about character creation window i know that u can see this info once ur ingame but this needs to be in character creation as well. Why is that info not there i dont know but its just stupid imo.



yes this is annoying as hell i just can't get it used of it

I noticed a minor inconvenience.

The inventory screen doesn't change accordingly, when you have your inventory open and select your second character. You have to close the inventory screen and reopen it in order to see the inventory of the other character.

But that's really the only thing that rubbed me the wrong way so far and I'm enjoying the Beta very much.

Great job, Larian!

I can completely understand the complaint here - you have some characters just starting out and a tutorial that can possibly provide a much desired boost at that stage in both funds in equipment. It would be silly to pass it up.

However, you have to keep new players in mind. A friend and I went through that tutorial very cautiously, like new players. It took us the better part of our play session to do that. You *have* to reward players for spending that time with more than just tips on how to play the game.

No new player is going to want to go through that dungeon and receive nothing tangible for their time and effort. Remember, while part of the purpose of the tutorial is to teach, the other part of it is to hook the player on the game, because that has to be done within the first 10-30 minutes or you risk losing them. Finding gold and shiny equipment when you're just starting out is fun. Not finding it isn't, and the goal here in the tutorial is to both educate new players *and* to make sure they're being excited while doing it.

So, if that leaves veterans of the game a little bored because they don't need a tutorial, then that's what it means. We don't have to go into the dungeon. But obviously we want the loot. Well.. then the price of appeasing that greed = grinding through a tutorial that really wasn't meant for veterans in the first place. You *can* just skip it and find better gear later on. In the end it's not required to have.


Edit: By the way, I agree with the concerns about source hunters and source magic, and what that all even means to the player. I suspect/hope some of this will be handled in detail in the manual, but not everyone reads those.

Well the source magic and source hunter back-story is literally what I mean with "characterization" is missing... we are dropped on that beach with nothing to go on, apparently we are source hunters, but if we are then we (the players) are never invited into that club. We do not know what source magic even is. We can cast spells but so can enemies and anyone else who can read, so clearly that isn't source magic. Also the fact that enemies can cast spells, makes me wonder what's so special about source hunters. Seems to me that any orc shaman could do our job ;P

It makes the murder mystery all the more an odd quest to start the game with. This is a quest player could get when he/she knows what goes on. But right at the start we are presented with very odd situations and reasoning by NPC's that we as players have absolutely no way to properly grasp or understand because we are missing back-story and lore information. It's pretty much why I am mentioning that the prologue wasn't improved enough. The video sequence doesn't give back-story, only a setting.



I get that new players need reward, which is why an academy that "builds up" to the 1st act is a good way to do it. Even if we let them keep their "found" equipment that is no issue, as long as "skip" provides the one skipping with the same equipment and xp. But you can not "skip" free loot. I know overall it's a minor thing that cave and all... but it's there, it's free XP. Even if the area gets better and the scripting tighter, it's still a cave that everyone feels compelled to do, with no actual (lossless) option to skip it.

And yes, Inventory screen, and how it doesn't switch when other char is selected is a major usability issue imo ;p It's not just that, but it's also confusing. The only situation where it would make sense, is if we could open both inventories next to each other at the same time. But the screen is way too wide to do that. ;/



PPs.: IF we learn about source magic later that's fine, but I play each version up to the resolution of the jake quest, and at that point we most certainly do not know what source magic is. Which makes that very jarring and weird.

Ehm... I can?
1920x1080

You can buy scrolls of fireball at the corner store, which are apparently fine and okay - and yet a patch of burning floor is considered evidence of evil magic. Huh?

Forget the fire, use creepy runes instead, please! Thanks!

I'm having a seriously difficult time agreeing with that. If a player can't take a few minutes to clear the tutorial, I don't think you should expect to receive the rewards within just for clicking a "skip" option.

Where does it end? After playing through the alpha enough times, I find the entire process of examining every barrel and crate within the town to be a chore. Can we have a button that assumes I would have searched through everything and packs all the appropriate loot in my inventory?

It doesn't take a long time to do the tutorial, and it can be skipped. I realize the XP and treasure gained in the tutorial makes it seem like skipping it would be a non-option (I'll go as far as saying it would be silly to skip the tutorial dungeon), but this dilemma is really not very different from every other portion of the game-world. I can, for example, gain experience and loot by killing folks in the town. I can rob the entire town blind. I have to make choices to either do that and obtain the shiny rewards, or forsake that course and lose out. Participating in the tutorial is no different.

Now, I have played games that allow players to skip the tutorial and receive rewards - but those are usually very specific rewards that the developers intended every character to start the actual game with. For example, you start a tutorial weaponless and armor-less, and by the time you escape a prison you have a predetermined piece of armor and weapon. If you instead opt to skip the tutorial, you receive those same items anyway because you obviously need the gear to play their game.

However, many of the rewards in Divinity's tutorial dungeon are randomized, with the potential value influenced by the character's stats. And we already start with equipment, so this isn't a case of needing a handout in order to continue playing the game. This particular request boils down to "I don't want to spend the time doing this, but I still want the stuff", and there are quite a few areas in this game people will want that logic applied to if we start down that road.

The loot can also be given automatically. There could even just be a dual dialog at the entrance, where the characters decide whether they should go through quickly and get back to their main objective or take their time and explore, and the quick option places the character immediately back outside with all the experience and 75% of the loot they could have gotten by exploring.



Left clicking a portrait selects a character, right clicking opens their inventory window. There are also buttons under the portraits for the inventory and skill windows.

Moving the viewing area around by putting the mouse cursor at the edge of the screen - for me, this makes the screen move craaaazy fast. Please add a "scroll speed" option.

You know what? This deserves a MAJOR LOL

Yes, you can in fact right click on both portraits which opens up both inventories... pixel perfect above each other... you can then drag and arrange them yourself. It doesn't save this arrangement, and you gotta do it every single time yourself. I didn't even realize this feature existed. Until you mentioned it ;P

That's neat, actually ;P Sadly there is no clear indication you can drag that. You can't drag a lot of things in the GUI (Like the skill-bar, which would be better a bit to the left)



Tis true. And would be a fine solution imo.



It begins and ends at the mandatory tutorial of course. But an optional tutorial should be ... optional. Passing up free loot is not an option ;P




Yeah, but the nit-picking guy in me wants to left click on the blinking + that appears in the char window on level up. I can't be the only one? ;P

Seems the figths are much harder now! I dont know if I found a way to leave the city... I hope to get 2 Levelups before need to go outside. Maybe I must kill all the inhabitants.

Without the Ice elemental Spell I don't know how to win the figths. I can't use the flare spell every round...
Spend all my Money to buy reanimating spells.

I think that's oversimplifying it. The entire way up to the town gate could be considered a tutorial, as you're presented with tips and instructions nearly every step of the way. Do we request an option to skip all that while still receiving all the rewards and XP? Why not just let us start in town at level 2 with a heap of crafting resources, gold, and nice low-level equipment?

I'll say it again, this particular request boils down to "I don't want to spend the time doing this, but I still want the stuff", and there are quite a few areas in this game that logic can be applied to. The tutorial needs to offer a reward to players that participate in it; it's not fun or fair to them otherwise. "Participate in it" is a key part of that phrase, however.

The tutorial dungeon is an option, like many other options in the game. Nobody said the choice had to be easy, though. Just like it's not easy for me to forgo stripping the marketplace bare for free gear - it's a choice I have to make.