Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Overly-Complicated

DOS is not an Action-RPG game. It never purported to be, and is the first in a resurgence of games that a lot of people love and miss from the old days.

I'm probably making a bit of a generalisation, but the kind of people that prefer games like DOS over games like Skyrim prefer harder difficulty, greater complexity, less hand-holding, and fewer 'usability' features than you get in an Action-RPG. People that like the thrill they get when a hunch pays off, having kept hold of an item that has no obvious, immediate purpose pays off later in the game etc. People that don't want to complete quests one after the other, but explore the world and find new things to interact with, without necessarily being 'led' in a certain direction. I would welcome some feedback on my analysis of the CRPG demographic.

You're welcome to your opinion of course. But I feel that what Larian wants, and what a lot of the kickstarter backers (I wish I had known about it myself) and a lot of people that prefer this kind of game over Action-RPGs like Skyrim, is more of an 'old-school' experience.

There's a real divide nowadays between the people that will cherish the opportunity to find that hidden object, to solve that daunting-but-ultimately-easy puzzle, and the people that want their overlord dictating their every move.

All I can say is that Larian made this game with the first group in mind. Not that they did it perfectly, but people of that mindset will have an easier time understanding their puzzles, feeling when something is amiss and realize they are actually missing something.
This obviously doesn't cover the whole problem, but I think the discussion will flow smoother if people taking part understand what side of the fence they are on and agree to not let those irreconcilable differences get in the way of a good discussion.

Carry on.

I haven't played Baldur's Gate or Planscape Torment so i don't know if they had puzzles like this so maybe i'm wrong, maybe "oldschool RPG" games were similar to Divinity.

I'm talking about something else. For example i love Portal and other puzzle games, i don't hate puzzles, it's like making a great FPS game and putting driving missions in it with horrible driving mechanics. You don't need to do that. You don't need to put crafting system if it's not good enough.

This subject is a tough one. On one hand I love puzzles. Even difficult ones. But there has to be a solution other than "try every single order possible" available. There has to be a clue set, not an obvious one, nearby or something within an acceptable range. SOME of the puzzles are just time wasters. Not clever. Not fun to solve. When they finally do get solved, be it by luck or using the web, its more of an annoyance than a sense of "i did it!" and that's not how it should be.

At the very least they should do two things I think:

1) Create a filter for quest items. So if I picked up a quest item 30 hours ago I don't need to spend another hour looking through the billion items in my wreck of an inventory between four characters.

2) Make quest items unsellable and undroppable.

The most ridiculous "puzzle" I've ever seen I encountered recently in Ubisoft's M&MX...in order to get promoted to Archmage it required a test of stepping on the correct floorplates laid out in a 3x3 grid. Get this: no less than *21* plates had to be stepped on *in the correct sequence* before the door would open. Miss one grid in the sequence and you had to start over. But, since the game never informed you that you had made a mistake you didn't know it...the game didn't inform you of how many correct moves you had to make to open the door, either. I spent two hours on it before looking up the answer and I was really pissed because *nobody* could figure that out on his own--I'm quite sure that *everyone* had to cheat to get that particular promotion--which is rather important in the game, imo--if you have a mage in your party.

*21* moves in sequence--*21* correct steps in perfect unbroken order--with no hints whatever as to what was expected. If the puzzle had been laid out so that 6,8,10, or even 12 correct moves would have opened the door, I would have eventually solved it on my own. But *21* perfect, unbroken, sequential moves??? No way. Not possible. Brains don't figure here--the test was deliberately unsolvable so as to appear "hard." It was not hard at all--just impossible to complete without looking up the answer. That's the sort of "puzzle" which is no puzzle at all--terrible, the developers cheated on that one. Every other puzzle in the game I solved on my own, some more difficult than others--but all of them were solvable by the player--with that exception.

At least in your example Waltc, the reward is definitely worth it. It's worse when all you get is a few xps and a random item.

Seriously, why bother trying to be subtle with the murder case when you can break into every room of Esmeralda's house and gather clues as well as any valuable items you can steal. This is something I don't like there, this murder case turns out to be much more of a burglar's work than a detective's work. And you get more rewards from stealing than what you get at the end from solving it... what DO you really get, by the way? Nothing. I don't usually touch anything else than the clues, but that's because I'm rping my way through the game.

Stealing stuff should be harder. For example they could tag a "stolen" keyword to some items (paintings, gold cups, etc.) so that only shady merchants will accept to buy them. It's getting ridiculous when you steal a painting from an NPC's room and sell it to HER a couple of seconds later.

(double post)

Here's the thing. Different gamers like different things. Some game designs are not for all players.

Some designs are just bad, sure, but when lots of people love a game, or game feature, that you hate, odds are it's not a total piece of crap. It's just something you don't like.

OK. Carry on telling everybody else that they're having fun wrong now.

I don't mind the puzzles in DOS. They make me think like I used to when playing games like planescape torment. Now that had some downright evil puzzles if I recall. I don't want a game where you have to go from point A to B or fetch and deliver quests. I like variation. I agree though that the quest items could have been done better. Its strange this was overlooked because if you ever played Divinity 2 in that game they had the quest items in a different inventory slot where they could not be removed or took up space. I think the inventory in DOS is the one thing I would criticise the most as it easily gets jumbled and difficult to manage despite the filters. It should also have the option to sell all junk items like some other RPG's do. That saves a lot of time.

Yeah, stealing is a bit easy - the part with "shady mercant" would be better..even better if you would have to join a thiefguild to prove you are "worth".
So we plundered every single house und mostly resold back to the owner. ;-)
But itï½´s the best way to get enough money for all those nice tomes e.g.

The rest... KEEP the game as it is.
Itï½´s very refreshing that there isnï½´t always a yellow questionmark to see where a questgiver is.

@lowlife: which puzzles are u talking about?
Havent come to a single one be now.
The journal is your best friend with EVERY info you need (if you cant remember what was told some time ago)
Example?... There is a murder..investigate, got to arhu...the murderscene is locked, go to that guard...other plane-back again...scene..loveletters..ask around...go to morgue..go to graveyeard..dog barking at grave (even without patpal its obvious that there MIGHT something be fishy..so take the shovel and see whats inside)...sheep..go back to morgue...3 suspects...investigate further...find possible facts...ask about..get more info...go to healer, look at evelins house...read...go to beach... should i realy carry on???? The game itself takes your hand and guides u every single moment.

About "area beeing to hard"..the guards tell you that u are to "inexperienced"..just another word for "stay inside and to more quests to level or they rip your...". At the beach, there are very big footsteps...
Its an RPG...so sneak ahead and see what will come. Running with blaizing weapons (and closed eyes) into an battle is plain stupid...scout, look for a better approach. Perhaps you could get somewhere to lure the enemies into water, near an oil/ooze barrel, or just to a doorway where they have to come one by one.

For me, my wife and friends..its one of the best rpgï½´s in the last time. hope to recive many many addons (land, quests etc)

Please show me the other players that love having important quest items mixed in with everything else in their inventory to be sold, lost, etc. You said there are lots of them, so go ahead.

You can't be serious.

I'm one. I'll take it one step further, I'd rather the game didn't tell me what the key I just picked up is for. Seriously how the hell does my character know that that particular key is for an ornate chest?

Because people label their keys? It's not so common anymore, now that the only thing most people lock is their car, post office box, and front door, but in situations where you have keys for lots of different things, people frequently label them.

Nope, I love the puzzles.
And then I mean puzzles, not the "find the tiny button game"

Take them out and what... just have this game be as mindless as all others? I'm glad my brain got a good noggin' again... felt good. Even though I seemed to have dumbed down lots... poor me. Modern games, what have thy done to me... I'm so dumb

I also agree completely with this.

Do people really think pixel hunting or arbitrarily stumbling upon critical items in unrelated areas engages their brains?

How? Just, how?

A lot of people seem to like it, but it stinks of Stockholm syndrome to me...

Well... anything that creates any kind of stimulus engages our brains.

It's just whether we appreciate the stimulus or not.

As an example I'll give you: the acorns in BG2:SoA. If you find them the first time you play the game, and happen to carry them around with you until the Windspear Hills, there is a sense of accomplishment when you can finish the quest. If not, maybe you want to improve your experience by finding them/carrying them around the next time you play the game.

Pixel hunting is a bit different, but there should be the occasional non-combat barriers towards getting further into a dungeon etc. (mirror dungeon was nice). Maybe it's best when there's a bit of variation in how this works, like different types of puzzles, but if you had a 'secret' lair you'd want to keep it secret right. It's also a quirk of the game that it breaks immersion and the fourth wall a lot (earth statue as a prime example, which I personally found hilarious).

At the end of the day, Larian created the game they wanted to, and people will discuss whether or not they like this particular feature or not. It's only really if there is a mass consensus on a particular feature that it becomes less of a debate and more of a dubious design decision (Tenebrium, difficulty post cyseal are the things that spring to mind, and I'm not even sure there is consensus on the latter).

I can see myself trying a door and finding it locked. Then I open my inventory and move each of 100+ keys from my inventory one at a time to see if any of them will open the door. Then after 20 minutes of completely wasted time and frustration I push myself away from the PC and my chair runs over the cat, killing it. Why do you hate cats?