Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback HH's v2.0.164.992 Suggestion Topic

Going to sleep now, it's late... barely got into the game yet, will continue tomorrow then add to this topic. Here are my suggestions so far:

* Not quite sure why there's constitution *and* vitality skill. Wouldn't it be better to have one or the other. None of the other attributes have a skill doing the exact same (and all attributes DO more too)
* Necromancy: What does heal 1/heal 2 mean. If HP add HP.
* Overall skills *seem* lacklustre. 2%? 3%? And with the diminishing returns that I see with other skills. Also why is fire more potent at 4%
* Vitality 1 is 4%, 2 is 5%??? Physical armor 1 is 7% 2 is 9%? That's some serious diminishing returns there, making it seem like more than 1 point isn't very much worth it. My first impression here anyway.
* Leadership is a combat ability taking civil points. A distinction combat/non-combat is good... but then they should infact BE combat/non-combat.
* Leadership should tell what boosts it's giving, all other skills do.
* I'm not sure "how to use" should be in thievery or loremaster descriptions, that's more for an ingame tutorial.
* The "You need to assign everything" makes more sense accepting a customised set rather than if you try to start the game.
* Re-write all skills up talent to not have (s), we know for sure it can be more than 1 after all.
* Picture of Health Talent should have a warfare 1 requirement.
* IMO Leech Talent should have necromancer requirement.
* One Man Army really needs to tell more WHAT it does. Does it scale with more players, less? Does a party of 4 in single-player count as 4 players. What does this DO?
* Attributes need to tell more statistics.
** STR just shows str-based weapon damage, not the accuracy or movement buffs/penalties. What effect does it have on Warfare, we don't know either.
** Finesse mentions improving Scoundrel damage. Scoundrel does not increase damage. Same for STR stuff. Why does it show 15.0% and 5.0% where STR does 15.0% and 15% Also the red/blue text just says -30%/-15%/+15%. Get rid of the .0 I suppose?
** Constitution popup should tell you your HP you get once ingame, like in D:OS1?
** Description says you need it to learn skills, all vids say you can learn all skills, you just need memory to memorise them for combat. Disrepency. Should not be in creation! All uneven point spendatures giving no bonus what-so-ever is also very bad.
** Again, lacking data on what's buffed. It increased magical armor? Why is there nothing for physical armor? With the amount of stuff put on this ONE attribute, maybe that can go to constitution (which does 1 thing, not 10 like Wits)?
* Eh, "use" in green for point indication... maybe dot or something else? Nitpicking here I know. Perhaps change it to "cost" and move the memory there, so it's "cost": "x memory" "x action points"?
* As said in the Stream not a fan of 3D portraits over painted ones. Can live with it, sure, just saying, although I know from Larian's response at the stream this wont change.
* What does "armor check" actually do during combat? Will it reduce damage? Reduce change of effect? Something else?
* Crippling Blow specifies crippled status' effect, the others do not explain their stances. Maybe all should? (under special at it's actual application please, not in properties as it is now)
* Starting the game I have full physical armor, but the bar on my HUD (topleft, not the bottom) is half-full, probably due to magic armor? Woudln't it be better to have 2 bars, counting for a % of already 50% is very confusing.
* Vitality should say base X, from constitution X rather than just lumping those together
* So there's a statistic on AP in the inventory. Not even a single remote hint how to raise any of the 3 though. You can't?
* Definitely in no way a fan of the pink colored writing in the quest log, barely readable!
* Is there a button for "alt" always active, rather than having to hold it the entire game?
* Is there an option to hide TAG commands in the conversation? Pretty please?
* Probably should not be allowed to craft in combat?
* You still can't hover over status-effects on opponents to see what they do
* Are you meant to be able to throw heavy barrels so far. Makes it easy to throw an oil barrel amongst enemies way out of their range with that throwing distance.
* I see repair still is entirely meaningless ingame... why is it still there if it's nothing more than a checkbox every few fights but has no actual effect ingame?
* Can't actually use the skills from the skill panel? Tried using it to get out of stealth mode, but had to move it to they hotbar to use it. The proper hotkeys showing would be nice too
* It would be nice if I could open the inventory without the character sheet going on along with it.

*Raw meat + fire = Floating Raw meat? Dissapointed 0_o
**http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=763766090

Agree a lot with the above points.


Can you elaborate?


Alas, one of my favourite new things.

Are these forums going to be preferred over Steam for feedback, anyway? I've seen at least a couple threads on Steam get a dev answer.

I agree with Hassat, it's unreadable (and I'm a girl who like pink ^^)

Other things:
- I have a double screen on my computer and when DoS2 is started, my second screen goes black and I can't use it (for watching a stream at the same time for example, or other stuff...).
- Actually, the game recognize only Querty keyboard. It's not really convenient for people who test the game with other keyboard.

Well I don't like pink particularly, but I assume that different actions will allow for different colours.

The talents description is "All skilled up immediately gives you 1 extra combat point(s) and 1 extra civil ability point(s)."

Think it just looks sloppy on something we can be assured of it's always 1. Warlord for example does not have this saying 2 extra action points. Bigger and better with 2 attribute points and Walk it off saying 1 turn.

FRANKLY part of me thinks they should change "All Skilled up" entirely or just outright remove it.

Given that skill points are not as useful in this game as they were in the first... to the extent where MOST of the time a different Talent would be much more appreciated.

HECK! Just get the attribute boost... +15% to a set of skills is much higher than 4% to one specific type.

I hear you. But I have a feeling it's up to change and we wont be sticking to these horridly ineffective skills myself.

* Everyone's telling me I have to stow my weapons but there's no button for it on the HUD, just Tab? (Had to look that up too). It's not that great a default with the Steam overlay.
* Going to assume STR affects weight-limit, nothing about this said on STR, and can't hover over the weight icon.
* Regenerating description should tell the vitality per tick restored.
* No need to ask "you will loose all progress" if loading after a party wipe.
* Musquito Swarm: 100% chance to restore 15 vitality - restores 17 vitality. We need more information what buffs these spells and what exactly is buffed. How did I get that +2? Hydro-skill apparently. Should be clearer on spell itself IMO.
* Perhaps show the persuasion roll? Also I have no idea what seduction is I just won against.
* Again, finesse doesn't mention raising damage on finesse weaponry. Quite extremely compared to skills too actually.

Seeing as there's an update, final few thoughts on v2.0.164.992 still:

* Apparently ability bonuses vary on level too. Should be made clearer. What changes? Or do you just have to keep tabs each level up what changes? Not good.
* I'm not quite sure having scoundrel's +critical damage being shown on the weapon itself is a good idea. No other ability works like that.

First off - Great Post!

It is my great hope that Larian and the community can have a meaningful and productive relationship throughout this open access period by channeling discussion through posters like Hassat Hunter. I stood up from my chair as I read his list and grabbed my paper that had many of the same exact suggestions written down.

What I am scared of - deeply terrified of - is that this incredible world with beautiful detail and rich story will be marred by a system that does not match it quality for quality.

The difficulty is that you will receive a tremendous amount of feedback, and 90% of that feedback should be ignored. Figuring out what the 10% is will be the true challenge, not just for Larian but for us as a community. We can drown out posts like Hassat's or we can add to them and refine them.

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With all that said I'd like to emphasize a few of Hassat's points with my opinions, and add some random suggestions that come to mind.

1. Large bonuses for single point investments. Encouraging players to drop "one point wonders" into their build may seem like a good way to get well rounded characters but it is not a satisfying way of building them. A lot of the feedback from my personal group of friends has included frustration over feeling the need to put points in everything and the inability to focus and feel accomplished in one area. In D:OS1 the strongest builds seemed to just get EVERYTHING and and left you unable to even define your character. There should be meaningful tradeoffs other than order acquired.

2. Option to keep "Alt" held down would be great. ALSO - if alt isn't held down you can't interact with items (pickup by accident a red item). No game have I ever played where I felt threat around vendors that I might accidentally steal from them. This isn't a fun thing and ends up being really annoying.

3. Can we PLEASE get a website with all the numbers that are up to date with the latest patch. I understand that during this alpha/beta phase things will likely change too fast and so I'm more talking about preparation for later stages. Do you remember the arreat summit from d2? All the wikis on D:OS1 are out of date with heavily conflicting information. I've put in some work to fix a lot of them but can't help but think this is the sort of thing you guys should do for us. :)

4. Related - do not HIDE numbers from us. Do not state things like "improves crit chance" without saying exactly how much. Off the top of my head tooltips could have 3 options under game play. "DO NOT SHOW" "SIMPLE TOOLTIPS" "EXTENDED TOOLTIPS" the extended shows every number and the exact effect, while simple would say the "improves crit chance"

5. Please give us all combat information. Hassat mentions inability to hover over enemy combat statuses. I don't have an easy solution for you on this one, I know it could be a pain but it is very important. Somewhat related - in D:OS1 the status affect durations would often be wrong in multiplayer sessions. This is a critical bug to fix. (not talking about early resists or anything like that, like bless says 5 rounds but I know its been on me for 4 rounds already and will wear off next round).

6. Give players information about progression during character creation or even better an in game information button. Something that tells us when we get combat/social abilities talents and attributes.

7. Is it completely necessary to keep the current system of Con Vitality and Hit Points? I've never seen a system needlessly complicate an incredibly simple mechanism. Sometimes the standard is really just best, rather than reinventing the wheel. I'd recommend using the term health or hit points (vitality is just weird) and allowing con to increase your base hit points. Of course this base is buffed on each level up by a percentage. Having a separate ability to buff hit points further seems odd, and should probably be left to a talent or two. The vernacular can be distracting moreso to the casual player.

8. Lonewolf vs One Man Army. I need numbers! I liked Lonewolf except that I felt it was a bit too strong in the hit point arena. For most players lonewolf was very easy to understand and really was an intriguing option - especially since it was available from level 1. I don't think you should throw this away so casually. MANY of us want to control less characters and it feels GREAT to get a buff for getting to play our way. We can make the buff smaller but as it stands now I feel compelled to run with 4 characters until level 8 - else I'm cheating myself. For me and my friends this is a horrible change. ---> Thats not to say one man army couldn't be a complimentary talent of sorts. Expand on the lonewolf setup. It would also allow you to restrict power earlier. AGAIN - don't feel compelled to overpower these. The previous lone wolf could have given 40% bonus hit points and still been amazing.

9. Dialog boxes just seem poorly designed. Sometimes the text is at the top and I'm constantly needing to scroll down. One suggestion I have is to make sure there is a gap between the bottom of the screen and the text so as not to give the illusion that more text is down. This is another one of those "don't reinvent the wheel moments" I'd take a look at how other popular games have managed their dialog to look good. If you want to get really creative give us a resizing option on it to. And as a side note - all of us love that multiplayer characters aren't forced into dialogs with the main character. We can be managing our bags or exploring while one of us is handling dialogs - so good job on that. (an area where many multiplayer games fail)

10. This one you can ignore but I thought it might be an interesting fix to the one point wonders. Maybe create a talent called "Incredible Focus" that enhances the effect of skill areas if you have taken points in 2 or fewer. I'm not sure if this is ideal but I feel like its a step in the right direction for those that don't want to feel like they have to do everything.

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Just general advice. A good way to balance a game is to let power gamers run rampant over it and basically destroy the game through optimal builds. Set up metrics to measure success of these gamers such as completion time, average battle length in turns or damage output per turn. Evaluate this data and then tune down what they use and tune up the things they always ignore. Its an iterative process that is made easier by having easily understood mechanics. Not everyone is a power gamer - but having power gamers set the balance does not compromise the experience of casual gamers. All gamers benefit from a well balanced game with myriad viable options.

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Thx for any of you who read all of that, sorry for the wall of text. I'm an old man who has played a lot of games in his life and when I find a company that seems to have captured something special in the RPG realm, it is worth my valuable time to share my thoughts. I hope to make more (hopefully shorter) posts in the future!

Hey, thanks for the reply. First my final few suggestions on this now outdated version;

* No time to loot the arena after combat?
* +gold or -gold should tell what's being changed. Had to reload a savegame to learn winning at cards gave me 100 gold as reward.
* Accuracy is too hidden, just replaced my lvl 1 melee with a level 3 and accuracy dropped from 109% to 86%. Had to notice this from screenshot comparrisons since nothing ingame tells about it.

Now to answer Tredvolt's single point I feel a need to respond to:
3. I prefer to have the values correct ingame, no outside website needed.

While we do have a new version now (2.0.165.341) going to stick to this topic for the time being since it was a rather small patch, and doesn't really affect the things I report. Moving on it seems the time for conversation is over, combat after combat awaits. Dissapointing. It looks like the amount of quests and dialogues is heavily turned down from D:OS1 or is that just me? The price of branching origin missions?

Here is my continued feedback:
* I'm not thrilled about questmarkers. I can understand secret doors that can be hard to explain (though Withermore did fine, while flower-girl which name I forgot needs a marker?) but just following the dot to finish quest? And is the locked up elf really that hard to find in the middle of the camp he needs a marker? Delorus isn't even trying to give any directions
** Oh come on, the secret lever in the fort is marked too?
* Talking to Verdas with one PC then others shows it's possible to have one convo trigger, and all others will not repeat the convo. Should probably be used more (or are most which are not bugged?)
* +1 physical armor on armor. Is it included in the total score (appears to be since it doesn't appear as additional +1 in the hover-over), broken? Totally unclear here .
* Buckets should really stack in the inventory 0_o
* Adrenaline is used instantly, but self-cutting of the elf (OP talen btw, 1 con is nothing for 25% damage, add in Leech and it's free healing too) needs triggered after clicking?
* So found a mace with +7HP... there's no HP in the game, just vitality. Which is also a combat skill, just to make things easier.
* I don't understand why even the tinniest level has a huge map. Makes mapnavigation difficult.
* Why does Rain have an insanely long cooldown?

I think buckets dont stack because they are equipment.
I agree the blood sacrifice should be cast instantly. ( would like to add that rage should not be castable on others but an instant cast too ).
Rain has a long cooldown because it would be broken in fights otherwise. Just create water and even more water and attack it as a mage -> giant aoe CC.

I kind of agree, it isn't fun to me putting 1 or 2 points into a category when I level up, part of the excitement of levelling up is choosing what to do next and feeling that "dump stat" feel seeing those numbers get higher.


So you want a Alt toggle button, as well as being able to hold it down? Sounds interesting.


I think you just answered your own question. :P


Completely agree and it's a complaint I made as well. Sure there is a bonus in x attack, but I want to know exactly how much and do a little maths.


I don't know if you know that you can right-click enemies and click examine, it tells you more information about them.


I'm not sure I understand this?


I actually like having a skill that adds a bonus to your HP, rather than direct increasing HP itself. It may sound complicated on the surface level, but all you really need to do is increase CON for more HP. It makes it so that a wizard can have high HP, but low CON, meaning if there is a skill that reduces CON bonuses the wizard won't suffer as much... Whereas a barbarian may have low HP but high CON, so using a skill or spell that reduces CON will make them suffer more. There's different things you can do by simply introducing buff stats.


I think this game is naturally more balanced towards having 3-4 party members because of the big changes to the dialogue system (tags).


Completely agree.


Hmm, what about if it has the opposite effect that you described? A talent that increases an area of skills if it has 3+ more points in already?

Nice discussion going on here

I have not that much to add now, mostly just murder murder and more murder now. And I think I've already noticed most annoyances of combat already and totally gave up on understanding abilities and gear boosts and all, so much broken. But hey, EA... that was to be expected.

* Something is improving Fortify's armour amount. Level? Existing armour? Strenght? Nothing ingame that tells. And the tooltip on character just keeps saying +30, being so very very wrong.
* Necromancy seems to be a little too potent, since it triggers on status effect damages, both weapon attacks with dual-wielding and on surface damage of surfaces your character created.
* Boy does killing random silent monks give much XP.
* Yeah, fighting those 2 at the docks was extremely easy compared to all fights before that. Probably since they were melee, and just as usueless as our own melee due to it.

@ Darkraign; I have no lack of water in combat generally. Nor fire, which I want Rain for really.
5. Yeah, I learned that a little bit after complaining about not hovering over status effects of enemies. And it's already helped me a LOT since learning about it.
7. It doesn't help we now have Consitution, Vitality the HP AND the combat ability. Gear that gives +Vitality (which is the ability) and gear that gives +HP (which technically does not exist in this game). And then a talent that gives you additional vitality (the HP one, not the ability) if you have ANOTHER ability (which is quite more powerful than massive diminishing effect own ability). Are you still there?

I'm only going to comment on a few of the points this thread has brought up.


I agree. The Vitality ability is completely worthless at the start of the game. The first point adds about 4 hit points, when the very first Voidlings you can meet at the start of the game do 9 damage per attack.

Perhaps later on when we have 1000 hit points, it could be useful... but then a single point only adds 40 HP. When you have 1000 HP, 40 is just as worthwhile as 4 HP when you have 100 (not very). The diminishing returns are also pretty ridiculous. A second point "improves" the bonus from 4% to 5%. That's total. Will the 3rd point improve it from 5% to 5.33%?

The Vitality ability either needs a severe rework to provide a better benefit, a different benefit other than just health, or to be just outright removed from the game. It's just too small and offers too little functionality to be more than a waste of ability points.

I’ll just toss out a thought here. Just an example. What if Vitality 1 gave +50 HP, plus 4% increased HP. Each subsequent point gives 10 less vitality, but another 4% HP, so at Vitality 5, you have +150 HP plus a +20% increase after that. At low levels, the boost to base HP is useful, but that boost tapers off the more points you put into it, but the constant percentage increase makes vitality better at higher levels when the fixed bonus gets less impressive.




I agree. These numbers are just far too tiny and worthless. If the defensive abilities are so worthless, then only offensive abilities become worth putting points into.

What about another fixed bonus + percentage combo? Again, these are just throwing numbers out there:

Magic/Physical armor at level 1 gives 25 magic/phys armor plus +7% increased magic/phys armor. Each subsequent point lowers the additional fixed bonus by 5 points, but the +7% stays. So at rank 5, you get +75 fixed magic/phys armor + an additional bonus of +35%. These numbers seem a bit high I admit. I’m not sure.



All of these sound good. Leadership could possibly fit into the "Defense" category.




I honestly don't see it as that terrible a change. It is also a fact that the painted portraits from D:OS 1 almost never reflected the actual character appearance. There are so many combinations that handcrafted versions for every combination just aren't feasible.




It definitely seems pretty pointless, I agree. I'm level 5 and I've never had to repair anything - and I've had to keep some weapons a long time.

Seems vitality is just for gear I suppose... Got +4 by gear alone, putting along some more points (since well, alpha, I'm doing this for testing not to get a great build) and we can get higher than level 7. Of course since you only get +1% per level after the first, it's still not that great, but oh well, if there is no better gear. Probably no points there from me in the final build though.

Armor is really good though. Armor's gone, you're dead meat. While the bonus is pitiful and I agree it's very uninviting to spend points in the binary "total security" vs "you're so very very very dead" makes every point worth it.

New stuff:
* The Divine order bulletins are... kinda lacking.
* I'm going to assume crippling blow does do weapon damage (since it does extremely more damage than all my other skills). Probably needs to be made clearer (and balanced!)
* Decomposing Swashbuckler used Nature's Curse... full team on magic armor, all resist, no damage at all, turn over. It was super-waste-full.
* Decomposing Marskwoman's Richochet was... pretty much a scratch. Which is odd since her regular attacks do do damage.
** Actually it seems for all opponents their skills are way less potent than their default attack. Making a fight easier since they start unleashing with their skills.
* Well, fighting the skeletons (lvl 4) (okay, sure, I was level 6) was very easy compared to fights inside the fort. That's kind of the opposite to how difficulty balancing should be. I guess that's why they're 200XP vs much higher for the fort battles, but... really?
* It's rather odd that you seem to get all nades and arrows that NPC's get and don't use. Unlike any other equipment. Intended? It's rather easy to swim in arrows and nades as result.
* Even though I hate questmarkers (with a passion)... can those atleast be removed if you found the buried treasure they point at?
* What exactly is the use of disarming traps?

In case you haven't already figured this out or gotten told elsewhere, go to graphics settings and change from fullscreen to fake fullscreen and see if that helps. I have dual monitors and that's what I have it set as and can see both screens fine.

Not much additional feedback now since it was mostly fighting, and most feedback on that I've already given here and in several other topics:

* I think necro-fire does a bit too much damage, vicious voidwaken fight went okay, then necro-fire entered play and my entire party (bar ranger) died in 1 turn (many very high damage fire ticks). Ranger killed the remaining ones easily and without trouble since really only the necro-fire wrecked me.
* Kerban is a fairly odd choice for a necromancer seller.

I think the end is approaching... will try to finish it off tonight. Meanwhile, a large number of suggestions have surfaced in the last 5 hours, here they are:

Suggestion:
* Can't find the squirrel's shinies... nor his treetrunk.
* Armor kinda ruins traps, since it usually just takes armor, that instantly regenerates afterwards.
* Why is Steam Lance a level 2 Hydro spell, it sounds rather aweful for a level 1 already, let stand using Source and 3 mem slots.
* Well, the maze is hilariously easy to circumvent, way easier than going through it. I would expect at least some obstacles.
* XP gained from Zorl-Stissa dialogue was not in the log, no idea what was given. Perhaps enter it in the dialogue window if some is given, or log it.
* Probably said before (I've seen it mentioned) but we should really know how much coin we promise the well-dwellers.
* Logs keeps spamming about Rhalic and an Enigmatic Figure in the Illusions cave. But... no such characters? Has to do with the Statue of the Seven? Should probably not appear in the log then (resist bleeding/immune to fire). (And again during Radeka fight :/)
** Heck, afterwards I even get that spam during the Voidwaken Deep-Dweller fight!!!
* Very hefty dialogue spam in the vanishing mine cave. Should probably not say it per mine.
* Disease Radeka gives should probably trigger with the battle (or not be realtime) since it expires before the conversation is even over.
* Please add a clearer indication which spells are unselected rather than having to hover over or compare icons
* Ymmit the elf doesn't look like the other playable elves.
* I've blessed every cursed pig, they all ran away to be deleted (except the one up the stairs, who got deleted right away) and then... nothing? Nothing at all???
* Should be a new chat with Tarlene if you killed the Shrieker.
* Source Vampirism should tell it doesn't work cause of your Source Collar rather than fail without intel why. Took me some time to figure that out, and since I freed Gareth it seems no Seeker wants to help out with removing the collars of my team

After 33 hours, I'm done. Needed to do some MAJOR cheese in the final battle, CC-stunning, fleeing, letting them handle the voidwoken internally.
Still can't say I'm a fan of the battles. Rely way too much on CC due to the 100% stun. Heck, I even got 3 of my party members stunlocked against that voidwoken in the middle of the map. Blood + some mage kept lightning it, and I was helpless watching my team getting murdered one by one.

Aside from that the stats are confusing (but that will be changed). Lot's of broken quests, but well, Alpha, eh? Overall, if combat gets a much needed upgrade, something awesome is here. Good job!

Last 2 thoughts (and I'll be browsing topics here and posting in them too :):
* Okay, I found Feder now on a totally random location. Good I guess blessing the pigs haven't been entirely in vain.
* Should be a shrine closer to the harbor.