Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Some notes on the new patch.

1) I suddenly felt purposeless when starting the game. I realised, that I am just thrown somewhere with no mission and no idea of what to do. Some interaction with the hero needed. Let him say something like "I see a fort far in the south, I can't survive out here with voidlings around, should get to the fort as far as I can."
The start of the game lacks some guidance and action also. It feels a bit boring from the start, especially it would feel this way for a new player that isn't sure if he wants to play the game. I have a good friend that likes dota2, but I know that if we play divinity together, he will die of boredom.
2) I don't like getting damage before my turn actually starts. If my hero is at low hp, I know that he will die and I can't help him. Let me do my turn first, then damage me with effects.
3) I felt weird to get items from a dead turtle body. I don't think any living creature would eat a human with all of his armor and poison wand. Why would it? Why not hide items in corpses, skeletons and secret chests around?
4) After the fight with voidlings, turtles and a zombie and picking some items from chests and boxes (30 minutes of gameplay at max) I had 2 items for body, gloves, boots, wand, bow, helmet, healing potion, scroll and some gold. And all that before getting lvl 2. Too quick in my opinion. Less items of better quality would do better.
5) The first chest I see (the one to the north from turtles) is locked and I can't open it with a lockpick, because I am a mage. It also has 370 hp and I can't break it. Let me open it without having thievery, and put there something cool, so that I would feel need for a thief.
6) In the town I fought with burglars (those who played cards) and they killed both of my heroes because of a ground effect not letting me use healing potion before I die (#2 above, I also lost my red prince in the fight with turtles because of this).
7) After both of my heroes died, I didn't keep playing, because last autosave was 10 minutes of gameplay before, somewhere outside the fort.
8) I think, ground damage shoudn't be done to a unit, that was staying on the other enchanted ground, when the effects mix or change one another. When I am staying at fire, and it turns to necrofire, I get damaged. It shouldn't be so. The damage should be deats after my turn ends.

First 2 "big" fights felt harder, than before, but not much harder. I also like picking a class for Red Prince. I'll keep posting here.

1) Not needed at all. You're naturally going to find your way there eventually, the lack of things to do in the immediate area is all the compulsion you need to move along.

2) I suppose the damage tick could happen after you complete your turn.

3) The wand is specifically a reward for defeating the turtle. Most enemies don't drop stuff you wouldn't find, so I don't mind an occasional exception. In real life, lots of inedible stuff can be found inside the bodies of sharks and other animals.

4) The game is already dropping less loot and encouraging more shopping. As long as the items are normal quality and not magical, then I see no problem at all with getting some stuff. Especially with how expensive skill books are now.

5) Nothing stops you from hiring a thief or a warrior to smash the chest open. You can even hire a temporary person you have no intention of keeping to unlock stuff, then kicking them out. Otherwise just accept that if you refuse to take Thievery on any character, there will be some locks you can't open.

7) Save often.

If you're going to continue to reply to this thread, please increase the numbers instead of starting from 1 again, it makes it easier to reply and find the specific point which is being replied to instead of having to search for which "3)" is being referenced.

It doesn't work so. Imagine yourself dropped somewhere in the middle of nowhere, without any idea of what is your mission. What will you do? You will search for water, roof and food. Imagine, that you don't need water, roof and food. What will you do? You will sit down and think. That's it. Same goes for a new player. I went playing DOS2 for checking the game, because I played DOS1 and it was great, so I had purpose. What if I didn't play DOS1 and started from part 2, because my friend told me the game was great. Well I will play 10 minutes, decide, that it is boring and go watch some series or play cs.

Replace the wand with some gem, that can be inserted in your wand and make it more powerful? Use turtleshell to improve your shield, or a part of the shell as a shield. Doesn't this sound better? A beast can have a ring in his stomac, for sure, but not wands, swords, shields etc.

I didn't get to the books. Will comment on this later. I still think that having so much items after minutes of gameplay isn't fine.

You don't get the idea. I am a new player. I don't know that I can find a thief somewhere far away from here and I don't want to break my weapons while trying to open the chest. All I feel is dissapointment that the chest can't be open. But if I open it right now and hear something like "uhh that was hard. I am not sure if I can manage some more of these without learning thievery" from my main charecter, I know, that in future I may need a thief or points in thievery. The game should be newb-friendly.

Read above. Getting inside the fort must be checkpoint and save automatically.


Will do.

One thing that RPGs in general taught me is if there isn't an immediate solution, one may present itself later; and yeah, I'm one of those people who has to learn it the hard way! In the case of this chest, I decided to pick it up and lug it about until a means of opening it presented itself, but otherwise I would've just gone back later.

I do get your point about it being accessible to newcomers, and some games can be very oblique for those not already immersed in the relevant knowledge and jargon; but there always has to be a balance: if everything was linear and immediately doable, it wouldn't make for a very interesting game and would have little replay value.

What.

Is that what you do in all your games? You sit there and wait for a flashing quest marker to tell you what to do?



That huge turtle is more than big enough to have swallowed a wand. And crafting isn't in the game in full yet, and it doesn't include Diablo/Divinity 1/2 gem socketing.

Also, you're complaining below about not knowing about the existence of a lockpicking party member, and you expect a new player to understand about crafting a wand with a gem found inside a turtle?




The game is lets you pick the prison cell doors with 0 Thievery in case you get a character stuck in there.

Treasure chests are optional. You can come back for the chest later and even mark it on your map. Just because you see something doesn't mean you need instant gratification. Before you reach the turtle beach you can see a treasure chest at the end of a rainbow. You can't get it then, you need to come back later. Same idea.

There's also a buried treasure chest nearby the turtles which isn't locked.

Yet there should be some impulse at the start.

You know, some people here say that without snipe game is hard. That was a surprise for me, because I never used that skill before and thought it was useless and the game was too easy even without it. Picking up a chest sounds great, but I never used this opportunity, didn't even think about it. But I would never start the game again just to test this. People here think that there should be some special features that will make a player do another playthrough. I, personally, would never do it just in order to test how picking up chests works, or how snipe works. So why don't you show a player from the start, that he actually has these opportunities? Great games have replay value and it isn't based on these small features. I have 2 examples of games that I replayed for dozens of times. It is Rage of Mages (both parts) and Space Rangers (every part). Both games are old RPGs and their replay value was based on how random the game could be. I played the previous patch of DOS2 4 times and every time I would go to the underground in order to pick a lvl8 item and pray that I would find a useful one. I didn't find one and reloading the game wouldn't change it. When I played RoM I could get some fixed loot from particular enemies or places, but 95% of time I would get something random. But it would be much more random than here, in DOS, where you just pick a common 1 armor helmet or 1 armor gloves and that is a random. The items in those games would vary so much. You could kill the simplest monster and get any cheap enchanted item with a weak enchanment. That refers to RoM. And in SR you would get a gun that weights 50% less and deals a little bit more damage (10-12 instead of 10-11, for instance). In RoM you would return to the town and see items in the store, but when you reload items would change. So I could spend half an hour, trying to reload and get perfect items for my heroes. Then I would go on a quest, find the strongest monster, and keep fighting against him with 1 hero while the other one would assist by healing. This way one of them would boost his weapon skill, and the other one would boost his elemental magic. In SR I had numerous planets, every of which had it's own market, so I would fly from one to another in order to by a perfect gun for my spaceship. And here I noticed that the post is a little bit too big.

Boosting the replay value is about letting people pursue perfection as long as possible. All those games like lol, wow, dota2, cs are never boring because they let you become better than others in every single matchup. And in those old RPGs you could have a stronger and better char after every replay. Add some of this and after some time the game would become legendary. In DOS1 the biggest disapointment for me was the fact that merchants had new goods only after you lvlup or some time passes, I am not sure. And the fact that the devs took out books with attribute and ability points also caused a little bit of frustration.

The Witcher 3 is so f*ing good, but it hasn't much replay value. It is not about perfection and competition, It is a great story. CoD series isn't about story or about competition, that's why this shit can't even reach the sales the devs wanted, people are tired of shitty stories with shitty multiplayer.
Is DOS a good of a story? For now that is a question. Does it have a potential replay value? Yes, it does. DOS1 was a good mix, like MW and MW2 at their time (both games still have fanbase), but you may see what happened with the franchise in the end. So what is the choice of Larian? Story or perfection? If you try to kill two birds with one stone, you end up with CoD. You will maybe have money, but it will come with angry fanbase for sure.

Being able to open chests now or later is not the best example Vometia could have used. Replay value in D:OS 2 looks like it will be playing as a different character with a different origin and solving quests in different ways. There will not be a NG+ mode. So story.


EDIT: I forgot to include a couple key words.

Sadly, the dialogs and monsters won't change much from one playthrough to another, that's why the routine should be more entertaining. A player may feel sick of picking up paintings and turtle wands every time he decides to start a new game. If the replay value is based on having a different storyline in same locations, the routine must not spoil the process.

I think you're grasping a bit. Placed items I am 100% sure will *not* be the factor that causes the game to lose replay value. Picking up paintings, well, they're not that valuable anymore anyway.

Predictability causes game lose replay value. When I did my 4th playthrough, picking up the trash wasn't an enjoyable experience any more, as well as selling it to a merchant. Picking up useless placed unenchanted items is neither a fun thing to do.

Er, yeah, I think I managed to poorly make my case for discovering new things and talents being something I enjoy about game progression: I rather missed the point by describing it as replay value.

I believe the idea is if you pick different origins each time, that the dialogue options and questing will change enough to remain interesting.

If your hope for the game's replay value is pinned on a NG+ mode where you take a single character through the game until you max out all your stats, I think you'll be disappointed.

Comparing D:OS2 with Rage of Mages or Space Ranger sounds for me like you are comparing a strawberry with an apple. Both taste delicious but they are far from tasting the same. Loot is surely not a reason to replay the game. Testing out different classes or different playstyles would be the thing. One playthrough you slaughter everyone, the other you try to avoid killing at all. One time you go full mage other time full physical. You can also try it in different difficulties. Combat in Tactican will be different from combat in Classic, not much perhaps but different and harder.

Also D:OS is about exploring, not about getting told what to do. It is about figuring stuff out by yourself, not following a plan. If you are not the guy who just loves to explore and test stuff out, probably it is not the best fitting game for you. I wouldn't even call something like 'picking a locked chest up' as something 'test worthy', more like something basic if you want to prevent backtracking.


Also I don't think 'replay' value is the core concept of this game. Replayable games are mostly focused around a lot of RNG like generated dungeons. Some will replay it to test different stuff, some just will be happy to have the game finished while doing their style of playing.

I am not comparing games, I am talking about concepts. There always should be either a good story, or an ability to grow powerful enough to win fights in seconds. I forgot to mention one import detail: in both RoM and SR your final boss would be tough as f* even if you have the best possible loot on your heroes. That is what both DOS1 and DOS2 missed (can't be sure about recent patch). But common monster would be very easy (that's minimising the routine).

Testing out classes is surely not a reason to replay. You already play 4 classes and learn 80% of the abilities in the game. Why on earth would you play it for the 3rd time, if you actually know the potential of your heroes? Storyline is a motivator, as I already said. But the routine, which is picking up loot, trading, making quests and fighting monsters must be entertaining enough, so that before the start of a new game the idea about wasting time on picking up trash and selling it to a merchant, which is a really boring experience (selling 100 items in order to buy 1), wouldn't prevent you from keeping on playing. This also refers to fighting the same monsters and reading the same dialogs.
You can't test a different class when items do not vary much. There are not many fights in the game, so you can't place too many unique items. They should be present, for sure, but they should be really cool so that you don't sell it to a first merchant. A wand with 4-5 poison damage and no enchantments. Wooow... In DOS you had that Braccus axe with fire resist, fire damage and some bonus attributes, which when you play without a two-handed knight is 100% sold. And a lot of items would be also sold. There should be minimum of these items. In RoM I would wait for every unique item, because it would be useful for quite a long time, it would be better than anything you can buy at the store at that stage, and it woudn't be sold, because I always had a hero that needs it.

I don't feel that avoiding killing in this game has place. Why on earth would you have skill and item progression, if you want to avoid killing? Going full magical or physical can't motivate me, because I already know all the spells and abilities heroes have. There is nothing new in it, I will just know that I will struggle against balanced enemy teams. If, for instance, there is some new team abilities, which can be used only if you have 4 knights or 4 mages or 4 rangers, that's better.

DOS is a turn-based RPG. It is not about exploring, it is about fighting with different classes and having different outcomes at the end of the game. There is nothing about exploring in DOS since you are always limited in where to go and who to fight with and what quests to do. The game has it's scenario and making me wasting time on finding the solution, which is only one or two, isn't okay. You can't skip going to Fort Joy, so why don't you tell a player that that is his job. If he likes exploring, he won't go south, he will go somewhere else. In Skyrim you can do anything you want, so it is about exploring. You can go whereever you like and do whatever quest you like first, but the journal still tells you to visit the town from the start. In DOS you can't do anything. You always have pretty much same scenario, same monsters, same secret chests and same solutions. You either kill, or sleal or talk. But you have to do the quest. In Skyrim you can skip it and move to another town or village. Can you do it in DOS? So what exploration are you talking about? Fighting with different classes and reading dialogs of different heroes, these are main features.

I am not QUITE sure the second is EXACTLY desirable.

It is, but it should be very challenging and time-consuming.

D:OS is not Skyrim, so it is not as open as Skyrim, but there is still tons of stuff you won't ever find, if you don't explore.

Also I know guys who find it desirable to make a totally pacifistic run to test out how much is possible. Just because you don't think it would be desirable, it does not mean others feel the same.

Surely you jest. There is a difference between knowing what skills are available, and building a character around only using a certain subset of Abilities, Skills and Talents. This game allows you to build your character in many combinations.

For example, in D:OS 1, before the EE existed, I decided to make a "Speed Mage" build, a Mage built around splitting their stats between INT and SPD, and using touch-range spells only combined with Far Out Man. All the components were there, but few to no people put them together in that way. I called it the "Inquisitor". That preset got added to the EE.

I'm already planning to adapt the existing Inquisitor class in the game to make them built around gaining extra AP in combat, which means taking the Elf Race, and the skills Haste and Adrenaline Rush, as well as the Talent Warlord. A game like this can always have interesting things for players to discover and/or try out.




You are completely missing the central idea behind the game's combat. Combat in this game is not supposed to be routine and easy. There are no respawning enemies, no grinding for XP. Each fight has to be interesting in its own way. A game with no respawns and enemies who are easy and boring to kill makes for a boring game.

You are absolutely not supposed to be able to grind to make combat easy and boring.




It's something you get at level 1 or level 2. Sorry that it isn't fancy enough for you. It's not supposed to be a legendary weapon of the famous evil king. (You get those later on the island.)

***

You do not seem to be the intended audience for this game.

I finally made it. I played couple of hours yesterday, I have to say that overall, the experience is much more entertaing, than it was before.
First, I'll say what I like and then continue the list above.

I like the fact that I don't have to pick up trash any more, I can do pretty well without it.

The first really difficult fight for me happened in the dungeons with the magisters. I had to reload 2 times, but won it without buying any books from the start and without buying any items. The fight with fire lizards, which are obviously overpowered, forced me to buy some fresh skillbooks and better armor. The fights are more difficult, that's for sure, I have spent every one of ressurection scrolls I had. That's a good sign.

Some assist over the organisation of my inventory is so f* great. Love it.

I actually found a Robe that demands having higher intellect. That's nice, it forces me to have intellect on my knight. It is a good motivator for having multiclass heroes. You can't have much magic armor on your unit if you don't have high enough intelligence, and you don't want to have intelligence without having spells.

Good nerf for elf's eat flesh. It now adds only one initial AP. I didn' feel that my ranger is Overpowered this time. I also noticed that she didn't crit as much as she did before, but she is getting much stronger with every new weapon and lvl.

Those 2 magisters that were saving the kid are funny. They were so good at using their disables, made me laugh. I fought with four heroes against 2 of them and they kicked my ass. That was fun, had to reload.

Now some of my thoughts, bugs and other stuff.
9) The economy is kinda fast. When I entered the fort, I already had 300 coins and some armor and items for sale on 2 of my heroes. When I finished all quests on the ground, so to say, and went underground, I had even more items on 4 of my heroes and 1200 coins. So with bartering at 3 I had around 1500 coins, I think, for buying new items. That is a lot, I don't feel the need to chose how to spend money, I just go and buy everything I like. And I noticed that merchants in the fort have items of worth quality than before. Can't say if that's good or bad. I guess it's okay. After I killed the first magisters in the underground, I had around 1600 coins and a lot of loot, I spend most of the coins on books and some items without selling anything (I had a lot of potions, scrolls and other things) and after killing lizards, I had 500 coins more. So I don't feel the need. The ideal level of difficulty would be having money for 1,5 books after every fight. So that if I see that I can't win the fight, I could go and buy a better armor and a book, that will change the situation, and the deficit would force me to chose carefully. But those 1,5 books should come with gold and items, without buckets and other shit.
10) When I invited the 3rd hero (Ifan) I had lvl 2, and instead of letting me spend his attribute and skill points, they were spent automatically. A bug I guess.
11) Crocodiles used attack of opportunity in the face of Ifan that came to hit them. So they just hit him before he could do anythig. It happened with 2 of the crocodiles. I didn't see that opportunist was reworked, so I guess it's a bug. The fight was very easy, they teleported close to each other and I kicked them down and used all of my aoe skills.
12) Frogs were also too easy. I still don't like the fact that the periodic damage is dealt before my turn starts. This was the reason I spent all of my ressurection scrolls during the game. I played fire+poison mage, cleric, knight (with shield) and ranger.
13) My Lohse spoke with that elf girl in the elf dungeon and the fight with Lohse occured, but the elves and everyone else fought with my entire party, not just Lohse. After the fight I couldn't chat with Modi and the lizard knight wouldn't have anything for sale but his sword.
14) Bedrolls all over my bottom panel. And scrolls, arrows and grenades are often absent. Why aren't bedrolls stacking in the inventory?
15) Poison wands deal damage to poison immune units if the units are burning. And guess what damage they do. Fire. Abusable against skeletons and overpowered overall, since there is poison+fire damage on units with no immunity.
16) Arena fight is ridiculous. That mage that doesn't even have to move in order to hit you is insane. I won the fight with 2 dead units, but only because the hound was running around searching for some bone I guess. He never hit me.
17) Fire lizards didn't fight me once. The fight kinda started, all panels dissapeared, I don't know. Some weird stuff. But the turn order panel didn't appear. Happened when Ifan initiated. I moved towards lizards and everything became ok, but still...
18) Fire lizards are ridiculous. Why on earth are they immune to poison damage? Why are they immune to slow? They move fast, hit hard and have tons of armor and hp. So strong. The first fight that forced me to go shopping. After the shopping it was still hard. I guess that's all because I don't have an assasin and didn't have warfare merchant.
19) That empty orange without drudanae, just let Griff take it, I don't like it in my inventory. I don't like those useless items like keys and books (so pleased that you sorted it out) and those oranges that you can not sell.
20) I finally noticed that you can't cancel the points you spend. That would be a sad missclick, considering the fact that there is no autosave after lvlup.
21) Ifan's talent is listed in other hero's talents, but can't be learned. Why is it there?
22) I noticed that I had 101 hp on a hero with 15 constitution while others had 87 hp and 10 constitution. 5 attribute points wasted. Lesser lvlup bonus hp, higher constitution bonus, or reworked constitution, as I said before.
23) The fight for Withermore's soul jar wasn't that difficult because I managed to break ice jar, but the pyromanser skeleton (the one in the robe) did 73 damage to my Ifan with 2 hits. 40+33, that is insane, I understand that that is fire and there is highground damage bonus, but man... I also don't get it why they have elemental havok skill and I don't. Guess, that is some special ability for enemy units like drudanae addict for Ifan or eat flesh for Sibell. What also made me sad is that he had nothing in his inventory. The skeleton archer which fough with mages against me missed 3 times at the start of the fight. Ricochet missed 2 out of 2 targets and fang also missed. Dunno if that's a bug or random.
24) Marksman fang's distance is too high. I was fighting with a monk and used it and somehow managed to hit magisters donwstairs.
25) You often cannot drag items with mouse from a chest to your units, so you have to switch to a unit and chose pickup option, or chose "give to" option. Uncomfortable. And after you switch between units and use pickup option, they don't follow your party until you give them a personal order.
26) I noticed that merchants didn't have wands. I wanted to buy one for my cleric and to buy better wands for my fire mage, buy all I found before fighting with Kniles is air wand of lvl 2 and lvl 3 air staff. And my fire mage had 2 poison wands which I looted from corpses or chests.

Phew. Guess that's it for now. Sorry for grammar mistakes, I was writing this for 2 hours or so. Don't have any more time or energy to check for mistakes.

5) Are you talking about Flesh Sacrifice? What nerf? It always gave 'only' AP on use.

14) Bedrolls are to big to stack. You only need one anyway, so why pick up others? Weren't you happy to not need pick up trash?

15) Poison explodes if it touches fire. This is just basic mechanic. Set zombies on fire and they make boom everytime you hit them.

22) Vitality gives percentage bonus. Of course it sucks in early game, the difference will be more feelable in the late game, level 20+. Part of the concept. Did you check if the other guy had items, that gave him flat HP? If 101 is 135% the other should only have about 74 HP, if I'm not mistaken.

25) Its probably recommended to have dedicated looter, from whom to share the stuff with others.

26) Shops get new stuff every hour and I think every level up. If there is no good stuff now, check to another time. What stuff will be there is mostly random anyhow. The better merchants are anyway after level 4 and behind the fort.