Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

[Metro]

Oh wow...

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Roguey Nope, no trash encounters, don't know what Matt is on about.

Anyway, I thought this game was crazy hard once, was pretty frustrating, then I found the henchmen. I ran right out of Cyseal's gate with two low level party members and although I ran into some difficulty I did fairly well with no OP builds or meta-gameyness and no lone wolf on either.
Anyway that was in the beta a few weeks before release. Since the release I've had no trouble at all, I enjoy the encounters and the occasional challenge, but it's been easy for me even with silly non combat builds and the like, as well the great builds and traits are really, really obvious, no guide checks required.

It's unfortunate that shit players with too much ego to admit that easy is more their speed can potentially dictate future difficulty levels with their bad reviews.(I have to deduct a whole point because I suck!) Although I wouldn't mind more balance, if he's losing because of a bad build then maybe the designers should have put a lot less shitty dump stats and the like.

 

[Tigranes]

I mean it's really nice that between Lone Wolf, Easy difficulty and Henchmen, you have 3 ways to make your game a lot, lot easier in different ways. It gives a different experience, as do things like glass cannon.

 

[Tigranes]

....new patch, started game, blue screen of death, Steam now says game is not installed. Hope my saves are intact, or I'm hgoing to have to restart again.

 

[Tigranes]

Well, after a bit of reinstalling it's all fine.

 

[doggfookker]

One thing I am a little let down with is the non-combat shit kind of tapers off after Cyseal. The forest and Silverglen are cool, and the combat encounters are solid, but Cyseal was just packed to the brim with content and people to talk to and shit to stumble across. It seems like that kind of stopped. Divinity 2 was kind of the same way, with the Orobas Fjords or whatever the fuck they were called being a lot sparser with non-combat related content and not having any reasonably sized town to visit. Does that change? Do later areas have big ass towns full of NPCs like Cyseal? I am a huge dork for that shit.

 

[Sodafish]

Is there a bug in...

Spoiler

the Temple of the Dead? There is clearly a passageway behind a titan's head at the bit where you click the skull to raise the bridge where the wolves appear, but there doesn't appear to be any way of accessing the passageway. I can't see a switch or anything anywhere (with a 14 perception character) and can't talk to the head. I've done everything else in the temple, and I assume this is the way to the trapdoor and switch above where the 4 sentinels are

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, the game gets sparser and sparser as you go along, though it's already a big game and I thought the stuff that was there in Hunter's Edge was interesting (the 'hub' is not as big as Silverglen but there is a similar amount of, or perhaps a bit more of, in-town stuff to do). Actually, I'd have preferred that to be the second big hub on a Cyseal level with lots of stuff to do given its theme. Don't know about what lies beyond that but I suspect it is the endgame.

 

[sea]

Normal RPG behavior suggests that if players receive a quest—without a giant skull icon or other “high-level” warning—then they should be capable of completing that quest immediately.

It absolutely does not. Jesus H. Christ it's like the last 30 years of CRPGs just don't exist and never fucking happened. The era of level-scaling and quest markers is less than 10 years old, and even still they are not pervasive. There are plenty of RPGs out there -- both old and new -- that don't operate this way. If he doesn't know about them, that's his fault. Not the developer's. Goddamn.

I do agree that being given what seems like a do-nothing quest only to find it's extremely challenging can sometimes be frustrating, but proper messaging to the player could solve that. I think a cool solution would be to do some sort of level check and change the quest giver's dialog a little bit... like, if the quest is intended for players at around level 10, but you're level 5, have the quest giver say "Well, you might not be up for this yet, but if you think you've got the nads for it..." or something along those lines. You don't have to specifically reveal what level the quest is meant for; you can just sort of imply it for the player

Of course that extends to making challenges also implicitly signal their difficulty, i.e. if you have a quest to kill some rats in a cellar, those rats probably shouldn't be ludicrously tough endgame enemies.

 

[Decado]

I'm looking forward to the content thinning out a bit. I am getting BGII levels of shit to do in Cyseal, which is fine (not complaining) but if the game loosens up a bit I'm okay with that too. It would be a nice change of pace.

 

[Decado]

Normal RPG behavior suggests that if players receive a quest—without a giant skull icon or other “high-level” warning—then they should be capable of completing that quest immediately.

It absolutely does not. Jesus H. Christ it's like the last 30 years of CRPGs just don't exist and never fucking happened. The era of level-scaling and quest markers is less than 10 years old, and even still they are not pervasive. There are plenty of RPGs out there -- both old and new -- that don't operate this way. If he doesn't know about them, that's his fault. Not the developer's. Goddamn.

I do agree that being given what seems like a do-nothing quest only to find it's extremely challenging can sometimes be frustrating, but proper messaging to the player could solve that.

Personally I don't find that frustrating. I mean, most of the history of CRPGs was this way, if you stumbled into something and got your ass pulped into V8, oh well! Hope you had a save! The Sierra games were notorious for this, just off the top of my head, and I loved them for it. I don't really see the big deal here, especially since 1) The game autosaves and 2) There is a fleeing mechanic. It just sounds like whining from that reviewer.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I think part of the fun of this series is going into the wild and stumbly sparsely onto crazy/funny characters that seem straight out of a Monty Python film and trying to fulfill their silly quests.

 

[Excidium]

Normal RPG behavior suggests that if players receive a quest—without a giant skull icon or other “high-level” warning—then they should be capable of completing that quest immediately.

It absolutely does not. Jesus H. Christ it's like the last 30 years of CRPGs just don't exist and never fucking happened. The era of level-scaling and quest markers is less than 10 years old, and even still they are not pervasive. There are plenty of RPGs out there -- both old and new -- that don't operate this way. If he doesn't know about them, that's his fault. Not the developer's. Goddamn.

I do agree that being given what seems like a do-nothing quest only to find it's extremely challenging can sometimes be frustrating, but proper messaging to the player could solve that.

Personally I don't find that frustrating. I mean, most of the history of CRPGs was this way, if you stumbled into something and got your ass pulped into V8, oh well! Hope you had a save! The Sierra games were notorious for this, just off the top of my head, and I loved them for it. I don't really see the big deal here, especially since 1) The game autosaves and 2) There is a fleeing mechanic. It just sounds like whining from that reviewer.

Don't be surprised if not many share your masochism

 

[RK47]

or u could just.... disengage from fights?
Messed around with two scoundrels.
Kinda fun when you're not just going through the combat motions over and over.



Hit Lv 3ish.
Decided to clear Cyseal again - will do more tonight.

 

[Tigranes]

Seriously, there's a 'run away' cheat button.

 

[Mangoose]

So consensus is to play on Hard?

 

[RK47]

So consensus is to play on Hard?

Not really. Pick whichever is fun for you.

 

[Raghar]

So consensus is to play on Hard?

I play on easy with three characters. Oponents are bit squishi, but considering number of stun locks it's not that bad. I dislike relatively forced path however.

 

[Haba]

So consensus is to play on Hard?

Play it which ever way is fun for you.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Is there a bug in...

Spoiler

the Temple of the Dead? There is clearly a passageway behind a titan's head at the bit where you click the skull to raise the bridge where the wolves appear, but there doesn't appear to be any way of accessing the passageway. I can't see a switch or anything anywhere (with a 14 perception character) and can't talk to the head. I've done everything else in the temple, and I assume this is the way to the trapdoor and switch above where the 4 sentinels are

Spoiler

That section is probably cut content from mega dungeon. Secret sanctuary which holds liches bones is the only secret place in there.

 

[J_C]

Oh Matt, what insane difficulty are you talking about? This is what normal difficulty should be in games. Normal, medium, balanced. It is just enough to maintain a little challange, but it is not insane if you learn the mechanics. But I guess people are used to the normal=easy, and easy="LOL the game plays itself" difficulty.

Anyway, I uninstalled the GOG version and will start a new game on the Steam version. It turned out that I become a spoiled brat and i miss the autoupdate feature of Steam. Although GOG cought up with the patches, it is uncomfortable to check after patches constantly (I'm spoiled, I know). Will return to GOG if the gog client is released and it works as intended.

 

[RK47]

I'm sucking Steam's Cock now. Don't judge me.

 

[J_C]

I'm sucking Steam's Cock now. Don't judge me.

I have nothing to say, you are right.

 

[Mangoose]

So consensus is to play on Hard?

Not really. Pick whichever is fun for you.

So consensus is to play on Hard?

Play it which ever way is fun for you.

Oh, I haven't started a game yet and the re-rolling talk earlier made me think difficulty was set at start of game. Seems not to be the case, thanks guys.

 

[Fangshi]

I think a cool solution would be to do some sort of level check and change the quest giver's dialog a little bit... like, if the quest is intended for players at around level 10, but you're level 5, have the quest giver say "Well, you might not be up for this yet, but if you think you've got the nads for it..." or something along those lines. You don't have to specifically reveal what level the quest is meant for; you can just sort of imply it for the player

If I recall correctly the game does that at least once:

Spoiler

In Silverglen I think. When you are trying to infiltrate the Immaculates and you have to go to that cave in the spider/sandstorm section. The guards you have to pass to get there warn you that the area has stronger monsters and you can ask at least one of them if they think you are strong enough to do it. They will either caution you to come back at a higher level or they will tell you that they think you are strong enough to do it.

Don't know if it happens anywhere else though.