It adds time, money, and doesn't have the flexibility that plain text does. I understand you wanting these features that exist in modern games, but that sorta stuff is the same bloat that got us here in the first place. You add stuff like this, something will be sacrificed for it.
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Divinity: Original Sin |OT| Sandbox RPG. Co-Op friendly. Bread.
- Thread starter Casimir
- Start date
It adds time, money, and doesn't have the flexibility that plain text does. I understand you wanting these features that exist in modern games, but that sorta stuff is the same bloat that got us here in the first place. You add stuff like this, something will be sacrificed for it.
More voice acting would be nice especiallly for important characters, but I don't think full-voice acting would be good for this game. Voice acting limits how much dialogue you can have (compare how much dialogue Baldurs Gate has against any full voice acted game), and when the dialogue is recorded you can't change it.
Also modders would try to add voice acting to their mods and their voice acting is always horrible
Edit: Techically Larian could add controller support, but they'd have to change the entire UI and the game with a controller would be just too damn slow.
Also modders would try to add voice acting to their mods and their voice acting is always horrible
Edit: Techically Larian could add controller support, but they'd have to change the entire UI and the game with a controller would be just too damn slow.
VO typically poses a strict limitation on the breadth and branching possibilities of dialogue as well as on hassle-free iterations to it well into the bug-fixing stage. It's not only about cost; it's about the significant flexibility afforded to writers when you don't have every line voiced.
Yeah, no.
Though looks like I'm lttp. Everything has been said on why VA doesn't work in this kind of games.
So you are saying games with inventories can't exist with a controller interface?
Diablo 3
Skyrim
Sacred 2
Dragon Age
All those games (and hundreds more) work fine with a controller and an inventory screen.
Like I said I have 40 hours into Divinity: Original Sin and I have every command in the game essentially mapped to 6 mouse buttons. I don't use the keyboard for anything at all. This aint no MMO or RTS, yo. It's the kind of game that has been replicated on console plenty of time.
Act 1 Spoilers:
- nope
- nope
- That'd be good
- FUCK. NO.
- That'd also be good.
Braccus Rex? Pfft. More like Braccus rekt
- nope
- nope
- That'd be good
- FUCK. NO.
- That'd also be good.
Sure that makes sense. But that is really just an argument for VO being the last stage in development, maybe even after a Greenlight phase. At some point a script is done. That's the point where VO would come in.
The interface being heavily reliant on mouse input doesn't strengthen your argument, explain how that would translate well to analog joysticks.
Also Skyrim is a perfect example of an interface being made shit because of controllers.
Lactose_Intolerant
Member
The game does lose some of the stuff that makes it special after the 1st map.
Crimsonsky
Member
There is nothing about the interface that wouldn't work with a controller. Triggers to switch party members, shoulder buttons to switch bars and the d-pad and two face buttons for abilities. Two other face buttons for accept/decline, the joystick buttons for inv/spell screen. Start for the options screen. Handled, and you still have a button left over. In addition, you could move via joystick, or still move via clicking where the cursor is. Right joystick swings the camera left and right, push it up for tactical view and down for over the shoulder. Really this hate on controllers is completely nonsensical and shallow. There's nothing wrong with controllers. Let it go. There's even games where *gasp* a controller is the better method of input. Witcher 2 upon release, springs right to mind.
Voice acting, like anything, is fine, provided it's done right.
Also I hope they don't get bought out, I can put down another 250 for the next kickstarter and I'm sure they'll be many more this go round.
Does Silverglen have a grindstone? The workshop only has a smelter and an anvil, but no grindstone at all. I don't want to go to Cyseal every time I want to upgrade my equipment.
edit: Oh, my only complaint about the game are the various hidden button puzzles. With the atrocious camera controls in the game, heavily using the equivalent of pixel hunting in an RPG is just poor design!
edit: Oh, my only complaint about the game are the various hidden button puzzles. With the atrocious camera controls in the game, heavily using the equivalent of pixel hunting in an RPG is just poor design!
Fallout 3 and NV are better examples. How the hell is it possible that 15+ year old games got controls and interface SO MUCH BETTER.
Aren't all of those games limited to like 8 skill slots? My ranger alone has 5 hotbars full of skills.
Diablo 3's console inventory is way less efficient than the PC interface.
And come on man Skyrim? That is like the worst UI in history and is exactly what you get when you design a UI with controllers in mind. Sure you could get D:OS to work with a controller, it would just be a huge step back.
Destiny's input system is entirely cursor based and it works fine with a controller.
Xcom's movement system is pretty much exactly like Divinity's in combat and it works fine with a controller too.
Pretty much every game from Torchlight to Diablo to Sacred 2, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance,have similar inventory systems and maps and those all work fine with a controller as well.
It's different if you add controller support and if Larian adds it.
If you add it, you would expect some problems, maybe you don't need the keyboard but some actions would be too slow or janky. I doubt this crafting system would work right with a controller, or just moving crates everywhere, but that's not a problem because the game isn't made for that input device and you accept those problems when you try using a controller.
If Larian adds controller support they can't just do that. They'd have to do a entire UI based on the controller, and to do that they'd have to make some decisions in the game design because if they have bad controller support it would be a big negative for the game.
you press one button to go to the next page on your command list. I have it mapped to Mouse 2. We aren't talking about a NES controller here. We are talking about modern controllers that have like 16 buttons and two analog sticks.
You can't even target where your barbarian leaps in console Diablo. It "works" but it is a concession that I am unwilling to make.
Well, to be fair, selecting targets and moving in XCOM with a mouse used to be bad until they patched it. Horrendous terrain issues...
That was the least important part of my post but ok. Look you want controller support fine man. The fact is the interface will have to be changed (like in console Diablo) and I prefer that it the way it is.
That's not a problem in an turn based game where you have plenty of time to put where a target reticule lands.
Hell, I played Sacred 2 on a 360 controller and that's an action RPG and has up to 16 active skills on a bar that you just flip between by using facebuttons, facebuttons+LT, Facebuttons+RT, and Facebuttons+LT+RT to flip between sets quickly on the fly and it worked great.
There is no reason a turn based game top view game couldn't work fine. The only reason you need a keyboard if for real time games that have far too many hot keys or FPS games where precise aiming is really important. Neither is the case in a top down turn based RPG.
Morevoer this interface looks very very similar to plenty of other games that have worked fine with a controller. It pretty much just rips off the interface used by games like Diablo and Xcom.
Actually you need a k/m in MOBA and RTS because of the requirement to snap the camera all over the place, not so much the button limitation. Oh and targeting spells of course.
And yes I do and always have agreed with you that a controller would work with this game. I just don't like what designing interfaces around controllers (Skyrim, Diablo 3, etc) does. That's it, we just want different things.
This type of game feels more 'book'-ey than movie-ey, y'know? Sometimes, hell oftentimes, I prefer to read my fantasy (or whatever) than have it acted out for me. I enjoy lending something of my own imagination to the characters, letting my brain come to its own nice fit as to how I feel they sound. You lose a lot of that with fully voiced. Like, I know it's a video game rather than a book or a movie, but the way I want to interact with its story errs more toward how I consume literature rather than film, if that makes sense. By way of example, you could give inXile a shitzillion dollars right now and I'd still hope they keep Tides largely a text affair. Fully voiced can both shape and stifle a thing, depending on the thing, in my head at least.
Ploid 3.0
Member
Square Enix is so good at controller support, a big inventory full of items is easy to navigate in FFXIV also the many macros and so on. These menus don't have to be reduced to Diablo 3 console levels of derp. I can't blame every PC game for not supporting controllers though. It just sucks that designers aren't more like Square's FF online team. I wish Guild Wars 2 had FFXI/FFXIV's controller setup, using the profiler setup that gaf's OT has is a bit wacky at times, though it feels great.
Yea I mean controller support isn't something you just slap on. If Square does it well I am sure they put a lot of thought and time into it. In Larian's case I would rather they use the current interface and spend the time on more spells/quests/whatever content.
charlequin
Banned
This is absurd. It's one thing to talk about Diablo 3 (where combat is in real time and therefore gameplay modifications are required to support controllers) but Divinity is turn-based. There is nothing whatsoever you can do in Divinity that hasn't been solved for controller support in double-digit numbers of games already. Nothing about the interface would "have to be changed." (Maybe you'd have to add a context menu to the pyramids to let you pick them up from the ground without dragging.)
I'm on board with avoiding more voice acting because that would consume more budget and aggressively limit dialogue options, but I don't see anything at all about controller support that would hurt the game for people playing with KB/M.
I don't think there's a huge issue with allowing controller support for a game like this. The biggest problem there is typically in focusing user interface design on the console versions, which has dire consequences for the PC UI (something Bethesda fails to understand).
And there doesn't necessarily have to be any other limitations imposed on the PC version based on allowing a different form of input. Look at something like the Baldur's Gate series on PC versus iPad, for instance, and that's real-time with pause. It's feasible to allow different forms of input without denying the depth of user interaction.
As a turn-based game I think something like Divinity: OS could function fine with a controller for people who prefer to play that way, though I'd never use it.
But that often isn't where it comes in, for any number of reasons. There can be notable iterations not only to the script but the game in general months after the point where VO is finalized in actual development. If you have every line voiced and have to pay the voice actors to come back because you wanted to modify such and such line, it becomes a lot less feasible to make those changes.
These are points that designers with notable experience writing dialogue both for minimally-voiced and fully-voiced games have repeatedly stressed, e.g. Chris Avellone. Take it from him:
"We plan on doing what most of the BG and IWD series did and only have limited VO for NPCs and companions. We don’t want to do a fully voiced game, as that comes with a number of technical hurdles that limit iteration, and that’s one of the things we wanted to do differently with this project… the ability to make a larger range of reactive text (like we did with New Reno in Fallout 2, for example – the only limit to this kind of reactivity is the cost for VO and localization). Limiting the VO also allows for any necessary changes during the final months of a project without the huge costs involved with altering VO and doing pick-ups."
And there doesn't necessarily have to be any other limitations imposed on the PC version based on allowing a different form of input. Look at something like the Baldur's Gate series on PC versus iPad, for instance, and that's real-time with pause. It's feasible to allow different forms of input without denying the depth of user interaction.
As a turn-based game I think something like Divinity: OS could function fine with a controller for people who prefer to play that way, though I'd never use it.
But that often isn't where it comes in, for any number of reasons. There can be notable iterations not only to the script but the game in general months after the point where VO is finalized in actual development. If you have every line voiced and have to pay the voice actors to come back because you wanted to modify such and such line, it becomes a lot less feasible to make those changes.
These are points that designers with notable experience writing dialogue both for minimally-voiced and fully-voiced games have repeatedly stressed, e.g. Chris Avellone. Take it from him:
"We plan on doing what most of the BG and IWD series did and only have limited VO for NPCs and companions. We don’t want to do a fully voiced game, as that comes with a number of technical hurdles that limit iteration, and that’s one of the things we wanted to do differently with this project… the ability to make a larger range of reactive text (like we did with New Reno in Fallout 2, for example – the only limit to this kind of reactivity is the cost for VO and localization). Limiting the VO also allows for any necessary changes during the final months of a project without the huge costs involved with altering VO and doing pick-ups."
Fantastic news. I wonder if it has been released at retail in Europe?
If what you say is true, why didn't Blizzard just port the PC inventory screen over to Diablo 3 console? I own both versions and the inventory on console is much more of a chore to navigate than on PC.
Terra_Ex
Member
Damn, you look away from the thread for one second and there's offers to buy Larian (don't do it Swen!) and suggestions that full voice acting and cinematics will make things better. I feel like I've lived through this nightmare before...
Please make the bad man stop, it sounds like you're paving the way for Dragon Age 2 redux here.
Speak for yourself, the lack of voice acting is a major plus factor for me after witnessing what happened to another series recently that was supposed to cater to the crpg audience. Beyond even the core game itself, if Larian had fully voiced everything then that'd hamstring any significant modding endeavours that sought to add meaningful content to the base campaign and in my eyes modding is going to be lifeblood of D:OS when everyone has exhausted the main story. Voice acting the major scenes/pivotal moments is all that is required.
I would like explanation as to why VO has to happen early in the dev process rather than later but I'll concede that it would obviously make things a bit less flexible.
And it is also possible that devs of the scale of Larian or inXile are never going to have the resources/budgets to make a game of the scope that could successfully pull it off. But I was really just composing a "dream list," like if time or money wasn't an issue. How awesome would it be to have a game with this fantastic combat system, great sense of place and environment, with the production values of Mass Effect or some other AAA game? I'm not asking them to make the game play like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. I want a game that essentially plays like this but with that big budget production value. This game but where every dialog encounter occured with the Mass Effect style dialog exchanges.
But it would be nice to be able to play this game on my couch/in bed with a controller since I work in an office all day. I don't mind going home and using my PC desk to play more and I do it because the game is great. But I also have my PC wired through a wall to a nice 50" plasma TV and it would be great to be able to a play a game with this level of depth on that. It obviously doesn't need cinematic fully voiced dialog encounters to be adopted to a big screen experience, but it sure would be a nice bonus.
LurkerPrime
Member
I just can't imagine solving some of the more object-oriented environmental obstacles without the precision of a mouse.
Disclaimer: I'm not a developer.
But, I figure developers must do VO before the end of development for both efficiency and flexibility-related reasons. It gives them time to test, iterate, and polish the script/VO/implementation before the final crunch period when they lock down the game and focus on polishing until release.
Leaving VO until the end of development would only be asking for trouble; I doubt any AAAAAA+ game would ever consider leaving something so vital until the end of development.
Disclaimer: I'm not a developer.
But, I figure developers must do VO before the end of development for both efficiency and flexibility-related reasons. It gives them time to test, iterate, and polish the script/VO/implementation before the final crunch period when they lock down the game and focus on polishing until release.
Leaving VO until the end of development would only be asking for trouble; I doubt any AAAAAA+ game would ever consider leaving something so vital until the end of development.
charlequin
Banned
Because they made more sweeping changes to the game for the console release which included modified encounter frequency, new loot tables, and local co-op, and they probably decided this alternate UI would fit better with the game's console iteration?
Diablo 3 is a loot RPG. A huge portion of the game is centered around loot; finding, identifying, equipping, trading, and selling loot makes up a huge portion of the whole game. It's also built for a co-op experience that's pretty high speed. An interface that's functional but slow for that purpose would be disruptive in a version of the game that can only be played with a controller.
Divinity is far less inventory dependent, has a much more measured pace in general, and supports fewer people in its co-op mode. It's also a PC-only game that any person can control with KB/M if they so choose. Adding entirely optional controller support based around the existing UI wouldn't disrupt the game or make it hard to play correctly.
Some people can do it without a point in sneaking, or even sneaking! All you have to do is time it right... That, and their cones of vision aren't that far.
Spoilery for what's ahead:
However, you may want to finish the cave-in parts first, north of the waypoint at the beginning...
Spoilery for what's ahead:
As a side note, you technically only have to dodge three death knights if you do it properly. Hang south after you hit the bridge to get to the Immaculate camp. Take the back route to get further into the cave.
However, you may want to finish the cave-in parts first, north of the waypoint at the beginning...
So this happened in tonight's session.
I have to go to sleep now, so I didn't have time to check, but I sure hope it doesn't persist.
This happened to me before. Just reload and it'll go away.
Divinity is much more inventory intensive than Diablo 3. In D3 all you do is identify legendaries (which takes one button press) and salvage everything else. There are what, 3 crafting materials in D3? One potion type? There are probably 100 crafting materials alone in Divinity. That doesn't count spell books, equipment, crafting hardware, scrolls, potions, etc etc etc. So I completely disagree with you that there would be a seamless transition to controller in regards to Divinity's inventory UI.
That said, I do agree with you 100% that the combat UI of Divinity would work perfectly well on a controller.
Edit: I should be clear that the original point was regarding what we want for DOS2. I am contending that if Larian allows for controller support in DOS2 that they would make the inventory more controller friendly. I am not arguing that DOS would not work with a controller.
You need to focus on the
White Witch
There is never a single point in the game where you need to fight higher level enemies.
Welp, I feel dumb again. Completely forgot about the(spoilers ahead!)
White Witch and started killing immaculates instead.
Yea I mean the game technically doesn't give much direction, but it actually really does in the form of mob levels.
Super frustrating trying to get homestead to update when you've aquired multiple stones without going back there in a long time. Can't progress without it, and it seems random when it decides to realize that its time to allow me to open a new area.
tried the final fight, didn't go so well.. going to have to reevaluate my strategy.
tried the final fight, didn't go so well.. going to have to reevaluate my strategy.
Prototype Viktor
Member
fuck those elementals and that idol the bane of my existence until i got a legendary 2hander with water damage and a summon fire elemental i used to tank everything while i ran like a baby to pick them off one by one
At each junction point is a passageway they don't patrol or look into. All you need to do is wait for them to walk away from you, walk behind them till you see the passage, then wait in the passage until they give you another opening.
You don't need sneak or invisi.
Yep