Divinity - Original Sin: Buggy as Balls

[lordmardok]

Okay, so I recently played Divinity: Original Sin (hereafter referred to as DOS) and I gotta say. Who in the blind hells let this out of Alpha. Much less Beta testing. I have encountered literally game breaking bugs and I've only played it for about an hour. My favorite one is this:

I'm in the first town, I finish up talking to folks, three of which get stuck in a loop where I can't get out of the dialog window or select anything outside of it and have to reload, and finally decide I'm sick of talking and want to fight since at least the combat seems solid. I go outside look around, loot some of the pre-dead Orc and Human corpses laying about, talk to a grieving orc and opt not to raid his dead brother's grave, etc... For a while I'm wondering where the hell I'm supposed to fight anything. The way people talk it's like they're constantly balls-deep in the walking dead but I instead it's just undisturbed orc graves as far as the eye can see. So finally I run across some orcs and I'm excited to finally fight something and try out a couple of new weapons I picked up in town. There's three orc bruisers, a ranger, and a shaman. I think I have this since I fought orcs earlier and, though tough, went down pretty easy.

Oh how wrong I was. One walks up and chunks my fighter with two swings that do SIXTY DAMAGE APIECE. This is 120 damage in the area outside of the FIRST TOWN where my characters have a total of about ninety hit points-ish. Then the shaman tosses a fireball and one-shots my rogue. Game over.

That's not the bug though. It's fucking stupid design philosophy but it's not a bug. The BUG is where I reload a little ways back and my rogue instantaneously explodes. That's right. The orc shaman kills him so hard he turned QUANTUM DEAD. DEAD IN ALL REALITIES EVERYWHERE. THAT'S HOW HARD HE DIED APPARENTLY. And my last save was waaaaaaaaay back in town. So yeah, that's an uninstall. Take my advice, give this game a hard pass.

Hard. Pass.

EDIT/UPDATE: Just for yucks I tried to reload back in town. My Rogue exploded there too. So I literally would need to start a new game. This game is so bugged it actually destroyed my save file. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

 

[hazabaza1]

The orc shaman kills him so hard he turned QUANTUM DEAD. DEAD IN ALL REALITIES EVERYWHERE. THAT'S HOW HARD HE DIED APPARENTLY.

I giggled.
A lot.

But yeah, bit of advice for playing Classic RPGs, especially newly released ones, quicksave CONSTANTLY. They're either so hardcore that you'll be dying 3-4 times in every fight until mid-game or so big that a lot of the bugs haven't been ironed out.

Sorry to hear about your Rogue, but from what I've seen the game does seem really good so I hope at some point you can pick it back up and enjoy it, I'm planning to eventually.

 

[lordmardok]

Sorry to hear about your Rogue, but from what I've seen the game does seem really good so I hope at some point you can pick it back up and enjoy it, I'm planning to eventually.

If you're really invested in playing it, go for it I guess? Although I will say this isn't really indicative of Classic RPG's. I played through all of the Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dales' and KOTOR's. Those were well designed Classic RPG's. None of them had parts in them where your Jedi could get two-shot by a random passing Nerf.

I've played /mostly/ classic RPG's and this is just bad design. Shadowrun Returns is a much better example of the Classic RPG genre than DOS imo. If it was like, fifteen bucks then maybe, but seriously, they're asking for $40+ for a game that could very well annihilate your save game? That seems like it's not worth it.

 

[hazabaza1]

Sorry to hear about your Rogue, but from what I've seen the game does seem really good so I hope at some point you can pick it back up and enjoy it, I'm planning to eventually.

If you're really invested in playing it, go for it I guess? Although I will say this isn't really indicative of Classic RPG's. I played through all of the Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dales' and KOTOR's. Those were well designed Classic RPG's. None of them had parts in them where your Jedi could get two-shot by a random passing Nerf.

I've played /mostly/ classic RPG's and this is just bad design. Shadowrun Returns is a much better example of the Classic RPG genre than DOS imo. If it was like, fifteen bucks then maybe, but seriously, they're asking for $40+ for a game that could very well annihilate your save game? That seems like it's not worth it.

I'm going to wait for the christmas sale personally, I thought it was a Diablo clone until it was released and then it got my attention.

And correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I played BG or KOTOR but I remember pretty easily getting ganked in a few hits until mid game in both of those. The bears and some random bandits in BG were pretty lethal, and those weird poison mutant dudes in KOTOR wrecked me rather consistently.
Like I said it's been a while and I didn't really understand d20 systems until recently so maybe I was just bad but what you're saying seems kind of indicative of old rpg design.

 

[lordmardok]

And correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I played BG or KOTOR but I remember pretty easily getting ganked in a few hits until mid game in both of those. The bears and some random bandits in BG were pretty lethal, and those weird poison mutant dudes in KOTOR wrecked me rather consistently.
Like I said it's been a while and I didn't really understand d20 systems until recently so maybe I was just bad but what you're saying seems kind of indicative of old rpg design.

Hm, well you're not entirely wrong but you are missing a few key elements of context I guess. I'll try to shed some light on my thought processes a little to try and explain it, so here goes nothin.

Baldur's Gate was pretty unforgiving, I won't lie, but it was also ridiculously easy if you figured out a few key strategies. The reason this worked is because the enemies didn't do overpowered amounts of damage, they usually just had decent damage numbers and okay hit points, but combine that against the wrong party set up and you get wiped without a fight. Wizards in particular were spectacularly bad about this, especially in the first BG. However, even if that were the case if you had a few certain spells and/or the right companions in your party the fight went from deadly to a walk in the garden.

As for KOTOR... I honestly have no idea why you had that kind of trouble, if we're talking about the Rakghouls from the first game in the undercity of Taris, only one or two them were really dangerous, most of them were painfully weak. Occasionally you'd come across a really uber-ghoul that would just break you over its knee if you didn't kill it in the first round or two but they were pretty easily avoided if you just checked what you were walking into before you fought them. I just went around them for the most part.

In the case of DOS this isn't the problem. Even the Uber-Ghouls could be killed without losing someone if you were really careful and stimmed up to the gills. These Orcs were essentially level 10 creatures in what should be a level 3 area with absolutely no warning that they are there. There are no subtle signs telling you you're in danger, you just walk in and instantly die. That wouldn't be as huge of an issue if it hadn't destroyed my save file.

To sum my point up; Classic RPG's aren't hard because their creatures are one-shot machines. They're hard because they're unforgiving to the terminally unaware. If you keep a weather eye out and move carefully you can win most fights. But this wasn't the case. I saw orcs and in DOS you can't check power levels so I figured, "I fought orcs before and won fairly easily, that should be the case here." But despite the fact that these were the SAME types of Orcs that I fought before, they had had their stats jacked up. There was no way to tell I was in danger until I was dead. That's not 'Classic' that's just 'Bad'.

 

[Caiphus]

I'm finding the game seriously good, actually.

The orcs in question that you're fighting, OP, are level 6. In the early game fighting stuff even 2 levels higher than you is going to be tough. You aren't supposed to be there until you've done most of the quests around Cyseal and cleared out the Undead to the North (Lighthouse area etc).

That place is also littered with traps. There's a good chance that you're hitting explosive mines.

 

[hazabaza1]

And correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I played BG or KOTOR but I remember pretty easily getting ganked in a few hits until mid game in both of those. The bears and some random bandits in BG were pretty lethal, and those weird poison mutant dudes in KOTOR wrecked me rather consistently.
Like I said it's been a while and I didn't really understand d20 systems until recently so maybe I was just bad but what you're saying seems kind of indicative of old rpg design.

Hm, well you're not entirely wrong but you are missing a few key elements of context I guess. I'll try to shed some light on my thought processes a little to try and explain it, so here goes nothin.

Baldur's Gate was pretty unforgiving, I won't lie, but it was also ridiculously easy if you figured out a few key strategies. The reason this worked is because the enemies didn't do overpowered amounts of damage, they usually just had decent damage numbers and okay hit points, but combine that against the wrong party set up and you get wiped without a fight. Wizards in particular were spectacularly bad about this, especially in the first BG. However, even if that were the case if you had a few certain spells and/or the right companions in your party the fight went from deadly to a walk in the garden.

As for KOTOR... I honestly have no idea why you had that kind of trouble, if we're talking about the Rakghouls from the first game in the undercity of Taris, only one or two them were really dangerous, most of them were painfully weak. Occasionally you'd come across a really uber-ghoul that would just break you over its knee if you didn't kill it in the first round or two but they were pretty easily avoided if you just checked what you were walking into before you fought them. I just went around them for the most part.

In the case of DOS this isn't the problem. Even the Uber-Ghouls could be killed without losing someone if you were really careful and stimmed up to the gills. These Orcs were essentially level 10 creatures in what should be a level 3 area with absolutely no warning that they are there. There are no subtle signs telling you you're in danger, you just walk in and instantly die. That wouldn't be as huge of an issue if it hadn't destroyed my save file.

To sum my point up; Classic RPG's aren't hard because their creatures are one-shot machines. They're hard because they're unforgiving to the terminally unaware. If you keep a weather eye out and move carefully you can win most fights. But this wasn't the case. I saw orcs and in DOS you can't check power levels so I figured, "I fought orcs before and won fairly easily, that should be the case here." But despite the fact that these were the SAME types of Orcs that I fought before, they had had their stats jacked up. There was no way to tell I was in danger until I was dead. That's not 'Classic' that's just 'Bad'.

Fair enough.
I haven't played DOS yet so you're pretty much the voice of authority here. When I played KOTOR and BG I was like, 13 and 16 respectively and painfully unaware, so that probably contributed.

That being said I think I saw a video where the player could either check the level of the enemy before the fight and do some kind of escape command during it. Again, haven't played it so correct me otherwise, but it seems like it could be something helpful.

And if it that doesn't exist it seems like the devs are pretty insistent on patching the game so hopefully either the balance issues or the identification issues will get fixed soon enough.

But yeah I certainly see your point and why it's so frustrating. Though I do wonder if the quantum dead character is something that has effected anyone else, it seems fairly unique and very hilarious.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

is called old school hard casul!, be glad the game only corrupted your file when you died, back in my day each time i died in a game, a man would just break into my house and stab one of my kidneys!

tough now that i think of it, none of my friends seems to have been stabbed repeatedly by strangers when we were kids, so maybe thats just me



joking aside, ive heard all kinds of accounts from people playing the game, some seem to be having a smooth ride, while others are experiencing notable glitches, weird

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

That's odd, I've had a completely smooth ride.
No bugs or anything.

I did the same as you though, I went against the orcs and were decimated.
It reminds me of old rpgs where there were specific areas you had to go to first, because the other areas was insanely hard if you weren't high enough level.

Sorry to hear about the gamebreaking bugs though, really hope that wont stop you from trying it again sometime.
It's a incredibly fun game.

 

[lordmardok]

And if it that doesn't exist it seems like the devs are pretty insistent on patching the game so hopefully either the balance issues or the identification issues will get fixed soon enough.

But yeah I certainly see your point and why it's so frustrating. Though I do wonder if the quantum dead character is something that has effected anyone else, it seems fairly unique and very hilarious.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it was an exceptionally rare bug. I can't imagine a bug like that being common, since the devs would HAVE to have noticed it and patched it out. To be honest, if I were to play it again chances are I'd have an entirely smooth ride through the game. Unfortunately, my only experience with the game was a massively buggy ball of crap with a semi-solid combat system.

Chances are I won't come back to it. It was a pretty atrocious first impression and I really... Just imagine every time you save your game wondering if the next time you die will the time the bug strikes again and wipes all of your progress away. That's a pretty bad thought to have hanging over your head for an entire game. I just don't think I'll be able to play it again and enjoy knowing that at any time a bug could sweep all of that progress away and deposit my happy ass back at square one.

 

[Tarsus]

Hate to say it but this is just a fatal case of L2P. If you payed attention to conversations in town you would know that the undead to the west was the easiest enemies and thus should have been your first target once done with the town.
Ofc a simple mouse over should have told you that the orcs were above your level.
Dont know about bugs but i have finished the game without encountering a single one. In fact this is the most polished release i have seen in years.
I have read that 32bit os's with 4gb ram has some save game issues, dont know if they have managed to fix that yet.

 

[Smooth Operator]

That is indeed harsh, I might give up on it myself if that happened. And yes this game has some pretty severe bugs, my recent one is that on every quicksave the game would crash completely and corrupt the save, luckily there still is autosave and manual save that works but if any of those happen the map disappears, I only get a blank until restarting the game.

Difficulty however I don't agree is a problem, this game was not made for you to stroll aimlessly without challenge. Some areas are just that dangerous that you can't go in alone/unskilled, you might need to run away and then prep for the next engagement or put it off until much later in the game.
I will concede that for anyone only being used to modern games this will be a world shattering experience, this really is a game where the approach to difficulty is on you, it was not made to babysit your experience and running head first into walls will lead to severe pain every time.

 

[Jandau]

Sooo... you ran into a higher level zone and got 2-shot? And this is somehow someone else's fault, and not your own? You mention how you've played many classic RPGs and how this never happened in such games. Well, of course it didn't, most of those are fairly linear. You know one that wasn't linear, i.e. had something resembling an open world? Baldur's Gate 1. Where you could easily wander in the wrong direction on the world map and get surprise buttsex from creatures way out of your league (Ankheg fields say hi!).

Sorry about the bugs, though. Haven't had any myself just yet, but I know how annoying that can be. Save frequently, that's all I can suggest. Bugs are a fact of life for large-scale games with a lot of systems running in the background, even for much larger developers. However, saying this isn't even fit for Alpha is quite exaggerated, don't you think?

 

[General Karthos]

The reason you couldn't get out of those conversations is that you weren't scrolling down. It's not a bug. You have to scroll to the bottom of the list of possible conversation topics and then you'll have the option of picking "I'll take my leave" and ending the dialogue.

As for those Orcs, those are pretty nasty, but when you highlight them you should be able to see they're way higher level than you. You shouldn't even be leaving the town until you've hit level 3 AT LEAST, and you probably won't be able to take those Orcs until you're at least level 5. I was level 6 before I went after them, and by that point it was a pretty easy fight.

As for the load, sounds like you're stepping on mines.

I have played 40 hours with a few hours extra in multiplayer, and I've found the game to be punishingly difficult, but very rewarding when you finally sweat your way through a ridiculously difficult fight, such as the main boss fight in the first area. (Holy HELL. I didn't have a fire elemental spell like all the guys giving advice!)

Anyway, it's a really good game, and as far as I can figure all the "bugs" you're encountering are just fundamental misunderstandings of what is actually happening. I certainly haven't had any of these problems.

Of course, looking at it now, I can see this thread is a month old, so maybe they were all fixed before I bought the game.

 

[Eddie the head]

One bug I found is that if you hit the "[" key when you start a rock paper scissors game and then hit the "]" key you win.

But yeah I have to echo people it looks more like you just went to the wrong area.