Divinity: Original Sin II - Evolves in Early Access

PC Gamer asked Swen Vincke how Divinity: Original Sin II will be improved with the help of Early Access players:

How Divinity: Original Sin 2 will evolve in Early Access

Combat balance and system tweaks galore, Game Master mode, and more are on the way.

Something always goes wrong when you launch a game, says Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke. You wouldn’t know it by looking at Divinity: Original Sin 2’s Steam page a week after it launched in Early Access, where it’s sitting at 96 percent positive reviews. But something did go wrong when Larian released Original Sin 2 on September 15: they all forgot to press the launch button.

“For some reason we forgot to push the button, literally,” Vincke said, laughing over Skype. “That’s no joke. In the past you had to ask Steam to release it and they’d release it for you at the appointed time. Now they have a system where you put in the date and time, and so we thought it would just release automatically. But apparently you have to still type in that you want to release. So we were waiting there, together with everybody, waiting for it to release, and nothing was happening. We felt really stupid. [laughs] Goes to show, you should always read the fucking manual!”

[…]

How Larian collects feedback

PC Gamer: Let’s start with things that you already had in mind that might need to change, and the feedback that’s influencing you in one direction or another.

Swen Vincke: There’s two parts to the question: What feedback are we looking at, and what do we do with it?

We obviously have the channels like forums and Twitter that we’re reading. Everybody’s reading a lot of it. We’re filtering things that we think are useful out of that. On one side that’s bug reports. Things are going wrong, there’s so much you can do in the game. On the other side there’s opinions and suggestions. Lots of good suggestions. Those go in a database and we go through it and say, ‘that makes sense, that’s actually better than we were planning.’

At the same time we’re also doing qualitative analysis. We have a little tool that’s shipping with the game, so people that want to can send data back to us. The data contains, ‘Where did you go in the game, what skills did you pick, what tags did you select, which dialogue options did you do?’ So it gives us more analytical data about what people are doing in the game away from the subjectivity of an opinion. That is dominantly being used for balancing, so we can see that if nobody’s managing a certain fight, then we probably overdid it on that fight. But also, if nobody is using a certain skill, it means we probably should do something about that skill.

[…]

More information.

An interesting read. Sounds like Swen knows what to listen to and when to listen to it.

We are in the Era of Analytics, even in video games.

I had a brief go at the game and i have to say that it's absolutely fantastic, even in this early stage. They really know how to make a good RPG and with these analysis tools it can only get better.

Originally Posted by Giovanni1983
I had a brief go at the game and i have to say that it's absolutely fantastic, even in this early stage. They really know how to make a good RPG and with these analysis tools it can only get better.

Yeah, I got a good vibe as well from 3-4 hours of playing the Early Access version.
I think I'll quit for now just to prevent 'spoilerification', but it looks and feels pretty good so far.

I concur. The game is fantastic even at this early stage. I have played a lot with my friends to test the new mechanics, and I must say we are already over 40 hrs… And we did not even leave Fort Joy so far… granted we have spent a lot of time in the Arena and restarting 20 times with different characters… but so much fun.

The new aspect I love the most so far is the introduction of heights. It gives a completely new tactical feeling: scrambling to get an advantage, creating choke-points…. So nice.

Can anyone whose played this comment if the inventory and item management have been improved?

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
Can anyone whose played this comment if the inventory and item management have been improved?

What would be an improvement in this case? The issue I had with D:OS's inventory/item management is that I seemed to have a bug where my inventory wouldn't organize when I pressed the button. Talk about crazy item management. Try playing the game for 140 hours without ever being able to organize that thing! Still had fun, though.

Odd thing was, my dad in co-op was able to organize his inventory at the press of a button. At that point it was fairly easy to find what you needed and a pretty good inventory system overall, imo.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
Can anyone whose played this comment if the inventory and item management have been improved?

The inventory is still a grid similar to the first game, but you can click icons to highlight/show only armor,weapons,etc in it. You can also show a combined inventory of all party members.

I'll let you decide if that is an improvement for you or not.

The only significant improvement I noticed is that you can see the inventory of all characters at once. Coupled with filters, you can swap items very easily (e.g., weapons or consumables).

Originally Posted by mbpopolano24
The only significant improvement I noticed is that you can see the inventory of all characters at once. Coupled with filters, you can swap items very easily (e.g., weapons or consumables).

Combined inventory sounds good to me.

I really appreciated the 'proper' PC UI larian developed for D:OS. It was just that throughout the course of the game, I felt I spent too much time managing items. So I was just curious if the management aspect of the UI was a little better. While I like having lots of things to fiddle with, moving things here and there for many various reasons got a little tedious and time consuming over the 70+ hours I spent with the game.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
Combined inventory sounds good to me.

I really appreciated the 'proper' PC UI larian developed for D:OS. It was just that throughout the course of the game, I felt I spent too much time managing items. So I was just curious if the management aspect of the UI was a little better. While I like having lots of things to fiddle with, moving things here and there for many various reasons got a little tedious and time consuming over the 70+ hours I spent with the game.

Bruh, managing items like that is a *good* thing. Inventory management is a core RPG element for me. I can't stand shared inventories. If you can't take a minute or two to give your Mage the scrolls as you find them or put a gem in the Thief's gem bag…I don't know if RPGs are for you. Inventory management like that is honestly like a short period of rest in an old-school RPG. It all adds to the total experience, imo.

Serious question, though. Did you know you could sort your inventory at the press of a button in D:OS? As I said, it didn't work for me (likely some weird bug) but my dad was able to sort his stuff and the inventory was clean when it was sorted.

And 70+ hours? Did you beat the game? My dad and I co-oped the game and it took us 140 hours to beat it and pretty much do everything. We loved how the game kept introducing new stuff at every turn. Just when you thought you had seen everything or it couldn't possibly get cooler, it introduced new things. D:OS 2 is going to be crazy!

Originally Posted by Fluent
Serious question, though. Did you know you could sort your inventory at the press of a button in D:OS? As I said, it didn't work for me (likely some weird bug) but my dad was able to sort his stuff and the inventory was clean when it was sorted.

Yes I did use the sort button and it worked for me. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being super important, my criticisms of the item management rest at about 2.5. It's just something I'd bring up considering they're making part 2 and maybe it could be a little better. But it's not a huge big deal.

Originally Posted by Fluent
And 70+ hours? Did you beat the game? My dad and I co-oped the game and it took us 140 hours to beat it and pretty much do everything. We loved how the game kept introducing new stuff at every turn. Just when you thought you had seen everything or it couldn't possibly get cooler, it introduced new things. D:OS 2 is going to be crazy!

I have not beaten the game. I am somewhere between halfway and three quarters way done. Darks Souls 3 and Witcher 3 distracted me and I played those two games. I'll be resuming D:OS very soon though and look forward to finishing it.