Divinity: Original Sin Beta Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

Ah, nice. I guess we can expect a Kickstarter update later today.

Wasteland 2 is supposed to reach "release candidate" status in a month from now, which means it could be on schedule to be released in June too. I wonder how that'll work out.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.lar.net/2014/04/25/the-power-of-crowd-funding/

The power of crowd funding
Posted on April 25, 2014

It’s now been one year since we successfully completed our Kickstarter campaign for Divinity:Original Sin , one of the most intense and rewarding periods in my game development career.

Now, as we’re approaching the moment where the game is going to be released, I think it’s safe to say that without any doubt, the two smartest things Larian Studios did this year were deciding to put the game on Kickstarter and subsequently deciding to put the game on Steam Early Access.

Having access to a pool of over 60,000 people who supplied us with feedback during development, and at the same time enabled us financially to act upon that feedback, is nothing less but a developer’s wet dream, and we’ve had the luxury of living it.

It’s something for which we at Larian are very grateful and it’s something for which future players should be grateful too, because the game experience they’ll get will be so much better because of all that feedback.

I’m aware that there’s a lot of negative out on the internet regarding Steam: Early Access, but reflecting on my earlier blog entry in which I was pondering whether or not to release Divinity:Original Sin via Early Access, I think the positives for us far outweighed the negatives, and I think our game is an example of Early Access being a boon both for the developer and the players.

Barring a disaster, we’ll be shipping Divinity:Original Sin in 6 to 8 weeks, the target date being the day before the next solstice, June 20th.

I know we lost a lot of credibility in the release date department, but this particular deadline is pretty much set in stone now, if only for the reason that if we postpone releasing again, we’ll be taking turns at the divorce lawyer. Of course there’s also that other reason and that’s that we’re slowly approaching the stage where the game will actually be ready.

It remains hard for me to figure out what the correct deadline is for this game because it is after all an RPG, which means millions of data fields, and it would be easy to continue working on it for ages. Perfectionism is a disease many of us have at Larian, and it’s something the production-minded people over here need to fight constantly.

In my feeling the game is now at a point where, barring a few thousand bugs and balancing changes, it’s good to go. Anything we put on tip is icing on the cake. Don’t get me wrong, there still are a lot of extra features I’d still like to see, but I think that what we have now makes for a rich RPG experience already and more importantly, also makes for a lot of fun. I was watching these 2 guys play last night , and the experience they were having was pretty much what I was rooting for when we start out developing this game. Seeing that confirmed my feeling that we’re very close and so I didn’t pull the new release date in panic, but instead confirmed that we were going to communicate about it today.

I know there are people out there who would see us develop for another year, and while we certainly won’t be doing that, I might have some news that will cheer them up.

If you’re playing the game on Steam Early Access, you’ll see that we’ve published an impressive changelist again, with tons of features in there I’m sure nobody was expecting.

Most of them are direct consequences of player feedback, and even if we already said that we weren’t planning that many features anymore, you shouldn’t be surprised if you see some more pop up in the coming weeks.

This obviously deviates from the classic development model where you have a clearly defined start and end of a project with a specific feature set, but I think we have some good reasons for it.

You see, in our minds Divinity:Original Sin is an adventure that runs on one version of our shiny new RPG engine, an engine that btw is in dire need of a cool name. The same engine will be used for making more RPGs in the future and as such it makes a lot of sense for us to continue to invest in it.

Already, the continued development of features in Divinity:Original Sin is being done on the budget of whatever our next RPG will be, one of the truly nice but also dangerous perks of being independent. The CFO in me needed quite a lot of reassurance when it turned out that extending development not only meant that the budget would go up, but also that we’d have to wave goodbye to a lot of our guaranteed retail distribution sales. But I had good arguments to counter his pleas for some more sanity.

The core idea behind us going independent is that each RPG we make improves the quality of the next one, not only because it’ll give the studio more financial room, but also because we can draw on the work done in the previous game and don’t have to worry about any publisher *stuff*. If better games mean better sales (which intuitively seems right, even there are counterexamples) then it makes good sense to adopt the following strategy: make a good game, use the opportunities (both technically and financially) created by that good game to make the next game even better. Repeat. Enjoy increasing sales.

I know it sounds simple but I believe in simple

Dragon Commander and Divinity:Original Sin are the first in the set of these games, and I sincerely hope there’ll be many more. Dragon Commander (which to my own surprise looks to be on course to outsell The Dragon Knight Saga) created a lot of opportunities for Divinity:Original Sin and I’m burning a candle that Divinity:Original Sin will be creating even more possibilities for our next game.

The fantastic and completely unexpected thing that happened this last year is that Kickstarter and Steam Early Access worked out so well for us, that we were suddenly capable of taking some serious shortcuts in this long-term roadmap.

We could never have afforded such continued development on Divinity:Original Sin without the support of our backers, and if it weren’t for them, we for sure would’ve had to release it sooner, if only because of those aforementioned distribution deals.

So in a sense, thanks to the help we received from crowdfunding, the game that ships on June 20th will be at the quality level of Game 3 on my roadmap instead of Game 2. Or put differently, the Divinity:Original Sin that will ship is not Divinity Original Sin 1.0 but instead Divinity:Original Sin 2.0.

And because once you commit to an idea, you should commit to it fully or it won’t come to fruition, that means investing in Game 4 by putting even more into Game 3 isn’t that unreasonable.

Of course only time will tell & it could very well be that we’ll be badly burnt by this. I for sure I wouldn’t advise it as a strategy if you’re meek of heart, as it does cause considerable stress

I have good hopes though, and if you are one of those 60000 fantastic gamers who backed us on Kickstarter or Steam Early Access, you have my profound thanks for letting my team and me take this path.

We’re putting a good piece of ourselves into creating entertainment for you and it’s nice to know that there’s so many of you that have so much faith in our abilities that you’re willing to fund us on a promise.

Thank you

 

[SuicideBunny]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/230230/discussions/0/540739405179447809/

Next update
Hi all,

The next big update will be by the end of next week, most likely on April 24th or 25th. It's a pretty big one featuring quite a few surprises you may not have been expecting. Personally I think it's almost as big an improvement as when we went from alpha to beta with plenty of bug fixes, balancing changes, usability improvements and a very respectable list of additions, courtesy of our hidden feature list that we're not telling anybody about. Expect things like formations, difficulty levels, much better pathfinding with party members avoiding traps and more!

Sadly that does mean that save games will not be compatible, so if you have any ongoing sessions, make sure to finish them by wednesday April 23rd.

Have fun this weekend!

Stabbey already posted this two pages ago, dood.

 

[Infinitron]

UPDATE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin/posts/822503

 

[Arkeus]

I was quite impressed by the before/after:

Also, Swen is looking /exhausted/

 

[SuicideBunny]

ooooh, new environmental interactions! neat-o.

Difficulty settings have been added, so players can pick which sort of experience they prefer.
Added formations, both in turn-based combat and in real-time, for optimal tactical positioning

All players playing Divinity: Original Sin can now chat with each other, making it easier to form multiplayer groups within the community.
Replaced “repair” with “blacksmithing” and charm/intimidate/reason abilities by “charisma”

 

[MicoSelva]

Swen's blog provides some interesting number.

60 000 'backers' counting KS and Early Access, so around 40 000 Early Access buyers, meaning additional $1.6M for Larian $40 per copy).
Seeing as 20 000 KS/PayPal backers gave them $1M ($50 per copy on average), and that have to use some of that money to pay for physical goods, Early Access is probably at least as profitable as KS for developers, if not more.

 

[Infinitron]

Swen's blog provides some interesting number.

60 000 'backers' counting KS and Early Access, so around 40 000 Early Access buyers, meaning additional $1.6M for Larian $40 per copy).
Seeing as 20 000 KS/PayPal backers gave them $1M ($50 per copy on average), and that have to use some of that money to pay for physical goods, Early Access is probably at least as profitable as KS for developers, if not more.

You forgot to take off Valve's 30% cut (and Kickstarter/Amazon's 10% cut)

 

[SuicideBunny]

You forgot to take off Valve's 30% cut (and Kickstarter/Amazon's 10% cut)

850k via kickstarter and somewhere around 1.12m from steam doesn't change the numbers much. plus kickstarter generates more costs for physical goodies production and shipment.

 

[MicoSelva]

I also forgot that in Europe D:OS EA costs E40 ($52), so it more or less evens out.

EDIT: the larger cut, I mean.

 

[SuicideBunny]

I also forgot that in Europe D:OS EA costs E40 ($52), so it more or less evens out.

and in ukraine and shady steam gift deals i costs only 20 bucks, soooo....

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand downloading. !

 

[Delterius]

This is the one game in almost a decade that I tried to avoid all spoilers. Having mostly succeeded, I must ask, how is it turning out? Instant classic?

 

[SuicideBunny]

This is the one game in almost a decade that I tried to avoid all spoilers. Having mostly succeeded, I must ask, how is it turning out? Instant classic?

well, the actual dungeons, like a certain somebody's lair, tend to be rather linear affairs, though that might be the case with the starter ones, and i am still pissed about certain storylocked doors, but otherwise it's pretty sweet.

 

[MicoSelva]

This is the one game in almost a decade that I tried to avoid all spoilers. Having mostly succeeded, I must ask, how is it turning out? Instant classic?

Let's just say that if you are a typical OCD RPG player that wants to do everything there is, and more, in a game, you will spend more than 100 hours in D:OS and have great fun.

If you are a storyfag-immershun-cinematic-awesome-button player, you might be disappointed.

 

[Delterius]

Well I'm a storyfag, but I do think that everything a game does and allows you to do is part of the story. So I guess I'm in for a treat.

Now the wait for the Steam deal because I'm poor and frugal.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Now the wait for the Steam deal because I'm poor and frugal.

ukrainian codex bros can gift it to you for 20 bucks

 

[ZoddGuts]

Wherever your a storyfag or not, it's a fun game.

 

[tuluse]

I also forgot that in Europe D:OS EA costs E40 ($52), so it more or less evens out.

EDIT: the larger cut, I mean.

20% vat in Europe makes that a wash.

 

[Perkel]

200rats in game have unique dialogues....


D:OS rats confirmed to have more dialogs than Skyrim npcs....


Edit: power of "not spending money on stupid shit like v actors"


Now lets see how much dialogs there will be in pillars of incline

 

[ZoddGuts]

One Larian dev in the in-game World Chat is answering questions. Also the starting area looks a bit different now.

 

[MicoSelva]

I also forgot that in Europe D:OS EA costs E40 ($52), so it more or less evens out.

EDIT: the larger cut, I mean.

20% vat in Europe makes that a wash.

I keep forgetting about this VAT shit. Fucking taxes.

 

[Perkel]

I have few ideas for game:

- after few hours of gameplay your lower part of body starts to randomly say words to you, with each hour played those voices are starting to make sence. After few more hours you can talk with them on various matters. Thanks to pet talk ability you have gained not playable "The Hive" companion. It grants drain blood and itch skills that you can use on enemy. Also to power up this companion you have to visit various brothels in DOS, also this companion can't use its abilities if you have wet status or you can even lose it if you use bathtub. In case if you use bathtub and you increased earlier its power. The Hive will choose randomly one NPC from its host pool and then he will take control over host mind, search player to have duel with him. If this fails and its pool was vast he can again try to take controll over one npc and again try to search for you. In case if your character is charismatic person you can convince The Hive to again join you and if you have super charisma , you can convince The Hive to stay in its last host and make that body your actual real companion that you can even romance with.
- new skill only for males: "Labia translation" which gives players ability to understand women. Famale nps have sometimes different dialogs or their answers for your questions are mosty yes and no. Also from all famales dialogs word "maybe" is errased

 

[clemens]

Well I'm a storyfag, but I do think that everything a game does and allows you to do is part of the story. So I guess I'm in for a treat.

Storyfag that I am, I must say I had quite some fun with that little murder investigation... and I am relatively eager to see how that cult thing will turn out, might be ok.

 

[SCO]

I just want the editor to be well used into more than remakes (remakes are nice too).

Also a expansion for schedules and other stuff would be nice.
Mod modularity is a pipedream i'd love too (elder scrolls/weidu like moding)