Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[Luckmann]

They really didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing.

Huh.

 

[Sjukob]

Gee, what a fucking surprise ... not !

 

[Perkel]

stuff

Reading all of this is like reading book written by two completely different authors in every sense who never interacted with each other.

 

[Roguey]

In truth, he admits they went a little far with the steepness, because players complained about their super weapons getting superseded too soon, and so they patched in a slightly gentler curve.

What, really? I don't remember this. Did they think that a Larian employee made the de-bloat mod?

 

[Jimmious]

So, what I get (even though it's hard since the text is not very...coherent) is that their goal was to reduce "randomness" and make combat and effects more "deterministic"...
But who gave them this feedback though? Who told them that D:OS combat is not "deterministic" enough and needs to be changed? I don't get this at all. Wrong goals lead to obviously wrong decisions.

 

[Perkel]

So, what I get (even though it's hard since the text is not very...coherent) is that their goal was to reduce "randomness" and make combat and effects more "deterministic"...
But who gave them this feedback though? Who told them that D:OS combat is not "deterministic" enough and needs to be changed? I don't get this at all. Wrong goals lead to obviously wrong decisions.

No one. That is the thing. I don't remember anyone complaining about such a thing. If there was complain toward DOS1 combat system etc it was:

- loot. Everything you find will be worthless in hour.
- stats are to weak outside of very few stats and they do not give you reason to go for other stats than those of your prime class.
- People complained that 2-3 level difference is weird and it shouldn't be like that.

And they they took every point and made them worse and then they added that shitty armor system.


IMHO it looks like that someone had some PnP background and he thought that system isn't neutral as in if two players would fight against each other person who started battle would have to big advantage. Thing is that DOS1/2 doesn't have proper PvP...


Frankly speaking those design decisions are pretty much comparable to PoE design decisions. They both work on idea of being "fair" meaning that no one should be able to control fight from start but they very in their response to that.

PoE way is to make everything worthless so you can't effectively control battlefield unless you stack shitload of abilities.
DOS2 way is to stop player from doing that in first 5-8 turns depending on size of enemy forces.

Problem is that battles are not fair because it is not a sport.

 

[DeepOcean]

Armor had the chance of blocking status effects, meaning that if you planned to knock a bunch of enemies out with a stun attack, you didn’t know for sure it’d work in every case. “The good part about this was that every encounter felt different, so when you started a fight it felt fresh. Things went wrong and right in very different ways,” says Pechenin. “But at the same time it really prevented long-term planning, because you didn’t know how many people you’d stun, so you couldn’t predict what you’d do next turn, and because of this you just wouldn’t think about the next turn.”

What this clown is talking about? Saving throws kind of mechanics are how many RPGs roll since the beginning, it doesn't prevent you thinking ahead, if something goes wrong, you adapt your plan, they are there to not make battle too predictable causing fear on the player that thing might go bad at any minute, driving tension because you don't know if that crucial spell you need will work out when you need it or that dangerous enemy attack will hit making you feel that feeling of relief when the bad guy miss it. How making a deterministic system makes easier to plan ahead?

On D:OS 2, you will waste the first to second turn (if your characters are optimized damage dealers) just blindly using the most damaging attack you have while the enemy do whatever the fucking it wants as you have zero control over it, it basically destroy tactics. I lost the number of times when I found myself on a really bad situation on D:OS 1 when I used status effects and high initiative to retreat to better defendable positions, or I setup fields of fire to block enemy access from different directions, this shit system destroy tactics as sure, you now know if your attacks will work or not BUT instead of having a chance of attacks working or not on the first crucial turns of a fight, they ALL WON'T work for sure. How making player helpless makes the game more tactical? This, this clown doesn't explain.

This is even worse, because as soon as those first or second round passes, ALL your attacks will work, allowing you to permastun fools. So, for the first two or so rounds, you are helpless and beyond that, you just already won because you can permastun fools, did those tards play tested this game at all? I mean, if they used average scrubs and had them play testing on the normal mode, this would explain alot how this system made to the final game.

So one of the big changes to DOS2’s combat design was to its armor system. Rather than absorbing a proportion of incoming damage, armor completely negates it. There are two armor types: physical and magic, which negates any magical attack, including negative status effects. But as these values take damage they’re whittled down, and once gone, the character is left open to losing HP and vulnerable to status effects.

So, the ones that do the biggest single type damage will win the fight faster. Hurray for diversity on tactics!

So far, so deterministic, but Larian wanted attacks to retain a ‘spicy’ feeling. The solution was a small variability in incoming damage which may entirely knock armor out, or it may not. “So there’s still some RNG there and you don’t know exactly how things will turn out, but you have a high chance that things will go as you want them to,” says Pechenin. “But at other times the game will throw a curve ball at you and make you scramble to find a new plan.”

As if this would mean anything, this doesn't change the nature of the deterministic system, you still will have one or two guaranteed rounds of pure boredom on every single fucking fight on the game, not counting the times the bosses cheat and always act before you, so you will have three or more turns of helplessness as you just watch the enemy do as he pleases as nothing you can do except raw damage will help.

The next challenge was to set the pacing of battles. Larian wanted each to last an ideal number of turns. They wanted the time it took to destroy the armor on an enemy to feel good, as well as the number of turns that it’d take to stun an enemy, to destroy the armor on a player character, or to kill them.

This is a fools errand, who set the pacing of the battle should be the player, not the designer, this is very, very wrong for an RPG. If the player is underleveled and undergeared, the fight should take longer than a player that is on a higher level and is more prepared. This is the whole point of a leveling system, if you want all fights on your game to take the similar number of turns to all players, the only way to achieve this is to make the leveling system kinda redundant, that was exactly what Larian did, it seems this guy wasn't aware of the consequences of what he wanted to do.

You know, you are leveling not because you want more abilities, new abilities and new way to kill stuff but because you want to match the number on your character sheet with the number of the enemy so he has a chance to overcome the HP bloat. Why not just adding automatic leveling up at this point? This would be perfect because the designer would know perfectly well the level of everyone would be at certain points and everything would be "fair" and predictable.

This interacting with the armor system makes it even more awful, you are level 16 and the enemy is level 18, he has much more armor than you and his raw damage is bigger, it means you WILL die because there is no way to stop him because of the mountain of armor that makes him impervious to all your attacks. So, the way Larian decide to control the pacing of each battle is to say FUCK YOU! to anyone that didn't follow their railroaded exploration and was on the wrong place when the designers didn't wanted him to go there? How can a rational person can't see this is just terrible?

“Getting that curve nailed down was quite a challenge, just because of how much extra content we have,” says Pechenin. Some players might have discovered an amazing sword that allows them to one-shot enemies, which effectively reduced the challenge to nothing.

So the solution was to make all items irrelevant at each leveling up so this would stop being a problem.
"Doctor, I have a problem of headache!"
"Well, well, my good sir, I will solve it! I will cut your head!"

But rather than balance out these extremes, Larian embraced them. “Our usual philosophy is for player to be as OP as they want to be,” says Pechenin. But to mitigate the effects of a player finding an amazing sword, they also steepened the HP curve so that in a few hours that sword will be next to useless, returning the character to the baseline – unless they’ve found an excellent replacement.

I guess this guy doesn't really understand the meaning of overpowered, overpowered means you have more power than something else, not that numbers are bigger, if I do 1 of damage and the enemy has 10 of life but after a few levels, I do 1.000 damage but the enemy has 10.000 of health, well... unless by OP he mean meaningless number inflation...

In truth, he admits they went a little far with the steepness, because players complained about their super weapons getting superseded too soon, and so they patched in a slightly gentler curve. “This is completely valid, but in general the curve allowed us to give something very impactful to the player but still present them challenges even after 50-60 hours of playtime.”

How about having low level, middle level and high level enemies spread through the game? You know, low threat enemies on low level areas, middle threat enemies on higher level areas and ultra powerful enemies on hard to reach places? You know, like any decent non linear RPG handles this.

One of the ways Larian discourages exploits – and players favoring certain tactics too much – is in DOS2’s combat design. In Act III of the game, many of the encounters are specifically set up to flummox certain powerful tactics. So, for example, in one fight the player faces enemies with the Fortify ability, which prevents them from being teleported by the player. If they’ve been playing so far by teleporting enemies into killzones, they’ll need to scramble to come up with a new approach.

Sure, the new approach meaning grinding their armor bar until they are dead... so much fun!

Still, whether you have a good strategy or not, DOS2’s battles have the knack of making you feel you’re hanging on by your fingernails. “We see the best tactics when the player realizes a fight that’s going OK goes for the worst,” Pechenin says. If you see a chunk wiped off your mage’s physical armor it can often seem if it’s about to become dangerously vulnerable, even if across the party you have suite of fantastic powers that will see you victorious.

Is this guy talking about the game he actually designed? If you aren't on the right level with the right level randomly generated sword, there is no tension, you WILL die (unless on easy mode), there is no doubt about that, if you are on the right level, there is no tension, because on the first two turns of each character, you can't do anything beyond using the most powerful damaging ability you have and cross fingers you out damage the enemy so you can permastun them. Such tension!

One of the ways the game conjures this feeling is by managing armor and HP values in relation to the number of hits Larian wants it to take for them to be eliminated. So, if they want a player’s character to ideally be killed in five hits, they have enemies’ damage output kill them in 4.5 hits. The character still dies in five hits, but their HP bar will look more depleted and have just a sliver left before they receive the final blow.

Or you guise could stop being control freaks and stop trying to play the game for me? This whole control freak system means you are controlling the player and not letting the player have freedom to do whatever the fuck he wants, lets say I just didn't do what you guise expected and got to this guy but instead of killing me on 4.5 blows, he kills me on 2 blows but I found a way to to avoid death by turning him on a chicken and move my guise to a more defendable position while I teleported water barrils and electrified the puddle between me and him so he couldn't reach me while I could kill him from afar before he could reach me? Ohhh... the armor system... sorry... When you guise said you designed a fight expecting the player character to die on 4.5 hits, you LITERALLY mean it.

Balancing DOS2 was a major challenge, one which has continued after its release in September of last year. The process has led to various surprising observations about the way players approach kitting out their party. Pechenin says that, overwhelmingly and regardless of skill, players buy skillbooks over any other item from shops. Then they’ll invest in upgrading their weapons. But even good players tend to skip buying armor.

Maybe because most RPGs tend to not expect the player changing his whole equipment after each level up?

That’s particularly true when they’ve experienced a period of being overpowered, and it’s only countered when they’ve felt threatened across several successive battles, after which they tend to blame the game for having a difficulty spike. But it was their gear that was the issue.

Well, if you make you game overly dependent on level ups with this kinda drastic level scaling mechanic, if a player turn on a corner and found an enemy group that is a few levels above them and they've been not updating their armor because everything was working well, guess you designed a system that would inevitably create difficulty spikes, to the players, those new enemies don't look any different from the ones he was fighting before and why how of sudden they are so hard? HP bloat on level up is the answer. A player assume he only needs to change his gear if he will enter on a hyped dangerous area where he suspects there are high threat enemies in there, he will assume he will need a better gear to fight that fucking scary powerful dragon not to fight regular mooks that are one or two levels higher. You should train the player to change his equipment a few times but not at every fucking level up, that is insanity.

Armor continues to pose problems in combat itself. To put it simply, players hate to hit armor. Pechenin says that if, for example, you have two enemies next to each other, one with 100 HP and the other with 50 HP and 50 armor, the player will almost always go for the unarmored enemy first. “Just for the pure psychological joy of digging into HP,” says Pechenin.

This is why I totally belief that to make a good system, a game designer must be a good player too, this has nothing to do with psychology, you fool, the 50 armor and 50 health guy is immune to your crowd control effects while the other dude is not, guess why the player chosen to attack and eliminate the most vulnerable threat?

But it’s the wrong choice: since armor blocks such status effects as stuns, it’s more tactically sound to clear it before hitting HP. ”It’s kind of counterintuitive; as a systems designer you don’t always think about this stuff.”

This kind of simple minded schematic thinking is really funny.

 

[Luckmann]

So, what I get (even though it's hard since the text is not very...coherent) is that their goal was to reduce "randomness" and make combat and effects more "deterministic"...
But who gave them this feedback though? Who told them that D:OS combat is not "deterministic" enough and needs to be changed? I don't get this at all. Wrong goals lead to obviously wrong decisions.

It's extra funny considering that because of the round-robin turn orders and the way environmental effects work now, combat in D:OS2 is much, much more of a clusterfuck than D:OS1 ever was. It's a complete fucking mess compared to D:OS1, and in terms of "randomness", they seem to have made it a point to actually compensate for the systemic reduction of "randomness" by making inherently "random" encounters (enemies coming out of nowhere, etc) - except that they're only "random" the first time you're exposed to them, meaning that there's literally no fucking point to doing that.

It really seems like the guy that designed this:

1. Had no idea what they were doing or why.
2. Had an unfounded and autistic dislike of perceived "randomness".
3. Had little-to-no experience or knowledge of system design, even regarding such basic concepts as the delta of randomness (which is covered in practically any course dealing with game (computer or board or anything) design).
   
4. Was spectacularly incompetent.

Really, even with the interview, this level of wtf is honestly somewhat jaw-dropping to me. I just don't understand. Why the hell didn't anyone step in? Swen should've seen how fucking awful this thinking is from a mile away. Even without the aspects of "randomness", issues such as the prioritization of targeting and pure damage-dealing is self-evident. Was he just phoning it in? I just don't get it.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Rpgcodex game of the year, a modern classic according to many codexers...

 

[Perkel]

Even without the aspects of "randomness", issues such as the prioritization of targeting and pure damage-dealing is self-evident. Was he just phoning it in? I just don't get it.

Yeah i mean this is something you can catch by end of act 1. So either people who made this didn't play it or they are fine with it. Both of those answers are bad.

Rpgcodex game of the year, a modern classic according to many codexers...

yeah i think it is one of the games where people just gave it a good score because DOS1 was great but they either never played it or they just played it for few hours liked it but never gone back to it bu they played DOS1 so it must be better right ?

Combat aside game is massively improved in all other areas which is also the reason why some people might not give a crap about combat at all.

Personally i think i will just drop difficulty to minimum and just play it for reactivity rather than combat (which kept me in DOS1). From finishing ACT 1 there is like bilion different ways you can achieve your goals and game rewards thinking outside of the box.

So while my combat oriented aproach i was looking for failed the other approach could work.

 

[Luckmann]

Rpgcodex game of the year, a modern classic according to many codexers...

I still like the game for completely unrelated reasons. If it didn't have these very obvious issues, I would unironically call it a modern classic and one of the best games of the past decade. This, in no way whatsoever, means that these issues are of lesser importance or priority, but rather underlines just what kind of monumental fuckups they are. Again, I simply do not understand it, and I think that it just reinforces the oft-repeated belief that Larian struck gold but they themselves don't even understand how they did it, and are now immune to criticism because they do not see the issues, as far above them as they are right now.

 

[Jimmious]

Rpgcodex game of the year, a modern classic according to many codexers...

I still like the game for completely unrelated reasons. If it didn't have these very obvious issues, I would unironically call it a modern classic and one of the best games of the past decade. This, in no way whatsoever, means that these issues are of lesser importance or priority, but rather underlines just what kind of monumental fuckups they are. Again, I simply do not understand it, and I think that it just reinforces the oft-repeated belief that Larian struck gold but they themselves don't even understand how they did it, and are now immune to criticism because they do not see the issues, as far above them as they are right now.

To add to that, being the Codex best of the year doesn't mean that it was "a modern classic", although its scope was to be something like that for sure. It's also that the competition was kinda weak to be honest. When the next best RPG was actually Expeditions: Vikings you can understand why it breezed past everything.
Also, I believe we keep discussing the 3-4 glaring combat/system issues because honestly if they didn't exist the game would really be an instant classic. Initiative, armor system and item bloat for me.

 

[Infinitron]

This is one case where the absence of a Codex review may actually be inflicting real harm to the RPG genre.

 

[Luckmann]

The item bloat and the stat growths aren't as fundamental to me, but they're particularly egregious because they could've so easily been avoided. In fact, D:OS2 would've likely done great with no level inherent level growth whatsoever, and could've had increases in the various base characteristics (health, etc.) be a function solely of stats; i.e. everyone starts with 100 HP, and if you ever want more HP, you'll have to put points into things that increases HP, or wear gear that increases HP, etc.

The scaling is entirely artificial, and it's absolutely grotesque, but simply removing it isn't a good solution either, because the character systemics (the attributes, the "abilities" (skills), etc) are too shallow and simplified to account for it. This could very easily have been solved, however, and it would've been interesting to see different ways to build your character based on that - the idea of being a blocking warrior with sword-and-board, a dodging warrior duelist, or a dodging rogue, or simply a barbarian bullet-soak would all have been interesting opportunities that are eminently possible and easily created under such a system.

But in D:OS2, the name of the game is bloat for no apparent reason, and if you want to go defensive, boost those HP percentages yo.

This is one case where the absence of a Codex review may actually be inflicting real harm to the RPG genre.

If Larian would be interested in what we have to say anyway, they can come in here and read the fucking thread. It's painfully obvious that they haven't, and haven't listened to the mountain of criticism or understood it (based on the interview), so it rather feels like they wouldn't give two shits about a review either.

 

[PEACH]

For the game to be a modern classic it'd have to have nearly everything about it completely reworked or reverted to the state it was at in D:OS1.

I mean, I guess I don't disagree with the notion that it could have been one barring those issues, but those issues (and the plethora of other ones) add up to a whole that comprises a majority of the game and it's systems. At that point you may as well say "It could have been a modern classic if it was an entirely different game fundamentally from the ground up"

The worst part is how each issue directly ties into further issues: the initiative, armour, stats / character progression, gear, encounter design, linearity / illusory open endedness, etc. Each one compounds the problems with the others and ensures that while there's some very good content at times, the majority of the game is impossible to salvage. And that's without mentioning the story, the third person dialogues & narrator, the ridiculous attempts at mature writing and the mediocre puzzles (pixel hunts & Pipe Dream throwback at climax of the game for instance)

It's far from the worst RPG I've ever played, but it's among the most disappointing. Talking about it like there are a few big wrinkles that need to be ironed out is senseless when there's no way for them to be ironed out and the problems run far deeper than that in the first place going back to the designers themselves clearly having no clue what went wrong or why. Even in the event where an Enhanced Edition came out, I have strong doubts that anything would be rectified whatsoever.

 

[Fairfax]

Why the hell didn't anyone step in? Swen should've seen how fucking awful this thinking is from a mile away.

Swen is not a systems guy, systems designers are very rare, let alone good ones. Also, it doesn't matter what grognards say next to to the game's reception, which validates the game's design as far as they're concerned. They're aware of some issues, such as having to upgrade your gear often and some players feeling stuck, but I'd bet they believe that's as far as it goes and it's just a matter of tweaking the stats.

This is one case where the absence of a Codex review may actually be inflicting real harm to the RPG genre.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i just tried to launch the game again

played for some 15 minutes before the overwhelming banality forced me to quit

this is dos2

pure, distilled banality

 

[imweasel]

Why the hell didn't anyone step in? Swen should've seen how fucking awful this thinking is from a mile away.

Swen is not a systems guy, systems designers are very rare, let alone good ones.

He might not be a systems guy, but as project director he should be able to tell if the systems are shit or not, something that even the average Codexer is capable of.

Swen also loves the item fever, which is why you have to upgrade your fucking gear almost every level. TBH if he likes item fever that much then he should make a Diablo clone and not a CRPG.

 

[Perkel]

Swen also loves the Diablo style item fever, which is why you have to upgrade your fucking gear almost every damn level.

Loot in sense of variety got a little better it is in scaling that went downhill because it is connected to vitality scaling (which mod addresses). Once you apply mod dagger damage is like 3-4 on lvl 1 and 5-6 on level 10 so system by itself isn't wrong as it is fun to hunt new gear and even buy stuff in shops. IT is just scaling that went to shit.

Bigger issue is armor. I tried mod that gives you chance to apply status effect based on armor you have % wise. So you have like 10 armor out of 20 you have like 50% chance to apply status but it doesn't fix issue that after you take off armor every effects always hit unless enemy restocks armor.

 

[Infinitron]

Just because he's not a number-crunching designer doesn't mean he's not a systems guy. He talks about how important they are every chance he gets.

We actually know very little about how Swen operates as a manager. For most people he's just the funny old guy in the Kickstarter update videos, which makes it tempting to dismiss him as a hands-off delegater who lets his young designers "find the fun". I think the man may in fact have some definite ideas about things.

 

[Fairfax]

Why the hell didn't anyone step in? Swen should've seen how fucking awful this thinking is from a mile away.

Swen is not a systems guy, systems designers are very rare, let alone good ones.

He might not be a systems guy, but as project director he should be able to tell if the systems are shit or not, something that even the average Codexer is capable of.

Swen also loves the Diablo style item fever, which is why you have to upgrade your gear almost every damn level.

Yes, at the end of the day it's his responsibility. I'm just saying I don't think he has the chops to foresee the consequences of these bad design decisions, let alone fix them. Although apparently it's a problem they've had before, so even if he's not a good systems designer, I guess he should've known better:

What is funny is that Larian already made this mistake with Divinity 2 with stat bloat extremely dependent of leveling with the railroaded exploration that result from that and they fixed it with the expansion for that game, guess the designers that fucked up now are new hires.

 

[Perkel]

Just because he's not a number-crunching designer doesn't mean he's not a systems guy. He talks about how important they are every chance he gets. It's funny, we actually know very little about how Swen operates as a manager. For most people he's just the funny old guy in the Kickstarter update videos, which makes it tempting to dismiss him as a hands-off delegater who lets his young designers "find the fun". I think the man may in fact have some definite ideas about things.

While it is true that he works on design it is not that unreasonable to assume he is not number crunching guy. I don't in fact remember any video in which he says stuff about combat in number crunching way. I always see him talking about openess of his game and how they try to achieve it.

Which is a reason why i think will give it a go again in future. I went into DOS2 thinking it will be at least great combat fag game but my expectations were shattered. BUT while finishing ACT1 i saw what he was talking about and how many ways there are to finish various quests due to their systemic approach to design which means that playing character that avoids fights should be fun imho at least in theory.

My only critique so far from that aspect is needless fight with Alexander in ending of ACT1 which kind of goes against this approach.

 

[PEACH]

I'd be curious to see how capable a character that skipped fights and (presumably) ended up under-leveled would be. My concerns with that approach would be twofold:

1) Would the mandatory combat then put you at a stark disadvantage when it comes around?
2) Is the content outside combat engaging enough to warrant an approach like that, all things considered?

I have no clue as to relative exp gains via non-combat-oriented solutions but I imagine there'd be a point where the game started to punish you if it doesn't give direct 1:1 experience and you, for instance, were to sneak by a sizable portion of optional battles and thus exacerbate the fundamental issues with combat even further.

As far as the second issue goes I don't think the writing, story or c&c is up to snuff to carry the load of the game on its shoulders alone but I suppose that'd vary person to person.

 

[Perkel]

BTW here is the difference you get with vitality mod:

So choice is more about secondary elements rather than main damage which is fun actually.

 

[Perkel]

I'd be curious to see how capable a character that skipped fights and (presumably) ended up under-leveled would be. My concerns with that approach would be twofold:

1) Would the mandatory combat then put you at a stark disadvantage when it comes around?
2) Is the content outside combat engaging enough to warrant an approach like that, all things considered?

I have no clue as to relative exp gains via non-combat-oriented solutions but I imagine there'd be a point where the game started to punish you if it doesn't give direct 1:1 experience and you, for instance, were to sneak by a sizable portion of optional battles and thus exacerbate the fundamental issues with combat even further.

As far as the second issue goes I don't think the writing, story or c&c is up to snuff to carry the load of the game on its shoulders alone but I suppose that'd vary person to person.

I wouldn't say so. For two reasons:

1: You get a lot of EXP a lot just by exploring and doing non combat things. Hell you can even get XP just for accepting quest. DOS2 system of EXP follows BG2 system where change is geometrical by level. So if you will get not exp from first 10 hours then you will get something like 5k for doing something and suddenly you will get 3 levels. You will be underleveled but combat isn't something you do and with Piramids you get by the end of act 1 you can basically run away from every single fight.
2: There are a lot of various way to finish quests. Even in mentioned alexander fight there is this huge worm that could potentially just kill everyone for you while you run away watching fireworks from distance. This doesn't mean every quest with combat can be finished without combat but so far in ACT 1 outside of Alexander everything can be skipped. In fact as long as you have teleport you can just straight up go to alexander fight i think by sneaking through the port.


Either way i will play it again just to try because imo it could be interesting