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Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

cruel

Cipher
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
857
Finally got around to watching this, and wow, very interesting talk.

Skip to 40:00 for the part about the armor system. Swen admits that it was a failure.


That is really interesting. Swen admits it was a mistake, half of the Codex hated this mechanic completely, I myself never spent more than 4h in single playthrough because of this - and still, the game managed to get perfect scores, GOTY titles and praised everywhere. What exactly Larian did here (that Obsidian failed with Deadfire or Owlcat didn't do for Pathfinder), that they kept such an amazing scores / excitement, while having one of the most important systems in the game completely broken?
 

Mud'

Scholar
Joined
Oct 9, 2018
Messages
225
Finally got around to watching this, and wow, very interesting talk.

Skip to 40:00 for the part about the armor system. Swen admits that it was a failure.


That is really interesting. Swen admits it was a mistake, half of the Codex hated this mechanic completely, I myself never spent more than 4h in single playthrough because of this - and still, the game managed to get perfect scores, GOTY titles and praised everywhere. What exactly Larian did here (that Obsidian failed with Deadfire or Owlcat didn't do for Pathfinder), that they kept such an amazing scores / excitement, while having one of the most important systems in the game completely broken?

4 hours? Even with a split party, the armor system is not a issue in Fort Joy, the problem with the armor system kicks in mid Act 2 with the bloat since they have more or less the same armor for physical and magical.
 

OldNorseSaga

Learned
Joined
Nov 25, 2017
Messages
160
That is really interesting. Swen admits it was a mistake, half of the Codex hated this mechanic completely, I myself never spent more than 4h in single playthrough because of this - and still, the game managed to get perfect scores, GOTY titles and praised everywhere. What exactly Larian did here (that Obsidian failed with Deadfire or Owlcat didn't do for Pathfinder), that they kept such an amazing scores / excitement, while having one of the most important systems in the game completely broken?

I have no idea why people hate armor that much.
Sure it's not good, but it's not THAT bad...
But then again, I really like how game becomes legally easy with magic/physical approach.


I reached Act 3 before I decided to start the game again, but I ran with one battlemage (archer + magic), two physical & one mage and it was a blast on classic.
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 20, 2017
Messages
4,092
Because whittling down a second health bar isn't fun.

Roll based disables/stuns (i.e. enemy has 100 armour, disable ability deals 50 damage = 50% chance to stun) if the damage dealt from the ability did not exceed the armour value would have been much preferable. It also further promotes just dumping everything into one damage type and a very systematic gameplay style of grouping them up with relocation abilities, applying CC damage and then AOE stuns once armour is low enough.

I think armour was a bit easier to understand than DOS1's "[disable] failed" or "immune to [disable]" ad infinitum, but the gameplay cost wasn't really worth it.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
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What exactly Larian did here (that Obsidian failed with Deadfire or Owlcat didn't do for Pathfinder), that they kept such an amazing scores / excitement, while having one of the most important systems in the game completely broken?
The power of co-op and people playing it on the easiest setting.
 

Fairfax

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
3,518
What exactly Larian did here (that Obsidian failed with Deadfire or Owlcat didn't do for Pathfinder), that they kept such an amazing scores / excitement, while having one of the most important systems in the game completely broken?
The power of co-op and people playing it on the easiest setting.
Additionally, the vast majority doesn't understand/care about the systems in the first place, and the mechanic doesn't get in the way of the things they liked the most: co-op, writing, humour, romances, sandboxy interactions, gimmicky exploits, etc. Also, the shitty armour system is the sort of thing that becomes more annoying the longer you play the game, and ~70% of players dropped the game in the middle of Act 2.
 

SniperHF

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2014
Messages
1,110
Additionally, the vast majority doesn't understand/care about the systems in the first place, and the mechanic doesn't get in the way of the things they liked the most: co-op, writing, humour, romances, sandboxy interactions, gimmicky exploits, etc. Also, the shitty armour system is the sort of thing that becomes more annoying the longer you play the game

I went back and re-read some of the stuff I said about the alpha back when it was released and I think this was a huge problem in identifying the potential annoyances with the armor system. It just doesn't come up that much in act 1 as a glaring flaw. Particularly in the alpha too when the disparity of physical armor vs magic armor on most enemies was greater than it ended up in the final version. It also looked like in the Alpha and at least the earlier version of the beta that Larian had toned down the gear conveyor belt and it was much less common to find new items you'd actually swap for. But it mostly turned out it just wasn't implemented yet.
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Honestly the armor thing is bad but it's not game breaking for me. I was able to enjoy it just fine. Though it does give me much stronger hope for the next game since Swen, in his usual candor, admits it was a bad idea.

If I were to do 4 person parties it would probably be a bigger issue since It'd force me to make them all similar in order to be effective, but since I would do solo runs it wasn't an issue since I'd either pick physical damage type sills or just elemental damage type skills and stick to it.
 
Self-Ejected

Circuit the Short

Self-Ejected
Joined
Sep 23, 2018
Messages
161
Men, is tactician okay for a first blind playthrough? I struggled hard and cheesed my way through the first game on tactician, and all that talk obout armour/hp bloat makes me wonder if I should just go casual in 2.
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Do you like reloading or retreating when the mini-boss with 9999 initiative unleash their can of cheese at turn 1?
 

Ismaul

Thought Criminal #3333
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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech A Beautifully Desolate Campaign My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
What's the point of playing a tactical combat game in non-tactician mode?

Unless you can't be arsed to learn how damage is calculated and how to build an effective character.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
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LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Speaking of excited people, this is #2 on Steam's global top sellers right now, with only 40% discount.

It was hanging around page 1 or 2 of the list without discount so...
dollars.png
dollars.png
dollars.png
 

PulsatingBrain

Huge and Ever-Growing
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
Playing DOS2. Anyone else has issues with quests just not closing? I just finished Deathfog Rising, but it's acting like there's more to do, although there's no prompt in the journal and the issue is totally resolved
 

SniperHF

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2014
Messages
1,110
Playing DOS2. Anyone else has issues with quests just not closing? I just finished Deathfog Rising, but it's acting like there's more to do, although there's no prompt in the journal and the issue is totally resolved

There were all sorts of these issues in the original release of 2 (and 1 for that matter)
I haven't played the DE but I'd have figured they would have fixed those but maybe not.
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
Man, that's pretty good talk, was a lot of fun listening to Sven.
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
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May 3, 2018
Messages
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Germany
Really enjoyed the GDC talk. The part about the armour system is really interesting because it sounds like that they knew that the system was bad even at release
Sven 40:13:
we were very stubborn we didn't want to change it because we say well they don't understand it's so accessible everybody understands it blah and yeah lots and lots and lots of discussions there were an incredible amount of iterations inside of the company trying to save the armour system but essentially it remained a broken thing and it's something we shipped with and maybe we shouldn't have shipped with this system
 

Duckard

Augur
Joined
Aug 14, 2010
Messages
354
Good talk by Swen. I'd be interested in knowing more details about how the AI was implemented.
 

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