Vapourware Divinity: Fallen Heroes - canceled tactical spinoff from Expeditions series devs

[Tavernking]

Out this year! And I thought I was going to graduate college

 

[fantadomat]

I see that the writing is still terrible and cringe.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Gameplay will probably be good or great, storyline will likely suck and full of gay humor.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I haven't touched DivOS2 at all.
Can someone tell me what is wrong with its initiative and armor systems?

 

[Jimmious]

Avonaeon great to hear about the initiative system being fixed!
I have three remaining important(for me) questions:

- Armor system. Will it be changed or removed(say yes please)?
- Itemization is completely Diablo-ish again or not?
- Is there 2 player COUCH co-op?

Thanks!

 

[Jimmious]

I haven't touched DivOS2 at all.
Can someone tell me what is wrong with its initiative and armor systems?

In short:

- Initiative is always Ally-Enemy-Ally-Enemy, so even if your chars all have insane numbers in initiative score it doesn't really matter. As an example imagine a party that has initiatives 20-19-18-17 fighting some stone golems with initiatives 1-1-1-1. The order would be 20-1-19-1-18-1-17-1

- Armor system: You have to deal enough damage, physical or magical, in order to break the "armor" of an enemy in order to damage/ apply effects on him. That made magic especially much more boring that in the first game

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I haven't touched DivOS2 at all.
Can someone tell me what is wrong with its initiative and armor systems?

In short:

- Initiative is always Ally-Enemy-Ally-Enemy, so even if your chars all have insane numbers in initiative score it doesn't really matter. As an example imagine a party that has initiatives 20-19-18-17 fighting some stone golems with initiatives 1-1-1-1. The order would be 20-1-19-1-18-1-17-1

- Armor system: You have to deal enough damage, physical or magical, in order to break the "armor" of an enemy in order to damage/ apply effects on him. That made magic especially much more boring that in the first game

Sounds pretty much like they saw combat system of Banner Sagas and decided to do their own adaptation of it.

 

[Jimmious]

I haven't touched DivOS2 at all.
Can someone tell me what is wrong with its initiative and armor systems?

In short:

- Initiative is always Ally-Enemy-Ally-Enemy, so even if your chars all have insane numbers in initiative score it doesn't really matter. As an example imagine a party that has initiatives 20-19-18-17 fighting some stone golems with initiatives 1-1-1-1. The order would be 20-1-19-1-18-1-17-1

- Armor system: You have to deal enough damage, physical or magical, in order to break the "armor" of an enemy in order to damage/ apply effects on him. That made magic especially much more boring that in the first game

Sounds pretty much like they saw combat system of Banner Sagas and decided to do their own adaptation of it.

They also apparently wanted to completely eliminate "cheesing" which usually meant super high initiatives and bombing with various spells before the enemies can act. Especially with Charms etc.
You know, remove fun - insert balance

 

[Rahdulan]

I was kinda looking forward to Expeditions: Rome, but this will do. Hopefully it puts the LA out on the map more as a developer.

 

[Avonaeon]

Avonaeon great to hear about the initiative system being fixed!
I have three remaining important(for me) questions:

- Armor system. Will it be changed or removed(say yes please)?
- Itemization is completely Diablo-ish again or not?
- Is there 2 player COUCH co-op?

Thanks!

I can't get too specific, but I'll try to answer anyway

1. Armour system is intact, but we're mindful of it
2. It's very different
3. I don't know

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I haven't touched DivOS2 at all.
Can someone tell me what is wrong with its initiative and armor systems?

armor system is considered bad because it's new and rpgcodex hates new things

 

[Jimmious]

Avonaeon great to hear about the initiative system being fixed!
I have three remaining important(for me) questions:

- Armor system. Will it be changed or removed(say yes please)?
- Itemization is completely Diablo-ish again or not?
- Is there 2 player COUCH co-op?

Thanks!

I can't get too specific, but I'll try to answer anyway

1. Armour system is intact, but we're mindful of it
2. It's very different
3. I don't know

Thank you very much for the answers. Yes, please at least be mindful of the armor system.
Also about the couch co-op - I guess it depends if the game will integrate the controller friendly UI version of DOS2

 

[Doktor Best]

I haven't touched DivOS2 at all.
Can someone tell me what is wrong with its initiative and armor systems?

Initiative system forces you to switch turns with enemy forces, which means that even if all your characters have a higher initiative than all your enemies, the fastest enemy unit will come second. Its unintuitive and sucks and i guess it was implemented to limit the players ability to combo-cheese enemies.

The armor system is fine. People bitch about it because they cant focus fire one target and cc everything else anymore.

 

[HoboForEternity]

the only thing they have to fix from divinity combat for me is the shitty item randomized shit and level scaling crap.

 

[Mark Richard]

The armor system is fine. People bitch about it because they cant focus fire one target and cc everything else anymore.

Got to agree. The point of the armor system is to make controlling the battlefield the prominent strategy. By stripping the armor of an opponent, they become susceptible to charm, stun, knockdown, polymorph, etc. So each round is about juggling threats until you're in a position to knock one off permanently.

It tends to turn each fight into a lengthy puzzle, and is more interesting than throwing everything you've got at each enemy one at a time.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey Avonaeon, how are development tasks split between Larian and you guys? What are you doing and what are they doing? Is it really mostly Logic Artists?

 

[V_K]

So each round is about juggling threats until you're in a position to knock one off permanently.

You know what else makes each round about juggling threats until you're in a position to knock one off permanently? HP bloat. Which the armor system is, for all intents and purposes.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I haven't touched DivOS2 at all.
Can someone tell me what is wrong with its initiative and armor systems?

armor system is considered bad because it's new and rpgcodex hates new things

excuse me but the armour system is nothing new, as it was already present in doom

 

[Jonas]

Hey Avonaeon, how are development tasks split between Larian and you guys? What are you doing and what are they doing? Is it really mostly Logic Artists?

Larian is providing a lot of advice, support, and feedback, but we're producing the content, adding features, and changing the systems to suit Fallen Heroes' new structure. Of course we're using their technology and keeping a lot of their gameplay so we get a lot of great stuff and polish 'for free' in that regard. We're working together on the story, but Larian's writers are handling most of - it's their setting and their characters, after all

 

[Latelistener]

Larian's writers are handling most of

Burn it with fire.

 

[fantadomat]

Larian's writers are handling most of

Burn it with fire.

I don't know what happened with them,they used to have decent writing in their older games. Now it is just trash.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's interesting how initiative was never that big of a problem in other turn-based games, so huge in fact that they felt the need to not only go with a round robin system, but also remove any possibility of CCing enemies if you just happen to go first. It's a ridiculous solution to a non-existent problem, or a problem they themselves created by not balancing CCs in some other way, like limiting their number or them having cast times. Both D:OSes had great potential, but were ruined by a myriad of design decisions that don't add up and don't make sense. Not only that, but they are also deeply ingrained in the game, modders will have a very tough time trying to fix them (like removing random items and placing hand-placed ones across the entire game), aka they won't.

 

[Strange Fellow]

The armor system is fine. People bitch about it because they cant focus fire one target and cc everything else anymore.

Got to agree. The point of the armor system is to make controlling the battlefield the prominent strategy. By stripping the armor of an opponent, they become susceptible to charm, stun, knockdown, polymorph, etc. So each round is about juggling threats until you're in a position to knock one off permanently.

It tends to turn each fight into a lengthy puzzle, and is more interesting than throwing everything you've got at each enemy one at a time.

I don't agree with this, but the more pertinent criticism of the armour system is how keeping it up to date level-wise becomes paramount to progression, which combined with the ungodly number bloat kills the joy of shopping, looting and especially levelling up. Bloat + DOS2 armour is a match made in hell, and this is true even if you enjoy the combat.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can very easily remove bloat, try using that mod and you'll see that it's not the only problem with armor.

 

[CryptRat]

It's interesting how initiative was never that big of a problem in other turn-based games, so huge in fact that they felt the need to not only go with a round robin system, but also remove any possibility of CCing enemies if you just happen to go first. It's a ridiculous solution to a non-existent problem, or a problem they themselves created by not balancing CCs in some other way

Initiative is not a problem when characters roll for initiative.