Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[Sjukob]

So, faglords, I quit the game after level 5 hoping for mods to fix it in a year or two.
But I read that Lonewolf is OP. I sorta dont get how.
Like 4 characters at 4 AP each should be better than 2 at 6 each even at more damage.
Care to explain how Lonewolf is great? Casual observation doesnt explaint it...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=174s&v=N9Frs_guV78

I played through the game twice , first the regular 4 men party on classic and then duo lone wolf on tactician . To put it simple lone wolf allows you to abuse an already broken game scaling . You get double points for each level , resulting in bigger damage/survivability that surpasses 4 men party , you also achieve that power much earlier . Having fewer characters to manage allows you to make sure that they wear best equipment available without having to split it , get all of their skills earlier , since you will be spending resources only on 2 of them and that means even more stats even earlier . And finaly getting 6 ap per turn allows those already overpowered characters to act more than regular ones in combat .

 

[Black]

The main advantage of lone wolves is less micromanaging crap.

One of the game's greatest achievements is its vast amount of voiced dialogue

 

[Sjukob]

Here is a bit of demonstration what lone wolf can do , tactician difficulty , spoilers ahead .

Characters are: Red Prince - scoundrel/warfare and Lohse - summoner/support mage .

Final battle stage 1 , first turn almost everyone was either knocked down or below 50% of their hp , gheist , Gareth and Lucian are already dead .

Spoiler

Final battle stage 2 , the big bad is killed in 1 turn , didn't capture the moment , just showing some numbers .

Spoiler

2 ap is enough to bring down 10k of armor , I used flurry + regular attack .

Mortal blow hitting for almost 14k damage

End game stats

Spoiler

This isn't the best you can get . I saw video of 2h warrior killing tactician Braccus in 1 onslaught with Anathema , can't remember if he had full armor though . And if you want to get crazier rangers can deal such damage in AOE by using arrow storm .

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Cyberarmy]

finally finished it.

Spoiler

- how am i supposed to kill kraken? He was always out of reach even for ranger with all the bonuses for extra range

Killed him in 2 turns with max air magic, it has negative resistances to it. One thunderstorm plus other skills made quick work of it.
Hardest part is to stay near it.

 

[Quillon]

finally finished it.

Spoiler

- ending slides are longer than death of king kong
- slides content is terrible
- sebile romance was forced on me even though I've rejected her all the way
- what was the deal with rejecting source powers ending? Suddenly god king wins, yet there was no one left alive. Yet in slides it was mentioned that god king is ruling through some possessed godwoken and that I am sworn to him? Can even try convincing sebile to join him.
- why is wendigo considered narrator on ending slides, if during game everything is male voiced?
- why black ring gets back to operational mode? Didnt I kill all of them?
- whats the deal with malady? Never told me whats her problem nor slides disclose it
- how am i supposed to kill kraken? He was always out of reach even for ranger with all the bonuses for extra range
- lothar dies due to mysterious wound on his neck. Was it result of my actions/lack of those?
- had nothing on dwarves in my slides. All that trouble of playing beast as main + killing queen for nothing?

Tis a fucking mess and instant all time classic at the same time.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Emmanuel2]

I just finished the game on Honour Mode Lone Wolf Solo for my first playthrough.

Can confirm that 2H warrior can 3 hit final boss on full armor with basic attacks. No Anathema needed, the easily acquirable 3-slot unique 2H from the Lizard Dreamers is enough to deal stupid damage.

Hitting around an average 15k physical per hit with Clear Mind, slightly more if the enemy has no magic armor, maybe 16-17k total.

Endgame Stats:

Spoiler

 

[Sjukob]

finally finished it.

Spoiler

- ending slides are longer than death of king kong
- slides content is terrible
- sebile romance was forced on me even though I've rejected her all the way
- what was the deal with rejecting source powers ending? Suddenly god king wins, yet there was no one left alive. Yet in slides it was mentioned that god king is ruling through some possessed godwoken and that I am sworn to him? Can even try convincing sebile to join him.
- why is wendigo considered narrator on ending slides, if during game everything is male voiced?
- why black ring gets back to operational mode? Didnt I kill all of them?
- whats the deal with malady? Never told me whats her problem nor slides disclose it
- how am i supposed to kill kraken? He was always out of reach even for ranger with all the bonuses for extra range
- lothar dies due to mysterious wound on his neck. Was it result of my actions/lack of those?
- had nothing on dwarves in my slides. All that trouble of playing beast as main + killing queen for nothing?

Don't quetion anything story related , seriously , you will never get an answer , it's a Larian game . I say don't even bother with unanswered things in video games at all .

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I realize that "call to arms" for cross-forum discussions are a bit, uh, classless... but since so many here seem to agree that the way Larian handled itemization and stat inflation is rather poor, you may want to jump in and let them know in this thread:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=628180

 

[Infinitron]

I realize that "call to arms" for cross-forum discussions are a bit, uh, classless... but since so many here seem to agree that the way Larian handled itemization and stat inflation is rather poor, you may want to jump in and let them know in this thread:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=628180

I loled at this post: http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=629138#Post629138

I don't understand this type of post. OP do you realize this game is singleplayer? It's not supposed to be balanced. Balancing it would make it boring. And about the scaling. Just mod the game yourself. Larian has provided us with an incredibly easy to mod engine. Play with these values in Data.txt:

key "FirstVitalityLeapLevel","9"
key "FirstVitalityLeapGrowth","1.25"
key "SecondVitalityLeapLevel","13"
key "SecondVitalityLeapGrowth","1.5"
key "ThirdVitalityLeapLevel","16"
key "ThirdVitalityLeapGrowth","1.25"
key "FourthVitalityLeapLevel","18"
key "FourthVitalityLeapGrowth","1.5"

And you will eventually get a more steady and normalized leveling progression. It's that easy. And to quote sven: "Mods fix what we fucked up." Stop whining daily, and fix this stuff yourself.

Anti-Sawyerism for morons.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I loled at this post: http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=629138#Post629138
Anti-Sawyerism for morons.

That's a problem with a lot of people: they will always drive any notion they hold on to its most illogical extreme.
I may even agree in principle that balance is secondary to enjoyment in a single player game, but to extent that idea to the point where ANY effort to make numbers reasonable is pointless "because it's single player" ranges between lunacy and mental retardation.

Beside, "balance" wasn't even a point of the thread.
The main point is that itemization isn't fun, engaging nor rewarding.

 

[Black]

I don't understand this type of post. OP do you realize this game is singleplayer? It's not supposed to be balanced. Balancing it would make it boring.

Don't tell Sven that.

 

[unfairlight]

Balance matters in single player games too. If all you want is a power fantasy, sure, fuck balance, but in RPG games if one weapon, spell, item, whatever becomes a "I win anything ever" button then that means it has poor balance which throws off the scale of progression entirely and in RPG games that matters a lot. The issue with the game is the scaling, it's absolutely fucked. 9 times out of 10, scaling is just an excuse for shit balance and design where the devs had no fucking idea what to do and how to balance their games and decided that items and enemies will just increase in damage and HP percentages each level. People really need to look at Gothic 1 and 2 for an example of good balance and progression. All enemies are a set level, all items have set stats and as you skill up, fights that you couldn't even kite or cheese earlier will become a breeze later. It's extremely simple, but it works perfectly.

 

[Black]

Balance matters in single player games too. If all you want is a power fantasy, sure, fuck balance, but in RPG games if one weapon, spell, item, whatever becomes a "I win anything ever" button then that means it has poor balance which throws off the scale of progression entirely and in RPG games that matters a lot

Like Harm in Arcanum?

 

[Dorateen]

RPG games

 

[unfairlight]

ATM machine

 

[MWaser]

Balance matters in single player games too. If all you want is a power fantasy, sure, fuck balance, but in RPG games if one weapon, spell, item, whatever becomes a "I win anything ever" button then that means it has poor balance which throws off the scale of progression entirely and in RPG games that matters a lot

Like Harm in Arcanum?

Frankly, while Arcanum is terribly balanced, I don't think it takes away the fun of the game. There's a LOT of OP things if you just look (one of the grenades you get from recipes are literally like 20+ round stuns in turn-based mode... it's pretty unbelievable, and a fuckton of magic and technology and even weapons are all OP) but you're not necessarily forced to use them in order to make progress in the game, although it does help significantly, since the game's pretty hard anyway. The issue is that in case of Arcanum the pacing in terms of difficulty scaling is incredibly poor, AI is terrible, controls don't really cooperate, which makes it appear much more difficult and on the opposite scale, things that don't suffer from this issue (like Harm, since it's simple and powerful) become the end-all be-all solutions of the game not because they're fundamentally more OP than everything else (although it might be, not sure exactly how far-reaching is the degree of its OP-ness, I didn't calculate this shit), but because everything else takes more effort from the player to get comparable results.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Balance matters in single player games too. If all you want is a power fantasy, sure, fuck balance, but in RPG games if one weapon, spell, item, whatever becomes a "I win anything ever" button then that means it has poor balance

It matters less, in the sense that not everything needs to be tuned to offer an even ground for competitive play. It can be fun to have way to make yourself more powerful than you are supposed to be.
If you have an "I win everything" button, that's not something merely unbalanced, it's fucking broken.

which throws off the scale of progression entirely and in RPG games that matters a lot. The issue with the game is the scaling, it's absolutely fucked. 9 times out of 10, scaling is just an excuse for shit balance and design where the devs had no fucking idea what to do and how to balance their games and decided that items and enemies will just increase in damage and HP percentages each level. People really need to look at Gothic 1 and 2 for an example of good balance and progression. All enemies are a set level, all items have set stats and as you skill up, fights that you couldn't even kite or cheese earlier will become a breeze later. It's extremely simple, but it works perfectly.

On this I can agree almost without reserve. Except that final part about Gothic 1 and 2.
Now, to be fair I think both did a fairly good job at making progression feel gradual and organic enough, but I'd be incline to say there are even better examples.
Dark Souls, for instance, hits a pretty sweet spot with progression, giving you plenty of ways to become considerably more powerful as you progress, but without ever reaching the point where low level content is so trivialized you can literally ignore a whole bunch of low tier enemies swinging at you.
It also theoretically allows the player to conquer the game from the beginning, even if it's FUCKING HARD to do it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Balance's goal in single-player games is not an equal playing field in a competitive sense, it's to facilitate the playability of as many builds as possible. It shouldn't go overboard, though, to the point of every build playing and being the same, it's ok for SOME builds to not be as effective. Shoddy balance forces specific builds into the forefront to the exclusion of everything else. It obstructs the creation of a challenging experience, when each build is a wild card, unbalanced to the degree of being unable to be predicted then it's virtually impossible to create a challenge because you don't know which build to design around. Arcanum is "difficult" because every build is shit from a mechanics perspective, while Harm spam is effective you go through mana potions like nobody's business. It also isn't very exciting.

 

[Tigranes]

Lacrymas is right. That said, I'm not sure how mcuh this sensible definition of balance even applies to a game like DOS2, where you can easily learn over half of all available abilities with two lone wolves, and with a standard 4-man party, can cover every single possible skill and weapon type without even trying. When you're not really making any choices about what parts of the toolkit to take, but you get the whole wagon every time...

 

[Iznaliu]

When you're not really making any choices about what parts of the toolkit to take, but you get the whole wagon every time...

This was the same in D:OS1.

 

[Tigranes]

Yes, we all know.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Quick question about an early stage of the Ifan Ben-Mezd storyline, fi anyone would be so kind:

Spoiler

I just met Zaleskar and he gave me the Shadow's Eye crossbow. I'm just wondering, does this have some specific magical effect on Alexander, or is it simply a powerful weapon? Because I can't even fucking use crossbows and if it isn't special in some way, I'll just sell it.

 

[Sjukob]

Quick question about an early stage of the Ifan Ben-Mezd storyline, fi anyone would be so kind:

Spoiler

I just met Zaleskar and he gave me the Shadow's Eye crossbow. I'm just wondering, does this have some specific magical effect on Alexander, or is it simply a powerful weapon? Because I can't even fucking use crossbows and if it isn't special in some way, I'll just sell it.

It's just a good weapon . To think , that it might have some special properties against certain opponents - is to give larian's designers more credit than they deserve . By the way keep this message in mind , in the end you will be able to get a specific weapon , that is supposed to be effective against the big bad guy , but it isn't .