Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[PulsatingBrain]

Thanks for clarifying! :mrpresident:

 

[unfairlight]

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.

Never played Dark Souls so I can't comment on that. I just really like the way you get more powerful in PB games, if you amp yourself up with trainers, a good weapon and spells anything dies before you and your gameplay will change up from careful, defensive and slow to aggressive, fast and dangerous where you can attack the enemy face first with little care and still come out on top. I don't know if Dark Souls has knockback if hit by enemies, but even weak enemies are dangerous because of that in PB games because it's more about avoiding hits rather than just being statistically better in every way, which you will be but that doesn't mean enemies will have no effect at all on you, you can still be ganged up on and stunlocked.

 

[Black]

DOS1- craftable pumpkin helmet
DOS2- no craftable pumpkin helmet
Shit game

 

[Modron]

DOS1- craftable pumpkin helmet
DOS2- no craftable pumpkin helmet
Shit game

But the most important question does DOS 2 have craftable barrel armor?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[LESS T_T]

This game is so mainstream. Yesterday Final Fantasy 14 (the MMO) added an achievement with a reference to D:OS: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/cfd6b53bc9cd08b494512a662c04942848db9539

Divinity: Original Kojin - Attain rank 7 reputation (sworn) with the Divine Circle.

 

[Luckmann]

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.

Keep in mind that unequipping items is free, while re-equipping costs 1 AP. This means that certain items can be worth keeping just for their abilities, and Ambidextrous can be worthwile if you de-equip your off-hand if you throw at least two grenades or use at least two scrolls.

In this particular case, if you're using a 2h weapon, equipping the crossbow means you can spend 2 AP (+1 AP to re-equip your regular 2h weapon later) to go invisible for 2 turns, even without points in Polymorph or a free memorization slot. Even without a ranger type of character, I keep a ranged weapon for my 2h warrior at hand so I can shoot arrows in a pinch.

 

[Haplo]

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.

I rather agreed with your post - until the Arcanum analysis, that is. That game has many builds/spells/technologies which simply break it. You certainly don't need Harm and mana pots for that. If you know what you're doing, only the start poses a little difficulty. Later on it's a long game with lots of combat where you don't have any tension whatsoever and don't need to make any tactical decisions.

 

[Haplo]

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.

Never played Dark Souls so I can't comment on that. I just really like the way you get more powerful in PB games, if you amp yourself up with trainers, a good weapon and spells anything dies before you and your gameplay will change up from careful, defensive and slow to aggressive, fast and dangerous where you can attack the enemy face first with little care and still come out on top. I don't know if Dark Souls has knockback if hit by enemies, but even weak enemies are dangerous because of that in PB games because it's more about avoiding hits rather than just being statistically better in every way, which you will be but that doesn't mean enemies will have no effect at all on you, you can still be ganged up on and stunlocked.

Yeah, I prefer Gothic 2 character progression to Dark Souls. You feel like your hard work paid off and your character really made huge progress. I mean even your attack animations changed from clumsy greenhorn to a pro - as did your ability to chain them in combos.

I like Dark Souls a lot, but the individual levels/boosts are too incremental and tiny for my taste. Also even in large numbers they don't make enough of a difference IMO.

 

[Lacrymas]

Good thing the Arcanum thing doesn't really negate my point :p Yeah, you can break it easily, that doesn't mean the builds aren't shitty. Those that aren't break the game, wohoo.

 

[Luckmann]

Arcanum was a train-wreck, we all know it. Didn't make it any less amazing (well, maybe a little), though, and part of the reason was the sheer variety of shit you could do as a character, even if it unfortunately often boiled down to variations within the same theme - technology vs. magic. Generally, I absolutely prefer systems with many options where I can look at something and go "Hmm, I wonder if I could make something viable out of...", whether we're talking Arcanum or Wizardry. Generally, modern games do not do that, because they're obsessed with "balance" to the point where it constrains any free thought or creativity.

Really, just create the tools for diversity and let us go wild, and shore up the worst offenders when necessary. D:OS2 does a good job at expanding certain options - the simple addition of Polymorph and Summoning actually makes it near-impossible to do a 4-person team that does everything all at once, which was relatively easy in D:OS1 (or at least almost), which has actually added a lot to me - I already want to do new playthroughs just to try doing something extremely focused on Polymorph, or a semi-pure Summoner, or a Warfare/Pyromancer, but the massive reduction of complexity also means that the game is a lot more predictable in the boring way, and a lot of things that could've been interesting in a more complex system simply aren't possible.

A wizard will always just be the same kind of wizard, by-and-large; you can't really do a Wizard that's based around CC and disruption and utility, because there's no way to try to make something based around increasing/decreasing saves alone, because there is no saves system, and you can't really do a wizard that's based purely on damage and hellraising, because every wizard is going to be based on doing damage and removing shields anyway - and once they're removed, it makes no difference. Likewise, every warrior will be largely the same, even whether he's Scoundrel or Warfare, because every Scoundrel will put at least one point in Warfare to get the base skills and Sneaking is useless, and all the defenses are largely the same, and all the weapons do the same type of damage - physical - and there's no resistances; the various types of damage and resistances were removed (blunt, piercing, slashing), and the only difference is really whether you put your points into Strength or Finesse (or Intelligence), and all they do is +5% damage. There's also no parrying/dodge/blocking versatiltiy (yes I know, there are some shields that get block in the late game, but they're hardly a relevant subsystem, especially not from a character development perspective).

It also doesn't help that the game so massively favours specialization - and not just on a team level. Because attributes are so incredibly one-sided, hybrids are actively punished; split your points between Strength and Intelligence, and you really just have the same-size pool of Skills you had before, except now all of them are half as effective as if you'd specialized.

Ideally, each attribute should do something for everyone, even if each still has a "core audience", and you should always have multiple types of offense and defense.

You know what I discovered yesterday? It's not even possible to have Skills have multiple damage types. Or at least there's not a single skill in the game that does (so no example on which I can build). I discovered this when I wanted to split Corpse Explosions damage 50/50 between Fire and Physical. Cannot be done. Seriously, Larian, wtf is up with this massive reduction of complexity and variety? Why is D:OS2 almost a complete downgrade in terms of core systems and sub-systems? It's not like this is only us noticing, either, I'd go so far as to say that the core complaints of the game so far are all systemic:

• Stat bloat/excessive scaling.
• The armor system and it's binary nature (arguably a function of #4).
  
• Fucked up stats and the initiative issues (arguably a function of #1 & #4).
  
• Massively reduced complexity in terms of character options and subsystems.

It's obviously not all the complaints there are, but I see issues relating to these cropping up on the official forums, here, and on Reddit all the time, whether it's an inability to understand what's up with initiative, a question as to why warfare is so overpowered (and open, by the way, whereas Huntsman and Scoundrel are both really fucking locked into Finesse and respective weapons; ranged/daggers), the armor system is constantly criticized, the dominance of physical over magical and how it all favours specialization of the entire team (again, armor system, but also attributes and reduced complexity contributes massively to this), or questions what shields do aside from just upping your armor (hint: nothing), etc.

If I were Larian, planning for expansion(s) or enhanced edition or a D:OS3 or anything, these are the four fundamental issues I'd deal with, and I'd look straight to the first D:OS1 (not even the EE) to see "What did we get right?". Because they actually did get a lot of stuff right the first time around, which is also why I ask myself why they felt it was so broken that they could can it all like they did.

Edit: Yeah, I know a lot of you don't like the randomized loot and shit, but I think it works reasonably well for the most part. While it was a minor annoyance in D:OS1, though, in D:OS2 it's a mess, but again, that comes back to these fundamental issues because that is caused by the grotesque bloat. In D:OS1, most uniques actually mattered for quite some time, and gear didn't double in the span of 2 levels, making you feel forced to upgrade every level, which means the frustration of not getting "the right" gear.

These are the four issues I think they need to pin on the whiteboard, because, like, 99% of the issues in D:OS2 stem from them.

 

[John Keel]

Warfare

 

[Doktor Best]

I still dont see how the armor system in D:OS2 would reduce complexity. All it does is dividing the hp pool into three categories and thereby discouraging the ages old focus target+cc everything else strategy of every turnbased rpg ever.

I somehow agree on the criticizing of the initiative system and the stat bloating itemization (even though the first game wasnt much better in terms of itemization), but i still think the armor system is a boon to the combat design.

Playing on tactician. Yes there is hp bloat, but big bloat comes with the hp pool of enemies anyway. Armor values are torn down pretty fast if you actually pick your targets appropriately.

 

[John Keel]

She's packing so much heat she's turning dat bitch blind.

Q U A L I T Y

 

[Pegultagol]

There is this that was bugging me about the game, and me being relatively late to the game so this thing must've not been allowed a free pass here, but the

Spoiler

magic mirror

...

Is this just some big joke, or is it a Larian thang?

 

[HoboForEternity]

so can you defeat lohse's demon without

Spoiler

snuffing the candles? i kinda want to defeat him in full power so i can get more satisfaction, but it seems he possess lohse permanently after 3 turns or so

 

[tripedal]

I just killed him quickly.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I just killed him quickly.

how do you chip off 30k hp + armor quicky

 

[toro]

I just killed him quickly.

how do you chip off 30k hp + armor quicky

with patience

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, Overpower is god in lategame, and if you have someone with Arrow Storm thing or Mortal Blow that takes care of the vit once the armour's down and dude is CC'd

 

[tripedal]

Abuse the dialogue for pre-casting and positioning, abuse AoE CC to take everyone else out of the battle. Overpower to remove the armor, Time Warp + adrenaline to dish out tons of damage.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Iznaliu]

I still dont see how the armor system in D:OS2 would reduce complexity. All it does is dividing the hp pool into three categories and thereby discouraging the ages old focus target+cc everything else strategy of every turnbased rpg ever.

It doesn't do so in itself, but HP is relatively simple to reduce compared to it, unbalancing the game.

 

[Tigranes]

I still dont see how the armor system in D:OS2 would reduce complexity. All it does is dividing the hp pool into three categories and thereby discouraging the ages old focus target+cc everything else strategy of every turnbased rpg ever.

I somehow agree on the criticizing of the initiative system and the stat bloating itemization (even though the first game wasnt much better in terms of itemization), but i still think the armor system is a boon to the combat design.

Playing on tactician. Yes there is hp bloat, but big bloat comes with the hp pool of enemies anyway. Armor values are torn down pretty fast if you actually pick your targets appropriately.

Luckmann may think so, but I don't believe the armour system in itself is decline, and it has a laudable goal of introducing multiple stages of combat. The problem is more to do with the elimination of all other resistances/saves & the wealth of CC abilities retained, meaning you are guaranteed to stunlock enemies once you get their initial armour down unless (1) the battle is really not going well for you and your own characters get debilitated, (2) you are in the first hour of the game with 3 abilities. Enemy AI obviously isn't as good at stunlocking you, and furthermore the ways to protect against stunlocks or to buff up your armour again are highly limited (you can get a teeny bit of armour back with fortify, for example, but in the time it takes for that to cool down the Warfare guy has 3 or 4 ways to knock you down and Warfare = enough damage to get past the armour too).

For example, imagine your own party fighting each other. YOu realise that whoever goes first, basically wins, because once you get somebody's armour down it's game over.

Another problem with splitting the armour pool and then tying abilities to phys/mag the way they've done it, is that enemies are always only as weak as their lowest armour (unless you've laoded your entire party into phys/mag, in which case you do enough damage to blow past it anyway), and this has the effect of narrowing the number of ways the battle can pan out. One look at their armour and you already know what's going to happen.