Divinity: Original Sin 2 Early Access Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Pope Amole II]

KK, played enough of the alpha, made a huge-ass autistic video to discuss the rpg system's issues, some general impressions:

- The RPG system, in my opinion, got slightly worse. Yes, abilities providing general direction for the character is a nice idea (i.e., warfare provides bonus to all physical damage, therefore, you can have obvious hybrids of warrior and rogue/archer or the less obvious with geomancer/necromancer as those now deal physical damage), however, the growth of those effects is really slow and is totally overshadowed by item progression. I.e., one level jump in attributes will give you 4% damage from stats and 3-4% from abilities, 7-8% in total, whereas the basic weapon damage grows by, like, 25%. Not to mention that the +3 stat items become available real quickly and that also propels your build in a very singular direction.

- Memory is OP. Other stats are very easy to get and the gains from them are insignificant. Skills, on the other hand, are ridiculously strong right now - that's why memory is OP, pretty much. In the first game, skills started rather mildly and got even milder in EE - wanna freeze a target? You have either Freezing Touch (with really short range) or Ice Shard (which costs a lot of AP). Ofc, in EE they screwed up and overbuffed Bitter Cold (which was totally fine in the original, you just had to cast Rain), but even so, it only froze. Now, Hydrosophists start with the hail strike that does a ton of damage in AoE and freezes everyone. And same happened with other abilities - they all got dialed up to eleven (xcept necromancy, necromancy sucks). The weapon damage also seems to got buffed. All of that leads to combats flowing much quicker than they used to - everything just does too much damage. Also, alpha strike becomes incredibly important - you either wipe half of them in your first volley or they do it to you. I think that's bad because it's not what the original was liked for - it was about slowly shaping the battlefield into your favor.

- The only exception from this memory OP rule are two-hander warriors. They deal so much damage that they don't even need that much skills (though warrior skills got as OP as everything else). They can easily right-click everything which feels almost an exploit. And, well, there's quite a number of exploits in the game - sneak, for example, is back to being as insane as it was in the basic OS, just by the somewhat different reasons. But I guess that's to be expected from alpha (their inner testing is probably bad, though - I bet they don't even use cheatengine to accelerate the speed of their testing).

- The story is... I dunno. On one hand, everything is dark, grim, hopeless and horrible. You start out in ghetto, but in reality that's a concentration camp mixed with the unit-739. So some really, really bad shit happens with people here. The game also actively tries to emotionally manipulate you - say, you kill a non-important NPC only to find a note in their pocket describing how human they are. So you feel guilty about it. On the other hand, it's not that larian's unfunny humor went out of the picture - so you kill the chief nazi of this concentration camp and what do you find in his pockets? Smelly panties of local doctor Mengele. You're still helping out flaming pigs and battling their half-assed guardians, talking with the megalomaniac crabs and zany local arena fighters, yeah, half of the conversations are grim and half are done in the quirky fashion. That may be a matter of taste, but for me that creates a schizophrenical atmosphere. It's like pouring black coffee in soup and drinking them that way.

- Graphics are nice, but they did something wrong with the special effects. I.e., when there are lots of ice and frosty characters on the screen (especially if that ice is made from blood), the picture quickly becomes something cosmic and not even remotely natural. First part looked more fantasy-ish.

- Quest structure is good, though. I'd say that it's the main drive behind the playthrough right now - lots of small stuff to discover and zero hand-holding. The world is not that open, despite what people say - all ways to escape the concentration camp lead through the same dungeon and you end up in the same areas. But it has enough secrets so you can ignore that.

- Economy is really tight and that's probably good. You need to mind it from the start or else you'll never be able to afford much. Compared how bountiful money were in the first part, that's a nice change.

 

[CryptRat]

lots of small stuff to discover and zero hand-holding.[...]But it has enough secrets so you can ignore that.

Now that makes me want to play the game.

 

[Infinitron]

Also, alpha strike becomes incredibly important - you either wipe half of them in your first volley or they do it to you.

Ironically this is what the new armor system was designed to prevent.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Ironically this is what the new armor system was designed to prevent.

Eh, the new skill system thinks different. Even if you don't kill anyone, it's way too easy to shred all the armor and to leave everyone lying helplessly - mass-disables galore and, once the armor is gone, nothing can protect from them.

What new armor system actually does - it forces your party to focus on either magic or physical damage output. Mixes are just kinda redundant - so your warrior spends his turn to strip melee armor from the enemy, now your mage goes and he can't really damage on top of that and he can't really debuff/control, he needs to shred magical armor first. Yeah, sure, there are enemy who have only one type of armor, but generally it's more consistent to polarize your output. In alpha, it leans towards the physical side as you can't have more than 2 casters in your squad.

 

[veevoir]

Two handers are insane exactly because item progression >> character progression. You just need to grab/buy one good item here and rape ensues.

And how sneak is overpowered? In 1 it was a question of getting very rich very fast, seems not a problem here

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

On the other hand, it's not that larian's unfunny humor went out of the picture - so you kill the chief nazi of this concentration camp and what do you find in his pockets? Smelly panties of local doctor Mengele. You're still helping out flaming pigs and battling their half-assed guardians, talking with the megalomaniac crabs and zany local arena fighters, yeah, half of the conversations are grim and half are done in the quirky fashion. That may be a matter of taste, but for me that creates a schizophrenical atmosphere. It's like pouring black coffee in soup and drinking them that way.

I know this has always been a controversial aspect in their games around here, but I honestly don't mind this one single bit. In fact, I quite like the contrast.

And yeah, their brand of humor may not be of the the "I'm rolling on the floor in tears" flavor, but there are a lot of amusing little touches. The scene when you enter the room with all these Inquisitor dogs and send them in collective frenzy throwing a red squeaky ball had me smiling the entire time.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Also, Pope, I'll watch your video at some point, but why do you say necro sucks?

There's too much redundancy and all of its spells are crappy.

Blood sucker lets you absorb surrounding blood to heal up yourself - sounds nice, but the resulting heal is quite mediocre, you're better off drinking a potion or using hydrosophist stuff.

Decaying Touch turns healing received into damage, as in EE - maybe it's decent to counter specific bosses, but average combats are too fast for such shenanigans. Not to mention that it goes against the flow of this armor system - you can't cast it until you strip their armor, after all. So you need use some traditional damage before using this as a source of damage.

Infect is nice (it's like Disease-effects from previous games, cutting on constitution), but it uses Source points (essentially, that's new mana which doesn't replenish naturally, you need to scavenge for it). And there's a lot of competition for them. Another thing is that mass debuffs are only good when mass damage is attached, otherwise, they get absorbed. You know, the more I think about it, the shittier this new system looks - it just prevents all the fun.

Mosquito Swarm is a bit of vampiric damage & bleeding. Damage is small, healing is small and DoTs also don't work that well under the current system. They do small damage and the combat is too fast for them.

Rain of Blood is Rain + mass bleeding. Sounds cool, but bleeding, as I've said, is weak and pointless without mass damage attached, it just gets absorbed. Otherwise, the ordinary Rain is better. Though even it got worse because combo play is weaker now.

Shackles of Pain is pain mirror spell - choose a foe and it suffers with you. Sounds nice, but doesn't really work out - once again, you need to deal damage to strip magical armor (so this lands) and once you've done that, it's easier to simply perma-stun the foe.

And how sneak is overpowered? In 1 it was a question of getting very rich very fast, seems not a problem here

There's a huntsman (ex-Ranger) skill Snipe that works out of the stealh without starting attracting attention. You can slaughter anything without them ever striking back, pretty much.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I haven't had the time to play this yet, but I'm happy to hear that the humor and zaniness are still in. I like Larian's style, and for me D:OS's problem was not the humor as such, but the fact that the writing was very uneven.

It sounds like they're shoving companion stories down your throat though, which is something I disapprove of, if true. I'm not playing the game for the companions ffs, but for combat and emergent gameplay and etc. I get it that they want to show off their improved writing, and I like that it's been getting more attention, but they should've tried striking a balance for both groups of players - those who care about the story, companions, etc., and those who don't, or at least not so much, and just want to experiment around with the system and party building.

Anyway, looking forward to giving this a spin, but I'll probably wait until it's out of EA before I play it any extensively, just like I did with the first game, which ultimately allowed me to enjoy it more. (Whereas e.g. I played too much Underrail pre-release, which got me to burn out on it post-release.)

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Watching the video now, Pope.
I think you are VASTLY overstating the importance of memory during the first levels, frankly.

Being able to collect a lot of different skills (which isn't even that trivial, given their exorbitant cost) matters just up to a point, when each one of them is not supported by an adequate build and performs modestly.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Am I?

Let's look at the Warfare school - that's the school that needs the skills the least as plain two-hander damage is ridiculous. Even so, what do we want to cut?

Rage provides colossal amounts of bonus damage (for those who haven't played - it gives 100% crit chance) so it's a no-no.

Crippling Blow and Whirlwind allow you to apply that great damage of yours to AoE - makese no sense not to have them.

Battering Ram & Battle Stomp are the same, only in addition to damage you also apply knockdowns.

Blitz Attack and Phoenix Dive - they're still some AoE damage & mobility combo. They're the least valuable here, but they still can save lots of AP on getting from one corner of battlefield to another.

Overpower seems to be great vs bosses as it can nullify lots of physical armor quickly.

So that's 10 skill slots already (vs 5 basic) with not much to cut. And that's only beginning skills. And we don't even mention that even dipping 1 into scoundrel provides us with even greater mobility (at the cost of more memory slots). Considering that getting around the battlefield is the only real weakness of warrior, why not? We're not diluting the build this way, we're just getting everything that we want to.

As for the skillbook costs - that's why we pay attention to our barter & pickpocket. A lvl 3 thievery char (doesn't take that much effort to accomplish) can steal 3 skillbooks from each vendor, that alone solves a lot of problems.

 

[Grimnir]

Yeah, melee is pretty strong. I was playing 4-player coop a few days ago and my knight was killing everything before my team could react, especially after I took the warlord perk. Anyway, I'll probably wait until they add tactician mode before playing again.

 

[Lacrymas]

EA has been out for just over a week, I'm pretty sure they haven't even begun balancing anything yet, so I doubt these things will remain in the release version. This is also an uncharacteristically optimistic thing for me to say.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Am I?

Let's look at the Warfare school - that's the school that needs the skills the least as plain two-hander damage is ridiculous. Even so, what do we want to cut?

Rage provides colossal amounts of bonus damage (for those who haven't played - it gives 100% crit chance) so it's a no-no.

Crippling Blow and Whirlwind allow you to apply that great damage of yours to AoE - makese no sense not to have them.

Battering Ram & Battle Stomp are the same, only in addition to damage you also apply knockdowns.

I mean, everything you listed up to this point, you can have just with the default memory... And Overpowered is a bonus perk with the best axe in this EA. So without a single point in Memory you could have everything except the two skill that yourself described as the least valuable. This, without giving up points to use in other stats.

I'm not saying memory isn't useful, I'm questioning your attempt to paint it as the only stat that matters. There are moments when doing a lot with a single skill is far more important than having a broad range of options.

And before you ask: yes, I already played the entire EA build. Thrice.

P.S. Let's also not forget that Memory seems already to be quite the common stat on items.

 

[Lacrymas]

I think he means that Memory trumps everything because it gives you the most bang for your buck. That's because items > your character and it creates this discrepancy where more spell slots are the biggest thing you can squeeze out of your actual build and everything else (like damage) comes from items. In that context, he is correct.

 

[deama]

I'm sure memory has it's "limit"; I mean, pumping 40 points into memory would end up being a waste right? Maybe pumping in just 20 points in, so you'd get 10 extra slots would be enough, then just pump the remaining into whatever else fits you.

 

[SniperHF]

I'm sure memory has it's "limit"; I mean, pumping 40 points into memory would end up being a waste right? Maybe pumping in just 20 points in, so you'd get 10 extra slots would be enough, then just pump the remaining into whatever else fits you.

The limit is more so related to you simply wouldn't have the opportunity to use all these skills you'd have the ability to learn. There's only so many turns in your average combat encounter.

 

[Gregz]

I haven't had the time to play this yet, but I'm happy to hear that the humor and zaniness are still in. I like Larian's style, and for me D:OS's problem was not the humor as such, but the fact that the writing was very uneven.

The quality of writing has really improved, that's for certain, but writing != story. Just item descriptions, vignettes, dialogue, cut scenes, spell descriptions etc. can do a great deal for immersion if well written. I don't know why Larian feels the need to drown us in player character story because...

I agree with a lot of Pope Amole II 's points, except that I like the ability to cheese fights in different ways. As we know from PoE, excess of balance != fun.

The biggest issue I have with DOS2 however is the extremely limited party creation. Being limited to generating only one of the four party members is a huge mistake. I hope they change this, but they are probably too far into the development cycle. A forced character (chosen one) story is OK...but I prefer making up my own back-story for my party members and LARPing them with my imagination (WL2 style) instead of being dragged along to listen to backstories about characters I don't really want in my party anyway.

 

[Zombra]

Haha. Gygax was a pioneer but that doesn't make that quote gospel ... or even not stupid. D&D was a nice starting point, that's it.

 

[Zanzoken]

I'm not stoked to hear that the combat has gotten worse. If that doesn't get fixed before release then I probably won't even play D:OS2.

I mean, realistically D:OS was about 90% shit. From the story and setting (banal), to the character and item systems (level-scaled MMO trash), to the dialogue and crafting (absolute abortions). Most of the stuff in the game simply wasn't very good.

But it did have one silver bullet, and that was combat. The encounter design was excellent so the fights were interesting and challenging, the AP system and abilities were well done, and the way you could use the environment and all the combined effects and statuses and stuff was really cool. In fact, the combat was so fun that even though virtually every other aspect of the game sucked, I still feel positively about D:OS overall and I think it was a good choice for GOTY.

All I wanted from a D:OS sequel was to roll my own party and go kill things. Not because combat is all I care about, but because it's all Larian demonstrated a talent for the first time around. Take that away and I feel like the game has very little to offer.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's what happens when you don't learn from past attempts or from other people's past attempts. The item system still being disgusting should've been red flag enough.

 

[SniperHF]

I'm not stoked to hear that the combat has gotten worse. If that doesn't get fixed before release then I probably won't even play D:OS2.

I don't think combat has gotten worse. The truncated AP system was concerning but when playing it it doesn't really feel that much different to me except for I don't have to spend as much time micro managing my character's exact steps for AP usage. That's mostly what makes combat go faster.

The game is pretty easy but we only have access to classic difficulty at the moment and all the new skills are clearly unbalanced at this time. But at the same time the AI/Enemies bring substantially more to the table. More movement spells are used, more special arrows, more targeting weak party members, more ambushes, and use of height advantages. Tactician will surely bring enemies that use grenades in addition to extra enemies to fight. Reduce some of the nuttier skills/talents a bit and I'd bet it will play pretty darn well on tactician.

I think they put a lot of effort into the combat skill redesigns to make the skills feel more unique/impactful since you have fewer AP to use. Right now I'd say most of that effort hasn't helped other than to differentiate the two games a bit. But it hasn't made things worse inherently either. I am still concerned about the AP situation in the late-game but for the first 1-8 levels it hasn't been a problem.

The armor system right now I suspect is mainly a victim of most enemies having too little.

 

[Black]

I don't have EA so explain something to me: what's up with action points and what seems their 'streamlining'?
No speed attribute.
No perception to govern start ap.
No constitution to govern your max ap.
Seems like all characters are equally fast/slow. Am I missing something?

 

[SniperHF]

I don't have EA so explain something to me: what's up with action points and what seems their 'streamlining'?
No speed attribute.
No perception to govern start ap.
No constitution to govern your max ap.
Seems like all characters are equally fast/slow. Am I missing something?

Yes the character building element of managing AP through the characters systems is mostly gone.

I think the "source points" are meant to give a combat level resource management item as a replacement, source points being limited points you use to cast more powerful skills. In the early game these are basically non-existent though because of the plot. And the balance issues negate needing more powerful skills at the moment.

For the characters being equally fast/slow thing everyone gets 4 start AP, 6 max AP, and 4 recovery AP. There are ways to get movement only AP. Movement speed is still a thing so some characters move farther per AP than others. Since there is less AP overall the weapon differences are exaggerated compared to 1. 1H weapon = 1AP swing, 2H = 2AP, dual wield = 2AP. So if a 1H weapon user banked AP to get a full 6 they could attack 6 times in one turn which would have been a lot harder to do in D:OS 1 for most characters.

 

[SniperHF]

I actually hate it a lot. There's a reason my ctive character is.. my active character. Conversations starting at random with other party members piss me off. I understand if those are character-specific (there are some npcs unique to some party members, tied to their story), but all others - fuck that.

Wow, sounds like they can't even do a Chosen One RPG right. Choose your Mary Sue I guess and watch the movie.

I think I'll name my PC Ishmael.

Post from Swen:

http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=589213&#Post589213

What's not the case yet is the companion specific scripting and the party relation dialogs. In the example I gave, in the final game you'll won't be able to control the reactions Red Prince has in party reflection or decision dialogs (except if you play a multiplayer game on your own). But currently you can and I understand that's not cool. But that's going away.

Likewise, Red Prince's origin quest will be something that he'll talk about as a problem he has and which the party can help in, but you won't handling from his point of view. In that sense, it'll feel more than what you're used to.

 

[Zombra]