Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Divinity: Original Sin 2

[vivec]

This Josh Sawyer is le master of le balance meme needs to die.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I am not sure where you are going there. But I am sure you are wrong about deterministic games not being good simulations. I have a PnP system I wrote right before me which is almost entirely deterministic and fully simulationist.

I, myself, prefer simulationist approaches where I try to gamify as many real-life aspects of combat into the rules. So I think you are convoluting two different things here.

But all things being equal, RNG trumps deterministic systems. I know some people can drive with their feet and eat meat with a pen, but that does not make neither feet more appropriate than hands in driving nor does it make pens more suitable than a fork to eat a steak. When you design a simulationist system that removes the RNG you are ditching one of the aspects of real battles. Is it impossible? No. Is it a good idea? Not really.

 

[Prime Junta]

This Josh Sawyer is le master of le balance meme needs to die.

Maybe.

On the other hand, it was striking how Joshist the underlying assumptions in the review are. Roxor simply takes it for granted that trap choices are bad, that putting points in different abilities in different ways should be a meaningful choice with different outcomes, that having different pools for combat and non-combat abilities is good, and so on and so forth. A few years ago all of these were massively controversial opinions, now nobody bats an eyelid.

Considering the vitriol he raises, he's had a massive impact on how the Codex thinks about RPG systems.

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

Darth Roxor speaks the truth. Superb review.

 

[Paul_cz]

Very well written review. Kind mindblowing to read after all the praise I read elsewhere. But it seems honest.

Now I want Bubbles *and* Darth Roxor to review Kingdom Come (once patched).

 

[Sacred82]

I've never been one to like Belgians.

Not their "chocolate" (with apologies to actual chocolate)

you monster

 

[Grunker]

Tell me, why would you raise One-handed, when the ability Warfare gives +5% damage with all physical attacks, and also governs warrior-type skills? Why would you raise Huntsman above the level required to unlock ranger-type skills, when it only increases damage made from high ground by 5%/point, while Ranged increases all ranged damage by 5% and also gives additional crit chance on top?

Fortunately, they have a separate ability point pool, because they are mostly uninteresting and would hardly warrant investing any points that you could instead pump into 5% damage increases.

Depending on your character archetype, a few of them will be must haves, and the rest will be either trap options or very minor boosts to pick once you’ve run out of the useful stuff.

Balance is not a function of firepower

Hey Darth Roxor it looks like Josh hijacked your account.

Spoiler

Nice review. Agree about everything, more or less.

Spoiler

Almost made this joke but then considered against it, since, well, it's basically not a joke, it pretty much is what it looks like

 

[Darth Roxor]

i have become what i hate the most

 

[Sacred82]

The game quickly falls apart after you leave the first island. It just stops offering new challenges, instead of that it simply inflates the numbers of stats, for the player and for the enemies.

This isn't all that bad, considering you can spend about 50 hours in the first island alone

hmm

you mean the island with the armor Roxor complained becomes obsolete too quickly?

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Computers always compensate this deficit by just throwing you in unequal situations - this is true for variance-based systems as well. It's a false problem, in other words, and the same goes for all of Roxor's examples.

The difference is that by the time you mastered the system, there is very little challenge involved, the situation being unequal or not. At least in a RNG system you can have some bad rolls.

Battles become repetitive? No, they don't, if you and your foes have sufficiently differantiated abilities that you have to use different ones in different ways based on the obstacle you are facing.

But then again, if there is no RNG involved, it is easier to predict the effects of each ability. Besides, this line of reasoning is self-defeating. If it is good to provide different abilities to make battles less repetitive, it seems only natural that you will provide the possible of different rolls to make each battle more unique.

Determinist vs. variance is not a case of better or worse, they're different things and can both be done very poorly or well.

You are missing the big picture here. A deterministic strange game with interesting abilities and combos would even better with RNG. The point is that all things being equal, RNG trumps deterministic systems.

 

[Prime Junta]

i have become what i hate the most

Come to think of it... so have I

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

This Josh Sawyer is le master of le balance meme needs to die.

The balance that Sawyer strives for is synonimous with making things achievable by every flight of the fancy that any player may have. The result of this doctrine is that character building seems meaningless. What Roxor is arguing is that character building in DO:2 is meaningless because you need to make every character into a glass cannon. It has nothing to do with Sawyer's doctrine. It's the opposite.

 

[cvv]

Holy shit Rox is getting almost professional at this shit.

90% agreed. It's a dumb game with broken mechanics, lulz loot and terrible quests. No wonder it's Codex GOTY with perhaps the widest margin ever. Because muh turn based, pretty graphix and isometric nostalgiafaggotry. Bah.

 

[vivec]

This Josh Sawyer is le master of le balance meme needs to die.

The balance that Sawyer strives for is synonimous with making things achievable by every flight of the fancy that any player may have. The result of this doctrine is that character building seems meaningless. What Roxor is arguing is that character building in DO:2 is meaningless because you need to make every character into a glass cannon. It has nothing to do with Sawyer's doctrine. It's the opposite.

I am not talking about the comparison of Roxor with Sawyer. But rather about the fact that Sawyer fails at what he preaches.

But all things being equal, RNG trumps deterministic systems. I know some people can drive with their feet and eat meat with a pen, but that does not make neither feet more appropriate than hands in driving nor does it make pens more suitable than a fork to eat a steak. When you design a simulationist system that removes the RNG you are ditching one of the aspects of real battles. Is it impossible? No. Is it a good idea? Not really.

Maybe. I like to use RNG to encourage experimentation. i.e. you know what you have and then you take a chance and push your luck by rolling a die to either increase or decrease chances of success.

On the other hand, it was striking how Joshist the underlying assumptions in the review are. Roxor simply takes it for granted that trap choices are bad, that putting points in different abilities in different ways should be a meaningful choice with different outcomes, that having different pools for combat and non-combat abilities is good, and so on and so forth. A few years ago all of these were massively controversial opinions, now nobody bats an eyelid.

Considering the vitriol he raises, he's had a massive impact on how the Codex thinks about RPG systems.

Seriously dude.

This is the kind of cult of personality that makes me wonder if you people can think. To ask for basic responsiveness from a game is quite usual amongst players. It has literally nothing to do with one developer.

 

[Brancaleone]

This Josh Sawyer is le master of le balance meme needs to die.

Maybe.

On the other hand, it was striking how Joshist the underlying assumptions in the review are. Roxor simply takes it for granted that trap choices are bad, that putting points in different abilities in different ways should be a meaningful choice with different outcomes, that having different pools for combat and non-combat abilities is good, and so on and so forth. A few years ago all of these were massively controversial opinions, now nobody bats an eyelid.

Considering the vitriol he raises, he's had a massive impact on how the Codex thinks about RPG systems.

Hey Prime Junta it looks like Roguey hijacked your account.

Sawyer for sure has had a big impact on the Codex' intellectual wannabes.

 

[Sacred82]

O rly, I totally didn't see that coming after the first two tiny paragraphs on the character system.

im full of surprises

It begs the question what exactly is the problem here. Are the attributes not interesting enough if you look at the game as a combat simulator (which isn't a problem for many people but for you)? Or is it that the attibutes are entirely gamey and not simulationist (which isn't a problem for many people but for me)?

The problem is that every stat is the exact same (boring) thing but with a different name, so you are not dropping points into X, Y, Z but into Xa, Xb, Xc. With shit like this you might as well drop the character system altogether, and the game would probably be better off for it.

Yeah, I got that. Do more damage, take less damage. Still not that unusual for RPG stats, is it? It's not a problem in itself without context.

Did you use magic to solve any puzzles, and if yes how frequently, and how obvious was this solution?

Oh this is actually a gr8 thing in itself that I didn't mention because I had no good place to squeeze it into.

Puzzles are solved by activating your Witcher Vision (tm) and following the superobvious cues it gives you.

well fuck me, that does sound horrible.

You know you're reading a Roxor review scribbled on toilet paper when skills are written off with a few sentences.

I was writing this revio from the perspective of someone who knows the first game, so I didn't dwell too much on things near-identical to it, because it would just clog things up. If you skipped dos1 and are thus confoos, tough luck.

could be me but I didn't see you mentioning that skills are absolutely identical, that would at least have told us something.

Just what is so terrible about a hidden mechanic remains unclear though, I mean you could make the connection between Strength and intimidation after all.

The problem is you're making blind choices based on an opaque (not "hidden") mechanic, while said choices can bar you from progressing in a quest. Because, from memory, multiple quests in DOS2 hinge on a single persuasion chokepoint somewhere, and if you fail that all you have left is going guns blazung.

hmm

Fail the persuasion check, have to fight. Doesn't sound out of place, really. In fact, having a persuasion stat that dynamically takes into account your character's primary stat rather than being tied to a fixed stat sounds kind of smart to me, in theory. And then you'd still have things like stealth for example, surely that would still be possible?

You don't even give a list of what 'civil' skills there are, contrary to your detailed run-down on combat skills.

and yet i dont give a list of combat skills either

well, certainly more than civil skills (one-handed, two-handed etc.)

All Larian games have always had unbalanced abilities and, before D:OS, shit combat, so those must be fine too.

this is not a review of all larian games

you referred to all Larian games to justify goofy writing.

I see I must reiterate because mentioning this once was not enough:

A lot of people took offence to the silliness of DOS because it was badly written and badly placed.

My impression from reading the forums is much different from that. Honestly, you can't have parody AND epicness in the same thing. The epicness either only serves to increase the parody, or else seems like a droopy-eyed concession to the fact that people actually like over the top drama, no matter how dumb it is.

Divinity 2's ratio of lulz to epix is about equal to DOS1, but there it's inserted in just the right moments and written competently, so it's funny and not stupid (for fuck's sake it has power rangers). These "a lot of people" are focusing on the trees when there's a forest to be seen, but it's not exactly something uncommon.

uhm ok, so it's got da lulz, how exactly is it grimdark then?

Btw I don't know if you've ever played Divine Divinity, high fantasy but still down to Earth flair, not even remotely the later Larian goofiness, on par with Ultima VII for homour.

I did in fact play DivDiv. You are correct that it's the most down to earth of the Larian games, but let's not forget that the first thing you encounter after leaving starter town is a black knight with an existential crisis.

In Ultima VII you had a scrawny tailor who fancied himself a lean mean killing machine, and you had to save his sorry ass for muh XP.

Uuuhhh, excuse me? I know it's acceptable on the Kodex to dismiss any writing with the words 'it sucks' and gain 50 Kool Kredits in the process. But just for the off-chance you want anyone else to read this crap, as does happen nowadays, you may want to lay off the edge a bit... a lot, and actually share some details about the writing.

I'd think at the very least the bit about animal abuse would be a good example of stupid grimdarkery.

huh?

As in, animal abuse doesn't exist (especially in faux-medieval times where we can assume people to use beasts of burden), or you don't want to hear about it?

This really seems to be a matter of taste first and foremost, and a rather specific one at that.

A question I've asked people who have played the game is "could you identify any MCA in the game, and how much of it is there?", for example. I mean you had someone like Chris working alongside wet-eared nu-humans, it should be possible to see some stark contrasts.

Ah, the MCA in DOS2 meme. Spoiler, MCA didn't write shit for this game. He only came up with a backstory for one of the origin characters (Fane), but only that - he didn't even write it.

Good. Not that any of this would belong in a review of the game written for RPG fans.

Dude, I didn't know you're that kind of prude. Or rather, you come across like the classical conservative, who doesn't give a shit about ethics but simply doesn't want to be bothered with things he doesn't want to think about.

If this is what you mean by 'grimdark', that sex and violence are treated in prose form rather than as 'tasteful cutscenes', bro, that's actually a good thing.

There's a question of taste, scale and competence. When it comes to taste, those bits are cringefests of the worst Biowarian kind. When it's scale, they are all over the place, and often unavoidable or coming out of the blue. As for competence, when a bit like this comes up, I shouldn't be shaking my head and thinking "what is wrong with you, writer", I should be thinking "that was fucked up, but p. cool". Clive Barker is fucked up but cool. DOS2 is a dog humping your leg.

I can respect you not liking the style, it's just that that's not really what you wrote in the review ("ubiquity"). Also bringing up mental illness in the context of presentation of sex and abuse simply makes people seem retarded, sorry not sorry.

OTOH ham-fisted reviewing using broad strokes offers a great opportunity to re-re-re-review the game after it has received the updates and expansions that have already been confirmed by Larian. I'm holding my breath for a "it's slightly less shit now but still shit, you could enjoy it if you're dumb, I sank 100 hours into it but it was a pain" Roxor verdict in the coming months.

hurr durr o u got me here

I did, didn't I.

:australia:

 

[Ismaul]

if there is no RNG involved, it is easier to predict the effects of each ability

That's not necessarily bad, as it allows for better planning, which is great.

the difference is that by the time you mastered the system, there is very little challenge involved, the situation being unequal or not. At least in a RNG system you can have some bad rolls.

But by the time you've mastered the system, it's time to play something else, if combat is all there is to it. The possibility to have bad rolls wouldn't make it better, or even less challenging since the RNG is balanced for a certain difficulty which you've mastered.

If it is good to provide different abilities to make battles less repetitive, it seems only natural that you will provide the possible of different rolls to make each battle more unique.

Why? There's a point where variation is useful and there's a point where it's just too much to be able to plan moves and character builds properly. If the encounters are unique, with different setups, terrain, positioning, enemy composition, player composition, and power levels, that could be enough variation.

I don't see any good reason why RNG would trump deterministic systems in all scenarios. Every system needs to have some things fixed and some things varied, and it need not be attack/defense rolls.

 

[Volrath]

Their waffles are nothing to talk about either, forgettable like Larian games.

If you really want to get a Belgian's goat, remind them that the French ended up receiving credit for their fries.

Belgians are p. much would-be French that ended up being a separate country because of Spanish and English anyhow.

No we're fucking not you fucking faggot.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Take an example. Say we're using a bow, doing 100 damage. We put 20 pts in Finesse, 10 points in Ranged. That gives us 100 x (1+ (30 x 5%)) = 250 damage. Let's put the 10 points in Huntsman instead of Ranged. That gives us 100 x (1 + (20 x 5%)) x (1 +(10 x 5%)) = 300 damage.

I came here to say that these self-conditioning sessions about how tactical choices matter and are required by how the combat system is designed, remind me of the same arguments raging over how tactical choices matter in PoE. But I see the parallels have already been made. Then again, it wouldn't be entirely true, because in my experience, even with all the dumbness of D:OS2's combat system, at least you can get smashed in combat if you do stupid as opposed to smart things.

 

[Perkel]

Considering the vitriol he raises, he's had a massive impact on how the Codex thinks about RPG systems.

Imo time for purge. Klean Kodex Kasusls

at least you can get smashed in combat if you do stupid as opposed to smart things.

Bigger problem is that you are not rewarded for smart choices. Because either way you need to get off that damn armor which means DPS DPS DPS baby.

Determinist vs. variance is not a case of better or worse, they're different things and can both be done very poorly or well.

Care to point out any deterministic RPG first that is actually good ? I struggle to remember any.
Secondly DR does make good argument. You are playing RPG not Puzzle game. The more deterministic system is the more predictable and boring it is.

If you argue otherwise then why the hell to even include things like accuracy, different skills etc ? He made good argument. You don't play cheess or puzzle game you play RPG in which non determinism is usually paramount to it being GOOD rpg or not. If you build highly non deterministic system which is fair and you can make game out of its randomness that doesn't suck you have RPG of the year/decade.

 

[Durandal]

lmao'ing at everyone thinking RNG in RPGs only implies failure/success rolls for hits and crits

RNG is a great asset for determining following AI actions, preventing the player from just executing a flawless plan by having the enemy AI behave unpredictably and not like how you want them to. Maybe the AI has a grand keikaku of its own. I figure plenty of RPGs do already employ a bit of randomness for determining upcoming actions, however most AIs in RPGs are too simplistic and short-sighted in their behavior for the game to really rely on AI for making battles feel unpredictable and keep you on your toes, so they need to be made up for with rolls for hits and unique encounter design in order to make combat feel properly varied.

 

[Sacred82]

you can have unpredictable behavior without damage ranges though

 

[Sigourn]

There's nothing wrong with balance™ when done properly. If a game lets you pick between +5% melee damage and +5% damage in all forms of combat, it's not so much about removing choice but removing pointless choices. It's simply trimming the fat. People against this may as well play RPGs drowned in pointless stats and numbers, where the excitement comes more from "I've found the only worthwile skill" as opposed to "I had to choose between many good skills and picked the one I think is the best". I don't know about you guys, but I personally prefer making tough decisions as opposed to pointless busywork because the dev was too much of an imbecile to properly balance his game and making sure there was a reason to use each skill instead of making many of them redundant. It also makes the worthwile elements of a game more visible. Sure, one game may have 100 stats. But only 10 may be useful. Whereas another may have 20 stats, and ALL of them have a good use.

Quality > Quantity, any day.

EDIT: as an addendum to this post, this was precisely what made Gothic much superior to most RPGs I've played. It didn't gave you tons of customization options for your character, but the few it gave you were extremely meaningful. At times in The Witcher I would increase my different skills, but the few that were actually tangible were those that unlocked new abilities or combos. I would have preferred thus for progression to be slower, but each choice meaningful, as opposed to progression being quicker (as it is in TW) and choices being pointless.

 

[vivec]

There's nothing wrong with balance™ when done properly. If a game lets you pick between +5% melee damage and +5% damage in all forms of combat, it's not so much about removing choice but removing pointless choices. It's simply trimming the fat. People against this may as well play RPGs drowned in pointless stats and numbers, where the excitement comes more from "I've found the only worthwile skill" as opposed to "I had to choose between many good skills and picked the one I think is the best". I don't know about you guys, but I personally prefer making tough decisions as opposed to pointless busywork because the dev was too much of an imbecile to properly balance his game and making sure there was a reason to use each skill instead of making many of them redundant. It also makes the worthwile elements of a game more visible. Sure, one game may have 100 stats. But only 10 may be useful. Whereas another may have 20 stats, and ALL of them have a good use.

Quality > Quantity, any day.

Pretty much. "Balancing" a game by making all action equally pointless, boring numeric tackons is what is wrong with these games.

 

[Sigourn]

Pretty much. "Balancing" a game by making all action equally pointless, boring numeric tackons is what is wrong with these games.

It also helps understand what is wrong with some Codexers. They think that if a game has many numbers = good. But it is more of a matter of "how meaningful are those numbers?". Having more numbers/skills/Perks/attributes does allow more customization. But more customization doesn't translate to a better experience if those different stats aren't exploited to their fullest. While having less stats is considered to be a bad thing in the Codex, at least there's an implicit reasoning behind it: by having less stats, developers focused more on removing pointless stats than actually making them worth your while. It's pretty much my grudge with Bethesda. Spears in Morrowind were fairly pointless, but a better developer would have made their ranged combat actually useful (like Vagrant Story did ). Different weapons have arisen in real life for a reason, and a developer that doesn't translate this distinction into their games have failed to justify their existence in them.

Requiem (Skyrim mod) changed how bows, crossbows, swords, maces, and axes work to great effect. It went beyond "this weapon looks cool" (for the latter three) and "this is for stealth archery" in the case of bows. Crossbows became useful instead of worthless, as they could pierce through armor from a distance.