Dear Larian Developers (eventually?) reading this forum,
I think we need to talk about your take on itemization, loot, equipment.

I won't mince words; I think in its current state it's a disaster.
Here's a quick recap on why:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=624036#Post624036

The game is great, sure, but that's despise of your take on equipment, rather than because of it.

Now, what's genuinely perplexing to me is that this was already broadly pointed as one of the major flaws (if not THE major one) in the previous game.
Still, it's clear at this point that you aren't doing this by accident; you are purposefully sticking to your guns here and deliberately committing to a solution a lot of people didn't like the first time.

I could argue for pages on why that's a terrible choice.
Hell, I already did it in the past, the last time barely few days ago, as the link above shows.

But at this point this feels like beating a dead horse, and I don't think bringing this topic over and over among users (both the defending and opposing front) would be of any use.
SO, what I'd love to, instead, is listening directly from the "word of god" as TV Tropes would say.

TL;DR - Please, developers, find few minutes to chime in and explain to me (us?) why you are doing things this way.

The item sistem is a stereotype from games like Diablo. I do get one shot often as well due to the fact that I can't get my hands on items that last more than 2 levels.

Here is the thing I gotta ask every player, why invent the wheel when it has already been invented? Same for item systems in game.

I know. Doesn't change the fact I can't stand it.
It just doesn't match with this sort of game.

Still hoping for some commentary from the devs. While I will probably disagree anyway it would be interesting to learn what makes this solution (randomization) so appealing to them.

I'm pretty sure Itemization is in this game worse than in a game like Diablo. I can't remember getting items with unfitting stats on them in Diablo.

Itemization is by far the weakest part of the game, the actual system makes what could be an enjoyable part of the game into a chore.
Why should I even bother in reading the description for this unique item I've found while exploring when I know that by the time I level up it's going to become trash?
Wow Braccus Rex must have been some powerful sourcerer yet his spear isn't better than a lvl7 green item

What?
Don't you enjoy your "+2 Single-hand" on a bow?

But yeah, that's part of the problem as well.

Another issue is that unlike Diablo, you can't go leaving town to kill all the respawned monsters to get new drops if the old ones sucked.

Both Diablo and Diablo 2 had this all of the time. It was actually one of the primary reasons trading was such a huge thing in Diablo 2 (don't recall if you could even trade in the first game). Diablo 3 initially had "junk" gear, with stats that still had some effect for your character, but the game was set up at launch to try to get you to pay real money on the auction house to get items that would let you progress.

They abolished that and changed the game to offer a "smart loot" system where items that dropped for your character were probably 95% of the time suited for your character. You could have random items for other classes drop that you couldn't use, but this was rare and mostly intended for you to use on a potentially new character later.

The loot system in this game is technically closer to the first Diablo, worse than Diablo 2 and grossly inferior to the current Diablo 3.

I'm not talking about gear that was not for your character, but about gear that has stats, that does not fit at all their item type. If you played as a group, you could always give other class stuff to your teammate.

But honestly I don't remember that well. Because you could always farm for more, bad gear had less of an impact anyway.

I guess there were times when I found gear to be annoying... but not really. I went through the whole game always upgrading my gear by buying new sets every few levels, never had an issue really. I mostly bought my gear from vendors though rather than finding it, so there's that. Always guaranteed to find some kind of upgrade by checking my commonly used vendors.

I suppose that is kind of sad since the drops were more or less pointless at times. What matters most in this game is your build and opening combos, honestly. And having high wits.

It would be nice if you could reroll item stats or modify them somehow. Also crafting is utterly useless, pretty much never used it besides for runes and skillbooks. Would have been great to be able to craft nicer gear, but I don't mind that crafting isn't a big part of it. Also what's up with not being able to see gear stats by hovering over the recipe item when crafting? It just feels like filler content not really flushed out or necessary in the game

I agree with this post. The game would be better if there was a larger ratio of 'fixed gear' to 'randomly generated' gear because then your gear progression could be charted out. Right now you might race to the houndsman crossbow or whatever but after Act 1 it becomes meaningless. Having gear scale with your level would honestly just feel better. Having so much random in a game where you can't farm anything feels bad sometimes.

Swen already said why in one of the videos. He thinks its more interesting to play a game and get "different stuff" rather then "always" get the same stuff.

So its a weird binary choice for him, although those two binary options dont need to be like that.
And despite the fact things dont really work that way which is further worsened by number bloat and nonsensical randomization of equipment stats.

Its not like they are really trying to make the best game possible. They made the game that will sell a lot and they succeeded. With mechanics for the... masses?
(nobody knows what that even means)

You want something better, hope someone makes a mod.
Instead of fantasizing how one of them will come over and tell you you are right and they were wrong.

While I do think hand-placed loot is vastly superior, I wouldn't mind random loot nearly as much as I do now if items we get lasted at least 4 levels and modifiers weren't useless 90% of the time. I get it, not all gear has to be optimal for my build. But when 90% of the random loot I find is useless it's a bit too much. And if I do manage to find something useful I'll have to replace it after 3 fights anyway.

Some of these problems would easily be mitigated if they had bothered to actually add a robust crafting system as seen in EE. It didn't have nearly the same problem as what this game does, because even when the majority of the dropped loot was garbage (even then, it seemed to have uniques that lasted a little longer), you could essentially make whatever you needed. You don't have that option at all here other than making a generic, non stat chest and a generic, non stat weapon.

What the hell happened?

I think you need to acknowledge that this is a pet peeve of yours. You may not like randomisation, but other people do, and there is nothing objectively wrong with it.

randomisation would be a lot more acceptable if:
-this wasn't a game where everything is handplaced, form consumables to enemies
-There was a way to farm items in order to mitigate the bad drops (but I wouldn't play a game like this if I wanted to farm my gear)
-items didn't need to be replaced after one or two level up in order to keep up with the stats bloat
-items didn't have nonsensical stats (str gear adding points to huntsman or sneaking ec..)

I also hate the randomization of items in this game.In act 1 it wasn't all that bad,but man in act 2 it is a nightmare - I can barely stand the game at this point and I have 2 more acts to go. I would rather the game had fewer random items and more skill points.

Yeah, it is.
Not one born by mere feelings, though.
It's a dislike caused mostly by my love for good design.

I have yet to hear a single good argument in favor of randomized itemization in any RPG.
The go-to flagship argument seems to be "When everything is random you are constantly surprised", which is countered by the sad reality of it: "when every item is randomized and easily disposable, every single find feels equally generic and often worthless".

In Baldur's Gate 2 you could find a +3 talking longsword near the tavern in Amn. I still remember that item, I still remember how you could go half of the game before having some NET upgrade over it (rather than few comparably good alternate options). I didn't play BG2 in the last four years.

It was useful, it was memorable, it was funny. It was also something I could plan a future playthrough around. "Hey, I know I have *that* specific item there, I'll give it to Character X and for Character Y I'll get that other weapon instead".

In this game I couldn't tell you a single item I'm equipping now on my party, in my current campaign, without loading my game and checking.
I'm also confident it wouldn't matter even if I did, because one level from now I'll have to replace it, if the RNG will allow it.

I'm in strong agreement with you Tuco. I can still remember several items from BG2 because they were powerful and meaningful, many with unique scripts found nowhere else in the game. I really really really wish they had gone that route with this game as well and left leveling off of items entirely.

Leveling items makes sense in an MMO with 100 levels but it really doesn't make any sense when trying to create a world with cohesion. Why is a white, normal guard sword in Arx like 1000x better than anything Braccus had? It's nonsense.

Bring the scaling WAAAAY down for vitality and then remove scaling from weapons and actually hand place the most powerful things so that they feel like true rewards for certain actions. Then you can keep randomized items for low-mid tier gear to fill in slots for your party that don't have uniques.

Finding unique, cool items that change a character is fun. Having to replace 40 items every 3-5 fights is not fun.

I think someone had the interesting suggestion to have the Armor and Damage values of Unique items scale with player level. I think that's an interesting idea.

Insane scaling combined with RNG item drops combined with finite item drops combined with RNG item stats combined with no ingame way to alter those RNG stats have all mixed together to create one of the worst gearing systems I have personally ever had inflicted on me.

I hope either the guy doing Crafting Overhaul or someone else mods a way to edit stats on items AND some way to level items that you like so you can keep using them. CE is an option for this now, for those of you not allergic to using it, but an ingame way to do it would feel better (as long as the method is streamlined and unobtrusive).

Here's one: the argument is that randomised loot increases replayability because each playthrough is going to be different. You may not agree with this argument, but you have to acknowledge the fact that this is a view held by not an insignificant part of the gaming community and with good reason. Yes, the system has some of the drawbacks that you mentioned, but it also has certain advantages over a strictly fixed loot system. You may like a fixed loot system, but half the people like a randomised loot system. Ipso facto that is a matter of taste, not a matter of good/bad design. A well-executed randomised loot system ensures infinite replayability, but it is obviously not going to be absolutely everyone's cup of tea.

But even then the game also has Unique items with fixed stats. Not all loot is randomised. Unique items are among the most powerful in the game. If you have not yet found them then you should be doing more exploration. If anything, I disagree with this approach because I know where the best item for build X is to be found on every playthrough. Boring. You may disagree with me, but this does not make my view any less valid.

Finally, this is not a loot based RPG. Loot plays a very small role in this game. I said in a different thread that in one of my playthroughs I realised in Arx that one of my dudes was still wearing a level 3 Migo's Breastplate. Surely if that extra xxx magical + physical armour was such a game breaker than it must have been replaced several levels ago? But it isn't, and even with all the infamous stat inflation you can absolutely breeze through the game on Tactician without ever visiting a vendor. The only items of any significance are weapons for physical damage dealers. So long as you have a solid build you have a solid run. Suggesting that you "have to" visit a vendor every other level is pure bollocks. You don't. In my last playthrough I ran entire Arx looking for a new 2 Hander for my warrior when I hit level 22. All the vendors were selling total garbage so I did not manage to find one. I'll equip Anathema - I thought, but when I got to the final boss I forgot to do it. I still beat him on turn 1 with my shitty outlevelled green 2 Hander.

Look, I get you. You find the loot system unfulfilling. That's a valid view to hold - but you must equally acknowledge that this is a consequence of your needs as an individual and not a matter of bad design as such.

Does it mean that the loot system is perfect? Of course not. But it is robust. You may not like it, but others do, and it works just fine.

Saying half the people prefer randomized loot seems like a made up statistic to me. And of those who think they do, have they ever played a game with good hand-placed loot?

Itemization seems to be something that devs have largely stopped bothering with. Throw a handful of stats into a randomizer and call it a day seems to be the norm.

Edit: The sad thing is there *IS* some fairly interesting hand-placed stuff in this game. But the scaling comepletely negates its impact by immediately making it useless. Combined with the godly stock from vendors it makes finding things deeply unsatisfying.

It is irrelevant what the specific proportion is - that is a strawman. What is relevant is that, on objective grounds, that is a valid view to hold. It is a tried and tested method and, no, not everyone likes it, but there are valid grounds for liking either approach.

By the way, I have been playing RPGs for close to 20 years and I have never played one that has a hand-placed loot system that is strictly better than a randomised system. Nevertheless, this, again, deviates from the point. Some people prefer randomised loot as a concept, while other people prefer hand-picked loot as a concept. The best super-duper hand-picked loot system is not going to appease someone who prefers randomised loot. Both views are valid. The way either system is implemented is what really matters. I would not say that the implementation in this game is bad - and this is coming from someone who does not hold a firm view on either fixed or randomised loot.

And no, scaling does not destroy itemisation. Generally speaking, randomised, scaled, loot provides more armour. Unique loot provides more stats. Having a tradeoff and the choice that this provides is much better than just having one strictly best item in the game for any given slot. If you think that you +5 main stat item is useless because another item provides you more armour then feel free to go for it, but other people prefer damage over survivability.

Let's say there is an EE version of the game. They could start by slowing down power progression of items - I would be happy with that. Right now item power is progressing way too fast with level.

We can always defend either randomized or fixed loot by pointing out the benefits of each. "Randomized loot" by itself is not the problem. The real problem here to me is the randomized loot in this game just doesn't go along very well with how fast item power progresses. Combined with the fact that you can't really "farm" for gears. And also, personally, I find tactician mode challenging enough that it's hard to just "take it easy" with the whole gear-hunting business. Unless you're going with 2 Lone Wolves and some other broken stuff...

As for the "why this STR-based chest piece adds INT???" kind of issue, it did come up from time to time during my playthrough. But then, I always realized that, it was an issue because my bruiser was a pure fighter. There are definitely hybrid builds that rely on both STR and INT. Also, it's not a big deal to bump your mage's STR a few points (4?) to let him equip that chest piece. Why would I want to do that? Maybe because I want to get a bit more Phys Armor on him, since his Mag Armor is already good? It's totally legit.

So, slowing down power progression of items should help mitigating the trouble with RNG. You can wait for longer until you get the right stuff for your chars. I admit, always having to hunt for stuff every level was somewhat of a hassle, even though I managed to adjust over time.

RNG can be fine in games where you have infinite ways of having loots. In DOS, there's a finite number of monsters & treasure chest to loot from, even the merchants refresh from leveling is limited (especially in Act 3 and Act 4). If RNG screwed you, then you're done for that playthrough.
It's not gamebreaking by any means because the game doesnt punish you too hard and you dont need min.maxed gear to finish the game even on tactician but still..

You have to adapt your chars build to the gear the RNG throws at you and not the other way around, which can be frustrating.

That's essentially what happened in my playthrough. I'd say that, "That's where the respec mirror comes in handy". I admit I abused it during my playthrough, but I do find that rather casual. "This new ring is awesome, but I would lose that +1 Necro. So all I need to do is go back to the respec mirror and bump my Necro up by 1 point to compensate." It adds a lot of flexibility, true, but at the same time, it feels casual.

So you finally realised that you are not the bad-ass motherfuckers that can walk your way through the highest difficulty setting in an RPG at a whim. I am disappointed.

On the plus side, at least it's not as anti-fun as the Locker Room Hell of the original Mass Effect: reequipping my team seldom felt like anything other than a chore, and a particularly fiddly one at that.


Definitely something they should look into; even if it requires a moderate amount of re-crafting to make it make sense rather than "my armour magically got better". People have not unreasonably complained that Braccus' armour set is junk by the time you can actually wear it.

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.

That's a weak argument, not a good one.
For reasons already pointed. "Every time is different" isn't a quality in itself, if that degree of unpredictability comes with a long list of drawbacks and virtually no advantage.

And even putting aside your completely made-up statistic about how "half of the people loving random loot", we aren't talking about a popularity contest here, but about good core mechanics.
I'd argue randomized loot isn't a great mechanic in general, but more specifically it borders the "dreadful" territory for the way this game implements it.



Can't genuinely think of one.
MAYBE the fact it spares the developers the work of designing and hand-placing unique items, but that's also questionable. I wonder how much work went in (clearly unsuccessful) attempts to tweak the item generator over and over in the past months.


You keep re-proposing the same (weak) argument over and over, but stating something boldly doesn't turn it true.
I have no idea in what ways having generic items rather than designed ones should "give you infinite replayability".
It's not something that increases the amount of content in the game. It just waters it down.
I've never seen anyone replaying a game with random loot thinking "Woah, can't wait to see what the random generators will give me this time". If anything, the opposite tends to happen. Speedrunners and theorycrafters typically love some degree of predictability to plan around for any subsequent playthrough.


I almost finished the game at this point. Unique items are trash. By the beginning of the game thay may occasionally be useful, for a whopping 20 minutes each before you'll need to replace them. By half of the campaign, even more if you played enough side content "doing more exploration" you'll cross most of them when you already out-leveled them badly.
That's another problem Larian apparently failed to foresee.
I remember when they announced during EA that they were going to "add a lot more Unique items in the game" and fearing this could happen.
Putting "unique items" in your game AND STILL sticking to randomized loot for the most part makes the former useless.
Unique items are meaningful when they are remarkable, not when they are constantly outclassed.


No, that's a big part of the problem. It shouldn't be, but that's precisely what this system is making it.

The answer to your question is simple. Scaling random items and random loot is easy to implement. Set scaling parameters, throw in RNG's and *puff* you have taken care of designing gear throughout the whole game problem.

On the other hand, going over the game itself and placing specific unique loot requires a lot of thought and work.

I do not like this lazy approach either, this in not a hack and slash rpg. Sure, you can throw in some random items at vendors and loots, AFTER you place carefully planned items throughout the world, and do it in a waya diverse party of 4 with diverse skillsets can benefit from.

I felt crafting is useless, except scrolls in rare occasions.
Maybe "Armour of the Eternals" is one worth is craft

There are many great end game unique items though.
The most value of uniques is that they give more then the divines and +5 to stat / immunity

Item randomization worked fine for me, I don't recall anything stupid. (e.g.: bow with + to two handed)

No it won't, you're going to find the same exact items with just different stats, You know what's the difference beetwen my ranger elf current crossbow and the one he had 20 minutes before? I don't, I just needed a better crossbow (damage wise) in order to keep up with the increase in the enemies armor (it even looks the same), and I'm going to forget that crossbow in 20 minutes once I find a better one.
Now try to play Dark Souls with a greatsword and then with a rapier, that's going to be a really different playthrough (wich is fun and memorable).
You know what's one the best things in Pillars of Eternity? When one particular item allow you to play a specific kind of build that wouldn't be possible without that item (wich is guess what? Fun and memorable), you're going to remember that item as much as every single person that played Dark Souls remembers the zweihander or the other weapons and armors of the game (and this alone is enough to prove wich one is the better system, no one remembers the +2 dexterity gloves they replaced after 5 minutes).
Nobody remeber fondly the incredible amount of random vendor trash you find in The Witcher 3 but strangely enough everybody remembers the unique witcher gear (because you had to put some effort in order to get that gear and you were rewarded with some unique and powerful gear that could last an entire playthrough).
How can I remember the spear of Braccus Rex if not as an example on how unique gear is meaningles when it gets outclassed by something found in a chest ten minutes later?

Bad design is more a question of implementation rather than something to throw around when someone makes a design decision you dislike. Expanding the meta beyond character creation (which is what the Baldur's Gate example ultimately results in, alternatively not creating false choices due to developer neglect of certain item categories) and giving some incentive to spread out your team's equipment dependencies (thus maximizing random equipment drops) are some pretty clear advantages from the top of my head. Especially in a game with free respec, where itemization is one of the few limiting factors remaining. Due to merchant restock (hourly I believe) I don't see it as a major issue overall.

Larian can definitely improve the present system to better realize what their design goal is. For example:

1) Weapons for different builds should not share the same item category for merchants (and likely loot tables). Spears for example are extremely rare due to them being in the same category as Strength two-hander weapons, causing them to be drowned out. This becomes rather clear with merchant logic. Weapons of fundamentally different build categories (in this case Finesse Warfare vs Strength Warfare) should not be competing for the same item category.

There seems to be quite a bit of D:OS1 -> D:OS2 stuff that hasn't been elegantly transitioned in this fashion.

2) Lucky charm creates a loot meta that is kind of annoying. Especially when the game incentivizes a separate barter character to sell the loot picked up by the lucky charm character. (Mitigated by vigilant respec, but thats extremely meta-gamey to the point that it makes me wonder why are they even skills)

3) As others have mentioned a more robust crafting system; at least on par with D:OS1, would allow players to minimize some of the RNG when the RNG is seemingly sabotaging them. (Note: This can create another problem with scaled equipment incentivizing hoarding crafting equipment until late-game for max profits - But opportunity cost is a thing to so mixed bag)

First of all sorry for my english, not my mother languaje and i don't like it really much.

The problem here is not a RNG system vs a handmade system, the problem is that we have a really poor RNG system+a skeany handmade system+ and abbysmal craftting system. The three have to be rebuild in an hipothetical enhanced edition. Lets look them one by one:

RNG system: Someone has told that is a robust system. NO it's not. When 90% of the loot you get is total garbage and the best way to equip is shopping you are doing something terribly wrong. Let try to seak for the main fails:

The power level that the magical atributtes can have is to wide. Lets makes some tiers (It is quite difficult because of the builds variants)
God Tier: Critical Chance, Statues inmunities, Runes slots, Civil habilities (has the sistem works now a civil point is worth nearly 4 combat points)
Good Tier: Stats, Combat habilities, aditional damage
Bad Tier: Status efects, Elemental Resistance, Cleave
Shit Tier: Movement, Dodging, raw HP.
It is obviously not a complete list but can give you and idea. My proposal is make something similar as the diablo Saga has done split the atributtes in Primary and Secondary. God and Good Tier should be consider primary and Bad and Shit should go to secondary. The Item will hace a number of each based on is rarety: Common none, Magic one primary, rare one primary one secondary, Epic two primary one secondary, Legendary two and two, Divine three and two.In adition they should implement some kind of smart loot, simply a two hander can not give +onehanded or finese.
On the other hand i will suggets to put civil habilities out of the equipement is painfull too have a "stealing gear" and change it each time you met a new NPC, and increase the wining of those points to 1 every 3 levels.
The last problem, monsters and exploration loot should be the top tier of the game, vendors have to be nerfed.

Hand made system: Has far as I see they have 2 options, the first one is to make these item scale with your level, lets say you can use a source orb or a dammed sould to do it (WOW crafting is usseful in some way), or you can modify them by giving them a level that didn't depend on where you can find them but trully what they are, I am looking at you Braccus Rex armour. The third option is to change the inflactionary stats sistem but that will supose a full reballancing of the game.

Crafting: You cannot change the crafting system, you have to build it from the ground because is terrible poor. In DOS you have a fucking godlike forge at your disposition, now you can put sharp rocks on a stik ¿WTF you are suposed to reach the divinity with ungabonga weapons?. Crafting should be a civil skill and it should be able to mitigate the RNG of the loot, not give you totaly trash unepic gear. Thing we need to be able to do: Craft non common gear, Enchant it, Put Rune slots in it, been able to break some gear to get new material...

The problem with DOS 2 is that the combat system is soo solid that it can support a terrible gearings system, but it is still a terrible gear system.

Yes itemization is terrible in the game. You keep finding items which become obsolete very fast due to item level scaling. And I can't fathom why there isn't at least a way to "upgrade" weapons to your level. Maybe with some great gold cost or something. That would AT LEAST make some unique items with more "unique" abilities last longer...

Generally though, a legendary weapon found in the vaults of Braccus Rex should be usable till the end of the game potentially, not useless after 5-6 combats..

For me itemization is the least important bit in an rpg. What is important for me is combat and story (that specific order).
As one of the many who feels they get screwed over by the rng sistem I recomend this -remove all green and blue items from the game and give us more stat points and at least 1 rune slot per white. We should also have to farm gold like crazy for a white with 2 rune slots.

Opinions vary, but I like random loot. I figured this was one was settled years ago. Some hard coded unique drops + Random... way to go. Now can the system be tweaked? Sure. I find the quality too good in general. I like lucky finds, have no problem with more, but the quality doesn't always have to be so high on them.

To note: I greatly reduced level scaling in my play-through. Mileage may vary.

Random items don't facilitate "infinite replayability", quite the opposite - it makes every run feel the same due to the genericness of the equipment. Even Diablo and Diablo-clones have specific items that can drop because it gives a concrete goal to work towards and even open up different builds. Admittedly, D:OS2 doesn't really have 'builds', the attribute system is trivial to the point of wondering why even have attributes, but still. Coupled with the bloat, forcing you to change gear every level, makes for a very sickly equipment system. Even if this "infinite replayability" was somehow true, I don't see how it is a desired trait to *design around*. Every book or movie we consume more than once is such "despite" their lack of randomization, I'd argue the lack of random elements is one of the things which makes them good and worthy of multiple readings/viewings. Make a good and well-thought-out game and the urge to replay it will come naturally, trust me on that.

The problem is Larian's attempt to reinvent the wheel when it doesn't need reinventing (and Swen's stubbornness in his attempts to jam a square peg into a round hole). Either that or they are too stupid and lacking in introspection to see how this system doesn't work with this type of RPG. Or any type of game for that matter, since even Diablo-clones have 'hand-placed' items, only the method with which you acquire them is random. You decide. I don't think they are stupid, though, just misguided.

What I loved most about Diablo was probably 'set items'. If gathered set items and equipped them, they gave even more benefits. Which kept them even worthwile on higherlevels even if they would have been outleveled otherwise.

What I hate most about D:OS: Items are two random. Yay, I found a found a purple crossbow. But turns out it is garbage because it gives +2 for One handed.

A unique item should not last for the entire game, but it should last at least for a longer part of the game. Gear from Bracchus is so old, it is understandable, that it is not uptodate and lost it's strength through aging. But because gear influences to heavily damage for physical fighters, it can't be to strong either.

I kind of liked the idea of improveable items in the first game, but the implementation was flawed sadly, because it was to difficult to improve them, without exactly knowing were to find. What I also remember is spotting a unique items in a birds nest or something like that and going to get it for my friend, which was a really good item and recrafting Swords of the Planet every few levels, which kept it relevant for the rest of the game for our Madora tank. Though calling it 'unique' was quite a stretch in that respective.

The purpose of randomness in games is to create uncertainty.

A small amount of uncertainty is good because it facilitates emergent play - something unexpected happens and the player is confounded or surprised and must react. At a fundamental level, this is the point of critical hit/miss systems. It is based on the idea that no matter how competent you are, it is still possible to fail. Or to put it another way, no matter how incompetent you are, it is still possible to fumble your way to success. The outcome in either case is not certain. The odds might be in your favour, or stacked against you but the player can now experience a whole host of emotions they would never feel if the outcome was 100% certain. The player can hope for success despite slim odds. The player can experience doubt over past successes because what if I fail next time?

Too much uncertainty is bad because it takes agency away from the player. The player of the game must be able to affect the outcome with their actions and decisions. If the outcome is entirely random, the player's actions have no meaning. Their past successes have no merit. Their future attempts at success are beyond their ability to control, so why even play at all?

I think D:OS2's loot randomisation sabotages some of its gameplay systems and reward mechanisms. BG2 is a good example by way of contrast because most of the loot in BGII is fixed and placed by hand.

BG2 has very memorable loot like Carsomyr because you don't just randomly find it in a barrel and thank your lucky stars for this gift from the stats god. You had to kill a dragon to get Carsomyr. The build up to the fight was awesome. The fight itself was awesome. The loot was awesome. There is a story behind the blade which you continue to write because it is now in your possession.

In D:OS2's early/mid game, skill books fulfill some of the promise of "static" items because new skills greatly expand the utility of your characters and the synergy between them. Skill books and most unique items are a squandered opportunity because far too many of them are available from traders that you can easily rob. I think more of these static items need to be hand placed into the game world, on to bosses, in to secret areas, inside hidden chests.

Randomized loot in D:OS2 can deprive the player of the satisfaction of getting great loot from a great battle. It can deprive the player of the joy of exploration - of wandering into a cave with a secret door that leads underneath a waterfall with a chest that has awesome goodies inside.

The way loot is randomised is strange. I became aware of certain loot generation patterns in the Tower of Braccus Rex/Gargoyle Maze:

1) at least one table of items is generated for each zone in the game.
2) certain triggers will re-generate or cycle the loot table (I think this also happens to affix combinations too). Some of these triggers are: entering a zone or looting a container in the zone for the first time, opening a trade window for the first time (or after 1 hour lapses in game) and opening certain chests.
3) Loot order is not fixed but distributed into clusters of containers. These are usually groups of similar container types - vases, crates, barrels, corpses.
4) Opening all containers within a cluster will always result in the same type and quantity of loot but not necessarily in the same order.
5) Alternating between containers in different clusters will change the type and quantity of loot from chests. If there are multiple chests, opening the chests in different orders will change the type and quantity of loot.
6) All of the above persists through a save state, so using trial and error, you can find a sequence of containers that results in a lucky charm proc, you can quick load, repeat the sequence until you get to the container that procs, quick save and reroll the item inside. Don't like the item? Change the sequence of the containers.

It isn't my place to say whether this is something you should or shouldn't exploit. It isn't my place to say if this is designed intentionally or that developer intent should dictate how you as a player should play the game.

This is my first Divinity game and I'm blind playing Tactician. I have to repeat many fights and many areas due to poor preparation/decision making. This is what made it easy to spot looting patterns. The Tower of Braccus Rex/Gargoyle Maze was a key for this because I kept reloading and repeating sections of the tower/maze due to accidentally leaving my party members chained. They kept dying to traps. The mechanics of loot generation are far too transparent.

The process is predictable to the extent that I can roughly identify clusters on sight. If there is a trader or chest in the zone, I know that leaving containers unlooted from at least two clusters will allow me to cycle the chest's contents or the trader's inventory without having to wait for an hour.

Despite how predictable this behaviour is, it consistently yields uncertain results because the affixes on the item change on every quick load. Due to the number of affix permutations, it is unlikely I will get my top 4 affixes. There are not enough rules to protect the player against against nonsensical affix combinations. You can roll single handed and dual wielding on the same Legendary Wand, meaning that one or the other stat is always wasted. This should never happen.

Large scale random generation/allocation of items is not compatible with a game that has a finite number of lootable containers and enemies. You cannot re-instance an area and enemies do not respawn.

D:OS2's random loot is most similar to Diablo 3 which is a big problem in itself because Diablo 3 is all about re-instancing and rolling the dice. It isn't an adventure game with treasure hunting elements any more and hasn't been since the design of the game centred around greater rifts. It is now more appropriately described as a gauntlet style arcade game where enemy hp and damage output scale exponentially with greater rift level. The last time I played monster hp was doubling every 4 levels. Keeping pace with the doubling of hp requires damage multiplier stacking and each new season added items that provided damage multiplication. This is how 100k damage numbers became 10 trillion damage numbers in about 1.5 years.

This is fine as long as you know what it is and what it involves. Its a dice roll game you involuntarily play while levelling up. Levelling up inherently involves killing hundreds of enemies per minute, all of which are capable of dropping randomly generated loot. The faster you do it, the faster you level up. The uncertainty of what you might find and how incrementally useful to you it might be is part of what breaks up the monotony of grinding paragon levels.

On a seasonal schedule it makes sense as a way of holding the player captive to a personal goal for a few months at a time. It makes no sense in a game like D:OS2.

I find randomization a pretty fun part of the game's loot system, but it's always disappointing seeing a unique item that quickly gets tossed aside not too long after it's obtained - especially with how big stat bloat can get later on. I like the idea of uniques scaling with the player level, or maybe having some means to "upgrade" the item to your current level. Might be a good way to utilize the crafting system which doesn't have too much emphasis on it right now.

I really think what hayte wrote says everything that makes me feel sad and sometimes frustrated on playing DOS2 at this moment.

ps: i really hate the inventory management but this is another topic.

Nice post, Hayte.

I definitely agree that it was a missed opportunity making the skills so available to thievery. How much more psyched would you be if you actually found or earned that skill through glorious combat? At which point, when you move forward to the next act, THOSE vendors would stock all the skills from the previous act so you can double up or get those that you missed.

I think a huge part of the problem is the scaling. By having such aggressive scaling, the items become worthless almost immediately. Damage and armor are by far the most crucial stats and they're the ones that scale obscenely.

That Braccus set had the potential to be a Carsomyr. It gave a unique ability, some pretty decent stats and some nice lore from the first game. But as soon as you can finally wear it you go through a bunch of story missions with a glut of xp and outlevel it nearly instantly. Such a shame. I'd be surprised if anyone actually spent as much time wearing it as they did hunting for the pieces. It totally subverts the whole idea of going on an epic quest for an appropriately epic reward.

It's not game ruining or anything, but it's definitely a big weak spot.

Since the most recent update, I have to completely agree with the OP. Not only with unique items you can find throughout your adventures, but also on the vast majority of all of the level 18-20 end-game unique items that used to come with 3 rune sockets have been nerfed to 1 socket and their vendor values are all trash now, making them statistically substantially worse than a level 20/21 vendor purchased Divine. The triple sockets made many of these items better than anything you could find or purchase 2-3 levels higher, and the feeling you get when you found one of these items was amazing FeelsGoodMan.

Now though? I don't even bother picking them up as their vendor value has been nerfed to oblivion as well, and my gear is usually better by the time I find them anyway.

To add to OPs statement earlier about hand-placed loot; I completely agree.

If I am going to go out of my way and spend hours on side quests to find that (supposed-to-be) awesome unique item, that item should provide SOME type of usefulness past its spawned level where I wont end up almost being *required* to replace it on my next level-up. It just feels vastly unrewarding and actually hurts the replay value of this game.

As what the OP mentioned, in games like Baldur's Gate 2 where you can get items like Lirarcor +3 or Celestial Bane or Carsomyr +5 very early on, I can use those items for almost (if not) the entire play-through and that doesn't make the game less replayable. It is actually more rewarding to know that I can reliably find these items that will last me rather than doing this dumb vendor grind to find that one Divine item that trumps the one I purchased from the same vendor on my previous level-up.

Further, this game doesn't have randomly generated dungeons or areas with re-spawning monsters to allow a fun method of grinding for this randomly generated Divine gear; I am restricted to scum-saving or waiting every X hours for a vendor to update if I am unhappy with my loot rolls by level 21/22 and am nearing the last few end-game fights.

I also don't think any response that suggests I use mods to "fix" what is broken is a viable solution; I shouldn't have to resort to using a third party mod to fix a fundamentally flawed aspect of the game's base design. The game should've addressed this from the start.

Just to put things into perspective; This game was released just shy of 1 month ago and I am already considering putting it down after my third play-through and nearly 600 hours invested (EA included).

Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, D2LOD, etc. are games that were released 15+ years ago and I still play them to this day, many thousands of played hours later, and to me they never get old. DOS2 already feels played-out to me. FeelsFrustratedMan.

Edit:
One should sense a tiny bit of over-exaggeration in my post, as there is one item I have stuck with nearly the entire play-through (Amulet of the Void) because of the socket and Immunity to Stun on an amulet.

Other than that though, even unique items like An Mafin shield and the unique 2h Mace, Armor of Eternals (crafted to scale with player level - can still find better Divine armor at vendors same level) and the unique 3-layered crossbow with the high water damage all used to have 3 sockets now have 1... I have better items one level later even without having the modifiers like "Deflecting" and such.

Just.... Argh. Very disappointing.

Incidentally, as I already pointed in that other thread linked in the OP, this over-abundance of randomized loot also plays a significant role in aggravating an already cumbersome inventory bloat.

+1

That someone was me, but to be clear I wasn't exactly talking about scaling items as they are now.
I was pointing as a positive reference model the way Might & Magic X handled "Relics": magic items that leveled up four or five time across the entire game... So you could get them at any point and they would stay useful until the end (if not even the best items in their class, in some cases).

And for context M&MX was also a game with a lot of random loot.
They just handled it the other way around compared to D:OS1 and 2. Randomized items were the "base line" of itemization, and then unique items (relics) were the real deal.
Unlike Larian, the developers there understood that unique items need to feel special and valuable and to stick around for a while.

Of course, it was easier for them, since their items, while growing across the game, didn't SNOWBALL in stats as comically as they do in D:OS 2.

so dam true mate.

One of the interesting things about computer adaptations of D&D is that D&D is designed for the tabletop. The math doesn't involve large numbers and the arithmetic is simple to do in your head. It has to be for D&D to work in a social setting because you cannot expect people to do long multiplication of factors on the fly. It would interrupt the flow of the game. Stop! Its calculator time!

Adventure roleplaying has been entrenched in computer gaming for a while now and this allows developers to do things like damage calculation with huge numbers, fractions and long multiplication because human beings no longer need to crunch the numbers. This is good because you don't have to do mental math anymore but in D:OS2, is there any compelling reason why your damage at level 20 is a hundred orders of magnitude more than at level 1? Base dagger damage at level 1 is single digit range. At level 20 its what? 3 digit range?

Then you pump finesse, multiply by crit factor and multiply by warfare factor until you have a humongoid number.

Between level 1 and 20 its not suprising you toss your gear every couple of levels. The math rapidly turns small numbers into huge numbers you can't easily crunch in your head.

This is one of those strange situations where going back to pre-computer basics might be a good idea for future development. Try keeping the numbers small like in D&D and see how that affects power scaling and difficulty. How it affects itemisation. When the numbers don't escalate rapidly, you can keep items for longer, develop attachments to them, build stories and quests around them because you know players will use them for longer.

You don't need to shower random loot with massive stats from every barrel and pile of skulls. Less in this case can be so much more.

Base damage at level 20+ is 4 digited, crit can be easily 5 digited. So yeah, it is all about huge number bloat in D:OS2, while in D:OS1 it was more about being able to do more per turn.

Good analogy. I installed the no-scaling mod originally just so I could enjoy the adventure without spending most of my time in the inventory screen, but a unexpected benefit was that...

I could now do-the-numbers-in-my-head (as you said) and began to get a feel for the relative strengths of different skills, etc. Very helpful!

Im really shocked you have to explain this simple concept to people. Respawning mobs is preciously why random loot works in diablo AND HAVE NO PLACE IN A GAME SUCH AS THIS.

SERIOUSLY PILLARS AND TYRANNY BOTH WENT FINE WITH FIX LOOT, WTF HAPPENED.

Tyranny's skill and talent system suck though, that skill level up system almost gave me cancer.

I didn't play Tyranny, but I played PoE (without expansions) and while I think it still handled it far better than Divinity, itemization was for the most part bland as hell.

I did play Tyranny, and my main complaint is kinda similar which is that it also ran out of steam somewhere in its second half: it was interesting up until that point, but both it and OS2 went a bit Bloodlines toward the end.

I feel my comments about the rest of it are probably not especially insightful as they're largely subjective.

I thought the items in pillar was pretty interesting, there were a lot to choose from, different weapon/armor types, different builds, then later the dlc soulbound items. Also the even the weakest unique weapon in the game can be upgraded into the highest tier. I enjoyed pillar of eternity very much and even wrote a pretty long wizard solo guide for it.

Tyranny on the other hand is something else entirely, the items function in the same way, I like the story and everything, but the entire skill level up system and talent system is just awful in my opinion, so much wasted potential.

So still no aswner from Larian Right?

They hard ever answer, so not surprising at all.

They shouldn't answer to be honest, because it would just make a Larian employee a target and thats not cool.

Public relations exists for a reason and all communication can, should and does go through PR. The public (meaning "us lot") are a force of nature in sufficient numbers. Someone makes a promise that can't be kept or they say something wrong or offensive and they can get swept away by the tidal wave of public contempt. People can be scary and unreasonable sometimes.

Some of the ideas in this thread involve very significant changes to core gameplay systems. They might not even be feasible to implement in the short term. Either way, the discussion is not a waste of time. Create a well of ideas that Larian people can draw inspiration from. If they are good ideas, they will spread and manifest somewhere, sometime.

I don't know about you guys, but whenever I find a great item, my friends get excited. So, the randomness may be annoying and the inability to reroll secondary stats is lame, but at least finding good items feels good. In some games, the looting is so boring and you never get excited when you find an upgrade.

I absolutely never expected them to change anything (even if admittedly an Enhanced Edition with a reworked itemization would make me extremely happy).

I'm arguing this topic because I'm hoping to see improvements in their future projects, not because I'm deluding myself into thinking "They will totally change the game in the way I want it"...

Which is also why I'd be curious to hear their take on it now.
Are they actually satisfied with the result? Do they think this is something they should stick to, in the future? In what way do they feel this is genuinely better than the alternate options? Etc.