Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Feedback on Memory

Anyone who says zoning is useless in DO2 does not know how to use wooden crates properly. :3
With enough boxes you can turn the odds of any battle in your favor.

PFT! exploits :P

And please no dividers? :P

As has been said before, relying on the RNG to provide the player with necessary stat boosts is a questionable-to-poor design choice in a game with limited XP and loot available, especially since there is relatively little pre-placed loot.

It locks you into the items which have the best stats you need even if there are upgrades. For instance, I've found some daggers which do much higher damage, but using them means giving up on the +2 Finesse from the weaker dagger. It creates an unstable cycle where you need to get better and better RNG drops for each upgrade.

Actually even if the RNG wasn't involved... I'd have a serious question with the game sort of making the attributes arbitrary by flooding the player with 20-30 attribute points from items.

Technically you could just RNG the stores to death though that will take some time. Also, there is crafting too and when the full recipe list comes out we can then complain that it either isn't enough or what have you.

Furthermore, the soft caps are pretty easy to reach which, while it doesn't get rid of the RNG, does reduce some of its influence. So you actually have a decent amount of points to play around with.

I agree that the memory system needs some tweaking
My problems with memory right now are:

-I don't like the 2 points per slot concept. The 1 point does nothing?! That is not satisfying. I would much rather have 1 points for 1 slot but have the abilities rebalanced so that much more of them take up two or more slots.
--OR give memory some other bonus in addition to the slots.
--OR give characters 3 ability points per level, which I think would be great to allow more flexibility. and the stat system needs a rework/rebalance anyway so it wouldn't hurt too bad

I really like someone else's idea of giving every ability an extended or bonus version by allocating an extra slot to it. That would be awesome

What if all characters started out with 5 Memory instead of 10, bonuses to Memory on items were cut in half, but 1 attribute point in Memory = 1 Skill slot?

That makes each point in Memory useful, and lets you get more value per attribute point without giving you too many starting slots or too many slots from item bonuses.

So basically half of what I suggest, and done far less ellegantly.

You wanted to keep Memory at 10, but increase the usual memory cost per skill from 1 to 2. The reason for cutting +Memory bonuses on items in half is because 1 point in Memory is now worth twice as many skill slots (from 0.5 to 1). Which approach is the more elegant one is up to personal opinion.




I haven't fully made up my mind one way or the other on the idea that points into skills increase your skill slots by 1 for that skill only. One point into a skill-granting ability gives one specialized slot. So 1-5 special use slots. That would allow for splashing of points, but powerful skills would be unavailable without specialization.

Yeah, that sounds okay. It might be a bit tricky to code, figuring out "okay for this 4 Mem skill, the first two slots go into the free slots in the specialization, but the other two require two free slots in the general use category".

If that issue can be solved, that sounds like a good plan.

I've been thinking about it for a long time and the best way I thought about "fixing" it with the least change possible was:

- Keep the 2 points per slot.
- Give 2 free Memory slots every 5 levels.
- Rebalance the skills that need more than one slot. They already cost more action points to cast, not to mention the ones that need the extra source point.

It is objectively provable that your idea is the less elegant one.

10
10
10
10
10

^this is how a raw stat sheet looks when no points/racial bonuses are distributed in my variant.

10
10
10
5
10

^this is your idea

That 5 there that breaks the neat pattern? That's objectively disgusting.

Not to mention the practical implication of one point in that one stat being worth twice as much of it's base value, whereas my version simply increases the granularity, by making 1 point a valid increment.

Stop overreacting and sperging out over "the numbers don't line up, the numbers don't line up!" No one has 10/10/10/10/10, there's always a 12 in there somewhere.


Your idea is OBJECTIVELY less intuitive. "You get 10 Memory points, each point is one skill slot. (P.S. Skills typically take 2 Memory.)"

"One Memory point equals 1 skill slot, skills typically cost 1 Memory" is OBJECTIVELY more intuitive.


EDIT:
Lord Crash's idea just below is definitely a better way of handling it than giving extra skill slots reserved for a specific skill type.

I have another suggestion. Imo the memory requirements for skills should be reduced once you climb up the ladder in respective schools. The memory spots a skill or spell needs should be reduced by one point every time you spend a point in the respective school/ability (up until it's at a minimum of one spot).

Exmaple:
If you have the pyro ability at level 1 a medium-powered spell costs 3 memory slots. When you spend another ability point in pyro (once you level up) the memory requirement for the same spell is reduced to 2. And on pyro level 3 (and above) it only needs just 1 memory spot.

That way the overal memory limitation (and freedom!) is still fully in place and simple to grasp while at the same time the better you get in certain skill schools the less memory space the respective skills and spells need (this is imo also a pretty intuitive solution since learning and mastering a school should make you better at performing the respective skills and spells).

With such a system you didn't even need any spell-learning restrictions. There is nothing wrong with learning a high-power spell that requires 5 memory slots if you're only at level 1 of the respective school since you can't combine it with a whole lot of other skills and spells in that case due to the high memory spot requirements. Gaining ability levels in certain schools then only serve to reduce the memory spots a respective spell/skill needs. So the more you climb up the ability ladder in a school the faster and more efficient you are at performing its skills or spells and the more spells and skill you can remember at the same time.

This seems like the best system. Memory as a derived attribute from memory the stat is needlessly complex - just make them equivalent, and increase costs if need be. Adding extra school-specific memory, or a school-specific discount would be a great addition to the mostly lackluster spell school skills.

LordCrash offers an excellent suggestion on how to improve combat abilities and Memory slot usage

Thanks.

What I don't understand is why Larian would promise new features like this without already having a strategy to make it work.

It reminds me of the No Man's Sky debacle. (Though I'm not suggesting that D:OS2 will be a similar trainwreck.) They kept making promises even though it's now clear they had no idea how to keep them.

It seems like there are really obvious issues with the memory system, armour system, spell-crafting, etc, and they should have been aware of these issues long before now. I'd be much happier if they'd limited their promises and focused their attention on a few features they could implement properly.

I disagree. All the elements above WORK. They may have issues and they aren't perfectly balanced, but they work and they work in a way that creates a fun experience for a lot of people.

And tbh this is only the alpha version of the game. To balance the game properly is exactly what this here is all about. The final release of the game is months away. Larian also changed a lot during the early access development of DOS1, all based on community feedback.

If you really think that, you have no idea what Elegant or Objectively means.

Elegance in design is about more than just making it simple to understand. It's also about consistent patterns.

Both solutions might make 1 point of memory a worthy investment, but yours is disgustingly crude in how it achieves it's goal.
As I mentioned, it breaks the pattern of a base value each stat has, and it alters the relative value a single point has compared to others.

The system we have already has a "P.S. Skills cost 1-3", that much doesn't change either way.
What I suggest is simply increase the granularity of it, so that 1 memory is a valid increment of investment.
What you suggest is altering the value in relation to other stats, so that the benefit increments line up with the current cost increments, as though they were set in stone.



This runs into a big problem though: eventually, skills of vastly different power will end up occupying the same amount of memory, leading to scenarios where there's an obvious best choice, and eliminating the cool mechanic of filling up your kit with smaller abilities.

A person with 12 slots won't be choosing between 4 meganukes or 12 combat-tricks, they'll be just able to equip all the meganukes they have, and still have spots for a few tricks.

It's essentially gutting the interesting parts of Memory as a mechanic.

Perhaps, just a thought, you could try getting off your high horse and not using phrases like "That's objectively disgusting" and "disgustingly crude" because someone dared to have a slightly different opinion than you.