Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Civil skills kinda suck

I have a bit of a gripe with the civil skill system in this game. I can't shake the feeling that most of the 'civil' skills should just be baseline, or baked into other things.

F. example:

Why are barter and persuasion separate skills? In most canonically 'classic' RPGs they'd be represented by one stat called CHARISMA. I do know that a lot of games tried to split them, but let's be real -- in 95% of RPGs barter-type skill is either useless because it's easier to just grind more stuff to sell, or mandatory because for some illogical reason every merchant in the world will demand the entire GDP of their country for a shoddy leather vest no one in their right mind would even look at, were they not a level 1 protagonist in dire need of covering their bare self!

-- Divinity doesn't have the latter problem, but I found that by late game I can buy upgrades from merchants on every level and still end the game with close to 200 thousand gold.

Persuasion. The skill requirements presented in brackets for persuasion dialogue tell me that the system was changed either last minute, or some time in development to tie into the Persuasion stat, rather than base stats; And I think it was the wrong decision. Now, of course, an all-strength dwarf with the eloquence of a troglodyte won't sway many hearts and minds with his 'oog'-like speech, but if he makes a good point -- why do NPCs still refuse to let him solve a strength-based problem?

The game's brilliant writing genuinely threw me off when instead of persuasion being a puzzle where you as a player figure out what a select NPC wants to hear it is instead a bland skill check; And I do think the game would be better off if the former was the case.

And if you don't want to play a diplomat -- nobody is stopping you from just giving them the axe if you choose to play that kind of character. It just makes no sense to me that a psycho axe murderer can't intimidate their way through some things they don't quite feel like getting their hands dirty with, without a full course of how to verbally influence people.

Sneak. I can't for the life of me think of a reason anyone would put points into it. Perhaps it's too strong with 0 point investment; But my real gripe with it is this:

Why are Sneak and Thievery separate skills? I think them being one skill would make the most sense.

What purpose do unidentified items serve? Gold sink? I do understand that most games do it because Diablo did it way back before anyone knew what a diablo clone was, but... Honestly, does Loremaster stat add anything meaningful into the game? The answer is that it doesn't and nothing will be lost if both unidentified items and the skill just go away. Or maybe you could simply make intellect / wits take its function (whichever is higher) to add some flavor to base stats.

What's left... Lucky Charm? In my opinion it should either just be a baseline chance to find random extra loot (because that's the name of the game. loot.), OR it should only be on items / runes. As things stand Lucky Charm just serves as "Barter Xtreme Edition" because the 10% you save on vendor-deals is easily outweighed by just having 100 extra gold found in a barrel, or 2-3 green+ items you'd find at a location to sell for extra profit.

tl;dr:

Civil skills are boring and add very little to the game. Make them baseline.

My remarks about your post:

I think Loremaster is also used to Identify enemies features.

Investing heavily into Lucky Charm is a nice way to find nice random loot and balance economy somewhat (It's also the only way to make finding loot a little more interesting rather than having to constantly purchase new gear every level).

Sneak is partly broken so far. It needs rebalancing.

Barter is okay to me.

Persuasion could be redone, because no matter what, there are certain persuasion skill checks meant to be failed no matter what.

But that's exactly the problem with it. You should be finding random loot upgrades regularly as a general thing, not as a thing that only happens with heavy stat investment. It's a trap diablo 3 fell for when that came out, where once you hit max. level you had to stack 'magic find' stat from items and grind, grind, grind until you had good enough gear to progress into harder difficulty modes.

I also didn't find that it balanced the economy at all because, as I said, it's just barter but better. And even without ever touching barter you can acquire enough gold by the final act you'd have no idea what to do with it. Really, money problems in this game only exist in the first hour or so of Fort Joy. Unless you take thievery on character creation and just pickpocket the essential skillbooks / some items to get you started, which makes that a non-issue.

Lucky Charm is an easy civil skill to get. Just choose 1 of your 4 toons to stack Lucky Charm, and it's a party wide benefit. You don't need to specifically loot with the toon that has it.

That leaves you room to stack Thievery on a 2nd toon. Persuasion on a 3rd that you feel has the best array of tags.

The 4th toon needs only be a hybrid between persuasion (to mitigate the chances one of your toons doesn't have an available tag).

Items can be identified at a merchant, so Loremaster is only a Quality of Life skill so doesn't need to be specialized. Telekinesis doesn't need much (if any) investment because teleport works better. Bartering might be good, but easier to just donate trash items to vendors to get their attitude up. Sneak might be a good 4th toon option, but still not that important depending upon playstyle.

And too, don't forget that civil skills can be enhanced by gear as well.

And on top of all that... you can respec your civil skills at any time with the mirro on Lady Vengeance. So always have one toon maxed with Lucky Charm, and the others waypoint/pyramid to the mirror and respec civil skills as needed. Not that difficult.

Only if you are playing alone, coop does not work that way.

No, no it is not; But my problem with it is exactly that. It is nothing but a layer of annoying busy work that interrupts the flow of the game, without providing any meaningful gameplay choices. And as the chap above me pointed out, it is a bit annoying in co-op because the skill is not shared with your co-op partner(s) or any characters tied to them.

Also I totally forgot telekinesis existed, that's how impactful it was on my 200 hours with this game.

regarding persuasion, you're half right

the persuasion skill is, from my experience, more important for passing a check than having the stat associated with the option you chose. however, it's not a bland skill check; the options most likely to succeed will depend on what makes sense writing-wise for the character you're persuading. for example, if you're talking to a bridge troll, an intimidation check (like strength) is unlikely to work even with high persuasion

also, you only listed one (and arguably the least important) aspect of loremaster. the much more useful advantage it provides is information about enemies in combat. without loremaster you can't see things like resistances and immunities. identifying items is just a side benefit, and if that were loremaster's only use you could forego it entirely since many merchants have level 5 loremaster and can identify things for you

agreed with sneak and bartering though

Stat checks... this means:

1. Save before each conversation
2. See if there is a need to persuade someone
3. If you fail - reload, teleport to ship, respec
4. Pass stat check

Hm... I mean, it surely adds to the time it takes for a playthrough, but I don't think that stat checks actually add something.

Bartering? In a party of four you usually have a level 8 barterer before level 14.

The only one which makes SOME sense to me is thievery.

I'd suggest something else - wits should give a bonus to persuasion and bartering (which are actually the same thing if you ask me), finesse to thievery and sneaking.

However - the worst thing about this system, as it is now, is the fact that building the initial party for Fort Joy and the Hollow Marshes is really a tradeoff between "this is how I want to play" and "this is what makes actual sense when it comes to our party economy" (means: thievery 3 on one character as early as possible is more or less a must have to get all the skillbooks and some hardware for a proper 4 toon party - sad, but true).

For me this means that, since I have all the achievements for act 1 anyway, I play with the Fort Joy respec mirror mod, so I can do "crazy" things like two summoners (without having two Pet Pal toons) or a wizard AND an enchanter, without wasting civil ability points like crazy into two toons with loremaster (which is the most pointless of them anyway).

Even moreso, since high Persuasion on one character (preferably a lizard with Mystic + Scholar and Pet Pal) is a must anyway, it more or less serves no other function than to suck up a whole lot of civil ability points.

All in all - I don't like the civil ability point system either. If it goes for good, all the better.

Dialog should be about roleplaying choices, btw... not "lets google which dialog options get us the most XP so we will be at an appropriate level when we go and whack that Doctor".

Which, in turn, means for me that only combat and "any" quest conclusion (which is at least meaningful in some way) should give XP.

Think about Slane... I would NEVER want to roleplay a character who slays that cool guy, but this is one thing that keeps me from maxing out my Act 1 XP even more (which would be an advantage later).

you really don't need thievery or to min max at all in order to succeed in this game on tactician difficulty

i've never killed a character i didn't want to for the exp

Don't worry guys, modders feel the same way.
There are few mods in progress that will fix it one way or the other.

Including overhauls that will remove them completely and turn into cobat-based skills for additional options.