Hi there!
I know DE is coming up soon and Larian probably doesn't have time to make a lot of changes, but
these are two suggestions this is a suggestion based on key issues with the game that I know a lot of the community really want to see addressed.
Currently, modding cannot fix them. It's my hope that Larian will address these widely acknowledged issues or at least provide modders with the tools to do so themselves.
1. Revert the "Round Robin" initiative systemI've actually been convinced that this isn't as big a deal if the other issues are fixed. I would still like for Larian to give us the option to mod it out, however.
I know I'm not the first to suggest this, but Round Robin - the turn order system in which an enemy will always move after an ally and vice versa regardless of initiative values - has the simple problem of making Initiative worthless on every character barring one, on whom you will stack Wits in order to have them go first.More importantly, it's contributed towards a metagame where damage trumps everything else - healing, armor regeneration and even positioning are secondary to your ability to deny the enemy their turns by CCing/killing them in turn order. This isn't such a problem in Act 1, but by Act 2 it starts becoming the far dominant strategy.I have evidence the community wants this gone: Bluefire's No More Round Robin mod has 2,100 unique visitors and 274 current subscribers even though it completely breaks portraits (which I suspect is what deterred many visitors from downloading it, as it did me). The Discord, Reddit and even the forums are rife with discussions about this initiative system - most of them at best tongue-in-cheek and at worst highly scathing.Bizarrely, even though the Round Robin initiative system was not present in early access, modders have been unable to find any way to revert it to the old system. If Larian doesn't plan to change the system in and of itself, I really hope they will at least consider giving modders the option.
Suggestion: Make turn order revolve exclusively around initiative. If a player is determined to play the old way, they can stack Wits. Alternatively, allow modders an easy option to revert the game to the old early access initiative system.
2. Please change or reduce exponential damage scalingMany people have pointed out that the game scales exponentially, with damage and HP values increasing by a progressively larger amount per level. This, while strange and frustrating when trying to fight enemies of a higher level, at least means that damage, health and healing grow at roughly the same rate. However, the ability-based damage multipliers in the game compound this problem into a real issue:
Warfare, for example, is multiplicative. This means it scales
exponentially.
If you have a weapon of 50 damage, a +50% from finesse and a +50% from warfare, you do not get 100 damage: you get closer to 112. Late game, with 200 damage, +300% from finesse and +100% from warfare, you will get a whopping 1200 damage instead of 800.
Nice big damage values sound fun on paper, but it means all other aspects of the game become outpaced: once again, healing, armor and sometimes even positioning become obsolete by mid-late game. This strips the game of a lot of tactical depth and is exactly why Summoning - which is additive - falls off drastically late game by comparison.
Sadly, modders cannot fix this either due to being unable to affect the way damage bonuses multiply: we can only increase or decrease numbers, not affect how they interact. (i.e. we can change Warfare's bonus to 3%, but it will still be multiplicative and therefore function on an exponential curve)
Suggestion: There are four approaches to this that I can think of:
- 1. Reduce the damage gains from warfare and other exponential ability scaling
- 2. Buff healing and armor
- 3. Make the damage gains from warfare etc additive instead of exponential
- 4. Make healing, armor and max health scale exponentially in similar fashion
None of these are perfect.
In 1, reducing the scaling does not remove the confusing, counter-intuitive curve that results from exponential damage - it merely adjusts it, meaning whether or not it fits correctly with the rest of the game is almost purely based on luck. It'd be an improvement, most likely, but a risky one.
2. Increasing the values of armor, health and healing would help them a lot, but would most likely make them balanced in Act 3/4 but crazy in Act 1. They will still be exponentially outscaled, just more slowly, so it will still be just as counter-intuitive for new players.
3. This is, in my opinion, the best option of the four. By making damage increases additive instead of multiplicative, you keep damage valuable while preventing the need to have an Arms Race to the ultimate 10-stack Necromancer Blood Storm combo that oneshots everything. Instead of feeling pressured to put as many points as possible into their multiplier or lose efficiency, players will build more creatively.
This can be done by simply making the multipliers apply to base damage instead of output damage. For example, a weapon of 50 damage with a 300% bonus from finesse and a 100% bonus from warfare should grant 50 + 150 + 50 = 250 instead of 50 + 150 + 200 = 400.
4. This idea, while interesting, has no immediately imaginable means. Damage is exponential because it scales with both damage stats (Str, Fin, Int) and Abilities (Warfare, Pyrokinetic etc). Health only has Constitution (and the Picture of Health talent) and Healing only has Hydrosophist. Unless an additional multiplier was added somewhat arbitrarily, this is not feasible. Furthermore, unless NPCs were given this same exponential HP scaling, they would still suffer from oneshotting. This would require a lot of case-by-case encounter redesign to apply the new multipliers and, at this stage, I doubt Larian has either the time or inclination to bother with this. (I certainly wouldn't!)
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Thank you for taking the time to read. I'm really hoping to hear some news about how these issues will be addressed - if at all - in the Definitive Edition. I'm eagerly awaiting the launch of the new version either way and plan to play the hell out of it whether or not these issues will be addressed, but I would have a far better time with the game if they were.
Thank you for all your hard work, Larian!