Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General AI 2.0 Patch Pros and Cons Mega Thread

I thought it'd be easier on the Devs that are responsible for reading through our comments if we gathered them into one collection of what we do like and don't like.

Post whatever you feel like was good, bad, or you are neutral on but have suggestions for and I'll do my best to compile them into one post here.
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Pros of AI 2.0
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- The improved AI intelligence when it comes to analyzing and making use of their environment has drastically increased the difficulty in a way that challenges us players to examine the field around the encounter and prepare correctly by eliminating or creating environmental effects for us to take advantage of.

- The substantial increase in gold generation early game has been a most welcome change, however it comes with it's own problems. (Listed below in cons)

- The ability to choose what class our companions are has vastly changed how we plan and create our own characters.

- The Durability change was one of the most loved changes, if not the most loved change. No longer do we have to struggle with our gear breaking and not being able to repair it for ages. Gear can still degrade when attacking objects though, but this is completely reasonable I think.

- With your decisions at Larian to have trading be a more core experience Bartering has finally become a more worthwhile skill to allocate points too. The Attitude mechanic also makes it more worthwhile to trade and befriend npcs. (Though i do recall a few players mentioning that Bartering was only working at 4 or 5% efficiency instead of the 10,20,etc % it was supposed to be working at.

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Cons of AI 2.0
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- Though gold generation was greatly increased you also increased the cost of books and basic gear to an unreasonable amount that has us nearly back where we started before the patch where most if not all our gold had to go to one or two items and we'd be completely broke again.

- While being able to choose our companions classes has been a great addition it reveals the flaws in the classes rather glaringly more than before I think. Most classes are underwhelming and should never be taken compared to others. However, letting us enter a screen much like character creation for companions would allow far better customization. The screen could just include picking a talent, stats, class and spells.

- Thievery has become a pointless dump skill as the books and gear are too expensive for anyone who doesn't have at least 2 points in Thievery right away and 2-3 pieces of +Thievery gear to steal anything. Skill books at the very least need a 50% price cut or Thievery will continue to be a worthless dump skill and the gold change will be nullified. Thievery also encourages slaughtering all the vendors to reacquire their items and gold.

- The community clearly all agrees that everlasting environmental effects were a terrible change. Cursed surfaces that never go away, ice that never thaws, smoke that never disperses, poison that never goes away, etc. Ice should thaw into water, smoke should dissipate, cursed surfaces NEED to be able to be eliminated. These surfaces also have caused players to get into fights with npcs because they touched the surfaces and went aggro on the player even if it wasn't their fault.

- Perseverance is underwhelming and isn't worth investing in as you rarely are hit by the effects that restore armor, I.E. Petrify and Frozen.

- Zombie talent is still completely worthless and a horrible choice to take in most if not all occasions.

- Silent Monks should NOT all become aggressive if they are damaged, this has turned already unbalanced fights into complete slaughters.

- Characters constantly stop moving and become unable to do anything but skip their turn.

- I've used Rain in the holding dungeon in the Fort and for some reason it turned the two prisoners in their cages into enemies requiring me to flee combat to get them to reset to passive, but not without them going -50 on all my party members. Not sure if that is intentional or not, but it is a horrible choice if it is because Rain is a too common spell to be used and if it turns neutrals into enemies this will complicate a lot of encounters.

- I've noticed when playing as Ifan as a mage that when I attacked he was unable to do damage even though it registered against the armor and health, it even critically hit, but he still did no damage making him completely worthless for the fight.

- The Rogue tag seems to be missing from character creation.

- People have reported that their Rogues will move out of the way when commanded to backstab and completely waste their turn/AP.

- Enemies cast buffs on the players party. An example is Magister Carin cast Restoration on my party twice in one fight.

- Source pools seem to be missing from all the places they were pre-patch.

- Source spells don't meld well with the lore and worldbuilding you have done at larian, magisters are using source abilities willy-nilly on the player, but we are starved of any source points for a long time unless we steal someones soul which also takes away from roleplaying potential. Source needs to be reworked or we need to be given the ability to freely use as often as enemies do, just something needs to change as it is lore breaking and game breaking in some occasions.

- Gear requiring attributes is an unrewarding mechanic that only serves to generate frustration. If anyone has seen the GDC talk the Diablo 3 team did where they talked about how after 110 hours the one dev found his first legendary and it was a quiver for a barbarian who doesn't use it at all. That is how it feels to us finding a robe with a req. of 12 strength.

- Levels 1-3 can be an unpleasant experience. Mentioned before was the NEED to kill Silence and save stingtail and griffs gang as the experience is too much to miss early game, but most players wouldn't even consider something like that would happen and by the time they look over there Silence is gone and has already killed Stingtail.

- "Ifan now has 1 thievery instead of 1 sneak

This might seem like a good change but one thing we have to remember that unless you have 1 sneak, you can't grab the prison key without being detected.

Of course older players will know this and have Ifan get Sneak to 1 anyway just to be able to do the Withermoore soul jar and grab the Houndmaster crossbow but newer players won't.

Because of this, if the players get sent to prison even with Ifan, if they don't level Sneak to at least 1 at level 2, they have to restart the game." -Ellezard

- The game feels like it leans too far to min/maxers and has essentially killed the newbies first run experience for players as they will eventually (most likely) feel the weight of their "mistakes" and are forced to restart their game to make the "right build". This is going to cause rage quitting, refunds, complaints and one of the worst is forcing players to go online to spoil the game for themselves because they can't compete with the game with the abundant sub-optimal and completely non-viable builds in the game.

- Hand placed gear has not been seen as that great of a change. Personally I cannot even tell what was hand placed and what wasn't which is how little a difference it seemed to make.

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Requests
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- More ways to increase NPC favor besides showering with gifts. This method will make the player want to only trade with ones that they know will die and than cause them to kill the NPC for their items and gold back. Also make this more clear on how much it'll increase the vendors favor with the PC.
- Consistent ratios, bonus from Persuasion, dialogue trees and options.

I personally either agree with or am neutral on the vast majority of this...

Except for EVerlasting Environemental effects - that I think is a GOOD thing. Unless you, say, cast rain and get things wet, poison shouldn't go away on its own. Nor should the water just evaporate in like thirty seconds, or oil just flee.

My only REAL complaint here is that blessed / cursed FIRE doesn't go away, because it should still burn itself out rather than becoming permanent. That way you'd be able to turn blessed surfaces into fire, the fire'd burn out even if it remained blessed, and then the thing would clear.
Otherwise, the remaining elemental surfaces seems quite good, if just because it doesn't make out of combat movement completely thoughtless, but rather makes you have to actually think tactically about what you're clicking on to SOME small degree, y'knkow? Just, again, blessed or cursed fire should burn itself out.

Rain once made Lohse aggressive towards me when I cast it in the encounter between Elodi and the thugs, on Elodi's side.

My main gripe with the everlasting environment is that ice patches don't go away and with the decent amount of ice casters in the game it makes it irritating to navigate the areas that they drop ice patches at. I know you can get rid of them, but still it just seems odd...it could atleast melt into a puddle of water instead.

I agree with much of this list - skill book prices could be halved and they'd probably be in an alright place with the amount of gold we get.

Also, the new AI makes the Arena fight way more unfair than it previously was.

I'd actually support ice melting into water, thinking on it, but that'd also lead to the downside of electric water being permanent.

Admittedly, electricity and ice BOTH fading wouldn't be bad, either, but poison and water should stay. But I think Ice shouldn't fade all that FAST, or even not all the time. It soudns like a nightmare to work in, really.

I have yet to try out the arena. Though I am currently playing through explorer mode as I found normal far too hard in certain key encounters.

I haven't found the arena fight to be that bad in either of my playthroughs, but then again I feel thats a failing of this patch. Certain builds and play styles will barley struggle ever, and others will struggle all the time.

There were no source pools where they were before - making it impossible to access Braccus' helm. Was this by design or is my game just glitched?

I remember in the patchnotes it says you can't get source until the collar is removed, so it might be that they won't spawn now until they are removed or it could be a bug.

In the previous patch, walking on the puddles with the collar on did nothing. It was already impossible to suck up Source from puddles before you could store it.

It is slightly frustrating to get totally wiped out on such a regular basis.

Wife and I are not that great at gaming, but we have enjoyed LAN-games for some time.

Now, with this last patch, one has to be EXTREMELY careful not to get spottet before one is finished setting up and removing stuff that could (read: will) get used against one.

Once the enemy has spottet you and the fighting starts, they/he/it has the advantage and slaughter is a fact.
Often we just sit and stare at the screen while we get paralyzed, knocked down, drawn and quartered one by one. And that's just in explorer mode.

But it looks really impressive. And we obviously have a LOT to learn.

Well, it's really important that you don't run into fights underleveled. Second thing to remember is that MA and PA are your only gods in this game. Get Armor of Frost and Fortify on your tanks, put them far out in the front and let your mages just cast spells out of hiding once the tanks have been engaged (naturally with Fortify and Magic Shell on them to prevent CC)

That being said, some party comps don't even work with this patch.

Larian has confirmed that the source pools were removed. The only way to get a source point is to absorb it from a soul jar.

Well okay. So I guess the proper way to play the game is to be evil.

There is also abilities that gather source from enemies or dead enemies I believe. But yeah, idk if i want to destroy some poor saps soul just for one use of an ability ;_;

That is quite a concern: I'm happy to not use source where it's optional, but ISTR there's a couple of places where it's actually quite necessary (such as removing the barrier in Braccus' tomb).

Well 2H melee damage&ability&talent(?) seems lacking way too much..

if you are playing a melee character there is no better option then 1h&shield style. Shield bonuses are way too good when compared to ''a little more damage'' (1h melee weapon loot from the bosses are far better then any 2H weapon i found in the game)

Also how about one last save versus status effects based on attributes when the armor is gone ? a bit chance may be

Skill book prices has to go down seriously..

And lastly i think enemy vitality buffed too much.. which kills smart combat and fun...

The innate ability on the two-hander is pretty useless yeah but a Two-hander in itself does so much more damage than a sword and board that a 2H warrior can easily shred through an entire enemy team in a few swings.

That's actually not true, the only thing you'd miss if you'd never removed your collar in act 1 is activating the shrine to get the helmet.

The barrier under the Gargoyle's Maze can be opened without using source. If you liberated Withermoore from his curse earlier in the game and touch the mysterious mechanism with whoever agreed to help him, he will appear to help you through.