Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General Has anyone figured out a way to fix Initiative?

I like these ideas.

This is the least gameplay mechanics should get to ameliorate complete removal of usual initiative role and effects.

As for hard CC, they should be achieved only with critical success. Then you can make Con a defense against criticals and Wit increases the crit chance - ergo: true balance.
And both attributes become very valuable.

I really feel cheated when it comes to Initiative when you look at the fact that Larian hasn't communicated anything at all on it after a full year of early access with the "old" system which as far as I know never caused major issues for players. The current turn order system cause a series of problems that can be very problematic in some cases:

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[*]- First it is very poorly described in game how initiative actually works and extremly misleading. As someone who specialized in UX design I can't stress enough how giving bad/false information to players is such a terrible idea and can create really significant displeasure regarding the game.

[*]- The lowest initiative on the team will played at 7th or 8th in the turn order every single time which basically means that this player (and the 3rd as well in a lesser way) will have by default a way less significant impact on the fight. If you decide to place your tank first it's good because he/she can get a good position in battle but then your damage come quite late into the turn order. Likewise placing your "support/healer" too early is a significant waste but having him/her playing as 7th or 8th character can be way too late and cause death of an ally.

[*]- I won't get too much into the impact it has on Wits being pretty underwhelming because it has been said already several times in this topic better than I would anyway but it still is a very important point specifically when I really love how all the other Attributes are pretty balanced as it stands

[*]- It very severely limit the range of tactical options available to the player. Before you could easily setup a combo between two characters with very close Initiative (like 11 and 10) to have nice interactions between the two, and overall you could have a clear idea of how your team will interact with each other. With this sytem you can be sure that A, B, C and D will always play in the same order but the only factor changing is if they are playing the odd or even turns which is not even really important anyway.
[*]This sytem creates extremly frustrating situations when enemies die as stated above. I lost battles litterally because of that because I planned my actions in advance for the next turn but by killing an enemy it moved another enemy turn much earlier and ruined all my plans. This system feels like playing casino machine more than a strategy game and it's a shame when everything else is really well thought out (in my opinion at least).

[*]- Similarly this system causes some very strange cases the biggest example being the "puzzle/fight" against the puppets at the very end of the game. The puppets tend to suicide a LOT (which is intended I guess) and to revive on the same turn. The issue is then that anytime they die they are replaced by another puppet playing its turn because of the new turn order system. This means that sometimes a single turn of one puppet can take about a minute of seeing puppets cycling between death and running around over and over. I genuinely wanted to throw my computer out of the window when I endured that absurd fight specially when the puzzle isn't even hard or any interesting whatsoever. It's only one example but there is many other instances with summons in particular that are very frustrating.

[*]- And while I am at it this new system creates super bizarre and hard to understand interactions with summons as well (in general the Initiative of Summons is very very strange and needs to be clarified a lot in my opinion)
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I really really really hope that you will come back to the old working very well system of Initiative. The whole point of it was that if you invested in it you could have the upper hand but at the cost of less of other stats (damage, health etc.). It never felt broken to me specially when the armors mechanics make it impossible to completely disable the enemy team on turn one.

And I'd like to say again that it's really bizarre and unfair that you never communicated on this massive change with us the community before going to full release.

NB: Sorry for the presentation of my post I used the "list" forum option to make a clear and clean list but nothing happens it makes it worse than anything else soooo, sorry.

I agree completely that the new system is a mess. I understand that it is a result of the new combat design philosophy.

Here is the philosophy for D:OS2 combat design:
"EVERY combat encounter MUST have screen-wide multiple poison explosions on turn one and every turn thereafter, alternating with turns of screen-wide smoke. Combat = environmental effects"

This is hard to balance if you allow the tame old initiative system because it allows you to kill most anything on turn 1 given that environmental effects can be chained so easily an so powerfully.

So I understand the decision, though I abhor it and the whole new imagining of combat. It was perfect in the original form of D:OS1

Having a stat give a bonus and then a mechanic that overrides it seems counter intuitive to me. I don't recall initiative being discussed as a major issue in EA.

Yeah it sucked when 3 enemies were going before me and I got frustrated with it so guess what I just invested in initiative and skills that increased it. It wasn't a game issue that I was investing in 1 primary attribute, it was my choice to do so.

Allow me to apologize, because if I came on too strong, it is only because I do care, and that was essentially the point I was trying to make too - that they can vary dramatically in a number of games and genres, and they don't necessarily relate to eachother very well. What I argue is that in this genre and this game, the current system works poorly - to say the least.

Other systems work great in other contexts. For example, I haven't played Imperial Assault, but I've played it's conceptual predecessor, Descent 2nd Edition, and it's system works great for it's format (although the turn order sounds different, based on your description). XCOM 2, while it may have flaws in other regards (I would argue), I can't see the turns working any other way, without breaking the game.

If XCOM 2 changed it's system to a system of first-inititative-first-move (which I will henceforth refer to as "initiative-based", because the D:OS2 system isn't actually based on initiative, it's "round robin" primarily), odds are that (if I were so into XCOM 2 as I am D:OS) I'd be over on their forums, arguing that this would be a terrible change.

Different systems work, like you imply, for different things.

Well, part of it is because of my personality type, for sure - I enjoy the de/construction of things, understanding the underlying systems, piecing things together, and taking them apart, especially conceptually. Call me deranged, but I derive both enjoyments and ulcers from it, and get worked up over it.

Another part of it is because I genuinely care about the quality of the game, because I actually like the game, and I want to love it, and it feels like the game wants to love me too. Larian really pieced together a great game, overall, but I think that it's important to examine the issues that it does actually have, so while I seem to be focusing a lot of negativity, it's because I perceive certain things to be problematic or broken; make no mistake, I love the game, and my incessant bitching is part of that. Sometimes that gets lost, and I relentlessly shit on the undeserving developers. It's not fair, especially when Larian deserves this win, but there it is.

And finally, like you say, getting worked up over it won't change anything, but the fact is that if we don't discuss these things, voice the issues, and discuss solutions, Larian will live on in the belief that there are no flaws, and they may stick to this for the next game - after all, the game is successful. I also believe that Larian is not beyond hope in regards to actually changing things in D:OS2. If not now, then possibly in a future Enhanced Edition. Or, again, in a potential, eventual, sequel.

I remain hopeful that they will come to their senses, at some point, especially regarding the armor system/binary predictability and the asinine nature of the initiative issues/round-robin turn-orders.

I disagree. I don't see it as obvious at all, and I suspect that Larian themselves are not entirely happy with how it works currently, but are also unsure what to do about it.

I personally find it incredibly doubtful that the armor system is going to bite it and simply be patched out - it may be revamped for an Enhanced Edition - but the round-robin turn-orders are another matter entirely, and I don't consider it impossible that Larian would actually fix that in a patch, considering how badly it works, and how easy it would be to fix, even if they make any such fix optional (I hope they don't - it's generally a bad idea to design for a variety of subsystems at once; but at the same time, it's obvious that the game isn't actually designed to use the round-robin turn-orders, as evidenced by the prevalence of initiative as an intended - meaningful - character stat).

Yes, combat is a lot messier than in D:OS1, and it's actually quite annoying. I think they tried to capitalize on that aspect - the interaction with the environment and layered effects (and by layered effects I mean such things as poison->explosion, water->steam, steam->blessed steam, or blood->electrified blood, and so forth) but they overshot the goal. By a lot.

A lot.

All of combat seems to revolve around this now, and with round-robin turn-order rather than initiative-based turn-order, it's a constantly changing landscape to the point where it's hard to actually determine what is going on, or make any plans.

A common concept that I would consider foundational to the very concept of turn-based as an enjoyable way to play out key resolution mechanics is the ability to think ahead and act upon the perceived development of the landscape as it is (and by landscape, I don't just mean environment, I mean it in the widest possible meaning of the word).

In D:OS2, that's.. really not there. Or at least it seems to have been lost as a key source of enjoyment, because it is practically impossible to plan ahead, because one turn on, the landscape may be completely different than from when you ended your turn. And then it changes during your turn, but is immediately undone the next.

Furthermore, you may not even WANT to put down water (just as an example) because the next turn, there's a guarantee that you won't be the one taking action, so you might actually be shooting yourself in the foot - but there's no way for you to know if you are.

You don't want to throw out a barrel, because there's almost a guarantee that it will blow up in your face - if there's even barrels around at that point (which is a big difference from D:OS1, where barrels sometimes would not even get used in combat, or simply not get hit by environmental or AoE effects, which is almost a guarantee in D:OS2).

And this goes both ways. The AI doesn't want to do these things either - unless there's a significant number of enemies, meaning that they do get to do several consecutive turns at the end of the round. The end result is that the idea of planning ahead or predicting the actions of your opponents are absent from the considerations in D:OS2 combat. The kind of set-ups that were so common and so integral to the enjoyment of the combat in D:OS1 is entirely absent in D:OS2, and combat in D:OS2 often devolves into "playing catch-up" and reactionary decisions on a turn-to-turn basis; and because of the armor system, the actions taken within those turns are entirely predictable and essentially binary, meaning that you know exactly what to do and what will happen at any one time within any given turn, removing any feeling of suspense or momentary hopefulness.

There are no moments of "YES!" or "Aaaah, noooo!" in D:OS2 that isn't caused entirely by your own fault, or that comes unexpected, and there is no enjoyment in the procession of consecutive turns because there is no way to fulfil even a short-term plan. And both of those things are absolutely essential to practically all turn-based systems.

Luckmann makes some very excellent points about the place of Initiative in battlefield control/progression and planning in reference to Initiative; and I think he really hit the head when it comes to Terrain Effects and setups being hampered severely by forced Round-Robin Initiative.

I also strongly agree that we should be speaking out about mechanical flaws and design mistakes no matter how grim the prospects of their change might be; and most, if not all of us do so because we want to see the game and the future content produced for it to be the best it can be.

My biggest complaint with this newer initiative system is when new enemies appear and join combat - They seem to be able to go right away after they join. Case in point, those damn evil clay golems in Act 2. As new ones get summoned (or revived?), they were able to go immediately after my turn was up, hitting for 200-300 damage each.

Hey, Kevin. I did what you suggested, and compiled my thoughts into a thread. The most relevant section relating to this issue is in the end, but I thought it was inappropriate to post it here, because I also touch upon other issues.

Really, guys, please. I refuse to believe that you're happy with how the system works.