Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Technical Issues Resistance cap intintional?!?!?

patch 1.0.130 yesterday
mentioned nothing about 'resistance caps'

patch 1.0.132 today
"Changes to resistance cap that were supposed to be in the patch but did not make it in"

80% cap is normally generous and fine
when a game is fully balanced for it...
this game is not balanced for such a cap at this time.

this affects gameplay FAR more than just resistances...
and to truly change resistances at this time,
requires a VAST rebalance of ALL game skills,
traits, resources, recipes, spells, combat, etc.
though ALL levels up till character level cap.

example:
* lvl 20 shield = 35%
* shield specialist skill lvl 3 adds 30% = 65%
* 'boost' the shield with Blacksmith, adds %20 = 85%.

so, after lvl 20,
now, minimal reason to pick up ANY shield for remainder of game.
now, there is no reason to put points in 'shield specialist'.
(capped at a meager lvl 3)

now, i can easily cap all resistance and blocking before level 20....

so, over lvl 20 game fun gets seriously nerfed?????

can't say i am very happy about that.

capping everything now removes MANY incentive for continued upgrades,
improved blacksmith skill, better armor,
better shields, nullifies many special traits,
oh, and lessens incentive for continued play.

your argument? ... 'use potions or buffs'... invalid.

again, game NOT balanced for caps at this time

never use potions...
never use buff spells...
never craft potions or craft buff spells...
why?
combat ineffective.
only last 3 turns and waste valuable action points.

example: lvl 20 combat can last a dozen turns...
buffing 'poison' just one encounter = 4 potions per character.
we are talking 16-20 potions per encounter for one resis buff.
encounters in the game are constant and around every corner.
easily over 100 potions per day!

a LOT of wasted time, wasted resources, and wasted action points.

FAR better to spend those points attacking or debuffing enemy.
charming, freezing, stunning, oil, wet, firefly, etc...
all same cost, all more effective use of action points.

now, IF buffs or potions lasted til combat finished
i would be using a LOT of potions and buffs.
they would be valuable and highly coveted!

as it stands,
duration toooooo short and cost too many action points.

Wait, this cap is INTENTIONAL!?

SHENANIGANS! I DECLARE SHENANIGANS!

The resistance cap makes no sense. The game as it was before was clearly designed for elemental absorbtion. Partially because of all the ways to get resistance high. There's potions that gives +100% resistance. Why would those even exist if you weren't supposed to get more than 80? And then there's elemental shields and absorbtion, elemental essences, rubies, the man at arms skill that raises your resistances by upwards of 25%...

And of COURSE there's zombie.

And then you have the huge amount of area spells. The game is so much more fun when you can build to avoid friendly fire, and being able to make a character absorb elements allows you to actively work with that element. It's a fundamental shift in gameplay.

The resistance cap change needs to be undone. It doesn't fit with the game at all. It's something that could have worked if it had been built in at the start, but - especially for those of us who are 90% of the way through the game already- changing it now is jarring and inconsistant and makes no sense to the way the game is built.

Hell, there's a path that you need fire immunity to take. There is one area that is /only accessible/ if you are immune to fire. The temple with the three paths: the immaculates, the demons immune to most things, and the lava? That one. The dialog says you can totally take the lava path if you can handle it. The game is built for elemental immunity/absorption.

Just to add my $0.02 to what brandon2u has already said: IF the combat rebalance is done AND it has been given a good bashing by QA, THEN the res cap could be reasonable. But it requires rebalancing of items, enemies, skill points, combat protocol, the lot.

But just to ninja only a res cap without any patch notes call out, which breaks already in progress games is just crazy. What I seem to dislike more than anything else is how it narrows play style. I've been through this sort of ninja change with Europa Universalis IV, where existing game rules were altered mid-play. It's not a pleasant experience, and not one I care to repeat.

I've also confirmed that the "Weather the Storm" talent on my tanks is now totally worthless. My gear takes me well over 80%, so the added 25% is just a waste of time. If I had known that resistances were up for a nerf, then I'd have put those precious points into health or armour buffs.

I see that there's a mod which puts res caps back to 200% - next game will use that, whenever I end up playing next.

To be entirely fair, those huge potions will still take you over the 80% cap. It's only "permanent" modifiers (ie, from gear and talents) that cap out at 80%. I validated that the Absorb the Elements spell takes me to 130% elemental resistance for 3 turns. I imagine that elemental shield spells will also do so.

I still think this change is wrong-headed, given that entire strategies and choice selections are rendered worthless, and thus a deep and wide game is rendered more shallow and restrictive.

To elucidate slightly: every choice that allows you to buff resistance for X is a choice NOT to do Y. So all the choices you make are, necessarily, compromises. I can have a HP/Armour tank, but then he/she is slow as molasses. I can have an uber-shield, but then that's a ruby that could have gone on my mages, etc, etc.

But now I have very vulnerable mages AND more vulnerable tanks, when I could have had more widespread risk mitigation. The choice I made was for tanks which could protect the mages if needed. That choice, for me, is now declared retrospectively unwise, yet was within the rules of the game when I started.

The game as it stood devolved into "how I chose to break the game and remove challenge from combat" even on Hard difficulty. Immunities played into that a great deal. There's a balance to be struck somewhere, between the player maintaining strategic options and the player losing interest due to an obvious optimal strategy. Min/maxing should break a game, not simply playing smart. I'd prefer a game that offers challenge on its own terms, rather than necessitating me actively having to opt out of obviously overpowered build strategies to maintain engagement in encounters.

My removed take on Larian implementing (drastic) balance passes is that the long-term game as a whole, with player feedback and data analysis driving adjustments, should take preference over the (undoubted and unfortunate) need for mid-game players to rethink a current playthrough.

D:OS is a great game, but one that can be improved, especially the post-Cyseal game. To deny improvements because it's inconvenient to present players is the wrong, albeit easier, approach to take. The game caters to outlandish strategies and improvisation enough that I'd be shocked if anyone's playthrough was entirely ruined, it just might not be the powerhouse min/max lol-i'm-invincible-now playthrough that the player wanted.

This isn't a question of "Rethink a current playthrough." This is a question of "Much of what my character has done up to this point has been invalidated." I spent significant amounts of gold, ability points, materials, and talents getting my resistances high. My primary tactics are no longer useful- the majority of my Pyromancer skills (on a chracter with max pyromancer) are no longer useful because I am now taking damage from them. I can no longer use Phoenix Dive to get /into/ combat because my partner is no longer immune to the burning patch. And she can no longer throw down area spells without harming me. I was min-maxed for 200% fire resistance at the expense of other things so that we could use Pyromancy spells to heal the tank. Much of my gear was chosen for "Whatever gives the most fire resistance" instead of Strength, Intelligence, or other useful abilities. And I'm level 20, so it's too late to change now without /significant/ investment and losing all my skills with no guarantee of being able to get them all back. Also, note that getting the non-armor-wearing wizard to absorb fire took a /lot/ of effort and equipment management.

Now, I'm not going to claim that getting high resistances on melee types isn't too easy- In the process of getting 200% fire resistance, I /accidentally/ got my water resistance so high that, even with the Demon talent, I was immune to water. But with the game built as it is, the cap of 80 is completely ludicrous.

There IS a balance to be struck, and you're not wrong that the current balance is too heavily in favor of the players- but the 80% cap just doesn't work in a game where full armor just gives you 25 all, you can take a talent for another 25 all, and master craftsmen can stick rubies in their gear. And seriously, if 80's a hard cap, why do Elemental Essences even exist? Give me diminishing returns, give me smaller bonuses on each of my items, weaken what needs to be weakened, but a cap is only reasonable in a game that makes reaching that cap a goal, not in a game where you just sort of crash into it and get frustrated at a seemingly arbitrary wall.

And, genuinely, I sympathise with you as an example of all the players in the middle of / deeper into a playthrough where build decisions have been made at the cost of other, less versatile, options. It seems apparent though that Larian want to further adjust the balance of their game, as (I'd strongly argue) they have every right to do so.

If we accept that Larian is going to take player feedback for post-Cyseal areas and balance-pass the game accordingly (as they did for months with Cyseal map, resulting in a wonderful, lengthy introductory area), how then should they handle deploying these balance changes, some of which may turn out to be very different from first implementation? Options-wise, what can they do for players in the middle of playthroughs, of which there'll always be some? Maybe their engine makes it super easy for balance adjustments to only be implemented in a toggle-on-if-you-want-to-apply-this-to-your-current-game fashion. Maybe their engine makes that instrinsically impossible. Maybe it's somewhere in between and someone has to make a final call on the matter, taking several factors within the development studio into consideration.

I don't think there's an easy solution that pleases everyone (and by everyone, I include the devs themselves). I expect a bumpy, lumpy road as Larian try to arrive at a version of D:OS that they're happy to consider finished and I hope they try to keep the bumps and lumps for us players to a minimum (as, arguably, they haven't quite done with this initial and rather sudden 80% cap thing). I do, however, consider it a valuable road for them to take the game down, with all of us along for the ride.

EDIT: worth mentioning I guess, something posted earlier today elsewhere on the forum:



Unless I'm mistaken (sorry if I am! -I'm fairly new to these boards), this is Swen himself.