Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General About Karma

I'm not sure I see what you mean with this. Your idea is that if one devours enough souls, one gets caught and tortured to death, or something equivalent?

If so, that honestly sounds a lot more simplistic and a lot less gameplay-enhancing than any of the suggestions, so far. It could probably be good in a roguelike or something more in the vein of "choose your own adventure", but if DOS is any indication, that is not what Larian are aiming for with DOS2.

No, I don't mean anything specifically related to D:OS2. I was just showing you that there can be deterrents outside the mechanics of the game. It was just an extreme example. A logically reacting world is enough reward for your choices, otherwise it leads to gaming the system. It doesn't matter if some people will ignore the role-play, they'd have enough ways to game the system. Role-playing is for its own sake. Though being tortured and killed because you did something that logically would lead to that would be cool :p

Hm. If we were talking about table-top roleplaying, I would agree with you, but DOS2 is rather far from that. In a game like DOS2, you need both a sense of role-play and choices that matter and a mechanical game system that you can "play", otherwise it would essentially just be an advanced "choose your own adventure" type game. Now, there's nothing essentially wrong with those games, but it's not what we're talking about here.

The problem is that Source stealing gives considerable benefits in that latter system, and that needs to be balanced somehow. What I'm proposing is to use "karma" as a purely mechanical system except in rare circumstances, where it makes sense that it affects dialogue.

Well, for once, I have rather a "simple" reputation system than no real choice&consequence system at all. So rather Bioware than Bethesda...

But of course Karma is a tricky thing. The problem I see with it right now is that you get "bad karma" for gameplay decisions (soul gathering) and not only for story/narrative decisions. This mix-up between gameplay and narrative decisions can really bite you in the ass somewhere down the line, both the developer and the gamer. I mean, maybe I haven't understood the Karma system well enough yet, but from what I've seen there is no negative gameplay consequence to gathering souls, only a narrative one (although not shown, only mentioned). It's a general problem for game designers to balance such a system. An infamous example is the theft system in DOS. There was no negative gameplay consequence to it (not even a real negative narrative consequence) so people just stole everything everywhere since there was no real trade-off for it.

Another problem is that there is imo no narrative justification for karma. Why should people know that you gathered souls if there is no witness if it's used as a reputationt system? Of course you could see it as a character meter that only shows who you are and how you are on an abstract level and consequently restricts what you can do and say in dialouges (how many good/bad options you have, like it usually works in Star Wars) but that would of course restrict the roleplaying options and player freedom.

I'd really like to know how Larian envisioned that Karma system in detail.

Age of Decadence (where the screenshot is from) has both C&C and a mechanical aspect that don't contradict each other. Though the entire point of that game is role-playing. If you choose a mercenary that specializes in combat then your game will be filled with fights and bloodshed and everything related to that. If your character is a scholar he can go through the entire game without seeing one fight. You aren't forced to do this in any way, though, the classes only determine your starting zone and more possibilities to role-play that kind of character. You can be a scholar who specializes in combat and have a completely different experience and story than a scholar who specializes in knowledge and diplomacy.

Since this kind of reactivity isn't really the point of D:OS2, being a party-based game with heavy focus on combat, I can get your point, but D:OS1 proved that giving you perks for dialogue choices is a bad idea. We don't know how stealing Source (or what you do with it) affects anything in game yet. If the amount of souls you stole unlock different dialogue options (related somehow to the souls, though, not just "evil"), then that would be a better option than giving you stats. Besides, there should be no deterrents for playing a certain type of character, not really. Just how the world reacts to your character and if it reacts bad, then so be it. It can throw more mobs at you if you are overly aggressive or tougher ones etc. Alpha Protocol had such an example - if you were aggressive to a character, he rats you out to his superior, which is incidentally your next mission, and that placed more guards in the mission. Just no numerical advantage/disadvantage to your character.

Yes, but the Source points you get from stealing souls is a mechanical advantage, because those Source points are used to create very powerful magical effects in combat. From what Swen said on the stream, the entire reason for the karma idea is to balance this.

I'm not disagreeing with you about having dialogue choices generally affecting further dialogue choices and keeping the systems mostly separate. That makes all kinds of sense. It is also why I think "karma" (maybe I should be using a different term to clarify, but I can't for the life of me come up with one) should be used as a mechanical balancing effect to stealing Source points and pretty much nothing else, except in the rare case that the NPC you're talking to can somehow see the "corruption" in your soul and it affects the social situation of the dialogue (which is going to be rare.)

That is not a deterrent to playing an "evil" character---it's just a way of making sure doing so won't imbalance the combat side of gameplay, if Source theft is going to be part of the game.

Blackmailing isn't a deterrent? Sure, it's "more content," but I never found a player who enjoyed sacrificing money or XP or skill points (whatever he accepts as payment) for no reason. Sure, the first case of the demons attacking you for devouring three souls might be less of a sacrifice, but that was just an example. The point is, you can have both tangible and roleplay consequences for devouring souls packaged into one thing, instead of a mechanical deterrent, which to me, is just as gamey as a smile-sad face karma measurement system.

I think 8-12 situations, some part of the main quest, where obtaining source points in an evil way has direct, negative consequences would be good as a form of karma. Your average person shouldn't be able to see the evil things you've done, but powerful wizards, other sorcerers and spirits might. You'll lose out on rewards, get in fights you wouldn't have as a good sourcerer, suffer mechanical consequences, and suffer from negative roleplay situations. Say, as an evil sourcerer, you accidentally corrupt a malleable spirit (say, it's sensitive to your evil aura or something) and it goes and kills what was once its family. Also, you should definitely face harder fights with the main antagonists, who hate source because they think its evil. You're proving them right, and they'll give you all they got. But if you're good, their motivation will be slightly lessened. You might even able to convince some source hunters that you're good and that the inquisitor is the evil one.

And yes, I think these situations ultimately might have to be tied to a count of how many souls you've devoured. The player shouldn't know exactly how many devoured souls lead to each outcome, but they should know that 10 devoured souls will probably get you to worse situations than 3 devoured souls. And you can probably do something like certain souls are more evil to devour -- for example, children, and others don't even count.

Anyway, that's my perspective. Maybe some sort of mechanical drain effect, or a sort of addiction thing, but I'd prefer more integrated downsides.

I want to point out some things:

- Your choices should influence your companions. They change their behaviour or their point of view depending on what you say. They like you more or less depending on your actions. All I want is NOT to have a pop up box "you have gained influence on companion x" right after the dialogue.

- As some people already said, it makes no sense that every villager sees your karma and likes or dislikes you because you helped a granny over the street in another town or you robbed a bank at the other end of the continent.

- In most cases it is rather immersion breaking if you get a message "you have gained x influence, karma or whatever" right after you select a dialogue or action.

My suggestion:
We hide the stats from the player.

They keep the numerical influence value for companions, but you cannot see it. When you select something, you see the reaction of your companions, but you do not get a message that shows your reputation. In case of romance, you need to do several things and have an influence of +10 (which you cannot see) before your companion likes you.

The same about karma: It exist but you cannot see it. It effects your source powers and only very powerful mages or demons can see it. But most normal people react only to things they see themselves.

Ah, I see where you are coming from now. I'd just ask the question whether stealing Source/souls is a mechanical or role-playing choice. I suppose both is the answer, but it's more of a mechanical one in this scenario. This logically leads to the question - "why would they make stealing source so overpowered that we need a role-playing deterrent and mechanical disadvantages?". I think balance is the key here, rather than any interface reaction. There is also the idea of too much deterrents. If they make it too punishing (though punishment in games is a concept I'm rather against) then nobody would do it. I just think they should restrain the combat advantages of source, but make you more detestable by good characters the more you eat souls. That way you aren't way overpowered, but also retain the role-playing element.

So what's the downside of gathering souls? Only that some of your companions might be angry with you?

There are three fundamental reasons why I'm very hesitant about what is being suggested in these last replies.


First: Having cumulative actions over a prolonged period leading up to a massive disadvantage situation is (at least from my perspective) a lot more player punishment than having observable and incremental effects that gently remind us that this path is not without consequences. (I too am very firmly against punishing the player, but it seems we have different ideas of what that constitutes.)


Second: DOS2 is slightly niche, but it still attracts a fairly wide swathe of player types. We seem to represent the more hardcore roleplayer side to these players. Others don't really care much for this aspect of the gameplay and will just make choices based on what benefits them strategically. The game must be made and balanced with both of these groups in mind. The only practical way to do this is to make combat mechanics more or less self-contained, and keep every interchange between that system and the roleplaying aspects on a tight rein, so that it can all be kept in balance regardless of which aspect of the game is more interesting to a given player.


Third: There is a huge amount of hidden complexity behind the scenes in a game like DOS2. Managing this complexity and not letting it getting out of hand while still giving the player the impression of choice and effect is a large part of what makes developing this type of CRPG very difficult.

As soon as you start mixing variables and elements between otherwise separate systems (such as combat and dialogue role-playing) that complexity grows exponentially. This forces the developers to spend hideous amounts of time on balancing and managing choices---time that could otherwise have been spent on adding more content that would have a much stronger impact on the player experience. This doesn't mean that you couldn't have dialogue situations based on "karma"---they just need to be made separate to the combat system and thus be balanced within the role-playing/dialogue side to the game.


As for why Source magic is so powerful, my impression is that it's to separate it from "normal" magic. There must, after all, be a good reason why Sourcerers mess with the stuff, considering the disadvantages.

The question here is why would they want to punish us for making a valid mechanical choice? Since it gives us a combat advantage, it's much more mechanically pronounced. I think they should focus more on how to make it a logical element of the game, rather than how to punish us for it. It also seems weird that we can be overpowered for 90% of the game, only to be brought down by a huge disadvantage at the end. If it unbalances the game so much, why not remove it entirely? Source would give us no combat advantage, only a role-play and crafting one(I think they said it can be used for crafting). Balance comes first, gimmicks come second or even third.


Why? Can't we have one game that doesn't try to juggle too many pins and have a focused point? This point would be combat, though, role-playing needs a significantly different premise (like AoD). It would still present us with a reactive, breathing world, but not to the point of AoD. Since it's the same engine and combat, it can at least try to go for Fallout levels of reactivity. I do like my combat challenging and my role-playing brutal :p The game needs a firm foundation so it can build up, trying to balance for wildly different types of players would ruin that. We also have difficulty options. It IS a cRPG, or at least tries to pretend it is, so players do know what to expect.