Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Enemy/Obstacle Randomisation & New Game+

X-COM2 is the reference – you start the fight and you don’t know what you’re going to get: the land, objects and enemies are all random. Since both X-COM2 and D:OS2 are the same type of game, I think they could learn from each other.

Combat randomisation of X-COM2’s scale could pose a balancing nightmare this late is the game’s development, which is why I’m suggesting it as a new game+ feature, or something the user could toggle on/off at their own risk.

In D:OS2, I reckon enemy and object (barrels etc) randomisation shouldn’t be a big deal, and would be great fun. It would be a kind of ‘chaos’ mode, where it doesn’t need to be balanced and near-impossible scenarios would be fine, because this isn’t the ‘real’ game.

For me, the best battle in the DOS:2 to date was the one with the seemingly never-ending void insects (or whatever they were called) that just kept coming. You didn’t know if they were actually going to stop appearing, or if you were doing something wrong by just killing them and not looking around for other solutions. This kind of mind-fuckery is the key to an entertaining fight, in my opinion, and was the closest thing D:OS2 came to battle enemy randomisation.

It would be great if random enemies popped up as ‘reinforcements’ like X-COM2 to rain havoc on your carefully laid plans. Random landscapes would be too much, IMO, but random placements of barrels could be great strategically and not complicated to develop – simply walling off a particular ramp or access point would be enough to add strategic depth to what’s mostly a static set of enemy and obstacle placement.

Even if more enemies wandered around a little bit so initial starting locations weren't so fixed for most fights that would make things a bit more dynamic. But making random spawns is quite a bit of work, especially for a NG+ mode that probably only 5% of people would play. A NG+ mode that isn't just a lame gimmick would already be boatloads of work, making sure fights are still challenging and there's some form of player progression.

Perhaps they could design some kind of area trigger where enemies would spawn within that area instead of in a precise spot (e.g., for that void insect fight or the radeka fight, enemies would spawn within a general area instead of in the exact same spot every time). Would be a nice option for modding at least.

Not sure where you're getting the 'boatloads of work' impression, since I've just quoted an entire game that's built logic around pure randomisation of significantly more features than D:OS2 offers. Are you a programmer? I am. Not in video games, but I know randomisation formulas are just a couple of seconds, workwise. I presume enemy placement could be auto-generated with just some simple maths, unless a game dev can contradict that?

I'm suggesting this as a 'fun mode', a thing that's optional outside of the main game. If randomisation works on math like it does in the kind of coding a do, then this would be an insignificant addition with lots of entertainment value. I'm sure X-COM2 adds plenty of contrivances to the math to offer balance, but I'm not suggesting they give it that much thought: imbalance would be fine, as long as dev time is minimal. Maybe a modder could add to it later at some point.

I'm not saying the randomisation would be a boatload of work, though it's certainly more than just throwing a few lines of code in and calling it a day -- it's worth noting that xcom is gridbased and D:OS is not, which complicates things, even if making a random number generator is simple. Every fight would need its own randomization factors.

I'm more saying doing a NG+ mode that is actually fun and interesting and even remotely balanced (fun and balanced are quite intertwined when it comes to challenge, which presumably a NG+ would emphasize) would involve lots of testing and tweaking and scaling formulas and possibly new skills. Throwing in a mode for the heck of it is pointless -- it makes the game seem unpolished, even if it's some optional "fun mode." If it's half-assed, it's a waste of their time and money. They already have a ton of things on their plate.

But to play along, giving enemies random buffs could be kind of neat, like Diablo 2 champions that have random stats. Like, you could run into a "Flaming Skeleton" that leaves a burning trail where it walks, or a Vampiric skeleton that leeches damage, etc, perhaps with some enemies having multiple random buffs. That might fit better in some kind of endless arena than the general game though. In general, a randomised arena with randomized obstacles, enemies and enemy buffs would be a lot of fun without being overly ambitious.

Again, I'm not a game dev, but D:OS2 seems grid-based to me, even if it doesn't actually visually display a grid like X-COM: aka - you have a finite amount of moves you can make across a specified area, and each move subtracts from the overall total of moves you can make. This is a grid to me. I presume behind the scenes it's a 'grid'.

Either way, it's a moot point. We're not talking about grids or new skills or anything like that. Just randomisation of enemies.

To simplify matters, they've already balanced each fight around a specific set of enemies that give a specific amount of experience. They could stick with that and just make the enemies appear in different locations (same number, same exp, no balance tweaking needed) and randomly generate some obstacles like barrels. Also, Diablo 2 'champion' type enemies that randomly appear with random stats would be a cool addition as you say, without being a tonne of dev/design work - I don't think any of these additions would spoil the polish, and they'd be great fun in terms of unpredictability.

I get what you're saying, in that they're only human and can only do so much. But it's worth pointing out that a game like X-COM (whether grid-based or whatever) is at its core the same thing as D:OS2, and it throws all caution to the wind re: randomisation, and it works - it works great. I don't see how applying this to D:OS2 would be a million miles away in terms of do-ability. Yeah, it may not be a polished, finely tuned masterpiece - but it'd still be a lot of fun, and worth it as an option after completing the main game. I'm not saying a new game+ should be just enemy randomisation, but I am using the post-endgame as an excuse to offer options that transform the original experience into something cool and different and risky. As I say, X-COM pulled this off - no reason the folks at larian couldn't do the same...

The only real similarity between X-COM and D:OS: Both are turnbased games, after this point there a many huge differences, I would say. X-COM has mission based combat scenarios while D:OS is open world with prebuilt scernarios. In X-COM you have pretty much endless amount of enemies/missions to grind experience and loot, only special encounters are limited. D:OS has a definite amount of enemies. Just to mention the main differences combat wise. I really don't think you can say: X-COM and D:OS are the same. Or would you also say X-COM and FF VII are the same?

Randomizing encounters coud only happen, if every fight would take place in a special combat instance.

The reason why there are only a few walking around enemies, because other wise sneaking at the enemies would be often quite impossible, if you want to prepare your team for a fight.


Also the finished D:OS will have a Tactician mode with more difficult and respeced battles. More or different enemies with different skill load outs for example.

Looking at the movement system, I wouldn't presume that.

By default, you can move 5.0 meters per AP. However, the distance you move can be changed. Armor can increase or decrease the distance per AP, and points into Scoundrel can increase your AP. Plus there are skills like Haste and Favourable Wind which also boost Movement, and status effects which can alter that as well, and sometimes you can adjust your position with 0 AP moves (I believe if you didn't use the full X meters you are allowed).

If D:OS2 is grid-based in the same way XCOM is, than you might as well say pool is gridbased in the same way chess is. What I more mean is D:OS2 uses a set of continuous states (a nearly infinite number of combinations of character positions) rather than discrete states (a huge but more easily calculable number of character positions). Of course, its only a matter of scale - technically D:OS2 has a .01 (or less) meter grid system, but it's kind of absurd to call that a grid. But yes, that is definitely all aside the point :P

I'm all with you in making a randomized NG+ version. Sounds like fun. But it's one of those things that's basically not happening. Get ready to make a mod if you want it. All the systems are in place for it to be possible even in D:OS EE (except a character import), but without the capacity to program the game itself and only use existing scripts, it would be quite tedious to place various triggers and script characters to randomly spawn among them. But D:OS2 might have more freedom or even non-tedious ways to script in randomness, who knows