Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General A Vision of Rare Hard CC

I think most people can agree that hard CC dominates the game. This is regardless of the armor system, since hard CC pretty much dominated the original game as well. But it seems even worse now, and if things don't improve, I'm considering what it would be like to mod a “Rare Hard CC version” with the release of the game (after a full vanilla play through obviously). I believe mechanically it should be possible to remove CC mostly or entirely, so I'm considering what that would actually be like. Here are my ideas for changing the statuses:

Knockdown

• Reduces physical resistance and dodge chance by 25-30%.
• Getting knocked down into a dangerous surface (electricity, fire, poison) will deal a medium amount of the relevant elemental damage and give a high chance to apply the relevant status effects.
• Perhaps elemental resistance is also reduced for whatever element you're knocked down in.

On your turn, you stand up and the physical resistance is back to normal. Hence, knockdown is about setting up your next attacks and teammates and synergizing with elements rather than taking a character out of the fight.

My biggest concern is that this makes turn order much more important for warriors, since knocking a character down right before its turn would be mostly useless. So possibly when a character stands up, they would remain “Staggered” for the rest of the round or two, and have reduced physical resistance and dodge chance, so high initiative would be less imperative.

Stun

Same resistance penalty/bonus stats as current stunned, but -3 Maximum AP instead of no action. Perhaps even you cannot gain any more than 3 AP a turn while stunned. Stun would remain a counter against AP-hoarding and abilities like haste. A mix of stun and slow would still dramatically reduce a character's effectiveness, but stun alone would be more a nuisance than a death sentence.

(I believe simply removing the hard CC effect of stun and knockdown alone would dramatically improve the game, but here's ideas for the rest.)

Frozen

-50% move speed, -15% dodge chance, grounded (no teleport), 30% extra damage taken against physical armor, -5 pyrokinetics. Nearby targets would be slowed or chilled.

Similar to knockdown, frozen would now be a status about synergizing with physical damage by limiting movement and softening their armor. This would probably require new visual effects and animations (or maybe simply eliminating animation lock effect).

Petrified

Could remain as a hard CC, but would dramatically raise damage resistance (50%+). Hence, you could use petrified defensively, and offensively it would be more about taking a character out of a fight for a turn rather than using it to gank a character. Petrified would remain fairly rare. Metamorph would become an actually decent racial.

Fear

On your turn, take moderate piercing damage (i.e., mental pain) per enemy within 8-10m of you. Incentivizes running away rather than forcing it.

Charm

Would make you unable to attack the character that charmed you, or perhaps make you take a lot of damage for doing so (or just take piercing damage from attacking enemies period), increase the damage you deal to allies from friendly fire. Switches the bonus of leadership over to the enemies.

Chicken Polymorph

Dramatically increases your run speed and dodge chance, and gives you a short range flight ability. You can also peck enemies for a small amount of damage, maybe with a small chance to blind or cause bleeding. Still pretty strong cc, but it leaves you with some options and protection.


The following statuses would temporarily disable the leadership ability (that is, leader will not emit leadership aura): knockdown, fear, petrified, polymorph.


It's very difficult to say how these changes would play out, but it would probably pair well with returning to a bit more randomness with status application, such that armor dramatically increases status resistances, but doesn't eliminate it. Hard CC is what makes 100% status immunity so important, since randomness deciding if you can act or not is frustrating. But randomness deciding if you're slightly reduced in effectiveness and incentivized to change your behavior (like run away if feared) is less obnoxious.

The most difficult/time consuming part would be changing AI to deal with the new statuses appropriately, but I think for the most part they would behave okay even with no changes.

Does this sound like it would play better to you? Would you be interested in a mod like this? Have different suggestions for how the the old hard cc statuses should work? What kind of other changes would you guess would complement a lack of hard cc, like, reduced enemy damage or armor, changes to skills (like, maybe battle stomp shouldn't eliminate surfaces anymore), etc?

It would be an interesting idea in the main game, but I think Larian is pretty committed to the hard CC at this point in development and would be quite reluctant at the massive rebalancing which would be needed for such a revamp.

For an independent modder working alone, the possibility of making a rebalance mod strikes me as low as well. I am not even sure it will be possible to make a mod to change the status effects for the main campaign.

I don't expect Larian to eliminate hard CC, though notching down even just knockdown and stun would make a massive difference.

Regarding the likelihood of a modder rebalancing the game, that's on me. Changing the status effects to some degree is entirely possible. A new game file they've added has a lot more parameters for editting statuses than the first game. For things that are hardcoded, I might have to create new statuses and replace instances where they are appear. For stun, I probably have to globally apply stun immunity and script a new status. It's some work, but I don't think nearly as much as it sounds. Getting the proper balance is a lot tougher. Scripting an overhaul to the armor system would also be tough, but entirely possible. And Larian hasn't even begun revealing any modder-friendly documentation or tools.

That would improve game like a charm. I hope Larians are not tooo stuborn to accept that.
On top of yours, I would like to see a cumulative soft cc to get to hard cc.

First stage >>> Soft cc
does minor issues. Often it makes target more sensitive to fallowing attack.
Second stage >>> Soft cc with serious effect
has serious effects like limiting AP, reducing chance to hit or cast (introduce spell fizzle here)
Third stage >>> Hard CC
is Hard cc as we already know.

Knockdown
stage 1 Off balance - Soft cc
stage 2 Sunned - Soft cc with serious effect
stage 3 Pinned - Hard CC

Ice
stage 1 Cold
stage 2 Freeze
stage 3 Deep freeze

Fire
stage 1 Warm
stage 2 Sparking
stage 3 Flaming - cant use skills, consumables or attack. Only one semi-random movement action is available per turn. Player choose destination but its slightly changed. e.g. when on flame the person screams and erratic runs. It is possible to run into water but it might miss.

Petrification
stage 1 Stone skin - add physical armor, reduces movement a bit
stage 2 Golem - cant use skills, regen physical armor, further reduces movement, removes fire
stage 3 Stoned - hard cc- long time like 10 turns, removes poison, regenerate phys and magic armor, stoned character counts as item for weapon durability
// get noticed that petrification is rather a buff in first stage. That is unusual progress. Group of dwarfs can nicely play use their skill to defend self or cc opponent. Skill can be cast on self or friendly target thru magic armor.
// It is also often when group of dwarfs going from pub that someone is totally stoned.

Stages rules :
Any regular attack or a skill with effect can add only one stage, The First stage. Apply another basic soft cc of same type then it changes the status effect to the higher stage.
Source magic is special. Source magic can add 2 stages by AOE or multi target attack. Most devastating effect is 3 stages at once for single target. e.g. Only source powered single target attack can make one shot hard cc. That is the power of source magic.


That way hard cc is still in game, however serious effort need to be done to achieve cc chain of death.

Seems like a great idea to me.
Im all for softer effects rather then hard barriers and penalties.

A couple of suggestions about some details of it:

Frozen should not damage enemies close by but apply a small measure of slow down, reduce movement speed for them too, if they are very close. Lasting a turn if they move away.

Fear should not give damage either.
Charm should not give damage either.

Those are not meant to be direct damage skills or effects and we have plenty of damage dealing skills anyway.

I like charms as it is. Its an effect that can be a great help or great hindrance requiring turning it back as soon as you can manage. I would only add some lesser debilitating effect to it after it wears off or gets turned back, so the affected character or enemy wouldnt be up to 100% efficiency right away. Something like reduced precision and dodge for a turn after Charm wears off.

Im not sure if Fear needs to be changed either or in what way, it seems simple enough as it is.
Maybe adding the "drop weapon" effect similar to "disarm" that is now in the game would be a good addition...
Or just disarm, which forces the enemy (or you) to re-equip the weapon once the fear wears off.

I guess you can see my suggestions about making new magic and physical armors work based on percentages, rather then hard barriers, so ... it would be nice if someone could mod it, in case devs dont see the brilliance of my idea.

I think ideas for Stun and Knockdown are very good. I would maybe add losing a few APs for the next turn when standing up from knockdown because standing up wastes a few APs itself.

Not sure about frozen as described - it seems more like chilled to me.

It should be more like petrified I think - i.e. slow/stop you moving but increase physical armour as ice is harder than flesh. Ice might even be harder than rock (I've not checked).

Thanks for the feedback gGeo and Hiver!



It's a bit more work to implement a three-stage system like that, and I'm not sure if it'd be worth the extra work. My concern with that system is it would encourage using the same or similar attacks several times in a row, rather than diversifying your actions. This would especially hurt hybrids. It also still keeps hard cc as the end goal, which is what I'm trying to avoid.

I do like the existing two-stage systems with chilled/frozen and warm/fire, so I could see, say, knocking down someone who's already knocked down does cause something like "concussion," which would upgrade the physical resistance and add a hit chance penalty and keep it around for a couple turns. A third stage could get a bit clunky, though. I'd also rather keep source skills more interesting than just insta-disabling all your enemies.



I like it. Maybe even chill nearby characters. Nearby damage did seem off to me. I could see burning cause damage or warm nearby targets, though.



I'm not sure about my idea for fear, and am especially wary about changing charm, since it's indeed a very fun status to use. But they are still very hard cc. Maybe instead of fear damaging, it would only make the character spend 1 or 2 AP running away. Still very inconveniencing, can trigger AoO attacks, make you run through status fields, but it's not a turn ender. The thing is, whatever hard cc ability that remains after purging the others will be king, unless it has serious downsides as a hard cc like petrified.

I actually think charm needs the opposite effect after it wears off, some kind of buff or mixed effect. In the mod Epic Encounters, characters get raged after being charmed. This might be a little too much with how power swingy rage is, but maybe a lesser effect like "angry," +25% crit chance and -25% dodge chance. I also think if a charmed targets takes enough damage to their vitality (like 25-33% of their max health or something), they get broken out of charm. This way you can't use a charmed target as a punching bag when convenient, or throw them in the middle of an AOE attack and expect them to stay loyal. Would also give you an option as a player to smack your teammate to wake them up.



I'm not about making armor a sliding scale of effectiveness. Further complicates things. Regardless, it's going to be tough (mechanically and balancewise) to implement a global resistance system. I'm not quite sure how I'd go about it, but I think the formula would take armor, constitution, perseverance, vitality percentage, and glass cannon into account.

Probably having any armor at all would give you 50-75% chance to resist. Each point in Con above 10 would add 1-2% chance to resist. Perseverance would add 3-5% chance to resist per point, depending on whether it would also keep recovering armor. Glass cannon would subtract 30-50% chance to resist, and having less than max health would decrease resistance chance, probably at certain breakpoints. Like, 50-75% max health = -15% resist, 25-50% max health is -30% resist, <25% health is -45% resist. Maybe just less than 50% health has an effect for simplicity.

Armor would remain the backbone of resistance, but it wouldn't be impervious (maybe max resistance chance of 90% even with high con and perseverance), and a character built to resist wouldn't be completely vulnerable without armor.




Knockdown standing up could cost an AP perhaps. Does make some sense.

Well it's like an uber-chilled. Maybe it could remove movement entirely. The fantasy logic is that frozen armor would become brittle. Also mechanically I want a magic armor based cc synergize with physical damage. The reality is probably that being frozen would make you harder to damage with conventional weapons. But the reality is also that being frozen would kill you, so it's sort of moot. Fantasy logic is that ice makes things shatter.

Yes, effort is needed to get maximum status effect. What you thing saying diversifing actions? Trying to set on fire and freeze at the same moment doesnt help. Try to set fire someone you will see, its a lot of effort.

However hybrid like Ice+Poly has no issue. what about Fire mage throwing Bottled inferno grenade as Rogue? Is it hybrid? What about warrior+poly to get battering ram and sprout horns to get more knockdown effects. Is it hybrid?

Total removal of Hard cc is not very good. Rather make them something special. Get stoned by meduza is very special. So the game need mechanic for that, such way that being stoned happen when you face a group of dwarfs. Which is very seldom. When your party has just one dwarf you will most probably never make a stoned opponent.

Same as source spells. Now they are just more dmg spells. But where is special, where is the wow effect? Can I use dwarf racial petrification skill infused by source point to make people immediately stoned? That sounds cool isnt it ?

What about party who has one pure fighter and 3 mages. He cant do Max Knockdown. But source infused Battering ram (also knowns as Overpower)can add 3 stages. Cool ?

Ability to infuse some skills by source and 3 stages of status effect gives beautiful playground. Lets have a skill Supercharger for 0AP cooldown 3 it consumes 1 source point, the next skill used, which has a source part will be enhanced

You certainly have an interesting way of speaking gGeo :P

Obviously you wouldn't want to use fire and ice together at the same time (though some skills that make them pair together somehow would be neat), but you might want to stun and knockdown someone at the same time, unlike now where they're redundant.

By diversification of tactics I mean I want there to be synergy between different skill trees, so it's less like each character is doing there own thing. For example, you could use knockdown on someone standing in fire to apply burning to them to boost the damage of your fire mage. Or freeze a target so your warrior can smash them better.

I suppose if you mean that two characters working together throwing the same status effect on someone to achieve hard CC, that's a bit better than a system where one character can just apply the same status to an enemy over and over again to eventually cc them.

Hard CC could probably be part of source skills (for example, maybe you can do a mass charm with a witchcraft or rogue source skill or two). But my vision for source skills is that they can dramatically reshape the battlefield in your without necessarily immediately KOing a bunch of enemies.

For example, I could imagine a source skill that draws enemies in a wide area to a single spot. Super strong if used to set up a bunch of AOE attacks, but no lethality in itself (barring drawing them into some lava or something.) Or a skill that blesses all surfaces under allies and curses ones under enemies (if enemy and ally are standing in the same surface, the enemy would have a small amount of cursed X below them, and your teammate would have a small amount of blessed X below them.) Very strong and dramatic if used intelligently, but could backfire as well.


Even more unrelated to the initial topic, I think these changes would pair nicely with a morale system. A number of factors would effect morale: character type (boss, species, etc.), intelligence, health, status of nearby allies and enemies, leadership, various skills and statuses like burning. If a character loses too much morale, they become terrified (the status which makes you run away, though not necessarily using all AP in doing so), or perhaps surrender, though that would be a whole can of worms requiring new dialogs and behaviors and whatnot.

A magister that is burning, low health, with no leader in sight and most of his allies dead would be very likely to become terrified. This could go for players as well, though this might be a bit too frustrating of a mechanic for that, not sure, but as long as being terrified would not mean total loss of control, it wouldn't be that bad. Overly ambitious for my taste and skills in combination with my other ideas, but maybe something someone else could do.

Thanks for modding work man.
I kinda missed the train with the first one so i fell behind but i know it takes a lot of time and effort.




Chilling enemies that are close to the frozen one seems like a good effect to add to these other ones, but i would still have it cause slowdown or loss of speed in addition to that.
Because chilling doesnt do much itself, if im not mistaking, except makes enemies prone to get frozen on next ice spell hit. (i could be mixing previous game effects with the new ones though)

So maybe reduction of speed or slow down while they are very close to the frozen enemy which lasts a turn when they move away. But also chill effect in addition to that which could last two turns...?

That seems reasonable while not being op.




Frankly i never used fear much and my guys usually quickly got either immunity to it or would resist it most of the time.
Ive only noticed it in EE version and only later in the game.
The way it is it isnt very inconvenient because usually if any of my guys get affected by it, they actually run away from enemies and so dont get damaged for a turn or two.
Same for enemies who usually run out of range while i have to focus on others that are closer.

It worked just like that in all rpgs i ever played.

So maybe, removing the "running away" effect would work better if the goal is to make it actually inconvenient or dangerous? Maybe it could work like some sort of softer stun as you want to make it, only the characters are "petrified by fear" so they basically stand in place - terrified.

But that would make it too similar to these other status effects. Basically the same as Blind effect, only with different animation.

hmm... what if Fear reduces chance to hit against that enemy and lowers resistances, and dodge?
While giving enemies higher critical chance?
So you could still fight while being afraid but it wouldnt be a good idea? Then it would be your choice to either move that character away - to run, or to try and fight while being scarred of those enemies and seriously penalized for it.

That way you wouldn't lose control over a character and you would have your player agency intact, but at a price for the duration of the spell or until you dispel it from that character. (idle animation of scarred character should remain the same so players can clearly see the effect)

In that case warrior encourage spell should remove fear (in case it doesnt do that already).




I dont know... i usually approach these things from realistic angle which seems to bring best results even in slightly distorted fantastical settings.

So im thinking, if i was charmed and then it wore off or i got turned back i would be pretty confused and maybe shocked for a few moments. I suspect anyone would be.
So... well, maybe first the character is "shocked and confused" for a turn (after charm effect stops) and then gets enraged or "angry" in the next turn?

I actually wish that charm was a weaker spell which only makes enemy not attack you, but that there is a second stronger spell like "mind control" or "hypnotize" which works like charm does now.



I like that. (I thought something like that is already happening, in the previous game at least. I seem to remember that if i damaged the charmed enemy it would snap them out of charm...? But it didnt work for my guys who got charmed. Ill have to check that.)

That would be a good option to have.



Yeah, i just thought to mention it.
I dont like having to chip away at the armor down to zero while its working at 100% efficiency regardless of how much I damage it.

Seemingly only to prevent hard locks like stun and knockdown. While it actually works as invulnerability spell after which you still hard lock enemies anyway.
All of it seems like a bad solution to a not that great starting idea to me.

The actually better solution would be to make those status effects less hard, as your modding plan aims to do.

Im not sure do you mean to say that my idea would need a global resistances system or is that something you want to do anyway?

If so, isnt that already in the game?

All i want, basically - is to get some damage in as the armor is reduced and to have enemies affected by elemental surfaces and their effects.

Not necessarily the hard locks, since i mostly dont use them anyway. It makes the game too easy and boring if thats all one does in combat.

Which is why i like your plan.



I figure that these kinds of status effects shouldn't wear off without any cost. Affected enemy should have some lingering penalty to approximate or simulate this, even if its something small. One Ap less seems appropriate for the new system, yes.

In addition to the other things you mentioned.

Oh. Thanks :P I am not a native speaker so excuse grammar. Why need to apply 2 statuses which are similar but one is more powerfull ? In my proposal use a Shield bash (for example) then replace stun by knock. Idea is, that any attack also make some aditional effect. When I punch you to the face, you might say: "Auch" and get status "surprised" When I repeat 3times then you dont have a tool to say anything. e.g. applyed status effect "Silenced". Would you prefer to have both statuses? It doesnt matter, "Silenced" mostly covers "Surprised" too.
Applying many similar effects at once is not pretty. Few years ago I played Age of Conan. The original online game. each class could apply about 3 additional effects. Boss raid means that I had half screen of effects icons, I could barely see the monster. For this reason, its wise to keep total number of active effects low. However for diversity is good to have more. e.g. one effect replacing stronger and stronger seem good solution.
It works. 2 Warriors are applying knock and fire mage working on the same target to make him walking torch. Side effects like extra when fallen on the floor is just another mechanic which works on top of all we said.

I think boots should be more important in this game. A lot of ground effects. I am tired of high leather boots for every prisoner. They deserve sandals

Yup it takes some time to learn and there's plenty of quirks, but it's a fairly adaptable and not THAT difficult to get into. I'll probably release an intro guide to the stat modding and basic character scripting fairly early on if Larian doesn't do that first.

Haven't started working on this idea yet except little tests, mostly with the old game. Just concepts. After all, who knows what will change.

I'll keep the rest of your feedback in mind. Chilled does slow down characters some I think. Feared is pretty limited right now. Not even sure if players can cause fear except with terror grenades. Running away can be not so bad sometimes, but you still lose your turn, and the rest of the characters can often get focused down while that character flees and then has to run back into position.

I was considering a fear that debuffs you to relative to the character that feared you, but not sure how that would work. Would need to indicate a connection somehow. Plenty of room for additional status effects.

Would love a weaker version of charm by Larian. My little birds tell me there could be a status that... shall we say... encourages characters to attack the nearest target. A way to selectively prevent a character from attacking a particular character would be nice too, though not sure how that would work with AOE (maybe can't even place AOE attacks near that character).

I really don't know what I'd do about armor. I see your point that 1 armor being as good as 100 armor for resisting statuses is a bit strange. So maybe there could be some scaling down, where having 100% of your armor grants you 50-75% status resist, while 10% armor might grant you 15-25% status resist.

By resist, I mean like how willpower and bodybuilding worked before, only using a combination of factors to determine your ability to resist statuses. Unfortunately, willpower and bodybuilding may have been hardcoded, so I might have to build a whole system of status resistance. The nitty gritty of it is that I'd potentially have to do something like:

When you get X Status
Then calculate your resistance chance and roll the dice
If you succeed, then immediately remove status

I'm not sure if that would really work, since the effects might apply right before you resist it. So I'm nervous I might have to essentially replace every skill that applies a fake version of the status, that can be resisted, and if not resisted, than the real status is applied. Real time consuming and clunky.

There may be another way to this, but I don't know how. So Larian, some way to easily calculate a chance to resist statuses would be nice



Statuses can DEFINITELY get out of hand. Even in Epic Encounters (the mod in my signature), bosses can get stacked with 10+ statuses and it's redonkulous. So making some statuses incompatible, or perhaps somehow combine is a good idea. Like, what if you're both stunned and on fir, then it combines into electric fire, with the effects of both statuses. Or Decaying Touch + Diseased = Rotting, which does both things but also deals some damage.

Though I wouldn't say stunned and knockdown should be incompatible. They have different effects.

Even if I disagree with you guys, the discussion helps me come up with new ideas so that's good :P Thanks for that.

I fought a long time ago, but its close. Once oponent is knocked down its also disoriented and slowed down e.g. stuned.
Make clear table of mutual exclusive and cumulative statuses might be important part of skill set creation. Make sure that no more than 8 statuses could be ever active at once. Positive and negative included.

Binary armor defence is sick. For some reason, Larian designer want to push it no matter what.
What about 50% to 100% armor you are 100% safe from effect.
From 1 to 50% of armor you have chance 1-100% it could go thru.

e.g. with full armor no efect
with half armor there is 1 % chance
with 1 point of armor there is 99% chance

Obviously, weak armor can safely hold just first attack.
Or frankly saying, armor safely insulate only when 50% intact and more. other wise its a chance.

I did start messing with it but then there were all those annoying "little" problems with the editor, especially with making and saving maps and then real life took over so i didnt continue. Its not that difficult but it does require time. I will sure look into any guides you make and who knows maybe ill make my definitely too ambitious Pl.. ups, nothing to see here move along...

It depends on how it will all go with the new editor.

And if i make any large overhaul i would trim a lot of stuff out... because there is really too much stuff in the game, especially this new one.


If it does then its fine like that. Of course, your mod so your choice. These are just general ideas and suggestions, not demands.


Yeah, im actually not sure either... as i said its not really something i notice or something that has great effect.


Yeah but, since usually your group is opposite to enemies and you each stand in your own space of sorts, if a character gets frightened he usually runs away from enemies and so out of danger.

Its only a problem if more of your guys get affected so you are left with one or two characters, but that rarely happens.



I thought about that but it seemed too complicated to actually do.

Maybe the "shackles of pain" or similar skill can be re-purposed and changed into something appropriate for that?

Maybe someone else will come up with a good idea.


Anything would be better than nothing at all. I at first liked it because it seems like it removes the 100% chance to apply any magic effect, but it actually only delays it. Once you remove the armor the system works like it use to in that sense. So its only a delay to do the same as before.


Generally speaking, the less factors go into it the better, right?



Yeah, thats too clunky and prone to various bugs and failures.

I may be wrong but, what if those resistances are calculated just through elemental resistances that each hard CC is ascribed to?

So, resistance to Air would also resist stun, resistance to Water would resist frozen, Earth would resist petrified, the only problem is that knockdown is a man at Arms skills effect so its not tied to any elemental magic...

Constitution? That would make it more valuable for sure but other types of builds would suffer... fire, maybe...?

eh, thats all i got for now...

Anyway, if you manage to just soften a few of these as you plan it would make for a much better gameplay.

I played the newer version of the game these days and i have to say it felt different then the first try with the earlier build.

The new balances they introduced make fighting much less of a slog through the magic and physical armors.

The Hard Cc effects are also mostly in effect for a single turn, with only knockdown sometimes lasting two but thats relatively rare. So those are not such an overpowering issue as they were in the previous game or maybe in the early build of this one (as far as i can remember which isnt very reliable).

I still think it would be valuable to add some additional after effects to these statuses as we discussed above.

Of course, with future rebalancing things can become a slog again.

Also, i encountered an enemy that was casting "dominate mind" on my characters.
Which would make them "charmed" for three turns. Which makes enemies heal and buff them

I only now see how much they simplified the mechanics and all the things they removed.
Makes me wish to mod something in the previous game engine.

How reliable did the editor get, especially in terms of building maps?

As an experiment in discussion (not necessary how the game should be changed) I love your initial idea. It actually reminds me of CC in Pokemon - where most of it is "soft" and has penalties with only one "hard" CC - which in Pokemon is Frozen.

My main suggestion to this would be to allow some additional hard CC, given the soft debuffs that already exists (chilled, wet, warm) - but most hard CC would require a progression to actually apply. This actually was more of a thing in DOS 1 due to the % change to apply CC (much easier to freeze if they are wet or chilled).

- Stun would require Wet (or maybe add a "shocked" soft state from Aero)
- Freeze would require Wet or Chilled
- Petrified remains as is possibly (unless a new "oiled" is required, which could also combo with fire single damage spike)

This way hard CC is possible, but takes more setup and strategy than it does today in DOS 2. Hard CC is spread across Aero, Hydro, and (lesser extent) Geo. Obviously spells will have to be balanced for this, so some things can only apply Chilled but never frozen (or only apply Frozen if combo of chilled + wet from Hydro).

Heh, that's interesting you think the game has so dramatically improved over the previous builds. Don't get me wrong, the game is quite fun as it is, but I still think the armor system is fundamentally problematic when combined with hard cc.

You want to mod something for the previous game? I would discourage that if you're hoping for much traction in people playing it, or even if you want much help from other modders. 99% of people will move on to the next game, which hopefully will be much easier to mod.

The editor did end up being fairly reliable though. Rarely crashed unless you screwed up some code really bad. Map making became MUCH more reliable than when the editor was first released, when it crashed and got corrupted all the time. It's still very difficult and time-consuming to make something good looking though. And that's one area that DOS2 will be vastly superior than the first game, with many more higher quality assets and hopefully some major quality of life improvements like undo on terrain changes.

You could practice making a map in the first game, since it probably will still be fairly similar in the next, but I wouldn't go to all the effort of making a whole standalone mod.

Its not a dramatic improvement, it just seems better and plays faster. It could be due to my quick and superficial first playthrough. I expected that the game will be much harder with the new Ai system and fights to last longer, but it actually isnt. And taking down armors works relatively fast so its not a big hindrance.

I noticed that a lot of enemies stand up from being knocked down or recover from stunned status very quickly, which is what you wanted to mod in. The "dominate mind - charm" is the only effect i saw lasting three turns. Most of them last just one and characters get back up very quickly.

Also, i noticed that some status effects make the affected character immune to other statuses, which you also talked about above - so, it already done.


Ill take your advices for moding. I dont care much about popularity, a good mod will find its audience. If its good.
Its more that both versions of the game have something i like and some things i would need to change or trim so... probably best to wait for the new one with a better new editor.

edit:

I still think it would be better if armor effects were percentage based or have some kind of tiers in terms of letting some damage to vitality go through.

They could give immunity to status effects as they do now regardless of that.

But it would be better if Hard CC effects would be adjusted and made not so crude.