Played a good 12 hours into the game and have some early feedback / bug reports. This is all personal opinion and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Eh, sometimes people who don't play much still have good insights.
1:Attacks of opportunity are a bit unpolished, people going up or down ladders do not provoke an Attack (even though that's even more vulnerable than just walking away ) and moving away from an enemy who has been put to sleep somehow still provokes an attack of opportunity.
I rarely use sleep abilities, but if they are asleep they absolutely shouldn't be able to issue attacks of opportunity. I suggest you submit that into the technical forum with a [Bug] title
here.
2:Ladders in general are a bit glitchy. Even if i'm standing right next to it i've often suffered terrain effects for moving a half inch. It's a bit bizzare to get slowed from oil when I just clicked the ladder i was practically leaning on.
You are still moving through an oil surface though. Surfaces do effect you a bit wonky in this game. Sometimes once you are in a surface it is better just to stay in it than to move.
2: Too much tactical retreat spam, it gets old when every single archer encountered has tactical retreat. Certain fights will basically be basically trying to remove archers from some places you can't even reach without similar skills or lots of ranged.
Mobility has always been key to DOS fights, more so in this game as there are now height advantages up to 50% if you rank the skill up. That is a big deal. Act 1 is all about teaching strategy, mechanics, and positioning. If you have a highly mobile target that uses retreat or phoenix dive or any other ability, you can teleport them back to your group. Or if your ranged characters have netherswap even better. The game has a lot of Rock, Paper, Scissors mechanics. Half the fun is learning how to exploit the enemy's weakness (for me anyways).
3: Terrain spam, the extreme amount of terrain spam is a bit crazy, oil, fire, ice, poison etc etc. I like the effects and the way it can effect the battlefield, I just think that the terrain spam should be reduced in size vs the hitbox. IE Fossil strike damages a 2.5m wide area but only casts oil on the center 1.5m of the hitbox. The related skill could bring the terrain boxes to closer to the hitbox itself once the character reached 4 or more in that skill. This would reward those who focus deeply on a skill while reducing terrain clutter from spammable abilities.
You are correct there is a lot.... lot... many lots.... of surfaces either 32 or 64 when you factor in blessed and cursed, and combination surfaces. It does seem a bit much at the start, but I promise you it gets better. You learn to adapt, and use those surfaces to your advantage.
One of the reasons surfaces play such a big part in DOS 2 is in DOS 1 they were present but took a back seat. A lot of the player feedback was they wished environments were more dynamic and that surfaces played a bigger role. Their wish was granted.
3b: With terrain spam as it is, mobility skills are mandatory as moving through certain terrain is devastating. Taking a few steps out of a firepit can often do as much damage or more as an actual attack. Sometimes the wisest move is to sit still which is odd in a tactical game. Perhaps standing still in a damaging terrain should be worse while moving through it should be less dangerous. As is frozen and electrified ground can lead to a fall or stun, maybe poison would be better to sit still rather than let it spread and fire would be better to get out of ASAP
There are builds that revolve around standing in surfaces, elemental ranger (I think this changed though in release) and elemental affinity(?) which reduces the AP of elemental abilities by 1 when standing on that surface. It can be a big deal. I do agree with you a bit about how standing in a surface can make more tactical sense than running out of it. Fire seems bad, and standing in fire seems really bad. But in DOS 2, not always.
4:Civil skills seem under-developed and sparse. 1-2 points in loremaster and you are good for most unidentified items from what I've seen. Civil skills in general could use a lot more to them, like actual crafting skills to determine if you can craft certain things. Alchemy, Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Cooking, Fletching, Trapmaking. Those would all be a great addition to the Tabletop-ish system DoS II already has and would promote a lot of interesting inter-party development and play.
I would like to point out that you are only seeing items from Act 1. Starting at like level 10 I think you need loremaster 3. I do wish higher levels of loremaster gave you more insight into enemies other than just hp, resists, and talents. It would be great if it would actually show you what abilities they had available, and not just hydrophist 1.
As for crafting unless something drastic changes it is just combining different items. Unlike DOS 1 which required you to have crafting, blacksmithing, and tenebrium to make everything as good as it could be. I hope there is a bit more complexity to crafting in DOS 2 compared to its current implementation but I am not holding my breath. One of the bigger complains of DOS 1 was how difficult crafting was to use, and by the time you realized the benefits of it you were probably already 3/4 of the way through the game and no characters with enough points to make it worthwhile. A lot of salt was tossed at Larian over their crafting in DOS 1, and a lot of praise for those that learned to use it properly.
5: Source points, I understand the methods to get them, and how powerful they are, but they seem a bit restricted in the long run especially in Multiplayer. I'm not exactly sure how to balance them but if it's something I hesitate to use at all then I end up saving them endlessly for fear of screwing up my hosts game.
In the Act 1 once you free Gareth you can talk to undead merchant in the sanctuary. If you convince her to help she will refill all used up/inert purging wands repeatedly (each wand has 3 casts). Source is then available to use fairly easily. Just cast it on a dead body and boom source point. Since most fights have at least 2-4 enemies you shouldn't have any problem having full source in the second half of Act 1 and beyond.
6:Consumables: Same as above. In multiplayer I'd rather not use them. Convenience, power and utility vs being uncommon enough that people are hesitant to use them in group play.
In classical difficulty you really don't need them if you have a semi decent group comp. If you are having difficulty in multiplayer you can always buy empty potion bottles and penny(?) mushrooms. This will give you a decent healing potion. Buying crafting components from vendors and making potions and other stuff almost always nets you a profit which you can invest in more crafting mats. Don't be afraid of using healing potions of stat potions. It is why they are there.
7: Armor might be too protective from status effects. I like how the system works but maybe some diminishing protection returns once you are below 50% armor?
I tend to agree with you, but I don't know of a better system. The devs have stated that they are going to keep it this way, except for a few changes in how statuses are applied, because it allows players to plan how they will attack during a fight. Having that knowledge allows for...
[ok in my next turn my rogue is going to get stunned because he has no armor and is standing in an electrified field. I know my enchanter is up next in the fight rotation and has ice armor available, I can cast it on my rogue before the next turn to avoid the stun.]
In DOS 1 it was really random and unpredictable if a status was going to be applied, it added a lot of RNG god outcomes (which didn't rely on skill) while might be fun at the start of the game ended up being really frustrating as the game went on. Larian's answer to RNG status application is the dual armor solution and saving throws are based on if you have the corresponding armor type. After a status is applied it then falls to your resistances to determine how much that burn is going to tick for, whatever status is being applied.
I think I've typed enough for now.
