Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Introduce 'Ironman' and change Honour mode

Rather than having Ironman (single save) in Honour mode only (which is the only difference between Tactician and Honour), allow players to play Ironman in Classic, Tactician and Honour (I've seen this system somewhere else), then change what Honour Mode actually is.

I don't play Single-save in DOS2 due to the likelihood of one-shot kill ambushes in Tactician/Honour mode, but it would be great to be unable to reload in Classic difficulty.

As for the new Honour mode, I don't think we need stronger enemies. However, it could include everything in Tactician plus some of the following:

-- If two or more party members engage in combat and then one of them disengages and runs away, all stats and cool-downs will continue to function for that character as if turn-based until the fight ends. In other words, if you leave combat with a character while another is still fighting you wont be able to just press your bedroll item and immediately recover from all cooldowns and status effects, and then re-engage fully healed. You can reengage in combat if you wish, but you'll have lost initiative and your stats will only have changed as much as the amount of turns you were out of battle for. Now, that's Honour!

(Only applies to characters who have engaged in a battle and subsequently left while combat still under way. E.g. If you have one character wandering around somewhere else in the map by himself doing sod all, his healing etc remains as normal.

Naturally if a single character engages in combat and then disengages, his healing and cooldowns automatically return to normal, given that the combat is automatically over. But this is fine, as you've probably noticed enemy health bars also become fully healed when all party members disengage from combat, so it can't be considered 'cheesing' in this case).

-- Inability to use Fast Travel from just any place in the map. Fast travel can only be performed from shrine to shrine; Or at the very least, make it impossible to fast travel out of dungeons, caves, etc. That's what the teleport pyramids are for!

-- The first time you come across a shrine you must engage with it to actually activate it. I think at the moment you only need to be near them (I might be wrong).

-- Party Inventory (which apparently is going to be introduced in Definitive Edition) is disabled. Furthermore, party members must be within a certain range of each other to share items. Two characters on opposite ends of the map, for instance, will not be able to share items until they come within decent range of each other.

-- Reduced amount of gold and weight per point of Thievery;

-- Reduced likelihood of finding Uncommon, Rare, Epic and Legendary items. If playing Honour mode it should be normal to expect that Dark-soulsy "all my equipment is unremarkable" vibe to last longer than it currently does. Maybe increase item prices as well. That way crafting armour is actually viable and necessary AND Legendary items are actually legendary and bloody awesome.

One of the best Helmets in the game is the bucket. It's miserable and humiliating. You're in a prison after all. Maybe create an NPC whom the Red Prince can persuade to receive slightly better clothing early in Fort Joy? Otherwise you could always murder someone for a fancier pair of boots... or steal them.

-- Give durability to all weapons and armor, and make it so that durability can actually be lost during combat; Stats deteriorate for each point below 50% (that is, below 10/20 durability) and become unusable at 0%. I HAVE NEVER used any of the repairing anvils on the map because it is unnecessary. Feels like a pointless feature atm.

And FOR THE LOVE OF GOD make bows, crossbows, wands and staffs lose durability just like melee weapons when attacking items in the world with basic attacks. Atm, if you have low thievery skills, you can attack doors at the expense of durability on your weapon. This is a good trade off which forces you to make choices. HOWEVER, it doesn't seem to apply to ranged weapons, making durability entirely pointless since you can always switch to a bow.

-- Considerably reduce line of sight when exploring the map for the first time(seriously, atm you can see waaay too far). This is a bit minor though.

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Do you agree with the idea of a different Honour Mode and separate Ironman(single save) option, regardless of mode?

Regardless of the question above, do you agree with ANY of the ideas mentioned?

I hope some of you at least agree it's cheesy as hell to be able to leave combat and re-engage fully healed as if nothing happened. "IT'S JUST A FLESH WOUND!"

Durability was removed from the game after players convinced Larian that it didn't add anything useful to the game except busywork. Every so often you click an inventory item on another inventory item. I don't miss the durability.

Most of your other changes aren't actually bad, per se, but almost none of them are actually combat-related. A difficulty level which doesn't do much to the combat seems kinda pointless.

The reason why I don't think the combat needs changes is because I found it really hard in Tactician mode at the beginning. So the question for me is, why does it become easier further on?

- Because you learn how to 'cheese' out of battles. (sure, you can force yourself not to do this, but the temptation is there, and you'll end up probably doing it when in a tough situation).

- You can carry lvl12 stuff while still in lvl8, with only weapons getting a penalty to accuracy (I think). I like that you can carry any item that you want given you meet some attribute prerequisites, but there should be either more penalties to doing so, higher attribute prerequisites, or as I suggested, just make great items that much harder to come across. I arrived at Driftwood at level 8 filled with rare powerful items. Whereas for most of Lvl1-7 in Fort Joy I would lose most battles against enemies one level higher than my own, and those at my own level were challenging, in Driftwood enemies at my level became very easy, and I could even beat enemies two levels higher, which would have been impossible at Fort Joy.

Sure there's also Source, but I don't think it's a good idea to mess around with that. You could make some spells more expensive to cast and more expensive to buy I guess.

- It's too easy to steal money and items, which in turn allows you to buy better equipment. I think this can be easily dealt with by just nerfing Thievery. 600 gold at level 3 sounds more reasonable than 1100.

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I think Durability only makes sense when items are more expensive and gold is harder to come across, which is not the case at the moment. The rarer your weapons and armour the harder and more expensive it should be to repair them. This would force you to choose between which items to repair, and you'd probably have to carry extra items of 'normal armour' because you'd be unable to repair all the legendary or rare items on all your characters

Doing so would ensure Durability is not just about clicking an item and then another. It becomes about opportunity costs and player choice.

The reason why early game is so hard: enemies have mostly stats and skills on an optimum level. You as a player are lacking good equipment and enough skills, instead of facing equally 'badly equipped' enemies you are fighting uphill. Later on your equipment is more fitting and you have more skills at your disposal. Many of the mechanics are kind of broken in prinicipal like teleport and invisibility so you as a player get a huge advantage against the AI from them.




How would that enrich the gameplay? It would make the game just more tedious and boring. Out of the same reason durability got removed as Stabbey already mentioned. Even if only for honour mode I don't see how it would make the game more challenging.


Also this game is riddled with possible cheesy tactics, there are so many ways to abuse AI or general mechanics, there is no way to fix them all anyway:
- drowning enemies in dozens of explosives barrels before blowing them up
- keeping the boss talking while the rest of the team slaughters his henchman
- going invisible in general
- fleeing combat and returning to get a new turn
- killend 1-2 enemies, fleeing, engaging again, killing 1-2 enemies, fleeing, rince and repeat
- filling a indestructible chest with tons of garbage and throw the chest on the enemies
- and probably many more


If someone want to cheese or save scum, he should be able to do so, in the end he is only cheating himself.