Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General New Stat : Memory : Thoughts?

You don't think that saying "Do you have any desire do to a constructive comment?" is NOT rude? Because I sure did.

I said "I'm not sure this is a good idea", not a definite "this is wrong", and then I followed up with "It really depends on the attribute points you get per level" and then explained why. I don't know what else you wanted.

No, I can't really judge how well Memory will work when they have only revealed a little information so far. Nothing I can do about that. All I can do is compare it to how it worked in D:OS 1, which was that you got one attribute point every 2 levels. I don't believe that they're keeping that the same, largely because that would make it ridiculously hard to make use of Memory and still keep other attributes up to date.

Again, this is my D&D, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment and Neverwinter nights past talking..

Some of you have concerns over balancing of the attribute. These are very valid concerns. After all, D:OS had a few balancing issues.

But D:OS2 is a long way from pretending to be balanced. There will be a lot of play-testing to come (much of which I believe we'll have the opportunity to participate in), which Larian can use to properly balance all of this.

I think this is a good chance to share any concerns you have with it on a conceptual level, but it's kind of pointless to start nitpicking on details just yet.

Higher level skills will use multiple memory slots. To me this seems to address the main concern I have, which was that eventually you would have "enough" slots, and then wouldn't need to invest any more.

Another concern I have is that one reason I generally don't like primary attributes is that I don't like it when you have to do things like invest multiple points in memory just to get one memory slot. I've said this before: I want every choice to count. If I have to "waste" 2 points before I can invest a point that does something... Then my choices feel like they lose a lot of meaning. I would actually much prefer if it simply forced you to invest 3 attribute points for 1 increase in the stat.

Conceptually 'Memory' sounds more like 'Preparation'. As in the player character prepares certain skills/spells for the next encounter rather than say memorises certain skills/spells. Makes more sense to me. Memorising implies that the PC forgets things habitually whereas preparation implies planning for the next encounter.

If you don't like the sound of Preparation you can call it Planning or a synonym of it that sounds cooler.
synonyms: arrangements, planning, plans, provision, preparatory measures, preliminaries, necessary steps, groundwork, spadework, foundation, gearing up
"preparations for the conference will begin almost immediately"

Just a thought

First of all, thank you for answering me.

Second:
1- I hope the importance of the skills won't be too diminished for the sake of a single stat. Having said that, I trust you, guys, and I'm eager to read more dettails about the new system
2- Good to know

Yeah I have the feeling that they know, to a degree, about the concerns.

Otherwise, why all Pc "newspapers" be so excited about DOS2?

Some Thoughts:
- The base value of stats in D:OS1 was 5, in D:OS2 it seems to be 10. I think it is plausible that you get more points per level (for example, DA:O had 10 as base value and you got 3 stat points per level).
- It looks like they kept the concept that each skill is only dependent on a single stat (int for magic, dex (finesse) for thief/archer, str for fighters). This means hybrid chars will still have problems and mages still have most options.
- The influence of speed, per and con on AP is gone. So it looks you must choose if you put all points in one base stat for max power or if you split between one main stat and memory for more utility. Wits for initiative looks also important. I hope that wits will allow you to get other options than fighting because you can talk your way out (not always of course).

- If you try something (except the hit chance of an attack), is the result determined by a fixed number or a random dice roll? (Like if you want a guard to let you through, do you need wits of 15 or higher or will a higher number just give you a bigger chance of success)
- Are there non combat skills that are based on stats? (Like sneaking/thieving is dependent on dex/finesse)? In D:OS1 all non combat actions were only dependent on how many points you had in that skill.

They only removed Speed. Perception is still in, just renamed to Wits.

Fighters in D:OS 2 will still generally go for a STR/CON mix, just like in D:OS 1. The removal of speed can help them there, where in D:OS 1 having to use 3 stats tended to make them slower.

Rangers in D:OS 2 no longer seem to get accuracy from PER (now WIT), so they can mostly stick to FIN and not spread things out much. They might split points with WIT for the critical chance, but don't need to.

Without Speed, that changes the DEX/SPD blend of Rogues, but they'll probably shift that over to a FIN/WIT blend instead.

Mages now have a reason to split attributes, and I imagine that they'll go mainly for an INT/MEM blend.


In essence, Fighters and Rangers become more powerful thanks to less attribute splitting, and Mages now become notably less powerful than in D:OS thanks to both a limit on total skills and now being forced to split attributes. Rogues probably become slightly more powerful, but probably not by very much.

Really? My mage in D:OS seemed to get a lot more benefit from speed than intelligence, especially in EE. There were a lot of very useful spells where intelligence made marginal difference, and some of the more useful spells (like summoning) had high AP costs.

We've had all kinds of other classes in the group, but none benefited from speed more than the mage and her 101 spells.

Everyone benefits from Speed. I'll put it another way: in D:OS 2, Mages are now (in essence) required to split attributes, like fighters, rogues and rangers were required to in D:OS 1. Of course I know that Mages get benefits from Speed. Before the EE, I did make an Inquisitor which was a INT/SPD hybrid which used touch spells. But there was certainly no shortage of players who made mages with Int in the 20's.

Speed was useful for all chars in D:OS1.

I think you are right. Since they had the biggest amount of skills mages take the biggest hit from the memory stat. They still have the advantage of utility (you fill your slots with fire spells in an ice area and vice versa. fighters/thievs/archers used the same skills all the time)

After some thinking, I think that wits is now very importent for every char because of initiative. When speed is gone this is the only way to increase it. To CC or even kill enemies before they can act makes things much easier. In D:OS1 your team almost always acted before the enemy because speed was useful for every char.

perception and constitution were not very useful in D:OS1. I had only 1 char with higher per to find traps and secrets. Higher crit chance was often useless because only normal attacks could crit but you used skills all the time.
Since you could CC most enemies most of the time you took very little damage. I increased con only when my AP from spped got close to max AP.

Except that likely is also no longer much of a thing. The same update has also confirmed the existence of Physical and Magical armor which must be depleted before status effects can take place. So gone are the days of going first, stunning everything and then cleaning up the stragglers.

Wits might become the new Speed, but I'm not so sure that (even with a possible increased amount of attributes per level up) most classes will be able to spread out to raising 3+ attributes to decent levels without crippling their power. But we shall have to see.

I was thinking about a trick where higher level skills has initial cooldown equals to the skill level. e.g. spell level 5 might be used for first in the 5th round of any combat.

In previous game, there was an issue that all super-powerfull spells are used in turn-zero, so later in the game, combat has finished before it even started. Allow to build it up, allow gradation, allow to fight for disable mage in 4th turn.

The importance of crowd control won't be diminishing, necessarily. It's not clear if magic armour will block ALL effects (such as charm). And there's also the summons to act as damage sinks.

Regardless though, initiative never seemed to be a big deal to me. I invested in perception in order to control my combat order within my team (it's good if the mage can cast a buff before the fighters attack) but it's a potentially expensive stat that only really means you get one extra turn at the beginning of combat IF your perception is the highest. And then, even if the enemies move first, they often have to spend a lot of their AP just to move into range. Seemed like a pointless benefit.

Like we showed at PAX East and like Swen was saying on the PC gamer talk this week, physical armor and magic armor are a really important factor to every combat.

Magic Armor block everything like charm/stunned/chilled, etc.
Physical Armor block everything like tripping/bleeding and such.

So before shooting that stunning arrow you need to ask yourself, will I make enough damage to go through the armor and then stun in that same shot or should I just make a normal attack and use it next turn.

CC is still really powerful but it's not the go to skill to use on first turn to win every single fight. In fact, you should probably wait until armor is broken.

Oh? So you're completely immune to status effects as long as you have both physical and magical armour?

Would I be correct in the understanding that magic armour blocks magic attacks only (not physical attacks), and vice versa?

I hope melee units will have a sort of "fluid zone of control" hindering movement (not just attacks of opportunity) to help protect the squishy mages.

That's correct. Matter is, these armours are not like in other games, passive bonuses: the value is actually the life of the armour. So eventually, all armor breaks.

I'm really sceptical about most of the stuff, tbh.

All that armor-imunity stuff feels like fixing things that shouldn't be broken per se.
Slightly exaggerated example:
Ofc CC is too important, if I need a hundred hits to kill something, because it is absolute and instant instead of the damage's consequence (death). Right now, a proper mage can be killed within a single round by one enemy easily, sometimes one single hit. (for example deathknights) And ofc the player needs to utilize CC to prevent that to be successful, making it way to attractive.
Balancing these aspects would be the better way to tackle this, imho.

This is pure speculation:
Your enemy wears the shiny gold armor of doom. It has 50 physical armor and 100 magic armor, but you do not know this. You use a skill and see 80 damage, but you do not know if you damaged the armor or the enemy HP. If your skill did physical damage, you broke the armor and the enemy may be hit by physical status effects (some enemies may be immune because of what they are, like skelletons do not bleed). If your skill did magic damage the enemy still has 20 magical armor and any status effect will fail.
If there is still a health bar at enemies you could see if the armor is still there (unless the bar shows the sum of armor+health).

Do you think this speculation is plausible?

Look at this image. It's from one of the arena we were showing at PAX in Boston.
http://www.co-optimus.com/images/upload/image/DOS2_PVPArena1.jpg
You see the grey bar and the blue bar? This is Physical Armor and Magical Armor.

So yes, you see it when you deal damage to the HP bar or you just do damage to the armor. Doing magical damage eat up the magical armor until it's gone. Same for Physical.