Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Response to Swen Vincke PCGamer Article

Hello there Larian devs! I met with some of you at TwitchCon last year and kept finding myself back to the Larian booth to check out more of this highly anticipated sequel. When Early Access was released, I immediately hopped on and had an amazing time through Chapter 1.

As a fellow game developer, I committed the cardinal sin and failed to provide feedback after testing. I enjoyed pretty much everything I was seeing and did not provide the positive feedback, which is just as important as the negative.

I wanted to write in response to the PCGamer article, specifically this section:

"There were some people that didn’t like the physical and magic armor, and that surprised me. I thought it was a major improvement to the game. But they had a particular tactic that they had in the previous game they can’t anymore, now. "

I wanted to note how much I enjoyed the new Armor system and would be very disappointed if it ended up being removed.

In D:OS1, though I massively enjoyed the game, I was not able to retain for a second playthrough. Even though I had changed my class significantly in style from the character I played the first time, the general tactics per fight remained the same. Crowd control and terrain manipulation were still the kings of combat. I only lasted for a few hours before realizing I felt satisfied with my single playthrough and would put away the game.

When fighting through the first encounters, I was reminded of that moment and started to question if this would again be a crowd-control dominated combat system. Then, Armor started appearing on enemies, and new tactics needed to be deployed. I needed to use different crowd control types against different enemies. When dual-armor enemies appeared, the tactics needed to shift again, focusing down an Armor bar in order to get a CC effect off. It shifted the combat dynamic and added a ton of depth and decision making, and by the end of the first chapter, I was absolutely dying for more.

While I'm here, I'll write up some of the other notes of feedback I had during the playthrough. This feedback is from a 2-player Co-Op experience, coming from a 2-player Co-Op double Lone Wolf D:oA1 player.

What I liked:

--New Skill System. Making hard choices is the very definition of what a 'build' is, and I was happy to see more restrictions placed on what skills you can bring into combat. In D:OS1, both of our Lone Wolf characters had a point in almost all combat skill categories, since it allowed us to use the basic, reliable abilities from each category. This is no longer efficient - I feel more pressure to specialize into a few categories, which makes me feel more unique and customized.

-Much more streamlined intro experience with more combat woven into the story segments. The murder mystery was my least favorite portion of DOS1, but I loved the pacing of this game's prison breakout.

-Shorter, more impactful combat. The lower time-to-kill for both players and enemies made for big-swing turns, where you either feel the threat of defeat or the thrill of victory with one big play from either side of the field.

-Less exploitation. The first game seemed to encourage me to go on a murderspree when I was at an appropriate level, looting absolutely everything from merchants that I had sold, and breaking the in-game economy completely. It does not appear this is possible in D:OA2, and I'm glad for it. I don't want to be a monster, but... dat XP though!

-Less exploitation part 2: No Teleportation Pyramid. My co-op partner and I made excessive use of the teleportation pyramid to exploit in combat, teleporting out of harmful situations. I would prefer if this didn't come back in the sequel, or was unusable in combat if so.

-Less exploitation part 3!: Fewer allied NPC's. The number of times we'd drag a tough fight to the town guards was pretty high in D:OS1, especially in the early game where we needed to XP to get on an even playing field. Between the distance between fights and allied NPC's, and the many gap closing abilities on enemies, this no longer feels like a valid or correct strategy.

-Overall game difficulty: For our experience, I attribute this greatly to the lack of early Summon skills. We struggled in D:OS1 until we learned some Summons to soak attacks, and after that, the game didn't provide too much challenge. Summons are not present early on, forcing us to make more use of our companions. Those companions died on several occasions, and we full-wiped on a handful of fights. The difficulty pacing felt right for the content. The final fight with the giant worm-beast was an awesome drag-out dance of getting the two factions to fight each other while picking off individual targets, ending with only one surviving party member on our side.

What I Didn't Like:

-The Crafting system from D:OS1 was never my favorite, and it doesn't look much improved yet. I like the recipes tab, but it doesn't seem to pick up all recipes you learn via experimentation. This is probably asking for too much given the 'learn it yourself' style, but it would make me more inclined to experiment if the crafting system filtered out all items that didn't have a recipe that used them. I am alright with trying to figure out the puzzle of which items go together, but I know that a large bulk of the inventory doesn't go with anything, and that really discourages me from trying to experiment. It's too large of a time sink that takes away from the rest of the amazing experience.

-Lone Wolf replacement being unlocked at level 8. I understand the reasoning behind this - you should give the 'normal' experience and the other characters a chance before you decide you don't want them around. I agree with this decision, but I do think it could come earlier, so you can get used to your new party size before Chapter 1 ends. Maybe level 4 would be sufficient to get to know the normal setup. We legitimately gave the other characters a chance, but we both agree that in a game like this, we want to play out that one character we crafted and decided upon.



In summary, I'm very pleased with being able to Kickstart this sequel, and can't wait until more of the content is available for testing. Larian has earned my respect as a fantastic developer and I hoped this franchise has many titles to come.

Nice feedback, I can get behind most of this.

It is quite possible to break the ingame economy tho, paintings are even more valuable than they used to be.
The interesting thing you can do with them is stuff all the paintings in a pouch, sell that pouch to a vendor and clean out their inventory, then you can pickpocket the pouch back because the game only registers the weight and value of the pouch, not its content. Then you can sell the pouch back to the vendor once he restocks, and if you are going to eventually murder the vendor for XP you can sell this pouch worth their full inventory three times to every vendor you meet. You can do the math on what tat amounts to in gold. Especially since you can "buy" all the stuff you want without using gold.

The new armor system has one big flaw. It is far too easy to perma CC the enemies. Once you chew through the magic armor, every single spell with a CC component (Freeze, Stun,...) has a 100% success rate.

It is game breaking and completely removes any need for adapting on the fly to random success/fails. The results are deterministic and hence BORING since you cannot lose.

Does it really?

Yes and the situation is even worse than that. You don't have to worry about running out of spells to cast since they give us CC with cooldowns equal to the duration You can just recast it over and over without the enemy ever getting a turn.

Keep in mind that this is just early access, and classic mode at that. Armor of Frost cleanses lots of CC, once they fix Haste you'll be able to cleanse frozen, etc. Not to mention, those spells (actually singular, spell, Winter Blast specifically) that are/is broken will most likely be getting a rebalance at some point. I would expect that in Tactician mode, you're going to be seeing a lot of new CC cleansing abilities, in addition to the options already available in the game. At the very very least, it is still an improvement over the first game IMO, where CC was left entirely up to chance.

What SlamPow said.

Don't take the current situation as a result of the system. It's more or less scaffolding around it.

That makes no sense to me.

Determinism is boring!

Oh shit moments only occur when chance is involved. Those moments are the ones that are memorable. Those are the moments that force you to adapt and overcome.

Taking out % chance to succeed with CC is a terrible design.

Determinism is good. When you win in a deterministic system, you win because of your own actions. It is a victory for you and you alone. One you can appreciate. It has meaning, and the meaning is that you earned success. When you win because you got lucky, well... How can you appreciate such a victory? Do your "oh shit" moments really make up for not knowing whether or not you were a deserving victor?

Determinism means you will never lose. Didn't you notice that playing through this game?

My first try I got to the last fight without once having to do any in combat healing. All healing was done with the bedroll after the fight.

It's completely silly how easy it makes the game. You always know exactly what will happen and that means you would have to intentionally screw up to lose a fight.

Again. This is early access. In the current build, literally everything is broken - warriors, rogues, rangers, and mages. The final game will certainly be harder, you can count on that. That, and it will have a tactician mode if you truly crave a challenge. The current mess of balance is not because of a deterministic system; it is because Rage is broken, warriors are doing too much damage, snipe is overpowered and CC doesn't have many counters ingame at the moment. But this moment is by no means representative of the experience Larian wants to give us. Trust me on this.

That's not what determinism means.

What are you actually criticizing? The system mechanics or the way the current mobs and abilities are balanced? There's actually a difference.

*shrug* I like the feedback here.

I think the ability system needs a lot more tweaking though and I also preferred the D20 mechanics in the past system. I'm not a fan of the new armor system. I'd have preferred if spells/skills (frost armor) and magical items were used to crest the same effect without getting read of block, bodybuilding, or willpower and replacing them with the new defenses stats. A combination of systems seems doable

There is nothing I despise more than the old system. It took the fun out of winning. It made solid strategies into losing ones. It was a nightmare on Tactician mode, which basically forced you into putting points into bodybuilding and willpower just to stay alive, and pigeonholed you into taking certain, exceptionally powerful skills in order to maximize the effects of your CC (looking at you, drain willpower). It was a nightmare, and promoted pumping your primary stat in order to maximize your chances of getting your CC off. Not to mention, primary stats lowered cooldowns as well, contributing to the issue. In DOS 2, we have the opposite issue, with primary stats barely mattering compared to memory, but hey, I at least prefer it to putting everything into INT just for a better chance at doing what I know should work anyways. So, we may have to agree to disagree.

Guaranteed CC success is what is wrong with the current system.

Once they have no Magic Amrour, or no Physical Armour for physical CC, your skills have 100% success. That is what makes it silly easy.

A game with no challenge, and that is what you will have when CC is guaranteed, is going to be very boring.

One of the most liked things about DOS1 was that it actually provided a challenge.

To be fair, I actually enjoy the current system of having physical and magical armour. It gives me customization options that I never had in the first game, where I need to weigh the use of the full plate vs. the robe, and promotes me actually contemplating gear hybrids.
In addition to this, as has been stated before, the current armour system promotes a more tactical approach to the game where CC is not random, but instead a result of strategy (or lack thereof). I would rather not have the old system back, because it would be like losing a game of chess because your opponent suddenly dropkicks you. That's really how RNG CC feels a lot of the time.
I do agree with the concern that there are flaws with how physical and magical armour works though. I'm not entirely fond of the idea of weighing myself down with armour that serves no purpose once they've chewed through this abstract number attached to it. However, I feel that's better served by implementing ways of restoring it (percentage-based restoration on Fortify and Frost Armour comes to mind) so that higher values carry the additional reward of more points restored when using skills and consumables.
This is all just off the top of my head though, so I make no claim to actually be offering good solutions. My point is that I like the current system and would rather see them tweak it, than remove it.

I guess you didn't understand my question.

So, let's take a look at your argument in short form over here (because fuck going back and quoting more shit, it's gettin gway too nested).



Let's say you do 200 damage per character, so when you focus fire in perfect initiative order you do 800 damage. What if the enemy has 1000 armor. Is this easy?

Let's say you do 100 damage per character and you have 400 armor, but enemies have 1000 armor and hit for 400. Is this easy?

Let's say you have 200 damage per character, and the enemies have 1000 armor but they also have two abilities to restore and buff armor by 150%. Is this easy then?

Let's say you have 1000 damage per character and the enemies have 200 armor. Is this easy?

These are all turn 1 projections with super simplified mechanics, I am not even going to bother simulating other turns but they all have different resource expenditure as well as time-to-kill.

What you're actually bitching about is the LACK of armor on things despite the mechanic existing. You are actually advocating for more lowered lethality or more armor so counter play can come in.

You essentially don't understand your own argument.

I agree with this. I like the dual armor system and the relative lack of RNG.

I endorse RNG cause I like more surprises and the fact that I feel like combat should have elements of chance.

At the same time, I understand how others like determinism that the new system gives. Wouldn't everyone be satisfied if the new armor system is there but the abilities themselves were changed back to the old ones?

You'd still have determinism in a dual armor system and could stack RNG in your favor when thats gone
There'd be elements of chance in CC after armor is gone
Shields would be better cause they'd have blocking again
Combat would have more interesting "oh, shit moments?" and feel unique each time.

It'd also make people consider whether to try and CC once enemy armor is gone or go for damage. And it'd place more pressure on whether or not they need to specialize in their main stat for better CC vs more memory for more skills vs more general spread

Alright. So first you say the system makes it too easy, and then complain that the game is too easy. But I would argue that one of these things does not beget the other.

As I've already mentioned, once Haste is fixed there will be another method of cleansing frozen, giving us Phoenix Dive, any fire spell, and the additional protection of magic armor to prevent it, giving you several tactical counters to it. And stunned is removed by armor of frost. These are among the very first abilities we have seen, on the very first pass of the open Alpha. If enemies had these, and used them effectively, then your complaint would be no longer an issue, and we know for a fact that they will be implemented, and that enemies will not only use these but other tactics as well to get around your CC, just like they were able to in the first game, with Purifying Fire, Cleansing Water, etc. So from what you're saying, CC being guaranteed is an issue. But the truth, I would say, is that the issue lies with enemies not having any counters to the CC... yet. I would wait and see how classic mode AI ends up, and judge the game then, along with taking a peek at Tactician Mode. I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised with where they take this and what they do with the armor system in the future.