Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Interview with Swen Vincke on DOS 2

Nice read.

Heh, I guess I find myself in the "suprised they don't like the new systems" camp.

What I hate about the physical/magical armor is mostly the 100% defenselessness once it's gone. RNG isn't the devil. RNG should not be avoided at all cost. Binary yes/no, now that's something that's rather boring to play. I'm fine with the system if once it breaks, it's not 100%, and there are other skills that may lower your chance to be affected or increase chances enemies are afflicted. This guaranteed CC is just boring IMO.

I can't really see what good there would be with skillabilities since there's literally nothing interesting anymore. I just pump out dual-wield and necromancy on all characters really.

IMO VO is generally a waste of time. Pillars of Eternity used too much too, and it was very bad having to read inbetween descriptions since there was no pause for you to read them so you had to listen, then read again for all the info. Not a pleasant thing, and lack of VO made things better as a result. I can see the same happening here.

I can't say I've grown font of the dialogue system no, it's still as jarring as it was 20 hours ago. Most people seem to believe it's placeholder text and if I tell them it's not, they tell me I'm lying. I don't think it's that well received myself, from my impressions of reading other people's posts.

I just need to say how much I hate the third person dialogue. I don't understand why he says it allows for more roleplaying or fits well into roleplaying. I just feel so disconnected from the characters. I mean, I guess it's ok to have some few third person options like *leave* or *punch him in the face* but replacing all dialogues with it is going too far. It feels ckunky and unfinished, actually I thought it was placeholder text until I read this interview.

About the armor system (again, yeah...), I would like to dublicate a suggestion someone posted in the other forum as I consider it to be the perfect solution.
The system should be adjusted, so when you are receiving damage it is absorbed by armor, HOWEVER the percentage absorbed is equal to the current armor value compared to max armor value, and after that the status effect (if the skill had it) has a chance to fail (not land) equal to the current percentage of armor to your max armor. These can (and I think should) be capped at something like 10% and 90% (which means even on a full armored character you have a 10% to succesfully debuff, and only 90%, no 100%, to debuff a character without armor at all). And this can work out really well with status effects that can be anywhere from 10% to 300% (earthquake anyone?) basic landrate - then this landrate is multiplied by the abovesaid percentage.
Example. I use a 100 damage magic damage stun 100% debuff on a target with 200 magic armor. I do 90 damage to magic armor (90% absorbed, 110 magic armor left), 10% to vitality, and I have a 55% to land a stun (110/200=0.55 equals 55% multiplied by 100% of the basic stun rate).
To me it's rather simple, and almost genius in the mechanic.

Hmmm, somewhat inconveniently phrased that feedback-selection part... "we ignore..."

As for the magical/physical armor stuff... I'm in the "needs some tweaking to really work well" camp.
Right now it makes HP quite meaningless imho, as it's as it was with Original Sin 1, this time just after the armor is gone.
I would actually change it to something like this...

- magical armor -> "Energy Shield" or whatnot, just like in DOS as a more active Life-Substitution
(not too high and cannot be "healed/restoreed", skill only, so it's an active playstyle to utilize it, maybe an AP upkeep-cost)

- physical armor -> "Stability", protects against all forms of hostile effects, entropy-based(!)
(amount of stabilty removed depending on what effect is applied and for how long)