Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Armor and Shields

Disclaimer: I know this is the alpha version, so I expect a few aspects to change for the official release. On the other hand, we won’t know what will change until that day. So it’s important to point out the strengths and weaknesses of Original Sin 2 at this stage, so that those changes reflect the wants and needs of the gamers that Kickstarted this project. Players like you and me donated to support this sequel because we loved Divinity Original Sin and wanted more of it, with expanded and improved content. Much of my analysis of DOS2 compares it to its processor to point out positive and negative changes in gameplay. This thread is about armor and shields. Tell me if you agree or disagree and why...


In Original Sin armor acted as damage reduction while shields had a chance to block enemy attacks completely. Divinity Original Sin 2 features new protection bars Physical Armor and Magic Armor but no blocking.

In the first game heavier armor absorbed more damage but slowed you down so movement cost more action points. The proportion of the damage absorbed by armor was equal to the armor’s rating divided by ((4.5 x (1+Attacker’s level)) + Armor Rating). That’s a neat old school RPG equation for a simple and balanced mechanic. In the second game, physical armor provided by gear is a second health bar. Enemy attacks whittle it down before dealing any real damage. This little gray bar only replenishes once you leave combat. That’s really unfair to both the player and monsters. From the monsters’ perspective, even if I’m wearing fullplate, smashing me with a mace the size of a tree should hurt. For the player equipment like armor is constantly there, so it shouldn’t be reduced to zero during a fight unless it breaks.

The sequel’s Magic Armor is an interesting new addition. Like Physical Armor, it’s an extra bar over your health bar, whittled down by spells during combat. A nice advantage is that it offers some protection outside of combat from environmental hazards like fire and poison. Honestly, I can take it or leave it.

One thing that was absolutely better in the first game was the shield. Sword and board were my bread and butter in Divinity Original Sin. A shield’s blocking chance was separate from the miss chance based on defense rating (armor rating + dexterity), so you had two opportunities to completely avoid attacks. Blocking was also a weapon skill like single-handed, two-handed, and ranged. So if you really wanted to make use of it, you had to invest. In Original Sin 2 the Blocking skill is gone and shields simply increase your Physical Armor bar. This simplification has removed a big part of combat and character building.

When you think about it, these physical/magic armor bars act more like the forcefields in Halo than Armor Class from D&D, so Divinity seems to be abandoning its “classic RPG roots” with this new system. I strongly prefer the original armor and shield system, though it is interesting that they differentiate between physical damage and magic damage. Magic armor may be a step forward, but the physical armor bar and the loss of the shield skill are definitely two steps back.

Honestly I miss the old system aswell. Shield had a better purpose and could have got awesome strong and with the new system, if the armors are depleted, enemies are stunlockable without any effort.

I also miss Willpower and Body Building. Sure, it was RNG a bit, body it felt more logical and gave a better feeling of your characters getting stronger, getting able to withstand all the shit that gets thrown at them.

I do feel like blocking should still be a thing in this game since a small amount of armor doesn't really make shields feel that special. That being said, I love the new system for everything outside of that one small detail. It makes each fight feel meaningfully unique in that at the start of each fight I have to plan how to take down each mob individually based on both their defenses and resistances. I would also like to point out that at this stage of the game we don't get to experience one of the high points of the new system, which is when we get sets of gear we can hot-swap to tailor our defenses around dealing with the present threats. Getting stun-locked by magic? Dust of the magic armor set.

Perhaps my experience was not the standard as well, but my first run of DOS1 was a sword and board tank with a water/lightning mage support and my tank felt so weak and useless that I got frustrated and ended up re-rolling all the way back to the beginning to be an archer after nearly completing the first map. This does not make me long for the old system at all seeing as how the red prince has shown me the opposite is now true for melee in the new system.

Shield sometimes have +1% Block on them. I don't know if it does anything currently, but it does seem like there's going to be some sort of blocking system in place.

That "at the start" is the problem. The fight loses meaning once armor is gone. It's questionable why health exists if once it's gone you're just gonna CC the enemy, or be CC'd yourself, to death

I've advocated for two new systems to be tried in replacement of the current one:

1) We keep the armor system in place but replace the new defensive combat traits with the old willpower/bodybuilding/block trinity. It'd bring shields back into some relevance, allow for more build options concerning armor set up, solve CC to death issue, add a host of other odds and ends would change and be influenced...such as the stat system :P

OR

2) We can keep the armor system but develop some method (through armor type, skills, combat abilities) for the player to decide how much of an attack type the armor is eating and how much is being let through to vitality. A 6:4 ratio, a 9:1 ratio, or so on. This would let armor persist over the course of a fight longer, allow the player to decide how their CC resist is used up and when, and so on. The determinism of choice would still be there, but more player control over it would help the current system attempt to mitigate the issues it presently has

Actually, this is what happened in the first game at any given moment of a battle. The Physical Armor bar was introduced in order to counter the omnipotence of CC spells in the first game. And it worked fairly well in these regards.
What doesn't work in the current build are shields. On that I can agree. A shield wielding character at the present is definitely subpar compared to any other melee build.
To address this issue I've already proposed 2 possible solutions:

1- Reintroducing the block mechanic of the first game (not that elegant if you ask me. This game already has dodge and two different amour bars)
2- Changing the physical armor bonus of shields with a flat damage deflection value. This value, of course, should scale with the shield level. In other words, I'm suggesting to make shields work exactly like weapons, except that - instead of doing damage- they should deflect a fixed amount of damage per hit.
This way they would be useful for an entire encounter without adding new mechanics.

Your shield ideas are workable and I wouldn't be against the second.

And yes, everyone knows why the new system was made. CC was way to easy for optimal builds in game one at any given level. Being able to CC all day at max level would've been fine but it was too easy at any given level vs enemies of the same level. This was mitigated a lot with wards and stuff in EE, so it wasn't nearly as bad there.

I didn't think it was too bad cause the plethora of enemy types and encounter sizes coupled with immunities and wards and auras solved the problem for a lot of things

Bringing that back with RNG wouldn't be that bad to me. I liked the EE system and the creative ways the devs made CC harder. They could also just give a general buff to resist chance this time around or...try the option I proposed that has no RNG and works based off the armor system completely

In DOS you had to examine enemies with loremaster and check, who is good at willpower or body building and wich element is their biggest weakness. Now you just need to look at their armor and their elemental weakness to decide wich is the fastest way to deplete the armor for your CC.

Perhaps armors should replenish for a percentage every round, it's just strange to see a full armored guy with no armor at all.

I like the idea of a portion of the damage going through, that would allow for more long term effects on fights. That being said, there are ways even now to refill/bolster both armor and magic armor mid combat so I don't view longevity as that big of an issue. I also feel as though most fights don't last long enough to put you on your toes as it stands if you have even remotely decent gear.

I really dislike the first suggestion as I pretty thoroughly did not enjoy the defensive mechanics of the first installation, as previously mentioned, and feel as though the new defensive systems have a much more clear impact on survival. It is also worth noting that it is much easier to tell at a glance what you are dealing with in the new system which increases usability for the less hardcore audience as opposed to having to dig through a stat sheet a lot of players probably don't even know exists.

Shrug, that's why I have the two systems. I prefer one but I think some people would prefer idea two. I'd like to get a chance to try both over the course of Alpha iterations.

The second suggestion also gives more tactical flexibility and power to player choice.

And the problem we currently have with the game is simple, enemy health bars don't matter :P too easy to win once armor is gone. Being able to see the armor values also makes it easy to plan around them and each encounter if your smart about it. It also makes it easy to gear specifically towards an opponent.

Also, the problem with those skills you mention? Horribly easy to stop a player or AI from getting a chance to use them. They'd have to escape the CC chain first. And even if they do, an opponent focused on protests ting/saving its allies is an opponent not attacking and most of all original sin players know that offense is the best strategy there is. Faster you can kill a unit of the enemy much better chances you win. Each unit death increases your chances to win and decreases difficulty by a magnitude.

Casual players would be fine with the system as is right now. Those of us who are heavy into rpgs and power gaming and completionisy and stuff? There's a lot to critique here

Personally, I love the new physical armour/magical armour mechanic. It’s a fresh take on a very old, very staid health system, and that, I think, should be encouraged.

Reading over the negative feedback for it, I’m struggling to identify a clear, solid argument for why it’s a bad thing. And I can’t fathom why it’s seemingly being written off as something ‘anti-hardcore’, as though it’s some kind of simplification of more sophisticated systems that existed in the first game (really?).

If anything, it adds depth. I’d like to see them take it further, however. I think multiple ‘health bars’ is a brilliant idea, but that it should extend to fire/ice/electricity/etc. That way, you’d really have some multi-layered combat. Sure, your fighter might have the best 2-handed sword in the game and have maxed out all 2-handed damage, but what else have you done with him/her? Because the enemy they’re fighting has a massive physical damage HP bar, but extremely low fire HP. Suddenly you’re stuck, but only because you’ve been too single-focus to diversify your builds.

I haven’t seen the physical armour and magical armour regeneration abilities/spells that were mentioned above, but I think they’d be a superb addition to the game, especially with a multiple HPs formula. So you can regenerate your fire/ice/electricity HP at any given time with different spells. To me, this would make for some truly creative combat – there’s huge scope here for evolving the elemental aspect of the game, and bringing it to a whole new level IMO.

The complaint it simpl:
no armor -> CC chain to death
Armor spells -> don't solve for instant armor is down & defensive tactics are weak
Enemy type -> carry different gear types for each enemy
Party buil? -> two on physical and two on magical to focus down armor...plus grenades and barrels

No body said the armor system sucked or to remove it entirely, just that it's left some glaring holes in tactical options

Has nothing to do with casuals vs hardcore

Has everything to do with the fact that those of us who power game can easily exploit this system

Yeah, the lack of blocking kinda sucks. Sword and board characters are kinda not worth playing imo. I mean, it might be viable if the shield provided a substantial bonus to physical/magic armor, but it just doesn't right now. I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I just wanted to state my opinion.

This is also true

Side note: it's for all these reasons that health really doesn't matter much -_- so why bother with HP

For the enemies at least; the AI isn't smart enough to CC a player to death on purpose yet

I agree that the current shield system isn't ideal. A shield providing a constant reduction in damage makes more sense.

With the current frontloaded system, I always unequip the shield as soon as it gets my turn to attack. Unequiping is 0 cost, and then my attacks cost 1 instead of 2. Shields are free absorption at the start of the fight, and useless after that. Aside from that, the 1-hand weapon talent is stronger than the other weapon talents, and I don't have to find 2 strong weapons as a dual wielder would.

Total disagreement.

Splitting magic armor into 4-6 different shields would only serve to make each and every shield completely and utterly worthless.

Don't forget that 80% of your equipment will be coming from RNG loot (whether found or bought), so you have little control over it. Trying to balance 4-6 magical resistance meters plus one for Physical damage PLUS attribute bonuses, PLUS whatever else you are looking for in armor bonuses is a hopeless task.

Right now as it stands enemies do enough damage to wipe away all your magical armor in 1-3 shots.




It seems more like a recipe for constant, irritating, micromanagement. Trying to keep up several elemental shields on 4 party members in combat sounds tedious. And that's before getting into the 4 AP a turn and Memory issues.

Yes!
However, I feel like armor and magic armor is good. I've enjoyed this new feature. More than 2 would get very unfun though, I think.
The only big issue is the complete CC immunity turning into complete vulnerability. This means if you work out a CC locking rotation you can beat enemies of infinite health and power, and this seems pretty abusive, and is what fights can degrade to quickly.

@aj0413 – I still don’t get your argument. ‘Those of us who power game can easily exploit this system’.

Here’s how I see it – in the first game, you had one health bar. In the second game, you have that same health bar and now there’s 2 more on top of that. Where’s the exploitation potential coming into play, if the same system from the first game still exists?

In other words, once the physical/magical armour is down, it’s the first game all over again. And once it’s back to the first game (my magic and physical armour is gone), what’s new that lets you exploit the game in your favour? Granted, I haven’t studied everything new, so maybe I’m missing something.

I think the combat is much improved over the original. In D:OS1, you just had to summon a few sidekicks as tanks, and fire away from afar. It also cost so much to actually move a character across the battlefield that you were never really in trouble, provided all of your characters had ranged/spell capabilities.

In D:OS2 (at least so far), I’ve seen only one summon ability (fire elemental), and it was appropriately mediocre. It costs much less to move, so melee enemies have much more opportunity to get ‘in your face’ (a good thing).

@Stabbey - I never said anything whatsoever about shields.

I said HP.

HP.

No shields. No equipment. Hit points. Fire hitpoints. Ice hitpoints. Electric hitpoints.

That's what I'm taking about. More variation on hitpoints, so some enemies have higher elemental hitpoints than others.

If you were to bring shields into it (and I didn't), they could have varying degrees of elemental hitpoint boosts (it certainty wouldn't make them worthless - on the contrary, it would only add to their power, especially when you bring random elemental hitpoint augmentation into play)

That ability is bugged even, the fire elemental cannot do any attacks. I am pretty sure I saw an enemy summon a dog once too.