Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Game was great then this happen...

The frogs are pretty tough, I don't think you can be prepared enough for their ambush at level 2 or 3, if you don't know it is there. They can attack so often, they instantly can kill even a tanky one as far as I remember. Same goes for the crocodile, if one of those beast suddenly teleport at the not expecting casual gamers. But what can you really screw you up at the beach it the fear. If you can't stun lock them to prevent it, the fears can totally get your team killed.

My friend and I aren't that bad at this game, but on our first run we had quite some issues with those fights, while we were still figuring out the new combat mechanics.

Open up the load menu and apply eyes to that situation. Pretty sure everyone does this after death.

With a full party you can take the frogs and crocodiles at level 2. You might have to crack a resurrect scroll or two, but you can do it. They are tough fights to do early in the game. However, they are just that: Tough fights. You can win them. You can't win against stunlock.

There is no "git gud" when you step into an area and just watch as your party dies while unable to do anything for 15-20 turns. There's just reloading your last save and not going back there until your characters are much stronger and probably won't get stunlocked.

Now, there are some fights that don't involve stunlock that are pretty much impossible if you're not leveled/geared for them. However, that's where the Flee option comes into play. You realize the fight is beyond your ability, so you flee. But you can't flee if your entire party is stunlocked. When stunlocked to death, your only option is to reload.

The problem comes down to the fact that stunlock exists. As I've said before, I have problems with stunlock on both sides of the table. Stunlocking enemies is too easy, and being stunlocked is too big a risk factor. Stunlock in either case isn't fun or interesting. There needs to be a system in place to prevent stunlock.

Do note that I am an advocate for making the game harder, particularly in regards to the AI, as it makes some boneheaded mistakes and I was not ready for Arena (turns out I'm not the master tactician I thought I was; I got mopped). Stunlock doesn't make the game harder. It makes it dumber.

Possible ways to make stunlocks less meaningful or remove them complete:
- get back RNG aka the chance to resist, if someone resists freezing he gets a harder roll against chilled, stun -> shocked, petrified -> slowed, knockdown -> cripple, sleep -> . Meaning if you fail the hard cc you at least get them soft cc'd, so there is not only fail or not fail.
- remove hard cc at all, keep only soft cc
- hard cc spells don't deal damage, damage dealing spells can only soft cc

At least solutions that would come into my mind just at the moment.

There is a thing called magic armor...

Which is sooner or later always depleted and the main reason, why stunlock is even possible.

The thing about the frog encounter is that it is literally the most telegraphed encounter in the entire game. Even the most new of new player to gaming in general would think, "huh, this is clearly building up to something big. So, yeah you probably are not prepared for that when you get there, but on my first shot at it I saw all the stuff in the way and was like... "You know what? Maybe I'll come back later." and I didn't end up actually doing that encounter at all until my third character. (I restarted shortly after to explore other builds so I never got back to it on that character)

I don't think I need to post this but I will LEARN HOW TO BUILD A CHARACTER YOU SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you think this game is hard at any part of the alpha you are and idiot. Yes you can get ambushed. Yes you can get killed OMG its a game get over yourself.

The only thing that sucks is such an attitude.

Yeah, that's kinda.....*side glance* we might get frustrated and insinuate in subtext here, but direct personal attacks are more than a bit immature.

The frogs need to be tuned but it's doable even if you rush head-long into an ambush so long as you understand what your tactical options are - so if everything was explained from armor, damage, resistance etc. the fight might cost you some resources (potions and res scrolls) but you should be able to win with some thought.

The problem that Rasly is asking to be addressed is that the fights aren't telegraphed well enough, and indeed, some of the situations are can be perceived as kind of alarming.

If I were in his shoes and cared about not having to reload, I would probably say things like this:

1. The player is assumed to have some working knowledge of RPGs - after all he or she has played all the big hits like Dragon Age Inquisitor, Mass Effect, Diablo 3, Final Fantasy, Witcher 3 - and chooses 'classic' difficulty (there really needs to be sort of an explanation as to what the fuck these difficulties even mean) because that's normal and the game is just being fancy with it. Also, there isn't an instruction manual but no one reads those anyways.


2. The developers do a poor job introducing mechanics by not deliberately and explicitly showing what the mechanics do by example; most of the fights leading up to the frogs, unless you got 'unlucky' with the crocs, are a good example of this. You do not explicitly learn the value of armor until after the fact and will require the average player at least one reload.

Side note: Remember, most of you guys here are not the average player either -- almost all of you are above the curve by some degree (and it's not small either). Say what you will about 'git gud' etc. but at the end of the day, they aren't catering explicitly to you.

3. We can see that most of the encounters are pretty trivial and there are massive spikes between them (frogs, judge, Alexander, void dragon worm thing) which points to inconsistent difficulty. The developers have stated that they want 'consistent' difficulty.

Side note: I found the frogs kind of alarming, but everything else to be ZzzzzZZz. We all have different experiences and expectations are always different.

4. The resources that are immediate and apparently available due to scarcity do not allow for adaptation leaving the player unable to prepare.

5. Because of the average player expectations, the lack of introduction to mechanics, the uneven encounters, and the lack of resources the average player will have frustrating experiences in DSO2.

Come to think of it, many of the frustrations with the game so far is mainly due to lack of proper introduction and initial balancing. Such are the ways of an alpha.

The God Emperor Limz, of course makes many good points as always.

I still think the armor system even allowing such instances to crop up is a major issue, but he raises many good points concerning difficulty and introducing players into the mechanics.

Its not an attack its a statement of fact for such an easy game to be called in anyway hard or frustrating is ridiculous. Also its a game if you die you died reload and try the battle again.

I think that the point of all this is that you can't ever tell if you are ready for a fight or not, there should be a way to find out or escape. And you could randomise ambushes after each load.

One, there's a flee button
Two, you have plenty of saves
Three, moving away from planned encounters is a terrible idea; least of all cause they wouldn't be as fun or fulfilling to overcome
Four, you can gauge the general level needdd for an area just be looking at one or two enemy levels

Five the game is only easy, if you are aware of the broken mechanics and exploit them.

Can't flee if you're stunlocked, which brings us back to the real issue that is frequently brought up in many other threads: Stunlock sucks.

If he hadn't been stunlocked, he might've taken the option to Flee, or perhaps he could've won the fight with superior tactics, but he never got the chance. It was just "Combat started. Here's some enemies that weren't there before. They're going first. Here, eat some magic damage. Now the aeromancer is going to wand you. Oh, your party is standing in water? Well, you'd better reload, then, because you're not getting another turn."

Magic armor does protect you from stun, but chances are, unless you're specifically going after gear for Magic Armor, with everything else being secondary, you're probably not going to have too much of it before you get to that fight, and it comes off pretty easy.

Also, the response of "git gud" doesn't address the issue that the player has access to unreasonably overpowered CC abilities, making most fights trivial once you get a turn. No fight should be determined by stunlock.

That's all very true. Which is why I've argued that armor system needs changing. Initiative rolls could've also helped.

This is a perfect example of many issues with the current armor and initiative systen and CC

#Very Minor Spoiler Warning#

We have only played the first act, you will almost certainly have more access to magic armor as time goes on. Calling for radical changes the system really isn't needed, at most they should change the rate at which magic armor appears but honestly I don't even think that is necessary. I've been through the current content a number of times now and even on my first full playthrough I had no problem dealing any of the content that wasn't telegraphed heavily. (ex: fight in the castle, frogs, skeleton ambushes, maze, final fight)

I didn't even take any particular precaution except that all my magic armor gear went on the tank who was always at the front of the party, and I actively attempted not to stand in water after experiencing the mass shocking during an earlier fight with people in the camp. With these two simple steps that pretty much anyone could infer with one encounter it is incredibly easy to make it through the first chapter with only minimal magic armor. Maybe I'm crazy, but those are pretty easy to identify optimizations.

The main issue still is, it can be freaking hard, if you are not that aware and totally easy if you are that aware thanks to the current armor system and stunlock possibility.