Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Replace crowd control with more interesting effect

I still like the magical armor system they've implemented to counter CC. I've read some say it's too easy to shred it. I agree. That's why I also think magical armor should be split out into several types of elemental armor: electricity, fire, ice...necromantic? (something I mentioned elsewhere).

This change would eliminate the main benefit that this armor system grants which is usability. You can easily represent three bars on a character as a developer and analyze those bars at a glance as a player, you cannot easily represent... six or seven bars on a character without making serious UI concessions.

Don't take this personally either because it's not anyone in specific, but I honestly feel like I'm beating my head against a wall saying that all they really need to change is the drop rate of magic armor gear. If it was more accessible in the beginning it would solve basically all of the problems that have been mentioned in each of the fifty threads about CC.

@Stabbey: You've a frustratingly poor ability to structure an argument. Instead of countering one piece of logic with counter logic, you just give a simplistic, subjective opinion without backing it up with any type of concrete evidence.

'If the enemies are varied and can use several different elemental types, then that makes your split magical armor even weaker'

How, exactly? Evidence? If anything, it makes it more robust. The fact that they can use different elemental abilities is the entire point of what I'm saying. At the moment, magical armour just counters every element. That's simple, but not interesting. It doesn't make me fear the fact that I haven't diversified my investments in various spells. I can just focus on ice, make that uber-powerful, then destroy magic armour with my one-dimensional investment into that single area.

If there are multiple 'magical armour' types, it means I can't be so single-minded. I have to diversify.

'So now you need to rely on the RNG (in the limited resource/limited drop game)'

Never said that should be the case. In fact, glad you mentioned it. They have a skill/ability (whatever it's called) that adds to your default magic and physical armour. Each time you level up, I think armours should be in a third tab that allows you to invest points in fire, ice, earth etc accordingly. You're not relying on gear (although that could help you out). You're enhancing the armour of your character at each level up, with a separate point system.

Resistances are so bland and rote they're in every RPG since the dawning of time. Better to innovate and suffer the lamentations of a few dull fools, than stick to doing the same thing, over and over, without risk.

@aj0413 How is the armour system a tangent into how 'one' prevents CC? It's the very thing that prevents CC in the first place. If you have full magic armour, you can't be CC'd be a frozen spell, because you can resist it. I can't be sure about physical armour, but I'm taking a guess here that it also prevents knockdown as long as there's some remaining.

In other words, controlling CC at the moment revolves solely around the new armour mechanic. Therefore, evolving the armour mechanic is clearly the best way to address the problems around it.

Knockdown, stun, frozen, petrified.

Aside from it not really being all that great for there to be that many effects that function identically, it's also essentially stifling most strategies that don't take advantage of permanently locking the enemies out of acting.

Hence, it would be most beneficial if said effects were changed to achieve their goal in different ways, and at a more manageable magnitude.

For example:

Knockdown: The target spends a number of AP proportionate to the duration of the effect to stand up. Afterwards the effect is removed and they act normally.

Stun: The target does not recover their normal AP amount at the beginning of the turn. If they have AP saved, or some other means of recovering it, they can use those as normal.

Shocked(alternative Stun): All actions taken by the target require 1 additional Action Point to perform.

Frozen: Target gains <magnitude> barrier, that absorbs all damage and cannot act until the barrier is broken or the effect ends.

Petrified: Target cannot move or act, and is immune to magic damage.

If, and that's a big 'if', the system was to be taken in that direction(individual resistances for each effect), a much better way to handle and track them would be the approach used in Dark Souls, and other Souls games.

The character has a tolerance for, rather than resistance against the effects: rather than tracking all the 'types of HP', and applying the effects once they are depleted, only the relevant ones are tracked, and they fill from zero to <tolerance>.

To become Poisoned, a character must receive <tolerance> amount of poison damage.
To become Frozen, a character must receive <tolerance> amount of ice damage.
Etc.

This approach however, is best suited for real time games.
A turn based game, with AP and other mechanics, has the design space to make more interesting effects, over making the boring ones easier to mitigate.

That's actually not a bad way to handle it. It still begs the question as to why you would do it, but certainly one of the more elegant solutions.

@aj0413 The topic of the thread is - CC is currently flawed, I've suggestions to make it more manageable.

Hello, I said. I've suggestions to make it more manageable too. Let's take the magical/physical armour idea they currently use to make it more manageable and evolve it.

How in god's name do you think that doesn't contribute to the debate? Is it your reasoning that because the OP didn't write the word 'armour' in his first post, we can't write 'armour' either?

I can keep revealing your contradictions all day, if needs-be. You're not exactly the savviest of writers (pro tip: the wacky dialogues with yourself don't help), and it's like shooting fish in a barrel to be honest - but do try me for another one

@aj0413 Lulz. Lots of them. Don't know what 'zone' you're in, but I gotta sign off for the night pretty soon. It's nearly 1am and I've work etc.

You're not trying to counter my argument with words, you're trying to counter my argument with technical nit-pickery. And even there you're tripping over yourself.

Now we're wheeling out the fact that 'armour' isn't in the title???

Man, are you kidding me? That's desperate stuff. How many posts on these forums actually even stay on point with the title of the thread? The point of an intelligent discussion is to assess what someone has said/written and build on it. In very general terms, the OP wants to tackle the issue of CC.

In very general terms, I want to tackle it too - and I've forwarded the idea of evolving the armour system to achieve that. It's like you're saying, 'I can't come up with counter logic to what he's saying, so I'm going to try and pull the red card because he hasn't talked about REPLACING CC WITH A MORE INTERESTING EFFECT EXACTLY TO THE POINT. Even though, if you were to be particularly anal about it, I could say that's exactly what I'm doing - replace current CC with an elemental-armour based system that only allows elemental CC when elemental armour is destroyed - hence more interesting.