Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Patch v3.0.31.292 - AI 2.0 - Feedback

I'll say it plainly: I feel like the game balance is a dozen time better than it was when talking about Classic difficulty with just a few hiccups that I consider more like oversights or possible improvements than anything. I absolutely do not understand how other people can feel the other way around regarding balance.
I will not say anything regarding Explorer mode since I haven't (and will not) tried it.

Not only does the difficulty now feel more in line with what I'd expect from a Classic mode, but the changes also removed a TON of cheesy exploits as well as easy and cheap tactics that would drain the challenge out of the game.
The game now feels challenging, resources feel scarce (As they should), manageable and, more importantly, a lot more impactful.
More impactful in that every single item you buy with your gold will make a major difference instead of just being "another spell for the spellbook that will only be used once in a blue moon" or "a slight upgrade to replace that one piece of armor since all others armor slots already have rare items".

Let me break down this feedback into categories...

The new AI
I have so many good things to say about the new AI.
The most notable things I've seen:
1. The voidwoken creepy crawlies ambush in the marsh. The crawlies would rush through fire surfaces to you, avoiding electrified surfaces, because they knew that on death, they would blow up straight up your face, unlike other monsters who would try to avoid the fire surfaces in some fashion.
2. The alligator that ate teleportation gloves seems to also have eaten a brain.
3. Enemies actually ganked up on a weak member of my team when they were given the opportunity to do so.
4. They actually try not to waste their status effects on armor, especially on abilities that doesn't even deal any damage and only does status effects.
5. They PUNISH you for not spreading your characters.

However, there are a few points that I'd like to mention:
1. It is still possible to control certain enemies too easily using surfaces. Example: The ONE arena under Fort Joy, a surface of fire caused both the warrior and dog to make a HUGE detour around the arena to get to us, giving us 2 entire turns to deal with their allies before reaching us. A player would simply have used a surface clearing ability like Rain, Rain of Blood and Ground Smash or would have used a charge or teleport ability to move themselves (or their enemy) to a more favorable position. Which brings me to the second point...
2. Enemies still lack utilitarian abilities. I haven't seen a single enemy cast Teleport, Nether Swap, Rain, Rain of Blood, etc. Besides the occasional Fortify, Armor of Frost or heal, they severely lack in the utility department, especially when talking about surface removal.
3. Enemies don't seem to have a proper priority on using their Fortify, Armor of Frost or heals. I don't think I've seen an enemy clear a stun yet with an Armor of Frost. And aside from the First Aid to remove Knockdown that was already there on AI 1.x, they don't do much to help their comrades intelligently.

Also, what's up with Rage? Enemies keep raging my characters, which has never been negative for me and always negative for them.
I know you mentioned it in the video for the patch, but it really isn't the balance team fault here.

Difficulty
When it comes to classic mode, me and my friend have been cruising through it. Of course, this isn't my first rodeo. I already knew everything to expect, the only surprise was the new AI 2.0 but the game absolutely didn't feel too hard or unfair. It felt just right. Now that we are past Fort Joy, it is actually starting to feel... too easy.
I don't know if it's because my Ifan has become an immovable wall of tungsten (<3 Armor of Frost, Fortify and Shield innate), but there is no longer this scary feeling of how the table can turn in a single ability... let alone an entire round.
The further we go, the less I feel like I *must* get my hands on that one spell book or new weapon. So long as I keep the tank decked out and on the frontline.

Companions class preset
This feature is extremely welcome, but I still think it should be taken a step further.
Please give us FULL customization options for our party.
I don't want Ifan to be a Hydro-Necro-Warfare sword and board warrior. I want Ifan to be a Hydro-Warfare sword and board warrior. This isn't possible using presets.
I'll go even further and say I want Ifan to be a Hydro-Warfare sword and board bald warrior with an overly manly beard.
Please make it happen.

Surfaces
I love this change a lot.
It offers possibilities like this:
http://i.imgur.com/NnftvYN.jpg
It changes the landscape and the players must adapt to it.
While it can be annoying to have to clear the surfaces in the aftermath of a battle, I think this could be fixed in a couple of changes.

1. Ice shouldn't stay around forever unless in an environmental condition where it favors such a thing (i.e.: Hiberheim).
2. Electrified puddles shouldn't stay electrified forever.

Also, player made surfaces should have a limit... otherwise, a player can simply throw oil, water or blood everywhere before starting a fight and remove any difficulty from said fight with a single Fireball or Lightning Discharge.

Gold, skill books, items
IS FINE!
That's right. I truly, truly, believe the extreme prize on the skill books and rare items is perfectly fine.

This is the FIRST TIME I ever increased a character specific attribute for BETTER PRICES at a shop in ANY GAME over the past 18 years I've been playing video games.
I actually STOLE a skill book even if I was playing my character as a GOOD character.
It actually FELT like I was a prisoner in a concentration camp. Living on scraps and doing my best to get through this hell, even if it meant going against my conscience.
No more black and white, just shades of gray. Tough times requires tough choices. I'll pay for that skill book by liberating Fort Joy from the Order's oppression.

Every ability I had counted and I couldn't simply run around with every single spells learned in my book, ROFL stomping all fights with rare items I shouldn't be wearing.

I actually felt bad for using Bartering because of how good this civil skill has become.

Skill books SHOULD be expensive in a high difficulty mode. Maybe reduce their prize for Explorer, but keep them hard to get for harder difficulty.
The players should have to choose between "having" or "not having", not choose between "using" or "not using".

This also comes back to getting full customization for companions. Not being able to choose the 3 starter skills of all 4 characters makes the start of the game much harder.
Even if the presets are pretty good in themselves, they still limit us.

Bugs, weird interactions, etc.
1. Holy (Blessed) Fire surfaces doesn't go away like Normal or Necro Fire does.

2. Enemies that are extremely far won't move or do any actions until player character(s) are moved to a certain range of them. This means a player can easily exploit fights by aggroing only a few monsters from a fight at a time while the other monsters will stay back waiting for the players to get closer.

3. Teleporting a character into an electrified puddle deal the air damage and stun effect to the character but remove the electrify effect from the puddle. Characters walking through electrified puddles doesn't remove the electrify effect from it and suffer the same damage and stun as a teleported character from walking through it.

4. Not sure about this one, but Ricochet doesn't seem to work properly? My friend can't seem to get Ricochet to bounce the majority of the time and enemies are clearly within less than 8m of each other. He's been using a Crossbow for most of the game so I don't know if it did that with a bow too.

For utility, Kniles the Flenser practically *spammed* Netherswap on me. Was annoying as hell to deal with.

I think AI keeps raging your characters because it lowers your resistances, so the AI algorithm believes it's a debuff. Something in its valuing system that places the debuff as worse than the buff.

Also don't take co-op mode as evidence for how easy or hard this game is. Trust me it's much harder when on your own.

You can steal skillbooks? Not in my game. 550 cost at 3 bartering, 3 thieving isn't even close to being good enough to allow stealing that much. Back when I could steal them, sure, I did that.

Not sure where you're getting this "readily available legendary weapons" thing. They never were easy to come by, even in earlier patches. But at later stages of the game, you *should* have the chance to have *some* great pieces of gear. Fort Joy is only a very small part of Act 1.

Necrofire surfaces don't go away either fyi

Why should coop by easier than single-player? Sidequest exp get less split up in singe-player mode and the only character difference is the inability to learn Bless.

Or do you mean because pickpocketing is easier in coop?

Pickpocketing is easier, you can split tasks much more efficiently, Bless is huge and tactics become much easier with two people on the job.

An interesting read. Alas I feel differently about the AI. I don't play that often, and this new AI 2 is around my third play through since early access started.

I can understand why the OP thinks about the AI the way he does, and for someone with his apparent experience and knowledge of the game that's not really surprising. I come to this from the angle of someone who, to all extents and purposes, is more like a first-time player; an experienced CRPG player perhaps.

I'm getting slaughtered. I spend most of my time unable to do anything. The AI seems to always manage to go first and most of my party spends the fight lying down (tripped/knocked etc). More often than not if I'm not fully tooled up and ready beforehand I lose a party member in the first or second round and the rest of the party soon after. I've not won a single fight without reloading (many times) where I did not initially out-number my opponents.

I'm starting to "cheat" to get past some fights. For example have one character lock an NPC in conversation while the others surprise attack the rest, i.e. triggering the fight on my terms. Starting fights early by picking off one of the "linked" NPCs at the edge of the group with a concentrated damage burst and so forth.

I consider this cheating because I'm forced to resort to meta-gaming (i.e. knowing that a fight will happen, exploiting real-world knowledge about the software and the game to solve in-game problems, knowing the "future") instead of my in-game characters solving it with just the knowledge they are expected to have.

I find my spells are always on cool-down and I run out of things I can do as a mage because I have far fewer spells available now because I cannot afford to buy them. I actually started going around slaughtering random NPCs and anything I could find just to try and get my party experience and money up so I'd have a better chance of beating the fights. Killing people I don't want to kill to gain XP so I can progress isn't my idea of role-play, nor really of fun.

The story mode is totally unbalanced right now in my view and anyone who doesn't know the game mechanics in-depth and doesn't know about the NPCs they are fighting in advance as well as knowing the world in depth to get the most out of their party (min-maxing) will die horribly and very quickly. The current difficulty level is about where I'd expect a Hard / Very-Hard difficulty level to be; for someone who has completed the game a couple of times and wants a tougher challenge.

That said, I love the new AI in the arenas. When you have two parties that are balanced and with equivalent/identical equipment and spells the AI does really well and is a real challenge and a joy to play against, whereas before it was simply too easy to defeat. I don't spend that much time in the arenas, and I can see why some of the more expert players might like the AI to be stronger still, but for me, with less experience, I find it actually rather enjoyable and challenging now and I can actually learn from the AI, which I consider brilliant.

For the story mode I think the AI needs to either be toned down a lot or the resources available to the party need to be considerably increased. I feel a large balance pass is required.

I agree with above. More resources for the player will fix most difficulty issues; AI is balanced *if* AI and player have similar resources.

1. You can get bless for every character by interacting with the statue. (Not sure if it's new from this patch or if it was there before.) Only the main "characters" go in the weird place but companions still can get Bless by having them interact with the statue.
2. I was stealing the lower cost books at 3 thievery and the higher cost books at 4 thievery (I bought gloves that increase my Thievery by 1. ;D). Thievery also allows to steal more than just books too. If you can't steal a book, steal something else so you can afford those books.
You can steal good starter armors and weapons easily in Fort Joy. There is a very good starter leather chest on Griff table you can steal if you are smart enough to distract the NPCs with your companions while your thief sneak past the detection cones. Me and my friend always had "just the right amount of money" readily available to get the skill books we needed to get through each part.
3. Classic difficulty IS supposed to be hard and challenging. Like I mentioned in my OP, I do not know about Explorer mode and that's not what I give my feedback on. If Explorer mode is too hard, too costly, etc. then Explorer mode needs a difficulty balancing.
4. If the enemy seems to always start before you, then Invest in Wits. Strength, Finesse and Intelligence may be the most useful stats but they aren't the be all, end all. My wizard almost always starts first at 15 Wits and one cast of Burn my Eyes will make any of your character first on the turn. You can actually have a character play twice in a row using Burn my Eyes on whoever is last to play on your team for the round and the next round they'll be first, effectively playing twice in a row. A two handed warrior can easily wipe an entire team of enemies using that tactic. Use your 3 other characters to weaken the Physical Armor of enemies, teleport them close to your warrior and apply Encourage + Burn my eyes to the Warrior. He'll have 2 turns to wipe the enemy team and using Warlord talent, Adrenaline, Haste, etc. You can get upward to 20 action points worth of attacks in. One well-placed Rage and the fight will be over before you can say WTF.
5. Buff before engaging when you know you are about to fight.
6. Disengage if you get ambushed... There is nothing wrong with disengaging back to the nearest teleportation statue. If you don't want to meta-game, this is the option you are given to do that!
7. Invest in Leadership... It's freaking good.
8. Invest 1 point in other combat abilities for level 1 skills that synergize well with your character build. Adrenaline, Rage, Teleportation, Burn my Eyes, First Aid, Armor of Frost and Fortify are all good example of abilities that almost any character can benefit from. You haven't truly seen glory until you see a Wizard with Rage and Savage Sortilege using a Source ability.
9. Use the "delay turn" option to reorder whom amongst your character will play first and get the most out of your support abilities or to simply let the enemy do the leg work and close the gap for you.
10. The most important point: Use items! Potions, scrolls, grenades and special arrows. One Lightning Discharge scroll will quite literally change the battle from a complete disaster to an heroic win.

Once again, if Explorer mode is too hard, then yes, by all means, tone it down. But to me, Classic mode is fine and I want Tactician mode to be even harder because the current Classic mode, while challenging, isn't enough for me. That's what difficulty modes are there for.

P.S. No offense to my friend, but I find coop to be harder beside being able to customize more than 1 character at the start for the fact that each player wants to play their way and synergy isn't as easily achieved in a party as it would in single player. And sometimes, both you and your friend have different plan in mind which ends up screwing the both of you.

OP's all melee builds depends on 1h&shield...

Other melee builds ''without shield'' brings near to nothing in table..

That's your opinion.

There is no better build than a two-handed Warlord Warfare to wipe an enemy team. With crits over 200 damage from Crippling Blow, you can remove the entire Physical Armor of all enemies in a zone in a single blow. When even Ground smash crit for over 100 damage toward the end of Act 1, I fail to see how other melee builds brings nothing to the table.
Obviously, the shield protects you from CC more efficiently, but that's what Armor of Frost and Fortify are there for.

This talk about builds and all your tips is exactly what I have a problem with.

Perhaps it's that we have different expectations or interpretations of what the different levels of difficulty mean to use.

My view/expectations are:

Explorer is "story mode":
I should be able to complete it easily, powering through everything. Any character build should be able to complete the game.

Classic mode

I'd call this "normal" difficulty.

In this mode I'm expected to expend effort. It should be challenging to a new player, I need to ensure I have a fairly well balanced party, that I make good use of the mechanics etc.

I should be able to complete the main plot-line with all the resources available to me; I shouldn't have to do all the side-quests, etc to make sure I have enough gold/level.

It should still forgive the odd mistake in character builds/choices, combat decisions etc. Consumables should not be necessary to win all but boss fights, and can act as a safety net for combat or build mistakes.

I'd expect this level to be for anyone experienced with D&D, and/or CRPGs.

Hard

I need to be careful with my builds. I need to have played the game through at least once, have a good knowledge of all the mechanics and need to make careful decisions in combat.

To succeed I need to be correctly combining abilities/spells, stacking bonuses and making good use of consumables.

Very Hard / Insane

I'd expect to need to know the game extremely well and have a very good knowledge of the classes and abilities/skills and have to build them into a strong cohesive unit.

Combat mistakes will generally get me killed, a bad build or class combination will prevent me completing the game.

Consumables are essential in combat, crafting is essential and I should feel constantly short of resources.

I see this level for the perfectionists, the min/max'ers etc.

Conclusion

I see the current difficulty level as somewhere between what I call Hard/Insane.

Now perhaps my interpretation/expectation is wrong. Maybe you feel classic should be what I consider hard mode. At that point we're just talking about semantics.

I see "Classic" as "normal" difficulty. From your posts, I suspect you see it more as a "hard" difficulty.

If your interpretation is correct then there's a difficulty level missing, in my view, between explorer and classic. In my interpretation you'd want to be playing not "classic" difficulty but something higher.

Let's see if Larian gives us some more difficulty levels.

Tactical mode is supposed to be the hard difficulty of the game, and we will get it at release. Classic is indeed the de facto "normal difficulty" and is the standard by which all other difficulties should be judged. As it stands this difficulty is partly what I expect from tactical mode (though it still needs more balance; late game is still a steamroll when you get access to proper skills)

Like you said, expectations.
I see the current difficulty between normal and hard, not even remotely close to what insane would actually be.

I base my own expectations on the many popular CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and more recently, Pillars of Eternity.

If you look at Pillars of Eternity, it's the kind of difficulty layers that RPGs should aim for:


Which is why I see the current Classic being more between Normal and Hard.
After having played Pillars of Eternity in Normal, Hard and Path of the Damned, I can easily say that Normal was not a walk in the park in itself.

If anything, Divinity Original Sin 2 should have more than just 3 difficulties. People don't want to play Explorer mode because they see it as having no challenge, which is fine, but the moment they get any challenge at higher difficulty, complain that it's too hard. So having that extra difficulty between classic and explorer would probably be for the best. Hell, they could make Explorer that "easy" difficulty and make a "Story" mode for "very easy".

I agree with Xzanron completely. I am getting creamed in Explorer Mode. I played D:OS on Normal with no problems and loved it. But it seems like in D:OS2 I am always at a severe disadvantage in skills, equipment, damage, and resistances.

When the enemies hit me, I am always affected by the status effects. I hit them, and everything is blocked by armor or magical armor, and my attacks barely whittle down the armor. Four of my guys may, almost by accident, be able to take out one of the bad guys if we all team up on them and can manage to keep them from getting healed up. I made it out of the dungeon in the first part of Fort Joy just barely, but once in the wilds I just could not get any traction at all.

I understand that I could spend points in thievery and steal all the equipment I need, but then the equipment is marked as stolen, and I have been jumped for having stolen equipment in-game. Second, I don't think that in Explorer Mode that I should HAVE to steal in order to be on a level playing field with enemies that have less than half the hit points that my party does.

I am not a hardcore tactical cRPG gamer. I am a casual gamer that loves the Larian games because they tell fun and interesting stories. I have the entire Larian collection, and the only game I haven't finished is Dragon Commander, because (as I said) I am not a hardcore tactical combat gamer. Just not my cup of tea.

I am all for harder difficulty levels for those that enjoy that kind of thing and have the experience and time to learn the systems and formulas and ways around them. But personally, I barely have time to play games anyway, and want to enjoy the story, not get beaten to a pulp or spend hours trying to find my way around the fights. Please balance Explorer Mode.

I don't need to feel like a god, but in Explorer Mode, the player should easily overpower the bad guys, in my opinion. Maybe not 2x as strong, but 1.5-1.75 times as strong. Classic Mode should be an even match. And harder modes should put the player at a disadvantage.

Just my 25 cents.

The reality is you have to resort to meta gaming and save scumming in order to be on equal footing atm part of me likes this part of me hates it.

Yeah. I made my way back to a statue and warped back to the statue in the middle of the camp. I went through and bought up or stole all the skill books I could, and beat some of those earlier level three enemies, which were easy now that I was level four.

After beating the Alligators on the beach and getting the Teleport gloves, plus :ahem: acquiring a lot more skill books, I was on a much more even footing with the bad guys. I realized they were level 6, while I was trying to fight them at level 4. Still, they each had 20-30% less health than I did, and I could get nowhere with them. The skill books really made a difference.

Once I got rid of some of the level 3 guys, and completing a couple more side quests, I made it up to level 5. So I am going to go back after the Level 6 baddies and rescue the paladin again.

Save spamming is a must, but so is reading through a bunch of walkthroughs to make sure you get all the EXP you can to level up. Skipping ANYTHING puts you at a severe disadvantage. I, personally, love reading though walkthroughs and trying to complete all the quests, because I know that I will probably never return to a game once I beat it. Too many other things in my list already, and several more on the way though Kickstarter/Fig, but I do not believe that should be REQUIRED to make it through the game for more casual gamers on Explorer Mode.