Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback CC/Armor/General Balancing

You’re telling me your prepubescent labelling of the dozens of posters on two 20000 view durability threads as ‘crying’ isn’t vitriol? Maybe ‘butthurt’ is a word you can relate to better: it’s certainly crass and silly enough. Saying the majority is ‘crying’ when they reach a consensus on the removal of a boring, tedious feature in a computer game is the most bitter thing I’ve read to date on these forums.

If anyone’s crying, it’s the guy who’s yelling at everyone else for supporting a good idea that got implemented, when all of his own ideas go wholly ignored – this couldn’t be more cliché of the jealous little fellow in the corner bad-mouthing the crowd because no one ever listens to him.



I must have missed the part where I wrote that I wanted an RPG game to be chess – can you pick that out for me please: I’d like to see it.

Chess is a turn-based game where opponents take turns to move pieces within the limits of their movement capacity, in an effort to destroy the pieces of the opposing army. Let me know if you need further help with the comparisons.

Combat is a tactical element of the game. RPG is ‘role playing’ – a completely separate feature, where you choose races and classes and dialogue options, and role play, if that’s your thing, as the characters involved. The combat is not dependant on any part of that whatsoever.

At any rate, I specifically stated I am not against RNG in GENERAL – I’m only against RNG as a solution to the current issue with CC.



You’ve done my work for me with that sentence. What does tactical mean? Using human/player skill to decide the outcome of an engagement. What’s the opposite of tactical? Using a calculator to take the place of human/player skill to decide the outcome.

In a game that features hundreds, even thousands, of stat allocation options, you could make a case for such investment being tactical – although only in a mathematical sense (we’re strictly talking about human cunning when it comes to D:OS’s combat). D:OS features only the simplest, most basic of stat-allocation systems – clicking a few points into bodybuilding for a % chance of not getting CC’d is hardly a stroke of tactical genius.

Far better to move dealing with CC to the player, as the game is substantially more tactical as a chess-like, turn-based grid system than it as a stat-based mathematical game where stat allocation is so all-encompassing that the computer plays the game entirely for you without the need of combat or turn-based gameplay.

Stat allocation is simply too simplistic in D:OS for it to be called tactical. By comparison, the turn-based combat is much deeper.



Eh – ironic, much? A slot machine is something you put coins into and pull a lever. The machine makes a calculation and gives you a random result. There’s no strategy. A CC status based on RNG is where the machine makes a calculation and gives you a random result.

How does the slot machine analogy equate with a 100% chance to hit every time? You’ve completely misunderstood the English there. I’m saying its mindless because you click on an enemy and a ‘slot machine’ (random computation) decides the result.



I hope we’re clear now on who’s talking ‘nonsense’.



All right, buddy: ok. You’ve just written here that all complaints about RNG being random are ‘absurd nonsense’ – well, I guess the clue is in the letters. Hint: RANDOM number generator. It’s always random. Jesus Christ...



Have you read back over my sentence that you quoted? It clearly counters the argument you’re making all along that I’m somehow completely against RNG. I’m saying – no, I’m not against the MAJORITY of RNG, I’m only against RNG being used to determine CC.



You’ve misread the entire paragraph again. I said RNG being used to determine CC is mindless and boring because the computer does it for you. Nowhere do I say 100% chance to produce CC is the solution. I’ve stated multiple times that my proposed solution to CC is to rework it completely in favour of the suggestions quoted in this thread



Now you’re back to saying everyone was ‘crying’ because they all agreed on something you had no say in. Salty much? You provided no reason in your follow up post as to why durability should stay in the game, except to vaguely note it adds to the ‘seriousness’ – in what sense? You want authenticity in a game with talking lizards, cannibal elves and people called sourcerers?

Guess what? Everyone else just wants to play a computer game for entertainment. They don’t give a bloody toss about the inclusion of a boring mechanic like durability for the sake of authenticity. It was a great idea to get rid of it.



Your point being? We shouldn't do it because it takes time? Now who’s talking nonsense.

I tell you what – they pay me to code for a living, so I'm well up for building my own mod with my own ideas someday. I propose a little challenge. You build your mod, with your ideas. And I’ll build mine. And let’s see what the majority decides. First rule – you can’t say everyone’s crying if they ignore something you did.

deleted

Im going to refrain from answering that fallacious drivel here. My first reply to it already answered all those things and that second repeat of same fallacies and nonsense doesnt change anything.

The OP had some good ideas on how to rebelance skills and attributes, although i would add a few more details for specific skills and stuff. But its all a moot point anyway. Until devs decide to change these systems in some bigger way.




I never said you did, did I?

I was talking about it in a more general way.

RNG plays an important part in games - it creates variety within the situation you can face. However, RNG shouldn't affect your ability to deal with those situations, which is exactly what happens when the CC is RNG based. So, going back to the old system isn't really a good option.

As for why the current system doesn't work:

Armor being used against both damage and CC:
Plain damage is way more effective at removing armor than CC is, meaning that all of the CC is saved for when the armor is gone. That makes the CC chaining problem even worse, because you have all your CC still available for use when the armor is broken.
There are 2 ways to address that issue:
1. Make normal damage ineffective against armor – That will force you to use CC to remove armor, which then becomes mandatory to have. It will promote stacking CC skills on your characters. Probably not a good solution.
2. Making armor only work against CC, but not damage (can then be renamed to something else) – Probably the better solution, and also makes much more sense. If you want to CC something, you use CC skills, not damage. Can then also have dedicated skills for removing “Armor” – They will remove more of it than the CC skills, but won’t do any health damage or CC.
Normal damage will then apply directly to health, and the old armor stat can be reintroduced to maintain balance between physical and magical damage.

Armor recovery:
There are currently 2 ways of recovering armor:
1. Passively through Perseverance – Because armor is shared for damage and CC, this is either too weak (doesn’t prevent chain CC) or too strong (you get punished for using CC instead of being rewarded – CC is better avoided). If Armor would work on CC only, this could create gaps in CC without preventing it entirely.
2. Actively through skills – basically an extension of your armor rather than a real recovery option, because you can’t use those when you are CCed. Only work if cast by a different character or if you get an opening through perseverance.

Making armor only work against CC seems to be the way to go. This will also make health and health recovery meaningful.

Elegant solution, Ozz! I like the idea of making armor - at least magical armor - work only against CC. The problem with it is that without armor working against plain damage, your health pool will be depleted far too quickly to be useful in its current form. You would have to end up raising the health pool considerably. There also are skills dedicated to removing armour, like Overpower.

Personally, I'd prefer more ways of recovering armour as a solution to overpowered CC.

That is why I suggested bringing back the old armor stat. There are resistances against magic damage, but not against physical (at least not for the player characters).

A stun at the moment 100% stuns when the related armour is down, a stat-dump issue can be fixed by scaling offence vs defence stats as you level. Using elemental effects to increase chances of stuns etc also allows for strategy. In the first game I found myself far more going "Well I can definitely stun target X, but Y is more of a threat with lower stun chance" then working out with the partner who can stop which target. In this I find myself going "well, that target has no magic armour, time to throw all my wizards at it", meanwhile the physical damagers go and do their own thing. You're right it is chance based, but you need to consider your options and use tactics to increase your odds. A lot of RPGs use this sort of system, because it works.


More magic armour > physical + physical based CC. More physical armour > Magical + magical based CC. No thinking needed, just get a flow-chart.


Until you can control aggro, shields are useless. There's absolutely nothing stopping the AI targeting someone else. The regen is okay at best - a support mage can do better though, as can pots. You also sacrifice a huge amount of damage, why use a shield and kill an enemy in 5-6 turns, risking him changing target or popping off some CC, when a 2-hander can beat someone down in 2-3?


You're right, not a good solution.


Almost makes it pointless to use CC then, depending on how much armour/char you get. Murder would be the best CC.


The solutions to the armour issue so far still don't fix the "burn down and CC" issue. Either the armour needs a serious re-work (if it's to remain anything similar to what it currently is), or the CC needs a serious rework, or better yet, both need a rework.

For armor to work (regardless of whether it block damage or not), there has to be a way to recover it even while being already CCed. And there is: perseverance or having allies support you.
The only issue that will remain is AoE CC. It is way too strong.

Nothing is really based on RANDOM numbers.

The chances of success which are percentage based are not - random.

If you have 90% (or any other percent) chance to do something or defend against something... it. is. not. RANDOM!

And the player can affect these odds and chances by building the character, choosing his or her stats and abilities and getting better equipment.

So in actual f`ing FACT - the problems with current implementation of both armors and some status effects can be solved if they are percentage based. And if the Hard CC effects are changed into softer effects.

There is actually no "rng" to it. At all.

Because its not random.

If you want to get into the semantics of chance vs. randomness, there is an authority on that topic. Chance and randomness virtually mean the same thing.

You need to get outside and cool down for a bit, Hiver. In the context of the OP, it doesn't matter at all whether or not this game relies on RNG or not (it does). Every post that deals with RNG only veers this topic even further off-course.



The end goal is to have a system where CC isn't basically the only valid method of winning fights. We can do this by following several methods: remove variety (dumb down armor and CC), add more variety (more ways to bypass armor values, more ways to specifically defend against CC) or a balance of these. I think we should add more variety. This means more skills like Marksman's Fang which directly bypass armor, more skills like Armour of Frost which allow you to cut off a CC effect.



Countered by party positioning, at least partially. Maybe a new talent that allows you to get freed from CC once during a fight?

It doesn't matter what you call it. The fact remains: if the CC is chance based, you can't know the outcome of the action you take. It can fail, or it can succeed, which then has a massive impact on the rest of the fight. The only way it becomes acceptable is if the impact is diminished (and the only way to accomplish that is by prolonging the fights or making CC weak enough not to matter).


It can be countered by positioning, but that tips the balance in favor of all ranged parties (or 3 ranged, 1 melee), but I guess that applies to AoE damage as well. CC is just more punishing.
For recovering from CC - I guess it wouldn't be impossible to make it so you still get your turn while CCed, but can only use certain skills. But there are options already, it's just too easy to break through whatever armor was recovered.

No i dont and that paper has nothing to do with a very simple mathemathical process i am talking about. I wasnt talking about semantics of anything.


Only for someone who is completely insane.

I used the term "chance" as a description of probability of specific calculation result, such as having 90% chance to achieve success in some specific repeatable action.

That CHANCE is 9 out of 10.

Its a basic mathematical equation, not a philosophical problem.

Not a "chance" as it is discussed in that paper.



You need to reconsider who you are taking that aggressive arrogant tone with, and you need to get more levels and invest all those points into intelligence and lore since you apparently use it a dump stat.



Isnt that funny?

Then why you and a few of your likeminded posters call everything you dont like an "RNG" although there is no such randomness in basic RPG mechanics AT ALL.

And then you can complain something is RNG but also say right after that other things in the game are alright to be "RNG"?

How does that brain work?

This game does not rely on any RNG i.e. randomness, but on mathematical probabilities for success based on percentages which is not "rng" - because it is not random. And thats because If you have a 5 out of 10 CHANCE to achieve something you will achieve it five out of ten times you try. So its not random.

The problem only appears because some ludicrously ignorant people get extremely butthurt when they happen to miss sometimes and then they start calling that "RNG" because logical fallacies and absurd ignorance is all you have in your skull.

So, because of your incessant bleating, the devs come up with mechanics as they are now where ever hit (with any hard CC effect) is a sure shot - and then you complain about those.

Because hey surprise the enemies then also achieve sure shots. And that makes you even more butthurt.

So they give you an armor that makes you invulnerable... but that means enemies are also invulnerable since they too have to have that armor.

So you complain again.



Its dumbed down to the maximum right now. You cant dumb it down even more.




How are you going to "bypass armor values"?
To do what? Cause damage to vitality? Directly and for maximum amount?

Then why have any armors at all? They wouldnt serve any purpose if that was the case.

Whats that? They would stop bad magic? Then why would there be magic in the game at all? Why not then just use physical skills that "bypass armor" and just kill enemies?

If you have skills to cut off CC effect then why have CC effect at all?

Variety eh?

Logic. Its a village in Andromeda.



edit:

To save us all from you trying to claim you even understand that article you linked to, let alone anything more specific, this is what it says in its conclusion:

Forget about chance to CC for a moment. If you look at the weapons, for example, their damage is inside a RANGE, so there is chance involved WITHOUT BRINGING CC INTO THE PICTURE. This is a good thing.

So if your weapon does 7-10 dmg, and your enemy has 50 Physical armor (and for simplicity let's assume you are only doing basic attacks) you DON'T KNOW if you're going to need to hit them 5 times or 8 times to take bring their armor below zero!!!!!!

THERE IS PLENTY to think about during combat with the current system. You just DON'T KNOW if you'll be able to strip someone's armor down in X many hits. What you DO know is that you NEED to give your party an advantage BEFORE the enemy is able to disable one of your characters with their CC. This advantage can be achieved in many ways, and in my opinion PRIMARILY through positioning, which has nothing to do with armor or CC skills.

If the complaint is: "Oh, combat is boring because every time it's a race to take down armor and CC first" then what are you even complaining about?? How is that better than "I can CC enemies immediately (DOS1)" ????

I really don't understand the discussion here. The armor system is WAY better, and there is a way to make it EVEN BETTER, and that's with Baardvark's original suggestions. The game would be WAY more interesting with those options to 'soften' the CC at the expense of AP or other conditions. The CC though 'softer' would still be incredibly debilitating simply due to the limitation on AP. How much work is that for the devs at this point? I'm not sure. Probably too much.

In all my playthroughs of DOS1, I never put points into Bodybuilding or any defensive stat like that because it's just SO MUCH EASIER to overwhelm the enemy with CC IMMEDIATELY and pick off enemies. The current armor system makes this impossible. How is that worse?!?!?!?!!?

Both of you need to seriously cool down. You're literally getting angry over a conversation about how to make crowd control more effective in a video game.

I'm not angry...concern yourself with substance and not blind ad hominem please.

You can however rely on the fact that after 8 successful hits you will get through that armor. You can plan for the worst case scenario. But in case of CC, the worst case is that the CC never applies, and if you are prepared to deal with that, you don't need that CC in the first place and might as well not use it all. If you are not prepared to deal with that, you might just lose the fight because of bad luck, which simply isn't good game design.

In DOS1 you could literally one shot enemies (like rain+ice shard on firedudes or stealth+backstab), and CC them at will in many instances (this is cheesy but hard to resist). With DOS2's new armor system, that is less of a problem (kudos to Larian for fixing that).

Now you at least have to figure out a way to remove the appropriate armor, then CC them. It is much more fun. Some softer CC might be nice to try but don't know if it would make game better.

There are lots of way to remove CC, you just have to position yourself correctly so multiple teammates don't get CC'd at same time. I even hit my own guy with a fireball to remove frozen once, just so he could attack next.

Larian please continue to make the enemies smarter and tougher but don't make the players weaker.

I have to agree with vivalafai on this topic. I don't really understand all the complaints about CC. Except that folks want to solo the game without using 'cheesy' tactics, and CC makes that very hard. Too bad.

It was already once proposed to rename the armor into bodybuilding and willpower bars, so that enemies get more likely to be affected the more the bar is wittled down.

Also there is probably never true randomness in gaming, even a random number generator does not generate random numbers. Every number has the same chance of appearing, but its called that way, because you can't predict the outcome. If you have a success chance of 90%, you still can't be sure if you will succeed, it just is pretty likely to succeed.

How ever the real problem seems to be, there is to much hard CC in either of those games. There probably should be more soft CC and hardly any or even none hard CC, because any fight gets boring as soon one side can't act anymore. Was kind of a problem in DOS1. Early in DOS2 it is more the opposite around, without the knowledge and heavy preparation some fights will knock your team into perma CC and make you lose.

If there is going to be a change, all that needs to be done is to implement that mechanic, not change the names. Personally I think the names are ugly. Physical Armor and Magic Armor is fine. It makes sense that the more dmg you do to armor, the more likely it is to break. This is consistent with the concept of the mechanic.

I agree that giving options to soften CC in any way will make combat more interesting.

It seems like there are 2 types of player, those who like to use tons of spells/skills (generalist, memory) and those who like using basic attacks mostly (specialize, str/int/fin). And for those who use basic attacks mostly they really don't like hard CC because they can lose easily if the enemy disables them quickly. New armor system does make it better than DOS1 though.

Many players like me like generalist w/ a lot of hard CC skills and skills that can remove hard CC. And instead of trying to brute force through fights, positioning to hard CC most of the enemies BEFORE they can use skills on my team.

Maybe more 'soft' CC would make the game more fun for 'basic attack' folks, but I am not sure I would like it better.