Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Civil Abilites and Combat Abilities

Here I am just going to be comparing Divinity Original Sin 1 to Divinity Original Sin 2.

In Divinity 2, I am concerned about two core progression systems:
- Civil Abilities
- Combat Abilities


CIVIL ABILITIES
At first glance, I like the goal... Separating combat power from everything else. Players innately pick combat power over professions in the majority of situations.

However, the new system feels like it allows you to have pretty much every Civil Ability across 4 characters. You don't have to sacrifice anything. In my opinion, this decision is very weak. If you had 15 different Civil Abilities, I might feel differently.

I realize that with the game releasing in 1 month, making large changes is difficult, so I wonder if there are easier ways to drive up competition between choices... If professions were global, for example, you wouldn't be able to have every character specialize in a different Civil Ability. In addition, it would clarify the fact that all characters indirectly gain the benefits of the other professions through Magic Pockets.


COMBAT ABILITIES
My biggest concern with the changes here is that it seems like the new system is over-rewarding multi-class characters.

From what I can tell, if I put 2 points into Hydrosophist, I have access to all hydrosophist skills. At this point, it is in my best interest to spread my points out into other trees. It doesn't feel very exciting to put lots of points into Hydrosophist because it doesn't provide new skills for me to play with. Maybe this is just a limitation of the beta?

Anyhow, that's pretty much it. I really like a lot of the other design changes, but I hope that some of these issues will be tweaked.

Yeah, civil abilities aren't very exciting and easy to access. If there weren't item bonuses galore for civil abilities it'd be slightly better, but even without items, you'll probably have all but one or two abilities maxed out between all your characters. Sneaking and Telekinesis aren't very good, so that's not much of a loss anyway. We'll see if they add a crafting ability or anything else, though crafting is tough since it's probably just as amazing as it was in the first game and basically mandatory.

Combat skills will have slightly higher ability requirements for certain skills, at least up to 3, but hard to say how much higher they will go.

Yeah, that's my general concern.

I have been in the industry a few years and I'm very impressed with this company. I also know they do a good of adapting to feedback.

I'm hoping there's some nice easy changes they can make to make these choices more competitive... Even if it means giving fewer skill points overall.

Cover and Armor system come to mind as points of ignored feedback.

How often does Larian reply to threads?

It depends on the topic. There have been various balancing changes made since the last Early Access update, and more things will be changed / tweaked as development finishes.

May we have a couple of non-compromising teasers?