Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Free respec is gamebreaking, casual and bad design

@ OP - don't you have some DOTA ranked matches to go play and complain that your teammates are all incompetent and that your back hurts from trying to carry them to a loss that you caused because of your elitist, cancerous attitude?

So ... should I start arguing that stealing (which I assume many enjoy) should be removed from the game because its effect on game balance is detrimental to my characters who don't use it? Or should I continue to ignore the guides that say you have to steal and quietly shoulder the bit of added difficulty that comes with playing a virtuous character? And to appreciate that not stealing would have no meaning if stealing were not an option?

The price of freedom is always going to be individual responsibility. Part of role-playing is choosing what sort of character you're going to play and choice only exists in the presence of options. To my mind "don't like it, don't use it" is pretty basic to RP.

Yes. Yes you are.

Be 100% completely honest here: how does someone choosing to play the way you're describing break your experience?

Why the hell does it matter if it's "abusable" or not? Are there any ramifications of people using the respec system in the way you describe that directly affect the enjoyment of others?

I also don't think you've properly thought through your argument or even tried to do what you describe. In order for it to work, you have to save before each and every conversation or encounter, reload the save when it doesn't go the way you want, head back to Lady Vengeance, respec, head back to the scenario in question and win it with your newly assigned skills.
Oh, and heading back to Lady Vengeance then back to the encounter isn't as quick as it sounds. Teleporter pyramids don't take you to or from the ship, so you have to head to and from the nearest waypoint.

Personally, I myself save scum, but not to that extent. While I know it's possible, life's too short to do this at every step of the game. And I think most people think the same.

And if I do want to "win" every last situation (which I don't; the story develops in interesting ways when you can't succeed at everything), I can forgo all that nonsense, load up Cheat Engine and max out all characters. That's a lot less time consuming than doing things the way you think breaks the game.

And you know what? If I do load up Cheat Engine, especially in a single player game with no online code checking for cheats, there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. In that scenario, am I ruining your enjoyment of the game? Because let me tell you, there are actually thousands of people out there doing exactly that.

One thing that poked me in the eye:

"The game is balanced around the assumption that players will use the mirror to exploit their way around civic skill checks. Therefore, the mirror has a detrimental effect on game design." (condensed version)

What a load of ****. It is not, you simply have not understood what differentiates an RPG from, say, an action game.

Not meeting a skill check can result in a lesser quest reward, or forced combat with a person you did not really intend to fight, amongst other outcomes. None of these consequences are game-breaking, but they do define your character(s) in that game: your character will have to live with, say, the avoidable death of an NPC on their hands because they failed to read up on lore. If the game was designed around players always succeeding at skill checks, then why didn't Larian just put a red-on-black 'game over' screen right after a failed check?

I'm sorry, but you cannot operate on the basis of an extremely flawed understanding of RPG basics and then go to Larian to complain about how they designed their RPG.

i had no idea people cared this much about how other people play a single player game

it's actually extremely easy to set self-imposed rules for RP purposes specifically to avoid things that can be potentially abused and/or exploited, in either a SP or MP setting

if you think this specific feature is too strong then you're at liberty to not use it, you won't miss out on any other features the game has to offer and your playthrough will be as clean as a bowl of holy water

I never even thought about abusing the system only those idotic min-maxers do that have no respect for a game and don´t get what RPGs are.

That will be me then. If I have a ranger I put points in Finesse. Rather than doing it at random or asking "what would my guy do". The answer being "do nothing, lets go to the pub".

You have respect for a game? That is peculiar. It isn't something conscious. How can you respect it?

Would you have respect for a table? A chess board? A lump of rock?

I can imagine having respect for someone who was good at (or knowledgeable about) something is normal. While I could have respect for a tree-surgeons skill, having respect for the tree his/her chainsaw is cutting is, frankly, a little odd. Far more odd would be respecting the car (or choice of car) they drive to work.