i like the armor system fine, it could use some tweaking, maybe with more individual spells (of the non-cc variety) going through them
i think the real issue is the stat inflation at higher difficulties. there are a lot of ways to increase difficulty during combat that don't involve simply making the fight a longer and more monotonous version of what happens on lower difficulties. i'm going to assume that most people who hate the armor system are people who play on higher difficulties like tactician and dislike wasting turn after turn burning through bloated armor before anything interesting happens. this is a fair complaint, but again, i think this problem can be solved without overhauling the whole system. in my experience having separate armor stats for physical and magical (which, on most enemies, has one significantly higher than the other) has overall made fights interesting in terms of who focuses which enemies. i always bring mixed parties (usually 2 mages and 2 physical damage dealers, though it becomes more complex and less tied down as the game goes on) and, while fights certainly take longer, they're still manageable. if difficulty was achieved in ways other than simply making fights longer versions of their lower difficulty counterparts i think people would find the system a lot more to their liking
Quite the contrary imo, players scale WAY more than NPCs, you may think numbers are bloated for Armor and Vitality on mobs, but the fact is that damage (especially physical) for players scales totally out of control to the point where you can effectively end most fights in two turns by simply nuking shit into oblivion and heck it's even more retarded because it's basically done with basic attacks coupled with teleports and AP recovery talents/abilities. And I am talking Tactician here. Like my non-lone wolf 2h warrior in Arx can easily kill 3 targets turn 1 simply thanks to Flesh Sac, Adrenaline and Executioner rolling from one target to another, no kidding, especially if ranger softened them up a bit at the start. And heck, Ranger himself can pretty much oneshot just about any non-boss target with Arrow Storm.
Game gets easier as you go, not harder, that's just wrong IMO and it is a problem with scaling, but not the scaling of a kind you think. Player damage gets out of control, that's the issue that throws otherwise tactical game out of the window and turns it into a simple game of tunneling a couple of select targets and killing them first or second turn effectively ending fight there (the rest of the stragglers you just clear out, as they pose no threat at that point when you take out main guys).
Heck the fact that big and bad final encounter can be beat just by that tunneling is the epitome of what's wrong with scaling. The fact that this is not only viable, but also a best and easiest path by far is just wrong.
This is pretty much why Tactician complaints died out by now, just because players found out that they scale WAY higher than a boost Tactician gives to NPCs later on.
