Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Dear Larian, can we talk itemization?

Bad design is more a question of implementation rather than something to throw around when someone makes a design decision you dislike. Expanding the meta beyond character creation (which is what the Baldur's Gate example ultimately results in, alternatively not creating false choices due to developer neglect of certain item categories) and giving some incentive to spread out your team's equipment dependencies (thus maximizing random equipment drops) are some pretty clear advantages from the top of my head. Especially in a game with free respec, where itemization is one of the few limiting factors remaining. Due to merchant restock (hourly I believe) I don't see it as a major issue overall.

Larian can definitely improve the present system to better realize what their design goal is. For example:

1) Weapons for different builds should not share the same item category for merchants (and likely loot tables). Spears for example are extremely rare due to them being in the same category as Strength two-hander weapons, causing them to be drowned out. This becomes rather clear with merchant logic. Weapons of fundamentally different build categories (in this case Finesse Warfare vs Strength Warfare) should not be competing for the same item category.

There seems to be quite a bit of D:OS1 -> D:OS2 stuff that hasn't been elegantly transitioned in this fashion.

2) Lucky charm creates a loot meta that is kind of annoying. Especially when the game incentivizes a separate barter character to sell the loot picked up by the lucky charm character. (Mitigated by vigilant respec, but thats extremely meta-gamey to the point that it makes me wonder why are they even skills)

3) As others have mentioned a more robust crafting system; at least on par with D:OS1, would allow players to minimize some of the RNG when the RNG is seemingly sabotaging them. (Note: This can create another problem with scaled equipment incentivizing hoarding crafting equipment until late-game for max profits - But opportunity cost is a thing to so mixed bag)