I've been binging OS 2 again with some friends and have played numerous builds on tactician. The end result is the same - Act 1 provides a bit of a challenge, but act 2 becomes a breeze pretty quickly. Having played the first original sin a lot, I began reflecting on the changes to armor and specifically the way CC works between both games and what I like and don't like about it.
First, for those of you who didn't play the first OS, all CC and status effects had a random chance to be applied. There was no physical/magical armor. This made fights a lot more chaotic and less predictable, but it also made them more frustrating because you couldn't reliably be strategic. Think more in the vein of XCOM, but with 50% or less shots all the time. Didn't feel great.
At first I was really excited about the new armor system in OS 2. It entirely removed frustrating RNG, but brought with it its own set of problems. Those problems being that CC became WAY too powerful when it could be reliably applied. There also came the issue of magic/physical party compositions feeling awkward. They aren't bad, but they feel bad when you aren't very knowledgeable or experienced with the game yet. Because I'm now of the opinion that these comps are fine, especially with things like magic damage with effects blocked by physical, or the ability to alter your damage type with elemental arrowheads, crafting arrows, or using piercing damage... I think it's just another layer of strategy that I've come to appreciate.
Here's what I think needs to happen in a potential enhanced edition or divinity 3 - remove hard CC almost entirely. I like the new armor system a lot, I'd prefer to keep it, but I'd change certain effects. I'll give some examples.
Knockdown is no longer a condition. Instead, skills that caused knockdown now cause 'dazed'. Dazed reduces movement -25%, hit chance -25%, vision -50%, wits -5 (scales), and dodging -50%.
Stunned is no longer a condition. Instead, skills that cause stun now cause 'electrified'. -2 AP recovery, -2 start AP, Dodging -50%, earth resisistance +30% and air resistance -30%. Cannot recover magic armor.
Frozen remains a condition by name, but instead reduces movement speed -75%, dodging -75%, 30% increase fire resistance, 30% decreased water resistance, -20% decreased air resistance and all damage dealt is decreased by 35%.
and i'd probably just remove chicken form entirely (don't kill me)
Apply the same sort of logic to conditions like terrified, charmed and petrified. Instead of essentially being 'you are stunned, skip your turn', they each can provide a very powerful debuff but allows characters to engage in some sort of counter play instead of being removed from the equation entirely.
The idea is that you can still reliably apply powerful CC effects, but CC chaining doesn't make the fight a terribly one sided slaughter. (especially since enemies don't deploy CC chaining tactics). Hell, even thunderstorm alone trivializes every single fight on tactician. You cast it in a huge AoE and it instantly stuns any unit that isn't a boss or some mages... and it keeps them stunned for 3 turns.
At the end of the day something I've learned not just in divinity, but in many other games, is that hard CC must be handled with great care. Ideally it's sparse and it doesn't last long. It never feels fun to be removed from play or to have your turns skipped. Divinity OS didn't feel quite as bad in terms of CC because you couldn't reliably land CC and there were generally less hard CC abilities in the game. OS 2 introduced a lot of hard CC and fights are over the moment the enemies have their armor stripped. Health bars are almost meaningless.
I'd say that the new armor system was succesful, it's just that hard CC is too abundant and could be revisited. The values/conditions I used are just examples. I'm not a game designer, so take them as just that - examples.
What do you guys think about hard CC and the armor system in OS 2?
Last edited by YOGZULA; 07/05/18 10:41 AM.
