Listening to everyone's feedback does not necessarily mean implementing it. And it's not like the new combat system was universally hated. Lots of people liked the new system, it does have many good points.
The DOS 2 armor system is core to the entire gameplay, and that's not something you can just casually change. Much of the negative feedback was essentially to scrap it, which would warrant a complete rebuild of the entire combat system.
Other negative feedback was ideas on how to change it, and I don't think any clear consensus grew around any specific idea. I spent a lot of time trying to think of other ways to change the armor system.
The closest idea I came was to complicate it by having Physical attacks be absorbed 70% by Physical Armor and 30% by magical armor, and the reverse by magical attacks, which made mixed partied more viable, but the math for figuring out if an attack would strip armor harder, which is not ideal.
Even now, the best change I can think of for DOS 3 would be this:
- Armor still exists in physical and magical type
- Armor blocks status effects, but it no longer blocks any damage, it all hits vitality.
- Armor, barring any resistances, takes full damage from attacks, the same amount that hits vitality
- An physical attack of 100 damage on an enemy with 400 health, 200 physical armor reduces the enemy health to 300 and the physical armor to 100.
- The system would allow for enemies to be completely resistant to some types of status effects, by setting armor values to be identical or higher than enemy vitality. (They'll be dead from the damage before you break their armor.)
That would make mixed parties viable because all attacks hit health, and it would also keep the status-blocking system in place and the math is easy to understand.
