Okay, I've been thinking about this as well for a while, and I've got a bunch of ideas. But it turned out that the post was really, really long, so I decided to put it in its own thread:

Stabbey's ideas for tweaks to mechanics in DOS 3

The short short version:

1) Give back a second selectable Talent Point at character creation
Builds just take too long to get going, especially with near-mandatory Talents like Opportunist and Pet Pal eating up an early game slot. If that means getting one fewer Talent point later, I'd gladly lose the one at level 18 and get it at level 1 instead.

2) Remove Opportunist Talent, make Attacks of Opportunity universal
The combat system is designed so that this Talent is mandatory to make an effective main-line fighter combatant. It feels very bad to have a fighter without this Talent. Every enemy has this Talent anyway, so just lose the Talent and make it free for everyone with a melee weapon equipped (including daggers).

3) Increase the amount of Civil points given out, cap base amount per stat based on level
Right now the optimum strategy is for each person to take one and only one Civil ability, they can't split them because that loses effectiveness on both. On the other hand, just handing out more points without a temporary cap will lead to people maxing points out sooner. So give out one Civil point every two levels, but cap the amount you can put into any one ability, forcing you to spread them around a bit.

4) Warfare only affects Shields, 2H weapons and non-dagger 1H weapons.
Warfare affects too much now. If you are dealing any physical damage, you are objectively doing it wrong if you are not maxing Warfare first. It reduces build diversity. A simple tweak so that it does not affect daggers, bows, and Necromancy would make weapon specialization more attractive.

5) Change armor to only block status effects, not damage to vitality
Keep both armors to make combat more interesting and promote target selection in mixed parties. All damage penetrates armor and reduces both vitality and armor by the same amount. Enemies can have more physical or magical armor than their vitality, thus being effectively immune to statuses of that type because they'll be dead from damage first.

6) Add more Talents that diversify builds
Please, please, please, try and get Talents right in the third game. There are too many lame Talents and others are so good they're basically mandatory. See some suggestions at the link.

7) Add a specially-coded Vendor for crafting items
The crafting system has a big problem with supply of ingredients. A new vendor selling 20-ish different randomly selected crafted items, and coded to refresh each time they're interacted with would allow players to drop excess gold onto that vendor and get useful ingredients needed for crafting.

8) [MODDING] Redesign the cobbled-together Talent system code and to allow for modding of Talents
It would really help the modding community if they could actually make proper use out of one of the game's key systems: Talents. Right now the game is not set up to allow for proper addition and modification of Talents.

9) Boost the potency of food items
Food should be a different way to heal than potions. Letting them heal a lesser amount each turn, but for multiple turns would be a good way to do that. Restrict it to only allow one food and one drink item to be consumed at a time until the last one is done.

10) Telekinesis should be more than just a gimmick
This is a lame civil skill, only good for a Barrelmancy gimmick. Have points invested in it grant a 0-Memory skill which lets you interact (not pickpocket) with items and things at [Max Telekinesis Distance]. This lets you trigger traps, pull levers and other such things.



Originally Posted by Try2Handing
I've thought to myself there should be a thread like this where we gradually build up ideas that would be "cool" for the next Divinity game, if it's going to be a thing, and hopefully Larian actually pay attention to the thread.

There are a few things I wholeheartedly support:

1) More companions, with more unique traits. This is one of the things that have always let me down big time. Even in SWKOTOR where your party has only 3 members, you have a total of 8 companions to choose from. Now since in the Divinity games you can build characters in any direction, what differentiates one character from another will naturally have to be personality, unique traits and skillset, and personal story.


Unique Talents on Companions is a really interesting idea. Larian briefly had that idea for Ifan with his Drudanae addict Talent, which they wisely dropped because it sounded like it would be obnoxious, but something similar which is not obnoxious could be pretty interesting.



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I think trying to tie companion stories too tightly to the main story or major events in the game puts a lot of restraints on this.


I definitely got irritated when at the very end of the game,
one of the Big Bads name-dropped Fane to my Fane-less party
. If they're going to be that key to the main plot, make them mandatory. If you don't want to make them mandatory, then don't tie them into the main plot. It's that simple.


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2) Party banter. By party banter I mean companions talking between themselves from time to time, exchanges both general and event-specific. The old Baldur's Gate games did this just fine. The Dragon Age games did a really good job in this department. Even Dragon Age Inquisition does one thing right: party banter. Back when I was playing DAO, I would stay near a banter trigger point, swap party members, and walk up to the trigger point over and over just to listen to all the banters among party members.


There was actually banter between companions in DOS 1, but it's not in this game for some reason.

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3) A better developed crafting system, with more depth. Maybe the ability to "upgrade" items. Many of the craftable items feel more like fillers, being there just for the sake of being there, rather than actually having a clear purpose of being there.


Yes, definitely this. One big problem is that ingredients are so random to find that it's hard to craft specific things when you want them.


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4) Combat. Now there are numerous things we can discuss over as far as combat is concerned, and pretty much all of them have been brought up before. Defense system, skill system, stat scaling, which stat does what, combat stealth, etc etc. You probably need a separate thread for EACH of these factors. For now, I'm just going to say that, while I have never vocally complained about the whole "armor system" issue on the forums, personally I do prefer the old resistance-based system which naturally has more depth and nuances to it. It has been an interesting experience, but no I won't miss the armor system when it's gone.


I do like the status-blocking armor, but I think that the system could be tweaked more.

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7) Better focus on specific "builds". This should be done in a systematic manner. The question here is, "What kind of playstyles can a player possibly come up with?". A two-handed style juggernaut, a single-weapon duelist, a classic sword-and-board warrior, Gandalf-style with one-handed staff and one-handed straightsword, a grenadier, an elemental master, etc.


A million times this. The combination of limited Talents, single-use attributes and Warfare, the One Ability to Rule Them All creates too many cookie-cutter builds where you are objectively doing it wrong if you aren't building in one specific way.