Hi,

At first I want to thank you for making such a wonderful game! I've been playing Divine Divinity a lot and Original Sin has it's spirit and it's even better. One of the best games of all times in my opinion. It's what I've been waiting for since years. Skyrim is a toy for little kids compared to your game. Now about the topic:

I found character who has comeback kid and leech same time can't die. At least it seems to be like that. I think the reason of this is leech talent healing him after each strike, so character's HP can't drop to 1 (and in such case comeback kid check always gives a positive result). Personally, I think it will be better to remove them both and introduce some less "cheaty" talents. It will be good for balance IMHO.

Or just not make them work with each other. Like you can't use your own blood for leech, or make leech work at the end of the round so you can still die in said round.

Don't forget, you don't bleed if you get hit with Magic. It's particularly useful to keep a balance between Warriors and Mages, it's kind of needed to be a successful tank.

Honestly when the game throws enemies in greater numbers than yours, shooting CCs left and right and Warriors have such long cooldowns and spend their time in the frontlines, they need this. It's the only thing that makes getting a warrior worth it.

It is strong, but not godly. Getting hit after resisting death = death.

Only if you were hit with magic and thus did not leech your blood.

Comeback kid gives a 100% roll to resist death if your health is >1, and it can occur infinity times a round.

The problem isn't the combo being too strong. Comeback Kid is the only thing that makes it actually worth getting 5 Willpower, and it still doesn't stop you from getting mashed by ridiculous elemental damage which a decent amount of enemies use.

The problem is that Madora starting with comeback kid is ridiculous because she doesn't have to invest a ton of points into willpower to make the combo work.

Balance is of no importance in a single player, or non-competitive, game. D:OS is not a competitive game - it only has co-op mode. So the "patch" for a talent pair being too powerful is to not choose those talents when you level up.

This game isn't made for one person and their preferences. If you find something that works badly, don't use it. If you find something that makes the game too easy for you, don't use it. But don't ask that the game be changed because you don't like something in it that clearly works and has - especially in its component parts - real value.

I would guess that for everyone who thinks something is too powerful, there's at least one other person who wants it for their own enjoyment. Some people like an easymode stroll through a game. Some are masochistic grognards. It takes both and everyone in between to make an audience for a game.

And just because it bears repeating - balance is of no importance in a single player or non-competitive game. It's literally made for people to be able to win at it. Logical results from that should be unsurprising.

I really can't believe you typed any of that.

Meh,

I normally run 3 mages + madora as a 2h user, she has 100% resists to all elements, I just rain destruction down right on top of her, my summons and any enemies in the area. The only thing that can kill her is melee and leech + comeback make that effectively impossible.

That's strange, because it seems most of the game developers do care about balance in SINGLE PLAYER.



And that's funny. You're saying the game isn't made for one person, but you're writing like it was made only for you and others have no right to say anything about it. I don't like such attitude, so if you don't agree and have nothing constructive to say just leave, please.



Judging the game as a whole it's certainly not an easy one. It's a true cRPG, so such combo seems to be a bug. Sorry, but you make no sense to me.



To bad it's just your opinion and doesn't reflect reality. I'd like to hear the response from developers rather than some weekend player. D:OS is not stupid Skyrim, so such high bonus which makes character indestructible in many cases points to bug.

Cain with Comeback kid and Leech and Weather.

>IMMUNE TO MAGIC AND UNKILLABLE BY PHYSICAL

"Balance is of no importance in single player"

This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while.
I bet you think cheating and savescumming is also ok "because it's single player".
Balance is fundamental in any game in existance, regardless if they are solo games or multi-player.
If you want easy mode, there already is. Options -> Game -> Difficulty.
I hate how the new generations want to play on Normal/Hard while having an Easy game.
Makes me think of Radious total war mods that make the game ultra easy even on legendary difficulty.
As someone on this forum said "the partecipation trophy generation".

Also, the "if something is OP don't use it" argument isn't a valid one.
I shouldn't be excluded from using a skill from a game just because the devs didn't balance it: I expect them to patch it up. And they will.

They might patch it up. They might not.

That is a 5 WP talent.

Also, everyone, try to remember that your way of playing is not the right way for anyone other than you. Sounds fatuous - kind of is, actually - bit it's worth remembering that something of mild importance to you might be really a game changer for someone else.

Up to the devs to decide what fits their image of the game.

And the modders!

[self-deleted]

No, I'm not. There's a fundamental difference in what you're suggesting and what I am. You say two talents in combination are too powerful, and your suggestion to fix it is to patch it out of the game, removing the ability of anyone to use it. "I don't want it, so don't let anyone else use it." I submit that the more appropriate fix is "I don't want it, so I won't use it." What I'm doing, in fact, is arguing *in favor of anyone with a different opinion than yours* to allow them to continue using one or both of those talents. It's entirely constructive, even if it's not what you want to hear/read.


It's actually quite easy. I've been playing turn-based strategy games for 25 or 30 years, depending on how you define early-genre games like Archon or M.U.L.E. on the Commodore64. I'd never suggest that someone design a TBS so that I'm challenged by it; I just impose my own challenges. Similarly, I'd never suggest that a TBS that's too hard for me be toned down; I just drop the difficulty setting. Why is this such an offensive idea to you?



English probably isn't your native language, so I'm not taking offense from your wording. I couldn't have this conversation with you in...what? Polish? Russian? Pawel seems an appropriate name for that. So please understand when I tell you this: you've misunderstood what I wrote.


Of course I think it's OK to savescum and cheat in a single player game. Nobody's playing for money or fame, so there are no overarching rules. Single player games are for fun and practice. Why do you think that world Chess and Go masters aren't rated against machines, but rather against other players? Because it's only in fair competition that "better" matters. Why do you suppose cheat codes are built into so many games? Because it's not up to the game-maker to decide always how the player should enjoy the game. I've beaten the original XCOM (UFO Unknown) on Superhuman with a single soldier, because the game wasn't hard enough to challenge me. I'm stuck on the last two sectors of Jagged Alliance 2 playing with a squad of four mercs using only knives. I don't need any TBS to be easier, but the OP wants to take away powerful tools from the game just because he doesn't want to use them, when not using is - literally - as simple as using a toggle. Don't toggle on (select) both of those talents. The argument "if something is OP don't use it" is absolutely valid. Did you really think that in a game as wildly permissive as D:OS that the only difficulty adjustment was a global switch? That's not imaginative at all.

EDITED: spelling

This is a distinct lack of understanding towards what motivates people to play games. Some do it for money (e-sports), some do it for fame (achievements, speed-runs, e-sports again). We each have our reasons for playing, and they're not always the same.



I believe it to be ignorant to consider something like this. It takes us back to our motivations for playing games. Some enjoy engaging in social activities, be them co-op or competitive (multiplayer), others like solitude and playing alone (singleplayer). Each game sets out to deliver an experience the developers want to pursue. I do not believe Dark Souls 2 was developed to be practice for its PvP, or Starcraft 2's campaign to be practice for its multiplayer. Of course, you are free to see them as you wish. We each experience games differently.



Most cheat codes are built into the game during development in order to aid the developers in testing mechanics and features without wasting a lot of time (debugging). That they are left in is a service to players, but I have a hard time looking at them as a valid option of play (especially since they're almost never advertised within the game).

The goal of the developers is to create an experience (what you get from the game) by using gameplay (what you do in the game). You can't force the player to enjoy it the way you want to, but the aim is to create opportunities for that.



Another development goal is to offer the player meaningful choices. That means, each choice should be valid in its own right and it's up to the player to decide which better fits his play style. Having one choice that is clearly superior to anything else breaks the balance of the game. Why would the player choose an inferior tool? Why would he act in a masochistic manner?

Here is where you balance the dominating strategy in order to allow the player to have meaningful decisions.

Singleplayer games need to be balanced in a way that it is fair towards the player, and in a way that it can challenge them from start to finish. The level of challenge is of course decided by the developers at the start, together with the intended audience.



It's great to have games where you can be creative in your approach at handling the challenges presented, but that doesn't mean you should give the player the "Sword of InstaKills" and expect him to never use it because it will ruin his experience. That's bad design.

Magicka is a game that comes to mind in terms of having a huge amount of options at your disposal. Even so, you ended up using certain spells more often than others due to their power and efficiency (Earth... :P). I believe this hurt the variety in the game to a certain degree.

Instead of asking them to take the talents completely out (a pretty extreme solution), why not just make the two talents mutually exclusive?

I'm reminded of a game where they had a character that had one strong build combo. The devs must have been like you and heavily nerfed every single skill in that combo a week later. Now the skills are useless even outside of the combo and the character is not used anymore.

In the meantime though, before the devs can get to this, you CAN choose to not use the combo since it offends you. That's really all you can do.

I think the point being made here by the others is that they choosing to abuse this talent combo in their game is really non of your concern and doesn't affect you in the least in your game.

Obviously, comeback kid should have at least a 1 turn cooldown. This is the simplest solution to the problem.

When picking a character build I like to find synergies between skills. However I also try to use some common sense.

It's quite obvious these two talents shouldn't work together the way they do and is undoubtedly getting patched at some point.

The way Comeback kid should work is quite clear, and IMO not good enough to warrant a pick. If you have 1 enemy left making only 1 attack it's potentially godlike (when you can heal in your turn) but with lets say 4 enemies each making 2 attacks per round, surviving 1 attack won't help you all that much.

As Simulacrum suggested, I believe that Comeback kid should protect your character from death for an entire turn (regardless of how many times you are hit), but then enter an internal cooldown of 1 or 2 turns if not more.
I makes it a useful perk to have in combat, but it prevents it from being the core of a character (go in, don't die... ever).

The bullshit is strong. Short of a fluke where you managed to start with a 100 psi strength soldier who also had amazing stats you would lose every single mission against mind control. Since you can't see psi strength until you capture a psi enabled alien...

Right. But when money and fame are your motivations, you aren't playing single player, non-competitive. Well, I'll accept that I'm wrong in the case of speed runs and the like, but those sorts of things are - as I had mentioned previously - player-instigated challenges. You're comparing apples to oranges, and so your point doesn't really contradict mine at all. So, I suppose, thank you for agreeing, sort of?

I don't mind you disagreeing, but the way you wrote that sentence is downright funny. However, as to the points from that paragraph, I can't agree with you on any of them except that - obviously - people have different preferences. Without an AI that can be as unpredictable and imaginative as a human opponent, single player is essentially a way to (for games with such tactical options) test out various tactics against an opponent that can be reliably expected to perform in a certain way. That there is no substitute for authentic practice is absolutely correct, and being good at the single-player campaign for Starcraft in no way prepared me for the intense butt-whooping delivered to me by real players; so to get good at *competitive* Starcraft I would have had to practice in MP. But just to get practice dealing with the game mechanics, to see the story written for we players, and to have fun? Single-player, all day.


Sure, but disabling them is *trivially* easy. Depending on what language you're writing the code for (and a whole lot of games are still written in C or C++ or one of the direct variants) it's often as simple as !, #, or ## at the start of a line to comment it out. That such things are not removed is in fact a conscious business decision these days (I understand that 10, 15 years ago it was sometimes just the work of mischievous programmers/devs).



I'm not surprised this came up. Firstly, as to why someone would deliberately choose an inferior tool, see what I said about XCOM and Jagged Alliance. Sometimes you just want to overcome something that's downright mean. As to the second, which goes back to the whole point I made from the beginning, the developers should design a generally acceptable difficulty setting, but it is absolutely up to the player in a game with as many options and choices as D:OS to fine-tune that difficulty. And it is essentially unfair - and intensely egotistical and conceited - to put forth an argument that says "I don't like this, so don't let anyone else do it because I don't want to." That's the whole point, and what nearly everyone who criticised me failed to understand.

I like the idea of giving Comeback Kid a cooldown. I'd like the idea even more of Leech only healing you at the end of the turn, so that multi-hit attacks can overcome Comeback Kid easily. And if the two of them are sufficiently changed, I'll even give one of my characters those traits and see how it goes. But I'm not selfish enough to say "this is so powerful that nobody should use it." I just decided that it was too powerful for me to use. Not hard at all.

I'm sorry that you've failed to do that, if you wished. The mechanics of the original game are straightforward, and there's no overt shenanigans like in TFTD. Be patient in the combats, don't bring any weapons that you will kill yourself with when you get terrified, and be prepared to lose a lot of fights and start again with a fresh soldier. It's doable. My limit wasn't imposed on number of interceptors, or on tanks for base defense. Just for offense missions. You can't afford to make a single mistake, but you can win it. Well, maybe; I did.

Yes, it was my suggestion and that's all. I'd rather want them fixed or replaced by something else (like two handed weapon bonus which is absent in talents). What you're doing is nothing, but defending a possible bug. This is not constructive at all. You took my suggestion as an order which leads to misunderstanding.



I find your arguing strange. You said it's actually quite easy game, but same time you were defending combo which made it like that (or would make it even easier if you're not using this "cheat" currently). Try fighting with 2,3+ levels above you, so it won't be easy. This is what I do. Furthermore, even in equal fights it's still harder than Skyrim or other console like games. I've been playing Laser Squad, East vs South on C64 and dozens of other turn based games, so I know quite a lot about them.



Yes, you're right about my language. However, I was according to "balance" which isn't important in your opinion. This is plain wrong. It's very important in SP and that's why developers make many tunables in games like F:NV, NWN and so on. It makes games more fun to play.



Like I said before I just suggested to remove them. They're broken and it's just one of options developers should take into account. Your argument: "if something is OP don't use it" is completely wrong. I wasn't aware of this "bug" and I noticed it after hour or more, so don't want to roll back to previous saves. I want to be able to use all of the options without turning the GOD MODE on. If someone wants to cheat he should type: godmode 1 or something like that. I hope you understand such simple thing.

All one needs to know is that aliens do not require sight for mind control, and all of your soldiers mind controlled = you lose the mission.

Why are you guys arguing with someone who says a single player game doesn't need balance..?

From that point on I was ignoring everything else he said and wish I could do so retroactively as well.

If you know that much about XCOM you also know that morale does not require line of sight either. Since you only have to plan on fighting Ethereals two times, and can abort every other Ethereal mission, with two exceptions the only time you fight psionics is when you're fighting aliens with such low morale that a single HE rocket, taking out two or three (and Sectoids can almost never survive even at the outside edge of an HE rocket), will panic almost all the remaining aliens. And they can't mind control you until they've recovered and then taken your morale down first.

Try it. Load up a game of XCOM and see what happens on a Sectoid mission when you lead with an HE rocket, or a blaster bomb if you've gotten that far. Everything else just falls into place.

And he'd be strangulated by the first stealth aliens too since you can't make a respirator without first having an autopsy. If he played enemy within he would never complete any hacking ops without at least 2, which I already highly doubt. Also wouldn't have enough turns to save everyone in Terror Missions.