The fact of the matter is that the system requieres changes, it is poorly designed and there are many reasons on why is this, many people have said it in many posts, it is not up for debate.

The only thing i now want to know is if the developers acknowledge this or they will be oblivious to critique?, if they will just ignore and behave like typical mainstream developers and just listen to fanboys praize.

I am seriously not having fun with the game and the thing is i can't refund it because i already clocked more than 2 hours long time ago, the armor problem doesn't really become evident until you have really more than 2 hours playing and you think: "well, maybe it will get better in Act 2", well it doesn't.

It is truly pathetic that the only game strategy that works now is go full damage and only one type of damage either physical or magical but not both or you will gimp your party and then don't engage in battle normaly but rather cheese the AI somehow to prevent all the enemies gang bang on your party and obliterate you, BECAUSE you can't CC you can't control the battlefield anymore so you are really stupid if you try to engage in a battle without cheesing it, the method that always works is to provoke the battle with 1 character and then run away as far as you can were your other team mates wait for the enemy to come 1 by one or the least amount possible so you can kill them withouth them grouping on you and kick your ass.

THIS IS NOT FUN PERIOD.

There is no "tactics" that is a lie, combat just became a 1 trick pony, there is not thinking anymore you just spam damaging abilities and stack damage to get rid of the 3 health bars ASAP.

I want a developer to say to me if they acknowledge this and they will do something about it or they will not.

I don't want to use mods since they disable achievements but i am seriously considering it now because i am not having fun with the game, it is not an enjoyable experience it is tedious and frustrating, i am tired of it and if i could refund i would do it.

Realize that i could just have pirated your game but i decided to support your company because i trusted you since the first game was really an amazing game, but this is a complete disappointment and i am gonna be honest with you, if you choose to not listen to critique like most developers and just take the fanboys into consideration this will be the last time i spend money on a game you make and i mean it.

They didn't really comment much on it throughout EA. Why would you expect them to comment now? However, while I understand your argument, you're being a bit too aggressive in my view.


I went against my first instinct and built a 2 Physical/2 Magic team, and I'm reaching the point where when one of my mages' turns comes up, I freeze up because I genuinely can't think of anything productive to do, even with a lot of skills on my skillbar sitting there unused.

Level 9/10 enemies have 300+ magic armor (and I've seen it as high as a ridiculous 800 on level 11 enemies), and I don't know what my mages can contribute to a fight other than buffing my physical attackers.

Yeah they over nerfed mages they are just terrible now.

About the other stuff, it is me just stating how things are, i will stop supporting them if they don't listen.

I played through both a double lone wolf mage playthrough as well as a double lone wolf ranger knight playthrough and mages felt fine to me. The ranger knight was obviously easier because all you do with them is auto but my mages were more engaging to play and had little difficulty throughout almost every encounter, save the occasional enemy with fire resistance.

I doubt they will change the system. The amount of people who are against it are a minority. I think the armor system is more or less a fine place to build more depth off of and I agree it's a little lacking, but I expect extra depth or fleshing out of systems will be done through mods. Tons of people love and enjoy the game and are happy with the current systems. It doesn't make sense to go about making huge sweeping changes that will only appease a small amount of players who are dissatisfied with it. This isn't about fanboys. There's everyone else who like the system, and then there's you and some other people ranting against the system. Whose side do you expect them to take?

That poll in the other thread shows an even split between liking it and disliking it. Only 13% said that it doesn't need any changes. 59% want to see some changes, either minor or major, and about 23% say they hate it or liked how D:OS 1 did it. So it doesn't seem accurate to dismiss the idea of changes as appeasing a small minority.

That said, it's unlikely that Larian will do much to change it.

it's about even on the forums which should be skewed in favor of not liking it. It's a rather fair assumption to assume that the people who are unhappy with something talk a lot more about something than people who are happy with it. And yet 47% of people that answered the survey are happy with it.

One: Your point on it being a loud minority is false. It's been consistent feedback that the system either needs changes or to need to be reverted. This has been ongoing since the EA.

Two: Expecting modders to be responsible for 'fixing' the game is a terrible practice.

That said: considering the everything else I've seen since the EA? I doubt they'll do anything in response to this.

Actually it is more accurate to say that 83% of the players know there is something wrong with the system.

The fact that people have been complaining since it was in EA doesn't disprove what I said...

I agree that expecting modders to fix a game is bad practice indeed. But expecting modders to fix issues a minority of people have? Sure.

Except it is not a minority.

What rubbish. You can't point to posts and poll answers which DO NOT EXIST as proof of a silent majority supporting you.

REKT

Have you beaten the game yet? Later on, it gets insane. Enemies start having thousands upon thousands of armour, at least on Tactician they do. Never played the lower difficulties.

Best ability in-game is Overpower, it's seriously great. Larian really does love their Warfare. :P

Just another proof on how Phsycal attackers are way better than Magical, they overnerfed mages.

Are you arguing against my previous notion? The notion being that the more complacent or satisfied someone with a game the less likely they are to be on forums in the first place.

People don't log onto forums for no reason. They get on forums typically because they see problems and want to create discussion about them. Nobodies going to pop in and say "hey larian I'm really enjoying your game it's probably the best game I've ever played". If they aren't enjoying the game they are more likely to say something about it.

Zherot actually has a reason to be here, because this particular user is not happy with their purchase. Someone enjoying the game has little to no motivation to post on the forums, while someone like Zherot wants their money on the game to actually be worth the cost. He's not enjoying the game, that's why he's here. People are enjoying the game, that's why they're in game.

I could also link you some scientific studies showing how humans only tend to report things that are negative if you need more convincing. Sounds a lot similar to posting on a forum no?

And if this still isn't enough to convince you then I would also like to point to the 94% steam user reviews as well to show that the majority are in fact very satisfied with this game.

Seriously, your argument is garbage. It's a fact that you cannot attach numbers to non-existent phantom posts and poll votes and claim that more people are on your side.

If so then I'll just claim that there are even MORE non-existent posts and votes supporting my side than yours. Prove me wrong.

You can't, which demonstrates why the "silent majority" argument is bad, and I'm not going to indulge it any farther.

As has been said: your argument makes no sense.

And just cause certain portions of the game are fantastically in need of tweaking doesn't mean the same people saying that don't also give positive glowing reviews. Why would I not recommend the game? It has one badly implemented feature, but it's still an overall greater product.

If you want to argue your position than the burden of proof to prove that others are in the minority is on you. That's how a debate works. You don't just get to magically wave your hands and say that even though there's nothing to validate your position, it's totally correct cause you don't like what you're hearing.

What? Is there some magical number of people in order to meet your criteria for majority? Or will you just keep moving the goal post?

How can a company make this big change now? With such a high like rating ta boot. They can and will be making general adjustments though.

What they could do and I think it would be smart, is come out with a screen with all kind of mod options you can turn on/off, baked into the game, like Xcom mods that were very popular additions. A page of I want this or that added. That way those playing and happy, continue on. Those not so happy, they can check what they want and then try a do over. And the best of all worlds, a person that is happy to try various mods in subsequent plays.

The gravest sin with the Armor System isn't its existence or intent; it's the sheer lack of depth it has and how little interaction there is with other systems.

There are so little ways to invest in armor defenses outside of equipment, it's absolutely suffocating in regards to Divinity OS's fantastic status and terrain systems, and has minimal interactions with skills and spells outside of "destroy all armor" or "get some armor now or over a few turns".
It's quite disappointing, but there's a lot of room to play with things and expand upon the armor system that could make it a fun and engaging mechanic, rather than a barricade trying clumsily to keep D:OS1's CC out of the room until it applies enough burst damage.

You can't seem to accept that if someone isn't talking about something then that means they are more likely to be satisfied with that particular thing. If you can't accept this then this argument doesn't really have anywhere else to go.

That is why i said in another post that ME did this system better, but also it makes CC completely pointless since by the time the enemy stops having armor you may aswell just kill them.

While I'm just as annoyed with the armor system as anyone else that is (Thanks Mass Effect 2 Adept hell), the "tactics" from the previous game were just as non existent, despite all of the praise it got for the combat. Thing is, that game gave you more options, not only for character builds, but also what you're functionally allowed to do at the start of any given encounter. But that freedom only really mattered maybe half of the game, if that. Once you had enough skills memorized, it became rote gameplay just like this, and it became trivialized once you unlocked the Master spells. Primarily because of the way initiative worked, and the best setup was to have enough so that your entire team went first.

This game is similar in that way too, except the "Master" spells require source. All that means is, you'll be casting the spells similarly as in the previous game, but with more downtime afterwards simply because of the hoop jumping to get source back (which isn't hard, it's just corpse hunting, waiting on cooldowns or going back to a pool each time is tedious).

From a CC perspective, the game is worse, but it's not really all that difficult. It also favors an all physical damage group over split or all magic, but split works just fine, and the game can be finished with a party of four Mages (Without Incarnates too!). I also greatly enjoyed my first playthrough for the story, side quests and dialogue--all which were mostly great. The game just doesn't have much replayability in its current state regarding combat or builds that actually work well within the current system.



My first playthrough was with a split team, and aside from not being able to CC really at all aside from slow and cripple melee units (which is phenomenal) until armor was down, it wasn't that much of an issue because I focused my casters on the enemy physicals, who typically have much less magical armor, while my Ranger (and occasionally slow ass Warrior) took care of the enemy casters. For evenly split damage bosses there was always the Bone Widow for physical as well as Shield Toss. Another thing is that standard hard CC is mostly trash in this game due to it requiring two actions after armor is stripped. However, Charm only requires one, and it only needs two in Summoning.



Lone Wolf shouldn't be used as a form of comparison. A party of two Lone Wolf Mages is much stronger than a group of four normal, especially because of the way initiative and turns happen. Lone Wolf is what you use when you want to power game through Tactician without any problems.



You might find the results to be similar across all purchases, but until you have a poll from thousands, it means very little since it's almost always going to be the vocal minority voting.

Bullshit.

And if that is the case this game is even worse so were does that put it then?

It isn't bullshit at all when the so called "tactics" can be broken down into what works the best and everything else. After the initial first few levels where comboing for CC effects mattered, it quickly stopped mattering. Like I said, the previous game gave you more options, but once you found your groove, each fight played out the same.

The system can be changed so that everyone is satisfied.
Personally, I also like the idea of ​​protection from control. But this realization is horror and nightmare.
The problem is that the protection is too powerful. It protects from damage, and from control. and even from different types of damage!
If you make one type of defense, combining the mage and fiz, add a chance pass depending on how much protection the target has left, plus remove the defense against damage - there will be an ideal system.

For example, what now:
The enemy has 200 health, 100 defense, 300 magic shields. In total, you get 300 health from physical attacks, and 500 health from magical attacks.
Thus, in a group of bow, warrior and two magicians, only warriors will beat him. Two people from the group can just go drinking tea.
In the system I proposed, there will be:
600 health, and 400 protection against control. Protection from control decreases with damage, but does not protect against damage. Thus, any damage damages both protection and health. So the group from the magic and physical damage will be full.

Further. it turns out that if the goal of 600 health is 100%, then no control will work on it.
If the health falls to 400 (which means 200 protection remains), there will be a 50% chance of passing the controls.
And with a drop in health to 200, the chance of passing control is 100%.

That is, in fact, nothing will change except that groups with different types of damage will be as effective as groups with one type of damage.
While now groups with one type of damage are times more efficient than mixed groups.

Now that you post that I really don't see the need or desire to impose both physical and magical armors. We had elemental and phys resists which worked fine. Oh no, said Larian, let's remove physical resistance for this new system of armors, but we're keeping magical resists though, because making new and interesting enchantments on gear is hard I guess.

They have dodge chance though, which protects against all regular attacks and most physical abilities (non-melee AOE abilities get a free pass). Yes OS1 had both dodge and armor, but dodge didn't protect against abilities like it does now.

I don't really LIKE dodge, I'm not a fan of heavy RNG mechanics if we can avoid them so I'd rather they REPLACE dodge with physical-resist, but as it is it does work to mitigate physical damage. In fact, you likely have more dodge chance than magic resists.

I didn't imply or state that I expect them to make any large changes at this late stage. I highly doubt any of this will be addressed.

From a company standpoint: they sold their product, it sold well, and most people are at least 80-90% satisfied with it.

That last 10-20% is what changes things form a decent/good game to the spectacular thing that I thought game 1 was.

Or better yet, just 2 health bars, given how the system works.

The way Larian intended for you to play the game is obviously either full physical damage team or full magical damage team.

Well this game is beyond garbage then because it is WAY worse.

First game was 100% more tactical than this, you actually had to choose who to disable, who to kill first, who to engage, in this game, nah, it is all about how to cheese the AI, never actually engage in battle normally and cheese it and once you have done that then go full damage like mental invalid because it doesn't matter, and you need a 1 trick pony party because you will gimp yourself so fucking hard by having a magical/physical party it is retarded how bad you gimp yourself by doing this and on top of that magic sucks in this game, resitances+ magic armor+insane cooldowns+source magics+limit ap BS. They really wanted to nerf mages to the point of making them useless they are so bad that you always think, "if i cast this AoE i will shoot myself in the foot so bad..." it hurts you more to try to do anything else but buffing with your mages its ridiculous.

Dodge does NOT mitigate physical resist please stop your BS.

The first game had dodge as well and also block. Block does not exist anymore, because shields only offer now 'armor'.

Also saying, that only those, who have complains will go into the forums is wrong. It is well known, that most people avoid to have to complain. In a hotel you expect about one from ten unsatisfied guests to ever really mention their complain, most people keep those for themselves, because complaining is to bothersome and time consuming or because they are to hesistant to produce an uproar.

Lol, nope!

But, feel free to think whatever you want.

Alexstrasza ... ouch. Overpower is brutal. Just looked at it. Low AP cost, 1 Source, and destroy ALL physical armor if you have more than they do? AND Knocked Down for 1 round?

Stripping ALL Physical Armor for 1 Source ... that's powerful. That's an ability that is just ... pardon the play on words, Overpowered no matter how you slice it.

If it was a Pyrokinetic spell that burned away all Magic Armor it'd be just as overpowered.

Even with the limitation of "must have more armor than enemy currently has" it still feels a bit ... broken.

Will I abuse it when I get a toon capable of using it? I'd be stupid not to.

Yes, Physical > Magical ANY DAY in this game.

And yeah i am free to speak the truth whenever i want thanks.

It's different when it comes to gaming. Real life complaining takes time for things to get sorted and some even take money. Game reviews/feedback let them vent the steam and continue venting it for absolutely no cost.

If anything, the hard part is getting people that enjoy the game to voice their opinions in public. There's a reason why game industry will say that "Majority of the positive reviews are bought" because unless you give them reward for doing it, they won't do it. They are having fun anyway and see no reason to take their time to ask for changes. This is presented in nearly every game marketing seminar I have been to as part of my study.

Actually eventually shields do come with a chance to Block. It's even worked a few times for me.

There is no block % in shields description or in the chars description in generell?

Or are you talking about block now being a modifier and not an innate shield trait?

Some shields have Block Chance on them for lower armor stat.

The only other game I have ever seen use armour as 'special' hit points have been space flight sims - this game is messed up, how did we allow this passed EA without picking up on this shit?

Next EA game I'm going to be on the devs case from day one, that is, if I ever fall for the EA trick again.

Regarding the fact how much the AI loves to attack a Tank, probably pretty useless. And also you can't skill your block chance if I'm not mistaken.

Put Leadership on your tank and enjoy watching them try to hit the tank instead.

They kinda intend you to put leadership on tank anyway. Even +Leadership is on majority of the shield. They even buffed leadership to have +3% dodge rate while it still says +2% on tooltip.

It isn't bullshit at all when the so called "tactics" can be broken down into what works the best and everything else. After the initial first few levels where comboing for CC effects mattered, it quickly stopped mattering. Like I said, the previous game gave you more options, but once you found your groove, each fight played out the same.

I disagree - the second game has far fewer skills, quite simply, you could play the 'first game' (which is about the 5th in the game series) as suboptimal, even on 'tac' in the EE, and still win, simply because alternatives worked.

Try a 4 party necro only set up in 2nd ed? No way. Just, game is half baked, really: open beta or no beta at all, we proved this 15 years ago in terms of RPGs.

Having everyone in 5 m range of your tank, sounds like offer to the enemies to burst your full team with AoE skills. Grouping up totally contradicts our playstyle so I will hardly ever use leadership with this rubbish low range.

Leadership is really broke though and I find it disappointing they don't have AIs using it to make battle harder. Only 2 fights in the game really capitalize on the Aura difficulty.

Alexander with his insane Aura.
And the Evasive aura in Act 2.

Need a real reverse Leadership aura in this game for tanks/diver/enemies to take.

Not agree with you.
Have to say that please don't change…
Or my opinion is make a exchange ratio, when one armour is zero.

Why do I think the battle is fun and a little bit easy?

fix damn armor system. make some stanalone CC blocking parameter, remove that horrible phys\mag armor and give our mages\figthers ability to cooperate effectively!

Just want to point to one little detail...
On forums like this most post will be about stuff people don’t understand or don’t like.
And some of the great experts on how things REALLY should work, are EXTREMELY vocal with their gripes.
Any polls are fraught with misconception that a broad demographic is in effect.
Nope. The very tittle of any poll is leading their intended audience to react. And it is a fact that 83% of all statistics are invented to support any claim.

The post numbers under a few forum members are a very good indication on how any discussion is warped. Most often the negative people are very persistent. Those who are relatively content comes in with one or two posts, make their opinion known and then leave. Some people will seek out all of those different posts and comment on all those user’s posts to make their point. Again. And again. And again.

In other game forums for fps it is fun to read comments about the “infinite ammo” problem where some argue that every time you run out of ammo there should be a box just round the corner. Because saving ammo and having to think about how to conserve what you have is “tedious”.

I think there's a substantial difference between a fast paced shooter and a turn-based RPG.
(Hint: For one of them you can instantly teleport to or freely harvest 'ammo' at any time with minimal threat. I'll let you guess which one.)

And others still, like me, will simply bounce off a game due to some aspect like messy system implementation, and go on to do other things. Not everyone views getting into arguments with randos on internet message boards as a fruitful use of their time--especially when there are so many good games out right now that dont have such off-putting design.

I'm just doing a drive-by here on my way to shelving this game until such a time as it's revisited. I've already moved on to another game, won't be finishing this one, and wont be wasting my time on a message board.

So again, we come back to the fact that there's no verifiable way to claim a silent majority. All we have is the fact that many people are dissatisfied with the game in its current form, and they make a lot of good arguments as to why. On the other side, the argument I see from most of the people supporting it boils down to "I like it anyway", or "The first game also had problems".

I don't know anything about being a game developer, but this would concern me. Fix it, Ill be happy to revisit the game at some point in the future. But dont interpret my silence in the meantime as being content with this terrible system.

What's wrong with it? The enemy have 2 armour types. You burn down one type then kill them. It seems fine to me.

And that is why the system kills hybrid builds (together with poor attribue implementation) and is bad for mixed groups.

I think armor implementation is step in right direction but it is having some disadvantages for mixed magic/physical teams indeed.

But that's not all, other part of why this is so is scaling, imo, a big chunk of potential tactics and gameplay is lost because you can simply bruteforce your way through with pure damage thanks to scaling.

You don't need surfaces, debuffs, traps and smart gameplay planning, when you kill shit in two swings outright and that's where mixed armors is a hindrance, as you need to tunnel damage and not spread it.

If damage would not be so effective (thanks to way too much scaling), then there would be much more value to armor system and mixed teams.

i like the armor system fine, it could use some tweaking, maybe with more individual spells (of the non-cc variety) going through them

i think the real issue is the stat inflation at higher difficulties. there are a lot of ways to increase difficulty during combat that don't involve simply making the fight a longer and more monotonous version of what happens on lower difficulties. i'm going to assume that most people who hate the armor system are people who play on higher difficulties like tactician and dislike wasting turn after turn burning through bloated armor before anything interesting happens. this is a fair complaint, but again, i think this problem can be solved without overhauling the whole system. in my experience having separate armor stats for physical and magical (which, on most enemies, has one significantly higher than the other) has overall made fights interesting in terms of who focuses which enemies. i always bring mixed parties (usually 2 mages and 2 physical damage dealers, though it becomes more complex and less tied down as the game goes on) and, while fights certainly take longer, they're still manageable. if difficulty was achieved in ways other than simply making fights longer versions of their lower difficulty counterparts i think people would find the system a lot more to their liking

Quite the contrary imo, players scale WAY more than NPCs, you may think numbers are bloated for Armor and Vitality on mobs, but the fact is that damage (especially physical) for players scales totally out of control to the point where you can effectively end most fights in two turns by simply nuking shit into oblivion and heck it's even more retarded because it's basically done with basic attacks coupled with teleports and AP recovery talents/abilities. And I am talking Tactician here. Like my non-lone wolf 2h warrior in Arx can easily kill 3 targets turn 1 simply thanks to Flesh Sac, Adrenaline and Executioner rolling from one target to another, no kidding, especially if ranger softened them up a bit at the start. And heck, Ranger himself can pretty much oneshot just about any non-boss target with Arrow Storm.

Game gets easier as you go, not harder, that's just wrong IMO and it is a problem with scaling, but not the scaling of a kind you think. Player damage gets out of control, that's the issue that throws otherwise tactical game out of the window and turns it into a simple game of tunneling a couple of select targets and killing them first or second turn effectively ending fight there (the rest of the stragglers you just clear out, as they pose no threat at that point when you take out main guys).

Heck the fact that big and bad final encounter can be beat just by that tunneling is the epitome of what's wrong with scaling. The fact that this is not only viable, but also a best and easiest path by far is just wrong.


This is pretty much why Tactician complaints died out by now, just because players found out that they scale WAY higher than a boost Tactician gives to NPCs later on.

i never said the game gets harder as you go, just longer

for sure, fort joy is by far the most difficult part of the game, and by the time i was in the last act none of the fights (save maybe the final one) were a challenge at all

But IMO, that's just not true? The whole point where you outscale enemies to the point you nuke them down makes fights shorter.

If you remember some fights in Joy equal level in prison on the way to the boat, for example, or Voidwalken encounter before first time you go to Hall of Echoes. Those fights were WAY longer than just about anything you have in Arx, simply because you could not just nuke shit down at that point.

Fights easily get shorter as game goes on, unless you choose to make them longer for whatever reason it may be.

The seemingly impressive armor and vitality numbers NPCs get are no match for even greater numbers your nukes get, that's the problem lategame, which also makes mixed teams or advanced tactics waste of time and weaker approach IMO, as opposed to simply "lol kill shit" approach.

that's just not my experience, but then i don't play this game the same way that you do

i definitely understand getting bored if that's your experience though

Why would they comment on something that is working as they intended it to? Not to mention the harassment and hostility that seems to come with that topic from certain individuals on this board lately.

I enjoy the armor system. I love the challenge. On that note, has anyone noticed how the writing and lore are so amazing:)

The armor system has no inherent problem. You might like it or not, but it's a matter of taste. I like the system better than DOS, fro example. You might not like it as much, but quit with the arrogance to demand some kind of official position from the developer at this point.

I also think the classes are pretty balanced. Different battles let different characters shine. I also found multiclass chars pretty useful.

I also think the game is not hard at all, being actually easy at times (in tactician). There were very few fights I had to load and it's been quite enjoyable.

Those are my opinion, just like the opposite positions are opinions, stop with the "... is BROKEN!!!" because you didn't enjoy it.

Lol, clearly you are wrong and it is up for debate, as this thread and all the numerous others show.

So let's just say that YOU don't like the way Armor is handled.
Get a group together and make a mod to adjust it.

People have already adjusted CC powers so that they bypass armor. The scripts for damage in general should be accessible and those can be changed to check Resistances instead of Armor to apply effects.

Have at it! ^_^

He got banned from the forum because of his behaviour, so he won't have at it anymore.

Bethesda has really ruined people... just because modding exist does not mean that modders should be the ones fixing glaring design flaws or imbalances.

But more importantly, these discussions are important so that DOS3 is better designed. If flaws or potential issues aren't pointed out, the system is less likely to be improved nor will it be improved as much.

Wouldn't you prefer a BETTER system rather than a static one?

Armour system is such an improvement over dos. The only issue I see is the scaling ans the dirth of higher level armour healing spells. If you could economically reforge equipment to be at your level, it would solve a lot of issues

This.

In DOS2 there is no feeling worse than unlocking a cool unique weapon/armor after a long quest and see it become absolutly useless after 1-2 levels.

Indeed!

That level scaling is one of the biggest problems, imho. Not the only one, but a significant one.

I somewhat agree (because everything is junk after 2 levels) but how to do it?

Money isn't an issue so it would make all later found items boring. Crafted stuff is shit too.

I don't know the answer apart from reducing the difference between levels (and then everyone will say mid-end game is too easy which it already is).

Perhaps you could only do it once or twice with a "bring this to my level" rune.

I think that the armor system is great. However, I do feel that it does need a little more balancing. Either the amounts of armor need to be scaled down (I'm playing in Classic, I can't even imagine Tactician) or new skills need to be developed to more quickly remove the armor.

I think the armor concept is good, but I do feel like the gap between the start of combat and being able to use the crowd control skills is too much right now. Also, each class should have options for removing each armor type. A wizard should be able to more quickly remove magical armor, but should also have some more options for removing physical armor. It stinks to have a turn with a character and not really have anything for them to do.

That's a really low standard even for video games

I don't really care about the combat mechanics, as long as they are not annoying, then they are ok. Doesn't really matter since the game is easy anyway.

The good things about this game are level design, ambient and music. I hope Obsidian can learn from Larian in this aspect for Pillars of Eternity II. They can write a decent story but their choice of presentation is just painful, one can't move from point A to point B without ridiculous number of loading screens...

I think having 2 physical + 2 mage team being strictly inferior to 4 of one or the other is silly. My 2h warrior smacks a guy around, wrecks his face, knocks him on the ground...then my mage throws a fireball at him that does zero damage. Oh hey but then my ranger has arrows that straight ignore all armor for some reason...

Does it make the game unplayable? Nope. But it definitely hurts build diversity in a game that is designed very heavily around being able to make diverse builds. You can be diverse in this game...it means you'll be strictly inferior in every way to someone who just stacks warfare + physical damage though. What's the point of a 'battle mage' when it means you need to eat through two sets of armor? It makes any build that combos damage types a "trap build". It's also incredibly common for people to report that they had to scrap their first 2, 3, 4 parties because combat was too hard with their gimped build choices - which is a sign that the combat system isn't as intuitive as people in this thread seem to claim it is.

I also don't really know how to solve this problem other than by completely redoing armor. Have armor give elemental resistances and physical resistances and then merge magical armor and physical armor into one stat - then use the resistances as a roll check modifier to a CC saving throw instead of "1 point of physical armor blocks knockdown, 1 point of magical armor blocks frozen".

And honestly the posts in these threads where people are like "I never had any problems and I'm on tactician" seem to be counter-productive. You mean you have a party with one spell caster and 3 physical and you didn't notice that the spell caster is completely useless because they have to break through magical armor by themselves? Or do you mean you had a pure physical or pure spell damage comp and so this wasn't a problem for you? There's no denying that the game is designed to let you mix and match a huge amount of things but if you actually do mix and match stuff, you're punished for it. That's a poor design element. Anyone who plays the game for a bit can figure out how to 'beat' the system but that doesn't mean the system is good.

I'm sure it's been mentioned before but wouldn't the easiest fix to armor be to create a third "basic" armor type that is a combination of both physical and magic? For example, if someone has 100 physical armor and 100 magic armor, they now have 100 "basic" armor that both damage types can burn through. Or if it's uneven armor values, like 100 physical and 200 magical, they could instead have 100 basic and an additional 100 magical armor. The devs can mess around with conversions like increasing basic armor by 50% to balance out the increased lethality of combination damage.

Wouldn't this fix the biggest issue with the current armor system?

Saw it in EA.
Complained like crazy on this forum about it during EA.

Devs never commented once on the topic.

They obviously had a goal of dumbing down the combat to appeal to the lowest common denominator of gamers this time.

Simply means that Larian is no longer a 'must buy' developer. Will always wait until well after release before making any decisions.

It takes so much intentional self gimping of my party to find anything remotely resembling a challenge that I am constantly fighting off boredom with the combat in DOS2.

And the armor system is 100% to blame.

Your mage should check for targets with low magic armour and shoot them, or focus on setting up magical threats or summons or something.

It's hard to near impossible for one magic user to do everything you'd want from magic. They don't have the ap to heal and damage, cleanse and do area control. It'd have to be a lone wolf and it'd still be a stretch.

Conversely, it's fairly easy to have the one physical damage guy, amidst 3 casters, but then expectations for him would be low.

I'm curious how that's posible. If everything but the armor stayed the same, what would change?

I've seen complaints that it forces them into going 100% damage and nothing else matters. I'd argue that is only the case turn 1 (or sometimes later that turn, since you set it up so a later character could CC the target), and CC becomes very relevant afterwards.

The fact that I know exactly when CC is an option instead of a posibility makes the turns more strategic, for me at least. In D:OS1 you could try to CC but it was often better to just deal max damage, using status effects as a bonus if they were not resisted. Here, you can plan around that.

The system might be flawed, and I definitely think more status effects should ignore armor beside slow and web, but I like it so far.

How can you find any challenge in a game where your plans never fail? How is it strategic when there are no decisions to be made, no possibilities to consider, no cost-benefit to be weighed when something may or may not work?

100% CC effectiveness is an abomination in a turn based strategy game. It removes the strategy completely and turns into something with which failure is no longer a possibility.

That people jump into discussions about the flaws of the armor system and comment on how more status effects should ignore armor leaves me completely bewildered. That would only make the situation worse!

Are there really so few people who actually enjoy challenging combat where you have deal with 'oh shit that didn't work' moments?

You're missing the point. Classes like "Battle mage" are strictly inferior to "having another 2h warrior" as a by-product of the armor system. The strongest party is 4x 2h poly warrior - maybe with some rangers mixed in. Seems wrong to me.

The issue is if you have 4x physical all of them with battering ram and battle stomp...CC is 100% effective. The "ideal" group is a physical cheese group that blows away the physical armor and chain CC's the enemies. That shouldn't be the "best" option in a game where you have 50+ skills/spells. It renders all of those things inferior because stacking warfare on 4 avatars makes the game trivially easy.

I don't think CC should ignore armor unless it's based on resistances. I do however think physical resistance needs to be added to make physical stacking not be so amazing.

Plans fail all the time, you just have to deal with plans in more absolute ways. Blocking line of sight, impeding movement, healing, picking out priority targets properly.

Random fails don't add drama or tension. Gambling is not the pinnacle of skill. In a game like this, you're more likely to see failures than success unless you power game to make chance rates near infallible.

In this game, hiding behind a wall can be all you need to scupper plans.

Probably because not everyone is Qiox: The Best Player In The World. Unfortunately no game has yet been invented which Qiox cannot beat while sleeping.

It's a by product of the scaling and damage system. It's got nothing to do with armour.

My battlemage hits with a 2h sword, just like your warrior poly.

My battlemage can slow with oil at range. He can teleport people all over the place, if an enemy is low on magic armour he can petrify them or blind them. He can heal armour better than you can and make people immune to teleport. He has way more tools and better synergy.

I don't really care about power gaming or what builds break the game though. It's more important for people to be able to play their way (unless it's dumb rng driven nonsense)

You speak as if the act of planning is automatic and has no challenge in it. When you are at a point in a battle where you CC all enemies, every round, then yes. The challenge is gone, because at that point you've won the fight. The challenge is to reach that point.

And yes, I like my oh shit moments, also from RNG, which is what you want here I assume. But the game give those moments, just not randomly. You don't know what the enemy will do, so the "oh shit" happends when they fuck you up, and you have to suddenly rethink your strategy again. Granted, the replayability suffers for this.

As to more statuses ignore armor. Why not? Of course the status' picked to now ignore armor will probably need to be nerfed a bit, but I don't see why a mage shouldn't be able the affect the battle before all magic armor is gone. Keep hard CC as is, but things like chilled and shocked could candidates for this.

DOS1 as you played on, landing successful CC was too much a miss.
Sort of like how people complain about TB games that have a lot of swings that miss.
Now once I breakdown their armor, earned, now I can confidently land CC.
CC is also much lower lasting in DOS2, so it isn't a devastating "I win" ploy either.
But I do like that I have confidence to use CC successfully once I broke down their armor.
Sorry, but I like that.

I know I'm a little late to the party, and although I'm all for bashing the armor system, although I must admit devedev463 has a point there.

I was wondering : all the people complaining here and there, did you put a thumbs down on Steam or not? Not saying you should do it, I was just wondering... Because, yeah, I never saw one review about this on the Steam pages although, it seems both fair and important for potential buyers to have that type of information. If you're unhappy with the game as it is, why not say it where appropriate?

I have had several people I know either attempt to refund the game or leave negative reviews (though this was unsurprising, seeing as several were from a 3-4 member coop group that found themselves unable to complete the game.)

I myself have left a negative steam review with the disclaimer that the game was good, but one should wait to purchase it until major issues are fixed and serious bugfixing occurs.

In every case, however, the reviews are immediately bombarded with 'Not Helpful'; and in my experience it took less than 8 hours for my review (which I decided to write just after experiencing the joy that is Arx) was bombed to 4/17 Found This Review Helpful before I removed it and decided to write about the issues of the game elsewhere.

Strawman.

A game can still have flaws but generally be an overall enjoyable experience. That does not mean that the existence of any flaws, or points where improvement is needed automatically means that people are hypocrites if they are not rating the game as bad.

You are both right. The game is good, could have been great... And I would rate it positively, yet I am still disappointed with the game. But there is a problem with community right now that it does not allow for almost any critique of the game, its the same thing that happend with Witcher 3 on release - game had flaws but people clamied it was the second coming of Jesus. Now they claim that DOS2 is third coming. What is different with DOS2, *in my opinion* is that main features of the game(combat for me)is done worse then in DOS1 while W3 had story and roleplay done very well.

It will take some time before people release flaws of the system. Besides I'm guessing a lot of players are either new to the genre or dont dive into combat mechanics too deep so they dont mind - which is fine ofcourse, not everyone need to be mastermind of tactics in video games. With that being said I thought I would get a 10/10 but I got 7/10 and after 1 playthrough and getting to know the game mechanics pretty well I dont want to play on Tactician mode and in the game overall despite liking the story. And I'm a bit angry with myself becaue I decided to buy DOS2 instead of Warhammer 2 Total War because I thought I will put more hours into it. Oh well...

Exactly.

Even though I dislike the armor changes (and the initiative changes, and the AP changes) that doesn't mean I think it's awful. I'm still enjoying the game.

The difference is, unlike D:OS1, which I played multiple times, I'm likely to only play through D:OS2 once. (unless someone makes a mod to make combat closer to D:OS1 combat)

You typically cannot confidently land "CC" that isn't physical based after breaking armor aside from the multihitting Hydro spells. Casters have the most forms of CC, yet they are inferior in almost every way. Not only do they take longer to actually break through magic armor, they typically have to perform two more actions to get any real CC.

Slow and Cripple are great (for Rangers...), but they aren't hard CC and they don't prevent enemies from taking actions, especially ranged. Teleport is nice too, but it's primarily a stalling tactic. Stalling because you're taking too long to kill, because you're not running a full physical group. Otherwise, it's useful for removing a single Warrior that decided to Phoenix Dive into the middle of your group once everyone and their dog ends up with that skill.

They broke elemental damage with the resist system and they broke elemental CC with it almost always requiring three actions to actually land, while simultaneously not lasting long enough.

Meanwhile, melee can Battle Stomp and Chicken for days; which also happen to be the best CC in the game. Other than of course simply outright killing them instead with your Ranger pack.

I would have prefered if they had implemented Diminishing returns on CC instead of the armor system. Where CC types like snares and slows only last 1/2 or 1/4 of the duration on the second attempt. Currently its only "bring down the armor, then cc infinitely."
Different types of cc could have been put onto the same DR table so you cant chaincc enemies forever. But have to choose the best moment instead. For example an enemy hexed into a chicken could be resistant to certain cc spells for x number of rounds after the hex wears off.
I would really like to see this as a mod, but as i've read its not possible to change the armor system?

I am still on my first playthrough (on tactician) and phys. damage dealers like rangers just outshine mages for this exact reason, because they can wear down the armor so fast. Mages and all other archetypes shouldnt be held back by this armor system. I would like to see classes that work well with damage over time and more cc. As said, if there exist diminishing returns its not possible to trivialize enemies by crowd controlling the whole fight.

I'm not going to speak for other people. Just myself. The armor system in this game is and always will be an exceptionally poor idea. There was no good reason why armor was changed at all. The RNG from the first game was not nearly as bad as this problem now. The game is no less cheesier yet way more prohibitive in terms of what builds you make on Tactician. This is a showstopper as far as I'm concerned. Considering I logged almost 800 hours in the first game and 90 hours in this one since launch I think says a lot. I simply do not enjoy this game and the numbers prove it.

It sucks. I really wanted to like this one and I think I would have if this armor idea was binned before release. The game has a lot of value behind it and some incredibly beautiful work. Lots of people worked hard on this game and it's a damn shame that one bad idea is destroying the perception of that hard work.

Hopefully they revisit this idea, bin it proper and give us something that improves on willpower from the first game.

There's thousands of good reviews, I mean, Steam is a "thumbs up/thumbs down" situation. One review in itself will not really change the rating of the game, although, it would voice issues the game may have into a certain light.

Like GreatGuardsman said, you could put the issues in a "bad review" and still pinpoint that the game is overall good.

Anyway, my 2 cents on this, I don't really think those topics serve much use, and although I'm not one for review bombing, if a few of us did put remarks on this on Steam maybe that would have more effect...

Why is physical damage shredding armour and supposedly being the best an issue of the armour system and not an issue of the physical damage scaling?

Warfare offering improved physical damage along with skills that boost weapon damage lead to physical damage dealers getting easy 100% damage boosts and a better option than investing in hunstman/scoundrel. The weapon skills also confer bonuses to damage that don't transfer to spells, so it's further skewed in physical favour.

None of that is a problem with the armour system. None of that means magic is weak. It just means physical gets too many cumulative bonuses that are kinda dumb.

This topic is not about physical being to strong, it is about the fact that magical and physical character don't synergize in this game. Which means pure setups are stronger than mixed setups.

That magic is weaker than physics is just another issue.

Take that personal attack and shove it.


There's a very simple fact behind how this armor system works.

Option 1: Use a direct damage attack costing 2 AP
Option 2: Use a CC with no direct damage component costing 2 AP


Case 1: CC has 40% chance of success
Case 2: CC has 0% or 100% chance of success depending on armor or no armor


Which case involves an actual decision? Which case involves strategy?

In Case 1 the two options have an actual cost vs benefit that must be considered. Can you afford to have the CC fail?

In Case 2, there is no longer any decision making needed. If your CC chance is 0% you never use CC. If your CC chance is 100% you always use CC.

How on earth is that a 'more strategic' system? How on earth is that anything other than a complete lack of decision making required.

They have dumbed down the combat with this idiotic system. And I get it. Lots of people like to never fail. But that kind of result does not belong on a game's highest difficulty setting.

*gasp* What personal attack? Slanderous! Where is the part which insulted you? That was clearly a compliment!

But that aside, that argument is flawed because it is too much of an oversimplification of an actual combat scenario. A real combat scenario has multiple possible enemies and multiple possible skills, and many other factors.

Should I wait to use Battle Stomp when there is a target with no PA, or do I use it to clear an annoying surface? Or should I use Phoenix Dive to get across the surface, making it unavailable for several more turns. Should I spend my last 2 AP on an attack or skill, or should I save them for Enrage next turn so I get an extra 2 AP of full crits to attack?

This especially comes into play if the character acting is a mage and not a melee fighter, because a mage's only real options to reach the point where they can land status effects are to spend their skills. Should they spend their AoE attacks on a single enemy with the weakest MA, or on multiple enemies grouped together with higher MA? What's the best way to position themselves for attacking enemies? What's the best way to position themselves for assisting allies? All those things are factors.

So in my opinion, pretending that they do not exist, and that the ONLY WAY a game can have strategy is by handing CC chance over to a die roll is disingenuous.

Petrify. Terrify. Web (Doesn't really count). Sleep. Root.

You typically can confidently land CC.

Starting in late Act 1 and Act 2 casters gain parity or pull ahead only to drop off contextually at the end. Though at that point nothing really matter since people are doing 9k+ phys or magical, and you have access to unlimited Source abilties.



No.

That's a pretty ignorant analysis of the entire situation.

At first I was opposed, and annoyed, by this mechanic as well. Over time I got used to it and can see its positive influences. Having a hybrid party is not a downside at all. You need mages to take down magic armor of the warriors, while warriors take down the phys armor of mages. And both your melee and magic characters have access to CC abilities that can assist in both situations.

However it is still a problem that it takes a few turns to have the armor down and you can do actual battle. And once you do it is usually over really fast.

I disagree with the point that there are few ways to invest in your armor type. During many fights managing your party armor values through Metal Mend, Fortify, Frost Armour etc is more important then using restoration spells to heal your HP value. The aforementioned skills basically are your heals. So the armor mechanic has given you more ways to heal/mitigate damage and thus increasing your survivability.

In my opinion. If the armor values are lowered, and thus be taken down a bit faster you can have more CC and strategic combat. Only if you increase the HP value of the opponent in question so have a slightly lengthier fight after you took care of its armor type. Other then that the cool down, and limited amount of CC's an individual party member has means you won't be chain CC'ing entire groups anyway. Not until their numbers have been sufficiently reduced. And by then you earned the right to control the 1-2 guys and finish the fight easily.

In DoS:EE I did enjoy the moments where you threw a charm grenade and were clenching butt cheeks in life or death moments hoping to get enough success to aid you. In DoS2 it is an auto success so far as soon as the armor is gone. Which...is less fun. On the other hand, when playing xcom-esque combat, it is nice to have some reliable methods to mitigate. But you got Chicken and such for that.

More health instead of more armor would not do anything good. It would make the fight longer without any kind of challenge, because as soon you have the armor down, the enemy is most likely perma-cc'd anyway.

Because of that constitution and picture of health are pretty useless stats. Leech and the vampirism of necromancer ist not as effective as it could be and heals are less important than armor refreshing skills.

No they won't be perma-cc'ed. Even if you give all characters ton of CC's, which would gimp you badly, you won't be able to unless you're down to the last 2-3 opponents. CC options are less then they used to be it seems and have longer cool down timers as well. By the time you can perma-CC the remaining opponents you earned the right to pull it off since you're going to the end of the fight anyway.

Less armor means you waste less time bursting damage an opponent. And more health means the overall length would still be the same as it is now. But you have more of that fight spend using your abilities besides bursting down armor types.

Further tweaks could be added by having the success rate of a CC be countered by opponent natural resistance to elements, or their class type and mental fortitude and such. That way success rate of CC is % based instead of auto-success. Which would come into play once the lower armor value has been taken down.

No, you do not. You just stack one damage type and kill the enemy. You literally don't ever need hybrid damage types for anything at all. In the first act, there are places where people have 100% magical armor or 100% physical armor but this is generally limited to act 1. After that, the armor values differ but the strategy of "stack damage and kill the enemy" is still the most effective way to play the game - as measured in "least number of turns to win the fight". So yes, having a party which is a hybrid of elemental damage and physical damage has a downside - it takes you longer to win fights. This isn't really debatable unless you're limiting your conversation to act 1.