Larian Studios
Posted By: Lightzy Larian, is there a balance patch upcoming? - 18/10/17 07:12 PM
For now I'm delaying my playthrough of the game because of the bizzarities of combat, the exploits, stat inflation and the horrible initiative system.

Is there a balance patch coming soon or in the works? Or will it be a long long wait?
Yeah, I'd like to know as well. At the moment, for me at least the game is unplayable, non existent balancing, terrible stat inflation, leveling and itemization. The combat is just rage inducing, but I want to like the game, it's just hard work though. Proper balancing would be nice.
I think there is a balance patch in the works, but I wouldn't get hopes up for major changes.

A good rule of thumb is that the bigger the changes, the longer a patch is to take out, so significant changes to armor, initiative, and itemization are unlikely.
Chances are there'll be an enhanced sort of edition coming out in a year or so with a whole lot of tweaks and reworks, so can you wait that long?
In the meantime, there are a number of mods on nexus that address these issues fairly well.
Originally Posted by Try2Handing
Chances are there'll be an enhanced sort of edition coming out in a year or so with a whole lot of tweaks and reworks, so can you wait that long?


I can no problem, there are many good games to play. Question is if they have something planned soon or not, even a mid-point balance patch
Posted By: Qiox Re: Larian, is there a balance patch upcoming? - 20/10/17 02:20 AM
Originally Posted by Lightzy
Originally Posted by Try2Handing
Chances are there'll be an enhanced sort of edition coming out in a year or so with a whole lot of tweaks and reworks, so can you wait that long?


I can no problem, there are many good games to play. Question is if they have something planned soon or not, even a mid-point balance patch


Larian does not answer meaningful questions about the future of the game. Good luck getting them to comment on anything on this forum or any other.

They have no interest in engaging the players in a discussion.
How should they respond I wonder ?

Let´s look at the armor issue as an example: There are as many ideas how to change it as people on this forum. Even if they acknowledge it, what are they supposed to tell us ?

If they go in one direction with it, other might get dissapointed that their take on the issue wasn´t considered. And what about those who are happy with the system ? It´s a loose loose situation.

There are allready some mods out which change several things like vitality scaling, penetrating debuffs etc. Give those mods a try, they might change your experience for the better.

And you can always try to alter stats to your own liking yourself. Changing basic stuff like the scaling of combatskills or which status effects ignors armor and which doesn´t isn´t hard to change once you get the hang of how things work in the editor.

At this point I rather see Larian putting effort in fixing broken quest chains (like Tarquin not appearing).
Quote
Hello everyone,

We’re working hard on our next update, fixing issues that have been reported and improving the gameplay where needed. While we don’t have a specific date just yet, it should be releasing sometime next week!

Changes will include:

- Improvements to mod support within the game. Mod sync issues, duplications and situations where mods would not update correctly should now be resolved.
- A large overhaul in GM mode Music and Mood panel. Plus we added support for multiple regions on the same level.
- The Tarquin bug fix (previously fixed in Patch 3 for new games) will now also apply to existing save games.
- A bug which caused the tooltips for inventory items to flash has been fixed.
- We added more journal entries that cover some of the more unusual choices you can make during gameplay. (Though we did not cover the killing of Alexandar with a painting)
- And lots, lots more!

The full list consists of over 500 items bullet points which is why it’s taking us a bit of time to test. Follow us here or on twitter/facebook to keep apprised of when we launch the patch and remember to leave feedback in the forums! It’s where we get our inspiration from for things to include in the next updates.

The Larian Team
I'd trade all of those fixes for the game's current iteration of an initiative system to wither and die.
if the initiative system worked properly within its own iteration i'd be fine. currently, your first character will be skipped if the highest initiative enemy has some sort of scripted transformation or first turn action (like the doctor, or the final fight)
Regarding the initiative system - I get what they were trying to go for, but in practice is simply doesn't work. It removes the vast majority of comboing or synergy between characters, and wits is only a worthwhile investment on one character.
The thing they were trying to fix with this turn system wasn't actually fixed though - You can clearly see the turn order, so for any given character's turn their job is simply to deal with (stun or kill) whoever goes immediately next in the turn list.
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