The original release of the game had a small laundry-list of fundamental problems, but I haven't actually seen any of them specifically addressed by the developers, I've mostly seen consolization fare.

Is any of them actually being fixed?

I don't think so.

The rebalanced some fights and skills/traits, tough no talking are in-depth-changes to mechanics as it seems.

They are adressing the insane scaling, I heard.

It would be a waste of a DE if they don't fix all the issues and problems. A real shame.

Yes, it would be. Unfortunately I don't believe they are fixing particularly many of the core issues within the game though. Maybe we'll learn differently upon launch. But doubtful - most of the changes seem focused on fixing the story for act 3 onwards.

Seems to me your laundry list of fundamental problems are far from fundamental and that your way of perceiving the game stem from a sense of entitlement. This is made obvious when you don't even bother to list a single issue here and instead link to a ranty post that well over a 30 minute read to suffer through (or over an hour if you bother to click all the other links there). The first specific issue you raised about the bone window has been patched many months ago. The rest TLDR.

Don't argue about stuff, if you are to lazy to even read it.

The Bone spider issue was a side note at best.

If you bothered to finish reading the sentence about the bone widow you'd know it was used as an example of something too specific to address.

Read the entire post you linked and you make a lot of good points there. Looks like I need to buy and play the first DOS.. that attribute system difference is crazy.

you've just described most of the vocal complaints on this forum

Eh ~~ I've had the game since EA, but could never get past ACT 1 cause of all the core issues.

Will be giving the DE at least one full play through, but I highly doubt it's gonna fix anything since a lot of core the issues are intentional:

Ex. The Round Robin Initiative and useless Stats = More accessible to a wider audience and reviewers uninterested in learning the game in depth or having combat be more difficult because of build errors

Yeah, my friend and I never got much farther, Driftwood in Act 2, then we just got to sick of it you could say. Not sure if we will give DE a second chance.

Thanks Luckmann for this topic.
I was searching for this, not really hopeful.
It's sad really.
D:OS 2 will never be the game it could have been.
I'll try the D.E. edition, but don't think I will push it way further...

Well the changelog is out, most of it is nothing but dialogue related stuff in Arx, nothing about fixing...ya know, the core issues of the game. There is one mention of a "stat jump", the inflation in hp and dmg, but nothing else.

Nothing about lack of talents (one of my main issue) and a bunch of other stuff. Oh boy.

Sadly DOS degenerated to some kind of playable story, looking nice and impressive story, but totally lacking in the gameplay parts like combat.

Don't understand why there are even stat jumps.

have you even played through the entire game?

No, he says (just a few posts above, in fact) he never got "much past Driftwood". He posts with a surprising amount of authority about a game he had no interest in finishing.

i just wanted to know what would motivate somebody to type over a thousand posts on a forum bashing a video game he has not even played halfway through

criticism is fine, but appearing out of the woodwork in every other thread to type about how bad this game you haven't even finished is gets tiresome

Why do I need to finish the game? Does the combat system or character developement somehow magical change after Act 2, does the AI suddenly get smarter? Most of the flaws of the combat system, was already predicatable during EA. The Attribute system was even worse at that time. The core problem of the game is, you don't need to play it fully to grasp all those basic flaws. Many others are easily devirable by reading and making logical conclusions.

I don't know, if Larian really did read everything, but I suppose my amount of posts proves, that is pretty much did.

Honestly my friend and I did not like the story that much from the get go, the 'Competative' aspect totally ruins the 'cooperative' feeling, for which we liked the first game. And as far as I read, the story gets even worse later on, so there is not a huge inclination to finish even because of the story.

In base game (not def), the combat imo gets worse bc of the inflation of hp and dmg. And for me and my gf (we do co-op), we need to have a balanced team of magic and phys dmg bc half the enemies in the game will have "1k phys armor, 200 magic", cuz lul. And vice versa, Yeah, we could do all physical and beat down that 1k physical, but why bother? The game is unbalanced in multiple aspects when it comes to magic, and in original it got worse as it went on due to "stat jumps".

it's just weird to me that you find your subjective problems with this game to be so fundamental and worth repeating over an extended period when you can't even be bothered to finish the game

if it's so bad that you couldn't finish it, what are you doing here?

what constructive help could you possibly be at this point? why not just forget about it, since it's obvious this game simply isn't for you?

you don't need to have a split team in the base game. in fact, doing so makes the game harder

because of how damage values scale, higher physical armor and low magic armor doesn't really make any difference if you spec your team properly because your damage output will be far too high for any armor value to matter, and this just becomes more true the further into the game you go (which is why combat gets progressively easier)

the game certainly suffers from combat issues later in the game but they aren't the problems you're mentioning. most of the problem with magic was the arbitrarily high resistances to it, with no real equivalent existing for physical damage, thus solidifying physical damage as having an overall superior output

Due to an amount of players essentially turning this community into a cult worshiping the holiness of the untouchable DOS2, sadly none of these issues which glaringly affects replay-ability is going to be addressed.

I'm with you you 100%. Absolutely looooved dos 1. Never finished act one due to the stupid physical and magical armour and the initiative.

I will give de a try, but only with mods to that revert these changes

Those issues would be only subjective, if I were the only one who is bothered by those issues.

Also I made many constructive posts, though if Larian really bothered to read them is as an open question as the question if they bothered to read Stabbeys several topic or all the other ones.

Why I am still here? A question I often ask myself, I guess a part of my is still hoping, a very small part.


Little add:
- DOS: 174 h
- DOS EE: 55 h
- DOS 2: 136 h

this is wrong. subjectivity does not become objectivity just because a small number of people agree on something. your subjective experience with the game has led you to the conclusion that it is not worth finishing, which is, i would guess, not the conclusion that most other people who have bought this game came to

subjectivity doesn't render your problems with the game invalid, but it does require that you keep perspective when deciding to constantly reiterate these problems in the hopes that people will listen and treat it as truth when it simply isn't

i'm sure you have made constructive posts, but you and i both know that a good 90% of your forum presence consists of repeating the same complaints over and over again in many threads. sometimes even when posting something helpful you manage to worm in some "unfortunately, the developers made the game bad in this way" or some other unnecessary barb, and quite frankly it is tiresome to read

hoping for...? that your 2000th post will cause larian to experience some sort of revelation and completely overhaul their game? i would think it is incredibly obvious by now that you have a fundamental problem with the game and that it just isn't what you had hoped it would be. that's unfortunate and i'm sorry you can't enjoy this game the way you wanted to, but constantly berating it like this only serves to turn every thread into some woefest about what could have been

To be fair, if it is, you would be one of the reason this thread is a "woefest".
The whole conversation around subjective and objective is kind of a moot point, at this point you can argue that everything is subjective.
To me the post of Luckmann was pretty much on point to me with a list of constructed arguments as why the game has some flaws. It could still be enjoyable, and people could still praise it very much (they do).
But saying "if you don't like the game just don't play it and leave" is a little idiotic.
I do too think the game has flaws, the same pretty much than those addressed by Luckmann (arguments that are not really being discussed which was the point of it all), and although I really enjoyed playing the first one, I did not really enjoyed playing the second one. And why are we bothering? To this point because we thought that some of it could be changed for the better, and now because some of us feel the points made here are still valid and could be read by Larian and taken into account for possibly future games...

Shouting through the megaphone "like it or leave it" does not help at all. But maybe the point listed by Luckmann are actually qualities that we should celebrate, if so, let's hear about it.

If you compare the attributes system of the first game with the attributes system of the second? Is it really 'subjective' to define which offers less depth in regards of character developement? I don't think so.


I'm pretty sure most of my criticisms are objective flaws of the game, just because you are subjectively less bothered by them, it does not make those criticisms arbitrary subjective flaws.

Also just because a small number only shows up in the forums, it does not mean only a small number agrees to the criticism.

Regarding steam achievements less than 25% finished the game in its original state:
- 11,2% in Explorer Mode
- 9,1% in Classical Mode
- 2,8% in Tactical Mode
- 0,4% in Honor Mode

44,2% met with Mastr Siva, which is as far my friend and I got before he lost all interest.

If I'm not mistaken mods deactivate all achievements, so those achievements mean, that most people did not finish the game at all or only while using mods. Though on the other hand DOS got finished by 7,6% and DOS EE by 8,6%. So perhaps those numbers mean nothing at all in the end.



If 90% of my posts are repetition, it is most likely because most of these issues stayed the same since EA or got even worse and a lot of people started topics again and again about the same issue and just partook in the resulting discussion. In the end I guess, I just like to discuss.

For some issues I suspect, that Larian just has no idea how to fix them and others are probably just to time consuming to really bother. So I guess, the only hope remains, that the third game will make things better and not even worse.

no, lol

absolutely not what i said

i said if the game isn't your thing to the point where it would need to change fundamentally in order to cater to your interests, it's not for you and you shouldn't play it because you'll likely never enjoy it

maybe read the post a little closer next time

i'll give you a chance to re-read my post and amend this mess


you can keep thinking that and make thousands more posts repeating the same things over and over again, then feel progressively more burned when larian doesn't listen to you because the problems you have with the game stem from a dislike of what it is on a fundamental level

the amount of entitlement in your posts (and others in this thread) is truly astounding

I think it might be time to close this thread, it's gone way past it's point and has just dwindled into a crappy argument.

IMO the worst issues of D:OS2:

*The armor system. It's just terrible, favouring all-physical over any other party composition.
*The armor system comes with the bonus "if >1 0% CC, if 0 100% CC" system that's just absolutely dreadfully terrible.
*Round robin initiate system
*Any character stats are pointless, gear-stats DOMINATE all (see also; armor system).
*Every single skill is CC+damage (since... ARMOR SYSTEM... AAARGH), rather than being one or the other. Some used to be so in the EA, but where changed since... armor system. Instead of making all either or.

Basically, this armor system added was the worst, and made combat terrible. Anything changed there.
Not that I didn't uninstall D:OS2 already since DE was piled upon Classic and 60GB installation is a bit much for a "maybe I'll give it a try after a few patches".
Sorry Larian. This game really got it's neck wrung by this PvP system added. Another potentially great PvE game ruined for an afterthought that took over all balance decisions

100% all of this. Can't bring myself to play past act 1.

I feel the same.
Even though I can tolerate the stat/armour/initiative system (despite them feeling like a significant downgrade compared to DOS1) I was looking forward to the DE's changes. However after reading the Definitive edition's changelog I can't bring myself to justify replaying the game solely for some modified dialogue in Arx.
I might replay it at a later date once they've added mod support and the bugs reported on Steam's and Larian's forums have been fixed, but until then I won't consider the new edition anything else than a minor patch.

What bothers me is that a lot of people have complained about the armour system - it's probably the single-most-complained-about thing in the game, and yet Larian never acknowledged any of those complaints.
(At least, not anywhere that I saw.)

They still have a thread here saying that they're listening to everyone's feedback, yet they don't act on it or mention it.

Let's face it, the reason that people go through the trouble to complain about something is because they care about the game.
If the game was worthless, no one would bother complaining about its flaws. The reason I've complained at length and in depth is because the game has so much potential, yet a few things that I consider to be bad decisions ruined the experience for myself and at least some other people.

Of the three people I know (including myself) who backed the game on Kickstarter, one loved it, one only played the first chapter and couldn't be bothered to get farther because of the combat system, and, while I did finish it, I had to force myself to do so because the combat was simply nowhere near as fun as the first game's for me, and I mostly finished it for the story.

I did notice that Larian said that their next game probably won't be Kickstarted, and I couldn't help but think that I'd probably be far more hesitant to back another game from them now after how disappointing I found DOS2.

Still, I know I'm in the minority. The game has almost exclusively positive reviews, so most people must be more than happy with it.

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.

I like pierce percentages. I always imagine if someone gets hit for 1000 armor damage that it has to have an effect on the poor underlying vitality. You just got half your armor ripped off by a 2 handed axe - I'm pretty sure that's going to leave a mark even if some of your armor is still on you. It also leaves room for higher piercing from weapons like daggers/bows etc.

HOWEVER IF I GET A VOTE IN ALL THIS - My group of friends really liked the armor system in DOS2 much better than DOS1. I think the people that are complaining are the vocal minority. The armor system allows us to have stronger CC and statuses. If you let everything pass through or make ONE armor type then the entire game balance would need to be different. If DOS 3 has this exact system of armor we'll still be very happy.

I don't really like it myself, mostly because of the fact that it entices the construction of a full physical or magical party, which cannot be considered as good I think by any metrics.

I would have liked an armor system that basically starts the combat by having 0 chance of CC'ing someone to giving more and more possibility. The all-or-nothing does not seem good either, so a solution like the one given by Stabbey and adding something that would be a percentage of chance depending on the percentage of armor you have would be better I think.

And to be fair, I'm not going to make an argument regarding this as we have no way of knowing, but a looooot of people put a positive review but haven't even finished the first act, so...

What is actually the advantage of having two separate armours?

The biggest problem with the system is that mixed parties end up feeling non-optimal, with a single magic damage dealer feeling completely useless in a party with three physical ones.

That could be easily fixed by just giving all enemies one single armour value, which can be stripped away by both physical and magical damage.
The armour will still also have an armour rating of how much physical and magical damage that it blocks, as a percentage, so an enemy that is supposed to be weaker to magical damage would have their armour value worn down faster by magical attacks.
It would keep the armour system almost completely in tact as it is, but remove the problem of someone being unable to touch an enemy because they deal the wrong type of damage to take advantage of the armour that the other characters have already broken through.

It wouldn't fix all of the problems, but it would be a relatively straightforward fix which would mostly just require a bit of maths to convert the values from the current system into the new system.

If an enemy has 1000 physical armour and 500 magical armour, then they would have 500 new armour and 50% physical resistance on that armour.

The advantage is that it differentiates between enemies who are strong against physical and weak against magic, and the opposite, and it does this at a glance from the player. A single unified armor offers only elemental resistances as a difference between effectiveness, and you need to examine enemies to look that up. Don't underestimate the smoothness of gameplay resulting from being able to see what attacks would be most effective at a glance, instead of needing to carefully examine each enemy in an encounter.

You are correct about the problem with it, but it doesn't follow that going to a single-armor system is the only way to fix that problem. The main point of armor is to reduce the "swingingness" of CC effects. My tweak to the system of allowing all damage to pass through armor (while blocking status effects) does the same thing without merging the armors, and no math is needed.




Right now, resistances don't differentiate between armor and health. There isn't such a thing as physical resistance on the armor. That's just a flat 50% reduction in all physical damage, even once armor is gone.

I realize I represent only a few opinions by speaking for my friends, but we have played this game a crazy crazy - possibly unhealthy - amount. Our most optimal and "broken" compositions ALWAYS include magic and physical setups. We've tried full magic and full physical parties and it doesn't work as well. I get that this is anecdotal and you'd have to actually trust that I know what I'm talking about - but that won't stop me from trying to convince you.

I think you guys give larian too little credit. There are definitely balance issues remaining (some significant ones) but the dual armor system works well. I think a single armor system takes away strategic elements and as Stabbey put quite well you sacrifice the smoothness of gameplay (when based around resistances).

The same system that I described would work equally well if damage to one type of armour simply dealt the same percentage of damage to the other type of armour.

So, if an enemy with 1000 physical and 800 magical armour got hit for 100 physical damage, it would reduce the armours to 900/720.

That would make the visuals clearer, and avoid having to code in the special damage-reduction-vs-armour functionality.

As I said before, that would be a quick fix without fundamentally changing the way the game works. I'm not saying it's the best solution, but others would require far larger changes to the game systems.

I tend to agree that I felt very strongly against it at first, and now, my opinion is more reserved.
There are indeed enemies with either one or the other armor, and it does make the fights somewhat enjoyable as you have to try and target the best enemy depending on the situation.
I wouldn't say still it's an improvement over the first game though, not sure I'll never think it is, but it's less bad than I thought at first.

I quite like the first one, I think the changes were a bit too drastic in every regard.

If an enemie has only one kind of armor, he is dead meat anyway. You don't need to deal damage, to keep him in deathlock. Same goes for every enemie who got ripped of his armor, one of the reason why physical is so strong. Knock down effects are the easiest way to keep enemies down, after they lost all their armor. Also it is much easier to increase your physical damage output than your magical. Magic feels very weak early in the game, even more if you go hydro/aero which is a cc heavy combo. Though no really point in repeating even more of all the issues in the armor system, that got repeated over and over again.

In the end except from some special fights, most of the fights just felt the same, also more like playing puzzle game and less like having a fight.

I like the new system and i don't miss percentages. The problem is rather that hard disables are so easily available and easy to apply. I think the idea that you have to apply multiple debuffs or debuff chains to get a disable is a better idea. We have this with wet and freeze i think ? This could be expanded further. So that you can't apply knockdown in a single round or single turn and that the other side has a chance to counter your incoming disable.

The point of mixed damage parties being worse is not a inherent problem to the current system. It is simply a problem of balancing. If you had enemies with say 6 or 8(<-- these number would need fine-tuning) times more armor of the other kind, you would be in a better position if half of your team could deal the lower damage type. If the majority of encounters had enemies like this, mixed parties would even be favorable in comparison to pure damage type parties.