Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Unlimited skills at high level abilities

In D:OS, once we had the active skill abilities at level 5, we could learn an unlimited amount of them.

In D:OS EE, even at the max level the skill abilities had a limit to the number of skills we could learn.

The D:OS system was better, IMO. It was a middle ground between learning everything all the time and having only limited abilities:

* Someone who is just dabbling or using a few spare points in a given ability is limited.

* It requires a huge investment to master an ability, considering how the ones with active skills don't have any gear that increases them (in D:OS 1 at least)

* There is more freedom in making the skills if players can reach no limit. In D:OS EE, it's very silly that we are told we can learn 6 Novice water spells when the game has only 5 Novice water spells. Removing the limit at high levels would lessen this problem and give freedom for the designers to make as many or as few skills as they want.

* Many of the skills in D:OS EE are underwhelming, just like many of the highest level skills were in D:OS. In the original game, this wasn't much of an issue since you could just keep them around until the rare situation in which they would be useful, but in the Enhanced Edition this doesn't work - it's better to simply not ever learn the underwhelming skills, since they are going to take the space of something else. This becomes even worse, for the records, when a given ability doesn't have many useful skills in a given rank - rogues don't have two useful Master abilities, for example, but we can't use the Master slot to learn one more Disciple-level skill.

If this allowed characters to become too powerful in D:OS - which IMO it didn't, considering how this was something available to all roles (as opposed to, for example, only spells being unlimited) -, it could be balanced by tweaking the skills themselves.

But I think the skill system in the original version of D:OS was much, much better than in the EE.

On the contrary, I think no limit means they have to reign in the number of skills available to a particular school moreso than when having a limit, though I agree a limit does encourage having at least as many skills to meet that limit (but that's not a bad thing.). It's easier to balance around a limit than unlimited skills, and personally, I'd rather have slightly fewer good abilities than more crappy ones. It is silly to have only 5 novice water spells available, though, and maybe level 5 in an ability could let you learn unlimited novice skills, or at least a max of 7 or 8.

I don't see this reverting in D:OS2 with their plans to make way more skills with skill crafting, unless they come up with some other way to balance an excess of skills. Something like increased cooldowns or slightly reduced efficacy of spells for having more than X spells known might work.

Unlimited skills is a big no, no.
In fact even in enhanced edition there is too much skills available even in the middle of the game.
Just consider Int based char which invest 2 skill level in every school - 3*5 = 15 points ----> 7* 5 = 35 spells. this pick have all the spells you need to comfortably finish the game.
As long as we have 5 skill bars they are nearly full. Pain in control when need to list up and down turns hot bar to the slow bar. that is ridiculous.

Skills should be more versatile. Like Slow/haste spell. Just one spell. It makes enemy slow and your friend hasted.

Also original skill progress was better. Mainly because of less skill at 2nd level.
1.st level 3 skills
2.nd level 5 skills
3.rd level 7 skills

I would reduce number of skills at all. In curent game, I dont use regular attack at all. Just spam skills.

Also introduce a slot system. Lets say novice skill takes one slot. Adept skill takes 2 slots. Master skill takes 4 slots.

Then you receive just slots. Its up to player if he prefers 3 Master spells or 12 novice.

Skills and talents are quite poorly balanced. Even in EE. Useless skills or pure placeholder skills are too often. Adding some "crafting skills"so we could have a huge amount of skills that is a lot of balancing work which current team is not able to handle. In fact, there is a good chance that focus at super-uber-cool-mega-strong-source-skills combined with huge amount of regular skills makes it wild so it ruins a game at all.

See, you are confusing "skills" with "spells". You can get a high number of spells for a spellcasting character and end with something that could work. But doing the same for any of the other skill trees - Man at Arms, Marksman and Scouldrel - doesn't work. Man at Arms has different attribute requirements than everything else, and the other two are too linked to their specific weapons (more in EE than in the original).

The "35 spells" would never work if you took the other skill trees and tried to replace it with "35 skills".

And even when using a spellcaster, it would make a very bad character - many of the Adept skills require a higher skill level than 2 to be cast without increased AP cost. Many of the most useful skills would be nearly unuseable.

In fact, your example is a good reason as to why the current system would only improve with unlimited skills at ability level 5. It would give more incentive for people to focus more points in a given ability, as opposed to dabling in everything like in your example; and once you have spent 15 points in a single ability, as opposed to in four different abilities, you would end with far less than 35 skills even if we could today learn all the skills in a skill tree.

Eras - would you please explain to me a difference on Rapture skill in original release and Rapture spell in EE ?

Sure!

Rapture (the EE spell) is among the Witchcraft skills, which means it's linked to Intelligence and to nothing else. A generalist spellcaster could try using it, given how a spellcaster would already have high Intelligence anyway.

Rapture (the D:OS skill) was a Scouldrel that was not actually linked do daggers, so it could be used by someone who had high Dexterity but didn't specialize in the Scouldrel skills. Not that there were many of those, but it was possible.

With the change from the original D:OS to EE, Scouldrel lost one of its few abilities that could be used without daggers. Which means, a character focused on Marksman (which is basically the only high Dex character who wouldn't be already focusing on Scouldrel) has one less skill to use if dabling in Scouldrel.

The result is that, while a spellcaster can dable in other schools of magic (again, with the issues I mentioned in my previous post), someone who's using the skills - other than spells - cannot dable in multiple skill schools at once.

In less words, the "35 spells" doesn't work if you change it to "35 skills".

Oh dear. I was expected you find your mistake by yourself.
But, it didn't worked.
Lets try another one. Summon Nick
What is it ?

In all fairness it is no mystery that physical skills need a overhaul.

Too bad that will never happen because the next two skills we will have are Polymorph and Master Summoning :P

I definitely agree with you. I'd rather be able to access all the available skills in my selected "class" or preferred "magic school" when mastering it than have some sort of irrationally imposed skill cap.

If some sort of "balance" is truly required for whatever reason, then it would be preferable to balance it in other ways--cool downs, cost, difficulty of acquisition, limiting the number of "schools" you can master, etc.

I, for one, enjoy achieving godhood from the beginnings of a humble whelp. It's a sense of continual achievement, accomplishment and growth. Limiting that spoils a fair bit of fun.

If they need a balance why not have an "active" spell list?

You can learn all the skills/spells you want (or a limit based on the skill level)... but can only use a certain number of them.

That way they can avoid their "Rogue can keyboard their way through fights" issue.

Honestly it doesn't help that quite a few skills are either useless (Hello Fortitude after the early game) or extremely build dependent.

An active skill list sounds interesting, but it's hard for me to see a way for it to be both useful and balanced. I suppose that the best way would be that you can only swap skills while out of combat.

A concern I have is to better balance the skill distribution. It's silly that some trees have only 5 or 6 Novice skills (but you can only learn 6), whereas some trees have 7 skills but you can only learn 4.


I also think that this might be a better distribution table:

N / A / M
=========
3 / 0 / 0
5 / 2 / 0
6 / 4 / 1
7 / 5 / 2
8 / 6 / 3

More skills can and should be added to the game.

I actually agree that a "loadout" system is better.
One thing that annoyed me in EE is knowing that getting certain skills that might be usefull at some point is actually a waste of money.
The idea of having to re buy the skillbook for an ability if you wanna change your loadout doesnt sit right with me.

Quite a few games already handle it with Hotbar based loadouts, now thats not quite the right thing for divinity i think, but yeah, an "active skill" system, basically a bigger loadout, why not.

Kind of goes back to D&D where you had to prepare your spells.

More skills means mora balancing, bigger chance for a nonsence skill.
Do you feel like curent skills are balanced?
Do you think that adding more skills would improve it?

There is another issue. How to controll such load. How to choose. How to change UI to prevent clicking madness? How to make user to remember good combinations?
There is a lot of casual players, more skills makes less accessible.

I can understand you point of view, the veteran who simply needs MOAR. but well, sometimes less means more.

List of skills should be bigger then possible skill slots. +50 +100%. So novice skill list should contain at least 8 skills. Adept at least 6 skills. Master at least 4 skills. That applys at any school. So the player must shoose what he likes. There should not be a situation where list of skill is same (or smaller) than number of slots. It also encourage to have diferent character in the party. So you can have diferent 2 fighters. One defensive tank, second damage dealer - depends the skills.

I also think that this might be a better distribution table:

N / A / M
=========
2 / 0 / 0
2 / 1 / 0
3 / 2 / 0
3 / 3 / 1
5 / 4 / 2

I would consider a skill as something special. Something more than regular attack.
I need to use basic attack to know difference.
Currently I dont use basic attack at all.

Current system which gives the BEST reward for first point is sick. I prefer a system where best reward is for master level.

***************
Flexibility
skill change needs an improvement. What if a skill book can be written down (created) from current skill. Like unsubscribe so you make a notes to you diary, so later you could re-learn that. or sell the book. For that process you would need an blank sheet an magic ink, both are consumed in the process. The process can be done at certain locations only, library, homestead, ... . You need a proper "craft" tool the office table for the process. Also create a skill book from regular scroll should be easier. Somethin like a skill level 2 allows create skill level 1 books from scrolls.

If nothing else, more skills are going to be added anyway with the two new skill trees, and with combo skills from skill crafting. Asking whether or not only D:OS EE's existing skills and nothing else should be used in EE is an academic question.

You have to agree that having a maximum of 6 possible learnable Novice skills but only 5 possible ones to choose from is silly.

I do believe that more skills can be added. For example, I don't agree with the decision to remove Featherfall. I also question some of the streamlining that was done to remove other skills.

I do not agree with the premise that the game should be dumbed down to appeal to casual players. That never produces a better game.

I do not agree with your premise that the number of skills in the game should be reduced, so therefore I do not like your proposed distribution table.

sadly. Thats why I plan to play DOS2 about 10 months after relase. Balance will be meess.
Obvious desing mistake. Cant understand what Q&A did.
More skill more mess. Feather fall is still avaialble thru Air elemental. However, I think that spells should be done flexible way, so caster makes hard landing for enemy and soft landing for friends. e.g. that spells should be merged to one.
Accessibility is big issue. RPG are difficult games generaly. Make system deep but easy to get. That is you do not achieve by put a load of skills in. Check Pillars of Ethernity - that has a shitload of skills bonuses and bonuses on the bonuses whith modifes some skills, sometime. The mess. DOS is readable, that is one if the reason why get popular.
You have misguided yourself. Number of skills in game is not limited by skill slots per level.

Feather Fall being accessible through Air Elemental is not a very practical solution, because that completely removes any ability to use it outside of combat. It also forces you into using an Air Elemental.




If by that, you mean you want to keep the same number of skills but REDUCE the skill slots, then I agree with that EVEN LESS. It will cripple diversity and cripple character builds, forcing them to only use the single most useful skills because they can't afford anything else thanks to a ridiculously arbitrary restriction. It will make for very boring gameplay, 1000% guaranteed.

If that's your idea of accessibility, then down with accessibility.

You said that skills are removed. So I have show you that is NOT true. So do not brag about something else. Feater fall was not removed. Period.

The idea is, more skills could be. But certainly less skill slots. For better controll. For more builds. For more versatile skills. Like teleport who crush enemy but soft land friends. Character builds are promoted with less slots. An option "unlimited skill" you destroys all the builds, there is just one. All. Obviously more slots less builds.

I have asked you these, would respond :
Do you feel like curent skills are balanced?
Do you think that adding more skills would improve it?

There is surely something in the middle between "tiny restricted skill set" and "ALL THE SKILLS FOREVER". I absolutely do not agree at all with the ridiculous notion that restricting you to 3 total skills at Rank 2 will promote character builds. People will always, always only pick the most efficient skills for those slots and never use the others ever. It will produce FEWER builds, not more. It will be boring as you use the exact same tiny number of skills over and over again for ages.

For example, a Warrior will ALWAYS have Battering Ram as one of their two skills because it is too useful. That leaves only one other skill slot for anything else for a long time.

A build does not equal one skill. A build is a SET of skills which synergize.

I don't have time to answer the first question right now. I already answered the second one with a BIG FAT YES.

i see, so you expect that there are an exptremly usefull skill and also placeholder skills. so you expect that skills are unbalanced. that is sick mind my friend. You expect that skills are poorly done you you wnat to fix it a way you take a lot of them.
Poor excuse. Proper answear is Yeas/No. Prety quick to write :-] You are wrong, you know it, but dont want to admit it.