Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Solving the Memory Problem

Problems Identified by the Community:

1. Odd-Stat Issue: Currently, having an odd-number of the Memory Stat provides no benefit.

2. The Skill Attributes provide little benefit to focusing on their own school or unlocking more utility for the school in many cases.

3. The current Memory system promotes only equipping the fewest skills you need, and pumping up other stats.



To address all three issues in one sweeping change, I'd propose considering the following option:

1. Each point of Memory would simply be considered a "point of memory" rather than unlocking a set of "slots." You would have a Memory Pool equal to your Memory stat, and your abilities would each consume a portion of this pool to equip.

2. All Skill Abilities would be sorted into "Tiers," and each Tier would have specific Memory point costs to being equipped.

3. Every Two Skill Points invested in a Skill School would reduce the Memory cost of that skill's abilities by 1, with a minimum cost of 1 Memory.



E.G. Fireball has a base cost of 3 points as an Advanced Skill. If you have 4 points invested in Pyrokinetic, this would reduce the memory cost from 3 to 1, allowing you to equip it as if it was a Basic Skill.

Basic Skills:

The most basic abilities of a School will cost 1 Memory Slot to equip. (The absolute most basic skills, such as the Touch spells, the "effect foes around me" spells, or the Battle Stomp, Cripling blow type skills.) These would be the 50g skill books.

Advanced Skills:

The next Tier of skills would cost 3 Memory Slots to equip (think of the slightly more advanced skills, such as Fireball, Teleport, or Healing Ritual) These are the spell books that generally cost in the 250g+ range. (I'd decrease the costs to 150)

Adept Skills:

This is the second highest Tier of skills, in which we start seeing Source Points being consumed in addition to generally longer reuse timers and high impact. These would be like our current "source" abilities that we have in game. (I'd price these at 300g)

Master Skills:

These are the "pinnacle" skills in the game which consume multiple Source Points (perhaps all three?) to unleash devastating effects. These are your Meteor Storms, your Hurricanes, your Earthquates, your "Taunt everything in range to target me for two turns" type skills. Your "Instant Death if Magic Armor depleted" necro type skills. By using up 10 Points at default, it makes it very difficult to include these in your build without some very heavy investments in either Memory or the Skill's Skill School attribute.

These would likely be more quest rewards or unlocked later in the game to purchase for 1500g or more. Perhaps we can choose these as some of our perks of becoming the Divine?



Conclusion: Combining it all together with sample builds

If we look at this system now, we can imagine plenty of build opportunities:

Specialists





Generalist Mage:



Split Hybrid




Do you guys and gals feel that this system would improve the current Memory system while still meeting the goals of making players "invest" if they want to equip a wide array of skills, vs some form of specialization to improve a player's ability to equip powerful skills from a specific school?

Can you guys try to imagine what skills would fit into which Tiers?

Could you create some builds with this system to test it out on paper?

To be clear, ideally the primary stat system would work out in which:

With decent gear and stat allocation while leveling, most players could assume that they would be capable of hitting the "hard cap" on a single stat for Intelligence, Strength, or Finesse.

This then leaves the player to choose between:

"Do I want more Constitution to live longer?"
"Do I want more Wits to crit more or have better Initiative?"
"Do I want more Memory to have access to more Abilities?"
"Do I want to Hybridize into another Primary Stat?"

Ideally, this should give Hybrid characters room to exist, at the expense of one of the other three areas.

This is where my adjustments to Memory would allow a Hybrid to function very well without any or few Memory investments, where as a Generalist would likely need to invest more in Memory to really have access to all of the abilities they want, while a Specialist will likely want to invest in simply more health, crit/initiative, or yet more Memory to maybe include multiple Master level skills.

1. Could be an issue.
2. Partially false; the differences are pretty big when you look at the benefit over time, however, it doesn't really allow more versatility.
3. Blatantly false; don't assume that your game plan is the same as everyone else's or that the environment will be static; it's too early to tell.

1. This is a valid issue.

2. This is not necessarily an issue, and in fact, only an issue if you expect otherwise.
It would a perfectly valid system if skills were for example renamed to things like "Vampirism", "Restoration" or "Destruction", and provided nothing beyont relevant stat adjustment to all abilities: For example Instead of gating the use of Necromancy skills, renamed to Vampirism, the skill would only allow partial healing based on damage, with no obligation to actually take Necromancy skills to take full advantage of it.
In essence, Issue 2 is an issue of expectations(based on the previous game), not an actual issue that needs to be resolved, and certainly not to an extent where the skills would become about primarily boosting the capacity.

3. That is a matter of tuning, and in principle it is false.
What the current system does is encourage making a choice between flexibility and raw power.
It is a good choice to encourage, and not an issue to solve.



1. Is the same thing I suggest in a thread I made myself.

2. Is similar to what I suggest, however, having a rigid cost based on rank denies the system from having cool things like a skill that has a low memory requirement, precisely because of a high skill one, or vice-versa.
It would be boring, and wouldn't take full advantage of the granularity presented by re-scaling the Memory pool.

3. One of the major reasons for shifting towards memory, was to give skills a proper weight when it comes to using them, without stopping you from learning them all.
By eventually making them all cost the same, you eradicate that point in decision making, ending up with the player just picking the strongest ones he has.
Considering that'd be just boring, and is terrible for balance, that's an absolute: No.
If you want to slog through it, you can read more on why I find this idea horribly bad back in the thread already linked.

I like the changes proposed by Swiftwynd. There is a matter of fine tuning so memory won't become useless. But the 3 ideas seem a nice change.

The main problem with the system in place is that you are forced to put all your points leveling up on the main attribute, or else you become weaker. If this is corrected, even the system in place would be quite nice.

I disagree with the assertion that having a "fixed cost" for a skill at a specific rank necessitates that you cannot have an interesting variety of options.

You can still have themed progressions, such as a Flare (Basic), Fire Ball (Advanced), Pillar of Flame (Adept), and Lava Fount (Master) skills that each have a variable amount of Memory due to being in four different tiers, but all still serving the general purpose of a "ranged fire skills that ignites the target and potentially the ground beneath them."

The more you invest in either Pyrokinetics OR Memory OR both, the easier it is to include higher Tier Abilities into your line up. You can also choose to have a narrow line up and not expend many points into Memory, but maybe invest heavily into Pyrokinetics, or invest heavily into Memory and only a few points into some other schools to have access to multiple master level abilities from other schools.

The granular aspect would be in the number of Basic/Advanced to Adept to Master skills you decide to slot. Any "odd" number of remaining Memory can be used for a Basic, or most often times, an Advanced ability if you have at least a 4 point investment in the skill's Skill School.

So, you can have those situations in which "man, I really want to use a Master skill, but that will leave me with 5 points left. Lets include one Adept and two more Basic/Advanced skills and we're good."



The issue you point it is a matter of implementation. If you cannot reach realistically "18" in a given Skill School with the absolute min-maxing, then you would never be able to reduce a Master level skill down to the minimum cost of 1.

And, even if this is possible, I honestly don't feel this is imbalanced, as its likely that by investing so extremely in a single skill, you really should be able to use every skill available to that skill tree at once due to all that you are giving up, from better Armor/Health/Magic armor, less options for weapon skills, and a narrower restriction on the other skill schools you can effectively use.

For the builds that don't exclusively pump a single skill school will not reach a point (unless the stats on gear get wildly large later on) in which they can equip Adept skills at "no cost difference" than Basic or Advanced skills in my mock system. You would need at least 8 points in a single Skill School to reduce the cost of the 5 memory Adept skills down to a single memory point, but at this value, it would still leave Master Skills costing 6 memory points, making them hard to squeeze into a build with only 8 Skill Points in the School if you don't also invest some in memory.


This system is also very malleable and can be changed at any time by simply adjusting numerical values in a database, and as such, it would be simpler to balance and change as we and the developers seem fit during EA testing.

My numbers are just a general suggested starting point, but there are several, easy "levers" the developers can fine tune until we hit a sweet spot.

How about not add anything new because the base system is generic enough that it allows you to specialize or 'cross-class'.

Then again we aren't playing the same game; in your world 20%+ damage difference is a trivial amount, and a character that strikes for 10% less damage but has 9-10 more memory slots is insufficient. Hybrid characters do exist already -- when you can competently deal both physical and magical damage you're there. You just haven't pushed the system to its limits.

While I agree the current Primary stat system needs some fine tuning, I actually think a moderate power difference is fine between someone maximizing their offensive stat and someone who wants to trade off some of this raw power for more versatility, defense, or damage type flexibility.

I think it should be slightly easier for a Specialist build to have more point flexibility to fully invest in their primary stat for their chosen Skill School, and with less stress to pick up Memory, while the more you Hybridize, the increased value and focus you should place on Memory.

This leaves Specialists with options of branching into more survivability, more crit chance/initiative, or more Memory to splash in some Basic and Advanced skills from other schools.

I'll agree that the current system isn't terrible. It's serviceable, but I believe it can be improved.

Honestly, a 20% damage difference IS very trivial in many situations, especially given the scope of other damage modifiers, especially if the trade off provides sufficient variety of skills to deal with multiple situations on a single load out. For example, if your extra memory slots give you +1 or +2 AP per turn, or Haste, or Rage, or Stealth etc, this can result in far more damage than just a straight 20% damage bonus from a stat.

Similarly, if you have a "support mage" who primarily just buffs the heck out of a specialized damage dealer, you get results that can sometimes surpass the damage potential of simply going a damage mage + damage character, depending on the situation.

My suggestions are to further enhance the system already in the game to further promote a variety of build options and to make Memory a much more viable stat that a single point increase in can make an impact.

There should under no circumstance, other than a deliberate exemption, be a situation in which skills that vary in overall power are allowed to cost the same amount of Memory to use.

If for no other reason, then simply because a single point of Memory available, should have a consistent value in terms of power the player is allowed to exert.

I have suggested a superior alternative(skill points add school-specific Memory slots), achieving a similar goal in a much more organic way: by operating on the player's capacity(which is how Memory gains work already) rather than adding another vector for multiplicative scaling.

Do you think that Source skills should count for that deliberate exemption?

Because while Source skills are more powerful than other skills, they also have a more specific limitation for their power - needing to spend a Source point.

It's passive. So that 20% applies without AP expenditure. So, technically, it's already better than an ability. 20% may mean the difference between one-shotting something or having to end your turn in a bad position - it's not exactly trivial.

20% means for the next 6AP worth of actions, my spells hit that much more than someone who doesn't have the same skill allocation; essentially it's specialization. Go figure.

20% means that I can survive a meteor from the opponent and not get CCed thereafter from other effects. Yeah, it's non-trivial.

You're not even beyond the first chapter when this happens.



Very rarely - a support, in this case runs, less damage spells and some recovery spells. You're better off self-buffing and enforcing your will than passing. There are less chains of vulnerability in your game plan. Furthermore, you're hampered by movement, memory, consumables, and cool downs.

Alternatively, a support mage is actually a damage dealer depending on how you build it.

Currently, you're really only saving 1AP at most with a buff mage - aka you're going to run Rage.



You're not enhancing, you're introducing foreign elements that may actually break the system. Also, memory is not necessarily even useful with 2 points put into it. It all depends on context and game plan.

So again, there is no reason to introduce further complexity when the current system has not been stressed.

I like the idea of specializing having some advantages and disadvantages. Ideally spells/skills of a particular school will cost less AP to cast and be more powerful at the cost of more AP to cast spells/skills you are not specialized in as well as those spells/skills not being as powerful. The choice to specialize being up to the player of course and not a required thing if you want to be a jack of all trades (you just don't enjoy any particular advantages with those spells/skills if not specialized.)

1. At least in the early part of the game, the two point requirement for memory makes for some interesting choices. If you have a fighter, for example, who is low on constitution but you also want to add an extra ability slot soon then one point in each may be the preferred solution. I have certainly done this to balance longer term against immediate needs.

3. The memory system forces players to make choices regarding the allocation of points. Do you want to have a large number of different spells etc., do you want to have a high strength combined with a smaller number of available skills to get a better outcome each time a skill is used, and so on.

At the moment I would prefer to see the current system tweaked rather than make large changes which will then need rebalancing. Also, the effectiveness of the current or any new system would need to be assessed for character levels higher than we will get in the Early Release game.

Short: Yes.

Long: Attaching another form of cost to the skill constitutes valid grounds not just for a deliberate exemption, but for a different evaluation scheme in general.



Adding granularity(such as by making Memory operate on a 1:1 basis for 'slots' added, and then increasing the costs of skills to be generally double the current), doesn't really run into any immediate balance problems.
The only special consideration it requires is to ensure that there exist odd(1,3,5, etc.) number cost skills to allow the player to take advantage of an odd number of Memory.

I like this idea a lot.

Another slight problem with how skills work is that since some gear has stuff like +1 aerothurge and so on you can pick up a full set of aerothurge skills without investing a single point in the school. That feels kinda iffy.

Overall a decent idea.

The main difference I would like to see is the bonus from skill school be a flat amount of school specific memory, rather than a reduced memory cost for each skill in that school.

The difference is that the latter is much more powerful and almost forces you to specialize: If Fire skills cost 1 to 5, and I have a -3 memory cost, then I can equip all fire skills at an average of half cost. This could easily be 20+ memory saved, for a few skill points invested. On the other hand, if that same investment gives you +5 fire memory slots, you still benefit by having a free fire spell or two, but not to the same extent.

Yes, that's brilliant. I'd be more interested in that than the current bonus you get.

The primary concern I would have with "Skill Specific Slots" is how would this be cleanly represented in the UI without cluttering the screen?

Would they have a border that is linked to each Skill School via color? Will we have "tabs" for each Skill School? Will it have a sectioned off selection with a label title?

Imagine if someone has 1 point spread among a large amount of skill schools, how would that look visually?


I'm not saying its a bad idea per say, but it would have some UI implementation challenges, as well as future scaling concerns if more Skill Schools are added.


The rational I learn more toward my idea is its a simple, easy to read integer change. You would highlight over your Ability you are trying to Memorize into your deck.

You would have a Blue number that highlights the current needed amount, with a parenthetical numeral off to the side that explains its base cost before the deductions occur.

So, if we assume a skill like Fireball is an Advanced skill, and someone has 4 points in Pyrokinetic:

_______________________________________________
Fireball
Advanced Pyrokinetic Ability
Memory Cost 1 (base 3)

Description....

_______________________________________________



And the Pyrokinetic description could read:

_______________________________________________

Pyrokinetic
"Increases all fire damage you deal and reduced the number of Memory points needed to learn Pyrokinetic Skills."

Level 1: +1 base Fire damage and +4% to total Fire Damage.
Level 2: +2 base Fire damage and +8% to total Fire Damage, and -1 Memory cost of Pyrokinetic Abilities.
Level 3: +3 base Fire damage and +12% to total Fire Damage, and -1 Memory cost of Pyrokinetic Abilities.
Level 4: +4 base Fire damage and +14% to total Fire Damage, and -2 Memory cost of Pyrokinetic Abilities.

etc..
_______________________________________________