Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Memory should NOT appear on random items

I've seen several posts complaining that people can learn too many skills, making them too powerful and allowing them to do everything.

One big reason for this is that +Memory is allowed to appear on random magic items. That makes it pretty easy to grab a lot of skills while pumping attribute points into STR/FIN/INT/WIT.

To me, it's clear what part of the solution should be, and it's in the title. Memory should not appear on random items you find or available from merchants. If you want more skill slots, you'll have to actually allocate attribute points to unlock them. This will make the game a bit easier to balance.

I am somewhat flexible on this idea, though. I think it's fine if pre-placed Unique Items are allowed to have +Memory on them. I also think it might be fine if +Memory IS allowed to appear on random items - but as the ONLY magic affix. As in, if Memory appears on a random item, that is the only thing allowed to appear on it.

I realize that this is only a partial solution, but it is something which can help bring skills back in line and encourage players into making decisions about their attribute allocation and skill loadout.

I'm still not sure, if the old solution was better than the new memory system. You needed more investment (skill points) to even learn higher level skills, now you need hardly any. Also now you need to use attribute points to use more skills instead of using skill points to do it, which would be still more logical?

Or you could just go for a D&D approach, number of skills usable are depending on your level (like mages in D&D and their spells).

You're talking about D:OS 1's ability point system, right?

I think that could be another part of the solution to too many known skills. Skills in D:OS 2 right now only need 1 point in the required ability. I think that it might be a good idea to partly go back there so higher power Skills need additional points in the required Ability.

Couple that idea with making Memory something you need to invest in and that should help with the problem of "know everything, do everything" characters.

What if higher level skills take more memory slots (even more so than they currently do), but having more points in that school reduces memory cost?

For example:
Chain Lightning takes 5 memory slots at Aerothurge level 1. Each additional point in Aerothurge reduces the memory cost of Chain Lightning by 1 to a minimum of 1 or 2.

So, someone who is a jack of all trades can only memorize a few powerful skills because they don't have a lot of investment in any particular school and each skill costs a lot. Whereas someone with 5 points in Aerothurge can learn a ton of Aerothurge spells with relative ease, but might have a harder time remembering skills from other schools.

The problem isn't with high level skills though. Haste, Adrenalin, Restoration, Armor of Frost, Fortify, Rage are all level 1 and more useful than most of the high level skills.

D:OS1 had the same issue. The most powerful build had 1 in almost every school because there were tons of very useful novice skills and higher level skills were just about damage. That's why memory system was created in the first place: to prevent taking Rage-Haste-Adrenalin-Teleport on every build in addition to whatever dps skills it has.

I think the solution of memory not appearing on random items can help with that. It'll also make hand-placed items much more unique and worth looking for.

I also like the solution of increasing ability point requirements for higher level skills. But it should go together with moving some skills to a higher level.

Probably both solutions should be implemented at the same time because currently it's still too beneficial to build a jack of all trades.

I like the memory system as it is now.
One problem is, that at higher levels you get flooded with stat+ items, this includes memory as well. (see other thread)
If you still think that there is too much memory then, we could change that you get another slot every 2 levels.

Changing the additional slot gain from every 2 levels to every 3 would help a bit. Limiting memory to +1 or +2 on a couple of item slots (probably like helms and amulets only) would help as well. I think the larger problem is really the lack of requirements for various powerful abilities, as well as actually not very many skills in general. When there's 20-30 skills in every tree you'll sure be scrounging for all the memory you can get.

I think the solution is pretty simple for ability requirements: a memory cost penalty for low ability points in a skill. So if something requires 3 Necromancy, if you have 0 Necromancy it will cost 4 memory. If you have 2 Necromancy, it will cost 2 memory. This creates a dynamic where you can splurge on an ability out of your expertise for a certain situation, but you'll be sacrificing other skills to do so.

I think rescaling the memory costs should be better. Or maybe classify the abilities by complexity (very easy, easy, m, h, vh) and limit the amount of possible abilities of a certain complexity learnt (3 abilities of VE from the start, and then more slots with lvls). Even VE abilities could still vary by memory cost, so that if you have low memory, you can, for example, have 2 easy abilities but no memory left for very easy ones. Putting more points in schools could lower memory costs in this case.

Can we just forget the bad idea and have the last games system, instead of forcing every build into a bit of a dump stat?

Err, yes. Hence this thread suggesting that Memory NOT appear on random items.




Memory every two levels is (at level 30 and the base Memory of 10), 18 slots.
Memory every three levels is (at level 30 and the base Memory of 10), 13 slots.


Eighteen might seem like a lot, but we haven't left the first island, or encountered skills which use more slots of memory. The effect of moving from every 2 levels to every 3 would also be more pronounced at the start where you're already the most limited with what you can have. That does run the risk of adding a bit of monotony as you have to use the same skills you started out with for longer.




Certainly some additional requirements would help. And I think there's going to be only 16 skills in every tree, not 30, but that's probably close enough.




Something like this could certainly work. But currently there are two issues. First is that you need 1 ability point to learn any skills of that school, and secondly a lot of the powerful skills currently are considered rank 1 skills, and are available before the second rank becomes available at level 4.

Sure, I suppose reducing the memory to level ratio would hurt most at the beginning, but I think it's a pretty minor loss when you can just throw in an extra point or two in memory to make up for it. On the contrary, I'm a bit worried the memory inflation will become more of an issue later in the game, where investing in memory will feel like a waste, especially for non-hybrids invested in one skill tree (like rogues).

Skills with higher memory cost (besides source skills), could help with the issue too.

Skill requirements can easy be changed. 1 ability point minimum to learn a skill should probably stay though, you're right. Right now the skill "ranking" does seem a bit arbitrary. The way I see it, rank 1 skills should be primarily basic or fundamental skills for a class, mostly requiring an appropriate weapon or stat investment. Level 1 scoundrel skills might be Vault, Throwing Dagger, Sawtooth Blade, Chloroform, and two or three more minor buff or debuff skills that don't require daggers (so a non-dagger rogue hybrid has a couple options for rogue skills at the start.) The more powerful scoundrel utility skills like adrenaline and cloak and dagger would require 3 in scoundrel for best use.

I think a major issue with memory is the attribute burden it imposes on hybrids. The way I see it, memory's main purpose is to limit the versatility of mages from going to the absurd like it could in D:OS1. But hybrids already deal with a split attribute penalty (unless they use only utility skills from their non-dominant tree), and so a third attribute to deal with the extra skills to memorize might be a bit too much to make hybrids viable.

An interesting talent could help: When distributing 4 attribute points equally among two different primary attributes (strength, int, dex), you gain 1 memory. So someone with 12 int and 12 strength would gain 1 extra memory, and 20 int and 20 strength would gain 5 extra memory slots. If too strong, then 6 attribute points split equally for 1 memory might be balanced (e.g., 13 str and 13 int for 1 extra memory).

Larian could just not have invented this dump stat everyone has to waste points in :O

RIP hybrids I guess, I hope you like investing in like 5 stats