Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Can someone explain the armour benefits?

Awesome example. Very clarifying for me. Thank you for sharing!

But your own characters also tend to have skewed armors. Items with high physical armor tend to have more strength requirement, items with more magical armor have more intelligence requirement. Enemy fighters that usually have more physical armor are not more of a threat to your own fighters than enemy mages, since fighters mostly deal physical damage.

Most enemy groups in the game are relatively balanced. Against a balanced enemy group, a pure physical/magical party can take down the more vulerable half of the enemies much faster. In a strategy game less units = less damage per turn. Then the party can handle the remaining half more safely.

If u met more enemy with high physical resistance, you won't think that pure physical or magical team is a good idea anymore.

So please don't make stupid comparison between mixed-damage team or pure-damage team.

It's a shitty stupid system but the sense of it is exactly what you said.
To make sure that combat doesn't end on turn 1 because everything is knocked down or polymophed etc.

A much much better idea would have been to simply return to D:OS1 system which was better in every conceivable way and allowed you to resist such stupidities through stats, but whatever. I think they were trying to make stats as useless as possible this time.

But I do agree this new system.
Why should I take the control effect when I defense well?
If enemy doesn't break my defence( or armour), then I could resist thier control.
Is it really that hard to be understood?

What kind of nonsense to resort to "logic" in such a matter?
Then let's remove health altogether - in fact for killing one blow on an open body without armor is enough.

Ugh! Another little grip I have is hitting someone in melee, their blood spilling, and setting yourself on fire (or whatever element), seems like it needs to be dialled down a touch!

If we talk about challenges to a specific party makeup, the toughest enemies in the game are bosses, they tend to have more balanced armors, and a balanced party would have more trouble handling them. So it's likely easier to get stuck because of game difficulty if your party is balanced.

There is rock paper scissors for skewed characters in the game:
pa and pd > ma and pd > ma and md > pa and md > pa and pd
pa/ma = physical armor/magical armor
pd/md = physical damage/magical damage
I feel it's not a good idea to have such counter relationships in an RPG game, it's difficult to design encounters and make them fun no matter what your party makeup is under such system.

So far I like the new system better overall, but can totally see people on all sides. To me it seems more refined, like a Fantasy XCom take on it. The DOS1 system was a system of excess, cool in its own way to, but so many big options over and over, the gluttony system. I like how Init works as well, much more reasonable switching turns between player/AI. The old system too many times was all or nothing.

For people playing DOS2 that haven't played DOS1, the differences in combat are real and gives the games a different feel, DOS1 isn't just a different story, it's a more a wild west take on combat.

So for those not wanting the armor part of this. Are we thinking, whatever is removed from armor, add that to overall Vitality? I can totally see that to and that alone would be a different play through, cc affects become a thing from the start.

Man I see several play-through experiences:
1. All the main chars.
2. Coop.
3. 6 man team mod.
4. 1 man team mod.
5. Different game mechanic mods. (Low scaling mods, no armor mods etc)

The modding and the scene is way ahead of where it was at last time around.

I think this could be the new pinnacle point for fantasy crpg's.

Good times ahead.

NOTE TO MODDERS:
We need to devise a way to test our changes out throughout the entire game. Right now we have some pretty sweeping change mods out, but there is no real certainty how these play out from start to finish, unless you play the entire game out.

There are so many ways to have a successful build for this game. It is sort of funny trying to lasso in a method that "Can do it", there are probably 100's if not 1000's of ways for success in game. Not pointing at you, just reading peoples takes, "This build", "This tactic", there are so many, it is more like "go find your happy place and have fun".

1-lie, never bothered with crafting in the first game, everything i equiped i found and i finished the game no problems.

2-lie again, stratagey doesn't mean cheese the AI until you are able to win, you will still be reloading like crazy until a fight plays in a certain way so you are able to win it.

3-AI is psychic it will focus characters with traits like glass cannon or undead without knowing shit about that, so yeah, there goes your fucking strategy, the AI outright cheats.

I'd like to throw in my two cents about random chance and what it means for a game like divinity.

In an RPG, especially one like divinity, the game is about going into the unknown, and taking what comes to you. There should always be an element of danger to combat, a lucky strike leaving you floored out of nowhere, a miss leaving you in a bad spot, things that make you look at the computer for a few minutes to consider your options. RNG adds this to a game, plain and simple.

Divinity 2 has seemingly gone on the war path against random numbers though, offence and defense ratings are out and miss change is very seldom encountered. But I feel like they are trying to direct the game into a path more suited for a multiplayer game than a crpg. In Dos1, when your CC failed when you thought you had a high chance, or you missed the critical shot, a true RPG player would savor the tension. The thoughts and tough choices they had to make in that moment being enjoyable experiences unique to this kind of game. The playerbase that div 2's changes seem to be directed to are different, however. People who, put in the same situation, would throw their hands in that air, proclaim "This is bullshit!", and reload a quicksave they made 10 seconds prior.

In a turn based game, reacting to bad situations getting worse and savoring when everything goes right are equal parts of what makes it enjoyable, and I feel div 2 removed half of that with gutting almost all RNG.

You know what?, it makes perfect sense now considering there is pvp in the game they "balanced" the game around stupid MP and killed the fun of the game.

Another example of multiplayer ruinning single player games.

Nah, I doubt it was the Arena mode. They just wanted a change to how things worked.

I think it made the game less exciting, and didn't address the biggest thing that they wanted to address. Hard CC is still hecka busted and the game still revolves around it. Reduce chances, bring back stats to reduce the chances even less, make statuses that don't skip turns hit through armor, put in physical resists... and I think you're in a very interesting place.

Are u sure it's not u who suggeste a nonsense condition?
U could disable the cc or rebuild the armour by teammates or anyother way, if u play game by using brain.

No, it really is the PvP. I recall the "epic battles" (and insults, so many insults) I got thrown about with by PvP players when complaining about armor in EA.
And no one listening that what works for 10m PvP matches might not do so in a 100H SP-game.

Now playing the game I do keep 2 physical/2 magic just because I want to. But it's always having to put these 2 on different targets since sharing is pointless. And a lot of times one of these groups just throws up buffs instead of fighting since fighting is pointless. It doesn't feel great.

Also stats distribution is lame. STR/INT/FIN it is, no point spreading out. I often wonder what to put my stat-points in since, wow, 5% extra, so great. But what's the alternative? It's all so meh, the real actual buff of your characters being in getting in more armor or better weaponry. My Ifan is OP since he got an OP crossbow, meanwhile the rest is stuck with avarage weapons and do avarage. Couldn't do the arena fight until I cleared the whole fort since before that I didn't have enough magic armor points to not just be blinded till dead

It's a good thing the game has other things going for it (but I HATE it at the moment for the Gargoyle Maze) cause it's combat system; it's not very interesting.
(But questing is also hampered by lots and lots of issues, but that's another discussion)

In D:OS1 a lot of various CC and debuff effects had a chance to occur, which was very frustrating RNG at times both ways, you could have been utterly gutted with a pure RNG CC rolling on and shitting on your parade or reverse - all your control planning failed because your CC/stuff simply would not land.

This caused a lot of reloads just because your carefully constructed house of cards could have been ruined by simple RNG and there was a lot of it.

I find this armor system to be a big improvement simply because you can now plan around with more consistent experience, you can plan your control chain and you can also plan your defenses too, instead of praying for RNG CC sticking/not sticking depending on which side you are.


Other than that I like that armor provides a cushion against small annoying damage that caused you in first game to waste time healing up. It's a convenience.


Now, I am not here claiming it is best mechanic ever, but it is an improvement, in my opinion. The problem with it is that "classic" mixed fighter/magic groups suffer somewhat, but honestly the game outside first zone and a half is not that difficult even on tactician - you eventually snowball so hard that you end up stomping things almost with any composition and it ends up something like a difference between you killing a chunk of the enemy force turn 1 or you messing around a bit and killing them anyway in the end.

For D:OS3 or whatever it will be called, I'd stay with armor system, but make some sort of adjustments to encourage mixed teams more.

1. All that means is the first game was too easy. There were a lot of ways that worked, most of them revolved around a single simple tactic that works 90% of the time, like knockdown spam.

2. That's not cheese. It's the very definition of strategy to find individual tactics tailored to the encounters. Cheese would be if a single simple tactic worked 90% of the time, which it doesn't.

3. It's not cheating. The player can inspect enemies with Loremaster skill and see their undead traits too (if it wasn't obvious) as well as their resistances. They would be able to see glass cannon just as easily if any enemies actually had it. The AI isn't using any information here that isn't also available to the players.