Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Alternatives to Armor system

There are a lot of threads on why this armor system is the worst thing ever (hyperbole) but not so many on alternatives to replace it. So with the spirit of just throwing stuff out there and realizing that the chance of this armor system getting changed being less than 0.1% give your ideas, ill get us started;

1. Merge physical and magical armor
At the very least, hybrid parties would now be more fun and viable. No longer would your mages be playing catch up on DPSing down their armor while your physical were already hitting the HP.

Personal armor loses a bit of uniqueness, no longer would magic armor give more magic armor and plate more physical, but you still have other important stats to think about.

2. Make Armor progressively weaker against CC
Currently all spells have an all or nothing approach. If you have physical armor and you battering ram someone, they wont get knocked down. To fix this every form of spell could be given a scale of effectiveness based off how much armor is left. For example battering ram could at 100% just deal damage, at 85% it would reduce speed, 50% greatly reduce speed and stats ect and at 0% apply its hard CC knock down.

The nice thing about this system is that it makes the game a lot more tactical. The question becomes 'Do I use this CC now, so I mitigate the enemies ability to hurt me, or do I save my CC for later so its more effective?' The player wont always know, or be able to predict, the best option which is what makes fights dynamic and fun. Making the best of the worst situation when RNG played against you was one of the best parts of DivOS 1s combat system. Whereas in 2 you almost never have this same situation, its more a numbers crunch than a tactical game.

3. Remove the Armor, replace with resistances
I really like this one. Instead of having Physical + Magical damage (+elemental resistances) have Physical + Magical Resistances.

There would now be Fire/Water/Earth/Lightning/Crushing/Piercing/ect instead. This would really benefit taking hybrids rather than just one damage type parties, as every enemy has its own resistances. In order to deal with CC have it so the more resistance you have, the less effective that CC is, this is similar to the above system but backwards so as you stack certain resistances you gain CC protection, rather than as you take damage you lose resistance. Someone at 25% for example will be stunned for half the time, 50% get immunity to that type of CC but take significant other penalties, 85% less penalties, 100% no penalties.

Just gonna leave this here.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1157299447&searchtext=

For me the solution is simple. Don't change the stats you get on gear. Don't change the fact we have phys and mag armor.

Change CC so that it has % chance of success. How you calculate the %... I honestly don't care. Make it calculate off stats and/or level and/or skill rank and/or target's stats/gear/whatever and/or make it scale off remaining armor.

All those ideas for calculating % chance, or none and use some other method to calculate is fine,... so long as:

You never, ever, have 100% success chance.
You never, ever, have 0% success chance.

Because when you have either of those chances you no longer need to make a decision. There is no cost/benefit analysis needed. There is no deciding if you can handle the branching possibilities.

And when that is taken away you have something lesser than what it could be. The combat becomes mundane. Mundane becomes repetitive. Repetitive becomes boring.

Unfortunately, what you proposed is exactly what Larian hates. They implemented the armor system because they don't want CC to rely on RNG factors.

They made DOS1 with RNG
They made DOS2 without RNG

Where do you get your evidence for this hate?

The problem with DOS1 was not that it used an RNG system. It was the flaw in that system that made it too easy to reach 100% effectiveness. That was the problem with that game.

Yet their effort to fix that flaw, bizarrely, now gives us guaranteed 100% CC effectiveness that is even easier to get to right from the start of the game.

My only problem with this is that its RNG. My suggestions are more predictable. If the enemy has 50% armor you will apply certain forms of CC on them, it just wont be a stun.

Also mods disable achievements and this triggers me greatly.

Eh, I couldn't care less about achievements. All to their own, but you're missing out on some great content in the workshop.

And where one person sees RNG, I see a die roll with appropriate bonuses. RPGs are built on them, I don't see the problem. But, as I said earlier, all to their own. Happy gaming.

Throwing out cc in the hope it'll work isn't a tactical decision, it's a desperate gamble. You should be thinking about los, movement, healing and deterrents. Not throwing out garbage and hoping it works.

A lot could be done here, and I mean a lot:

- Chance to save a status effect = Base + (current armor)/(parameter x total armor) + save modifiers - Chance to inflict status effect

- Chance to inflict status effect = Base + inflict modifiers

- Base = Can depend on your level, or could be adjustable for certain monsters/character

- Save Modifiers = These could come from attributes, other spells, items,

- Parameter = something around 0.7 - 1.3

Inflict modifiers = These could come from attributes, other spells, items. Some spells might have a higher chance to inflict a status.

This would prevent 1st turn cheesy plays since everyone has full armor, and also keep armor, and armor regen a useful tool, but would also bring back proper status effect and terrain planning.

Spells that deal a massive damage to armor with some drawback could also be implemented. Some chance to shake off a bad status would also be useful, especially from ones that disable you completely, e.g., knockdown, stunned, frozen, unlike crippled, blinded, burning etc, where you can still act. Or effects like knockdown take
away a chunk of your AP for your next turn rather than disabling you completely.

Which brings us to the horribly streamlined AP system, but that is another topic.

Most importantly, the (current armor)/(parameter x total armor) factor brings a varying RNG effect to the equation that makes it predictable for the player if their effect has a high probability of working or not, so you can actually count on your effect working when the enemy armor is low, and you know that you are taking a big risk when the enemy has close to full armor.

1. I disagree with merging MA and PA, that does nothing to change the superiority of all-physical teams and it leaves the door open for too many status effects to be inflicted at once. I also don't like how that simplifies things, there is no longer as much differentiation between enemies, and in a game which has the exact same AI for all enemies, that won't help improve the feel of combat.

2. That defeats the point of the armor system existing in the first place. Disagree.

3. That is such a major change that it would require rebuilding the entire combat system and changing almost all the skills and statuses, and it just gets back to what's basically the same D:OS 1 system that the armor system was meant to change.

At this forum the #1 issues seem to be about the combat model system.
I do wonder percentage wise how people feel overall:
Hate it
Disapprove of it
Neutral
Like it
Love it

And no I'm not asking for a poll here, that won't really tell the story, doesn't seem like enough people frequent here to get a good reading.

I find the system with the Armor a step forward. Yes it does take out the %'s, you know when and why it will work or not. In DOS1, there were many times I just didn't take CC into account anymore because of high failure rate.

Is there a balance issue with Physical vs Magic? Perhaps, but that is more a balance thing and not a Armor Y/N thing.

Does this game have some levels that boost everything up unnaturally? Yes. I do find that very odd and I play a modified version to lower those affects. So the gear replacement thing hasn't been an issue for me, like I've read it has for others and it all has moved along quite well.

These are reoccurring discussions all over game forums. RNG vs Definites. You'll always get two sides to the argument. Like Level Scaling. Like many things. If Larian went the other way, there would be an equal group telling us how they really messed things up this time. I try to look at, did they do well with what they went after? In some ways yes, in others not so much, there is no doubt before I even bought this, balancing a game like this is hard and isn't a Larian strong suit, it just isn't and I'm unsure why it isn't. I always look at the Top Game Designer for the project of a company this size and feel that this part is their signature to the game, the final polishing, they play test and hone their system in. Blizzard has the resources, but they aren't going to make a game like this for us, so beggars shouldn't be choosers.

We rec'd some really improved tools and making some changes that can hone this in individually is there for us. They should probably add various options/sliders in the Gameplay Menu for anyone to find their happy place.

I'm not a fan of the new combat system because it turns combat into a DPS check. A "numbers" game like mmorpgs. CC skills are next to meaningless because while perseverance sucks on player, it works great on bosses. Hey, Why would I try using cc abilities on bosses when it lasts only 1 turn and recover 10k armor for them?

If Larian is afraid of cc chaining, there are better ways to improve:
How about pumping up enemy initiative and making it difficult for players to go first unless players invest heavily in initiative to the point of sacrificing main stats?
How about some "trigger" skills that automatically cast and negates cc when you are cced?
Certain enemies that immune to cc and get damage/AP buff based on the numbers of his/her teammates get cced nearby?
Enemies with auras that reflect certain cc back to you?

If Larian spend more time on encounter design, they could use the system in DOS:EE with some minor balance and it would work much better than what we have in DOS2.

However, the game is already released, so no matter what my opinion is, it would be impossible to redesign the whole system.

There are no good arguments for rng driven gameplay. It's a preference.
It is not something you can easily mod into the game, it'd require extensive work to everything.
It is not something you would want people switching on or off in the middle of a game.

If you're having trouble with a boss that has perseverance, use one damage type to inflict control affects, use the other to focus on hurting their hp.

Which means that you need to do enough damage to deplete both physical and magic armor. If a team could focus on one type of damage the boss would be dead for good.

Simply untrue. First of all, it's not a true preference; it's a "preference" in the same way gambling is. It matters very little if you claim to enjoy gambling or not - unless you're functionally abnormal, you're pray to the same drives and triggers as everyone else.

RNG is about tuning things to a level where the RNG matters, and gives you ups and downs, preying on your basic psychology, but where it does not completely determine the outcome (or is perceived as such), wherein the gambler/player feels cheated (and stops playing).

It's a very basic and foundational concept in game theory, and for whatever reason, Larian have completely missed it. It's really quite strange, and I wonder who was behind it. Larian are no amateurs, but the armor system "as-is" is amateurish.

This strong veering towards reduced complexity is very odd, and it's consistent throughout all the things cut or systematically stripped, whether we're talking the attributes, various sub-systems (or lack thereof) or the armor system.

Maybe you're looking in the wrong direction; perhaps, it's more because the framework is sound but the implementation of it wasn't that we ended up with the system that we have.

Perhaps the implementation required far more resources than there was available at the time to bring up the overall experience for certain players to be 'acceptable'.

Who knows?

What I do know is that blaming the armor system as you guys have done over and over without accounting or assigning blame to other things as well makes a tired and most likely incorrect line of thinking.

The discussions here show that almost no one bothers to reach in and figure out what the optimal version of this system looks like and that everything around and about is a knee jerk reaction.

The debates over rng vs not is pretty stupid too because it skirts the issue and is a red herring.

If I were to design a non rng combat system with CC I would most likely just split up HP and CC defense into different pools. This way you can have good CC with low/no damage and high damage that does not enable CC in any way. CC defense would also likely regenerate each turn on its own (partially).

RNG is not bad in and of itself.

You can swing too far either direction. Too much RNG and it feels like you're not in control. Too little RNG and it feels like everything is predictable.

Finding the balancing point in the middle ... that's the hardest thing to accomplish.

I mean, look at Blizzard and WoW. You'd think as a company by now they would have learned how to balance the idea of too much vs too little rng.

Yet one of the biggest faults that many have with World of Warcraft Legion is the amount of RNG.

So its not an easy task to find a happy middle ground for what is "too much" and what is "too little".

MadDemiurg ... the idea of "armor" against CC is what I think they were trying for. The problem of course is that they tied it to the ability to resist damage.

I said that as a concern early on that I wasn't comfortable with the idea of "Physical Armor" and "Physical Resist" being tossed into the same basket.

I still don't like the idea.

Kind of a shame that DOS2 is hampered by a few issues like this as otherwise I've loved the game.

So if Larian hates RnG on CC why didnt they go for a World of Warcraft style of putting Diminishing Returns on thEse spells? First spell is full duration, second spell in the same DR category only lasts 1/4 as long or even give the target a short immunity. That way you have to think about when to use the precious cc spells instead of mindlessly stripping down the armor. It prevents nobrainer cc chains but keeps them reliable and more tactical than the current system. I think phys/magic armor should stay in the game though, just as protection against any DAMAGE. There could also be introduced a few spells that prevent cc or dispel it.