Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Thoughts after 100 hours.

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Larian studios has created a masterpiece, this RPG game has meaningful player interaction with overall narrative, interesting and epic storytelling, creative progression system (both story and combat). Though the game is not without fault, since most of the game’s good merits do not lack any praise, these are some thoughts pointing out some of the flaws.

Overall Combat (On Tactician Difficulty, 4 Man party)

The game’s overall combat feels “Right” in first half of Act 1 “Fort Joy”, the encounters require tactical thinking, Scrolls and potions are very relevant, enemy type (Melee tank vs Range dps) are threatening in their own way.

However as the game progresses, especially starting from the middle-end part of act 2, the combat has degraded into assassinate/maim enemy dps, while rest of AI team figures out how to navigate the terrain only to be teleported away. Some of the dps builds compared to health pools (both enemies’ and players’) are ridiculous towards end of the game, so much so that mechanics can be ignored, armor types are irrelevant. Although this does fit the narrative of a Godwoken, but it doesn’t really make combat interesting.

At first glance, it seems the core of the problem lies with amount of health pool on both sides relative to damage output. The combinations of critical damage chance and critical damage multiplier really starts to break the game starting from mid part of act 2. It is a problem of undertuned healthpools or overtuned damage outputs or a mixture of both.

Another side effect of this imbalance caused all defensive options to worth “less” compared to offensive options within the game. There are simply no need to defensive options if your team manages to wipe out half of the enemies within first turn, which happens quite often with 3-source point spells towards end of the game (Arrowstorm, Thunderstorm).

If the battles are more drawn out, the relative cost of movement would decrease, the encounters would feel a lot more like battles instead of assassination attempts.

The experience curve problem, overleveling and underleveling

At launch, the act 2 experience gain are pretty overtuned if all quests are completed, which caused butterfly effect of players overleveling rest of the game’s content. This in turn made combat encounters trivial even on hardest tactician difficulty.

On the flip side, for those who skipped a portion of the open ended act 2, would end up underleveling the rest of the game, which renders some of the fight impossible. This problem is only amplified by the exponential stats growth as level rises.

The experience gains and level breakpoints are always tricky in open world games, especially with the freedom Larian is striving for. Also, while developing the game, the experience curve probably had to be manually adjusted as quests are added, and sometimes when developers forget to tune this aspect, it causes hell of a mess to fix.

Therefore, the long term solution of this problem probably calls for a dynamic scaling enemies based on player level. This solution was attempted by Elder Scroll 4: Oblivion many years ago, there were many issues with this model, which will not be discussed in details here. But I personally believe since the premise of the two games are vastly different, what didn’t work for elder scroll could work here for Divinity OS series.

A quick example, an intended difficult area could be set as player level+1 as players enter the area, which will negate the drawbacks of visiting areas in unintended order if the areas were set to static levels. This dynamic scaling enemies caused ES4: Oblivion players to feel no progression throughout the entire game as enemies constantly re-spawn with equivalent level, however DOS series does not have this problem.

Talents, combat skill formulas and specializations, comparison with DOS 1


Overall talents in DOS 2 are less “interesting”, most of the “Weaker” talents simply too situational. Top tier talents are usually applicable in ALL situations. Talents should probably be balanced around the number of situation they would apply as well as the bonuses.

The combat skill formula needs to be tweaked to be more in line with actual specialization as well. For example, why do huntsmen and scoundrels need to maximize warfare instead of ranged/dual wield, a mage would get more out of polymorph/two-handed/scoundrel compared to the school of magic you are specializing. These inconsistencies need to be ironed out.

The specialization schools in DOS 2 have alot more viable styles of combat with overall good balancing. But they have less interesting touch compared to the DOS 1, in DOS 1, a fire mage with max point into pyrokinetics would be rewarded with fire immunity talent choice as well as high tier spells. However, in DOS 2, a 10 point pyrokinetic mage would be exactly the same as a 5 pyrokinetic mage, in fact, the 5 pyrokinetic mage probably does more damage with 5 points extra into scoundrel/polymorph. The best designed spell in game is probably summon incarnate with many special twist, and even great bonus at summoning 10.

The combat specialization needs to matter more past 5 points. Some examples could be, Pyrokinetics gaining spell radius/width, Hydrosophists could gain “shatter” instant death on frozen targets below 10% hp. An interesting twist would bring back the charm DOS1 once had.


Source ability system and why they are currently underwhelming

The idea of a limited resource gating powerful spell/abilities is very interesting, however the execution presented in game is undeniably poor. Here are few reasons why they do not work:

-Three point source abilities are too powerful! There are no need to cast any other source abilities each encounter (the resource system doesn’t really allow them neither). 1 and 2 point source spells are useless in comparison, the enemies are already dead when smoke of ultimate spells clears.

-All defensive options are currently useless as enemies can be sniped down before they become any threat at all.

-Two point source abilities are too expensive because of the total source pool only goes up to three.

-Source point are often too scarce, replenishing regularly source require players to disrupt their current adventures.

Suggestion:

1. Increase total source pool to 10 or 20, battles would
restore a portion of source upon conclusion.
2. Decrease the power level of ultimate source spells.
3. Vastly increase healthpool on everyone, so defensive
options play a larger role.

Game’s monetary generation

Needless to say, how broken lucky charm + thievery + bartering is. In my playthrough with my friend, we managed to accumulate 300k gold without touching thievery arriving Arx. This is after we bought out every divine gear from vender and learned all spells from two or 3 combat schools on a party of four.

The game probably needs adjust these civil skills to a more reasonable level, and vastly increase the profit from crafting. Drowning players in resources because lack of resource generation from the game doesn’t really make the game feel engaging. A vast crafting system with end product having very little impact on the game feels like you encounter mountains of junks throughout the adventure.

The best items in game probably should come from crafting and maybe vendors. The current prices on some of the gear are simply too low after high level of bartering, mostly due to how combinations of civil abilities breaking the game economy. The craftable gears becomes irrelevant as soon as you reach level 2, which could easily be expand upon.


Concluding thoughts:

These flaws may just be syndromes of limited development time and resources, with modding, some of these problems would be surely fixed by the community.

These shortcomings by no means undermine the accomplishments Larian studio has achieved with Divinity: Original sin 2, Larian has nailed the story narrative, world building, creative quests, and an in-depth combat system. Hopefully these criticism/suggestions will further this masterpiece towards perfection.

Creative progression system combat wise?

What exactly do you mean by that? There is nothing creative about attribute and skill trees. D:OS1 was creative, but D:OS2 is 0815 or even worse. Summoner is the only skill with a level 10 'benefit' and even the highest tier of skills is learnable with only 3 points in, if I read correctly.

Everything in this game is focused in giving you more damage, not on creative ways but totally basic and linear. Classic mixed composition are pretty much killed by the armor system, because you can't really focus the same target without pretty much doubling the necessary.

Playing tank is no legit tactic, because AI will just ignore you, if you don't bait them with taking something like Glass cannon. Also the AI is pretty much always the same, just with a different costume and different skills. A zombie is as smart as a elite assassine.

You have to realize this game is made for people with far less tactical RPG experiences, not just us die hard fans of the genre. Also, the creativity doesn't come in forms of baseline status, but spell design. The developer really did try to move away from monotone skill system compared to DOS1, this is but another iteration.

The mixture of schools actually work for most part, and have their own perks and drawbacks. The increase in viable combat styles is astonishing, this by no means a small feat and it's far more difficult to do than most imagined.

Yes I agree individual combat schools feel lackluster, that was also one of the points mentioned above. Though, we also don't know if Larian is planning more contents in these regards. The game just got released after all, there are plenty of opportunities to patch these up in an expansion.



Well, pure tanks are indeed useless, that's why the most viable tank builds currently are hybrids, between support/debuff/CC, there is a mixture in there not as weak as a pure warfare tank. In terms of how to improve the pure tank's viability, my personal take would give these tanks some perks where your CCs bypass armor checks in the future (Maybe perk comes from 1-handed 10?). With an overall health increase, the tanks would act as a main disrupt role compared to dps, that would make them alot more dangerous than what they are right now.

To OP.

You have it right at the start, it is a masterpiece. To me this is the most fun I've had with a CRPG. And you say that even when weighing in the balancing issues with the game. But you put way more effort into the problems than what is right. I get that, we all do that. But perhaps soon, we'll realize these issues are the main topics in General and perhaps we do need to praise the good things, because whatever those are, they outweigh the balancing issues for us to still call it a masterpiece.

Good news mods can fix a lot of this. I'll have something out there when I'm satisfied with play throughs, but source points, gold, prices, armor system, skills, nothing being abandoned, just refined. There is a LOT of low hanging stat fruit to work on.

You are correct, these issues don't really break the whole amazing experience for me personally, but they are things could improved upon. Larian studio deserves all the praise they are getting and more. My hopes are these messages reach the developers for their future project involving DOS series.

The game is a buggy, imbalanced mess, but sure, praise them even more. Perhaps the next game will turn out even worse at release.

Right lie to the world how I really feel, you have your voice as well. A few bugs I've noticed, nothing major, not done. Imbalanced mess... well I took it into my own hands, that said even if I didn't, it was well playable. But I do agree balancing isn't their strong suit.

The game is a colourful, intelligent RPG-journey through a smart world with working tactical fights and an epic story and pretty good characters.

It is not without issues but you seem to look for a crusade that is worth fighting. This one here... isn't.

The DPS race to the finish becomes a real problem in Act 2 or more when bosses have disgusting damage and armor piercing disables while you have none of that, not to mention gimmicks like the doctor where you either one shot him turn 1 or face the hardest boss in the entire game.

The final boss gimmick is also a DPS race since killing his adds solves nothing and every adds has nearly 20k armor/hp with stupid amount of damage and abilities, essentially forcing you to arrow storm your way to victory. Combined with high scaling of items, when you are level 20 you find your self struggling, a level later you are one shotting everything in the game.

A bow from level 21 to level 22 had 200 damage difference, a near 100% increase.

Insane level scaling is definitely the core of the problem. The dps scales faster than hp scaling in middle of the game (act2/3), then act 4 catchups so quickly it's unbelievable (on Tactician).

My friend and I started deliberately going into the fight with intended level of gears, and let's just say, the fights are very very difficult. Like you said, you have to resort to dps race, I don't know this will be easily fixed unless they hire someone extremely experienced in designing challenges and combat with variety. Arx has been enjoyable with on the level gears, the difficulty though, I can imagine some would even say it's impossible.

If you going into the fight with level 21/22 and optimized everything (Gears mainly with that -ap cost green tea sold by Kemm's wife), fights definitely started becoming too easy just like act2/3.