Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Initiative, how it works now?

10/10, Stabbey.

I rate this post Friendly.

In which case, it's still poor design because it has a stat which doesn't do the things it says it does. If Larian really wants to mandate Enemy-Ally turn order, it should be for all difficulties and the Wits stat should be removed or severely changed. Just deleting it for the highest difficulty isn't Tactician.



No twisting needed. Larian had to break a stat for one difficulty mode to make it work. It's hard to see how that is not an indication of poor design.




I'm not interested in a difficulty level which is essentially just inflating health on enemies. That's boring. A lot of people have the exact same complaint, and those who defend Tactician mode continue to not understand that no matter how many times we repeat it.

It always come down to the same thing.

"Wit is weak due to round robin since Ini is useless."

It always come back to this claim and no matter how much someone will bring up that Round Robin is much more challenging and better designed than "High Ini First Serve", it will always come down to "Larian can think of something then" without offering a proper solution that won't go back to "Stack INI and act 4x in a row, completely deleting the AI".

Most of the whole "ini stacking is good" all comes from the experience with EA. Having been to Act 3, if Ini was a thing, every build must have high Wit because it becomes a game of "Who shoot the source spell first". Easy example, Red PRince story last fight against the other lizard. They have stealth, decent ini and instakilling Arrow storm. Without round robin, If you don't have ini, you die. What's the counter? Get more ini than and have Evasive aura up or you die. In the end, it all comes down to "Stack ini battle" more than making a decent build.

That's why Round robin is good, at least it frees you from having to have wit in every build so you get to play. At least it allows you to replenish your armor with Mend armor and Soothing cold in the middle of all the attack so high ini enemies don't outright wipe your group and high ini team comp don't outright shut down 80% of the enemy team on t1. You already have high crit chance anyway so most of the time, you aren't losing any damage if you crit with high ini build compared to high fin/str.

High ini competition is bad and it gets boring real quick. You only enjoy it most of the time because you are blinded by the amount of power you have against enemies and with that taken away, no wonder most of the complaints have to include how they feel weak compared to the enemies. They only hate round robin because it forces them to actually play well and that plans can actually go wrong now if they were pulled out of their ass in 10 seconds.

Don't hate the changes just because it feels different. Play the game until a certain amount to see the extend of the effect the changes bring along instead of just saying "DURING MY TIME IN EA"

Honestly, I understand why they did the Turn-order stuff and I support it, but in that case take away Initiative from Wits. Solve it different, but don't say Wits influences Turn-order if it does is only in a slight way. This is missleading and bad design. Making it, that players go always first and let them write down, in which order they characters should act during a fight or whatever, having to put points into iniative to keep your team in order, in case of items ruining the order is just aweful. And Wits being mainly a secondary dump attribute after you maxed the first one is aweful as well.

Forcing everyone to play on crit damage and poor design as well, mainly mages should be crit independet, now it seems savage sortilege or how its named is just a must have trait for mages like Backstabbing was for Rogue.

"It always come down to the same thing."

That's a very specific and self-serving way to frame the argument; and it betrays the fact that aspects of a game don't exist in a vacuum to one another.

Initiative is a crucial part of Wit's existence, but also a key point in the design and balance of character development, combat design, equipment selection, and so on. Initiative isn't solely generated by Wits, but it makes up a large portion of the attribute's value, especially early on in the game when crit chance and multipliers are scarce to nonexistant.

I don't understand why you fixate on this single attribute and point. If Initiative were in its original, more sensible state then there would be a greater depth to character building and equipment selection than we see now; with Wit's Initiative bonus making for an alluring option early on as an initiative booster and a long-term investment rather than a raw damage pump stat for after you've exhausted your main combat attribute.

The fact that encounters are unbalanced with Initiative proper isn't a point in favor of Round-Robin, but rather (as others have stated in this thread) show what a flimsy bandaid it is for encounter design and implementation. If Bosses are decided in one-turn rushes and powerful skills dominate encounters then perhaps Initiative isn't the culprit.

Initiative and Wits are also not just relegated to Player Characters, but are also a part of the makeup for the many foes we encounter throughout the game-- Round Robin not only robs players of build variety and options, but streamlines those same facets from the original designer's and future content creator's hands. The ability to create creatures balanced or fixated around certain speeds and making that an obstacle or feature of enemies, encounters, and equipment is all thrown out the window without a system that actually utilizes the mechanic in any meaningful way.

Those are just my two cents, though. I didn't play in the Early Access but I own every game in the franchise and played OS1/OS1:EE extensively, so I'd like to think I'm not talking out of my ass here.

So Initiative being useless is compensating because players going first is an instant easy win, but NEITHER of those are design flaws? Sorry, but that statement is inherently contradictory. At least one, if not both must be a design flaw.

If the enemies always have to go in round robin because otherwise the players will always stomp them, that is a design flaw. Crippling Wits/Initiative to compensate for that problem is, as Great Guardsman puts it, a bandage on the deeper problem.





Stretch Goals



I kinda think that when a company is literally given money to do a thing, that it IS that company's job to actually do the thing. But I'm silly that way.

You want some ideas? Sure. I won't promise they're all winners, because I've only had a couple hours and $0 to work on them, but here's a couple:

1) Maximum caps on WIT per level, so you can only put points into it if it is below the cap. Bonuses from buffs and gear can exceed the cap. Enemies of the same level have Init ranges which stretch from below to a bit above the cap, depending on the enemy. Thus the designer can guarantee that not all players will go first.

2) Initiative gets a dice roll component added to it before a fight starts. This varies based on difficulty. So say Players get to roll 1d6 added to their initiative, no matter what difficulty level. On Explorer, enemies get a 1d4 added to their Initiative, on Classic they get 1d6, the same as players, and on Tactician, they get 1d8 or even 1d10. Thus players are not guaranteed to go first, and the higher the difficulty, the larger the advantage enemies get. This could be displayed in the UI as Initiative 22 (23-28)

If I had a year and a team I could probably some up with more.



I don't have a high initiative composition and my team doesn't all go first. I've got better things to put my attribute points into at the moment.



Another statement suggesting that the only reason all others who do not like the system is that they must be incompetent idiots. That's the thing that I really find most irritating.




I only quoted part of it, but this whole post is very good.

Eh, I think that the whole armor-system is what bite D:OS2 in the back.
It's good for PvP. But D:OS2 isn't a PvP game. It's a 100H SP-game. For that, it sucks balls.

And instead, Larian keeps trying to wurm themselves into ways to make this broken system work, whatever possible, even if collatoral damage is done doing it.

I wasn't even aware this was happening in the game, and it sounds INANE. There's an initiative value in the game. Why would anyone assume it wouldn't work. Cause the developers *broke* it. Intentionally? Who would ever think that would happen? Nobody would expect this.

If being bound to wits was so bad since all other abilities are not much to write home about (really, +5% damage is the opposite of thrilling, all again done to suit PvP over a good SP-experience *sigh*) why not a combat ability. There's plenty of good alternatives there, unlike the boring-to-death abilities. And then make it just highest initiative is a go for the entire order. Have skills or powers that can boost or harm initiative. Make it dynamic. Not just throw it out the window.

Really, Larian should be glad that their game is good in non-Combat since the Combat is a mess. I thought that way in Early Access hoping they fixed it, and I haven't gotten far (sadly enough) but all I hear here they just made it even worse. And that's a shame since D:OS1 combat was great fun. D:OS2 in EA with the armor? Not so much. Wasn't very promosing the only way they could think to add a challenge to stunlock was to extremely overpower (like +5 levels) the opponents like that end-fight (seriously, I had to massively cheese there and it was the sheer opposite of anything resembling fun) and I would have expected them to massively improve on that. Dissapointed to hear the opposite.

Please, next time you add PvP to your game, don't let it ruin the SP-experience by over-tweaking to compensate for that. It's not good for a lenghty SP (or co-op) experience. Really.

When you have to suggest something like adding RNG and stat limitation, you lose the right to say anything about being tactical.

You could have suggested for a better stage design that involve interaction with objects to beat a fight while infinite respawn happen, or to come up with new abilities alter ini, like a cheap ini version of Adrenaline rush with Ini penalty on expiration.

Maybe make Ini give a bonus like first turn free movement up to x meter based on ini for better planning without The Pawn?

Did you even consider that super long and cheap wit buff exists, like the drug den in Act 2?

Get to at least later half of Act 2 or even play through Act 3 first and the strength of round robin will become more obvious. First come first serve has always been a bane of tactical gameplay because it results in even more bloated stat with multiple final forms just to guarantee the enemy won't die straight away. Stat will always be easy to stack and that's why strategy game will try to come up with some sort of diminishing return for them and just go real-time to avoid the problem caused by the nature of turn-based combat because stat like ini is so flat it's just "Higher than X at level Y = OP".

Just look at it from a level designer perspective. How are you going to design a stage and combat that won't get rekt in turn 1 by wit stacker in an FCFS system? Place them so far apart they cant' be targeted on turn 1? Then they can't target back either. Give all of them grounded? Then that just goes to show you have no idea what to do with teleport. Round Robin gets rid of all those problem and it's why modern turn-based game like Wakfu reworked the ini system and went with Round Robin during its development with ini being used for some other bonus instead.

Play through the game first to see what really changes before making a comment. Bias first impression never works well like how I trashed Tactical on the first day too.

You know, being forced to have a back up plan is more tactical, than just playing puzzle with armor types. Fights in D:OS2 are missing a lot of tension, because there is hardly anything that can ruin your tactic. Hardly anything that forces you to improvise, there is more like chess or playing a puzzle.

The warrior sees an opponent on the other side of fire. In D:OS crossing fire was always risky, because you could fail to resist, in D:OS2 you just check your armor: "Oh, still enough, I will just walk through it. Who cares."

Every kind of CC had the probability to fail, therefore casting them had always this kind of tension: will it work or not? Usind a charme arrow and succeeding felt great, failing felt bad, now it feels nothing, because you know it would work. Probability is kind of the core of most RPGs and makes battle feel more organic and alive.

Having such a issue with 'probability to fail' seems to show more an inability to cope with the unpredictable.

Some like chess, some don't, but liking RNG has nothing to do, with if a opinion about RNG sucks or not. It is the delta of randomness that matters.


Just give everyone an innate initiative according to their race/type, if being able to maximise Initiative is to strong. Or just remove every kind of hard cc, if hard is not balancable or even remove skills like teleport, if they are just to op. Teleport makes mazes kind of useless and easy to trick and in fights in even more unbalanced. Teleporting someone into lava is as broken as getting teleported into lava sucks.

The longer I read the (excellent btw) posts here the more I get the feeling that it is indeed the offensively-used teleport that is the main problem here.

The problem I have with wits, initiative, and RNG is the following: it massively reduces the way you can build and play your character in the RPG.

You want to play an agile and fast melee, hit-and-run style: you need speed, finesse weapons, and preferably murder backline mages. You can zip across the battlefield, but you also better not be there any more when that hulking lumbering dude with the 2h axe reaches his mage friend that you just splattered against the wall.

You want to play a cannon mage: you need good positioning, armor spells and a friend to keep you in the clear with hamstrings etc. when that pesky enemy rogue tries to splatter you against the wall. You also need intelligence to overcome any resistance enemies may put up.

etc. etc.

Removing initiative voids all these choices. My rogue is no faster or more agile than the plate wearer (barring skill choices, of course, but then the warrior has access to his own versions of those too). My mage is no slower than the enemy rogue either. All that means that there is no trade-off, and thus no choice, of adaptability and speed vs. defenses and superior firepower.

Also, making status effects purely RNG based (i.e. a flat percentage chance) is stupid, something I really disliked in D:OS1. Skill and defense go out of the window that way. The D&D way of spell resistance and saving throws rewarded investments so much better, for example, even if I have always had issues with its binary nature and scaling. -- But it needn't be that complicated: Like stabbey's (I think it was, apologies if not) suggestion of rolling some kind of dice into the initiative calculation, you could have a resistance value, an attack value determined by int, and a random element to shake things up. Attack + rng > resistance? Status effect is applied, otherwise it fails and only the damage portion is calculated as per status quo.

A character with 10 int and one point in hydro should not have the same chance of freezing an enemy as a character with 24 int and 10 points in hydro, given the same defensive stats on said enemy. That's just mindboggingly bad game design.

If they're going to add RNG to the game then they need to make sure the game is covered in RNG so that any action can be come a bad decision. Divinity only has 1 major combat RNG being the dodge-hit rate and 1 minor RNG being the freezing floor that works almost every time anyway.

So in a game with minimal RNG, if you want to add changes that are indirect but also consistent. You can't add RNG because with so little RNG being presented, the players will just do whatever they can to completely eliminate the RNG and enjoy the profit that comes with it.

It's like imagine if Blitz attack is changed to hit 1-3 targets with 50% damage increase if it hits only one target. People will just use it as a single-target attack spell instead of gap closing.

I already said that the ideas weren't winners, but then again, I didn't spend $100,000, a year and had a team working on them either. Larian did, what's their excuse for this ridiculousness?

Don't you tell me I have no right to say anything.

Better level design.
Better balance design.
Appeal to modern turn-based market players.
etc.etc.

Lots to go on really.

FCFS Turn-based is outdated.

Of course. That applies to all games and doesn't really say much either way.



Come again? And round-robin is the new kid on the block? (By the way, it's not FCFS. It's 'the guy that invested a lot into being able to go first goes first, the guy that invested least goes last'.)

When did die rolls become such a bad thing in rpgs? I've always enjoyed rolling dice in tabletop rpgs and I certainly don't mind them in crpgs either. I'd much rather have a die roll with my character's applicable bonuses determine something like saving throws than some system that's 100% or 0% as it completely removes the fun that comes along with chance happenstances and chance is part of the fun. The better your character is, the better your odds become. It's not like it's a completely random roll, but by making an all or nothing system you're losing that element.

On topic, I'd rather they kept the initiative system from DOS 1.

I hadn't been following this whole saga too closely, but after reading the thread and my own experience playing/modding I have to agree the initiative system is pretty terrible.



The funny thing about the "outdated" argument is some people would say that about turn based combat itself.

Ever since mass market imbeciles were invited in.

To them a chance of achieving something at 80% or 90% or any % is "random" - as if its completely chaotically random. And all that fuels that moronic nonsense is pathetic deranged butthurt their attack missed sometimes or spell didnt hit.

Because in their heads they are still playing action games where player reactions override characters skills - and the devs are fucking listening to that because it brings them more fucking money. Or so they think!

Hence, DOS2 main mechanics as an attempt to have a cake and eat it too.

It never worked and it never will.
Decades of decline were the result before, and even now in this "Renaissance" of "old school Turn based RPGs" the biggest kickstarter successes are trying to worm in more "action" by removing as much of "RNG" as they can - thus directly reducing character skills influence on the gameplay itself - which make the game less of an RPG and more of a hybrid action RPG or, in more extreme cases, action games with some RPG mechanics.

Then even in a TB game you get the mechanics such as Hard CC with 100% chance to succeed, and then you get binary armors that prevent any "RNG" from disturbing the imbeciles that you need to whack off to win and you get the removal of initiative and ALL of its effects on the gameplay - because its not fucking binary enough!

The you get insane deranged proclamations such as this :

"When you have to suggest something like adding "RNG" and stat limitation, you lose the right to say anything about being tactical."

And what was the one before? That "You cannot expect "insane" tactical options in a ... Turn based game"?
(the insane part is a idiotic strawman woven into an absurdity)

Did you play the first game?

RNG with Status effects WAS dice rolling in D:OS1. You rolled your chance to stun and the enemie rolled his chance to resist. Better stats and your chance to succeed was higher, debuff your enemie to increase the chance to succeed even further, like make him wet. Increase your own bodybuilding/Will power to increase your own chances of resisting in return.


Also saying there is hardly any RNG in the game is stupid:
- Doing max or minimum damage is RNG
- Doing critical damage is even more RNG, except if you raged to do it
- Hitting is RNG
- Dodging is RNG to reduce Hit chance even further
- Looting is mostly RNG
- Critical looting with Lucky Charme is even more RNG
- Quest rewards are often RNG aswell, like the well
- Items offered by a trader are mostly RNG too
- Item modifications are so heavily RNG that you can have a Str-Weapon that will give you + on Int and therefore will be totally useless

Not sure, if I forgot something, but saying there is hardly any RNG left is just stupid.

The Rng is low even with those factors as they are heavily limited or offer way to get around it.

1) The damage range isn't large so even if you hit min or max, you don't feel like you gain too much or lose much. You can still estimate if it will kill nearly every time and is given the information on how tanky stuffs are from the get-go with Loremaster so you can always calculate it.

2) Hit rate starts off really high making it really consistent and you can even get + accuracy gear. Most high level weapon even offer it to make the base accuracy 100% instead and enemies will need ton of dodging to even compete with it. But even then, even if they do have dodge rate, Floor-AoE hit rate is 100% at all time if it's enough to knock them down.

3) Every spell that has dodge included has a really ridiculous scaling that it completely negate the attack almost 100% of the time, making it very consistent. Most enemies in the late game also opt for magic anyway to not miss and just hit you, which is why LEadership is ridiculously strong with its magic resist.

4) On the subject of loot in general, lucky charm isn't RNG heavy because of how often it triggers and that it needs levels to be useful else you will just get something like 1k gold that is worthless. It's so consistent at guaranteeing you that you will get stuff after you reach a certain level on it. The area you use it in also guarantee what level you will get.

Traders also have a set of legendaries/divine they always sell so if you visit them on level up on or restock, you are almost guaranteed to get a legendary/divine of the type you want.

Legendaries and Divines of a certain name will only appear at a certain level so if you know at what level a certain legendaries will appears, you can go to the right npc and get it. My weapon legendaries and divine are always updated in act 2 because of this with minimal luck involved once I find out who sells the 2h and crossbow legendaries.

5) For rune, Frame of Power guarantee +str on everything. The only one I annoying is Frame of Mystic but I used up all my frames on various resist rune before I got the chance to test if stat bonuses are always the same or not based on the type of rune being upgraded.

So the only RNG in the game that players has the least control on is just crit. Everything else only give off a fake RNG feel because it has % attached to it or because some of the informations are hidden. Even then, Crit becomes less RNG heavy thanks to flame rune + late game gear giving you like 3 slots to spec for crit chance. You get less armour that way but very consistent crit chance, easily reaching 100% with some wit.

You're going to have to explain me how "they had to change the very way this stat works to balance, which hints as a design problem" becomes "I don't want to adapt and I want things to become easier !", because I really don't see any form of logical link between the two.