Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Issues as according to me

I know this wasn't your exact point and you were more about the RNG but they are related in that they seemed to cherry pick multiple design strategies and smush them all together, but not necessarily in the most coherent way. I think a couple of patches will resolve the issue, IMHO. It is not as "we r DOMED!1!!" as many are making it out to be.

Attributes: I don't see your problem. They give small boosts that add up over time. Nothing wrong with that.
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Talents: The talents are cool. Sure some are stronger for minmaxing, but not every player minmaxes. There are loads of people who play this game to roleplay. They want to play the grenade throwing dwarf, no matter if there are better minmax-choices. Check out any pen & paper game and you will see the same thing there.

I do not think using RNG and stat inflation are parts of different design strategies or are inherently incompatible. That said, I agree the stats are kinda silly and hate JPRGs with a burning passion

The question is, does the dev team even perceive the current state as something to fix? I'm not sure the people who want even basic combat balancing are a significant portion of the playerbase, going by the steam reviews people are playing the game as a roamer and do not care.

I think the disconnect is when you base the ENTIRE game around "American tabletop game" as you phrased it, then throw out these Japanese RPG style static (and huge) damage numbers and stats, it is very jarring. Pick a design philosophy and stick to it! If we are going to be arbitrary why not 100 in each stat to match the inflated vitality, armour, etc?

I know this wasn't your exact point and you were more about the RNG but they are related in that they seemed to cherry pick multiple design strategies and smush them all together, but not necessarily in the most coherent way. I think a couple of patches will resolve the issue, IMHO. It is not as "we r DOMED!1!!" as many are making it out to be.

That is the problem:

FANBOYS

People that just outright lie to themselves and everyone else (devs included) about how marvelous their game is and how it is perfect in every aspect.

They just end up destroying franchises.

There isn't some grand conspiracy in the background, the majority genuinely enjoys the game.
It isn't a useless pile of shit, though pretty shallow if the story isn't enough for you.
Just the way it is: kids and the common folk took over RPGs from the neckbeards

That is the problem:

FANBOYS

People that just outright lie to themselves and everyone else (devs included) about how marvelous their game is and how it is perfect in every aspect.

They just end up destroying franchises.

Typical hyperbolization that fanboys do to discredit any kind of criticism.

It is not gonna work with me.

The Divinity games have always been not very mechanically polished but great for having tons of nonrepetitive contents to explore. Since Divine Divinity it has basically been Larian's game development style. The players should have expected that for D:OS 2 too.

The Divinity games have always been not very mechanically polished but great for having tons of nonrepetitive contents to explore. Since Divine Divinity it has basically been Larian's game development style. The players should have expected that for D:OS 2 too.

I really don't know what you mean by this. Div OS1 had some of the best mechanical polish of any crpg I've ever played. I can't even find a game that holds a candle to it. So it make perfect sense why people are disappointed that Div OS2 was watered down significantly.

Some complaints I heard:
Stealing and Crafting should have been more interesting, self-made items are too powerful.
Sneaking is almost always worse than invisibility skills.
Bartering and lucky charm have very little effects, and it's tedious to switch to your looter for looting or move items and money to your barterer.
Persuading has a rock paper scissor mini-game, annoying if the player really want a certain outcome, and it doesn't scale well, 11 points for each win is no different than 6.
Item repairing is really tedious.
Traits pressure the player to make certain role-playing choices for character builds.
In the vanilla version, breaking a chest would lead to content loss, why they removed that in EE?
Strength/dexterity/intelligence are bland and discourage hybrid builds, though not completely invalidate them. Perception is too weak.
Talents are quite unbalanced, Hyperopia acutally lead to less accuracy in long range.
Too much hard CC spells, grenades, arrows. Smoke is too effective against long range enemies.
Lack of synergies between earth-fire and water-air. It would be great if steam cloud was more useful, for example.

You are completely right in the case of balance, divinity 1 OS was not so, even in the enhanced edition. However, it is a single player game, Balance can be secondary to making different things feel interesting and varied. Its ok that my cool bard multiclass character is slightly less effective than what is the most "combat effective". Not only would I not know what's the best until I tried both or looked it up on a wiki (which you shouldn't do anyway), I have plenty of fun with both.

When I say mechanical polish in divinity, I don't mean every option is just as good as any other to a T. I mean the systems in place are well made, reward creative play, and are satisfying to use. I don't think any CRPG is 100% balanced, nor do I think they should be.

High amount of RNG is mostly a tradition of American tabletop game industry that had been carried to early video game industry. Tabletop games from other places may use less RNG, there is a more deterministic class of tabletop games called Eurogame, for instance. Just because many old-school hardcore RPGs (that have been influenced by American tabletop games such as D&D) use a lot of RNG, doesn't mean there is anything inherently hardcore about it.

Best part of the game ruined.

We all have our own opinions. Steam users 94% say the like.