Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Larian, what's being done about stat inflation?

If anything at all?

This single-handedly ruins the combat in DOS2. I bought this game after reading all these 10/10 reviews praising it for its strategy and challenge only to find out it's just artificial difficulty due to stat inflation.

I don't have a problem if an enemy fighter targets my party member with the lowest armor. That's smart, fair, and exactly what the player should do against the enemy. I don't necessarily have a problem wih the physical/magical armor separation either because I can see pros and cons to it.

I DO have a problem when an enemy who is the same level as me has twice my armor, three times my damage and four times my health. It forces me into a constant cycle of looting every container, grabbing very object that's not nailed down, and transferring everything to my barterer to sell so I can scrounge up enough gold to buy equipment that's half as effective as the enemy's just so I don't get two-shotted. Then I meet an enemy one level above me and repeat the same process all over again because all my equipment became obsolete.

There is no strategy involved; no counterplay. It's cheap, artificial difficulty that gives the illusion of challenge. This is no different to games like Destiny 2 that gates your progress based on a gear system that forces you to grind.

So Larian, can you give an official statement about what you're doing or planning to do with the stat inflation in DOS2? Or perhaps it's too hard to fix without changing the entire combat system to maintain the challenge that earnt the game so many praises from reviewers. Or maybe criticisms posted on message boards don't mean much when the game already has a 90+ rating on metacritic.

If nothing changes, I fully expect DOS3 to be a loot grinder like Diablo 3. Perhaps we could have an auction house as well.

My only problem (on tactician) with the system was when I outleveled some encounters and steamrolled them in 2 turns. But when I was fighting higher levels than me I finally felt challenged and the fighting was fun. So yeah, maybe a more normalized progression would be good. There are some mods that accomplish that, and for my second playthrough I may try them out.

I'm only at fort Joy now but i've had a two realy hard fights where mobs had even 1 lvl lower then my group. 4 lvl Magister (don't remember the name) with two-handed sword that executed prisoner (made it hostile) when i was 5 and 6 lvl Void Moloch in the woods when i was 7. Realy HARD fights. And that's not even a bosses so i'm little sceared for what is waiting me next...

I think the first act is the most balanced out of them all. The spells aren't as destructive as later and more importantly, the scaling curve is linear until level 8. The game has 4 "leaplevels" where the scaling goes through the roof. I believe 9, 13, 16 and 18 are these levels. This coupled with the tons of experience you get in act 2, you will end up overleveling pretty much everybody in act 3 and 4 and making the game a walk in the park at that point.

Although I had the same complaints, gold was not the issue. In fact I ended the game with about 600,000 gold and probably another 200,000 gold worth of potions, gear, ingredients and stuff in bags.

There is no problem making money. The problem is that its tedious to have to change gear every 2 levels. I mean... i barely just got this brand new unique, and I only used it in about 4 (maybe 5) fights before it was already obsolete. Also, uniques in this game suck with exception of 2 items, the crossbow in act 1 and the 2h axe later in act 2. I think uniques were designed before stat inflation was tested at its current level.

Solution is actually simply. There is a mod that reduces stat inflation (DnD progression or DOS1 progression). There is also a variant that eliminates inflation entirely though I am not sure if this is good. I am trying the DOS1 progression in my new game because I read there was some rounding problems with DnD progression (seems the engine always rounds up for damage calculations).

Why uniques suck? They are just OP a.f.
Just take a look at these boots:

Because those are not great. Granted I used them, but they didnt help much. By the time I was level 20, I already had one ranger with max wits so the extra initiative was not useful. Thievery was useless, I was already rich. Sneaking useless. Immunities look nice, but why is your rogue/hunter getting hit? They are always up on top of a tower or away from the big crowd (or using a shield) so I never enjoyed the benefit of these legs. Also, with these legs, you lose about 300-400 magic armor and another 200 regular armor. Not to mention, the finesse characters usually dont have tons of HP's. So overall, these were not so great. They are ok at best. If my ranger got targeted and cant run away, they were dead. Period. No amount of immunities were going to help and extra damage boost was available on other legs anyway.


Honestly, on tactician, the only real defensive problems are raw physical damage, fire damage (extreme) and to a lesser extent poison. For CC's, the only thing that ever got me in trouble was charm. The other CC's were not a big deal since they had a counter and I can always do damage from range if I had to and melee generally has high armor even without shield.

I played solo as a max strength / warfare char so countering CC was crucial.
Used Uncanny Evasion / Skin Graft / Peace of Mind / Glitter Dust

That small stealth point helped me a lot at the Death Room.
Items with immune to hard CC will be always better then extra stats.

With such setup game can't offer any obstacle to stop you.

As I'm still in act 2 and just starting to get into the meat of what people think is a scaling problem, I might be wrong here, but how is being incentivised to go vendor shopping every level a bad thing, if you only level up every other hour, or maybe even longer in the later levels? It's not like you need level appropriate gear in all slots to be fine (at least not for our hybrid damage party on tactictian, though as I said, only in act 2 so far, might change after level 13) I used the teleport gloves until lvl 11 I think.

Sure, It might need a bit of tweaking, but people speak as if they want to almost ignore gear altogether, and if that's the case, I'm not sure you are playing the correct genre of game.

It's not necessary to keep everything 100% up to date, you can get cheap replacement non magical upgrades and hope to find better stuff later.

It's not an easy problem to address, it's easy to power game your way through, but even a rough team of misfits can bungle through with proper strategy.

I agree with the original poster. In a great game in so many ways, Larian has opted for the lazy way of balancing difficulty by bloating hp/damage. Best approach to increased difficulty would be to have larger mob spawns yet with total xp remaining same or even slightly less to ensure the party isn't overleveled as is frequently the case now. This way the player could feel properly "heroic" as in going against the odds and not cheated when bested in combat. Having a random or fixed chance of each enemy spawned being slightly higher level is also better than simply inflating hp and damage.

Because you won't be as happy finding epic gear, if you know next level up it will be outdated again.

Agree w/ OP. I've spent 60 hours on this game and I think 40 hours was staring at inventory screens.
20 hours... FUN
40 hours... NOT FUN!

Right, I'm working on my own stat mod, but I'm testing it out before making too much attention.

I've asked the mods who have done these and they have been kind enough to answer, they are making educated assumptions with some pretty heavy stats and don't know how it plays out for certain. I hope they are clear about it, you could put yourself in a unworkable situation.

But yeah, this game has has these bump levels at some places that are big % bumps. I've kept them in but a 10% increase vs something huge, to have something a little different than every other level. But these unique bumps could just be removed and just use the standard per level adjustment that are built in to and are modifiable. You can make it where 1 level anytime means a lot, a little or anything in between, I have tweaked them down a little to make them less noticeable. It is amazing how easy this can be done. I just need to test the whole game (and that is only one party) to make sure its good enough, with no gotcha's.

I had no problem with just using lucky charm loot and upgrading weapons on level ups. In act 4 I would buy any decent divine piece a vendor might have. The game becomes very easy mid act 2 and the damage you can put out far exceeds enemy stat pools.

Are you playing on Classic or Tactician? The core of the issue is about Tactician not Classic.

Tactician

2handwarrior ranger rogue and a support mage, you can pick off 2 enemys a round without using source skills.
The main boss of the final fight does not even get a turn

You are playing 3 Physical + supp its normal that you wreak everything. Phy damage is quite op atm.

I honestly don't think a magic party would be much different. They would just have to rely on source skills more often. The only thing that is possibly op about physical is arrow storm, which a magic party would have 3 magic versions of it.

However when I fought the gods mates in hall of echos they had 100% immunity to all magic. Fane had to use a hammer he was ill equipped to use as every point was in INT.

Sure there is evasion and that is a bore for physical dealers.

After 150 hours playing 2 lone wolf (one archer, Lohse, one inquisitor, Fane) sure they don't mesh but I only just got to Arx.

I can't see 100% either Physical or Magical would work. One or the other has to sit out a fight occasionally as they have nothing to add. If your enemy has evasion or 100% immunity you are stuck - you MUST use other trait.

That's a good thing though innit? Alive and dead, magic and physical, male and Lohse,