Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Itemization and crafting in Original Sin II

Background: I DO like D:OS. Actually I think D:OS is the best party-based RPG of the last decade, and probably the best co-op experience of the whole genre.

Having said that, I have to be harsh with that game on this single issue that almost drove me crazy: Itemization.

Even though I'm the kind of guy who prefers hand-placed items to random loot, it's not the randomness per se that I felt totally out place in the first game. It's the sheer amount of valuable items that the game constantly throws at you, at any given moment, from the beginning to the end of the campaign.

To make even more clear my issue with this system: randomized or not, the amount of potentially useful loot you get by simply killing stuff in D:OS, is so massive, so overwhelming, that crafting and exploring for better loot are basically pointless activities.
Sure, you can make your own magic bow starting from a piece of wood, but why should you? You can explore any corner of the map to find any hidden chest but, again, why?In both cases, you'd get a better weapon/armor in no time by killing the next mob.

From a game so strongly based on its systems, what I was expecting to see are 3 macro-systems (itemization, exploration and crafting) that works together to enhance the player experience. What I got, though, it's a game where 2 of these systems (exploration and crafting) are good-great, one sucks (itemizaiton) and none of them seems to work together with the other two.

I hope this issue is going to be fixed in OS II.
Personally, I have lots of ideas about how to fix it. But, of course, I'm not a game developer.

I'm sure they've made lots of changes to loot in the enhanced edition, and the systems will only improve in D:OS2. I agree though, that the sheer amount of magic items you find really devalues the experience of loot. Also, there just isn't that much variety in the variables, so you end up finding like 50 +loremaster rings. I really hope they've at least halved the junky blue and green items you find, and added more variety. So far though, the loot I've seen in EE demonstration videos hasn't seemed too different, but it's hard to tell.

Yeah, the lack or real variety and interesting, unique gears was my 2nd big issue with D:OS itemization.

Now, I know they started making changes to the loot system in the EE, but I'm pretty sure that they couldn't change the whole system on the fly. I hope this time they are considering the problem right from the beginning, designing loot, exploration and crafting as a comprehensive whole (which - in my experience - it's the only right way to design these 3 systems).

Baudolino05 - you may as well post your ideas about how to fix the itemization here. Larian does take suggestions and good ideas from the community, and if they don't like it or think it's a workable solution, they'll ignore it. But you never know until you post it.

I liked the itemization in D:OS, although I prefer loot that has abilities almost as gamechanging as most spells in the game. When I played a hydro/tank hybrid build stats often decided my arms race against all the stat requirements in the game. Lose strength and the new armor had to go into stash, lose blocking and (in theory) you took severely more damage, lose int and the mightiest spells and this cape were unusable, for a long time 1 point of speed decided if you could go for the first round combo or not. With a little salty taste it was possible to let go of some constitution at least.

All this put me into the permanent consideration if the new loot, most often barely fitting my needs, actually was better than the old one or not, always depending on what other loot might appear to replace what I already had.

If it is possible to give this restrictive mechanism to the grand majority of builds in D:OS II, then imho this would be even better than handplaced epic loot and everything I have seen so far.
+There is a couple more advantages/pay-offs over predictable loot: There possibly is loot for every build at every stage of the game; Every build more or less has the same chance for interesting loot.

Necessarily the game always had to throw absolutely random loot at me and this in amounts rivalling the huge variety of bonus combinations.

The conclusion is, that sheer amount of valuable loot is a necessity for this system to work. DO NOT CHANGE.

How does crafting fit in? I don't know. I did not use it often enough. The things you could make (if you knew how) were reliable, but replaced after a couple of hours (I used multiple +1 speed rings during midgame due to bad drops). Also, until you knew if it was possible/how to make stuff, you often used a lot of ingredients you probably did not find when it would have come in handy (and even then you needed lots of everything).
By observation, the most appreciated crafting was improvement. Tossing nails into shoes, or putting a ruby into your armor. It was both reliable and it gave a little kick of happiness.
So if it is possible to enable everyone to tinker around with tons of loot patches which might have a wide range of obscure effects, we might obtain a system that is more or less independent from whatever loot you find.
Taking into account my first paragraph the bonuses that can be obtained by patches should, at least until late midgame, be different from everything that loot already provides.
When the time has come, and you hope to find at least some new items, then crafting some +2 attribute on anything might mitigiate frustrating randomness. (For that matter, consider a vendor whose stash can be rerolled with money). Another direction with similar characteristics is crafting stuff which cannot be found (e.g. traps, food, robochickens, fake potions, ...).
Beware the mess in PoE. If you can craft anything, the possibility devalues everything you have: Sometimes less is doing more.


Regarding exploration: Fighting and Exploration do not exclude each other, they go hand-in-hand. That's why I do not see a problem. It might be a good idea to give hidden treasure multiple loot with a level bonus and lower boundary restrictions. Maybe it should be predefined by hand which number/level/tier items appear (This probably has already been done).

What interests me, though, is if the game should have a skewed randomization towards your skillsets, i.e. if you have three people with 2h-skill you will find a lot of 2h in the game.
I personally think this will harm the overall experience. Even implementations with little effect will give you the impression that the game specifically caters to your taste. It is like in Starcrafft II when you decide if you want to save Haven or purge it from the Zerg, you are always right. In one case the colony is not infested, in the other Dr Hanson becomes a monster. Canon is whatever pleases you.
Gameplay-wise this might even improve the game. It is the mindset, that active avoidance of reactivity and contra bothering me. When three guys contend for the same items, they have earned the argument.

Actually, the only conclusion I draw here is that both the dominance of the + [insert random stat/skill] kind of gears and the sheer amount of loot are undesirable features, which add nothing to game except for an unnecessary amount of item management.
You can have stat requirements for gears in your game (not that I'm particularly fond of them) without filling the player inventories with boring + random attribute gears. You just need a levelling system that takes in account the aforementioned requirements (see Demon's/Dark Souls). Additionally, you don't need this ginormous vertical growth of the gear level you have in D:OS. Few is definitely better in this area.
Finally, there is basically no hope for an itemization system to takes in account all possible builds provided by a good RPG. That's where the crafting system should play a role. A good crafting system is meant to allow players to customize gears according to their needs.

Well, I doubt developers didn't have a plan for loot in OS D:II. Having said that, a couple of years ago I "designed" a system for my P&P sessions that works like that (I'm not saying it would fit with D:OS II, but by describing it, I can show my idea of interconnected game systems):

So, a typical "magic" weapon in my system has the following features:

- Quality (the weapon basic level, which determines its stats)
- Peculiar Features (things like "balanced", "sharpen", etc... which are simple bonuses to a single weapon stat, like damage or accuracy).
- A secondary material (like alchemical silver, mercury, ruby, etc, which - of course - add secondary damage types to the weapon and/or give it a bonus against particular enemy types.
- One or more relics (depending on the weapon's quality), which are unique, not craftable items that add special features to your gear. Serious stuff by all means.

So, provided that your character has enough points in blacksmithy and all the required materials, he can craft any quality of weapons from the scratch, and add them any additional feature. He can make an "exceptional" "balanced" poleax, for instance. With enough points in alchemy (and the required reagents), he can also add an additional damage type to this weapon. And with enough points in jewelry he can remove/attach any relic he's dicovered.

Relics, though, are not craftable items, so - finding an high quality weapon, with some powerful relics attached, it's always a moment to remember, because players can keep at least a part of it (the weapon itself, the materials it's made of or - of course - its relics).

One can keep the weapon as it is. Destroy it and reuse the materials. Remove its relics and attach them to his favorite weapon. Or keep the weapon and change the relics. It's up to the player.

In short, exploration in this system is strongly encouraged by the relic rush, but at the same time players can tailor their gears according to their needs, provided that they are good enough with crafting or have enough money to pay an high-level artisan.

The prominence of random loot and the overwhelming amount of it that you get in D:OS really detract from the exploration aspect. You know you are just going to find Generic Sword of Mediocrity wherever you are and in whatever chest you look. I definitely prefer hand placed gear, though you could have a mix. Unique items you get from exploration and bosses, and random loot from the mobs throughout the game. Uniques should also have special properties you can't get anywhere else, Obsidian did a really bad job with this in PoE like transfat said. Since it's not really feasible to expect unique items for every slot for every conceivable build, crafting can fill the hole, so to speak. Crafting shouldn't be able to replace the loot you gain from exploration entirely though. It's a pretty delicate job of balancing crafting to be useful but not so it eclipses everything else.

Baudolino05, That's cool. As long as it's not like gems or some crap. Every game, except perhaps Diablo 3 that had like socketable games/relics into their weapons always sucked so bad that you'd almost wish that the socket was replaced with something more useful. They are always significantly underpowered.

Pretty much what I intended when a talked about complementary systems.



Actually Relics are the most interesting part of my system. I mean, a relic is what makes unique a named gear. They always give peculiar abilities, which more often than not have a condition: things like a substantial health regen when you hit a critic, or an automatic teleportation in a safe area when your health is really low. Relics are meant to performe "miracles", after all .