Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Should Div2 have some overpowered skills?

Well I would say yes,but I can imagine others might have a different opinion,so let me explain.
A couple of overpowered skills for us to discover has some benifits but no real drawbacks.
If you don't want to use them ,just don't.I read countless times on this forum how people stated that they don't use scorpions or frost on a weapon.So we're fine there.
The only problem would be in player versus player combat,but that's not exactly on the horizon.
And if Larian does develop it they can always change or even disable some skills.Happens all the time in other multiplayer games.
So which benefits do I see in singleplayer?
First of all they are an exciting discovery the first time you play the game.
Secondly they are a blessing for more casual players who don't read these forums,made some less than ideal skill choiches and consider not playing on when they get frustrated.
Lastly for those who do like to use those skills,well they are there for them.
As an example,last time I role-played it like this:I did not use my frost-sword before the wastelands.At that point fighting with it really gave me the feeling that I had become "the divine one"

i for one- hate overpower things.. it just takes off the fun.
but you know, if the development staff would start working on overpower skills, it would mean they would not invest their time on comlicating a fighting system, combining several skills into 1 method of killing, if its aoe or not, resistance to magic or physical.
well i assume thats what their doing xD

Emphatically not. Discovering clever combos is one thing, but a skill deliberately designed to break the game is a wasted skill, IMO. All they do is take up a space that could be used for a useful and well balanced skill that will enhance the game for everyone.

Anyone wanting an easy game can use the 'Easy' setting, surely.

i dont remember the "easy" choise in div1 had any difference then normal thogh xD

Hmm,I don't see how a skill can "break" a game if you're not obliged to use it.
Divine Divinity has overpowered skills for sure and it is not a broken game.
Also a skill is not "wasted" if people are having fun using it.
As for easy setting:for a casual gamer the catacombs can be quite punishing,even on easy setting.
All I'm saying is that it would be good to let everybody play it the way they like it and that having overpowered skills gives an extra option in that regard without forcing anyone to use what they don't like.

One of the things QA and testing does is balance the game. Anything that has the potential to imbalance it is tweaked so that it no longer does. Of course, the more complex the system, the more difficult it is to balance (which is why some configurations of character seem overpowered). However, there is still a big effort to limit imbalance. Overpowered skills deliberately added isn't something I'd like to see. It's far better to have players discover ways to make their character as powerful as they can be based on a combination of all the character's attributes (and their own ability to learn the game mechanics, of course).

That's not to say that an imbalanced game in some minor respects is a broken one. Many players have discovered specific combos in games that give them an edge yet the game remains perfectly playable by everyone, and enjoyable to boot.

I on the contrary would welcome it,but I agree with you that it is higly unlikely.
Come to think of it,it would be a daring step to do that,very unusual and almost revolutionary if that would'nt be a too dramatic way to put it.
Also there would still be some balancing required,for example an "armageddon" spell that kills everything on the screen would't give anyone enjoyment.
I remember once playing quake on god mode long ago:pretty boring quikly.
So I do not think that the overpowered skills were intentional in Divine Divinity,my guess is they were human mistakes.
But I am very gratefull that they did't get nerved in a patch:-)

I'm pretty sure the Scorpion Traps WERE deliberately broken in DD1, actually. There's no way a play tester could have missed that.

Frost swords could have been an oversight, sure, as the spell is not broken. The traps, no.

If you don't want to use them ,just don't.

Ugh, I hate this argument. It is a drawback for the gamers who don't want them. Suppose you don't know that's it's overpowered until you get it? Then you can't help but use it when things get rough instead of using any strategy. If you can resist the temptation, then the skill points are wasted. All because some "casual" gamer couldn't be bothered to learn to use balanced skills effectively.

High-powered skills, sure. I eventually want to rain down death and lay waste to my opponents, but "overpowered" by definition means too much, imbalanced, and out of place in any well-developed game.

Aren't games ment to be challenging? If you put some overpowered skills in them you take away the challenge IMO. And as Flixerflax said some players can't resist the urge to use those overpowered skills when it gets a little harder(I'm one of those players :p)

If I would have noticed how overpowered scorpions are in Divine Divinity during my first play-through, it would have totally ruined my gaming experience cause I would just have used Scorpions whenever it got hard. Happily I didn't understand I had to use those traps with the Deadly Gift skill back then.

If they would put overpowered skills in the game, please make them hard to get so casual players don't accidently stumble upon them.
Overpowered skills can be fun when you've finished the game or when the game starts to get boring, but when you're playing the game for the first time and you know that whenever it gets hard, you got this 'uber-skill' to just take care of your enemies kinda ruines the game experience for me.

In an old Nintendo console game (maybe Ultima?), there was a hard to find skull which could be used to destroy everything onscreen. Used in a town it would wreck the place, kill everyone, and really hurt your reputation (some kind of virtue system IIRC); used in battle it would kill all your opponents and end the fight, without any loss of reputation. I found that quit enjoyable for a few minutes; I would have gotten board with it, had I not first noticed I wasn't getting any experience points. The skull still came in very handy, though. If I was trying to get somewhere, and hit a random battle with a bunch of weak opponents that were not going to give much experience anyway, I could use the skull to quickly end the fight.

You really think so? Maybe it was not the tester who missed it but things were getting a bit too hectic for those who had to correct it.
Anyway,if it was done on purpose than it was to give weaker players a break,which I applaud,and it took some courage cause it is an unusual thing to do (and not popular with hardcore gamers).

[quote=flixerflax]If you don't want to use them ,just don't.


Flixerflax,you are off course fully entiteled to not like certain arguments.
Take me for example,I'm no better,I don't particulary like this argument:"All because some "casual" gamer couldn't be bothered to learn to use balanced skills effectively."
So we'll have to live with that and do our best to keep things playfull.

I don't think you'll find too many Monty Haul gamers on here, YellowShark, I have to say

While I respect your right to your viewpoint, I still can't see any way that a seriously unbalancing skill or item can make for a better game.

If anything, it detracts from it.

Raze,
Fair correction.So even a really overpowered skill can still be fun,depending on how you choose to make use of it.
For me ,the more freedom of choiche you have in how you want to play,the better.

Elliot,
Thanks for stating that you respect my viewpoint,I appreciate that.
And yes I knew in advance that posting this would'nt get me much applause from hardcore gamers.
But I still thought it would be an interesting topic for debate.
On a side note:what exactly is a Monty Haul gamer?

'Monty Haul' is a tabletop RPG term for a game that has little to no risk but offers massive reward. It sometimes gets confused with 'Power Gamer' to the annoyance of Power Gamers everywhere

I've never heard that term, EK. But no, I suppose I wouldn't qualify as that at all. The challenge is the reward, just barely scraping by after a huge fight and no energy reserves is so much better than "BOOM" everything die now!

Yellowshark;
Didn't mean to sound harsh or rude while stating my opinion. I understand your argument. But I would much rather encounter the "overpowered" stuff via some extra utility (like mods, or the item and character editors for the first Divinity), and not have them built into the game itself.

YellowShark does have a point here. In the DD help section, many people have desperately asked for help with the fight against Josephina, and they were often happy to use Deadly Gift as a last resort. I wouldn't mind having overpowered skills in the game, especially if they were labeled 'overpowered', so I could avoid them. I feel using overpowered skills isn't much different from using cheats, but I can understand that inexperienced or casual gamers would prefer being able to complete the game without officially cheating.

One way to hide those overpowered skills from the more experienced players would be to make them only available on easy difficulty, though I can imagine this isn't easy to implement, now that the game has been developed for quite some time.

Oh please don't put any overpowered skills in the game and try to balance it as much as possible.
That way you have (example) 50 usefull skills instead of 3. I hate this idea of overpowered skills.
And while you say Easy was still difficult in Div1, we are talking about Div2 so make a post about how they should improve the difficulties instead of this rediculous idea.

Just for some further info, "Monty Haul" is derived from "Monty Hall", the host of Let's Make a Deal. Most folks from outside North America and/or who are too young to remember the show wouldn't get the reference unless it's been explained at some point.

Thanks, Equisilus

I must admit, though I know the term I wasn't really familiar with where it came from.

In a single player game I say why not.

Give me scorpions, give me hell spikes, and give me meteor!

Personally, I wouldn't want an overpowered skill. To me, such a skill would be as useless as an underpowered skill. It would be like a cheat code that's taking up a skill slot, which could have been better used by a balanced skill.

One of the things I want to see in an RPG is as little useless skills as possible. Of course I don't mind if a skill becomes obsolete once you've leveled up enough, just don't make it useless from the beginning.
All skills of the same level should be equally useful, just in different ways. I enjoy exploring the skill trees and trying out all kinds of "builds", and anything that takes away from that is not something I would want. The point is, if you need an overpowered skill, the game has failed (or you're exceedingly bad at playing it, but there should be proper cheats for that).

If memory serves me right, scorpion was very powerful on purpose but we misbalanced the treasure tables/cost on those things and you weren't supposed to find that many of them. Then we discovered that a lot of people actually quite enjoyed using them, so we left it like that.

Yeah I have to admit the death scorpions were lifesavers at times. Drop one, cast aura of command...it's all but invincible and you can't banish it. That thing will be with you until the end of the game!

That was a bug btw

Scorpions are arthropods, and arachnids. Not bugs!!!

Sorry again, YellowShark, for going on the "attack." No disrespect meant.

High-powered vs. overpowered:
I'll use the examples from DD that Lews mentioned since we don't know about the new skills yet. Sure, give me death scorpions, but make them hard to find, as Lar said. Imagine if you could only get them from Tingalf, for example, a transient NPC. And no aura of command. You could still unleash them on Josie or the really tough baddies, but you wouldn't be able to have them follow you everywhere doing all the killing while you lift not a finger. Give me meteor and lightning, or some armageddon skill like Raze mentioned that scorches the earth, but put a casting delay on it, or a high mana req, or more varied resistances on the enemies, etc.

Balance is key, as others have said. To get the effect that some casual gamers might want, leave in the high-powered stuff, but nerf the enemies or magic requirements...just make the "easy" mode really easy.

p.s. Morbo, bugs are arthropods too! Don't discriminate!

I am going to have to agree with the topic creator. I actually DO LIKE overpowered spells. For me a game should be fun. I don't want to stress over not being able to beat a boss.
I don't have loads of time on my hands and a challenge is not that fun for me. The only challenging game i love are puzzle games.

I want to enjoy a game for its scenery, great music, story and gameplay.



However, instead of having overpowered spells, can't you just make a 'super easy' difficulty level?

can't you just make a 'super easy' difficulty level?

Exactly my point. Balance the game for the normal difficulty level, nerf it super-easy style for the casual gamers, and turn up the heat on the hard level for us challenge-loving, masochistic gamers.

Works for me

Sounds like the perfect solution all round

I loved them so much Lar, rofl. they made the game so awesome. Just run around dropping scorpions, and go and pick up the rewards! They made things alot easier then it would have been normally.

One could argue the same for putting cheatcodes in games.

Frankly to me there is little difference between using a Win-all skill and turning on Godmode or giving myself an endgame weapon.

I do understand the need for cheat codes in games. Some players find for instance the story and quests a lot more entertaining than the combat part of a game. I myself have played some games in godmode simply because I want to continue through the story instead of grinding through endless mobs fighting a combat system I find completely boring.

Most PC games have cheatcodes, you don't have to use them, but they are there for those who want to skip certain parts of the game.

As developers we try to make everything both fun and challenging. But there is no magical formula which makes everybody like every aspect of the game.

We tried to allow for as many different playstyles as we can think of and get in the game. I'm sure everybody will find some things in the game they absolutely love and things which they don't really care for. Not forcing the player to things he doesn't like is empowering the game in my eyes.

Okay, enough ranting.

-- Greever

Usual disclaimer:
All opinions in this post are my own. No offense was meant to anyone. Everything promised is subject to change; Unfortunately I can't predict the future.

Yes, no overpowered spells but a easy difficulty so the newbs can still finish the game.

I'm impressed .To me it means that you really think about how to provide fun for a lot of different people and you base your decisions on that,rather then just do what's usual.
That's really nice.

No harm done,Flixerflax.I'm really pleased this has turned into an interesting exchange of ideas.

Yep, difficulty levels are the way to go for making the game easy/hard (rather than the overpowered skills for anyone). What are the intentions for difficulty levels for Div2?

imo overpowered skills are just cheats for those that don't want to admit to themselves they are cheating. I'd rather see some cheats than overpowered skills. Especially if there are really challenging fights I usually cheat when I replay a game.