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.