Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback I'll just leave it here

I would like to give you some ideas that wouldn't ever appear at the game, I guess, but I am a dreamer. I don't think that will change the game too much in terms of game mechanics, and these changes doesn't seem too time-consuming to my unexperienced mind, but it may make the game much more fun.
The attribute system we have in DOS is actually poor. Its pretty straight-forward and routine, but as I saw in your last post, you want to make player feel that every point he puts in some attribute makes difference. Keep in mind, that all changes I suggest match up pretty well with the game you have at the moment.

Strength +physical dmg +magical dmg +vitality +transported weight
Finesse +range +initiative +ph.dodging +movespeed
Intelligence +aoes +crit chance +% to set status +% to avoid mg.status
Consitution +ab.durations +amount of APs +resistances +% to avoid ph.status

Memory grows with lvl, talents and books
Wits as a civil skill for thieves and rangers.

Warfare adds physical damage and physical armor
Ranger reduces AP cost and allows dodging magic
Assasin adds poison damage and reduces cds
Necromancer adds vampirism and poison resistance
Fire gives fire damage and resistance
Water gives water damage and resistance
Earth gives earth damage and resistance
Air gives air damage and resistance

Learning abilities requires stats, even if they are magical. So if you want to summon earth golem, you need, lets say 40 constitution and his qualities will change with your stats.

Elements have specialisations which are damage dealing, buffing, debuffing and healing(fortifying), which leads to the amount of spells. Fire has 40% damage dealing spells, 30% buffs, 20% debuffs and 10% of healing (lava shield, for instance). Air 30-40-20-10, Earth 10-20-40-30, Water 20-10-30-40, Necromancy 20-20-20-0 and 40 for summoning.

I'll just leave it all here

There have been a few posts with suggestions to make all stats useful for all classes. The issue with making all stats equally useful remains that people only get X points per level, and encouraging everyone to spread their stats around just produces a party in which everyone has pretty much same stats as every other member despite having different weapons and attack styles.

I have seen games where STR is the only stat for increasing the damage of basic attacks, but those games are typically JRPG's where you don't allocate your stats, they all increase when you level up, and they also have a separate Magic attack stat which governs how powerful your magic attacks are, to differentiate physical attackers from casters.

Your suggested system will produce much more homogeneous characters than the current system.


(Also, this game seems designed around the idea that you have a max of 6 AP and get 4 AP per turn, and you cannot permanently increase either of those numbers.)

And even at the basic levels some of these things are somewhat flawed.

"+AoE"
-Area of effect is surgical. It would be like handing a doctor a sword and expecting him to do better.

"Necromancy = Poison"
-Earth is poison. Necromancy is unrelated to it.

"Assassin + Poison"
-So it increases a skill they don't particularly use... that Necromancy gives you resistance to... and that Earth actually uses.

"Water increases Water damage and resistance"
-One of the stronger aspects of the game is how cross-classing works. Water increasing healing amount regardless of what skillset uses it is a benefit. That said

"Warfare increases damage"
-I am not sure a universal physical damage increase is a good idea, it makes the skill essential for scoundrels, Archers, Warriors, and Necromancers (assuming they stick to physical)

Personally, I think Pillars of Eternity, which has a stat system much like the OP's, produced an amazing variety of builds. I mean, it was kind of hilarious how Barbarians could invest in a lot of intelligence to increase the AOE of their physical attacks, but also awesome. When I looked at the forums, I was impressed at how different people built the same classes (though some classes were more pigeon-holed than others).

That said, I'm sure a system where all stats are useful can easily lead to homogeneity if not done right. The key is to make all stats useful, but not essential, to all builds. In general, intelligence should be the best, most important stat for mages, so I don't know if strength should increase magic damage, for example. Any sort of mage damage build would mandate large investment in strength, especially if it also increased vitality. I also think memory should stay as a stat, and wits could probably stay. So I'd probably suggest something like:

Strength: +Physical Damage, +physical armor, +carry weight
Finnese: +Range, +crit multiplier, +dodge
Intellligence: +AOE, +magic damage, +magic armor
Con: +Vitality, chance to resist statuses entirely (like, 1-2% per point), or perhaps only to reduce their duration (though that conflicts with Walk it Off talent).

Memory and Wits as are now.

Range and AOE bonuses are definitely tricky to balance, but I think it's doable. They should be small but still noticeable, like 20% more range/area with large investment.

Perhaps I'd give Strength something like increased chance to set statuses through con resist (like 1% per point). So if Con grants 1% resist per point, and Strength grants 1% resist pierce, than the strength would cancel out a con. But a weak mage might have its statuses resisted (although it probably doesn't make sense to apply this to magic statuses).

I'd also add more physical damage spells, particularly to the Earth tree, that strength would increase the damage of. Possibly it'd be worth nixxing earth damage entirely (after all, what does that even mean?) and replacing all earth damage with physical damage. After all, most earth spells are basically just hitting someone with some form of a rock. I think it'd thematically make sense that earth mages would tend to be stronger than other mages, since they're more about physical presences than the more ethereal aspects of water or fire.

This is not a complete perfect version of some attribute system, just a blank, so there is no point in picking on details.

I think that a class should be built outside attribute system, it should be determined by combat and civil skills and talents. That is the main idea. Attributes should change the way your class works.

Yes of course, your heroes will be similar in terms of stats, but relying also on weapon skills and school skills would make you choose between 4 base classes (mage, assasin, ranger, knight) and the classes would not be so cliche. A knight would be either hard damage dealer (strength-based) or ninja (capable of fighting on distance and with multiple enemies, finesse based) or samurai (capable of making some lucky killing blows, intelligence) or some tanky support with many long duration buffs (constitution-based). And you could also have a decent magic if you mix your class with some magical school, because your magical abilities would also rely on stats. You won't be as good as a full mage, but worth putting points in that magic.

Now a good match is playing fire+earth mage, water+air, classical knight, damage dealer assasin or ranger. I tested different builds in the current game and I don't feel synergy in how attributes and skills work. I tried to play water+necromancy with shield and wand. Ends up me dealing no physical damage, no magical damage. I want to be tanky and play bloodsucker, but then I can't use global poison on my other hero. Or I can if I go zombie. But then I can't heal myself with water. I don't want to use leech talent, since I already have bloodsucker. My necromancer abilities deal physical damage, so should I max strength? No, I have a wand, I can't put in strength. I also have hail strike, so its going into intelligence, but then I don't want mosquito swarm. Current system doesn't let you have good balanced class. You may have either a good damage dealing class, or a good healer which you can reach by putting all your points into strength, finesse or intelligence, or you may have some shitty half way class, that doesn't do neither magical damage, nor physical. Another example - I want to play air+warfare with air staff. But my knock down doesn't ever work, because I can't reduce their physical damage, and If I eventually knock them down I end up bumping into magical armor. There is no point in focusing enemies with both magical and physical damage. There are many enemies, so you want to focus some of them with magic and others with ph.d, because it is more effective.

You could make the current system more balanced by creating a lot of new abilities and changing armor-status mechanics, but I am not sure what it will look like.

No.

If there's only one stat useful for a given character, than having a stat system at all is meaningless, since you effectively scale everything with level anyway.

Making each stat do a different but useful thing for every class is exactly what justifies having a variety of stats in the first place: it produces a variety of results.

You'll always want to focus on something in particular, but there should be hard and meaningful choices to make outside of your primary attribute at the very least, and right now Original Sin 2 offers only no-brainer non-choices, which are a major step back from the original game.

Strawman.

Did I say anything about "only one stat useful"?

No, I did not.




The system proposed by Hewman, has one godlike stat: Strength, required by all classes to increase damage, and it even also increases health. You can't go wrong by pumping all your points into Strength.

Additionally, the ideas of stats to increase range and radius of AoE effects are also troubling when considering that you start with 10 in each attribute, gain 2 attribute points a level, and will reach about level 30. So that's 71 attribute points before gear is taken into consideration.

How much range would a ranger have with a (conservative) 25-30 FIN? At some point, wouldn't a Ranger be taking enemies out from several screen lengths away (with a spotter)?

How large a radius would an 30 INT AoE spell have, and would that actually be more harmful than good at some point?

Obviously, you'd have to cut the amount of range and AoE gained pers point to a very small amount, which only would encourage more STR stacking.

The proposed system is fatally flawed.

As for Pillars of Eternity there is one flaw with the comparison.

There are classes in Pillars of Eternity and the majority of your power comes from those classes. (I am going to ignore the broken/bad classes for this argument).

So how do you have cross classing be meaningful when there are no classes? Exactly what DOS2 is doing.

With what the Topic Creator has written up... Why even solo class? There is a clear super optimal route already written in.

You didn't play dota obviously. Imagine how a hero with maxed strength would act in a fight. He has low initiative, so he is last one to go. He has no resistances, so he easily gets stunned/knocked down from the beginning. He has low movespeed and he can't jump far enough to start damaging enemies, he also has low movespeed. So it ends up him being useless for a turn or 2. Or maybe even more if he falls under longduration debuff or disable.


It's a draft. Don't pick on details. You can make stats less useful with each new point invested. It is one of the ways. Another one is to make bonuses small. Lets say some ranger has 70 Finesse. We would make it 10m attack distance in the beggining with 0.2 meteres maxed by 1 point in finesse. With 70 finesse he has 22m distance for his shots and abilities. Not much, considering he has no points in strength and can't actually deal damage. Mosquito.
"Ranger reduces AP cost and allows dodging magic"
But the one that comes up with a lot of attacks.


Another detail. I am not suggesting a good working system, it is just some other way of building it. You only need to make your spells harmless for your players. Nothing hard. But you didn't notice that int also gives chance to set some status. So you will maybe deal less damage, but you will freeze/stun/burn/knock down the enemies.


It won't. The proposed system is a rough draft.

Hardly.

You specifically state that the limited amount of points is the problem, so to put my point from the opposite end. Without the limited availability that forces you to choose, you get enough to do everything, so it might as well happen automatically.

If there's enough stats to get everything you want(be it a few valuable stats to get, or enough points to get everything), a leveling system based on distributing points becomes pointless.


I'm not arguing the merits of the proposed system, I'm arguing your flawed approach to the topic.

Damage, Durability, Quickness, Abilities - main features that characterize a unit. Each stat should add every of this feature to a hero, but in a different way. Strength gives base damage, Finesse - range for the attacks, Intelligence - crit chance, Constitution - amount of action points. It could be changed, you may give a finesse-based unit lower cooldowns.

In terms of durability: strength for vitality, finesse for dodging, intelligence for avoiding disables, constitution for resistances.

Thats the logic. You should first determine what classes you want to have, than determine what each of the attribute may offer to the class and than balance all of this stuff in order to avoid super-imba classes.

So in other words heroes need to build all their stats more or less identically, which was the first issue I noted.

This game is also nothing like DOTA, and using a completely different genre as a model is a warning flag, imo.




So I'm not allowed to point out potential problems and issues until the final version is posted? That hardly makes sense. Where are we? We're in an alpha test forum for D:OS 2, where it is our job to point out potential problems and issues now so they can be worked on and fixed before the final version.




You're the one who just said above that a hero stacking all their points into one stat would be crippled by flaws elsewhere. So why are you setting the range bonus based on someone stacking all their points into one stat? With a starting range of 10 meters, Rangers will start in easy melee range of all enemies (2 AP = 5 meters), losing their advantage of range.




There are no AP Cost reductions in D:OS 2.



Details do matter. The type of concrete you use in the foundation when constructing a skyscraper is a detail, but get it wrong and very bad things will happen.

Additionally, spells having friendly fire is a critical part of D:OS 2's combat mechanics to encourage proper tactical play. You can't just say "oh, we'll just switch friendly fire off". Not to mention that surface mechanics would be incredibly confusing if some surfaces were harmless and identical ones were not.




I called it a strawman because there is, in fact, such a thing as a middle ground in between "ALL stats equally useful" and "ONE stat is useful". You can see that in D:OS and D:OS 2, where you have STR/INT/(DEX or FIN) as primaries and other attributes as complementary to the build.

You do not have enough points to get everything, but you can afford to specialize in a few of them, and don't have to keep all of the primary attributes roughly equal to not be crippled. That is what I was trying to say.




This is not DOTA. This is an classless RPG. The presets on character creation are just presets which can be changed.

The current system is already doing some of what you want anyway, with STR granting some bonus physical armor and INT bonus magical armor and FIN some dodging. However, an important difference is that each of those attributes provides bonus damage for X-type weapons. That is more balanced than putting all the damage onto STR only.

"It's a draft. Don't pick on details."

It is very important to pick on the details. It would be one thing if he picked on the unimportant details.

Yet how your suggestion works on a fundamental level is kind of important.

He cannot just go "Well I am going to assume your suggestion just will magically work in the future".

No I am not going to go into details, I am not a part of the developers team and I doubt they would even test any of the ideas I wrote here. There is no point for me in wasting so much time. I suggested ideas, I am not aware of capabilities and plans of the devs.

I'm always a bit baffled when people (both developers and players) spend so much effort reinventing the wheel with new systems that should allegedly solve all the "dumb limitations of these obsolete old RPGs", just to come up with solutions that more often than not end up having the same exact flaws, just in a slightly different configuration.

A textbook case of "solution in search of a problem", except the "solution" doesn't even work that well, most of the times.

DOS developers reinvented the wheel when created those attribute systems that DOS1 and DOS2 have. What I proposed is one of these "obsolete old RPGs" systems from games that were the best at their time.

Yes but you are doing so without a fundamental understanding of how those games worked or why they even had those systems.

You bring up the reverence of games

Divinity didn't reinvent the wheel, they were rather basic. What attributes were needed? With perception being the odd one out all things considered.

Even further not only do you not understand the games you are taking from but you do not understand THIS game... and what it needs to do.

This whole proposal isn't "Too much work to do" as if it was some sort of good idea that would require a bit of restructuring to pull off... It is a entire shift in how the game is played, it is an entirely different game.

Ultimately what this is... is trying to make Divinity OS 2... Just like every other game out there, blindly. It is Battlefield Earth, you know Dutch Angles exist, but you don't know what they are for.

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Dungeons and Dragons has its attribute system because of two reasons
1) They are trying to sum up the entirety of human existence in as little attributes as possible.
2) Each attribute is an example of a hero.

It is a roleplaying system (Tabletop specifically), so it didn't really need to trim this down.

I could go on. Yet you see that Dungeons and Dragons system is tailored to its needs. Flawless? Maybe not...

But I wouldn't go and insert Pillars of Eternity's "Dungeons And Dragons Clone-Esk" attribute system and call it better.

---

THAT is why people aren't respecting this idea. (That and "I'll leave this right here" is oozing with such arrogance that this whole thing just comes off as "I know how to make a better game that Larian, watch as I completely ignore basic game theory").

It is less that your idea isn't good and more that... It completely ignores the game.

Like you just played the first hour of Chrono Trigger and went "You know what would make this game better? If you had magic!"

You seem to be the only one "understanding the game". You can't even figure out why you like DOS and why you like DOS2. Just ask this question to yourself and then may be you will understand what needs to be changed in the game. Attribute system doesn't make sense. Unique doesn't mean good. First you decide what you want your attribute system make game like, then you decide on what will the attribute system be like. In case of DOS - as far as I understand they want to build a system that allows players mix classes so that the untraditional ones would still be effective.

Don't know why would I even answer to the bullshit you are writing. Will ignore those typical 14-year old fanboy analytics in future.

What I liked about DOS is style (graphics, sounds, music, dialogs), combat system and item progression. Those are the strongest features of the game. What I don't like is skillset and attribute system. I don't understand why earth equals poison in the game, earth mage is useless against skeletons. I don't understand why I need constitution if I gain additional armor with items and additional hp with lvls. I don't understand why surfaces are so imbalanced. I don't like the fact that I pick up wand with 4 finesse (who would ever need that shit). I don't understand why picking up a staff of my lvl and the element needed is so hard. I don't understand why enemies don't have teleportation skill. I don't understand why mages can't teleport themselves. I don't understand why fire mage is as vulnerable to fire as a ranger. There are a lot of things I can't understand in this game, I am trying to look inside the developers' minds but I can't. It seems that devs themselves don't fully understand why DOS1 was a success. They won't lose their current fanbase with what DOS2 looks now, but they would neither grow it.

Again with the "Is useless" arguments.

Fossil Strike and Fissure.



Because you are bringing assumptions into it... and not even basic assumptions.

FFT does not give mages resistance to magic except that they have higher magic resistance stats... Which DOS2 does as well.

Mages do not teleport themselves because you do not have the teleport move they specifically get Netherswap. Nor have you put a point into Marskmen to get their version of teleport.

And many enemies do have a teleport skill of some form.