Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback I still don't like the current attributes.

The whole "start at 10" thing is just ugly and pointless, given the scarce ways there now are to actually lose points.

Memory feels like a failed experiment more than anything else, especially now that it had to be made to work on a basis that is not consistent with other stats: the 10 default points have a value different than any of the ones you gain afterwards.
It is something that is being made to work, but it is neither elegant nor even necessary for the system to function: you now get enough slots from levels and the optional talent for most builds to be fully functional and the few cases where you would add a point could be easily replaced with extra slots from leveling.

Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence - the way they function restricts hybrid builds more than it encourages them, going as far as to feel like a step back from the original, and the entire scaling system being now bent completely out of whack makes the game extremely rigid in terms of when you can approach certain encounters.

On top of that, because the impact stats have is now significantly more reliant on the character level, falling behind in stat increases is absolutely devastating to a jack-of-trades character.

I have made posts about this in the past and I still sincerely believe that at the very least, the stats should work on the following basis:

<Strength equivalent/Melee attribute> - Increases all types of Melee damage and grants some bonus Vitality.
This should be the stat a character takes if they want to stand at the front-line, regardless of the preferred form of damage.

<Finesse equivalent/Physical attribute> - Increases all Physical damage.
This would be the stat you pick up when you want to maximize physical damage, be it at range or in melee, with no consideration for the damage you take back.

<Intelligence equivalent/Magical attribute> - Increases all Magical damage.
This would be the stat you pick up when you want to maximize magic damage, be it at range or in melee, with no consideration for the damage you take back.

<Constitution equivalent/Durability attribute> - Increases all forms of Hit Points/Resistances.
This would be the stat you pick up when you want to maximize the amount of damage you can take, with no consideration for the damage you can deal.

<Wits equivalent/Utility attribute> - This would be a stat that generally increases the power of everything you do by contributing to stats not increased by the other attributes/abilities.

Memory should either be restored to it's original form(fixed ratio), with the level based bonus diminished to make investing in more skills actually meaningful again, or it should be removed completely with the level based slot gain increased to compensate.

That's the whole point.
Why would you ever go one path when you can take all path at the same time without cons?

Hybridization brings versatility and the capability to deal with more situations and support other characters more effectively.
Focusing on one strength allows you to excel at one thing while sucking at the rest.
The whole "Jack of all trades, Master of none." conundrum.

You are either good at something and bad at the rest or good at nothing but average at everything.

A hybrid physical damage dealer that delves into magic SHOULD deal less physical damage than a pure physical damage dealer. Just like a pure physical damage dealer will not be able to deal any magical damage while the hybrid will be able to support its caster allies in getting through magical armor.

So I wholeheartedly disagree with you on the stats system needing changes at the exception of the Memory stat.
The Memory stat does feel out of place somehow but still, I can't see how else it could be implemented. The concept itself is good but doesn't feel great altogether.

My problem is that the changes relative to the previous game were meant to improve the power of hybrid characters, but combined with the changes to the armor mechanics, they instead essentially cripple you completely once you leave the early levels where there are still enemies missing a defense type.

Your supposed "versatility" comes at the expense of being completely reliant on the other members of your party being able to take down the enemy defenses, particularly if you were to mix skills that do not have an inherent synergy(which basically means you're shit out of luck if you want to be a spell-blade archetype).

The whole idea behind a jack-of-trades type character is that you make up for a lack of specialization with an above average total sum, which simply doesn't happen in a game where your scaling is exponential(which reminds me of another point to make about scaling).

Except that your other teammates are also reliant on you to get past the enemies defense.

If your party as too much focus on Physical damage and lack magical damage, you will get wrecked by the enemy warriors because you won't be able to get past their defense, same goes for mages if you have too many casters.
Hybrids allow you to cover what you are missing. Whether it be supportive abilities, damage, heals or CCs.

My Warrior managed to chunk 80% of the enemy Physical Armor? Well my hybrid warrior will battlestomp the enemy, finishing the last 20% Physical Armor and then turn around to Shocking Touch the enemy Warrior that got blasted by the Geo-Pyro Wizard.
Something you wouldn't have been able to do without a hybrid to get both Physical and Magical defense heavy enemy.

And no, scaling isn't exponential. The more points you put into primary stat, the less value they have. The stats are additive, not multiplicative and certainly not exponential.
The difference between 30 strength and 40 strength isn't 100% more damage, it's 33% more damage.
The difference between 10 strength and 20 strength is 100% damage.
The difference between 110 strength and 120 strength is 10%.
So on and so forth.

This would only work as a valid argument if the game wasn't designed to be equally about competitive infighting as it is about cooperation.


While "exponential" isn't the correct term(I suppose "multiplicative" would be), the scaling is still such that your level increases the base damages and investing in the attributes also increases the multiplier on those increases, which means that you will be significantly outpacing someone who spreads his points around.

Starting at 10 makes it easier to use attributes in formulas. I like how Memory works now. No way should it go back to "single points do nothing, two points gives you one slot".

But they probably could start that out at 3. It's probably done that way because it would look less aesthetically pleasing if it didn't match the others.

Hybrids are supposed to increase their versatility at the cost of power. Granted, it's less power in this game because of the need to spend into Memory as well as the usual attributes.

What does this have to do with anything?

If you are a Fighter mage wearing full Physical Armor against a full on Warrior, chances are that you are going to win because you'll shit on his piss poor Magical Armor and CC lock him until he dies while he won't be able to get through your own Physical Armor, especially if you can screw him over with Teleport, Fortify, so on and so forth.

The game being designed about both competitive infighting and cooperation doesn't change that fact.
If you'd have to balance everything around giving everyone an equal chance at winning in a duel, then... what would happen to support casters? Those who's only purpose is to boost other to do the dirty job for them. They'll never win a fight because they are backline buffers.


Except you won't.
If you put 10 points into Strength, you get 50% bonus to your Strength physical damage.
If you put 5 points into Strength and 5 into Intelligence, you get 25% bonus to your Strength physical damage and 25% to your magic damage AND you can wear both Warrior and Mage armor.

So you do 125% Physical damage and 125% magical damage.
Versus
150% Physical damage and 100% magical damage.

Sounds pretty balanced to me when you actually get the benefit of wearing whatever the hell you want and cover both Physical and Magical Armor the way you want to.

Not sure about current patch, haven't play so far. But in the last patch magic damage pretty much was awful. Going mostly physical damage with your team made the battles much easier, because physical damage depends mostly on the weapons and there for can be increase much easier. At least if you did not go for an 'explode everything fire and poison'-build.

Attribute and skill benefits feel pretty simplistic and not much inspiring, still better then the first version but not much in my eyes.

They offer even less then they did in the first:

I actually find that Divinity Original 2 encourages and boosts Hybrid classes far better than DOS1 ever did. Simply because each of the primary stats has a secondary value that is genuinely important.

2% more magic armor you call important?

It really does add up. Also I thought it was 4%.

Losing 25% of possible damage just for 10 or 20% of possible magic armor does not sound like a worthy deal.

It doesn't on paper, but it kind of works out, especially as your percents get higher and higher.

125% instead of 150% is 15 instead of 20.

Not to mention the armor bonuses add up. You will notice that extra 20% armor a LOT more then you will notice that extra 25% damage. In fact it oddly works to even put no points into an attribute and still use those skills.

PLUS the additional skill types are impressive and good.

Mind you this is because you have sort of two options in the game so far.
1) You can either have more skills then you have AP and cooldown ability.
or
2) You can have less skills but more individual skill damage output.

The funny thing is? #1 outpaces the second by a huge margin. People complain mages suck? They are building them too tall and are trying to get unreasonable damage output from like... 2 spells.

This also encourages cross classing... In fact almost too much.

10% armor is absolutely incomparable to 25% damage for virtually any build. (Unless they changed the armor bonus from 2 to 4%?) 10% more armor is like a third of a hit or a couple ticks of running on burning ground, even with 100 armor. Even 20% armor isn't that much, but it's in the ballpark for a tank maybe. 4% damage bonus and 4% armor bonus per point might make the attributes worth going to just for the armor for certain builds.

As far as mages go, I think as they add more spells, things will balance out -- there's like, 5 non-healing buffs in the game, nevermind the fact that intelligence gives NO BONUS to support spells. Would be awesome if intelligence improved buffs, though this would probably require some systematic change for how buffs work in the game (which is probably needed anyway to make modding in statuses less of a pain.) Say, intelligence boosted the movement speed bonus of Wind of Change by 1% per 1 or 2 points of intelligence (limited to a certain point perhaps.) Healing and even armor recovery spells could get like a 2% boost from intelligence (incomparable to investing in the relevant abilities, but a little bonus anyway.)

Perhaps higher level investment in intelligence could even give brand new effects to spells. At 20 int, maybe Armor of Frost also cures frozen, and for every status cured, it heals the target, or perhaps it offers chill on contact and an water damage bonus.

^ i like that idea stemming out from it something like the old 11 cost spells from divinity ee when you reach a certain level of int

I like this idea.

I'd also like to see some incentive to specialize in a certain school. For example spells that required 5 in Hydro or something.

At the moment, with the exception of Archers, I tend to put one point in pretty much every school (except Geo) for everyone because I always want Adrenaline and Rage and Crippling blow and Haste and netherswap and so on. This seems more helpful than the little 5% damage bonus you get for specializing but that could be just how I play of course.

I really like the idea that you only need 1 point to have potential access to all skills because it gives way to a lot of fun different builds, and hybrids. In my opinion specialized builds and characters don't need anymore benefits than more effectiveness and raw power.

I am sorry. Actually its opposite, everyone has everything. e.g. NO DIVERSITY >>> very few builds.

Is there a cleric ? No, everyone heal themselves.
Is there a burst dmg specialist (rogue, assasin) ? No, everyone has Adrenalin and Ex. retreat.
Is there a pure massive brawler? No, even a dumbest club expert casts like no tomorrow.

I would like to see a barrier to open a new school.
Like
first point in first school 1pt
first point in second school 2pts
first point in third school 3pts
and so on

They should just make it like in D:OS1 were better skills need a certain knowledge of a class. In D:OS2 you had max of 15 skill points per class (1+2+3+4+5=15), you needed them to learn all the skill and master the strongest.

In D:OS2 you can even learn the strongest skills (source) with only 1 point put into a skill, you are only limited by source and memory, wich is a heavy dumb down from the previous style. D:OS2 feels like an oversimplification compared to the first.

I rather think that is a choice which should be left up to the player. The Elder Scrolls games let you do whatever, and make characters who can join every faction.

But when I play, I deliberately limit myself - I pick one faction and play that character in a specific way.




In other words, delete all caster classes and penalize hybrids? You do realize there are enemies strong in Element X, and every single mage has to at least dual-class, right? Not a fan.

For dual-class you are penalized by one point. You have two schools. Where is a problem?
Did you get used to Hex-o-class e.g. Jack-of-all-trades as a staple DOS build?
Did you noticed that any mage could use a tons of wands and a staffs with any element and any spells?
Did you notice a hell lot of scrolls and grenades?
Did you noticed that on the level 7 your inv is flooded by consumables without use?

Looks like, such a rule would bring at least some meaningful decisions in builds and resource usage, isnt it ?

Meaningful decisions would be really nice. Learning 2-3 combat schools with some depth seems very reasonable; you shouldn't be able to be good with more than 3-4 of them without a substantial drawback.

Right here:

"For dual-class you are penalized by one point."

The concept of some restrictions for the skills you can learn isn't necessarily bad. The idea you proposed IS bad because it arbitrarily punishes anyone who is not a single-ability specialist and harshly punishes anyone who dares to take three abilities.


However, I can see a similar kind of restriction working with skill tiers, so that first tier skills only need a single point, Second tier skills need two points, third tier skills three or four points. So for instance, one point into Scoundrel will let you learn any of the Tier 1 Scoundrel skills you can buy at levels 1-3. At level 4, Tier 2 skills unlock and you'll need to spend a second Scoundrel point there to use those.


The difference is that one point in the ability is all you need for any first tier skills, you don't need two points to learn first tier skills.

Thus you can be a generalist with a lot of skills, but they are low-tier skills, and you'll need to invest further if you want better skills.

This will allow you to build a deck of low-tier utility skills, and encourage you to specialize into certain areas with higher tier requirements.

So you mean DOS1 skill point distribution ?
That has pretty the same result as current system.
Compare one lvl 5 skill to 5 new schools with lvl one.
This effect made any hero to take a point which ever school was even a bit usefull. Becouse it is hell lot of better.
e.g. every build in this system has at least 30% same skills. e.g. everyone is doing everything, again.

So what if you shift gGeo's idea slightly:

1st point in first, second, and third school: 1 point
1st point in fourth school: 2 points
1st point in fifth school: 3 points
...

So you are encouraged to have a little diversity, but it grows more difficult if you spread out too much.

-OR-

You can only ever have points in 3-4 different schools, but you are able to sell old points back and respec. This might incur some cost or have a limitation or something so you can't constantly be respeccing, but it does allow you to grow and change over the course of the game.

Not quite like D:OS 1. This game also has Memory to limit your known skills. And yes, I do prefer D:OS 1's skill distribution to your overly restrictive method.


People might also say that you don't need to invest attribute points into Memory because you can get enough from items. That's not a hard fix: change how Memory appears on items. For instance, Memory could only appear on Unique items, never random magic items. If that's too restrictive, then Memory could only appear on uniques and the lowest quality magic item - and even then, it would be the only modifier, so you could build your gear for Memory, or for other qualities, but it couldn't be at its full potential in both. That will encourage players to invest actual attribute points into Memory.


I do have another thought though: If you don't like the idea of making a character who picks up a point in everything, you could always not do that yourself. It's not like someone else making a do-everything character will hurt your experience.




That is better than the idea as originally proposed.




Sounds like it might be a bit complicated, and also that sounds exactly like what Memory is supposed to be doing. Seems to me like the problem there is too much Memory is available, probably because +Memory appears on items.

huh, I have read it 4th times and didnt get it.
Whatever rule would be introduce it should be as easy as one sentence.

Is there currently any build who doesnt use adrenalin and self haste? Unlimited opening new schools makes all builds works same, that is clear. Is it inteded or not ?

RPG ment Role Play Game. The role is a character bahaviour and also combat role. Currently Roles are somewhat blurred. Theoreticaly is possible to not build a staple jack-of-alltrades but it is clearly disadvantage.
As long as usual target is get the party badass, play a game intentionaly weaker doesnt make a sense.

What another barrier simple rule?
:"Any first level of a school costs 2 points. "
( And add 1 point to character creation. )
Its less steep also easy to understand.

An example with a four-school limit: if you have points in pyro, aero, necro, and warcraft, you cannot put any points into hydro or two-handed unless you abandon one of the other schools (remove all of your points from it, probably at some cost). This allows you some flexibility to hybridize and change over time without being able to put one point into every school for the utility skills.

Is this a perfect solution? Certainly not. But in design it's pretty common to come up with good solutions by first looking at extreme examples and edge cases and finding useful components of those.

Here's another idea that incentivizes you to focus on learning one thing at a time: it is cheaper to continue to study whatever you are already focused on. If the last thing I added a point to was scoundrel, I can continue to add to scoundrel for only one point, but it costs 2 points to start studying something else. Maybe after you hit level 3 on something, you can switch your focus to it for free. An example:

-Start with scoundrel 1, dual-wield 1. Current focus is either scoundrel or dual-wield.
-Scoundrel 2, dual-wield 1. This costs 1 point. Current focus is scoundrel.
-Scoundrel 3, dual-wield 1. This costs 1 point. Current focus is scoundrel.
-Scoundrel 3, dual-wield 1, pyro 1. This costs 2 points for switching focus. Current focus is pyro.
-Scoundrel 3, dual-wield 1, pyro 2. This costs 1 point. Current focus is pyro.
-Scoundrel 3, dual-wield 2, pyro 2. This costs 2 points for switching focus. Current focus is dual-wield.
-Scoundrel 4, dual-wield 2, pyro 2. This costs 1 point because you are switching to something you have 3+ expertise in. Current focus is scoundrel.

First: Dual-wield is not a skill-tree
Second: So if you would want to level Scoundrel and pyro at the same pace, you would have to pay 2 every level because of switching the focus?

The problem is not, that you can learn several skill-tree. The problem is, you learn every skill from a tree just by putting in 1 point. You are also not limited about the amount of skills you are learning, memory only limits the amount of skill usable.

In D:OS you need to skill further to learn more skill of a tree and higher tier skills of a tree. Those limitations are totally missing now and the main reason for all this mess. To make this undone would be probably the easiest solution. If a skill like Adrenaline is overused you could just Tier it up, and it would afford more investment automatically.

Just remembered something while discussing about 'Rage':

There was a third limitation for reducing the amount of over-crossclassing:

In D:OS 1 you had the chance to fail even a buff if your attributes were to low for that skill.