Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback CC/Armor/General Balancing

I haven't played much in the newest patches, my friend feels hardly interested at the moment. But so far the seem to attack summons only, if they were the only possible target.

Maybe that's a case of the "AI 2.0" at work, because if the Summoner dies, so do all their Summons. They could introduce a Tank Incarnate which attracts aggro from enemies as its skill.

As I see it the key issue is the armour system (which I think everyone has pretty much said anyway):

Bluntly, the armour system does not work, and as far as I can see, it will never work.
Every fight is; step 1: burn through armour; step 2: CC; step 3: there is not step 3, you got to step 2 so you won.
The stats from the first game (body building/willpower/etc) and elemental resistances worked far better, (and can be modified to work better still), with the status system. For example making it rain before using lightning to increase stun chance/reduce resistances. Really given how much environmental effects and statuses are being emphasised by the developers I'd have thought the stats/elemental resist route would make far more sense for the gameplay.
The % system means that if your wizard messes up a CC, another character has to spend resources (AP) you could have put somewhere else. It also would mean that there's a point to having melee and magic fighters attacking the same target, because at the moment that's pretty much pointless - melee fighter attacking someone? Just pass your turn wizard, him hitting won't do anything about that 100 magic armour you'll have to burn through to do anything useful.


On a hopefully thread related note - 1 handed melee fighters: If a character has a shield they really need to have way more defence and the ability to taunt. At the moment the benefit of a shield seems pretty pointless. You massively reduce your damage for practically no benefit.

I disagree that the armour system ‘doesn’t work’. The stats based system of the first game was much less inventive and strategic, as the stat-dump mechanic ended up playing the game for you: you didn’t have to think, as it was done for you with dice rolls behind the scenes.

The new armour system may be flawed, but it at least forces you to think. Should I target physical or magical? Should I heal lost health or heal lost armour? If you find yourself having to ask questions and make choices during combat, that’s a good thing. If the computer is doing the numbers for you instead, what’s the point in playing the game?

However, I do agree strongly with the point – raised by a poster on the previous page – that damaging magical and physical armour shouldn’t be as simplistic as it is now. Currently, 100/100 physical armour will absorb all 30 points of a physical attack, leaving you with 70/100 physical armour and full real health. I believe your real health should also take some minor damage too. Say 5% of the initial attack by default (with certain weapons gaining bonus properties allowing this to be increased and certain armours gaining bonus properties allowing it to be decreased).

This would add a much-needed tension to the new system, without undermining the strategic value of having physical and magical armour in the first place. I don’t think you should ever feel completely safe from real health damage, even with full armour. Every blow should count towards keeping you on your toes: even small bites into your real health will eventually add up to a problem that will require a judgment call to resolve.

I also disagree about the new shields, for the same reasons mentioned above. The armour regen ability for shields can strategically turn the tide of combat in spectacular ways. There was one memorable fight I had within the keep inside a room with a character being converted to a silent monk (can’t recall the names of the enemies here off-hand). It featured at least one shield and sword guy: at one point, I had him CC’d, with his health whittled down to nothing, and his magical and physical armour at zero. So I focused my attacks on the more dangerous enemies around me, considering this guy a goner. Then he gets up, does the shield regen, and gets healed by some other lad – suddenly he’s back in the game, and a significant threat just because I failed to pick him off.

Returning to the problem of CC, I hadn’t read this thread http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=602078#Post602078 on CC. This covers the ideal solution to the problem, I don’t have anything to add to that.

That being said, I’m also not convinced Larian can or will make such changes at this point in the dev cycle. They’ve so much work to do that a release this year seems ambitious in the extreme. It’ll require either heavy patching post launch, or it really will fall to the modders to supply solutions to the bigger problems.

It would be great all right to get a kind of modding handbook for the game, either from Larian or someone familiar with the codebase. Though I’ve never felt like anything more than a fumbling hack with unfamiliar languages and systems, I find you can still go a long way as a hack, so I’d be more than willing to get involved with the right docs as pointers.

Kalrakh had an idea along that line.

His suggestion was basically that some portion of Piercing damage should penetrate armor to do direct damage to health. (I suggested 67 Armor - 33 Health), Crushing damage should do extra damage to armor (but no health damage), and Slashing damage should do normal damage to armor, but have a chance to cause Bleeding even through Physical armor, which goes up to 100% once the enemy's armor is depleted. (I wonder if maybe Bleeding damage in general from all sources should bypass armor.)

Obviously there are some things which would need to be tested and worked out, but it's an interesting idea. I'll just suggest there's at least one person at Larian who knows of that suggestion and is a fan of it.

I wonder if there's a way for the devs to let us know which ideas they picked up on in here. Would be useful to see what kind of content got picked up on and what didn't.

It is quite the sad part, that Larian is far to silent, instead of using opportunities to discuss with us. I guess, it's one of the reasons, why the forum got more silent over the time.

I've tried to read between the lines quickly.

There is just too many suggestion at once and I would suggest leaving the dev working on the number's instead of saying how much it should improve.

1) On the ground of mixing the Physical and Magical armor together, I disagree.
The game conception allows character to mix and match their character as they wish, wearing a plate armor which only give physical armor, therefor makes more vulnerable that said user (most likely a fighter, knight etc) to magical effect...that is normal, it's the basic concept of dungeon and dragon stuff....

As a work around proposed. To have the damage to armor and health divided together (67/33...etc) could be an option as armor seems to be depleting too quickly leaving the door open for massive CC. Although i dont like the idea because it messes arround the piercing skill.

Maybe they should just improve the armors instead both for the AI and the players instead....make the combat last longer, therefor increase the strategy.

As a solution I've proposed in another thread, to allow counter measure on CC, relaying the CCd character last in the turn would allow other character's in the same team to play before and maybe using proper magic, un-CCd the CCd character.

Maybe we will find objects more resistant to CC later in the game...

Because down the line, the damage is fine maybe beside the mages where i find their wands unusualy weak....and water damage weak but i think those improves over time.....and will improve following the next suvgestion...

The problem is the CC

Maybe instead of losing a turn, you would be losing a number of AP per turn....for x turn depending how long the effect would last....
3AP for being stunt, maybe 2 AP to stand up....etc
That suggestion would although interfer with my previous suggestion on turn priority changes.

2) On the ground of having the skill bonuses improved, I do agree on the fact that all skills under a skill tree should benefits from putting more points into that said skill tree because lots of skills are being forgotten from improvements.

Adding more points to a skill tree should result in the following:
Damage skills should improve the damage
Defense skills should unlock more potential and increase the healing or armor.

Skills like Frost armor, Clear minded, First Aid and other which are curing a lot of effects; maybe they should be rework as of curing maybe just 1-2 effect, than the more points unlock more cures...

I don't agree with all the extra bonuses proposed though...
I think most classes right now are doing enough damages anyway and I'd like the game to be a bit harder... maybe another difficulty lvl....

I can’t find who suggested mixing physical and magical armour together – but obviously, yeah, I wouldn’t support that idea. My example above was just for physical attacks, but naturally I’d like to see magical attacks also damage a percentage of health while magical armour is still up.

This may make room for buffing the amount of magical and physical armour available, since you’d always be damaged under this system and, for me at least, the 3-way health feature of magical armour/physical armour/real health is key to enriching the strategy in combat. There should be some increased pressure to keep armour in good shape if you’re always being damaged, because once it’s gone you’re even more vulnerable.

The so-called ‘hard CC’ is just the cheapest thing going, and the solutions in the other threads mentioned are not only much better but also allow you to keep playing the game with affected characters.

I wouldn’t even want to see ‘rare’ unavoidable CC in the game, such the chicken spell, or charm. Not unless there was some way to un-charm the character by some straightforward but costly means, such as x amount of attack damage to that character from a friendly character: you must damage them by a certain amount to un-charm them (they lose their health, you lose AP). And most importantly, it remains a choice: always available, no special skills needed, but a significant enough choice for the yes/no to have noticeable cost.

The game is entertaining because it rewards cunning up to a certain degree: this is good. Tackling CC at present involves virtually no wits. Dice roll solutions to the problem only reward stat choices, which don't translate into strategic choices during gameplay. And specialist skills than undo CC only reward those with the money or luck to acquire them.

I think this is a very good point that trying to rely on skills that remove hard cc as a way to counter it isn't interesting, but just something that basically ends up being mandatory. Giving universal but costly ways to counter forms of cc is a much better solution.

It's not the devs who necessarily need to interact with us. Does Larian have a PR department or anything equivalent to that? A community manager or some such interlocutor? It would seem at the very least reasonable to have someone whose job it is to interact with the community and perhaps filter some of the suggestions made here to the developers.

They are reading and they have people like Raze who try to help with issues. But except from one or two they do not really tell us, what they think, wich make the whole thing pretty onesided.

Raze is doing a good job, but he's just one person who's already tasked with helping with technical issues and probably a whole load of other stuff I'm not aware of. That's why I was pointing out that maybe there's a need for someone solely - or just mostly - dedicated to this side of the forum, where most of the ideas are hatched. I mean, it's obvious most of the ideas here will never see the light of day, but it'd still be interesting to see what effect this open alpha-testing-period has - if for nothing else, then as documentation of the efficacy of an open betatesting process like this one.

Pr manager is there to do the PR not to give you meaningful interaction with the devs.

The whole crowdfunding deal is mostly PR schtick and the devs are constrained in how much suggestions they can take due to the fact that if they take too many - they will be criticized as incompetent to make their own game. Which is a complaint you hear often - as soon as some random poster sees any idea he wouldnt like personally.

And the devs are very sensitive to that kind of bad press - PR.

As for CC i gave two suggestions so far, but take this as discussion amongst ourselves more then any idea i think the devs will actually take. Besides, they are aware of these possible changes themselves but choose different approach.

1. Make investment into every skill also raise resistance to that specific CC effect. So, investing into Hydrosophist magic also gives you resistance to being frozen, investing into Geomancer increases resistance to being petrified, investing into Warfarer makes you more resistant to knockdown, etc. All these investments into skills also raise you defense against that specific skill or magic in general which is then supplemented by equipment that would need to be nerfed for balance.

2. Make magic and physical armor percentage based instead of hard point defense that works at 100% as long as you have any point left, even one. So that some damage to vitality goes through the more you damag the armors. This can be separated into tiers (quarter, half, three quarters) for simplicity or be literally based on percentages or whatever other permutation you can imagine.

As Baardvark suggested i wouldnt mind seeing some softer CC effects, but i would keep some hard CC for critical strikes success. So then those would be rare, as they should be - not the main and most often feature.
I would also reduce the turns they last for, to one turn with some additional smaller debilitating effect for another turn or two that would simulate character recuperating from some significant effects. Which would make it more believable. (this allows for other stats, maybe main attributes to have effect on this recuperation)

This way, you would have soft CC, rare hard CC and maybe even rarer super hard CC based on your stats that would cause CC effects to last longer then one turn.

Since all this works for enemies against you too, you would not find yourself being hard CC-ed, except rarely and only against much powerful enemies - which is as it should be.

And you would be able to cause such effects only when your characters grow very powerful - which is as it should be.


***


The thing about RNG complaints is that its absurd to complain about it. Because in a percentage based games such as RPGs most often are - its not really actually random. You will get more success if you have a 90& chance then 20, 30, or 50% chance to do something. And you can change and affect your chances for success.

Investing into the skills (and equipment) is a strategic decision the player makes - which especially fits turn based systems. Thats what RPG games really are - a system based on combination of player strategic decisions and character tactical abilities (most often in form of different stats) that affect tactical gameplay.

You cannot remove the character effect on the gameplay and still have an RPG game.
The more you do it the more you shift the game towards action game kind of gameplay. Which can also be good but that necessitates going for real time combat, not Turn Based systems which enhance the importance of character stats and skills.


But the problem with Devs approach to this is distorted since they have to be mindful of the overall market - and then turn out to be absurdly sensitive only on ridiculous complaints about it. You can have a hundred or a thousand people saying its all good, crowdfunding such projects and suggesting minor things to make such a system better - but they will only focus on a single complainer who literally cries about "random RNG" on steam or forums without actually understanding how such system works and motivated only on some missed hits he experienced a few times - as if thats the only thing that should be considered.

So, in that case, most often the only solution is moding the game. Which has its own problems and issues.

Chess has no ‘RNG’ and is one of the most tactical turn-based games in existence – certainly more so than D:OS – so how exactly does RNG’s absence or diminishment make a game less tactical and more action-orientated?

If anything, the more RNG in a game, the less tactical and more action-orientated it becomes, since the reliance on a computer for calculations removes the need for human calculation. The game consequently becomes turn-based Diablo, where you don’t have to think – you just have to click on the enemy and let the slot machine do its thing.

Regardless, I can’t find the post that advocates RNG's complete removal from the game. My own post on RNG focuses on its relationship to CC in D:OS1, in which it qualified as only a tiny fraction of the overall RNG that went into the game.

My argument is that a return to an RNG solution to CC means assigning a critical aspect of the game’s tactical gameplay – CC, in other words – to the computer, not the human. It’s boring. And mindless. CC is currently too prominent a tactic for the computer to have so much power in deciding its fate during battle. All other RNG mechanics are perfectly fine, and never stand out as a barrier to strategy.

I’m not sure, either, where the devs turned out to be ‘absurdly sensitive’ to what you’ve articulated as ‘complaints about the market’ – presumably you mean complaints about the game, but when has that ever been the case? They removed durability when the topic generated enough heat, and nobody misses that, do they? So great – they obviously do read the forums, and do act. And the majority benefits.

Likewise, I’m not clear on your argument against modding: if the modder is skilled enough to enact all of their own ideas about the game, how are there any 'problems and issues' there?

Seems to be an abundance of vitriol in the above post at the expense of reason.

I'm not sure where this thing is going

The RNG is fine to me in this game. But more RNG in a game doesn't mean less tactical.
See Bloodbowl for instance. You play your odds, it is full of RNG, but it is understanding and making the choices where you feel are better for the desire outcome.
Of course if you get all the 1 on a 6 face dice and your opponent's get the 6s...there won't be much of a game...but that's not suppose to happen...

The more RNG would lead to suggest not to allow saving during battles otherwise one might just reload the game until they get the proper roll...

The problem in this game is massive CC from both sides because it is what immediately turns a battle one-sided. It is fun strategically, I think it has its place in the game, it's just that there should also be strategically a way to counter (for both sides) this beside trying to keep your armor afloat...because it is too easy to strip an armor within one or two round of combat.

The question is how to fix this without changing the whole aspect of the game because there is a good base there; skill set, AI, characters...etc

Mhmm, false accusations about "vitriol" because you dont like what im saying. Without even understanding it.
Nice projection mate.



You want an RPG game to be chess?
So we have 16 characters against the enemy 16 characters which have no ability but to move in specific way on a limited field and kill eachother?

I would rather have an RPG game myself.

There is no RPG game in existence that is not dependent on different percentages of success of each action. If you remove that then every action has 100% chance of success and that can only obliterate any sense of a RPG game.

And is especially not applicable to a Turn Based system.

The only thing in OS games that isnt working like that are these hard CC effects.



No, the exact opposite is true.
The less of percentage based skills and stats there is applied to a character the more of an action game with real time combat it becomes. Because then everything of influence is transfered to the player skill, not the character skill.

Because in that case the character always has 100% chance to succeed. So the only one who can make any difference is the player.




thats what happens when you remove any stats and skills from the character, whcih happens once a character has 100% chance to succeed in anything.

Then you cannot have any difference in character stats at all.

I find it absurd that someone cannot understand this.




Well what are you then complaining about?
How is that logically consistent with nonsense you just wrote above?

And btw, all i see as arguments against making hard CC more percentage based instead of absolute are complainst about "RNG" as if all of such mechanics are completely random - which is absurd nonsense.



No, if your character has 100% chance to cause hard CC every single time THEN it is something you have no influence over and it is "done by a computer" in a turn based game.






EXACTLY! Its mindless and boring because the chance for it is ALWAYS 100%.


Yup, the removed something because a few posters cried about it. Instead of making it better.



How many mods is there around that are high quality (not just some skins and superficial stuff) and how long do you usually have to wait for such mods?

It takes time and dedicated capable people to make really good and valuable mods.

I do collect feedback and suggestions to summarize in a list (though technical support does have a higher priority), and others do follow the forum.



You say that like there was a clear way to make it better. There were various suggestions in several topics, but I don't recall any that were 'better'. Given finite resources, would 'fixing' durability be a better use of time than more focus on other features? Have you ever brought up the durability system when recommending any game, as one of its key features?

You see guys, crying gets you some response :p

Yeah, Raze collects stuff and sends it up the stream and devs do read the forums. And do something about it.
Mostly regarding smaller issues within core systems. They are not going to change whole systems just like that or talk about it with fans. Which, if you followed game development for some time is pretty much how things go. Same thing as when there were publishers running things.



Durability is a supporting, not a key feature of any RPG i know of so of course i didnt recommend it as a key feature.
Its usefulness is very dependent on other systems in the game, like crafting, or availability of items. Or general seriousness of the setting. If the setting is an action combat heavy romp where new items fall out of every bush and traders sell thousands of leveled and magical items (even in a prison) that you need to ditch and get better ones every five minutes then it doesnt make much sense to have it.

It did feel to me like it was one of those things devs cut out due to complaints of specific kind, which is the only time anyone sees any kind of response, but i could be wrong.


Anyway...

After playing some more, it looks to me like armors are getting more problematic when you are fighting enemies of higher level then you. Even one level above makes them a slog to get through.

And they dont just stop hard status effects but everything.
They basically work as extended health points.
While making you invulnerable to any additional or secondary effect any skill has. You cant burn, get poisoned, crippled... or anything.

I guess the idea was that some characters will have only physical armor and some only magical, but that is rarely true.

So, your vitality is actually vitality + any physical + any magical armor. And you are invulnerable to everything as long as armors last.

That makes it pretty much impossible to deal with enemies just two levels above you, which forces you to play against same or lower level enemies which tends to make things too easy.

Keep in mind, Hiver, that I never insinuated the devs aren't doing enough already. In my posts, I focused on the visible aspect of their work - do the regular posters here really get to know (and perhaps just as importantly, experience) the value of their contributions? Maybe that's all well and good, and it doesn't really matter either way. I don't have a particular opinion that. My only point was to highlight that it seemed to me, from the way people were talking about this and from my own personal experience, that people were, at times, confused about the value of their contributions. As a reminder: I didn't post any of this with complaining in my list of priorities.

Back on page 2, I saw smokey worrying about the sluggish leveling from 1 to 3. I don't know how experienced he is with the game - it's entirely possible, even relatively easy, if you just know the locations of all the encounters from experience - but to someone who doesn't have that experience, I suppose it might be hard due to a lack of *obvious* encounters that don't involve taking on several Level 4 Magisters with sub-par equipment and a severe case of underleveled characters. This, however, should be fixed by the addition of the tutorial segment in the beginning of the game (which IIRC is supposed to get you from Level 1 to Level 2).