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Balance Poll for DOS 2

Do you think DOS 2 is well balanced?

  • Yes, it is well balanced especially on tactician

    Votes: 22 44.9%
  • Yes, it is well balanced on difficulties lower than tactician only

    Votes: 14 28.6%
  • No, it is too hard on tactician

    Votes: 7 14.3%
  • No, it is too hard on difficulties lower than tactician

    Votes: 1 2.0%
  • No, it is too hard and I know I am super smart so its Larian's fault and not me

    Votes: 5 10.2%

  • Total voters
    49
  • Poll closed .

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
2,088
I am very impressed by the difficulty of tactician in DOS 2. I think it is very well balanced. The major fights are majorly difficult and memorable. You have to try and think and come up with a strategy. I think it blows the super easy tactician mode of DOS EE out of the water.

It seems that I may be in the minority here as people say the balance sucks. I am not sure if they are claiming it is too easy or too hard. I have only tried tactician so don't know how well balanced the other levels are. I'm positive the game was balanced around tactician level and that level was aimed at thinking adults. So I am thinking that all the whining is from stupids who do not want to realize they are dumb so they cry the game is too hard instead of playing at the easy difficulty level they should be playing at because of their mental deficiencies. This poll is to dig deep and find out the truth of the matter.
 

KateMicucci

Arcane
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Sep 2, 2017
Messages
1,676
I had started playing on Classic because I thought tactician might be too hard for a first playthrough. After seeing so many people complain that armor was broken on tactician, I loaded an earlier save and redid some fights. They really weren't that much harder and I beat them with no deaths and without even using any consumables. Armor was only slightly more difficult to break. I wasn't playing well either- I kept misclicking and once accidently cast Evasive Aura on an enemy instead of myself. It didn't matter, the fights were still easy. This was against enemies of the same level. Looking at the armor/hp values of enemies a couple levels higher, that would definitely be a challenge and actually require some hard thinking, maybe even customizing gear and skill selections for the fight, but still be doable.

It does seem that a lot of guys are mad because they aren't good.
 

Niklasgunner

Savant
Joined
Aug 6, 2017
Messages
153
For me the problem isn't whether tactician is to easy or to difficult, but that some builds simply break the game.
I have found a summoning build that lets me cheese any encounter without any of my characters even being involved in combat. Apparently lone wolf is also really abuseable. I don't understand how Larian is so bad at designing systems that aren't higly exploitable.

For me it's easy. I thought having two summoners would sound like a fun party setup, turns out their damage output alone is enough to get through any encounter.
Even though I tried minmaxing other skill focuses to challenge myself, they just don't compare. I rather have balance man make the next Divinity than Larian if their combat systems can be broken so easily.

Also, tactician simply bloats hitpoints, instead of encounter design and AI behaviour as stated in the kickstarter.
That's probably the most disappointing thing about the difficulty mode, it's just lazy.

So basically, you are lacking an "it's to easy" option.
 
Last edited:

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
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Messages
2,088
For me the problem isn't whether tactician is to easy or to difficult, but that some builds simply break the game.
I have found a summoning build that lets me cheese any encounter without any of my characters even being involved in combat. Apparently lone wolf is also really abuseable. I don't understand how Larian is so bad at designing systems that aren't higly exploitable.

For me it's easy. I thought having two summoners would sound like a fun party setup, turns out their damage output alone is enough to get through any encounter.
Even though I tried minmaxing other skill focuses to challenge myself, they just don't compare. I rather have balance man make the next Divinity than Larian if their combat systems can be broken so easily.

Also, tactician simply bloats hitpoints, instead of encounter design and AI behaviour as stated in the kickstarter.
That's probably the most disappointing thing about the difficulty mode, it's just lazy.

So basically, you are lacking an "it's to easy" option.

I have a party of 3 physical damage and the demon lady who is a water/air mage. I have a the guy I made, the demon lady, the elf lady, and the dwarf. I had them all go to default of what they are, but have build the dwarf as a ranger since so he isn't optimal. My guy is a two hander user whatever the fighters skill is called. I've barely dented the content off the boat in the new city area. Right now I've been trying the scarecrow fight and getting my ass handed to me and thinking I may have to come back later. I'm either going to hit the town or look for the witch. The enemy summoners I have come across have been pretty easy though and I haven't looked at any of their skill books. Unless the last first island fight with the guy head bad guy, there was this floating lady that may have been a summoner. Whatever she was was a huge pain in the ass.

I think I'd care more about imbalance if other games had good combat and I wasn't forced to always create my own rules to make games playable. Such as never respecing in game. I wish the characters didn't have so much content so I could create my own party, but oh well. I've had to break a lot of my rules in this game like never having a character die, never reloading to make different decisions

Even though I like a lot of combat changes from DOS 1, I think chardev (and gen) remain a weak point. I am hoping that the person who made the epic encounters mod for DOS ee makes a mod for this game focusing on chardev and itemization.

I haven't done much looking but one of the things I think is way off is the huge jumps in gear stats between levels. It is crazy. This, coupled with the lackluster chardev makes leveling more of a pain than something exciting. I hope the epic encounters mod for this game also recuses the level cap to like 10 so you are much more restricted by points, added with far less significant gear jumps in level, and less stats on gear. I also hate random loot and being forced to pump lucky charm for a character and have him be my looter. I do like that the combat and utility skills were separated, but this game will benefit a lot from an epic encounters mod. And the bonus is the epic encounters mod will have to focus much less on making the game difficult since the tactician difficulty is actually difficult, which wasn't the case at all with DOS EE, so it can poor a lot more focus into chardev and itemization and item placement.

I also love the non-OP crafting. Not the crafting itself, but the fact that it isn't game breaking like it was with DOS 1.

I also resigned myself to knowing most non-super indy devs will never make a game with good chardev and combat and mods will be needed to make either good with very few exceptions, but this game is so far improved than the original when it comes to balance and difficulty it is like night and day. The framework is in so much of a better place in this game than the first it is crazy. So crazy that the content mods that come out for it will be playable without any gameplay/systems mods. That is unheard of and never been done before. Larian is the first to do it in my opinion.
 

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
2,088
No kingComrade option. No vote.

So you only vote when there is an option that is basically just like not voting? My heart goes out to you and I'm sorry I did not think of your demographic when creating the poll. It must mean I am a racist and my poll is aimed at the privileged who default to wanting select an option that is like voting.
 

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
2,088
I had started playing on Classic because I thought tactician might be too hard for a first playthrough. After seeing so many people complain that armor was broken on tactician, I loaded an earlier save and redid some fights. They really weren't that much harder and I beat them with no deaths and without even using any consumables. Armor was only slightly more difficult to break. I wasn't playing well either- I kept misclicking and once accidently cast Evasive Aura on an enemy instead of myself. It didn't matter, the fights were still easy. This was against enemies of the same level. Looking at the armor/hp values of enemies a couple levels higher, that would definitely be a challenge and actually require some hard thinking, maybe even customizing gear and skill selections for the fight, but still be doable.

It does seem that a lot of guys are mad because they aren't good.

What do you think of the balance of some of the major fights, though? Did you struggle with the end island fight? I certainly did. The Ai is pretty decent in really screwing you over when you are setting up a win and just sticking it right up your ass.
 

Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
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Strap Yourselves In
On tactician only few builds are viable, like the summoner + necro bone widow, or stunlocking CC warfare guys/poly. Since source is infinite if you are keen to teleporting back to city all the time, you can always use source spells. Myself i hate such mechanics, because it just make things longer in the sake of making it longer -if i have the option to cast stronger spells, then why shouldnt use it, even if i have to lenghten my game like 50% more? That makes the game tedious, not challenging. Thieving every shit you find and look into every container with lucky char character make this game quite unbearable. But hey MMORPG players will love that.
 

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
Dumbfuck
Joined
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Messages
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On tactician only few builds are viable, like the summoner + necro bone widow, or stunlocking CC warfare guys/poly. Since source is infinite if you are keen to teleporting back to city all the time, you can always use source spells. Myself i hate such mechanics, because it just make things longer in the sake of making it longer -if i have the option to cast stronger spells, then why shouldnt use it, even if i have to lenghten my game like 50% more? That makes the game tedious, not challenging. Thieving every shit you find and look into every container with lucky char character make this game quite unbearable. But hey MMORPG players will love that.

I disagree about the build thing. That is baddie thinking. I have no idea about builds because I only know what I have and I know for certain I could have a very successful party with what the bads consider the weakest builds. Adapt and overcome. It isn't your builds or weak builds versus the game, it is, and has always been, your ability to adapt to the hand you've been dealt versus your ability to manage the systems.

I agree with the looting think, a lot of dumb shit from DOS 1 where doubled down on for some reason - but the biggest sins of DOS 1 (besides the fucking camera pain in the ass which is new stupid shit) have been addressed. The tactician difficulty is actually difficult, the crafting isn't retardly OP and is now focused on reusable upgrades. But the itemization wasn't addressed, and the random loot. I hate random loot. Random loot is console nonsense, like spinning cameras and pixel hunt looting. I want loot to be like encounters - hand made. Random loot is for SSD idiots and just a waste of time for thinking people with good taste.

But, the base line difficulty of this game makes is far superior than DOS 1 in my book. Having really tough fights in an unmodded game from a non-super indy developer is so rare this century it is unheard of.
 

Monkeyfinger

Cipher
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Messages
778
There's a universally good set of dips.

2 water, for heal, rain, global cooling, and winter blast
2 air, for electric discharge, teleport and dazing bolt
2 polymorph, for chicken claw, medusa's head and spread your wings

Plus enough memory to fit all those skills and still have whatever else you want.

By around level 10 it's reasonable to have that on all 4 of your characters, with a bunch of leftover points to spend on whatever you want.

Only hard thing is prioritizing where your money goes when you're still poor. Like if you have a melee guy and a bow guy, maybe it's a good idea to spend money on melee skills, bow skills and decent weapons, even if that means you have to ignore the dips on those 2 characters for a while.
 

Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
Also, tactician simply bloats hitpoints, instead of encounter design and AI behaviour as stated in the kickstarter.
That's probably the most disappointing thing about the difficulty mode, it's just lazy.
.



Oh right I forgot, some enemies have an extra status effect, damn larian putting in effort


They also use different skills. Numbers scaling of encounters has often led to uneven encounter design (especially with a combo heavy system like in DOS2) so i welcome their choice not to tweak the numbers, as it is just another form of hp/damage bloat anyways.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
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May 18, 2015
Messages
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I find tactician to be hard enough for my taste. Stronger enemies will crush you, same leveled enemies will provide a good challenge and weaker ones you will win with relative ease. Sounds good to me
 

anvi

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I'm more concerned with how it is balanced later in the game. My issue with DoS is that it was challenging at first, learning to only pick the easier fights and avoid all the others, and learning what spells do what. But after a while, every fight was boring and easy and just spamming all the biggest spells and watching the enemies struggle to do stuff. I think the boss battles were good but the million trash fights were too easy as the game went on. I am hoping DOS2 has the same difficulty all the way through.
 

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
2,088
I'm more concerned with how it is balanced later in the game. My issue with DoS is that it was challenging at first, learning to only pick the easier fights and avoid all the others, and learning what spells do what. But after a while, every fight was boring and easy and just spamming all the biggest spells and watching the enemies struggle to do stuff. I think the boss battles were good but the million trash fights were too easy as the game went on. I am hoping DOS2 has the same difficulty all the way through.

I disagree wholeheartedly. DOS 1 started off super easy and quickly got boring, even on tactician. You should try the epic encounters mod for a challenge throughout. But, having the trash fights be challenging almost all the time isn't nearly as annoying as boring combat, but is annoying after a long while.
 

Hell March

Educated
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
64
Tactician is very difficult when you don't exploit top-tier winning strategies, but laughably easy when you do. It's like Larian deliberately steers players towards cheese.
 

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
2,088
Tactician is very difficult when you don't exploit top-tier winning strategies, but laughably easy when you do. It's like Larian deliberately steers players towards cheese.

If these "top-tier winning strategies" are gained by watching other people play the game, or searching out ways in which to exploit the game, instead of organically found by normal people playing the game as normal your statement is moot.

Single player games are made to be played, not watched or read about. If these fucking idiots who are exploiting information gained specifically to exploit the game just played the game like a normal person you would have no point.

Think about it. Seriously. This is a single player game, why are people just not playing it? Or even playing it in multiplayer without going out of their way to learn about game exploits and then complaining there are game exploits?

If people just mimic what they watch are they actually playing the game? Not like I am. Of course, I'm not going to seriously play the game until there is a mod that makes chardev more interesting to me, where I actually look forward to leveling up instead of seeing it as a hassle, at which time I will look into skills and other functions across the board instead of just what I got. But I will learn on my own, and if at that time there is a super OP build that I miss oh well. You can't miss what you never knew.

But besides that, I am certain I am right. People that don't play the game on their own are mimicking and not playing the game. Their opinions are worth nothing since they are not players of the game. Neither are they normal. Normal people play games. Fucking degenerates and retards watch other people play games. As for searching for exploit to win and then complaining about winning - that seems tantamount to searching for a cheat engine table and then complaining you are winning. The ability to have gimp builds and great builds are the a necessity for a good rpg, but if not found organically the player has no complaint.

I do have to say that difficulty should be based on assuming the player is not retarded and has to have a good build to barely scrap through a fight with tons of trying, and great builds to make it slightly easier. If there are builds that allow people to breeze through boss fights on tactician certainly is an issue. But it certainly won't be an issue when I play the game modded with a good chargen/dev mod. That doesn't mean LArian shouldn't address this issue beforehand.
 

anvi

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I'm more concerned with how it is balanced later in the game. My issue with DoS is that it was challenging at first, learning to only pick the easier fights and avoid all the others, and learning what spells do what. But after a while, every fight was boring and easy and just spamming all the biggest spells and watching the enemies struggle to do stuff. I think the boss battles were good but the million trash fights were too easy as the game went on. I am hoping DOS2 has the same difficulty all the way through.

I disagree wholeheartedly. DOS 1 started off super easy and quickly got boring, even on tactician. You should try the epic encounters mod for a challenge throughout. But, having the trash fights be challenging almost all the time isn't nearly as annoying as boring combat, but is annoying after a long while.
Not on Normal mode. It starts with only 1 or 2 fights that are winnable and a bunch of tough bosses that you can't do until you grind up some levels. Then once you clear that first area, the rest of the game is mostly smooth sailing. It did have some challenges later on, the desert with the sandstorm screwed my party pretty good, maybe one or two others. But mostly it was just repetitive spamming of stuff to annihilate everything.

I don't mind the repetition too much because it felt less repetitive than other RPGs. Not even sure how it can be fixed either. I might have been better playing on Hard mode but I've been burned by that too many times in the past with games that don't get much harder, just more of a pain in the ass with hp sponges etc.
 

thesheeep

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Tactician is very difficult when you don't exploit top-tier winning strategies, but laughably easy when you do. It's like Larian deliberately steers players towards cheese.
Fully agree with this.

I really don't like that you can not walk into a single fight unprepared. You have to start almost every fight, see what's coming, reload, position your guys accordingly PRIOR to causing the fight trigger.
Then, and only then, you can have a challenging, but winnable fight.
Without doing that pre-combat "magical insight" shuffling, you lose every harder fight due to standing too close to each other and eating a ton of AoE attacks in the first round. Because in contrast to the enemies, your guys have rather low armor values.

As Hell March said, you are absolutely forced to cheese, which is fucking annoying - and to me very much immersion breaking.
Maybe some people are proud of themselves when they carry a ton of oil / poison barrels with them to trap a battlefield before they could "realistically" know where an enemy will be. Maybe as if they solved some kind of puzzle. But to me that just feels like cheating. I want to meet the enemy on equal footing. But Tactician won't let you.

What would have been so bad about allowing the player a free (maybe even somehow limited) movement-only round at the start of each battle? The enemy sure as hell gets it.

I'm almost 30 hours in and I still can't decide if I want to deal with the cheese or with too-easy-for-me combat in Classic mode...
 

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