Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[HoboForEternity]

The problem is more to do with the elimination of all other resistances/saves & the wealth of CC abilities retained, meaning you are guaranteed to stunlock enemies once you get their initial armour down unless (1) the battle is really not going well for you and your own characters get debilitated, (2) you are in the first hour of the game with 3 abilities.

yeah. I have been saying this since like mid end of september

 

[Payd Shell]

Luckmann may think so, but I don't believe the armour system in itself is decline, and it has a laudable goal of introducing multiple stages of combat. The problem is more to do with the elimination of all other resistances/saves & the wealth of CC abilities retained, meaning you are guaranteed to stunlock enemies once you get their initial armour down unless (1) the battle is really not going well for you and your own characters get debilitated, (2) you are in the first hour of the game with 3 abilities. Enemy AI obviously isn't as good at stunlocking you, and furthermore the ways to protect against stunlocks or to buff up your armour again are highly limited (you can get a teeny bit of armour back with fortify, for example, but in the time it takes for that to cool down the Warfare guy has 3 or 4 ways to knock you down and Warfare = enough damage to get past the armour too).

For example, imagine your own party fighting each other. YOu realise that whoever goes first, basically wins, because once you get somebody's armour down it's game over.

Another problem with splitting the armour pool and then tying abilities to phys/mag the way they've done it, is that enemies are always only as weak as their lowest armour (unless you've laoded your entire party into phys/mag, in which case you do enough damage to blow past it anyway), and this has the effect of narrowing the number of ways the battle can pan out. One look at their armour and you already know what's going to happen.

But how is it better when RNG decides what will happen? RNG can screw you over even if you played perfectly or save you even if you played like a retard. RNG makes things unpredictable at the surface but if you scratch at said surface it's still the same - you'll try to apply damage or status effects and the dice roll decides if it is gonna happen or not. If you think about it statistically, your chance to hit or apply whatever you want to apply to your enemy evens out. for example, a 50% hit chance will halve your dps if 100% is the norm. A 50% chance to stun means you need to use any ability or item that applies stun twice as much.

Personally I don't enjoy RNG-based systems that much and all that DOS 2 does is exposing the flaws of many turn based games. I only ever liked the combat of Jagged Alliance 2 when it comes to turn based systems and that was probably because you had a shit ton of options and a well executed strategy always paid off in the end. I do think that health based rolls are a nice idea but are badly executed in Original Sin 2 - a healthy and armored opponent should almost always resist any attempt to CC them but as they lose more and more HP the chances get higher and higher for them because they're more wounded and exhausted now. Oh well.

 

[Urthor]

If the armor only was for the opening turn and like the majority of the battle was armorless and balanced for that it'd work out, but yeah the issue atm is that 90% of the actual threatening part of the combat is before the armor goes down, and once it does you kind of just win, and the armor feels like a health bar you are whittling down down with basic attacks.

Honestly if characters just had a shield that made them immune to CC abilities for the first turn that'd be a fine implementation really. Or just go back to the old system and not balance at all for player vs player multiplayer, and just let people play through the campaign in a combat system that is only balanced for player vs everyone interactions.

 

[Payd Shell]

The combat system isn't tuned for PvP, though. In PvP all that matters is initiative because once you get the source skills everyone can oneshot each other so whoever has his turn first usually wins.

 

[Tigranes]

Payd Shell The difference between stunlocking people 100% and, say, having an RNG system that lets you do it 80% of the time isn't just "20% less combat efficiency" or "20% less DPS" or whatever. People like to use probability to reduce the problem into simple comparisons (the irony being probability is often quite tricky), but there are qualitative differences in the combat experience and the tactics. It's very different to have a system like DOS2 where you are completely immune to even raging fires underneath your feet and every other kind of effect (except, for some reason, Oil/Slowed), and then suddenly become completely vulnerable.

It's not like I'm arguing for RNG over deterministic systems writ large, I enjoy both when done well and the flaws with RNG are well known. I think with a more robust armour buff/debuff system where you have comparably dynamic ways to restore your armour, and where knockdowns aren't handed out like candy, and where for example there are ways to bleed your magic armour into physical armour, and some effects bypass armour where sensible (like Taunt), then the deterministic armour system could still have been quite interesting. Armour wouldn't make you completely immune to all effects; you wouldn't be stunlocked and 100% doomed to death just because your physical armour's out and your magical is in 8000; and you wouldn't know for sure you've won this battle as soon as you calculate that you can get the enemy's armour down this turn, which is how the whole game works ATM.

 

[MWaser]

indeed, one of the big aspects that exacerbate issues caused by armor is simply how much hard CC there exists, and how strong a single round is at the same time. With the ability to easily take away basically all turns from an enemy once their armor is down, the actual HP bar feels more like it makes you a meat shield not really capable of doing a whole lot, especially since your characters, unlike bosses, will not have the massively overinflated hp bars that would allow you to survive multiple rounds of continued hard CC and then potentially make use of some inane mechanic like perseverance.

If hard CC was, comparatively, really rare, then the armor bars would not feel like 90% of the combat, and health would have more of an actual use.

 

[Lacrymas]

A brute forced system with no thought put into it is shit? More news at eleven? There was a bunch of other ways they could limit CCs, they just went with the most retarded and nonsensical approach.

 

[John Keel]

I kind of disagree, it *could* have been a good idea if they did a split between Hard CC and soft one and allow the soft one to go through it (as well as some minor debuff).

Far from a perfect solution for sure, and it would not solve the problem of once armor down, CC-lock is possible, but then again, they did have a solution for that in DOSEE with diminishing-return/temp immunity so ...

 

[MWaser]

A brute forced system with no thought put into it is shit? More news at eleven? There was a bunch of other ways they could limit CCs, they just went with the most retarded and nonsensical approach.

I'm sure a lot of "thought" was actually put into it

 

[Payd Shell]

Payd Shell The difference between stunlocking people 100% and, say, having an RNG system that lets you do it 80% of the time isn't just "20% less combat efficiency" or "20% less DPS" or whatever. People like to use probability to reduce the problem into simple comparisons (the irony being probability is often quite tricky), but there are qualitative differences in the combat experience and the tactics. It's very different to have a system like DOS2 where you are completely immune to even raging fires underneath your feet and every other kind of effect (except, for some reason, Oil/Slowed), and then suddenly become completely vulnerable.

It's not like I'm arguing for RNG over deterministic systems writ large, I enjoy both when done well and the flaws with RNG are well known. I think with a more robust armour buff/debuff system where you have comparably dynamic ways to restore your armour, and where knockdowns aren't handed out like candy, and where for example there are ways to bleed your magic armour into physical armour, and some effects bypass armour where sensible (like Taunt), then the deterministic armour system could still have been quite interesting. Armour wouldn't make you completely immune to all effects; you wouldn't be stunlocked and 100% doomed to death just because your physical armour's out and your magical is in 8000; and you wouldn't know for sure you've won this battle as soon as you calculate that you can get the enemy's armour down this turn, which is how the whole game works ATM.

But how does probability affect your decisions or gives you more interesting options? It may seem more interesting at first because as far as I know our brains love uncertainty more dopamine or whatever gets released when you have success at something that feels unpredictable. I'm no math genius or anything but I think that in most cases accuracy could just be a factor to multiply your damage values with and you'd eventually get the same results. But it wouldn't feel as ""rewarding"" I suppose.

 

[Tigranes]

Just think about the actual situation, instead of trying to make some mathy/biophysical explanation. Not everything is behavioural science.

 

[Payd Shell]

Well personally I don't enjoy RNG based systems that much, they burn me out really fast. I don't want to win because I simply got lucky and I sure as hell don't enjoy losing simply because I got an unlucky roll because those situations deny you the possibility to improve yourself by analyzing what you did right and what you did wrong and how to do it better next time. Sure, in games with RNG there's usually several mechanics involved that you can use to increase your chances, JA2 being the best example to the point where the RNG didn't bother me at all, but at the end it usually comes down to a dice roll one way or the other. 80% chance to hit? Well sorry matey but you miss. Enemy has a 5% chance to hit? Enjoy your crit to the face. Those are outliers, sure, but they'll happen eventually if you give the system enough opportunities.

 

[Roguey]

Well personally I don't enjoy RNG based systems that much, they burn me out really fast. I don't want to win because I simply got lucky and I sure as hell don't enjoy losing simply because I got an unlucky roll because those situations deny you the possibility to improve yourself by analyzing what you did right and what you did wrong and how to do it better next time. Sure, in games with RNG there's usually several mechanics involved that you can use to increase your chances, JA2 being the best example to the point where the RNG didn't bother me at all, but at the end it usually comes down to a dice roll one way or the other. 80% chance to hit? Well sorry matey but you miss. Enemy has a 5% chance to hit? Enjoy your crit to the face. Those are outliers, sure, but they'll happen eventually if you give the system enough opportunities.

That's a terrible over-exaggeration.

Nonetheless

 

[Payd Shell]

That's a terrible over-exaggeration.

Nonetheless

It's somewhat of a hyperbole but also not really because give any probability that's above zero enough time and it will happen. Probably. 80% chance to hit means that one in five attacks will miss the target which isn't particularly rare if you take into account how many attacks are calculated over the course of a game. On the other hand, a 5% to hit means that one in twenty attacks will hit which is also quite common all things considered. Eh, I don't know.

 

[Tigranes]

"80% means one in five, 5% means one in twenty which is more than zero!!!"

Are you taking your very first statistics course in middle school, or something

 

[Shackleton]

Wait, so all that's required for me to win the lottery is to enter it enough times?! So that's where I've been going wrong!

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Full interview: http://www.pcgamer.com/swen-vincke-...-2-and-the-pros-and-cons-of-open-development/

Over 700,000 sales confirmed.

Steam sales. I imagine GoG also sold quite a few copies as well.

 

[Jimmious]

Infinitron
According to SteamSpy, you sold somewhere in the region of 700,000 sales in less than three weeks.

I think we're over 700,000 now.

That's not bad going.

No, it's not. We could definitely do worse. I mean, we had the early access players before that too. Lifetime total units: 748,000 on Steam, and then you have to add the pre-release ones on there. Wow, that's higher than I thought, that's really good.

 

[Infinitron]

I know that, I just don't know how Ausdoertt knows Swen was referring to Steam only.

 

[Jimmious]

That's why I'm bolding the part that he says Lifetime total units: 748,000 on Steam

 

[Ivan]

Is it time to jump in boys?

For story reasons, is it best to play a custom char and recruit compas vs playing their role yourself?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Luckmann]

Is it time to jump in boys?

For story reasons, is it best to play a custom char and recruit compas vs playing their role yourself?

There is nothing special about companions. You will be part of their origin quest even if they are no longer alive, you might miss specific quest outcome though.
What is important is to carefully chose tags for PC, which origin characters got locked.
Avoid noble and barbarian. I've played Beast as PC and it was terrible.
Jester is nice(for me mandatory even), Outlaw fits rogues, Scholar unlocks some quests.
Dont know much about Mystic or Soldier, maybe someone else can explore those.

EDIT: at no point origin companions will disagree or whatever. After joining they are mindless puppets and will never turn on you. They will just share pieces of their tragic backstories. If you are choosing origin characters as companions, pick ones that seem interesting for you. Hint: From what I've red no one found Beast interesting, Sebile story gets interesting in a2.

Yeah, Noble and Barbarian are shit. Barbarian is just "retard savage" and Noble is "foppish asshole". It's pretty bad how extremely pigeon-holed the tags are. I'm going for an Outlaw Noble at the moment and it's insane how much they clash with eachother, even though the concept itself is sound.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[AwesomeButton]

I know this is old, but my wife just got to the scarecrow battle, in her own playthrough which she restarted after I refused to keep up the coop one.

So, you get a battle regardless of whether you passed or failed the persuasion check? What the fuck is this? I know, it's a middle finger in the player's face and an insult to the player as a player, made by a lazy designer. Fake choice has always been a game designer trick, but this is inexcusable.

Just seeing this made me want to drop the game again.