Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

[Zed]

teleport was my main damage dealing spell for 10 hours of this game

 

[J_C]

o Please clarify if dropping people from great height and dealing damage to the people below is even intentional, it's somewhat tricky to execute. Please refine the UI..

I didn't know dropping enemies onto others is possible. I tried it, but the game didn't let me to drop others on their head.

 

[RK47]

o Please clarify if dropping people from great height and dealing damage to the people below is even intentional, it's somewhat tricky to execute. Please refine the UI..

I didn't know dropping enemies onto others is possible. I tried it, but the game didn't let me to drop others on their head.

You have to aim their circle (Toggle the Unit Circle on their feet for a general idea) if the targeting circle crosses theirs, that drop will damage the one below it. Most of the time.
It's very inconsistent.
I'll do a vid tonight to demonstrate.

 

[RK47]

Anyone else abuse Walk in Shadows to steal Paintings for gold?

There are other applications for Walk in Shadows like moving your rogue forward, then using your warrior's pyramid to teleport right on top of the enemy before initiating combat.
This saves AP on your end for the warrior and with his presence (hopefully your warrior took 5 Leadership) a lot of initiative will go to the real hardhitter and crowd control artist like your Scoundrels and Wizards. Your Warrior shd be able to resist most CC and absorb any punishment that low initiative wouldn't matter at all to him.

You can also use Move in Shadows to reserve AP while remaining out of harm before unleashing a chain of CC attack or damage.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

If by pain in the ass you mean you have to pump your Charisma and actually choose the correct Dialogue choice, and then after that you don't have to play the minigame, instead just having a random check that takes into account the aforementioned stats? Or do you mean you're trying to cheat the system by doing the minigame, then skipping right when you're about to lose? lol.

I didn't write anything about cheating because I didn't mean to say anything about cheating. I said exactly what I meant, that RPS mini-game is a huge fucking pain in the ass and the longer you play the game the more annoying it becomes. Wanna hire the henchman? Win the mini-game first. Wanna enter the store of one of the few merchants that sell legendary items? RPS first. Wanna see her inventory? RPS a second time. Wanna leave the store without a fight? RPS again. Wanna answer the questions of goblin totem/sentient mushrooms/statues in the temple? RPS each and every time against that Scarlett bitch. It gets old very fast. The fact that they included a stat - Charisma - which has absolutely no relevance to the game, which is 99% combat with quest design as simplistic as it gets, except to make the mini-game more bearable, only adds to the annoyance. Gimp yourself so the RPS crap is less of a hindrance. And if you don't waste points on CHA, as soon as they *fixed* it, instead of having to reload 1 time, when you skipped and lost, you probably have to reload 3-4 times. Sounds great, especially considering the loading times of ~10 s. And this is on a war-machine, loading from an SSD. I have no idea what some poor sods without a highend machine are in for regarding loading times.

Meanwhile there are actually more important things to fix. How about fixing Hiberheim loot, where 80% of all chests contain level 5 loot when your already lvl12? How about fixing the random loot system to begin with. I didn't expect anything else than a random loot system but from all Divinity games I've played, this is the worst.

 

[J_C]

How about fixing Hiberheim loot, where 80% of all chests contain level 5 loot when your already lvl12? How about fixing the random loot system to begin with. I didn't expect anything else than a random loot system but from all Divinity games I've played, this is the worst.

Why is this a problem? I myself visited Hiberheim when I was way past the area's level (I was level 16!), so naturally the enemies and the loot are lower level, since this area is meant to be visited earlier. On the flip side, when I did the immaculate and spider part of Silverglen, I did it too early and was on a lower level than I meant to be. There I got high level enemies and loot. It balances out on the long run.

Either there is level scaling in the game and you always get loot and enemies which are on your level for the whole game (this sucks), or you get limited level scaling, like in DOS, which is much better.

 

[Mangoose]

If by pain in the ass you mean you have to pump your Charisma and actually choose the correct Dialogue choice, and then after that you don't have to play the minigame, instead just having a random check that takes into account the aforementioned stats? Or do you mean you're trying to cheat the system by doing the minigame, then skipping right when you're about to lose? lol.

I didn't write anything about cheating because I didn't mean to say anything about cheating. I said exactly what I meant, that RPS mini-game is a huge fucking pain in the ass and the longer you play the game the more annoying it becomes. Wanna hire the henchman? Win the mini-game first. Wanna enter the store of one of the few merchants that sell legendary items? RPS first. Wanna see her inventory? RPS a second time. Wanna leave the store without a fight? RPS again. Wanna answer the questions of goblin totem/sentient mushrooms/statues in the temple? RPS each and every time against that Scarlett bitch. It gets old very fast.

Dude, half those examples are solved by setting AI to Loyal. And before you say anything, yes, I agree the RPS game is stupid. Btu still, you also realize that Charisma isn't the only thing that is supposed to affect the random roll from skipping (after Larian fixes it as they acknowledged), right? The check is going to be based on Charisma + Dialogue Choice + Attitude. If you pick the wrong dialogue choice you have a less chance of winning, if you pick the right one you have a higher chance of winning.

Meanwhile there are actually more important things to fix. How about fixing Hiberheim loot, where 80% of all chests contain level 5 loot when your already lvl12? How about fixing the random loot system to begin with. I didn't expect anything else than a random loot system but from all Divinity games I've played, this is the worst.

How about, uh, fixing all that at the same time? It's not really hard to change the Skip RPS roll from 50/50 to a real stat check.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Does Hiberheim have level 5 enemies? It's a lvl10-13 area. The loot should reflect that. My guess is, when you first enter Hiberheim by being teleported by the wishing well when you're around lvl5 or so, the chest are created with lvl5 loot.

 

[J_C]

Does Hiberheim have level 5 enemies? It's a lvl10-13 area. The loot should reflect that. My guess is, when you first enter Hiberheim by being teleported by the wishing well when you're around lvl5 or so, the chest are created with lvl5 loot.

Hm, you might have a point there. The chests should be higher level indeed.

 

[Ziem]

Okay, I'd like to compile a list of balance suggestions/issues/concerns to post on the Larian forums. Sadly I'm still early in the game so I can't say much (especially since I hear balance gets way more wonky post Cyrea.) But another guy on the Larian forums had a nice list of his personal concerns so I think we can compile a nice organized topic.

So can you guys list your specific issues with balance and explain why (short or long, doesn't matter). And if you want, provide possible solutions.

Feel free to criticize each others' opinions, it'd make it easier because I'd have a shorter list to post

allrighty then

the biggest balance issue in my opinion is how invisibility works and how abusable it is, both in combat and outside of it, and how easily accessible invis is in the game
stealing would be an issue if money actually mattered in this game

sneaking - sneak 5 is overpowered as hell (basically invisibility for 1 ap)

leech talent - completely gamebreaking combined with bloodletting, even without abusing the bleed status its too strong, since it makes your character insanely resistant to normal damage; just make it so that leech chars can't bleed and don't create blood puddles when they get hit, to prevent them from leeching their own blood and healing after getting hit
or completely rework the talent

resistances - its far too easy to get over 100% resists on anything in mid game, partially due to crafting; one of the reasons why lategame is so easy.

glass cannon talent - broken. chars built around this talent have more ap and more hp than chars who don't have it. just make the bonus static instead of absurd 2x ap.

ai doesnt understand how resists work, so enemies often end up doing stupid shit like tossing fireballs at your fire elemental, all day, all night, completely ignoring the fact that they end up healing it with every attack.. that's just stupid



not really huge balance issues, just some random nitpicking :

some of the talents are terrible and spending your precious talent point on them is a bad decision (+1 attr, +2 skill points talents), but you don't know it until you unlock the demon in homestead. shit design.

lockpicking is completely worthless, whats the point of wasting skillpoints on lockpicking when you can just break locks with spells or weapons? i don't recall a single area where lockpick would be anywhere close to useful.

tenebrium skill - so you have a few categories of weapons in the game : 1h, 2h, bows and crossbows, you pick one or two and invest points, only to find out that they're all fucking useless later on, because tenebrium weapons use tenebrium skill and ignore the normal weapon proficency.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Leech can be easly fixed by making bleed effects powerful (spells are beyond joke) and/or making enemies/your party leave blood pools only after backstabs/critical strikes/death.

 

[TheGreatOne]

The self proclaimed king of PC gaming and "Roger Ebert of video game journalism" did something that no "video game historian" has ever attempted before and reviewed ET because he has nothing else to do since "there aren't any new games to review this month". Even IGN reviewd D:OS and gave it 9/10 but this assclown refuses to touch it.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

glass cannon talent - broken. chars built around this talent have more ap and more hp than chars who don't have it. just make the bonus static instead of absurd 2x ap.

Why have they more HP? On hard a class canon build will have 25% the HP of a normal character. (-25% playing on hard, -50 % glass canon) The problem is it doesn't matter. When will your glass cannon mage ever be attacked? Hardly ever happens and even if it did happen, it's too easy to prevent enemies from doing so. loads of CC for instance, summons etc.

The point on resistances is true and the problem is made worse by the fact that enemies generally deal too much elemental damage and not enough normal weapon damage. A death knight could two-shot a glass cannon build with his high weapon damage for instance. Most of the time enemies deal elemental damage though and thus aren't very effective. The resistances you gain are so high that I think the talent for men at arms that increases resistances is a wasted talent point, no problem coming way above 100 even without it.

the biggest balance issue in my opinion is how invisibility works and how abusable it is, both in combat and outside of it, and how easily accessible invis is in the game

Nah I almost never use invis (except for stealing) and it doesn't matter so it can't be the biggest balance issue, plus imo it would actually be a good thing if your mage had to use it once in a while to keep himself safe
The biggest balance issue is the dumb AI and the plethora of CC, enemies use too much magic which damage-wise doesn't scale well (becomes weaker the higher level you become) and runs into the resistance problem

 

[RK47]

o Please clarify if dropping people from great height and dealing damage to the people below is even intentional, it's somewhat tricky to execute. Please refine the UI..

I didn't know dropping enemies onto others is possible. I tried it, but the game didn't let me to drop others on their head.

 

[Raghar]

I didn't write anything about cheating because I didn't mean to say anything about cheating. I said exactly what I meant, that RPS mini-game is a huge fucking pain in the ass and the longer you play the game the more annoying it becomes. Wanna hire the henchman? Win the mini-game first. Wanna enter the store of one of the few merchants that sell legendary items? RPS first. Wanna see her inventory? RPS a second time. Wanna leave the store without a fight? RPS again. Wanna answer the questions of goblin totem/sentient mushrooms/statues in the temple? RPS each and every time against that Scarlett bitch. It gets old very fast. The fact that they included a stat - Charisma - which has absolutely no relevance to the game, which is 99% combat with quest design as simplistic as it gets, except to make the mini-game more bearable, only adds to the annoyance. Gimp yourself so the RPS crap is less of a hindrance. And if you don't waste points on CHA, as soon as they *fixed* it, instead of having to reload 1 time, when you skipped and lost, you probably have to reload 3-4 times. Sounds great, especially considering the loading times of ~10 s. And this is on a war-machine, loading from an SSD. I have no idea what some poor sods without a highend machine are in for regarding loading times.

I dislike the binary result of failed RPS check. Either you make it, and lose some xp by not killing random bystanders, or you don't and then you are in combat, even in situations when when you shouldn't be in combat even when you fail the check.

For example, in that troll near broken bridge, you should be simply able to walk off even when you didn't seduced him to look behind and see the bridge. Then return back to the troll with a mirror and show him the fact.

What it does now is a simple binary flag, hostile, or not hostile, and sets it to hostile after a single failed dialogue. Actually it's quite a degradation from DD. I remember majority of dialogues didn't end in combat. You could talk with a lot of people without being screwed over.

 

[Raghar]

I thought everybody did that, Walk In Shadows or no

I didn't.

The self proclaimed king of PC gaming and "Roger Ebert of video game journalism" did something that no "video game historian" has ever attempted before and reviewed ET because he has nothing else to do since "there aren't any new games to review this month". Even IGN reviewd D:OS and gave it 9/10 but this assclown refuses to touch it.

Who's that?

 

[sbb]

I thought everybody did that, Walk In Shadows or no

I didn't.

You lose

 

[Mangoose]

I didn't write anything about cheating because I didn't mean to say anything about cheating. I said exactly what I meant, that RPS mini-game is a huge fucking pain in the ass and the longer you play the game the more annoying it becomes. Wanna hire the henchman? Win the mini-game first. Wanna enter the store of one of the few merchants that sell legendary items? RPS first. Wanna see her inventory? RPS a second time. Wanna leave the store without a fight? RPS again. Wanna answer the questions of goblin totem/sentient mushrooms/statues in the temple? RPS each and every time against that Scarlett bitch. It gets old very fast. The fact that they included a stat - Charisma - which has absolutely no relevance to the game, which is 99% combat with quest design as simplistic as it gets, except to make the mini-game more bearable, only adds to the annoyance. Gimp yourself so the RPS crap is less of a hindrance. And if you don't waste points on CHA, as soon as they *fixed* it, instead of having to reload 1 time, when you skipped and lost, you probably have to reload 3-4 times. Sounds great, especially considering the loading times of ~10 s. And this is on a war-machine, loading from an SSD. I have no idea what some poor sods without a highend machine are in for regarding loading times.

I dislike the binary result of failed RPS check. Either you make it, and lose some xp by not killing random bystanders, or you don't and then you are in combat, even in situations when when you shouldn't be in combat even when you fail the check.

For example, in that troll near broken bridge, you should be simply able to walk off even when you didn't seduced him to look behind and see the bridge. Then return back to the troll with a mirror and show him the fact.

What it does now is a simple binary flag, hostile, or not hostile, and sets it to hostile after a single failed dialogue. Actually it's quite a degradation from DD. I remember majority of dialogues didn't end in combat. You could talk with a lot of people without being screwed over.

I agree but like VentilatorOfDoom there's more important things to fix instead so stop worrying about it

 

[RK47]

If anything they need to fix the combat AI a bit...
Make them less likely to go full retard on Charmed allies and Resistance that heals damage.

Tone down some broken trait like leech by making it a vampiric effect on attacking someone while reducing incoming heals by 25%.
Address a few underpowered traits as well to make character building more fun.

 

[Raghar]

What more important things?

 

[Mangoose]

What more important things?

Balance.

And I don't mean that sarcastically.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Combat AI and the loot generator.

 

[Tigranes]

1. Teleport is too powerful. Make it higher level, or perhaps switch it with featherfall so you first have access to the mobility but not the damage.

2. Enemies should use status effect abilities and other non-typical abilities (teleport) more frequently on players, at least on Hard. In general, enemies should have access to / use a wider variety of abilities.

3. Leech is too OP if the player heals by the blood he himself sheds while being hit, since it's often 50% reduction in damage or even more. Maybe it should only heal from blood of others.

4. Given the importance of AP and some dumbness of the AI that can't easily fixed (e.g. stands still if player is invisible), Glass Cannon is a little too powerful.

 

[Orma]

Does Hiberheim have level 5 enemies? It's a lvl10-13 area. The loot should reflect that. My guess is, when you first enter Hiberheim by being teleported by the wishing well when you're around lvl5 or so, the chest are created with lvl5 loot.

They are 5 level because loot is generated according to the monster level of the map.

The only monsters in the prison for example, are those sentry statues. And they are always level 5 iirc.

 

[Abu Antar]

Reached Hunter's Edge. Been cruising through encounters every since I reached level 10. Got into my first fight in this area and got annihilated.



I also went to the northwestern part the Luculla area and found some monsters that had a void aura. When will I be able to kill these bastards?