Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[Grunker]

Didn't mind the armor system or item treadmill at all

popamole.jpg

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Helps to remember most codexers are incredibly casual and the armor system is too complex for them because having to manage three numbers instead of one blows their mind.

 

[Grunker]

Calling this game complex lol. The simplistic nature of its itemization, attribute and skill system is the primary reason it’s subpar

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Calling this game complex lol. The simplistic nature of its itemization, attribute and skill system is the primary reason it’s subpar

Then why were you so easily filtered?

 

[whydoibother]

Helps to remember most codexers are incredibly casual and the armor system is too complex for them because having to manage three numbers instead of one blows their mind.

This isn't about complexity. Its about status effects being very powerful, and you needing to shred the magic/physical armor before you can apply magic/physical status effects. Overall this is THE issue with the system.
I didn't focus on all physical or all magical, because its bad RP and not fun; plus there's encounters that heavily favor on over the other, so a balanced party always has some character that will overperform in said encounter. However the entire system of armor shielding enemy from status effects is busted, and I disliked the change. DOS1's system of enemies having big HP and big damage, so you need to keep them controlled, was honestly just more fun.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Helps to remember most codexers are incredibly casual and the armor system is too complex for them because having to manage three numbers instead of one blows their mind.

This isn't about complexity. Its about status effects being very powerful, and you needing to shred the magic/physical armor before you can apply magic/physical status effects. Overall this is THE issue with the system.
I didn't focus on all physical or all magical, because its bad RP and not fun; plus there's encounters that heavily favor on over the other, so a balanced party always has some character that will overperform in said encounter. However the entire system of armor shielding enemy from status effects is busted, and I disliked the change. DOS1's system of enemies having big HP and big damage, so you need to keep them controlled, was honestly just more fun.

filtered

 

[FreeKaner]

Helps to remember most codexers are incredibly casual and the armor system is too complex for them because having to manage three numbers instead of one blows their mind.

It is the opposite, streamlining systems of round-robin, itemization and armor make the game both too simple and too onerous.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Helps to remember most codexers are incredibly casual and the armor system is too complex for them because having to manage three numbers instead of one blows their mind.

It is the opposite, streamlining systems of round-robin, itemization and armor make the game both too simple and too onerous.

"I don't understand it because it's too simple!!!!"
Sure, Jan.

 

[FreeKaner]

"I don't understand it because it's too simple!!!!"
Sure, Jan.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand DIVOS2. The streamlining is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of RPG design most of the decisions will go over a typical player's head. There's also Swen's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his itemization- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. Larian fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of the grey and blue colors, to realise that they're not just bars- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike DIVOS2 truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the depth in two characters taking as many actions per round as four characters, which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Swen's genius wit unfolds itself on their computer screens. What fools.. how I pity them.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"I don't understand it because it's too simple!!!!"
Sure, Jan.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand DIVOS2. The streamlining is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of RPG design most of the decisions will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Swen's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his itemization- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. Larian fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of the grey and blue colors, to realise that they're not just bars- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike DIVOS2 truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the depth in two characters taking as many actions per round as four characters, which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Swen's genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them.

Imagine writing all this just to pretend you weren't filtered.

 

[Grunker]

Calling this game complex lol. The simplistic nature of its itemization, attribute and skill system is the primary reason it’s subpar

Then why were you so easily filtered?

i beat the game on tactician

 

[Roguey]

Helps to remember most codexers are incredibly casual and the armor system is too complex for them because having to manage three numbers instead of one blows their mind.

It's deterministic vs RNG. DOS2 obviously isn't totally deterministic, but it's far less swingy than its predecessor and most RPGs for that matter. I'm confident this helped contribute to its success.

^ lotta normies/casuals hate this

 

[Alienman]

Shield systems make no sense from an RP point. What even is it representing, and why does everyone have it? Even a beggar in rags have some kind of damage immunity.

 

[Roguey]

Even a beggar in rags have some kind of damage immunity.

There are plenty of normal NPCs with no armor whatsoever. It's actually a tell in Arx; the ones with armor are demons in disguise who will attack you if you killed the Advocate or offer you some cryptic advice if you're on the Doctor's good side.

 

[Alienman]

Even a beggar in rags have some kind of damage immunity.

There are plenty of normal NPCs with no armor whatsoever. It's actually a tell in Arx; the ones with armor are demons in disguise who will attack you if you killed the Advocate or offer you some cryptic advice if you're on the Doctor's good side.

wut. I remember everyone having some form of armor already in the first area/fort Joy or whatever it is called. That's what made me dislike the game in the first place, besides the silly writing.

 

[Roguey]

wut. I remember everyone having some form of armor already in the first area/fort Joy or whatever it is called. That's what made me dislike the game in the first place, besides the silly writing.

Fort Joy is completely lacking in verisimilitude for gameplay purposes. Somehow or another there's a black market on an isolated prison colony where people are able to acquire all kinds of skillbooks, weapons, and armors they couldn't plausibly acquire because the systems are built for this particular kind of experience.

 

[Sharpedge]

Some enemies have really high physical armor, some have really high magic armor. If you go all-in on one, its going to be more of a pain to fight the other. With a hybrid party instead of "some are quick to kill, some are a slog" it evens out more or less and allows for easier crowd controlling of the entire enemy force.

Not that it really matters, but this is factually untrue.

In almost every circumstance, fights will be faster with a pure physical party. The game is easy enough that this is never a problem, actually, in my opinion its more fun to play with a heavy dose of self imposed restrictions + mods to correct some of the issues. There was a great post by DraQ though much earlier in the thread which details the problems that the game really has, I will spoiler it, since it is long.

Spoiler

> You see: retards fighting autists (and not in a good way).
> Both sides seem to be on the defensive.

Even by (relatively lax lately) codexian standards this thread is one hell of a spectacular smooth brain moment.
It starts off by rusty_shackleford being a complete brainlet and conflating people liking game with game's mechanics design being infallibly perfect and then it keeps getting better.

Anyway, to the point:
The problem with DoS2 armour system isn't it:

• making the game too hard
• making the game too easy
• encouraging cheesing the game with homogeneous party
• encouraging cheesing the game with heterogeneous party

Anyone engaging in back and forth over those specific points is just being fucking retarded.

The problem is that is a wonderful fractal of shit.

This guy gets it:

The problem with the armor system in DOS 2 is that it makes hardly any sense in principle and it creates way more problems that it solves.
Discouraging mixed sources of damage (which it factually does, it doesn't matter if you can work your way around it) is only the tip of the iceberg. There's also the fact that makes a certain amount of utility skills/spells utterly useless (not "unreliable" as much as literally 100% pointless to even attempt) until a certain threshold of damage has been passed, etc.

Basically it's a system of HP bloat (now in three different flavors!) that favors direct damage dealing above any other strategy. And conversely once that threshold of damage is surpassed the exact opposite becomes true, and some of these crowd controls become 100% reliable.

I mean, sure, you can learn to live with that. We all did.
But holy fucking Christ if it doesn't go straight in the bottom tier among all the countless attempts at "simulating damage mitigation" I've experienced across the years in different rulesets.

The system is simply bad. It splits combat into two phases:

• One where you avoid using most skills to not waste status effects.
• One where everyone is spamming staus effects, or at least those characters who aren't currently stunned, knocked down or polymorphed into poultry while bleeding and on fire.

It also fails to have any semblance to anything.
Ablative HPs are generally not particularly good armour mechanics.
Ablative armour over entire battle duration is just singularly awful and being combined with cooldowns and stupidly abstract and highly segregated damage system (odd chloroform notwithstanding) doesn't do it any favours.

Smaller split pools depleted and replenishing on per turn basis might actually be quite tolerable both in terms of gameplay (encouraging more tactical approach than non-status alpha strike followed by status alpha strike) and in terms of making sense (overwhelming combatants defenses by concentrating attacks on them), but the system as it is is just a huge clusterfuck of concentrated derp.

There is a lot to like in DoS2 including sizable chunks of combat system, but there is no denying that large parts of it are just inexplicably bad. This includes armour system, damage system, ease of traversing terrain with everyone having jump, flight or teleportation abilities trivializing all those nice area layouts Larian lovingly made as well as lesser things such as nearly inconsequential initiative.

But no, let's discuss how to optimize damage output like it's motherfucking special Olympics.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"reee the armor system suxxx!!!"
"btw I stacked one damage type and tried to ignore the armor system"

have you guys ever considered you might actually be retarded?

 

[Brickfrog]

I think the armor system was an attempt to encourage diverse parties and also serve as a nerf to CC compared to DOS. I felt like it was pretty inelegant. And it failed completely on the "encourage diverse parties" front.

 

[FreeKaner]

"Unique items" in DIVOS have properties that would only be a rare item in Path of Exile. That is how bad the itemization in this game is. It is literally worse than a hack & slash. It is designed as hack & slash itemization but is also worse at it than even games like Diablo 3 and Path of Exile.

 

[Sharpedge]

"reee the armor system suxxx!!!"
"btw I stacked one damage type and tried to ignore the armor system"

have you guys ever considered you might actually be retarded?

I know reading is difficult, but if you put in the effort you might realize that the point the post is illustrating is that the armour system fails to solve the problem that it acknowledges exists. It is like trying to fix a leak in a pipe by covering the leak with a towel.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"reee the armor system suxxx!!!"
"btw I stacked one damage type and tried to ignore the armor system"

have you guys ever considered you might actually be retarded?

I know reading is difficult, but if you put in the effort you might realize that the point the post is illustrating is that the armour system fails to solve the problem that it acknowledges exists. It is like trying to fix a leak in a pipe by covering the leak with a towel.

It wasn't solving any problem you guys seem to think exists.
DOS2 is the best selling turn-based cRPG ever made. You can kick, cry, scream, and yell and it won't change a single thing. Absolutely nothing from Larian's POV will tell them they did anything wrong.

 

[Grunker]

"reee the armor system suxxx!!!"
"btw I stacked one damage type and tried to ignore the armor system"

have you guys ever considered you might actually be retarded?

I know reading is difficult, but if you put in the effort.

is this your first time interacting with rusty

 

[Sharpedge]

"reee the armor system suxxx!!!"
"btw I stacked one damage type and tried to ignore the armor system"

have you guys ever considered you might actually be retarded?

I know reading is difficult, but if you put in the effort you might realize that the point the post is illustrating is that the armour system fails to solve the problem that it acknowledges exists. It is like trying to fix a leak in a pipe by covering the leak with a towel.

It wasn't solving any problem you guys seem to think exists.
DOS2 is the best selling turn-based cRPG ever made. You can kick, cry, scream, and yell and it won't change a single thing. Absolutely nothing from Larian's POV will tell them they did anything wrong.

I am pretty sure if I went digging I could find an interview or discussion with Swen where he discusses the armour system in D:OS 2. It wasn't like they dreamed it out of thin air because they liked the idea of having 3 bars, it was designed to solve a specific problem and he acknowledged that problem (I very clearly remember him discussing it at one point). The problem he was trying to solve came in 2 parts, the first one was him wanting to prevent the permanent crowd control which was possible in the first game and in addition to that, he wanted to encourage more diverse parties. The solution clearly fails at both directives, as outlined in the long post.

I will not be addressing the second part of your post, since it is not actually relevant to the discussion. I like the game. If I did not like the game, I would not bother to replay modded versions of it. I know the concept is hard to understand, but you can like something whilst still being critical of its flaws.

"reee the armor system suxxx!!!"
"btw I stacked one damage type and tried to ignore the armor system"

have you guys ever considered you might actually be retarded?

I know reading is difficult, but if you put in the effort.

is this your first time interacting with rusty

No, I am bored and its like interacting with Victor. It is always guaranteed to provide the same circular discussions and thus kill time.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I will not be addressing the second part of your post, since it is not actually relevant to the discussion.

Yes it is.
DOS2 numba one, all other trash zero.

Kick, scream, cry, and pout about the armor system all you want.
Numba. One.

Listening to the codex is how you get dumpsterfire-tier sales figures.