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   Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:31:43 JST Jacek Wesołowski

   Gave up on Divinity: Original Sin because the progression curve felt very demanding and it stopped being fun. Game the sequel a try and I can see a lot of improvement. But the core issue remains: no matter how good your tactics you are, your party simply has to farm the stats, or else.

   Problem is, the game systematically robs you of XP if you play a certain way that generally involves avoiding combat (via dialogue options, mostly). It's a side effect of several design decisions.

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     Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:35:36 JST Jacek Wesołowski

     in reply to

     Right not I'm about to try the final fight for the first act, and I'd really like my characters to advance one more level before that. My options are:

     - kill a bunch of characters that are technically my enemies by I don't want to kill them for roleplaying reasons

     - have a fight with an "optional" boss that I could also auto-defeat with a quest item, except then I wouldn't t get the XP

     The boss isn't really optional because I need all the XP I can get, or else.

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     Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:39:43 JST Jacek Wesołowski

     in reply to

     This isn't a git gut situation. because the entire gameplay loop is "encounter an enemy, lose a fight, go somewhere else, gain a level, go back to the same enemy, kick their ass so hard there should be an achievement for it"". The window where tactics actually matter is fairly narrow. Most of the time your stats decide the outcome.

     Yes, it's a delicate balance design-wise, not easy to maintain. There are things you can do to make the mechanics more stable, though.

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     Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:43:46 JST Jacek Wesołowski

     in reply to

     A few examples (you might want to not use all of them, depending on your design goals):
     - a more linear experience
     - a generally lower difficulty bar that gives the player more margin for suboptimal play
     - less XP from enemies, more XP from quest resolutions
     - fewer stats to farm
     - optional handicaps the player can earn through other means (DOS2 does a bit of this: most boss arenas have multiple entry points, some of which grant tactical advantage - this is neat, actually)

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     Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 17:54:39 JST Jacek Wesołowski

     in reply to

     • Eva Infeld

     @quaithe The mechanics in both of these offer a lot of tactical depth, BUT it's still trumped by stats. Ultimately, it's more about the order in which you approach the enemies than it is about actual execution.

     The multiple entry points thing is neat, and there's also the teleport spell, which is very fun to use but messes up the roleplaying layer a lot, which is my point.

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     Eva Infeld (quaithe@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 17:54:40 JST Eva Infeld

     in reply to

     @jzillw Hmm I actually found DOS and especially DOS2 to be all about tactics. 🤔 That last battle of act 1 has a lot of ways to sneak up to one enemy at a time and take them out without alerting others. Also there should be a bunch of quests on the island that don't involve fighting, like the soul jars or collecting the cursed armor. After act 1 you can also re-stat the characters whenever you want and some skills are powerful even at low levels. Necromancer-rogue, undead with poison etc...