It was my mistake for taking Divinity: Original Sin 2 (DOS2) more seriously than the designers. Here I was getting all worked up about a useless crafting system that includes products worse than either of the ingredients, or a Skill system featuring dozens of pointless “gotcha!” choices.

Seriously, no redeeming factors here.

As it turns out, the devs are just morons. Case in point: Thievery.

This is a Civil Skill you need to put points into in order to Lockpick and Pickpocket. At level 1, you can pickpocket up to 300g worth of goods. It then quickly scales out of control:

• 1: 2kg / 300gp
• 2: 4kg / 450gp
• 3: 6kg / 1100gp
• 4: 8kg / 2350gp
• 5: 10kg / 3800gp
• 6: 12kg / 6000gp

It actually scales up even higher than this (224k at level 14?!), but Thievery 6 is where I’m at currently with my gear bonuses. I’m in the first major town in Act 2, and most vendors have ~3500g on them, and selling multiple epics/Legendary items… which is its own thing, but nevermind. So, I purchase the expensive goods, then pickpocket 6000g back. The victim will try and find the thief for about two minutes, but that’s it. The only limitation on this mechanic is that you can only pickpocket a given NPC one time… per character. Respeccing is free though, so it’s no big deal to turn anyone into a master thief long enough to rob entire kingdoms blind.

Lucky Find can also break your game with free Legendary items in every X containers.

There is so much wrong with this, that I don’t even know where to start.

So… I won’t. DOS2 is a very pretty game with an interesting combat system submerged in hot, sloppy garbage game design. I wouldn’t expect this level of disregard for balance from Early Access shovelware.

…

…I mean, do you understand? Crafting being weaksauce (on purpose?) is one thing; that simply means the game is balanced around loot drops. Vendors being able to sell you Epic/Legendaries is whatever, as that simply makes it necessary to collect all the things so you can save gold and buy them. Having a crazy-scaling Thievery skill though, with zero repercussions, that can succeed at any Sneak level by simply creating a smoke cloud, essentially means every single vendor in the game gives you entire dungeons’ worth of loot for nothing. And it’s not just vendors either – I saw a fisherman with 2900g just walking around, so I nabbed that too.

What was this game supposed to be balanced around? Anything?! “Just don’t pickpocket vendors.” Or maybe the professional (?) game designers could change the Pickpocket values to be a tiny bit more consistent or sane. Each step value varies wildly between 40-140%. Go up 300g each time, or increase it by 50% each time, or something. The latter would make level 6 Thievery worth 2278g per vendor, which is still probably game-breaking, but at least not to the same degree.

Know what’s really laughable? One time I stole 5000g from a random non-vendor NPC, but actually got caught. I was given a few dialog options on how to respond, including trying some Persuasion checks or attacking the NPC outright. Or… I could bribe them… with 151g. And, you know, keep the remaining 4849g I just stole from them. So I did.

I could… not do these things. That is a choice that I have. It is also a choice I shouldn’t have to make. I should not have to handicap myself to have fun playing a game. Nevermind the fact that the fun I have playing games usually comes from leveraging my whole mind against the systems in the game, and puzzling out a solution. Optimization is fun. When it’s this brain-dead easy, it’s less fun. When it’s clear that the designers can’t be bothered to care about balance at all, it’s even less fun still.

Everyone has their hang-ups. Maybe it’s cringy dialog, cliche plot, bad graphics, slow leveling, too many random battles, etc, etc etc. For me, it’s when there is evidence the developers stopped caring, didn’t bother to playtest, or never knew what the hell they wanted to do in the first place.