Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Thoughts on the Gameplay...

This is all opinion, but I don't feel PEO's turned out fine in terms of combat for me, too janky. I'm up for RtwP if the AI scripts are good and easy to edit, they weren't in Poe's or Pathfinder, DA2 is imo the pinnacle at this time. Both Poe/Pathfinder seemed to have great AI scripting but shit if I couldn't get it to do what I really wanted in action. I spent hours at first doing the same fight over and over testing and was just not firing right, then I had to say to myself. Am I going to put 40 hours into this? DA2 fwiw, it worked pretty much as you set it up and setup was easy. It was also smart in giving you more depth as you go, so you could grow into it.

If I'm going Real Time, I want my AI to do in order how I ask it to, heal when needed, AOE when enemies line up, etc. Otherwise I'm pausing too much and then it is poor mans TB.

This is probably the first time DA2 is being praised for something. I played POE2 mostly RTwP and really liked it, however I micromanage a lot and never program AI, but people that did use AI thought it was very well done.
If the AI is bad in BG3 is not an issue to me since I don't use it anyway. But anyways, the optimal is being able to choose the game mode. Since the TB apparently displeased most of the fanbase I'd guess they will at least try RTwP.

Good point @ Danielbda , even if they don't, for the sake of the continuity and my childhood , i'll still buy the game and finish it , but i'd still rather not waste 30-40-50 extra hours just watching animations play out , gotta get me some good old weed to take thoese boring moments away.

Here... Please Read my post. I think we can relate a bit here.
I have similar concerns as well.

http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=659445#Post659445

Yes exactly. Of course there are going to be some fans of the original games who prefer TB, but there is no question the vast majority prefer RTwP (and do see the RTwP combat of those games as being good, so talk of people "hating" the combat in those games is just TB sour grapes). So essentially BG3 is Larian making a game with the "BG" title but meant for the D:OS fanbase at the expense of the BG fanbase.

I will be boycotting this game (while continuing to criticize the game at every turn), and I hope many of those of you who also prefer RTwP will be doing the same. We can instead support P:WotR because those Pathfinder games, and even the Dragon Age games for that matter, are the true successors of the original BG games.

@ Kanisatha I actually just bought Pathfinder Imperial edition a few days ago but only played a little due to work ( but weekend is here so i'm gonna not sleep til monday ) i omitted to buy at release since i kept hearing about bugs and inconsistencies , all of which have been fixed from what i gathered from later reviews , and yes , i actually giggled a little because i literally found out TODAY that they are making a new one, this game and the first Pillar of Eternity (not the 2nd one) seem to me the closest possible relatives to BG and IwD , and yes i've literally played and finished all other possible existent CRPGs ...i won't boycott this game , i will buy it, even though it's not Baldur's gate per say , it's still a game from a company i've been playing their games since they started , and i always had good experiences (except Dragon Commander , for real i dont know why they thought anyone would like that game maybe it was just an experiment , who knows :P)

First we all know the disappointed side will be more vocal, but lets leave that known thing lay.

Why did Poe2 not live up to sales expectations? Why didn't Kingmaker sell more? Why did DOS or Xcom for example as TB games outsell both of these? If RtwP was so much more preferred by everyone, why did more everyone's buy the TB games? I feel it is a fair enough question. How does that happen? As a community we went out of our way to buy the game style we like less.

PoE2 didn't live up to expectations because of its writing and its forced social agendas. The criticisms of the game upon its release noted that, and not its combat system.

Why did adding TB to PoE2 not do anything to improve PoE2's sales or review scores? Why did PoE2's Steam score not increase by even a single % point in the months following the addition of TB to the game?

If TB was so popular, why did Torment: Numenera tank in sales despite having TB instead of RTwP combat? Why did people criticize the game for abandoning Planescape: Torment's RTwP combat, if everyone supposedly preferred TB combat?

If TB was so much more preferred by everyone, why did those games bomb in sales and not benefit from having TB?

If TB is so popular, how come Wasteland Remastered isn't selling and has mixed reviews?

If TB is so popular, then how come there are more owners of Pillars of Eternity on Steam than there are of Wasteland 2?

If TB is preferred by everyone, then why does Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which is RTwP, have almost as many Steam reviews as Divinity: Original Sin, despite that Pathfinder: Kingmaker released 4 years after D:OS1? It seems to be out-performing D:OS1's popularity on Steam, yet it's RTwP.

If TB is preferred by everyone, then how come Dragon Age: Origins, which has RTwP combat, sold lot more copies faster than Divinity: Original Sin 2 did? It took Divinity: Original Sin 2 two-and-a-half months to sell 1 million copies. After just over 3 months, Dragon Age: Origins had sold 3.2 million copies. So, DA:O greatly outsold D:OS2. And that's not even counting DLC: DA:O also sold "well past $1 million" of DLC within its first week of release.

How can you explain all of that?


The answer is simple: Because there is no trend that games with either TB or RTwP combat systems do better than the other type of game due to the combat system. Each game does well based on the sum of its parts, and either RTwP or TB can be done in a way that is good and compliments the game. D:OS2 didn't become popular specifically because it has TB combat, but because of the sum of its parts.

The same false argument that TB games are doing better than RTwP pause games keeps coming up by people who I have to assume are not experienced with the PC RPG genre, because otherwise why would they be oblivious to the actual recent history of RTwP and TB PC RPG game releases and receptions? Why are they only familiar with D:OS2 and speak totally uninformed and baseless assumptions about what the market has been approving of in recent years?

There's literally one TB game that has been a mega hit (D:OS2), while other TB games have done decently to terribly. If people were loving TB games because they're TB, then Torment: Numenera wouldn't have been a flop. Then PoE2 would have improved in sales and reviews after getting TB added. But T: Numenera did flop and PoE2 didn't improve in sales or reviews after getting TB added. And Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which is RTwP, has blown both of those games away in popularity. And Pathfinder: Kingmaker is getting a much-anticipated sequel.

So, there is no truth to arguments that TB is more popular. D:OS2 is a recent popular game, and D:OS2 has TB. That doesn't make TB a better system, it just means that there are a lot of D:OS2 fanboys out there who don't know much of anything about PC RPGs and only know D:OS2 and so fanboy to get a carbon-copy of it.

If Larian made BG3 with RTwP and they did a good job with the RTwP system so that it was at least as good as Dragon Age: Origins' (but hopefully better), there would then be just as many fanboys of BG3 with RTwP demanding that every next game be RTwP because TB is out-dated and not relevant anymore in modern gaming. Fanboy thinking isn't based on situations actually are, it just distorts perception of reality to put the one thing they liked recently on a pedestal and create a mythology about its importance.


What's important is doing a good job with what a game is. And a Baldur's Gate series game should be an RTwP game, as well as a game that respects and honours the other characteristics of the Baldur's Gate experience. Larian should be doing that and shouldn't be making D:OS 2.5 with the Baldur's Gate license.

That... Doesn't make sense when you think about it for more than five seconds. BG1 and 2 were RTwP because that was the best method of adapting the edition of D&D they were made with to the screen.

Meanwhile, 5e has a LOT more decisions every player has available to make every turn, so it makes sense to reconsider whether or not a RTwP system makes sense for converting that.

Limiting yourself to one gameplay style for no real reason other than tradition doesn't make much sense.

(Additionally as much as 5e has some issues, it's still a MUCH more robust RPG system than D:OS', so comparing the two games, particularly before we even have one of them, is... not a good idea at all.)

So, to turn your point from the middle of your wall of text back on you, there is no inherent advantage to Turn Based or Real Time with Pause, what matters is how well you use them.

Just like with the claim that Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 had RTwP combat due to technical limitations, what you've just said is another false claim regarding why BG 1 and 2 have RTwP combat. Making Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 RTwP wasn't forced by any technical needs, but was a creative choice made free from pressure to make it any particular way.

As I wrote in another recent post:

"Where did you get that idea from? It's wrong. There were loads of TB PC games out when BG invented RTwP, and BG's RTwP system actually calculates rounds in the background. It would have been less work for BioWare to go full TB-only in BG than to implement RTwP. But James Ohlen wanted Baldur's Gate to be real-time and Ray Muzyka wanted it to be turn-based, and so they created a system that caters to fans of both styles. There was never a factor of technical limitations at play, and if there had been it would have been simpler to just implement TB."

Likewise, when BioWare made Dragon Age: Origins, claiming it to be a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate without the license from WotC, BioWare was free from technical limitations (and also ruleset limitations) and were completely free to make the combat system anything they desired - and they desired and chose to make it RTwP.

Baldur's gate was RTwP because RTwP is what BioWare wanted it to be. It had nothing to do with the underlying ruleset or any technical limitations. BioWare was free to choose any combat system they wanted, and they chose to create a new one, which was RTwP.


That doesn't make sense. Every turn the player still has 2 decisions to make: Movement, and action. There aren't any more things to consider.


Not for tradition, but because it's what the series' identity is based in, because the Baldur's Gate series invented the RTwP genre, because RTwP is a great system that can be far better than D:OS2's TB combat (DA:O already has better combat, and it's RTwP), and because it's disrespectful and unfaithful to co-opt a series and turn into a clone of another series. Larian should just release their game as D:OS 2.5 or D:OS 3 if they're going to do that.


Just like your assertion about why BG1 and BG2 have RTwP combat, which is wrong, your assertion that I wrote a wall-of-text is likewise wrong. You should put some effort into understanding the things you're going to claim before you present them as arguments.

A "wall of text" is text without proper indentation. If I'd made my post as a wall of text, it would have appeared like this:



While I agree that neither RTwP or TB is inherently better than the other, one may be more suited for a particular series, for a particular audience, and for a particular experience. When making a Baldur's Gate game, RTwP is central to its identity and experience, and is what decades-long fans of the series hope to get to play in a new Baldur's Gate game.

I think you are all missing the point and are skirting around the answer even though it has been said. Neither RTwP or Turn-based mechanics have anything to do with whether a game sells well or makes a good game. It is the story. If the story isn't done well then it doesn't matter what mechanics you have, what computer you use, the size of your graphics card, or whether you live in a luxurious mansion or your mother's basement. (sorry had a Tommy Lee Jones moment. )

If the story isn't good, word of mouth will rule the day. The same applies if the story is good.

People fight against change or for what they believe. RTwP or TB?

Remember when the earth was flat?

It's really not central to the identity or experience, in any way, shape or form. You've not given any evidence to back that up you're just asserting it.

And, your quote from the creative team of BG 1 and 2 doesn't ACTUALLY respond to my point because it doesn't even touch on WHY these people made that decision, wanted that state of things for the game, which was the claim I was making there. It just says two people wanted different things and they settled on a middle ground, it doesn't discuss their reasons for holding their individual positions at all.

And again, you keep arguing to tradition, "This is what BioWare wanted" well Bioware is now just another corpse drained by the vampires at EA, so, this current development team shouldn't be chained down by their ghost and left unable to make decisions they genuinely think would improve the experience.

Series are not some ancient artefact that must be preserved in it's original state, never growing or changing. In fact, when a series refuses to evolve in meaningful ways, we call it stagnant and begin mocking it for that (Hello Pokemon, fancy seeing you here.)

I've made that point, myself. But when using an established series name, which is only done because the name actually stands for something, it's also important to live up to that name and to not abuse it. Baldur's Gate is a RTwP series, made such out of creative desire and conscious preference by BioWare. The fans of the series know RTwP to be a part of the identity of Baldur's Gate, and those who've hoped for sequel for decades generally want to play a faithful Baldur's Gate game and not a clone of another series that has merely co-opted the name of Baldur's Gate.

BTW, it took Divinity: Original Sin 2 two-and-a-half months to sell 1 million copies. After just over 3 months, Dragon Age: Origins had sold 3.2 million copies. So, DA:O greatly outsold D:OS2. And that's not even counting DLC: DA:O also sold "well over" 1 million copies of DLC within its first week of release.

So, Dragon Age: Origins, which has RTwP combat, was a lot more popular when it released than D:OS2 was when it released. Therefore, going by the weak 'this game was more popular therefore its combat system is preferred' argument, RTwP is the more preferred combat system. So, if Larian are just making "BG3" for a cash-grab (which appears to be the case considering their "BG3" is actually D:OS3), they should be making it with RTwP combat, anyway.

Reposting this because you seem keen to avoid my arguents, perhaps because you can't actually respond to them.

It's really not central to the identity or experience of BG, in any way, shape or form. You've not given any evidence to back that up you're just asserting it.

And, your quote from the creative team of BG 1 and 2 doesn't ACTUALLY respond to my point because it doesn't even touch on WHY these people made that decision, wanted that state of things for the game, which was the claim I was making there. It just says two people wanted different things and they settled on a middle ground, it doesn't discuss their reasons for holding their individual positions at all.

And again, you keep arguing to tradition, "This is what BioWare wanted" well Bioware is now just another corpse drained by the vampires at EA, so, this current development team shouldn't be chained down by their ghost and left unable to make decisions they genuinely think would improve the experience.

Series are not some ancient artefact that must be preserved in it's original state, never growing or changing. In fact, when a series refuses to evolve in meaningful ways, we call it stagnant and begin mocking it for that (Hello Pokemon, fancy seeing you here.)

And new addition, the so-called " the weak 'this game was more popular therefore its combat system is preferred' argument," is weak BECAUSE IT'S A STRAWMAN, nobody is actually saying that, you're just using it to deflect away from our actual arguments.

Spamming is not the way to make an argument. And when I just spent the time addressing somebody else's comments and you only posted your previous comment minutes ago, there's no basis to think somebody is avoiding it.

But if that's the way you think things work, then let's see if it works on you.

Reposting this because you seem keen to ignore what I wrote - perhaps because it obliterated your every assertion.


Just like with the claim that Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 had RTwP combat due to technical limitations, what you've just said is another false claim regarding why BG 1 and 2 have RTwP combat. Making Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 RTwP wasn't forced by any technical needs, but was a creative choice made free from pressure to make it any particular way.

As I wrote in another recent post:

"Where did you get that idea from? It's wrong. There were loads of TB PC games out when BG invented RTwP, and BG's RTwP system actually calculates rounds in the background. It would have been less work for BioWare to go full TB-only in BG than to implement RTwP. But James Ohlen wanted Baldur's Gate to be real-time and Ray Muzyka wanted it to be turn-based, and so they created a system that caters to fans of both styles. There was never a factor of technical limitations at play, and if there had been it would have been simpler to just implement TB."

Likewise, when BioWare made Dragon Age: Origins, claiming it to be a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate without the license from WotC, BioWare was free from technical limitations (and also ruleset limitations) and were completely free to make the combat system anything they desired - and they desired and chose to make it RTwP.

Baldur's gate was RTwP because RTwP is what BioWare wanted it to be. It had nothing to do with the underlying ruleset or any technical limitations. BioWare was free to choose any combat system they wanted, and they chose to create a new one, which was RTwP.


That doesn't make sense. Every turn the player still has 2 decisions to make: Movement, and action. There aren't any more things to consider.


Not for tradition, but because it's what the series' identity is based in, because the Baldur's Gate series invented the RTwP genre, because RTwP is a great system that can be far better than D:OS2's TB combat (DA:O already has better combat, and it's RTwP), and because it's disrespectful and unfaithful to co-opt a series and turn into a clone of another series. Larian should just release their game as D:OS 2.5 or D:OS 3 if they're going to do that.


Just like your assertion about why BG1 and BG2 have RTwP combat, which is wrong, your assertion that I wrote a wall-of-text is likewise wrong. You should put some effort into understanding the things you're going to claim before you present them as arguments.

A "wall of text" is text without proper indentation. If I'd made my post as a wall of text, it would have appeared like this:



While I agree that neither RTwP or TB is inherently better than the other, one may be more suited for a particular series, for a particular audience, and for a particular experience. When making a Baldur's Gate game, RTwP is central to its identity and experience, and is what decades-long fans of the series hope to get to play in a new Baldur's Gate game.

I agree.

Oh fuck a strawman AND ignoring all of my arguments from last comment in one go. Delicieuxz, seriously, stop.

If you wanted to respond to both of our comments, you can do so... in ONE POST, by talking to one person first and then the other. VERY EASY. Making multiple posts just fragment everything up and cause confusion and misunderstandings. Like, golly gee, I wonder, THE ONE YOU JUST CONVENIENTLY MADE.

It's really not central to the identity or experience of BG, in any way, shape or form. You've not given any evidence to back that up you're just asserting it.

And, your quote from the creative team of BG 1 and 2 doesn't ACTUALLY respond to my point because it doesn't even touch on WHY these people made that decision, wanted that state of things for the game, which was the claim I was making there. It just says two people wanted different things and they settled on a middle ground, it doesn't discuss their reasons for holding their individual positions at all.

And again, you keep arguing to tradition, "This is what BioWare wanted" well Bioware is now just another corpse drained by the vampires at EA, so, this current development team shouldn't be chained down by their ghost and left unable to make decisions they genuinely think would improve the experience.

Series are not some ancient artefact that must be preserved in it's original state, never growing or changing. In fact, when a series refuses to evolve in meaningful ways, we call it stagnant and begin mocking it for that (Hello Pokemon, fancy seeing you here.)

And new addition, the so-called " the weak 'this game was more popular therefore its combat system is preferred' argument," is weak BECAUSE IT'S A STRAWMAN, nobody is actually saying that, you're just using it to deflect away from our actual arguments.


And, finally, I did miss one argument of yours, the nonsensical conunter to the idea that 5e characters have more options than 2e characters...

Like YES OF COURSE THERE ARE ONLY TWO CATEGORIES OF OPTIONS, NO SHIT SHERLOCK, but 5e characters have more variety WITHIN those two categories to choose from, which is what makes them quite a bit more of a handful than 2e ones.

I swear at this point you're just being angry for the sake of it, you don't actually have any ideas or constructive stuff to contribute, you're just being petulant because times have changed and there's a SLIGHT STYLISTIC DIFFERENCE IN ONE SYSTEM OF A VIDEO GAME.

And they have used that difference to create more elaborate traps which better evoke D&D tabletop ones, if you'd actually finished the video. They're not just doing it for the hell of it, they've made that decision in order to deliver a better D&D video game experience, which is the whole reason Baldur's Gate exists in the first place for fuck's sake. To be D&D as a video game. THAT is it's identity. D&D has changed a LOT since back then, and the devs are trying to be authentic to D&D as it is today.

There is no straw man argument in what I said. You keep naming concepts that you don't understand: wall-of-text, strawman, why BioWare chose RTwP for Baldur's Gate (it wasn't due to any technical or ruleset limitation). Your arguments are overall vapid and spammy and overall very immature.


OK there, post nazi. Get a hold of yourself. You don't dictate whether a person responds to everybody in a single post or in multiple posts. And I was typing out my post to the other person before you had made yours. Do you suffer extreme anxiety and go into panic attacks when you aren't given attention every second of the day? If not, then why are you behaving so irrationally as to start spamming the forum because I was responding to somebody who made a post before you did, before I started to respond to you? Your post that you're having a panic attack over not being addressed wasn't even existing in the thread when I started typing out my response to the other poster. Did you think of that?


The only reason to use the name of an established series is because the name represents something. In the case of Baldur's Gate, the name represents the birth of the RTwP genre. If there wasn't associations with the name, Larian wouldn't have any interest in using it. The Baldur's Gate series name isn't needed to make a game with a D&D ruleset, in Forgotten Realms, or containing the city Baldur's Gate in it. The only reason the name Baldur's Gate is being used is to capitalize on what it represents. But Larian are dishonouring the name and the series' legacy.

I have not appealed to a need to preserve tradition. I have only pointed out that a series' name should not be co-opted and used as a husk to sell another series, which is what Larian appear to be doing with their "Baldur's Gate 3" that is actually a D:OS 3 without any character traits of Baldur's Gate in it.

It isn't needed to make a D&D game but it is the most widely recognised one out there, and considering they are not an existing D&D game studio, it makes plenty of sense.

And, what do you mean "without any traits of Baldur's Gate"!?

It's a character and storytelling-focused D&D game set in the city of Baldur's Gate.

Those three traits are if anything MORE significant to the series than the subgenre they spawned.

Like, dude, there's more to a game than the specific exact way you fight people in it. Or, there should be, in order to make an actual good game. And if there's a SINGLE genre which should remember that the most, it's RPGs.

Nonsense. All that you're doing is throwing arbitrary opinions out to try to defend an argument that is overtly baseless. Every game is a sum of all its parts, and a series creates an identity for itself based on the games it releases. The Baldur's Gate series has had only 2 games in it and they both share the same characteristics. Therefore, to use the Baldur's Gate series name is to appeal to fans of those two games. The RTwP combat system, which Baldur's Gate is the father of, is as much a defining trait of the series, even more than which D&D ruleset the game uses.


I never suggested otherwise. But since you suggest you think that comment means it doesn't matter which combat system a game has, full-stop, therefore you would be 100% OK if Larian make BG3 use RTwP, an only RTwP.

The Baldur's Gate name is recognized as representing a specific game series with specific characteristics. The only reason its name would be used is to draw in the people who like that series and its characteristics. Its core characteristics include RTwP combat.


Like so much of what you've claimed, this is also false. Multiple people have made that argument on the forums before, and elsewhere. Hence why brought it up and discredited it.