If the Steam chart is anything to judge by, there really isn't a lot of people invested into testing this game. Sure we passed a million copies sold on that platform alone, but most of them didn't even finish the product, let alone went through multiple playthroughs and left a valid criticism with their review (easily checked by their hours played tooltip next to their name)

Compared to DOS2 I'd say Larian really did make a mistake with their update schedule and planning because theres not a lot of interest left (speaking from a personal standpoint, but even so, the numbers don't lie)

What data, if any, they are still extrapolating from those small amounts of playthroughs is anybodies guess but I don't think we're going to see meaningful improvements and additions until the big release even with the loud minority on the forums voicing their concerns and ideas.
Heres looking at you patch 6

The hype arround the game was really high at the beginning. The first monthes were crazy.

Then Larian didn't really do anything to keep this hype really high.

With communication, regular patch, polls or events from the community managers, regular gazette and so on... players (streamer, media,...) would talk about the game during the whole EA but with a single PFH and a patch every 3-4 monthes there's not so much to talk about and the hype slowly goes down each time.

Yeah, but D:OS2 was crowdfunded title, not EA. So it's not exactly 1:1.

As far as data, that might be more helpful, then bunch of hardcore, multipleplaytrhough gamers. Most buyers won't finish the game, nor replay it.

Everyone times someone says "meh, wasn't that great; I didn't finish it", someone else puts their $60 into a different game.....

Also, there are folks like me who do not want to burn out on the game before release. Played thru once on patch 4, messed around with some different char builds a little to check out other classes, etc. But I have no desire to go back in till more classes are added.

Not concerned. The game already sold over a million copies and will sell a lot once released.

what exactly are you worried about? This is a crpg. Larian has a history of completing their games. What else do you want? This doesn't have to have a large playerbase at all for anyone to enjoy themselves.

I feel like the concern being raised here is not that the game won't complete, but rather that the game has a LOT of ways it still needs to improve, and many of them are ways that go against Larian's original ideology.. and so for those improvements to actually happen, they need that volume of data and feedback from a large pool of independent testers. Without it, the game will complete and launch anyway, but some folks are worried that it will remain as intrinsically dissatisfying and underwhelming as many are currently finding it due to the problems it has - and folks want the game to be as good as it could be.

Some of us are just awaiting patch 6 before spending any more time testing.

To borrow an example from a totally different game genre, this EA kind of reminds me of a FreeOrion to Master of Orion 3/MOO:CTS type situation, where the whole Universe hopes for something more like 1 and 2 but way better! but then you get that sort of sinking feeling like its going to level off and crash before it gets there. I think if they should push out some more content or a new class in the meantime even if its still kinda bugged out in patch 6 just to show forward momentum and maintain interest. They need to go big at the end of October and into the holiday season.

This is more to do with preventing burn out and waiting for the next patch. Most of the features were already gone over by many players and new bugs reported. Not much left to do other than wait for patch 6.

That's what people said about CDPR before Cyberpunk 77 turned out to be fucking awful from start to finish. Some good ideas here and there, but nothing was actually executed properly, and the game is probably the most schizophrenic experience I've ever had. Can't make up its damn mind if it wants to be a looter-shooter or an RPG or a story game, and it essentially fails at all three.

Larian has a history of not being that damn incompetent but so far all they've managed is a decent first act. They haven't managed to get the ruleset sorted out, their approach has some tangible problems, their user interface is making naughties games look good, and their communication about what they want to do and how they want to do it and when they want to do it is pretty much zilch.

So am I worried? Do I have any bad tingling in my gut that the company that gave us toilet chain movement and drag-to-group and frustrating camp mechanics and incredibly unreliable party dialogue triggers and origin nonsense and three-quarterlings with giant heads and an aggressively cramped map that doesn't convey adventure or exploration or really any care or effort to build a nice word is going to phone it in a little too much? Yeah, I do.

What makes you think all they've managed is a first act? They told us that that was all they intended to share in EA, but we've no idea what how much progress has been made on things they don't intend to show us until the game is released.

Personally, I'm still as interested as I ever was, but I'm only playing the game if there's something specific, such as the new approach to camping, that I want to test. Not wanting to play the game constantly just means that I don't want the first act to feel stale when I start my first real playthrough.

I don't know what they've managed. They're not really telling us, after all. But if act 1 is indicative of how they've decided to do things then it suggests some design choices that I, and probably a fair few other people, would find less than optimal.

The complete radio silence indicates that they're not at all concerned about hyping up EA at the moment. And that has me worried that they feel they're beyond the need for regular feedback and are confident enough in their design choices to push ahead with intense production of the rest of the game. If that's the case then i suspect they'll give us a fall patch to maintain the appearance of caring about EA, but then one more update in March or so, and then nothing until second half of 22, in order to get a feel on priorities for polish. But more depressingly, it means the rest of the game will probably be very similar to act 1.

So no time mechanic, buggy dialogue triggers, characters everywhere that just repeat their lines over and over and over, a ridiculously compressed map, and along with that also extremely nerfed ranged attacks. Along with that comes other necessary homebrew rules to maintain an illusion of balance. This has the potential to be a fine DOS game, but an exceptionally awful Baldur's Gate experience.

That is understandable concern ...
Problem here is that the more game will be tuned to satisfy Group B, the less it will satisfy Group A who liked it before.

So ... statisticaly, its inevitable that *someone* will feel like this is piece of shit. :-/

You of all should know that ... just look around.
Scrolls, barrels, high ground, hotbar and dozen other topics ... some people will never be satistified until those things will be gone forever, bcs their very presence "ruins their game" ... they never accept its existence bcs "dont use it" is stupid argument for them, while "using during complaining about using it being stupid" is somehow seen as genius argument or what.

I mean, its "Larian game" after all ... so its first and before anything else should fulfill Larian vision ... at least that is how i see it, feel free to throw a rock if you feel the urge. :-/
Once someone will be crazy enough to development game, that will be "exactly as people wants it" he will never deliver final product, as long as there will be at least two people providing feedback.

It is a Baldur's Gate game. If Larian wants to make their very own game exactly how they want it to be then they should not pick a name that is this strongly tied to a particular kind of game. If Larian wants to use that particular name then they should also accept the restrictions that come with that name.

If Larian just wants to make a DOS-game that isn't DOS then they could have made Mortality: Original Virtue and had a completely free hand to do whatever they wanted to do.

Okay:

No. That's not acceptable.

First and Before Anything Else, they must deliver the game that is being, advertised and pitched and sold. Their vision is irrelevant if that former condition is not fulfilled. If they deliver their vision, but in doing so they do not deliver that former condition, then they have failed, and worse than that, they will have deceived, and defrauded people.

If a company hires you to create "Better Gardening 3", the long anticipated third instalment in the much acclaimed Better Gardening series.... a game series much beloved as a video game simulation of a story based gardening system that takes you on an exciting adventure in gardening... and this company hires you on to make Better Gardening 3 using their latest system evolution of garden simulation, Digging & Dirt 5th Edition... and you agree to do that, but your previous games involved explosions everywhere, silly voices and cartoonish violence... and so your vision moving forward is to make a game with more of the same, because that was really popular with your existing audience... and what you ultimately produce and launch is Worms Armageddon: Garden Warfare... a game that doesn't really feel like Better Gardening, or really Gardening at all, or playing with Digging and Dirt in any real way.... then I'm sorry, but "You followed your vision", and "It's digging in the dirt, isn't it? It's just doing it in a way that we think is more fun!" is not, in any way, an adequate defence of your failure to deliver the product you were hired to produce, or your fraudulent misrepresentation in your advertising that was used to draw in the crowds of players who came for the Better Gardening series, or for a Digging and Dirt simulator... If you hadn't ever intended to produce those things then you should not have taken the contract, and you definitely should not have advertised that that was what you were making. Vision, in this situation, is of secondary importance, and the overall product delivered should not bend to it so far that it no longer matches the original commission as advertised.

Don't get me wrong: Worms is a great game series. I love it. I genuinely do... And if this theoretical company had advertised that they were making a new Worms game, I might have been excited for it, in its own way. But it's not what was advertised, so it's not what I came here FOR, in this case. I don't care if they say that this was their vision for the series: That's no apology and no excuse for failing to deliver the original stated goal.

I would love a Worms Armageddon: Garden Warfare

Yes. This. ^^^^^

Ah, when this thread started, I was thinking "what's the catch?" And it turned out to be another "BG3 should be an Infinity Engine title". I, for one, really hope this game will be much closer to DOS than to original BG series. And that's what I'll emphasize in my testing.

Yeah ... but what exactly that mean anyway?

I mean isnt that ultimate question?
And not just in games, but also movies, series, tabletop, books ... basicaly anything that do have sequel.
There will allways be some people that will claim that "this is no longer *XY* bcs it lacks *XYZ*" ...
But there is no evolution without changes. :-/
Sure, not all changes have to be good, but if we will be affraid to change anyghing, we could simply re-release the same Skyrim over and over with slightly improved graphic ... do we really want that? (Oh wait. )

For example:
I bet there is lot of people out there that will tell you that Fallout 3 were no longer Fallout, bcs that game was providing completely different experience.
But was that a bad thing? O_o

Actualy i believe that Fallout is quite good example, bcs that game gets quite simmilar overdo as Baldur's Gate did.
Both was isometric ... now both its 3D ...
BG was Real time with pause ... now its turn based ...
Fallout was turn based ... now its real time with V.A.T.S. (something kinda simmilar to pause, if you are not familiar) ...
I could find some more similarities, but im too lazy for that ... so google yourself. :P

My point is ...
Larian presented some vision to WotC when they were talking about using their trademark. (Or at least that is how things usualy work.)
Therefore, logicaly if WotC give them their permition ... they are okey with that vision, no matter what that is ...
Concidering how good sellings of this game was, i would dare to say that nobody will even notice that *some* people disliked Larian vision ... WotC did ... and people who buyed it obviously did too (or at least that is how companies usualy measure sucesfullness of their product) ... and that is what matters.

Basicaly i would agree ...

Problem here is in that point, where their advertising ends and our expectations begins ...
Main problem of this is pinpoint where exactly it is, since that is also quite abstract construct.

For example ...
Baldur's Gate III. is advertised as "based on DnD 5e" ... at least in my country it is.
And here are people complaining about things that are (quote) "not exactly as they are in tabletop rules" ...
Does that mean that advertising was wrong ... or their asumption that something that is "based on" actualy means "literal transcription of rules 1:1" ?

Another example ... a little more abstract:
As long as their point of view would be "anything from this universe is conciderable as sequel, no matter how well it fits to that universe" (yes, looking at you new so called "Star Wars trilogy" from Disney) ... officialy it would be a sequel ... and therefore their advertising, "we will deliver sequel", would be fulfilled ...
Of course ... they would probably piss off large amount of their fanbase and potentialy hurt both the trademark and studio that allowed such herecy ... but the question is (still looking at you, Disney) how much would copyright owner even care, as long it makes enough money.
(Spoiler alert: Not at all.)

Actualy Worms are great example ...
(and i still believe that Fallout was too)

Personaly i loved Armageddon ... but the new, 3D wersion seemed allways weird to me. :-/
So, for myself ... Worms 3D was no longer Worms ... doesnt seem like anybody care, if you know what i mean.

Dont get me wrong, i get what you were trying to say (or at least i believe i did) ...
Its just seem to me that if Larian would screw Baldur's Gate III. so much as you described with "Better Gardening 3" ... they would need to make first person shooter out of it.

I don't expect Larian to make an Infinity Engine game, but I do expect them to respect what the franchise was about. It was a single player party-based D&D experience. Most of those words should be reasonable descriptors of a modern sequel, even if they change some things.

But if they just want to make another DOS game then it is completely disrespectful to involve the Baldur's Gate franchise in that project. That would be rather much like making a solitaire game and calling it Fallout 5 because Fallout 4 is taken and the game uses Fallout motifs for the cards.

Predominently yes. But both games had Multiplayer and I for one loved playing this via TCP/IP with my friends. The limiting factor was the "chosen one" aspect which meant that for long conversations there was little to do but read whilst the main character did all the choosing. I think it's great that we will have a BG game where that aspect has been heavily improved. I would have preferred it without some of the sacrifices that are being made in the name of multiplayer (Night/Day cycle for example).

Also, until Larian fix the god awful Chain System, it's also much more fun to play in Multiplayer with each (or most) characters being individually controlled!!

That said, I too play these types of games in Single Player mode a lot, but I just wanted to point out that BG was never PURELY a SP experience.

It means that one can make changes but those changes have to respect what the core of the franchise was.

In the case of Fallout, sure, mechanically it was isometric, but it was also a game about a wacky post-apoc world, wacky people, wacky mutations, and a fair bit of grimdark humor. Did Fallout 3 get all of that right? No, not even close. It wasn't a bad game, in my opinion, but it was a bit lacking in the Fallout factor. What I felt it did pretty well, however, was depicting the world in pretty much the right colors. It had exploration, it had big empty areas, it had laughs, and it had a few dark bits too. It didn't get the dialogue right, though. And it didn't really do the job with companions either, did it? But it felt to me like they at least made a decent effort at a 3D first-person RPG set in the world of Fallout.

New Vegas did the dialogue a lot better, but the game world was too cramped. There was too much stuff in too little space and you practically couldn't toss a rock anywhere without hitting something moderately significant, despite supposedly being out in the Mojave.

Contrast with a game that takes the king of single-player D&D party-based experiences and then violates everything that is holy in D&D by focusing on living through the story of pregen characters, turns the game world into one very long cartoon networks moment, doesn't try to go for any kind of immersion, doesn't even try to get the ruleset right, and isn't actually designed for SP at all. In fact it's really primarily designed for DOS players to play wacky DOS multiplayer in Forgotten Realms and zero fucks are given about what the predecessors were about. Is that really a remotely serious attempt at a modern sequel? Or is it simply a hijacking of a respected name in order to push a DOS game without actually naming it DOS?

Mind you, I am intentionally overdoing the language a little bit to stress a point. There's no need to point out the hyperbole. I am aware.

You didnt answer the question.
What exactly *is* Baldur's Gate series? :P

A very long story about a pair of Golden Pantaloons

I understand that you are evoking hyperbole, but still...

BG3 is already much closer to 5e edition RAW than the original saga ever was to 2nd edition. Cinematic scenes were also a thing in the original series, except for they looked abstracted. And a lot of fans love the cinematic scenes, so I am kinda certain that they will be a net positive for the game. The pregen character thing is I admit a Larian thing, but these guys were chosen by WoC to carry out this legacy project and they have already been shown to be willing to let go some of their classic style elements (though origin pcs are obv here to stay which might be a cool thing, as they provide an excellent narrative anchor). I do hope Larian comes up with something that makes Custom heroes just as invested in the story. Also BG3 is much more a singleplayer experience than their previous games...

Correct

Not surprising at all. These kind of very slow pace combat, heavy handed cinematic games get boring VERY fast after a few playtrhoughs. You cant skip the dialogue quickly like the traditional BG1/2 games, or just quickly run away from a minor encounter...

From the first three months, overwhelming complaints were that the game is too much DOS2 not enough D&D/Baldurs gate. "Oh, dat just DOS2.5 with pretty faces..." People left.

And now nearly a year later, and WHOPPING 5 PATCHES, this hasn't changed. The few that likes the game for its cinematics kinky scenes are still here, and the rest few of us are wishingly hoping...praying...things turn out well ; more like traditional dark and gritty Baldurs gate atmosphere, more D&D and less <<Larianization>>.

How could it even change, when you people seem to be uncapable, or unwilling to pass the whole sentence? :-/
"It feels too much like DoS" or "It dont feels enough like DnD" ... dont help anyone. -_-

Claiming that all people who like the game are pervs who are obsessed with the explicit scenes is a bit rich. I can accept that people might not like BG3 as much as I do, but still this kind of attitude that says "we the normals despise this trash" is just wrong. Larian is working on something great here. A lot of people understand this. They just might be much more patient and positive bout this title than you are...

You want the game to be "more D&D" and yet complain the combat is "very slow pace," and that you can't "skip the dialogue."

The old BG1 was a shot in the dark, made by a fairly small team on a harsh budget and working with limited hardware capability. I can forgive them for cutting a bunch of corners in trying to come up with a game that actually felt a little bit like that D&D party experience. And it did feel D&D, even if some rules got bent in the process. It was not a full D&D simulator but contrast with what else existed at the time and it was a pretty solid effort.

BG3 is a rather different situation. Big team, big budget, incredibly strong hardware to work with, and they are not starting from scratch. Games have been made in 5E, and they also have the original games for inspiration. They made the choice to use the DOS engine in what seems to me like a fairly pure form, but that was not obligatory. They've made the choice to make the setting cartoonish, to have an intense focus on surface effects, and to make combat extremely long and drawn out whenever there's more than your party and a couple of hostile actors involved... That's all because Larian wants it that way, not something they had to do.

And they appear to be going for a discover-the-past-of-your-toon adventure and pretending that this is in tune with D&D rather than focusing on having players create their own character who goes on a D&D 5E adventure. That's a Larian choice, not something they had to do. They've chosen to massively compress the map instead of using activation points to load other maps, like the original games would have done. That's a Larian choice. This leads to homebrew upon homebrew, and again this is Larian's choice. They've chosen to have no sense of time in their game, to have everything essentially exist in a time-free zone and occasionally start little combat pockets with time. That's a Larian choice. Shared inventory, Larian choice.

And how many of these choices were made to create a great singleplayer D&D party-based experience? How many of those choices indicate a good faith attempt to extend the Bhaalspawn saga into the 5E ruleset using all the technology and game design ability of the twenties? Rather few, I suspect.

If Larian just wanted to set a game in Forgotten Realms then they could have done that without problems and received probably nothing but praise for the effort, but they made the choice that it wasn't just a game set in FR, it was in fact a sequel to the Baldur's Gate series. Not just a sidestep, not just something that would offer homage to that particular saga, but an outright sequel. I can also slap together some fanfic set in Tolkien's universe, but if I have the stones to call it a Lord of the Rings sequel then it better actually be worthy of that name, wouldn't you say?

What does BG3 do that makes it worthy of calling itself "Baldur's Gate" that isn't also done by a bunch of other games? It is a provocative question to ask, of course, but I don't think it is entirely unfair to do so.

The problem, Ragnarok, is that the question you are asking is one where you do not appear to accept any answer in simple terms, and if someone does write the novel presumably required to fully answer your question then I suspect you will nitpick the answer to argue that a comma here or there is out of place, and therefore the whole thing is not an acceptable answer. It's what you did in GM's story topic, isn't it?

What is the Baldur's Gate series? It's a series of games designed primarily around letting singleplayer computer gamers have that experience of party-based adventuring in the Forgotten Realms. There are a lot of flaws in how they tried to achieve that but combine a limited budget with limited hardware at the time and suddenly their achievement is more much impressive. What games at that time did a better job?

Now contrast with BG3. What does it feel like the design periorities were? The same as before or rather different from before? Keep in mind just how much more resources Larian has and just how much stronger computers are today, as well as how much better we are at general usability. And keep in mind that Larian had something to target and didn't start off in a complete void.

No, I'm not at all keen to reduce the originals to a checklist of technicalities that we can then spend a ridiculous amount of bandwidth discussing back and forth about. That misses the point entirely. There is an artistic element to games and art is largely based on feeling rather than hyper-rational thinking. So rather than throwing a giant book at you, so you can throw said book back at me, the simple question for me is how does the game feel? Does it feel like a sequel? And once we've searched deep within our bones for the answer to that, we can then try and figure out why the answer is what it is.

To me, no, I'm not getting any feeling of BG2 when playing this game. I'm discouraged from creating my own character. The story isn't about my character anyway. My character is at best just a lucky passenger. The world is fisherprice plastic and ridiculously compressed. The sun always shines. Time stands completely still. Once you scratch the surface, the world feels extremely dead, like nothing whatsoever is happening anywhere and nobody has any purpose in life but to handle one or two interactions with "the party" and then disappear.

Combat in the BGs is done in an arcade way that makes it entertaining enough to do many times but also fast enough that it doesn't dominate completely, and with an option for those who want to really put time into it, but here in BG3 it is freakishly slow without any way to speed it up. In BG2 there were tactics that made you feel smart rather than cheap, in BG3 there's stealth cheese and high ground cheese and the occasional surface effect cheese, but not really a lot of smart tactics.

I could go on but at this point I suspect you get the drift. I'm not a D&D purist and I don't play TT, but I did play the heck out of SoA back in the day. There are good things in BG3, definitely, but it just doesn't feel like it's got all that much to do with BG2. Or BG1, for that matter.

But it does. Just not necessarily as much. All sorts of feedback is to some degree useful. A general sentiment such as "It doesn't feel enough like D&D" might not mean much on its own, but it doesn't have to. If there's enough word going around sharing similar sentiments, that in and of itself is feedback for Larian. It is their job to assimilate and take feedback into consideration during decision making and revision, not the person making the feedback. In other words, no feedback requires an academic analysis of game design, philosophy and human psychology for perception and what ever else there might be. So don't be the arbiter of what is and isn't feedback please. That too, is Larian's responsibility to process. Very often, gamers know when they like or don't like something, but equally as often they may not know exactly why, which is fine. Few things in life is binary, there's nuance, context, the whole array of intricasies.

An example would be back before EA was even released, narration in the game was different. It was told in past-tense, like re-telling a story as if it had already happened. I immediately wrote in some feedback about this, though I also explained why, but I want to use it as an example either way.


In this feedback, Larian is made aware that some people aren't enjoying a design decision. The more this sentiment repeats, the bigger reason they have to considering revisiting it, and reflect on why that is. (And I can promise you, a writer would quickly jump to similar conclusions as the following example.)


This design change (in my opinion) pretty much reflects how a game feels, but either example is perfectly fine. One may be more worthwhile on its own merit, but that holds in no shape or form any relevance to the shorter variant.

This pretty much sums it all. Larian had plenty of opportunities, including one year of amazing feedback that I have witnessed in this forum. What BG3 will become is entirely Larian's decision. They have all the power to create the best RPG ever made, but what we have so far is far from that. They are excited to bring BG3's name and D&D 5th edition, but they never talk about the originals. And that is what is missing, to understand what truly made the originals special.

On a side note, people tend to invoke WoTC approval to justify Larian's decisions. I have to remind you that WoTC doesn't give a flying F to what Larian is doing. Just see what new Dark Alliance became.

Every major update saw that Larian is listening to the EA players. I just don't understand this fatalistic doomsday pessimism at this point. The surface effects were turned down, narration style changed, initiative system was altered, actions reconsidered. All due player feedback. And they talk about the originals all the time. But also they are making their own title. And bout this tired argument that "this is just a DOS clone because same engine". Look at how similar DOS2 looked to DOS in early development. BG3 is becoming more and more distinct with every patch, but the idea that Larian should start from scratch just seems ignorant about game development in general.

Story-wise, the Bhaalspawn story is over. Both Larian and WoC told us that. This is a new story where that story's aftereffects still linger. And u can already see that.

Cartoonish? Have u guys played any game set in the Forgotten Realm? It is a cartoonish setting...

This has been done several times here.

Once again you're just trying to deviate.

I think at this point, people are just waiting for a major gameplay update to dive back in. Something that would be equally important to everyone, instead of small tweaks or updates that are only really that appealing to a specific faction. Something like a new companion or a level cap increase to 5.

I've tried getting back into BG3 with each patch, but I've only ever managed one full playthrough shortly after patch 3. Every other playthrough since stalled around the time I reached the goblin camp, knowing not much has fundamentally changed afterwards, and the game's writing and party interactions are currently in a state where I don't find it compelling enough to sit through a bunch of unskippable cutscenes just to see how combat encounters have changed due to a few tweaks - especially when the combat balance at this low level is a bit gimmicky, though it's not exactly Larian's fault that low level 5E is as barebones as it is and admittedly some of their more questionable tweaks do make it slightly more interesting... Just maybe not in the way they intended or what people would consider good balance.

I would say the game's a bit slow too, although not in the way most people would think when most people bring up that word. CRPGs are by nature slower games, but when you really think about it... Solasta's pretty fast and snappy, Pathfinder is, uhhh, Pathfinder, and BG3 is getting faster in combat too. But things like unskippable cutscenes, almost every NPC having mini cutscenes for a one-liner, jumping not being automatic outside of combat, no shared inventory so you have to manage four separate inventories at once... That all adds up to constant interruptions in pacing that feels off enough that if there aren't any improvements in this category upon full release, I'd probably just do one full playthrough and then drop the game afterwards, something no other cRPG has yet to make me do as I usually commit to at least 2 full playthroughs (usually trying to optimize/perfect run the second time around).

Like honestly, when I think about exactly what I did in my sole full playthrough of the EA last year, I feel like I spent more time in cutscenes or walking around or managing my inventory rather than doing anything compelling.

Now that I think about it, my DOS2 playthroughs have usually stalled for similar reasons around the end of Act 2, though it usually takes a lot longer for me to get to that point there for entirely different reasons (knowing most encounters in the second half of the game becomes rocket tag extreme with how the stat balance becomes, and that the writing just falls apart around that point too).

That is not the problem friend, that is my point.
Exactly my point i would say.

You know if there would be several ... lets say dozen, exactly same answers that would appear simultaneously (instead usual quote and "+1" or "this", since then people dont express their own idea, but simply accept someone else) ...
I would agree that there is consensual idea of what Baldurs Gate actualy is.
But i honestly doubt that would ever happen. Exactly bcs as you say that is not question that can be answered in simple terms.

The point here was not to get the answer.
It was to show to those people who are simply complaining that this is "not enough BG" that "being BG" is not so simple to define, that their vision of "what it means to be BG" can easily be entirely different from what would others expect.

I never cared about where is comma placed ... mainly since my own english is poor, so i would probably not even notice it.

I quote, so people can clearly see to what im refering ...
Ofcourse i do know that some people mind it, but i dont see that as my problem ... i also mind if someone quote whole post and them refer to single sentence that is somewhere in middle on the end of his posts, just to then refer to something that was in the begining ... i find it incredibly messy to orient, but that is not reason for me to acuse him from purposely creating chaos so nobody can orient in his writing.
I can only wish more people stop presuming the worse (yes, refering to you too right now).

Nope, never did.

This sounds to me like something BG-3 is doing quite well ... isnt it? O_o
Sure, it allows us to ejoy the same adventure with 3 friends ... but that is just flaw of our time, world is more connected now and it would be shame to not allow such clearly offering option just bcs nostalgia from the times when internet connection was not so common.

You are talking here about limitations of that time ... but is that really relevant? There is allways some limitations.
I mean, There was times in history when there was no hardware at all ... just quill and paper, and people still created awesome stories we love and replay even today. Sure it was no "computer game" (shocking huh), but i believe you get what i mean.

I mean, sometimes the fact that you have limited resources is what is forcing you to give the best, so you will not have limited resources in the future.
In other words ... do you know this meme?


I dunno, i never played Baldur's Gate before, nor any other "big RPG games" like Neverwinter nights, from that time.
I mean i heared about them, when i get to games ... and i never heared anythng but praise (wich allways get me suspicious) but the graphic side of those games is too big obstacle for me to be interested ... and i dont have that "sweet nostalgia" that helps the others to get over that.

Just for the record i also never played any Larian game, for quite simmilar reasons.
So i dare to say that i get here as quite independent observer.

Also keep in mind how many "so good games as back then" is released from perspective of those older players who remembered that "good old days" ...
I mean sure, there is a lot of nostalgia, combined with selective memory to help them forget every frustrating part of old games ... but since we are comparing old and new game, we cannot afford to forget theese aspects.

Also when we concider how much resources Larian have ... we should keep in mind how much more resources Larian need ...
I mean, if Larian would have the same amount of money back in 90' they could produce all games that was released in whole decade. But that is no longer the case here, is it?

About computing power ...
I believe that is reason why Larian decided to create one big map, instead of lot small areas ... bcs computers simply can do that now.
Simmilar to first Fallout, compared to Fallout 3 ... back in Fallout times, computers was week and it was unimaginable that any could handle more than small hub with few enemies ... then technology get few generation futher, and sudently we have here open world game where everything seems to be happening at once.
Was it better? Was it worse? Nobody can really say bcs everyones preferences are different ... but it was "finaly possible".

Sure Larian didnt start off in a complete void ...
But you present that as pure positive ... i would dare to disagree here, from perspective of customer i rarely seen something being called "worthy sucessor" of anything including games, movies, and even books ... i dont say it never happens, im just pointing out that is much more rare ocasion that we would like to admit ... and the older the original is, the harder job people have ... since time is changing, expectations are incerasing, and lets be honest with each other for a second, many things that nobody was stoping around back in the old times, is no longer acceptable in our society.
But to put all that aside, if you are talking about the story ... that is something we would never be able to rate until full release, so im not even starting this.
If you would rate Alien 3 based on first 15 minutes, you would also probably dismis that as something that have nothing to do with Alien franchise ... and yet, from all its sequels it was closest to original movie we ever get.

I can respect this ...
Its nothing we can talk about tho, since there is no way to share feelings in whole scale ... also, as i stated abowe im unable to get it.

But this is something i can understand, and therefore accept.

And this is where we start rational thinking ...
Since this is perfect list of claims ... without any explanations and i would like to understand them.

Why are you discouraged from creating your own character? O_o
I mean, yes there is OPTION to play as origin ... but how exactly does it discourage you?
It seems similar to me to Barrels discusion we had in this forum, for some people just their very existence seem to diminish their effort in encounters no matter what, how, or why they do ... just bcs there exist easy alternative ... i cant simply understand this mindset sadly.
To me, i would be happy i managet to climb the wall and i would be laughting (inside, just to be clear) to people who used elevators nearby, bcs even tho they would have the same view from top of that mountain, they would never know the feeling i have right now ... i would never feel foolish for not joining them, bcs my point was to climb and therefore that is why i did it ...

Story isnt about your character?
Again, what makes you say that? Its your character who makes all the important decisions ... i mean, sure there is that incredibly anoying bug when NPC pick closest party member instead of talking to YOU (or at least i hope its concidered a bug, keeping in mind how often that was reported) ... but besides that? Even if you try to recruit anyone as one of your companions, they reject them saying they would rather talk with party leader.
But truth be told, i would also like to have my protagonist forced as main actor of conversations ... with option to call party members for ability checks preferably, to be completely honest. I dunno, but it just seems right to be to have option to say something like "Hey Gale, do you have any idea what this is?" when you are suppose to make Arcana check with your fighter that dumped intelligence for obvious reasons.

Compressed world ...
I agree on this, to make a little wider map with few more encounters would be appreciated by myself ...
Honestly i believe that this game would actualy mostly benefit from hub system ... that was used in the past (personaly i recall it mostly from Dragon Age: Origins) ... and i also believe it would not be so hard to implement it with little tweaks to what we do have right now.
The problem here is expectations from audience ... even tho i would appreciate it, and probably most of older players would too ... today standards calls that game that have a lot of loadings between scenes is concidered boring.
If you listen in public transport you can sometimes hear young people (kids mostly) complaining that their mobile game will "now just again loading half of the day" ... it allways makes me smile, since i remember the times when games actualy (not litteraly tho) was loading half day ... but they are playing again before you even finish that sentence ...
So i kinda understand Larian decided to go this way, it may not be the best ... i would rather call that lesser evil. O_o

About time ...
I believe that audience allready managed to express themselves quite clearly that they DO want some time flow in this game ... i would not give my had to fire for this (is that expresion in english?) but i believe Swen never told us that they will definietly not including day/night cycle (and if he did, i forgot) ...
On the other hand we were multiple times told that one of Early Acess aspects are placeholders, unfinihsed things and bugs ... and since one of last updates in cinematics was the fact that Nautiloid crash happened before daylight ... i would say that there is hope that this particular problem will change until game will be released.
Or at least that is what i hope for ... its not like time would be somehow extremely important for myself, more like pleasant addition.

And finaly dead world ...
I mean i cannot disagree here, as i stated in the past the whole world in this game is actualy paused until you and your group gets to the scene and start interacting.
I would not go so far to say that they dont have any own purposes, or that they dissapear after interacts with our party tho. O_o
Seems to me that every NPC have its purpose, sometimes is clear, somethimes its not ... yes, some do exist just to interact with us and their fate is sealed afterwards (Marina's brothers for example, wich i didnt manage to save, nor neunite with their sister, so far) ... but again, Early Acess, work in progress ... to add some short scene in Teahouse, if you manage to knock them out and save Marina withing single long rest, where they reunite should not be too hard to implement, or maybe they will reunite in futher parts of game.

I dunno ... just yesterday i started yet another gameplay ... and i must say i was litteraly shocked how fast combat before Grove Gate was (especialy compared to start of EA last year) ...
Also, feel free to corect me if im wrong ... but wasnt combat in BG-2 real time with pause? It sounds like logical outcome that when your group automaticly and simultaneously (even with your enemies) does something it would probably be faster than when you need to pick and do every step yourself and then wait for another character.
But that is hardly misstake of BG-3 ... that is just difference betwen used mechanics.

About tactics ...
Can you provide me few examples please? I would really love to hear those ... people keep talking about how older games had options to make "brilliant tactics" instead of "cheap cheese" ... but so far nobody was able to give me at least five examples. O_o I would really appreciate it.

I mean i dont even know what "cheeses" you are talking about here ...

I presume when you mentioned stealth, you are talking about that you are totally able to stealth after every single attack and enemies are not coming to actively search for you ... and i would agree that is certainly exploit ...
Or were you talking about the fact that you are totally able to work outside conversation, or even combat as long as you keep stealthing? Well ... i would not call that exploit, since you will sacrifice your first turn in order to get into better position, if you fail stealthing ... its gamble, usualy its worth the risk i give you that, but still ...

About high ground ...
I dont quite understand what is so cheesy about this, as far as i know in most situations its turned against you ... at least from the start of the combat.
Unless you specificaly and willingly do some precautions to either get it, or negate it ...
I mean i would not mind if High ground would get hard bonus instead of "advantage" ... but it seems totally logical to me that high ground give you some bonus.

Surface effect ...
I dont really know what exactly you mean here ...
And i was actualy pissed off yesterday that when i used my Witch Bolt on red caps in the swamp, the whole water didnt get electrocuted.

The things with exploits is that is most certainly not how game is suppose to be played ... and as it was mentioned in other topics, there was fair amount of possible exploits in older games too ... i believe one of mentioned i remember was puting lightning storm at the edge of fog of war? Or something simmilar ...
[sarcasm] How odd that nobody is criticising BG-2 for allowing such horrible, cheap and gamebreaking cheese mechanic. [/sarcasm]
Personaly i concider myself a big supporter of free will ... and if someone can ruin his game by using exploits, its his choice ... i shall not, and i will enjoy it ... thry that sometimes. :P

That may be source of the problem.
Since BG-3 seem to be lot closer to TT D&D ... than BG-2 ... but i believe it was even mentioned in that interview with WotC that this was one of their conditions when they allowed Larian to create this game in the first place.

(Did it used it corectly? It was my first snaping. :D)

This is what i was trying to say ... i expressed myself poorly.
The point i was trying to made was when you keep saying "this is bad" "this is bad" "this is bad" ... and expect Larian to keep offering another and another and another options, just so you reject them with the same sentence over and over and over ...
They will burn out eventualy (at least i would ... actualy i would not even pay attention for such feedback, but luckily im not Larian employee) ...

If you instead say "this is bad bcs *XY* and i believe it would be better if *XY*..."
They know where to aim, instead of keep shooting in darkness hoping they will hit the exact thing you had in mind.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't see a good enough reason to replay until major content is added. Don't get me wrong, I VERY much like the changes introduced in patch 5 (combat is actually not garbage anymore, dice rolls are more bearable), but the game in its current state is not that repeatable or long - 1 good & 1 evil playthrough, maybe reload important/interesting conversations to see other choices, try all the romances (which you can easily do in those two playthroughs, maybe just one, LOL) and that's it - and I've done that in patch 2/3. I have tried the druid in patch 4 (including the grove conversations) for a few hours and then the combat system (+changes such as rescuing SH) in patch 5 for another few hours and I just do not feel compelled to play EA anymore until something big is added (mountain pass? level 5? origin chars, I guess, although I don't like the concept).

If I strongly believed this will turn out to be a game I'll absolutely love, I'd be reporting issues and replaying it again and again (kinda have spare time for that right now), but as it is (a decent game I will probably 'like', maybe even 'quite a bit'), I'll rather invest my time into games I haven't played at all yet and play BG3 once it's released (maybe one more EA playthrough when EA becomes (almost) content-complete).

Larian are not communicating anything back other than "we listen to feedback". If they would be explaining their design choices or goals better, especially when deviating from D&D rules, perhaps testers would feel more encouraged to play and give feedback.

Larian are also not saying what they especially want feedback on. Maybe your feedback concerns something they absolutely won't change, or something that has already been planned to change.They just said play the game and we will gather data. I don't trust their data analysis because players might not actually like the way they play, they could simply have no choice. E.g. combat still revolves entirely around high ground but that doesn't mean players "like" to play king of the hill or "hate" to use spells that give advantage. They are simply playing the way the game was set up.

And perhaps if they added the missing classes and races and some armor and customization options, and new companions, it would be more interesting to replay from a gameplay point of view. You can't keep replaying just for the same story.

I would dare to once again say that this is nonsence ...
I mean sure, there could be "some" players unable to think outside their box, so they adapt to system they hate instead of going around it ... teoreticaly, but i still have troubles imagine it. O_o

You used high ground as example ...
I would say that high ground specificly can be easily overcome ... by Arrows or roaring thunder, misty stepp and thunderwave, void bulbs (wich are surprisingly effective, when used on edge ... not even sure if there is a change to resist their pull), stealthing and shoving (wich have 100% chance for success), thorn Whip if you are Druid ... and i bet i forgot some options.
I mean, there is quite a lot options for us to use ... how is that possible that so many people believes that everyone choosed "do what i hate and complain on forum"?

We know for almost certain that they will not add all races into Early Acess, since Swen specificly told us that they wish to keep some as surprise for full release.
(I would dare to expect also that there is not much to test on them, so they are not quite interesting for Larian from EA perspective ... maybe except models, but as Larian showed us with elves, they will never update models anyway)

And this is something i disagree completely.
Since if there is anything that BG-3 is really strong (maybe even strongest of all games i played so far) its variablitily of the story. :P
Sure ... sometimes you have to act a little ilogicaly, so you get the right outcome (like me yesterday, when i was curious about what exactly will happen when i kill Goblin Leaders and save Tieflings ... but dont manage to save Halsin ... i had to attack him, bcs he would tear those poor goblins to shreds and they had litteraly no chance. :D) but there is so many options that i would bet (concidering that i have 460h played and im still finding tidbits i never seen before) that you didnt even see them all.
In other words, there is never "the same story" unless you make it same.

Actively working to deprive enemies of high ground when they have it because you feel you must in order to be effective IS being forced to work with the mechanic even if you hate the fact of it. By talking about all the things you could do, and suggesting that lots of people do them regardless of their feelings on the matter, you're proving the point that others are making, Rag.

If you're struggling to imagine that a large percentage of players will play the game, and want to do so effectively and without hampering their chances, and so make full use the over-bearing homebrew mechanics because they are the surest and most effective way to do things... even if they have a strong distaste or even dislike and disgust at the design... then I'd hazard to suggest that that is a failure of your imagination, and of your understanding of human beings in general. If you can't see that players are forced, by and large, to benefit from and be hampered by these mechanics, regardless of their feelings about the homebrew, simply while playing the game - even if they ignore it as a rule - well, few others are having trouble understanding that, so it sounds like the difficulty is on your end.

If you can't see that Larian taking from that play data and saying "We see that most people do try to get advantage from high ground when it's easily available, most of the time, and they also try to deprive enemies of high ground when they can do so: that must mean that people love using our high ground mechanic!", is a big problem for their reading of analytics, then again, the missing link of understanding is on your end. It is a problem, for several very pertinent reasons that have, at this stage, been explained, at length, many times on these very forums.

None of that has anything to do with data analyzing or thinking outside the box. You're just listing consequences of overpowering high ground i.e. what else became mandatory or overpowered with it. High ground and it's consequences IS the box in BG3.

And, respectfully, I think it's you who can't see outside your own bubble where you must relentlessly argue with everyone and everything.

I think this is the crux of the issue. There's nothing to playtest or give feedback on that hasn't been done so far. In one year Larian has added one class and not much else for EA players. I personally haven't touched it since the first patch or two since I can't be bothered to replay it again without any new content.

For myself and likely many others to even bother reloading the game, there needs to be some new companions and classes if nothing else. Of course more content to act 1 wouldn't be looked down upon if they decided to expand the area a little or add more quests.

I'm largely concerned with the fact that Larian appears to function within a bubble. Even in terms of act 1 with analytics and at some point a million different players, communication is incredibly poor, updates are scarce and interpretation of the data provided appears to be biased. Now imagine the final release when we've been unable to provide feedback on any of the other companions, classes or content the game has to offer. The rest of the content will be entirely produced within the vacuum that has become Larian's development team. I just hope that Baldur's Gate 3 Definitive Edition is a free upgrade.

Edit: To drive the point of the OP with the Steam charts. Less than 1 in 24 are still playing which means roughly 96% of players stopped playing compared to the initial release.

So you take it to THAT extreme ...
You know when i read all those crying post from all those people i allways thought that high ground bothered them bcs they was "forced to center whole combat around it" ...

Wich i understand as being unable to play properly without geting High Ground, since half of their attacks missed ... being unable to attack enemies who have high ground, again since half attacks missed ... and that they were frustrated that there is no effective way to defend yourself, while you are geting high ground too ...
You know, something that bothers you majority ... or preferably whole combat.

If i thought that all those complains about how is hight ground stupidly overpowered and how is game centralized around it was actualy complaining that you have to waste litteraly single action to throw Void Bulb ...
Well ...

I'm still playing the game since late August when I've got the time and mood. 29 hours in and still haven't finished everything, then again, I'm taking the scenic route and trying to explore everything before putting it away, then after some break I'll try it again with a new class. I'd reckon lots of people who already have the game are waiting for new content. The rest will only flock once some major promotion/event kicks in.

Calm down, Rag. That's a bit silly to disingenuously nag at others for crying at, well, anything. No need to be so antagonistic about it, if anything you're just as guilty of what you claim others to be guilty of. Focus on the subject, not the feeling. If you have a perspective on why something is perceived as a problem and have counter-thoughts to present, great! But keep it at that. There will always be some main elements that recur in discussions for any game, particularly in regards to feedback. If not high-ground, then something else. And there are good reasons for those opinions, whether you agree with them or not. Right now, it seems you want to shut down a differing opinion, because you disagree with it. That's not healthy for a feedback environment.



This is bad, Rag. Just bad. This is the kind of behavior you need to hard-stop with. No matter of context, if people don't like something, you have no position or right to claim that it's nonsense. There may come a day where you don't enjoy some part of a game, and you should be able to say "I don't like it", too. For example, in DOS2 it's a lot more effective running a party of the same damage type, to a point where once you learn that, playing a split party just feels bad because you know you're kneecapping yourself. Players may not like the feeling for that, as it "feels like" the game forces them to play a certain way, if they want to be optimal. So if you want a party with a tank, a healer, a rogue and a magic user, you're SOL in Dos2. (Of course you still -can-, but if this needs explaining at this point, then you're just not getting the point.)

This same thing goes for high-ground in BG3. I personally don't have any issue with it at all, but I do see why people wouldn't enjoy it. To flip it a little, if say Larian addressed the issues some people have with the perceived importance of high-ground, and found a viable solution to fix that problem, would it even matter to the way you prefer to play the game, or is it a win for everyone? I suspect you wouldn't even notice it. So why nitpick at legitimate feedback and issues others have. Just because you disagree, doesn't mean you have to try and "debunk" the value of which ever it is you disagree with. Lift people up, offer ideas, other perspectives. But don't shut others down. That's a job for moderation, and I am specifically addressing you right now. Take some time to reflect why.

There's a reason why the Pokemon games are turning away from forced random encounters too. I'm one of those that generally don't enjoy combat in games (it's complicated), particularly random encounters. I find them annoying, disruptive and doesn't add anything to the game but pointless grind to waste my time. Your argument could be translated to "Just buy lots of repel items and spend most of your game experience playing item menu simulator to activate a new repel every 40 seconds, duh." - Completely evading the point in the first place. A mechanic or design that someone express an opinion about, is not devalued by a solution to it. The fact that people don't enjoy highground isn't because of what they can or can't do to overcome it, but rather that the game feel bad; That they feel like they're playing bad or doing something wrong if they're not utilizing the most effective solutions at any given moment, further emphasized by enemy encounters often starting with advantage unless you have pre-existing knowledge of encounters ahead and can sneak/position yourself for it. There's valid arguments to be made of why that isn't always very good either. Anyway, I think you're completely missing the point, so stop trying to argue why oranges are good for you when everyone's talking about apples.

Does it? O_o
I dunno where it came from. (Seriously)

Also i kinda struggle right now with right form to state my opinion without including anyone else, since my opinion exists only as contradiction to theirs. :-/ Seems impossible.

I can see tho, why you seen my last post as "too much" ... i was ... i duno how to say it, the proper word seem to be "overwhelmed" but that dont sounds right ... the situation when i thought i finaly realised where lays the core of the problem after SO MUCH TIME in SO MANY different topics, it just feeled absurd ... and yes i admit it (and no, im not sory for it ... i feel that i should be, but im not) that core sounded incredibly ridiculous to me.
So yes i was mocking the idea, and i used my favourite scene from comic series instead of questioning their capability of understanding things (wich is obviously cool, since you dont coment on any of that at all) ... i thought it would be taken with more humor this way ... i see i was wrong, i try to remember that.

Im sory to say it, but you seem to be focusing on wrong part of the sentence ...
I never claimed that its nonsence that someone "like or dislike" something ... i also countless times stated here on forum (but i dont blame you for not remembering, there is lot of us around) that im all in for free will ... i would NEVER forbid anyone from disliking anything!!!
And it sadens me that you believed oterwise.

I claimed, that its nonsence that they have "no choice but do things they dislike" ... and i stand for that claim, since they do have alternatives (and i know since i use them, its not imaginative), they just dont want to use them and there is important difference.

Even if you read the rest of that quote, it seems quite obvious to me that i was only talking about options, never claiming that someone cannot dislike anything. :-/
Really have honestly zero idea where this came from. :-/

I totally understand that, but that is exactly core of the problem i was talking about.
This is not matter of "getting" or "not getting" some point ... i just have different opinion.

People wants to use the best of the best, i can respect that, even tho i thing its not healthy attitude (especialy seeing them specificly complaining about it) ... and therefore they feel like "game is forcing them" ... but that is not corect, they are forcing themselves ...
Especialy now, when there is no dificiulty and anything in EA is vincible(?) no matter how uneffective your party is (you can thrust me, my parties are deep below optimal, i often even forgets the buff and stuff and yet i usualy manage somehow to survive).

All im trying to say is basicaly:
Try to sacrifice 10% of your efectivity to take companion you want instead of comanion you get best results with ... and you find something incomparably more precious ... FUN!
Ben there, done that, yars ago. Just try it and you will see.

They dont even need to find any solution ... people suggested one that sounds really good ...
Just switch advantage with +1 to hit, or +10% for shooting range ... or both.

And yes, i would never mind it ... i even support that idea.
But that was not my point here as i stated abowe.

Im sory, but i dont understand you here ...
How can any discusion exist, if disagreeing is forbidden? O_o

I mean, i believe i stated abowe that i was actualy trying to offer perspectives ... clearly i could (should?) choose different form ... but, that sounds little like neverending story. :-/

Wasnt there some item that reduced chance for random encounter to zero permanently?
Or im i misstaken that with Final Fantasy 8 ? :-/ Not sure now ...
It certainly was in FF8 tho. O_o

I know it was not your point, you just made me thinking out loud.

You know this is catualy quite funny you mention it ...
You say that "they feel like they're playing bad or doing something wrong" ... yet you tell me that if im offering them alternatives since i "feel like they're playing bad or doing something wrong" ... im missing the point. O_O
Pardon my poor english ... but in such cases, when people really do feel that ... i would dare to argue that i hit straight to the point ...

I also dare to disagree with claiming that you need to have pre-existing knowledge ... it helps, sure ...
But the only place i can think about when you actualy use it, is Blighted Village, where there is passive perception check, and your party litteraly tells you that if you go through that gate, you go straight into ambush ...
Where else are mobs placed with High Ground, and you get there without knowing their locations?
- Maybe those looters before the crypt ... yes, if noboy is scouting ahead you get surprised ... if somebody IS, they get surprised ... i hope i dont need to say that i find scouting quite usefull, especialy in unknown teritory (yup, first gameplay included, maybe even mainly first gameplay).
- In whole goblin camp they are neutral ... so you can see them standing there before you attack.
- Gnolls are all attacking from the ground level (maybe except that one with bow, standing on the cliff, but he can also be seen).
- Githyanki are actualy even starting on low ground, or same level, if you run with whole party straight to their arms (wich i still concider to be bad idea, even for first gameplay, concidering what they do).

So again, i dont see here problem with system as it is ... i see here problem with state of minds of players. :-/
Nobody is checking for traps, and they they are angry that they get trapped ... is that fault of the trap? :-/

So ... what to say for the end.
I do actualy understand why people dont like "high ground" ... and no, i would really not mind if bonus from reaching it would be changed for anything else ... but i do like the idea so yes i would totally mind if bonus would be simply removed without any replacement.
Also i do understat what pisses people off (about high ground!) and no i never claimed that anyone could not express themselves, even if that could seem otherwise ... but i believe as long as people can repeat that "high ground is bad" i should be allowed to say "nope, high ground is fun".
Howgh.

It's not about efficiency. It's about how something feels for someone, and their feedback and opinion on it, and you having no reason to shoot them down, particularly as you evidently don't get it. Got nothing to do with numbers or success rates. But thank you for proving my point.

Really had fun reading that !
It's a very good summary of Rag's "discussions".

I admit, the way the highground mechanic works right now feels a bit gimmicky. I would leave the range extention, but remove the advantage/disadvantage. It would still make for a few encounters where it would matter, like archers on a castle wall who can hit the targets below, but can't be hit in turn. And it would remove the need for constant climbing and jumping during combat (which to me looks pretty silly).

I like misty stepping to high ground. It is fun having a spell like that to cast as a bonus action. They could make it a toggle in the difficulty settings so that people who don’t like going to high ground could turn bonuses from high ground off.

This honestly makes more sense to me.

Having played bannerlord where physics of various things like arrows are simulated pretty realistically in a battle, i had no trouble sniping any archers on a high ground if they dare to show their faces. There really is no advance or disadvantage at all if it comes to hit change. If anything firing from low ground made it much easier to judge where the arrow will meet their heads.

However on high ground you can indeed aim much further.

And why would you stop to misty step higher ?

A safer position ?
A better range ?
A better line of sight ?
Thunderwave/shove (...) the higher ennemy ?
Flee maybe ?

No more advantage for highground does not mean that verticality won't matter anymore in combats... It only mean that it won't change your attack rolls anymore...

The complain is that (such) bonuses/maluses to attack roll is too decisive and that playing with verticality should be a tactical choice rather than an easy win position - not that verticality should not matter anymore.

In other words: transforming overpowered tools to make combats a bit more subtel and to offer us more balanced tools rather than cheesy one.
This is also true i.e for dipping, shove, throw, hide and it was for healing food, barrelmancy, disengage as a bonus action and... backstab. Does anyone saw a complaint about backstab not being a thing anymore in patch 5...?

I hate highground advantage but I like to misty step higher too

One small thing to keep in mind is that the high ground is largely a buff to ranged characters, who have had their range nerfed rather badly in BG3. Taking that buff away without compensation would likely make them rather sub-par and overall liabilities in a party.

Bow ranges being too short is a separate problem. Having to seek high ground to have any range just further overpowers high ground, again.

It's ridiculous anyone can Dash to melee range of an archer or outside a bow's range from melee in a single turn (lol@Larian). Are we firing rubber arrows with sucker cups?

I just noticed that this was originaly not even topic about high ground ... but i gues it is now.

Im sorry how is that safer? O_o
I mean except that you cannot get meele attack when you are far ... but you dont need high ground for that. O_o

That was a suggestion.
It's fine if you consider that going higher is not safer.

I personnaly think it's a good strategy to be safe a turn or more from melee or range (i.e if you can break the line of sight), depending the situation.

What benefits do high ground currently give? I see that attack rolls were mentioned, which logically make some sense, but mechanically would suck in a game.

If anything it should increase line of sight and give a small buff to range, but it shouldn't give a better chance to hit and damage. It's not a Wasteland-type game where cover is necessity.

Maximuuus also makes a good point in that simply being safer for a round or so from melee is a good bonus in itself. I know I stacked my range uptop at the Goblin camp and placed a tank and melee at the top of the ladder. The safety to slowly pick everyone off is a good enough bonus.

- Advantage if you attack when you're higher (drasticaly increase your %to hit)
- Disadvantage if you attack someone higher (drasticaly decrease your %to hit)
- Various bonuses depending the situation (easier to break the line of sight, safer position, better visibility and line of sight,...)

I dont concider anything ... im ASKING ... HOW will go to high ground make you safer.

Depending on the availability of climbing spots, it could take the enemy a lot of turns to reach you.

And here is one of the obvious answer Rag was waiting for.... Thx Moradin's !

Sigh ...
Sometimes i have the feeling that i unconsciously speak Swahili ...

Let me ask a little simplier then:
Is part of your suggestion to implement any other mechanic to make your character safer as you claim ... or are you make common asumption that you will be safer, just bcs of your location ... and therefore ignoring litteraly everything enemies could theoreticaly do to turn high ground against you?

Really, you're speaking Swahili....

Icelyn could still use misty step to highground, in exemple to have a safer position.
You know... Because some higher position are safer depending the situations.

Is that ok ? Do you finally have the point ?

I won't answer your "ignoring blablabla", that's exactly why I wrote "depending the situations" more than once - obviously you won't be safer higher if you're fighting the githyanki.

Except fixing the range would require a much less compressed map, so that's probably not happening. So assuming the range is what it is, what exactly can be done to keep ranged characters feasible, since dashing into melee is possible in a single turn?

As I recall, the Giths only have one teleport each. So if you can make them burn that one and *then* push them over the nearest ledge then being very high is absolutely a safer option.

Also, the AI has big problems pathfinding to some high grounds and those paths may take it through some excellent choke points. The gobbo camp interior is much easier if you climb up into the rafters, in my experience. There's a lot that enemies could theoretically do about it but not a whole lot that they actually will do.

What other mechanics would need to be added? In some higher elevated positions there's only one of a few ways to reach the ranged characters. I haven't played since like patch 2 or 3, but even now I can think of several such locations.

In the Goblin camp exterior there's a ladder to a high elevation where basically everyone was hostile and IIRC the only way to reach it was the very tall ladder. Positioning ranged up there was basically a guaranteed win because they would all have to rush the ladder where they'd be subsequently pushed off and killed off by arrows or spells. Outside the cave is a similar situation. They need to climb the cliff face or flank around, either way an area control spell blocks the area while ranged kills them off. The first battle after getting off the ship with the Intellect Devourers forces them to climb the side where melee pushes them off and ranged picks them off. Same thing for when the Grove is attacked initially.

You don't need any other advantage than that and nothing mechanically would be needed. I have no idea what you're asking for beyond that. It's an instant win without the advantage/disadvantage in many cases.

I'm not sure about that.
I can think about a few situations where an increase ranged could really work with the same map.

I.e the goblins camp inside / outside and the harpies or the fight at the grove.

Then there are many situations where it could work - in exemple to better ambush our ennemies and/or increase the value of ranged attacks :

- attack the goblin's at the mill from the village's roofs.
- attack the duergar from another part of the village in the underdark
- attack the minotaurs outside the range of their jump (maybe, because it's insane)

I really think ranged characters could be usefull with better range in the actual map. But not in "close" area obviously.

Congrats, Larian. The community has so little to talk about that we're re-treading the high ground arguments again.

They'd better release the patch, because if it goes on like this, we'll come back to the rtwp vs tb discussion in a moment

Bows should probly have a longer range.
Oh and im not on steam, instead using GOG (i like NOT having heavy kernel(?) kidnapping software that paralyzes the computer.)

And right now not really playing. Having 154hrs (last play a month ago). Waiting for new areas to explore after dunno.. 6+ playthruus.


oh and psst.. seems the only way i can save the kid from harpies is having my dwarf mage jump down from the cliff above onto the harpy cliff. While everyone else stays up. Lnding takes damage but hes made of muscle, good looks and hitpoints (con 16, str 17 -> with heavy armor, absolute hammer from bror 2-handed.. eventually anyway...).

Oh and had one pretty hilarious gobbo fight. I stole a load of smokepowder and sneaked into the big gobbo room. Then placed smokepowder behind their backs while sneaking. Could even move them infront of the people without them noticing. Withdraw and fire up. Most everyond on the "left half" wiped out. Concentrating fire on Bror and the rest a mopup.


Githyankie can be fought in a lot of ways, pushing, hiding, sniping etc from the upper flat level is one. So high strength & pushing warlocks welcome. But on the ground is far from impossible as well. you could even try figuring out how to keep tripping the boss, grease etc entangle/web..

It is, but its not possible to dash and attack at once, since it both costs Action.
That would still mean one safe turn ...

Good question, thank you for that ... cover for example.
Bcs high ground itself provides no defense against Magic Missile, Mage's Hand shove (this is not implemented ... yet i presume), enemies jumping (as Minotaurs, or Bulette), or using Misty Step, Arrow of Roaring Thunder ... etc.

Thankfully NPCs dont use Void Bulbs right now.

As others have said, I'm holding off so I don't get burned out. I've played a half a dozen times. But I've only done The Druid's Grove, Blighted Village, and the High Road. With that I've always reached 4th level. Since buying BG3 ea on day 1, I've discovered Interstellar Space Genesis. Solasta, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Humankind have released, and Galactic Civilization 4 has hit Alpha. With a heavy work load, family, and now the NFL; I'm just going to hold off. I still have hopes that this will be my "game of this decade", like NWN2, it's expansions, and player made mods were for me.

Now if they give us proper reactions, or the Paladin, or the School of Enchantment; then I'll be back in a heartbeat.

Action surge, cunning action dash, double cunning action dash potentially, and eventually we'll probably have multiclass fighter-rogues with cunning dashes and action surges. Dash and attack is very possible. Or dash and push, as it happens.

Also, it doesn't really matter if the dash is followed by an attack or not, because simply having some darn melee thing standing right next to your ranged character forces you to respond to that, which means the ranged character isn't using its optimal action on the optimal target.

Fundamentally, having maybe a single turn to shoot an enemy, particularly if we take away the high ground advantage, is just not enough to justify how squishy ranged characters are in melee. Do consider that 5E PHB contains the Eldricht Spear invocation for warlocks that gives Eldricth Blast a 300 foot range (~90 meters) rather than standard 120 foot range (~36 meters). Longbows have a normal range of 150 feet and a long range (attack with disadvantage) of 600 feet. Heavy crossbows are 100 / 400.

I am not playing because I am waiting for the full release. Impatiently waiting. For the game I am expecting, which is a Dungeons and Dragons game with lots of stuff about mind flayers *as told by Larian*, which means I shall be *extremely* disappointed if it does not strongly resemble Divinity Original Sin.

Maybe not so much that the entire screen ends up on cursed fire, but if all of the year of teeth gnashing over high ground and surfaces completely eliminates them, I will be upset.

It’s not Larian’s fault that they want to make a 3D world when D&D is made for a flat one.

That’s my feedback on that. Back to waiting until this game is released. *twiddles thumbs*

Yes, it is. The made their own decisions and had the freedom, funding and resources to do so. If they design themselves into a broken, poorly implemented or non-functional corner, it will be Entirely their own fault.


No, it isn't. Nothing about current D&D is made for flat worlds, at all. Boring DMs may design their spaces that way, but it's not a fault of the system and the system is in no way designed towards flat worlds. It handles unusual terrain and 3D environments perfectly comfortably, and with no more difficulty than a flat or land-based set-up.

It would be interesting to see what that broken, poorly implemented and non-functional corner looks like. So far the game isn't perfect, but it's good enough that if it came out with roughly the same mechanics, I would still consider it head and shoulders above the competition. And I'm sure they will make it even better. Look at other successful EA titles - DoS and Mount and Blade for example. They turned out to be great.

I'm mostly worried that BG will get the Star Wars treatment, disregardment of the fans and such. I want more feedback angles. We barely have topics of interest anymore. I want an insight into the development process of the rest of the game. A snippet, a quick 5 minute video of some models, areas, concept art, armor / weapon designs, interviews with the development team, I would even settle for a goddamn screenshot - instead of wasting everyones time with a pointless PFH show. Not to bash on that, I think they're adorable in their way and I support their playfulness about it, but since the beggining we are in the dark. I don't care for it. It doesn't get me hyped up as a solid example of a developmental process could. A bunch of smaller game studios give out information like that as the norm.

A patch is introduced and then silence comes which in turn makes the people branch out into wild theories and suggestions (both on here and discord alongside the amazing content/lore creators on youtube) which will probably not see the light of day. Silence is NOT Larians friend. Not when you're developing a game of this scope, with a name that has cemented itself into the nostalgia filled hearts of so many people.
You can paint onto me whatever opinions you want but I seriously don't think thats too much to ask for. Especially because I'm not the only one requesting it. I want monthly updates on where they're at. I'm not asking for a new playable area or new levels in the EA as it is because I can understand the problematics that would arise from those additions.

I want to see how it will be. What they envision it to be so maybe they could see how the community would react to it, gather some feedback from us etc.... not just drop it on us when the full release rolls out and hope for the best and fix it along the way if the crowd isn't pleased.
They succeeded in making the (arguably) most passionate part of the playerbase feel disregarded. I feel more pleased when I see a new datamine than their hotfix post. Feed me the spoilers I don't care anymore, I am so starved of information about this game that I will take whatever I can. Sure they say they're aware of some problems that plague us but they don't adress others or say they're even considering on making a compromise.

I'm worried mate. I'm just worried we built this game up in our heads to be something it will never live up to. Until I see changes in that chain system thats been talked ad nauseum I doubt my feelings will change. Hate to sound defeatist but thats the way it is.
I was oh so hopeful for the developmental stage of this game but I can now, in hindsight, see that my money could have been spent on game studios that give at least some sense to the point of a being an early access player.

I don't even have the strength to come back to this forum as I can't stand to read the same feedback from new people (and some very well established old ones!!!)
It became depressing as I can't type anything that won't echo their own words back to them and obviously typing ''I agree/I support this'' isn't accomplishing anything and I can't in good conscience recommend anyone to buy the game as it is.
Sorry for the blog post but this is where I currently stand with the whole situation. Mentally pacing back and forth, awaiting to hear what news Larian brings about in the new patch. See you around when the time comes.

Well, I can commiserate I guess. Cause honestly, sometimes kicking around this place reminds me of attending the longest wake ever. Like we'd all be putting our hands on each other's shoulders and saying stuff like "Don't worry. Everything is going to be alright. It just takes time" hehe. Achieving critical mass with feedback here on a given issue seems to just mean getting moved to the Mega-thread Hospice where it can wait to expire out of sight. The longest thread on these BG3 boards is about how people are disappointed with the small party of 4 and the lack of party-combo-dynamism that follows. The second longest is about frustrations with party movement, esp pathing, selection and general camera controls. The third longest thread on these boards is about another game entirely, like versus. So if there's a fall off in playtesting maybe that's cause there's nothing new lately, and nothing new on the horizon. Combined with not wanting to court burnout and it makes a certain sense. Not surprising if people turn to other things or other games. I mean Larian has plenty of hotlists for things they could promo to keep the train steaming along and pull some of the eyes back. Right now it's like a year gone by and the BG3 game still feel like its hardly changed at all. Or really only at the margins. I wish they'd put more up front. I don't really mean direct communication with plans and reveals, since they don't seem to care for it. I mean actually changing the way the game feels from the launch window to char creation, UI, class list, inventory, prologue, splash screens, so it feels like more stuff is happening and the game is actually growing. In the meantime I can run around in Pathfinder with my next character, Restartus, the most Primal Druid yet! And his faithful companion Dimbo the Last Mastedon lol. You know, where at least I know shit is sure to get hectic, while I wait for something new to happen with BG3 hehe.

I'm kinda sad that I won't be building my sniper-lock in BG3: Sorceress with a couple of Warlock levels, Eldritch Spear (Plus agonising), Spell-Sniper Feat and Distant Spell Meta, for a 1200ft Eldritch Blast ^.^ Depending on stat rolls, you skip the warlock levels altogether and take the Invocation feat to get Agonising and Spear, and get Eldritch blast itself from spell sniper...

(this is just a random aside to an earlier comment that I missed.... it was a fun character design)


Edit:

On the news angle, I'm with others here that say they'd like there to be more open communication. I think the important point to get across though is this: We are EA tester... WE Understand that a lot of this is fluid, subject to change or being tested. It's okay. They can tell us what they're planning to do, what they're thinking of doing, how they're intending to approach something, or what they're testing out... and it's Okay if it doesn't work, doesn't end up that way, or turns out to need a drastic a change, or ultimately gets scrapped for something completely different along the way... we understand that that's part of the process, and for the most part the mature testers here aren't going to complain about that or be upset by it. Just talk to us more.

Can't say I've followed the conversation much up to this point, but I can say one thing in particular is that I doubt you'll ever see some of the crazy ranged options like hundreds upon hundreds of feet like you can in tabletop setups here in BG3, let alone just about any CRPG for that matter. Even without that, given something like height advantage, ranged characters do typically come out pretty much on top very frequently, even more so given how safe it can be to just use said height advantages in combination with stealth, and you get an endless routine just stealth sniping on a rouge, or possibly even warlock if you want the added bonus of occasionally knocking someone into a pit of death. Granted, I know many people here want height advantage to be all but removed, but I don't see ranged characters really being all that weak at all in the current game unless you outright ignore several mechanics inherent in the game itself, and try to play it like a standard DnD game, which is just denial of its current mechanics more than anything if I'm being honest.

Granted, this is mostly coming from a playthrough, and first time through the game at that, where I played a mix of a ranger and Astarion for my primary damage dealers, with Gale mostly providing support, and Shadowheart for healing, so I COULD be biased just from that experience alone, plus having played stuff like Divinity in the past. Of course, having done another playthrough since on patch 5, Battlemaster is insanely strong with the sheer damage it can quickly out put, as can rogue given the right circumstances up close (even pretty much capable of completely destroying the Githyanki patrol in one turn with a lot of buffing/setup), so its pretty unrealistic for me to say that melee ISN'T insanely powerful currently, because it really is, though Battlemaster being strong at lower levels isn't much of a shocker honestly.

A bit of an aside and to touch on the issue at hand though, I do hope they look at height advantages in the game currently as it stands, and at least retweak the numbers on it if nothing else, as it really is just insanely strong given how much of an advantage it can give you, ESPECIALLY if you combine it with constantly dipping in and out of stealth. I do think its fair to at least give it a small buff of some kind, especially given the lack of a cover system to take the place of advantage/disadvantage in that sense. Maybe just keep the increased range from up high, or maybe just revert the height advantage to a smaller percentage so it doesn't completely invalidate what is currently there, while also giving ranged characters on the ground a decent shot at landing a hit. Though, I do think it should probably be completely removed in the case of spellcasters minus the increased range at higher heights, as that just feels right in a sense I guess you could say.

All in all though, I guess it really depends on the style of play, but with actions like pin down, plus rangers having both hunters mark and colossus slayer, and rogues being able to near infinitely kite and hide away from enemies with cunning actions and stealth, ranged seems pretty damned strong overall. I do plan to give a ranged fighter a try at some point too, just to see how well it can work really, though I do have some pretty big doubts on that one without added bonuses like sneak attack/colossus slayer. Realistically though, I'm just glad that for once Ranger actually feels pretty damned decent in a D&D anything, though with how good they can be in both melee and ranged currently I think its a bit skewed for them to be a little too strong realistically.

That said, shove should most definitely be made a Action instead of a bonus action, I get they probably want to make things feel more actiony every turn, as well as allow for some really crazy shenanigans given the way they make things, but being able to dash, and potentially even free action dash/cunning action dash into a shove that could potentially outright kill an enemy before it can do much of anything does seem PRETTY imbalanced in my opinion, though I do suppose there is at least the caveat that you have to have a pretty decent Strength to actually pull it off reliably, somewhat lessening the problem for rogues. Though, even in the case of making it an action, you'll still likely get people just taking misty step more often to place themselves behind enemies and shove them with their main action, or even just circumvent things the other way and use thorn whip to bring down enemies from up high for some pretty hefty damage in itself.

That's my point, Lunar Shower. Ranged characters do okay with the height advantage, but take that away and they're a total shadow of what they ought to be under 5E rules, even without all kinds of shenanigans that one could maybe forgive Larian for not supporting.

Longbows should be able to attack as far away as 180 meters. In the game they have a max range of a tenth of that. A tenth! Given a standard movement speed of 9 meters per turn, you can do the math on the number of attacks a longbow user should get against an enemy approaching on open ground before melee becomes a thing. In this game, however, ranged characters can barely squeeze in an attack before chaff can rush into melee range and mess with attack priorities.

Height advantage does counter-balance the lack of range a fair bit, particularly when you combine with damage boosters like sneak attack or Hunter's Mark or Hex, but it has so much of an effect on encounters that it starts to dominate the meta. Just find a high spot, control access to it, and shoot away. The mill encounter, which is a bit of a pain? Trigger it with Astarion, then dash and cunning dash away back to the village and start killing them from the rooftops.

True enough, it is plenty abusable to say the least, and without it I could definitely see ranged suffering a good bit. Its a pretty delicate balance to say the least though in either direction. Though, will say the windmill is actually a pretty decent example of being an encounter that seems extremely challenging/unfair at first, at least until you realize all you need to really do is focus down the boss of the group, something that isn't really readily apparent unless you have Wyll in your group, and even then its dubious at best. Will admit though, stopping the windmill after sneaking up into it, and just sneak killing everyone that comes to check on it till the group is culled to about 3/4 or 1/2 of what it was to start was both super cheesy, but also pretty amazing as far as moments go in the game for me, and that's just something I managed to luck out and do on my first attempt, and also where I learned just how busted the stealth mechanics can be in this game currently. Fun, but definitely overpowered.

All in all, I'm no game designer, but if they do end up removing the % to hit from height advantage, maybe they could just give ranged a general buff in its length throughout, while also maybe further expanding it up at higher elevations? Its tough to really say what might work best without further tipping things in the direction of ranged once more. Either way, plenty of things to think on, and more to hopefully give Larian a bit of food for thought, though I'm sure much of this is things that have already been on their mind in some form or another. More than anything, I hope they give us custom sliders/options for difficulty similar to Solasta, if there is ONE thing they could take from that games success, it would be that and allowing for a truly custom experience tailored to each player.

That is so true as that is what I'm waiting for

One of the often suggested changes to height bonuses would be to instead of advantage offer a +2 to hit below you. This mimics an inverted version of the cover mechanics of the book (half cover gives +2 AC, three quarters cover gives +5) while simulating that height gives you a greater overlook of the battlefield.

One could either remove disadvantage from low ground entirely or give the target-on-high the half-cover +2 AC bonus too.

This also has the added benefit of reducing the impact of "locational advantage" on gameplay -- a Rogue would for example not get automatic sneak attack for being above the enemy from constant advantage but need to have an ally next to the target -- and improve the utility of advantage-granting abilities and spells, similarly to how removing Backstab Advantage from the game made the combat more versatile and fun.

Also hello forumites, it's been a while. Good to see you again.

It would certainly be interesting to attack Karlach from Waukeen's Rest.
But i presume those numbers would never be translated to this game 1:1.


I know that having ally next to the target is allready working ...
For me in most situations its more used variation, since its easier to get.

But have you any specific encounter in mind, or was that just general?

No, these 2 points are much further away from each other. And besides, afaik shooting at 180 metres comes with a disadvantage.

I didn't say ally-adjacency wasn't working.

And it's definitely not easier to get. Putting your ranged people up high will give you advantage on nearly everyone, rendering ally-adjacency and other sources of advantage moot in terms of sneak attack validation. And every battle scene by and large is designed to allow you to take a position above the enemy, often before the combat even starts.

Never said you should hit.
Even tho it is still possible to hit even with disadvantage. :P

But yes, im aware that distances in game map are not quite equal to reality (could this word even be used for fantasy world? ).
It was just joke, dont take it too serious.

Thats the thing ... you do not "put" your ranged people up high ... you need to get there somehow, wich (unless you have really covenient position and misty step), could be matter of several turns.

So the best i can do is agree on: "it depends..."
(insert image of bald dude from Pawn Stars)

No. Like I already said (and you ignored) the majority of the combat encounters are designed to either let you take the high ground before combat starts, or get there in the first round. Height advantage is near omnipresent in-game.

I actualy see no real difference between your "game allows" and mine "you could". O_o

@op: The low pool of EA testers itself doesent worry me that much tbh. Larian made it very clear that the game is in EA and that it wont be for everyone. Ive been in multiple EA titles and if that made anything clear to me its that only a small minority will sign up, even a smaller minority will visit the forums and an even smaller portion of that group will provide feedback.

The game seems to track things done by the players itself without needing our input so that Larian can monitor us plaing the game and reading the decisions that we take. So even if only a very small portion of the people playing the game actualy come to the forums Larian gets input from all players who participate. Which is actually quite ingenous I think

About the 'this isent BG' argument that keeps coming up again and again and again and again and again.....

You have these options:
1: RPG in the same way as BG 1 and 2.
2: RPG true to 5th ed DND.

You cant have both. BG 1 and 2 were based on a (by now) very dated version of DND. BG3 would be based on 5th ed dnd rules. Which differ ALOT from the system BG 1 and 2 were based on. The difference between THAC0, to hit bonuses and how AC works is the most easy to point out difference. The spell system is also very easy to point out. Alot of the spells in BG1 and BG2 either dont excist anymore or were changed drasticly and nowadays we have concentration meaning we can only cast 1 of those per character. No more stacking buffs for us! (well some you can still stack, blur and mirror image for example. And mage armor. Just not concentration spells)

If 'this isent baldurs gate' means the lack of real time combat to you then I dont know what to say. Dnd is a turn based game. They cant make it real time and true to dnd 5th ed at the same time.

If 'this isent BG' you mean that the story isent about a bhaalspawn. Well first of all, we only see a small portion of the overall game. You dont know that. In act 1 you can find alot of books about the dead 3. Why would there even be a forshadowing reference to them if nothing in the story is tied to them? It could be easter eggs or just lore books I suppose but I found them so much im convinced they might be involved in the story. All we know SO FAR is that the story involves mindflayers and an overaching god or entity that seems to tie that all together. Secondly, the story of the Bhaalspawn was supposedly finished with throne of bhaal and the timeline has advanced since then. But only 100 years (IIRC?) so its still possible that characters from the previous games are still around. Specially the longer lived characters like elves, half-elves, etc. Point is, you dont know whatever or not its tied to the previous games or not. Just act 1 is a little bit to early to come to that conclusion

If 'this isent baldurs gate' you mean that the game is played in a more advanced engine that looks different to bg1 and bg2..... Well...Yes? Thats a good thing? It looks like DOS2 because its done by the same company and it uses their engine. Dont really see how that makes it less baldurs gate honestly... The gaming indsutry has alot of (most QOL) improvements since BG1 and 2 and id raise an eyebrow if we werent actually getting them.

If with 'this isent baldurs gate' you mean something else.... Then what? Just voicing generic feedback doesent help much, even if it is said alot. Because say 100 people say it, but it means something different for all 100 people then Larian cant really do anything with it now can they? Say 1 of people explains the comment and they change the game to acommodate the feedback then it wouldnt help the other 99 that dident explain their comment.

@high ground: I still feel it should just give a bonus to hit and/or ignoring cover for enemies on lower ground at most. Granting advantage that easily is indeed abit much. Having advantage (or disadvantage) is a pretty big thing in DND. Just standing on high ground shouldnt grant it imho. That said I dont feel forced to take it either. Given the many ways in which you can give yourself advantage in combat, high ground alone doesent stand out to much for me. Given that they also toned down advantage for standing behind someone (which did have some merit in the rules honestly) I feel confident Larian will take another look at advantage for high ground and change it in the future.

How about "this isn't Baldur's Gate" meaning that the story isn't a tale about a protagonist and the game isn't really designed to be a nice SP experience and the world is weird and dead and hyper-compressed and it seems to be made out of the nicest fisherprice plastic and time stands still everywhere and the game doesn't really give that nice D&D party exploration feel and frankly there is an argument to be made that the game isn't even designed for 5E.

We don't know where the Origin nonsense is going to go, but if it's anything like DOS2 then the game is literally designed to not reward the player for doing that D&D thing and rolling their own character. That's not very BG either, is it?

And this is entirely before we get into the old classics of the toilet chain movement system, the small party size, the slow combat, and seemingly much fewer companions but of course every companion you run into is an origin character and thus probably more central to the story and more powerful and Mary Sue than the player character. What happened to running into a funny guy like Jan, who isn't central to anything but still a valuable companion?

Or if you want some fun, try and imagine what BG1 and 2 would've been like if the party members all had to follow the pattern in BG3. Jehaira isn't just a seasoned adventurer and occasional Harper, she's actually the top covert agent and spec ops badass of the Harpers on a secret mission to save the world and get divorced. Imoen isn't just your little sister, she's actually the secret apprentice and mistress of Elminster. Nalia isn't just some random daughter of some random noble, she's actually a princess hiding as a random noble because a cabal of devils and vampiric kobolds want to turn her into a lich!!

Yes, I'm slightly exaggerating just a tiny bit, but you get the drift.

No I really dont. I dont understand when some of u guys write this longwinded and divorced from reality rants where I dont even recognise which game u talk bout then add that u are slightly exaggerating as if that saves ur bullcrap argument.

We only see act 1. For all we know it will be focused on the player.

Also BG1 and BG2 werent about the protagonist per se either when you dig a little deeper.
BG3 isent made to be a SP experience? Where do you base that comment on? Considering I havent played a single minute of multiplayer in my hours of play im abit confused. Genuine question because apparently im missing something. How is the world weird and hyper compressed? Do you mean in the sense that there are so many things in 1 area? BG 1 and BG2 both have areas where the same applies. Dont know what you mean with fhisherprice plastic. You dont like the visuals I suppose?

Time standing still if the player isent around applies to 99.999999999999999999% of the games in excistance. It applies to both bg1 and bg2 as well. How does it make the game not a baldurs gate title?

The party exploration not feeling good is about the only thing you said there that id say is an actuall complaint that Larian could maybe do something with. What part about it feels off? What can be done to improve it? Why does it invalidate the game to be a baldurs gate title in your opinion?

I dont think the origins are going anywhere. Dont like them? Dont play them. Noone is forcing you to play them if you dont want to. None of us currently have played any of them (because we cant, lol) but even in bg1 you could play with pre-generated characters that you could play in place of rolling one up. Aside from not having to roll up your own character it dident add anything though but not really a reason why the game isent a BG title.

Small party size....

DMG, page 83, section 'party size'
"The proceeding guidelines assume that you have a party consisting of three to five adventurers"
The guidelines were rules that a DM can use to make encounters. DND 5th ed in gemeral is written for campaigns of 3 to 5 players and while some generic guidelines are given in how to accomidate bigger (or smaller) parties the general rule is 3-5. 4-man parties sits nicely in the middle. Fact that bg 1 and 2 had a 6 man party is moot. BG3 is written with DND 5th ed rules in mind and all the rules, encounters, challenges etc. are written with this number in mind. They are following 5th ed in this.

The chain system I also dislike but doesent make it less baldurs gate. It allows you more or less control over how you move your party. If you want to micro you can control your party members individually or if youd like you can move them all at once. We can discuss implementation but its inclusion or lack doesent make it more or less baldurs gate.

Slow combat I assume you mean turn based? Thats dnd 5th ed for you.

fewer companions.... We only see act 1. In act 1 in bg1 you see: Imoen, Xan, Montaron and Khalid and Jaheira if you reach friendly arm inn. Reaching the friendly arm inn also triggers act 2 if im not mistaken. You can move from act 1 to act 2 in a matter of minutes. But even if you do the (unfair) comparison the number of companions is about equal. And the number of companions has 0 bearing on whatever or not this is a baldurs gate title.

Not sure what you mean with mary sue character? Regardless, its also a moot point. Some of the characters that you met in baldurs gate could be stronger or weaker then the main character. Power level of companions compared to PC is not something that defines a baldurs gate title. For all you know there will be fun characters like Jan. We only have act 1. Stop judging things you cant see yet...

This part I completly dont get but it might be me. Are you referring that the companions in bg1 and bg2 dident have impactfull (or impactfull enough) backgrounds?

Some of the characters you mention did have some rather major (in universe) power though. Nalia was the last surviving member of a noble house. You can free her home and run a mini kingdom, essentially. You can have 2 paladins in your party, 1 of which is a high ranking member of a paladin order and a noble of some respute. The PC and Imoen are Bhaalspawn. Cernd (I think? A druid you could meet in BG2) is an archdruid of a grove. Jaheira and Khalid are Harpers as you said. I could go on and while not ALL chracters have this....powerfull backgrounds, the majority of them do. Theyre pretty much all larger then life and honestly thats generally what adventruer's are in DND. 1st lvl characters aside, theres nothing normal about adventurers when you start to think about it. With point by a fighter can have STR20 by level 6 with alot of races. Nearly matching GIANTS in physical strength. When you think about it, dnd adventurers are pretty insane

Why not point out any specific part that you think is wrong. That way I can explain what I mean and why I mean it without having write another 17 paragraphs.

Thats exactly my question. What is hyperbole and what is your genuine criticism?

If you don't like the aesthetics of the game because it has bright colours, okay that sounds weird for me, but I get it that it may grade on your eyes.

It not being a single player game, BG3 is already a much more single-player focused title than Larian's previous big hits and this is still something they are working on by their own admission, so we can presume they will get even better with it.

4 members party is the standard for 5e edition, so that's on the system they are trying to implement. And just to point this out, they are actually doing a great job bringing a tabletop game to another medium (this is one of my bigger criticism for Owlcat games in general, that they don't really adapt just copy ttrpgs and it shows because there is a bunch of material in their games that make no sense in the framework of a pc game).

About their story and companions. Aside from maybe Gale (whose backstory gives me powergamer vibes, I admit), the companions are not demigods. Shadowheart is a junior cult member whose sect does not give a damn whether she lives or dies. Wyll has a pact with a fiend for revenge backstory (Dorn says hello), Astarion is a bit eccentric yes, but there is a whole fanclub around him already so people must have resonated with him. And Laezel is very much your standard githyanki massmurderer.

And I dont mind being one of a dozen when it comes to my hero. This is not a game bout the Bhaalspawn, which story is finished. This is a game about adventurers. I am with you on the point that I am hoping for a backstory for our custom heroes as well; at least some NPCs whom we will recognise when we enter Baldur's Gate or the Underdark.

If they change things massively, sure. So far the player is just some random nobody whereas Gale is a chosen of freaking Mystra, Shadow is a special operative chosen for a massive mission to pick up some super-gismo that is a major part of the story, Astarion is a weird centuries-old vampire spawn that somehow has enough control to not be the least bit vampire spawny (looks perfectly normal and isn't prone to losing control), then we have an in-the-flesh local folk hero, Laezel is high enough in the Gith hierarchy that she expects help to be cleansed rather than just having her head cut off, and are we going to get that tiefling "I was a badass kicking ass and taking names in freaking hell" lass too?

So far we've seen no indication that the player has any story at all. Except the main story, of course, which seems to revolve much more around the Origin characters.

Actually, BG1 and 2 were absolutely stories about the protagonist, but the various plots out in the world that the protagonist bumbles into were of course not all directly about the protagonist as such, because that would be ridiculous.

All of the mess in BG1 does indeed turn out to be the work of someone who wants to be Lord of Murder, but it's your party centered around your character that ends up figuring that out, and you are the main actor opposing the big dude with bigger daddy issues. Then in BG2, you and your friends are captured by some unpleasant dude who does some torture and murdering and then gets snatched along with your sister, meaning you have a very strong incentive to find out where they went. You. The rest of the party are supporting characters of various backgrounds but you are the central character. And then TOB, where the plot makes very little sense, Cespenar smacks you with a stupid stick whenever you fall asleep, you're pretty much the mindless henchman of a "benevolent" advisor that totally tries to solve all the problems, but bar none you are indeed the central character who can clean up the big mess and finally sort out the whole Bhaalspawn saga once and for all.

No time system, weird movement system, weird way that time fractures around those in combat and those outside of it, and of course the ridiculous inventory that lets characters move stuff from one inventory to another across any distance. And the game is set up so most dialogues are completely agnostic regarding which member of the party they're talking to, which can happen at any time regardless of what is going on with the rest of the party. Also, have you noticed the lack of "you must gather your party before venturing forth"? Yeah, not much sense in a SP game letting the party split up like that but of course it makes perfect sense in an MP coop game.

The gobbo camp is literally right next to the super secret druid grove. Everything in Act 1 is pressed into a single map rather than letting things have the space they should have. I haven't done the math yet, but I would be very surprised if the Act 1 overland map isn't roughly a square kilometer in ingame units. And within that area, you have a dead village taken over by gobbos, a mill used for gobbo entertainment, a ruined temple, a crashed mindflayer ship, a druid grove, the gobbo camp outskirts, the gobbo camp temple, an eternally burning inn, the dam and bridge area for the gith encounter, the river place for the sirens, and that high overlook Harper thing, and the gnoll encounters. Even for a two square kilometer area, this is just way too much.

You can then ask yourself why you think the range of all ranged attacks was cut down so much. The range profile of a longbow is 150/600 in feet. Try and imagine having that sort of range in the current overland map. Could the AI deal with that? Are enemies even loaded that far away?

And yes, the world is nice and fisherprice plastic. I don't want the world to be nothing but greys and browns, but particularly the constant never-ending summer time sunlight is a bit much. And the atmosphere never really gives a "people are starving" vibe in the grove, or one of barely hanging together buildings left long ago in the village. Neither of the temples have much of an "evil place" vibe, do they? And I suppose the underdark didn't feel all that oppressively deep and dark either, did it?

BG1 and 2 have a time system and no, time does not stand still. Time moves. Granted, most quests don't care much either way, but some of them do. Some of them are day time only. Some of them are night time only. Take too long somewhere and suddenly it becomes dark and then the vampires come out to play. Not ready to deal with vampires yet? Better get inside then. Time also does not fracture between characters in combat and characters outside of combat.

The biggest problem is that the area to explore is just too small and too full of stuff. It's like the Mojave desert in Fallout New Vegas, around every corner there's something. How often was that the case in BG1 and 2?

You could not use pre-generated characters in BG1 and 2. You could use pre-generated profiles for your character that has your name, your choice of background, and your choice of personality. It was still your character, just using a suggested setup. Origin is different in that they're in no way imaginable "your character". They are Swen's characters, designed by Swen, with a personality dictated by Swen, with Swen's choice of background, with Swen's choice of future goals. They are the equivalent of turning up at a TT session and asking the DM to just quickly put together a toon that you can use. How is that in the spirit of D&D?

Except Larian is ignoring 5E whenever they feel like it, so arguing that they're tied by 5E rules is hardly convincing. But given the other details it does make sense to not have more, because how slow would this turn based system be if we had to go through six people on our side and a suitable number of enemies to maintain challenge? But that is a function of Larian's other design decisions. 5E in general does not in any way force Larian to only let the player character bring three friends along. And Swen has fairly strongly hinted that they'll do that whole party wipe thing after Act 1 so rotating party members won't be possible either. You get three friends and only three friends and that is the entirety of the party. And that doesn't leave much room from bringing along someone just to bring them along, even if they're not strictly speaking pulling their weight, does it?

What I mean by slow combat is that it is just that, damned slow. You get into a fight against a dozen kobolds with a full party and a couple of summons, how long does that take to resolve in real world time? It takes a while, because every character has to spend time on every single action in isolation. This was also how 2E worked, as I recall, and yet it didn't completely grind everything to a halt in BG1 and 2, did it?

Nalia is a betrothed noble whose father is dead and whose only resort, if she can't make the protagonist take over as keeper of her estate, is to run away from her commitments. She is *not* a powerful spellcaster when you run into her and she's not a skilled thief either.

There is Keldorn, a mighty and high ranking paladin who is on guard duty in the ass end of a sewer. He is old, he has some seniority, but he is not in charge. He is not in line for commander of the local chapter of the paladins.

There is Anomen, a pathetic little clown of a man, a fighter->cleric dual class who is not a paladin and who spews platitudes but is very short in both wisdom and competence.

There is Cernd, a wishy-washy druid that you meet in the local jail of Trademeet, where he is locked up in part for his own protection. He is not the archdruid of a grove nor even all that powerful at the time you meet hime. But he is one of precious few characters that make me seem short-winded and prone to using only 15 words when maybe the same could have been said with 17.

Jaheira, yes, she is a harp and a seasoned adventurer, but she's not a Harper boss at all. Just a fairly low level member.

Imoen, yes, she is a Bhaalspawn but she never manifests any powers at all. Fundamentally, she's just Imoen, your sister, gifted but not one of those world-shaping people. She might end up becoming that powerful but that's epilogue rather than during the games.

Aerie, a winged elf without her wings that is stuck in the illusion of an ogre inside a circus.

Viconia, a drow on the surface.

Minsc, a ranger who is very good at hitting things but who suffers from a traumatic head injury and relies on his stress relief animal for sage advise to a worrying degree.

Shall I go on? None of these people are the chosen of Mystra or anything like that. If we think of it from a lore perspective then the most powerful of your companions is probably Edwin, at least until ToB where Sarevok is an option, but Edwin is powerful enough to get himself into big problems and just not quite powerful enough to be a realm-shaper. And he has some hilarious issues with an actual chosen of Mystra, doesn't he? Well, she, I suppose.

Theres a thing with all of that. The PC has no option to tell if they are lying or 'bending' the truth for most of the dialogue. Which lets me believe its one of 2 things. 1: Its a joke from Larian where they are taking the piss out of a trope of new players, who tend to write very large, long elaborte backstories for their characters completly forgetting that they are lvl 1. Or 2: the characters were indeed more powerfull but got taken down a peg either from the tadpole, or some other machination that overcame them. Gods for example are fond of punishing their followers if they trangresse in some way or if they really went against their teachings. Or a god might curse the follower of another god if they opposed him.

Even so, it could just be easily be that everyone is full of shit and is talking trash....

-Gale could very easily be making himself sound more important then he actually is. Hes a squishy wizard who think everyone but wizards are uncultured barbarians. If they poke him with a stick though he keel over dead as his health pool isent amazing and he cant wear armor. Better make himself sound super powerfull, smart and important so they dont get any funny ideas.
-Shadow comes across as a simple cultist send on a fetch quest that went south somehow.
-Astarian IS a vampire-spawn, but prowling on unsuspecting nobles (who are basicly lvl 1 NPC's with like 5 hp) doesent take a great deal of effort or guile.
-Wynn by his own admittance is no hero. But people believe his tales and he made a pact for his warlock powers. Hes a charmer though so that could easily translate into people believing stories or him bluffing.
-Lae'zel comes across as a grunt who is just repeating the stuff she has been indoctrinated to believe. I dont believe they have a cure other then lobbing of the effected peoples heads so they dont become mind flayers and she just doesent know it. The Thiefling I have run into, but it was a while ago. If I was half bleeding-out and people who I suspected were coming to kill me id say im the biggest meanest bad ass on earth as well so I can hopefully bluff my way out of death.

Guess our opinions differ then. Although any game where you control a character it could be said that the game resolves around you so in that sense generally speaking every game we play resolves around the player...

While BG1 and 2 did have a day/night cycle its effects were minimal. In BG2 they were more impactfull thanks to the vampires but even then time was rarely a factor. You could find a quest at the start of your game to save a guy who is dying and totally needs your help or he will die, and then proceed to come back 2 months later and go 'oh right, I still havent finished that quest' and save the guy in the 'nick of time' so uh....how much it REALLY is a factor differs greatly. Sometimes companions had a set that they wanted a quest done before they became a pernament companion like Minsc while for other quests you could as long as youd like. Personally, if time matters I want it to matter ALL THE TIME because otherwise it just feels like a cheap gimmick to arbitrarily make me fail a quest or something. And that isent good game design either.

I see your point, and counter that its a game. If you want to play a fallout game where the map is the actuall size of the Mojave desert then all the power to you. But I dont want to travel REAL LIFE DAYS before finding anything of notice. It isent fun either. A medium has to be found between small game space and real life sized desert. Sometimes realisme just doesent work as much as we think we wouldd love to see it...
You could. And I have. Sorry but if you say that you couldnt pregenerate a character before clicking on new game then you are full of shit. There was an option in the menus to go to character creation and then export that character.

You did just that though, just create a character. It had no inventory, spells and whatnot. But you could do so. Infact you could play an entire player created character by making a multiplayer game, and moving the save file from multiplayer to singleplayer so you dident constantly have to deal with the multiplayer menus. Only the 1st character in the group would be 'the Bhaalspawn' but it was a fun way to play a game, especially once you had already played with all of the npc's and wanted a more optimized run through with different classes.

Honestly the origin characters are only special if you play them. Otherwise they are npc companions who have backstory. All of the BG1 and BG2 characters had backstories of their own. Some more interesting then others. In that sense I dont see the origin characters as any different.

I see people say that here and there. You think them beeing tied to 5e rules in unconvincing? Why. WOTC doesent let everyone handle their IP and specially not one so famous as baldurs gate or otherwise wed have had a dozen baldurs gate games by now. If Larian really wanted dos 2.5 they wouldnt have rolled out the massive amounts of changes to their engine that they did. Seriously why would they bother if not to adhere to 5E?

Honestly I havent had to wait for a full 15 minutes while one of my players decides what spell to cast so compared to pnp DND the combat is bloody lightning fast if you ask me! If its slow then something sounds very wrong. Do you take long to decide on your actions? Does the AI? The AI is quite rapid with their actions for me but specially when the EA was just new the AI tended to be rather slow at times. Its improved alot for my game but maybe something is still slowing your game down?

I dident go into specifics because I thought it was clear what I meant. For Nalia for example she has alot of POLITICAL power. Beeing a noble actually means something in most dnd settings. They have alot of friends/connections, a good source of income if you have the keep and you literally can become a lord of a...uh...barony I suppose? Small kingdom? Either way. Thats alot coming out of just 1 npc and while her combat skills might be mediocre the overall RP picture is pretty damn fantastic.

For Cernd when you fight him hes in prison because if hed have to defend himself it would be a massacre and that wasent why he was there. His personal quest is to challenge a druid for the role of archdruid (which in my game he won easily) earning yourself a companion thats the ruler of a druid coven. Yes. Totally no power at all there....................

Keldorn isent 'on guard duty' in the sewers. Hes investigating the cult of the eyeless. Which is a bloody beholder cult. Did you play the bloody game at all or are you oversimplifying everything to try and score internet points or something?

I wont go over every single character because if I do il need till tomorrow to make this bloody post. Point is, some of the people you meet are pretty bloody powerfull. And while maybe not chosen of Mystra, if you bring them along till the end since you find them they would be about equal on power to chosen of Mystra.

@ Demoulius

This is getting very long and borderline unreadable, so I'm going to split up my replies. It don't know if that makes it easier or harder, but the copy/paste approach is leading to impossible bricks that aren't much good for anything other than blunt force ballistic weapons.

So the first thing I want to reply on are the characters and what we know about them at the time of adventure. On that note, please do do not insult others while getting certain details wrong. It does not lead to anything good.

In BG3, we have Gale that of course could be full of hot air, but he does have that peculiar thing when he dies, and some random hedge-wizard probably wouldn't have that. This lends some credibility to his "master of the weave" chosen of Mystra spiel.

And we have Astarion, who appears to be a wimp that never tasted human blood, but... Look up what a vampire spawn supposedly looks like in D&D. Now look what Astarion looks like. Vampire spawns are arrogant and devious and fairly cunning as far as predators go, but they're not master schemers and they are predators. They are wolves, not sheep dogs. Also look at the rules for vampire spawn characters and contrast with Astarion's stats. Either something is way off or he's holding back a lot.

Then there's Shadow, who looks a bit like some simpleton on a fetch mission, except... She's managed to pick up the super-gismo! She actually got to it and managed to conceal it! That's not simpleton levels of proficiency. Also, you don't generally send useless dimwits on missions to pick up realm-altering super-gismos that rile up all manner of cosmic forces.

Then Karlach or whatever her name is, the girl who may or may not have been a badass, but who managed to just step onto a passing mindflayer ship to catch a ride out of hell and who managed to persuade the not-quite-pally bunch at the trading station to sod off and leave her alone.

Contrast that with what we run into in BG2. Nalia does not have great connections or really any pull in the upper echelons. If you don't help her, she's hiding in the Slums or she gets grabbed by the Roenalls and that's the end of that. She's a member of the elite by class, and she will eventually become a master wizard in the epilogue, but the Nalia that is met by the player is almost out of options. Her land is overrun by trolls, being taken by Roenall, and she's being forced into a marriage with a slaver. That said, her combat skills are immense. She's a wizard with a couple of thief levels in a game where getting a wand of 50 fireball charges is trivial and casting timestop and/or wish-resting is a thing.

Cernd is in prison for his own safety. He's not interested in fighting citizens but he is a druid and therefore true neutral, because that's what druids are in 2E. If people attack him then he would of course defend himself, but if legitimate authority wants to hold him then what grounds would he have to attack them? Therefore he is in the local jail, awaiting a good chance for him to get booted out of the city. He is not on a quest to challenge the archdruid either. He's on a mission to investigate why the animals are going nuts. Once you reach the grove, he can challenge for leadership, or Jaheira can do it, or the player character (if a druid) can do it. The challenge involves a ritual of unarmed combat so yes, Cernd the Shapeshifter would be pretty good at that one thing.

The shadow druid you're killing fairly easily, by the way, is none other than Faldorn, a BG1 companion. And Cernd's personal quest is to find his missing infant child that has been snatched by some evil rich dude who hangs out with a lich. Yes. And what does he do with the child? Why, he sends it off to some grove to be raised well and then rejoins the party and never speaks of it again.

What else, oh yes, Keldorn. Yes, he's technically not in the sewer just to stand guard, he's "investigating" the new cult and where all the people are going. On his own. In a deep, dark sewer, making very little progress. And of course he doesn't know that it's actually a beholder cult. That's not known at all until a bit later in the quest.

Theres a rather big power gap between 'cursed hedge wizard' and 'chosen of mystra'. On the same level we dont know how well the gizmo that Shadowheart has was protected. Maybe they left it in some office somewhere and she snuck in and snatched. Maybe it was under armed guard and she barged in and took it. Most of the cast so far are disengenous or coy about details at best. Not everything they say can be taken at face value, nor are we given alot of options to pry more information from them. Sometimes we can, for example sometimes we can do opposed tests or use the tadpole but at other times we cant. Its hard to get a clear image of each character and how truthfull they are overall. But all of them twist the truth or hide details. And honestly they come across as pathological liars to me...

Nalia is indeed in abit of a bind. Everyone would be if an army of trolls barged into their ancestral home, killed their family and friends and find themselves surrounded by slavers and other unsavoury types. Doesent take away that nobles have friends or aquintances that they can leverage for....stuff. We dont see alot of it ingame but the focus on the game also isent about the political intrigue of beeing a noble in Amn. Making a mockery of her power or potential power when you bring up game mechanics or things like timestop is also trivial. By the time you meet her you sure as hell and cant do that yourself and by the time you could, so could she. She can be as weak or as powerfull as you want her to be. If shes in your party and ends up weak, thats your own mis-management.

Cernd is a druid. If he wanted to he could literally walk out of that prison at any point that he wanted to. It wouldnt really help relations though and people are already on edge because of the local animal attacks so he chooses *gasp* the diplomatic route. Omg. A character whos more then just combat! Who would have thought? His personal mission beeing the one with his kid is my mixup. Its been a while since I played the game with him in my party but having a druid grove as allies has some benefits. That you dont see these benefits back in game is a shame but I dont think it takes much inmagination to see why it can be a very usefull source of allies and aid.

By the time you reach the shadow druids the party is already so powerfull that yeah, they dont pose much of a threat. Even with a PC not imported from bg1 a fresh bg2 character is like what, lvl 7? Level 9? if solo class? Most people in-universe dont even get that strong and thats the starting point for the player. The game has serious powercreep issues honestly.

Keldorn pinpointed the location where the Cult members are heading to. That by itself isent so special, alot of people can tell the player they come from the sewers so eventually you would find them on your own as well if you spend some time. Dont recall if he was waiting for backup or if you 'stumble' into him before he can run in on his own but considering the player has a party of 6 (if you got a full party anyway) and some fights can be challenging if you havent played the game before an order sending a dude off on his own is some indication that they have a decent amount of respect for him. Or maybe he ran off on his own, I dont recall. But he sure as hell isent dead when you find him and other then the Beholder itself he can give most things down there a very bad time.

Regardless. We are talking about different things. Im talking about more abstract things like political power, favours, connections and whatnot and you are talking about raw damage output as far as I can tell. Obviously the player will have the upper hand on all of the companions if they take a little time to gear up. Likewise, obviously a character made by the player will be more powerfull if they took the time to get a good stat role and stat distribution. We are however also comparing apples to oranges if we compare companions from bg 2 and bg3. Characters in bg2 arent level 1. Some come with their own unique gear and/or magical items when you find them and the game system between bg 2 and bg 3 is different. While most have more 'normal' backgrounds they are still exceptional individuals when compared to their peers.

Anyway going into details about what characters were good or bad at was completly besides the point. The questions were 'what makes their inclusion not-baldursgate.' Other then 'some of their backstories are larger then life' I dont think youve given any reasoning? A new player in a group I played in last year made a background for his level 1 barbarian. Do you know what he wrote? He was a general for his tribe. He had slain armies, conquored lands and never lost a fight in his entire life. Then before the 1st session he and a Goblin tinkerer did a little sparring and the Tinkerer got him to 1 HP. Then he punched him in the groin with fury of the small and the guy changed his background to say he only lost 1 figher ever in his life point is, new players tend to write way to elaborate and way to powerfull backgrounds for their lvl 1 toons. They all honestly come across as that.

And that's why it's ok to have poor worldbuilding in a premium computer RPG?

At least to me, the appeal of a premium campaign over player created content is that it is supposed to be well put together.

Not saying that. Im saying thats what it comes across. We only see act 1 of the game so far and unless Larian outright tells us we wont know what the ACTUAL backstory of these chars are.

What theyre telling us is filled with lies, half truths, overexerations and hyperbole. Its like all our characters studied the MO of devils rather then DnD characters in how to talk...

1 year ago, played for an hour or two. Meeeh. Uninstalled.

Re-installed last week played for an hour or two. Few bug fixes, 2 extra classes or whatsnot, a little cosmetic change here, little rules change there….Basically the game core stuff is unchanged. Meeeh. Uniinstalled.

See you next year.

Are people that hard headed to think that what we will get will be drastically different than what we have now, BCAUSE THIS IS EA??? the game is already 90% set.

I mean nobody forces u to play. If this game is not ur cup of tea, thats perfectly understandable. Larian cannot please everyone.

Meanwhile spend 2months of pure time on forum complaining about game you played 4 hours ...
I clap your prophetic abilities.

Constructive criticism aside, I find the tone of many game forums lately, very gloomy. I mean.... I played OG BG 1 and 2. And I am willing to give Larian the benefit of the doubt on this title. I don't expect them to fix all according to my personal wishes. I just hope they add a solid basis for modding to this title. patch 5 added a lot of changes I liked. With 60 GB of changes incoming I am sure there will come more changes of which I approve. I will judge the game more harshly when it is, well... finished.

Yeah, it used to be a much more fun community. Then, it became a cesspool of vindictive moaning. And this is not about the criticism, these are the same people who hated the game well before EA even started, but still stick around to voice their "constructive criticism" that Larian is an awful company that is making an awful game because Larian won't listen to them personally, they who already hate everything about this title. Sure, BG3 is not perfect, it doesn't have everything I want, but I still cannot recall ever being this excited about a game title. But I really have to tiptoe around my excitement so I won't trigger someone with a hate boner against this game. So yeah, I get what you are saying...

[/quote]Yeah, it used to be a much more fun community. Then, it became a cesspool of vindictive moaning. And this is not about the criticism, these are the same people who hated the game well before EA even started, but still stick around to voice their "constructive criticism" that Larian is an awful company that is making an awful game because Larian won't listen to them personally, they who already hate everything about this title. Sure, BG3 is not perfect, it doesn't have everything I want, but I still cannot recall ever being this excited about a game title. But I really have to tiptoe around my excitement so I won't trigger someone with a hate boner against this game. So yeah, I get what you are saying...[/quote]

Was not referring to this community in particular really. Just a lot of games I am following it is like.... Like the game you are a fanboy. Dislike the game and you are a hater. I just miss middle ground commentary I guess. Some here provide well thought through posts. And well since this a title in development, Larian will need feedback. Just wish some could do so without resorting to either seeming a bit overly dramatic or acting like the game is a failure just by existing.

Yes, I do find the doomsday prophecies very tiresome. Most people can already tell that this game will be a success. The question is how big is gonna be. And it deserves criticism of course, why it needs it, that's the point of the EA. But still, acting like BG3 won't be a successful entry for both Larian and DnD games, is just not realistic.

If it will be a resounding success depends. After 2077 I try to adopt a wait and see approach lol. But yes, personally I am sure I will enjoy it

Sure, I try to be cautiously optimistic as well :DDDDDDDD. Though, I doubt Larian will pull a cyberpunk (or frankly wrath of the righteous) and release a half-made game on us. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt they have earned as a company.

Agreed, Just looking forward for some more time in a forgotten realm setting, which is not a action rpg or some weird MMO xD

I am so with u on that point. :DDDDDDDDDD

I think 60 gb and dropping a Sorcerer on us will have to qualify as meeting the moment hehe. I'm sure it'll pick up again after the new patch, as it tends to do. Hopefully they keep us on the hook for with a big Saturnalia follow up too!

The gloomhammer tends to show up pretty heavy towards the end of their update cycle here, like at the 4 month mark the weight starts to get real. I think its just a bit too long to wait, and the enthusiasm for the new only lasts about a month or so. Hopefully they can push stuff out at a more steady clip and it doesn't take another year to get the Paladins and Bards, UI upgrades and such. I try to remain hopefull. I'm kind of excited to check out the Sorcerer for the knock on effect with the Wizards. Like in the hopes that maybe they have created a new spellcasting UI beyond just the hotbar thing? That'd be nice to see. I also hope somewhere in that 60gb are couple new soundsets or models or even some splash loadscreens just to make it feel newish right from the launch

Pessimism certainly doesent help but can understand why some people get abit pessimistic with the game industry as a whole in its current state. Not that its Larian's fault but if youve been in 1 EA and seen something you found a problem (like lack of, or poor communication) I understand that people want to raise alarm bells.

Humans are wired to recognize patterns so if you think you are seeing something happen that happened before its understandable to want to raise alarmbells.

Not every company is the same though and I also dont find it very fair to give 1 company shit for something other companies did. BUt I see where people are coming from. If they dident care, they wouldnt be on the forums at all after all. We all want whats best for the game

Its a 2 way street. If they had demonstrated anything REMOTELY pretending to be engagement, responsiveness, communication, people would have continued.

I'll see what it looks like on release. A few hours into Wrath of the Righteous proved what an appropriate focus on a game's mechanics and feel can look like in 2021, instead of cutscenes and...whatever meme worthy additions Larian was up to 6 or so months ago.

I'm not really doubting that it will work out and end up a half-decent game. But will it have anything whatsoever with the franchise that lends its name to it? That I am not sure of.

It does take more than just throwing something together that more or less resembles 5E and touches the city of Baldur's Gate to actually make a Baldur's Gate game. Larian has the ability to make a proper sequel and would have been my studio of preference to make the attempt before this whole thing was announced, but whether or not they're actually going to manage a sequel remains to be seen.

Yes, that is a bit harsh, but that's how it has to be when you very intentionally decide to use the name of some existing and highly appreciated franchise. If we allowed any odd effort to fully be a sequel to anything decent, we'd end up with every franchise taking the turn of Far Cry or Serious Sam or the Ass Creed.

the game has a main villain called the absolute, whose symbol contains a piece of each of the dead threes symbols, A skeleton who is most likely Jergal, and a ritual site that resembles a Myrkul incantation circle, is in the game. If you're worried about the game not having any connection to the previous games, I'd say you have nothing to worry about.

I would have taken literally anything but what is essentially a re-flavored Wizard, but Larian has probably been working on multiple classes at once and Sorcerer is likely the only one in a good enough state to release. Probably because out of all the classes that had yet to be released, Sorcerers don't really care about reactions.

I think even Barbarians use reactions to a degree. Incidentally the classes with a heavier emphasis on reactions in the earlier levels are the ones that haven't been implemented yet. Though because Larian is pretty much out of classes that don't really need reactions to function, chances are that we're likely to be in the longest wait ever for the patch after this, since it kinda sounds like a decision on what to do with reactions hasn't been reached yet.

Either way, with the current timing, Sorcerer holds very little appeal for me. Maybe if a martial class had been released in between Druid and Sorcerer, I would have considered looking into it. But as it stands, I think I'll sit this patch out, especially since there's no hints of a new companion being available to offset this either.

We don't know much bout it still but Patch 6 is gonna be a huge update and I think it will introduce new areas, new quests. But I understand that. I am planning on taking at least a 6 months break from the game before full release.

Personally I was very pleasantly surprised by many of the changes of Patch 5, so my hopes for the game has been slightly raised again. Since the game is changing in a way I like, they clearly do listen to feedback along my thoughts, so some of my negativity stemming from the lack of communication can be said to have been misguided. But in a way that only makes the lack of communication even more aggravating, because if they had shown the least bit of interest in it maybe I wouldn't have gotten as disheartened in the first place. 'Tis disturbing to my demeanour!

Are we all testers in a sense?

My bud and I play every two weeks or so just to test our systems with the possible new builds and fixes.

Honestly, it is getting pretty lame.

I and we do not like the pace at all. A solid year.

Where the hell are the classes. Imo they should be out to test.

IDC what anyone says, adding a sorcerer is almost like just adding a skin and a few motions and a few new internal algorithms just to make a wizard skin and objects work like a sorcerer should in DnD.

Lame.

Gee, if only they warned upfront that the game is beeing worked on and isent finished :V

Sorcerers beeing simular but different to Wizards isent Larian's fault. Thats DnD.

What their internal workings look like I dont know. I dont code and would gain nothing by looking at it, because I couldnt read it. But Metamagic can effect alot of things to excisting spells and when you add possible multiclassing to the equation every single possible metamagic/spell combo has to be accounted for. Dont know if you know how many spells and combinations there are, but thats alot. If you need code for each and every single case its not hard to see why they need some time to make it work. Specially if things arent instantly working as intended and they need to tweak and bugfix a fair few of them. Which honestly I wouldnt be suprised if that was the case.

In pnp DND you say you cast a spell with x metagmagic and you play it out. That obviously doesent work in a video game. They need to account for everything we might want to do upfront.

Yes. You bought an Early Access game. We're not testers "in a sense". You literally signed up and paid to be a tester.

I know that I'm a bit demanding, but I'm going to have to actually feel that connection during gameplay rather than just know intellectually that actually the game sort of touches on the things that was also technically part of the plot in the previous games, before I feel comfortable declaring that this game actually managed to be a sequel rather than a new take that uses the franchise name for promotional reasons.

The first two games were about Gorion's Ward and I'd expect this game to be about something that relates to said ward or events set in motion by them. But simply going back to Bhaal and his dimwit friends and their lame followers is something that I don't necessarily see connecting directly to what happened in the last two games.

Suppose we had a Black Panther movie and then a pretty good sequel to that. In both movies we follow the title character do what he does. Then we get Black Panther 3, except it takes place in the 24th century, it has no black panthers of any kind, and it's about a 24th century hero team that runs into the aliens that once upon a time crashed and provided the tech used by the Black Panther in the first two movies. Wouldn't you reckon that this would be a fairly weird sequel?

Don't know what "most people" mean, but the state of the game for 4 years of development definitely isn't good. It still only has 1 act, lacks half the classes, a proper reaction system, day/night cycles and still doesn't play like 5e D&D. On GoG it has a score of 3.8/5, or 7.6 which in my view is a disaster for a game with this legacy. And most of the criticism in the reviews is the gameplay and comparisons do DOS, which the developers still insist in not addressing.

On one hand, there's one thing to be said about relentlessly doomposting. But I also think it should apply to statements that are so sure that the game's going to be a smash hit critically. People have reason to be rightfully wary, now that the honeymoon period has been long over for quite a while now.

Outside of the subreddit, I've noticed that the overall vibe in regards to the Sorcerer reveal has been rather muted. It feels like the changes to the rest system generated far more discussion overall, probably because again, it's something that affects everyone rather than a new class that's mechanically just a modification of already existing classes at the end of the day.

We have no idea how much of the game is done. Early Access will only contain the First Act, as previously stated. Day/night cycle was never promised, you are just expecting it for some reason (as if it were some crucially important element and not a vanity item). The game is missing Barbarian, Bard, Monk and Paladin. How is that half of the classes? For me personally, this game feels to closest ever to playing DnD on my pc, so that's your personal feeling probably and not an objective truth about the game. On that tired troll argument that "this is just DO in BG skin", with every update BG3 becomes more and more uniquely new and fresh as a title. If you don't want to see that, that's your choice.

And i really presume this will ever improve ...
From my experience, most people go rate only once ... if game dont meet their expectation (and this is important word, since it have nothing to do with what was promissed, advertised or what developers mean to deliver ... its just what people WANT no matter anything) they rate low, if it does, they rate high ...

But i honestly dont know much people who grab their own nose (czech expression for admiting your fault, dunno english equivalent) ... and admit that they made misstake and should see the product with more fresh eyes. And even less of them ever bother to adjust their initiate rating to more acurate numbers.

There is a case to be argued in that presumably developing the rest of the game while the classes aren’t even done yet should be a bit worrying in regards to future encounter balance.

Who knows how trying to implement reactions is messing with the development of the future acts behind the scenes. Because it sure seems like the original plan was not to implement them at all, until Solasta came out and demonstrated that such an idea would be rightfully taboo.

Maybe that’s why the development has seemingly focused on the narrative and cinematics. The combat basics aren’t there yet.

There is a case, but it's a weak one imo. Final tweaking of encounter balance should be one of the last things done by any game developer. I imagine Larian has rough placeholder encounters for Acts 2+, which will be a relatively small amount of work to adjust months from now to account for any changes to mechanics. Add or remove an enemy, tweak enemy placement or stats, use the new template for an enemy-with-reactions, etc

Your worry will only hold true if Larian never does a final pass-through on Act 2+ encounters after finalizing the mechanics, which would be idiotic of them.

And honestly, the removal of backstab Advantage and jump+disengage probably affected encounter balance way more than the addition of any new class will be. After all, is the sorcerer class really going to be make parties more powerful? We did already have the wizard class.

It better be! After seeing the photos of all the marketing dough they dropped at the convention in London this week, they clearly have big expectations. That was not cheap marketing spend!

Anyway, spacehamster95, the haters are always like that, always have been. Meh. I'm really, really stoked for patch 6 (I started playing I think two days before 5 dropped, so I don't have much basis for comparison), but it will be really interesting to see if it's *all* new stuff, or if there are any nods to some of the larger discussions that are grounded in reality, like Minthara's armor.

The day/night cycle and weather system were in Baldur's Gate I&II if I remember correctly, and not having those in Baldur's Gate III would be a definite loss.
The importance of things that only have an effect on what is seen shouldn't be downplayed.
Day, night, rain, snow, etc. all affect atmosphere, and in some games, they also affect gameplay.
Since Baldur's Gate III has environmental effects, I think that it would make sense for those to affect gameplay somewhat.

As for classes, there are 7/12, which is only one class beyond half.
However, I doubt that they'll wait until the game is out of Early Access to release the other classes.

About Baldur's Gate III being Divinity: Original Sin with a Baldur's Gate theme, trolls might also be saying that, but it doesn't seem incorrect.

Equipment names? Baldur's Gate.
Spells? Baldur's Gate.
Races? Baldur's Gate.
Combat system? Original Sin with Dungeons & Dragons elements.
User interface? Original Sin.
Party size? Original Sin.
Party management system? Original Sin.
Lack of a weather system? Original Sin.
Lack of a day/night cycle? Original Sin.
A lot of interactive objects? Original Sin.
A lot of environmental effects? Original Sin.
Story structure? Original Sin.
Party member names? Original Sin.
Party member personalities? Original Sin.

Some of the elements from the Original Sin games are definitely an improvement over the original Baldur's Gate games, but overall, Baldur's Gate III is far more like an improved Original Sin with elements from Dungeons & Dragons than an improved Baldur's Gate.

Combat system? DnD 5e with still adjusting the perks of the system.
User interface? Originally similar to their DO titles, now distinctively BG3
Party size? DnD 5e
Party management system? Greatly readjusted in the last Patch.
Lack of a weather system? Would be nice, I agree.
Lack of a day/night cycle? Dragon Age Origins also miss out on this one for the same reason. They would have to re-shoot all of the campsite cinematics. Also the game has a concealment system that would have to be recreated entirely with a day/night cycle. I am fine with the current set up. Day=adventuring, night= party banter.
A lot of interactive objects? I would say intractability is one of the great strengths of BG3, compared to for instance Solasta where everything feels stale and static.
A lot of environmental effects? Greatly readjusted in multiple Patches.
Story structure? Like the three part story structure that is universal to western storytelling?
Party member names? Bullshit...
Party member personalities? See my previous point.

BG + BG2 were cool relative to their time and age. I loved them, too, but they are not state of the art anymore.

Technology and game design have evolved since then, this also includes (of course) the things developers can do when implementing game mechanics.

I have played BG2 for a while again during the last few days - and I honestly have to say: the magic is gone. BG2 feels clunky, unpolished, unwelcoming - but this is seen from the perspective of a post D:OS2-gamer, of course.

What I'm trying to say: being stuck in the past and wanting things to stay the same forever doesn't work. I see BG3, since we have good dice rolling (weighted dice, ability to improve dice roll outcomes) which enables player agency instead of having your story dictated by RNG, as it was at the start of EA, as a culmination, or a "best of", between D&D and the advances video game science and technology have made since BG2 came out.

And no, neither Solasta nor WotR are really good comparisons, both are, in comparison with BG3 even as it is now in EA, very "unpolished", with Solasta feeling more like a "tabletop simulator" instead of an actual, deep, AAA-level computer game.

Yes, both are really good games, but they are not even in the same ballpark, production-value and game-design wise, as BG3.

And also, yes, I agree that BG3 is not unsimilar to D:OS2 - but in my most honest opinion this is a good thing. D:OS2 is still one of the best video game RPGs that were ever produced. Modern and still a somewhat "old school" RPG.

Honestly, D&D rules are good as a guideline and general idea, but they don't make a AAA level video game. It's just too bland when playing alone, much more spice is needed, which Larian adds by utilizing the virtues already implemented in D:OS2 and then some.

Also, coming back to D:OS2 once again: this game was groundbreaking. In my opinion D:OS2 actually reshaped the meaning of the term "CRPG", because it really brought together the best of both worlds: CRPG gameplay on one hand, the possibilities of video games in the 21st century on the other hand. It is a game that welcomes even people who are usually put off by the stoutness of what "CRPG" meant in the past, which is also a good thing. Still it's not "toned down" or "dumbed down", quite the opposite. It just leaves out the artificial elitism which only serves as a "gatekeeper".

I agree wholeheartedly. I love the old saga but I don't want a remake of them. Larian was chosen for this project for a reason. Of course, they have design and stylistic patterns as a company that they will implement; and they should, cause they are great at their job.

Also, I understand that I am a minority as someone who is here as a fan of the BG saga and not originally a fan of Larian (though I have tried their games after it was announced that they will be making BG3). But there are some people, hardcore fans of the original games, who really think that their opinions should command the design of BG3, cause they are the real fans whose opinion matters the most. And that's just self-absorbed and lacks perspective.

"Great at their job"

Yes, yes they are.

That special "Larian" magic is what actually drew me to BG3 in the first place. And I'm super happy that we see a lot of it in the game, even the "exploitability", which is something I loved about D:OS2 as well.

I game to have fun, not to follow a cult and feel "pure".

Larian delivers. With great abundance. Every moment with their games I'm having a blast.

There is only one thing i can say to people who keep repeating that this is Original Sin 3 ...
Maybe, just maybe ... you should have listen to Swen, when he specificaly warned us about: if you are not quite sure, if this game will be for you, you should not buy it right from the start, but wait for some reviews first.
You can only blame yourself and your own inpatience. -_-

All those things in red are places where you could've just said "not inspired by or related to Baldur's Gate".

Also, 5E does not say that parties cannot have more than 4 members. It says 3-5 and it doesn't rule out more, so this whole "doing the DOS thing is actually totally forced by 5E" is obviously a very flawed argument. It's a design decision that Larian made because it fit perfectly with all the other things they'd decided. It isn't forced by 5E at all.

And I don't think there's too much "for some reason" over why Larian skips the time system. It's just easier to have time effects eliminated and not have to worry about it. You have complete control over lighting, you don't have to worry about schedules for your actors, and there's no problem having some people be in combat while others are not, even though this leads to an obvious time fracture. People outside of combat are subject to constant time whereas people in combat are in turnbased time-stands-still mode, so how do they merge the timelines after the combat ends? Answer is, they don't need to! Campsite cinematics and concealment are the least of the problems.

Yes, Larian is not copying a game from before the turn of the millenium, that's true. They are adapting DnD 5e into a pc game that has strong narrative ties to the BG saga.

But, honestly, your argument that everything would be solved if they abandoned their turn-based design, it is just laughable, I mean What???? DnD is a turn-based system. They cannot implement it without their turn-based design. This is a tired argument. BG3 is a turn-based game, as it is an adaptation of a turn-based ttrpg. Deal it with already.

People are trying to tell Larian that their game isn't pushing the right buttons to really feel like a sequel to two legendary games whose name this game is borrowing, and you feel it makes sense to tell them essentially to fuck off with their perspective? To got eat a can of shit for expecting a BG franchise game to push the old BG buttons?

What's the point of that? What do you hope to achieve, aside from just annoying people?

They don't need your consent personally to create a sequal for the BG saga. They needed WotC's and they got the green light after their pitch with them. I am a fan of the original saga and I love what Larian has been creating so far. I don't want a slavish and uninspired clone of the old games. I want a rpg that could mean as much to a modern generation of players as the original saga meant back then. I want a pc experience that mirrors the joy of playing DnD with my mates. And so far it seems Larian will deliver that...

Nobody says they should copy. But they're good at what they do so "being influenced by" is certainly possible.

What they are doing, however, is making a DOS-D&D hybrid game that so far doesn't seem to have all that obvious connections with or influences from the BG saga at all, except the narrative will seemingly tie in with Bhaal's situation without having too much to do with anything the Bhaalspawn did. Even though the interesting bit, as far as the BG saga is concerned, is actually the Bhaalspawn rather than Bhaal himself.

Lastly, where did you come up with what "my argument" is? And did you wash your hands afterwards, because unless you have some speech-to-text thing going, not washing your hands after something like that is really bad. You know what they say about keyboards, they're dirtier than your average restroom. Take one apart one day, you'll believe it too.

But you're right that the turn-based design is forcing a lot of other things that in turn cause a lot of differences and probably isn't helping the game that much. FYI, the old 2E rules were turnbased too, but Bioware managed to come up with an alternative that worked better for what they were trying to do. I'm not as good at game design as Larian so I don't know what they could or should have done, but what I do know is that spending half an hour to kill 20 or so gobbos is a bit much. That same fight in BG1 and 2? Probably a couple of minutes at low levels, less at higher levels because there's no need to pause and micro.

Nah, people told larian 3/4 year ago, nobody seemed to care back then, and that didnt change so far ... they are just repeating it for the sake of conflict itself.
This isnt about improving the game, so they get what they want ... this is just about expressing their dissatisfaction, since they didnt get what they *expect* ... nothing more.

If people would really as you say "trying to tell Larian that their game isn't pushing the right buttons to really feel like a sequel" ...
They would parcipiate in topics, that are talking about what to do to "start pushing the right buttons to really feel like a sequel" ...

Instead of repeating "Not Baldur's Gate enough" in every single topic, that is talking about litteraly anything else. -_-
This isnt feedback, this is just flaming. :-/

Yes i do.
I would say it should be obvious, since i allready did.

If parcipiating in topics, that was made to actualy talk about what to do to make this game feel more like BG ... is equivalent to eating can of shit ... then yes.
I dunno, in my country we usualy call it good manners.

Few examples:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=672266#Post672266
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=652913#Post652913
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=760211#Post760211
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=689874#Post689874

I dont "hope to achieve" anything ...
My hopes for this comunity to learn few basic rules about how forums works are long gone, but if my message manage to reach at least single person, i call it sucess.

Just one more thing, mate, and after I will just stop engaging with you. Bioware was forced to create a real-time with pause game (against their better judgement) because their publishers wanted a diablo-clone. But there is already a topic for that troll discussion that you are baiting here, so I would advise you take it there.

They don't need my consent at all, you're right about that. But this game is in early access presumably in part because we're supposed to play it and offer feedback, and if I, or others who feel the same, offer this feedback half a year after full launch then what's the point?

You say you're a fan of the original saga, fine, then tell me what this game has in common with those games? Same world, though interpreted very differently, but that's about it, isn't it? No, wait, there's also a tangent to the same story, except much later and from a radically different angle and not really about the main dude of the original saga.

What part of this game actually gives you Baldur's Gate vibes? Not just "not quite DOS" vibes, but actual honest Baldur's Gate vibes? Because I'm just not sure that I'm getting them at all. Which doesn't make this game "bad", but it does make it "not quite BG".

The earnest desire to recreate DnD within the framework of a video game. For me, that was the spirit of the BG saga and it is the spirit that is gonna make BG3 a fantastic game.

I think it actually already is.

Even in its current EA state one can easily extract 40+ hours of most excellent play time out of it - most fully released games today don't offer that.

I know, I am floored by this game, too. But imagine when we get to experience the full campaign :DDDDDDDDD.

How kind of you to try and tell me why I'm posting. Because that's totally not jackassery or anything, is it?

That's my point, mate. All you're doing here is asking people who aren't sufficiently loyalist to eat shit, fuck off, and stop pestering Larian with their anti-DOS grief, if you'll pardont he directness. That's not really what I would consider proper behavior on a forum.

If parcipiating in topics, that was made to actualy talk about what to do to make this game feel more like BG ... is equivalent to eating can of shit ... then yes.
I dunno, in my country we usualy call it good manners. [quote=RagnarokCzD]
I'm just following the conversation here. I don't believe I stole the topic and I'm sure someone would tell me to stop stealing the topic if I was.

I have zero attachment to the original BG games and even I think there are things that are fundamentally off with the design of several aspects of the game.

Not everything is a measure of which gatekeepers are better, you dinguses. Maybe instead of flagellating each other for another two hours, maybe look at the criticisms from an objective standpoint. Because since people keep bringing them up, perhaps they actually exist for a reason?

I saw 15 new posts in here thinking there was actual interesting discussion, and basically got a gatekeeper war.

I couldn’t give any damn at all about a day/night cycle in particular, when this is shaping up to be a game heavily reliant on wowing people with its first impressions - but ultimately rather shallow in its current state that despite its seeming focus on replayability… The actual moment to moment gameplay coupled with frustrating UI and controls seems to be doing everything in its power to discourage that.

Problem with that is, the feedback needs to be about something for it to hold water. If all the feedback that a person has, is that its not baldurs gate because it doesent feel like baldurs gate then....uh....ok. Wtf are we supposed to do with that? What are the developers supposed to do with that? If people can narrow it down abit more or elaborate on it further about WHY it feels off to them then thats feedback thats helpfull and that can be build upon. But alot of it isent that. Alot of it is: its to much like divnity. And theyre saying that to the studio that made divinity. The engine used is called the divinity engine... (IIRC anyway) Dont know about you but I dont really think thats helpfull feedback. At all.

The few times people do elaborate further they bring in things that were never promised, dont make a title a baldurs gate title, cant really be narrowed down because people dont know themselves or have nothing to do with the game at all, etc etc. Mostly it comes to how their expectations havent been met somehow. Ive been playing the game since it came out, taking time off the game after playthroughs so I dont burn myself out but it seems these arguments just dont die down. They (generally) still cant narrow down what it is exactly that feels off to them and if anything, theyre just repeating themselves over and over. People also get defensive or offensive to others if they ask them to explain, leading to things kike you bring up. 15 replies and its people talking back and forth with not to much beeing said.

Id hope that people at least stop to read the patch notes when they come out and play the new patch but people are already writing it off before even knowing whats in it. But alot here dont seem to want to do that.

I can narrow exactly what feels off: The gameplay.
From the first gameplay reveal where Vincke gets his ass kicked and only wins the very first encounter by dipping his bow literally into fire and exploding a barrell to kill all enemies I didn't feel like that was 5E D&D.
Surface effects, shoving, jumping and disengaging as bonus actions, high ground, walking behind enemies to get backstabs. It felt like playing DOS with d20.
What got me pissed was that they said in interviews that a pure adaptation wouldn't translate well into a video game... and then Solasta came out and proved them wrong. It plainly plays better, not different, better, like it feels like I'm playing D&D on my computer.
It is the exact same system they are trying (or should be trying to) to emulate, and 17 guys with 200k did in 2 years what BG3 with 400 didn't do in 4. How not to get frustrated?
And on a sidenote, I paid 60 bucks for BG3 and 10 for Solasta.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, none of us are gate-keepers of what is legitimate or helpful feedback and what is not. A person's opinion that the game does not feel like it should, if it is to be considered as the game it is claiming to be, is feedback - and if many people share that opinion, even if they do not or cannot articulate it well, then that it very important feedback. Neither you, nor anyone else here, have any right to attack anyone else or demean their thoughts and opinions, or to attempt to act as any kind of gatekeeper about what's valid and what isn't: unless you are an actual Larian employee, you don't have that information. Beyond that, stating those thoughts and opinions is why we are all here in the first place.


I would strongly encourage you to take some time to browse the feedback section more carefully, read some of the threads, and actually take a look at the mountains, upon mountains, of serious, well-considered and analytical threads full of people discussing, in great depth and detail the aspects of this game and its design philosophy, implementation, aesthetic, functionality, style and other elements there beside which they feel do not work, are unsatisfying or detract from the game in various different ways.

Most of the highly critical posters reiterate various points in brief because they have already been discussed in great detail, and it is presumed by this point that most people participating in the conversations are up to date on this and have availed themselves of those many and varied threads before deciding to go on the offensive at others. (And honestly, because it is exhausting to have to re-write the salient points of a scholarly essay, and cover the relevant details sufficiently, again and again each time a new person pops up trying to claim that the critics are just haters with no real arguments, without having taking the time to actually look at what has been said and take it in...)

The arguments and complains continue because the issues they spring from continue, without address. There is no shortage here of threads wherein various elements of the game are picked apart with honest, detailed examination and found wanting, and the reasons why they are poor choices, bad designs, or otherwise detrimental to the game as a whole are gone into at length. Claiming that the highly critical posters never have any real arguments, and never articulate anything properly just makes you look like you're speaking with your eyes closed - either overtly disingenuous, or wilfully ignorant.

==

That said, the above exchange seems to be getting nowhere, to my eye at least, and all that's happening is that people on both sides are getting increasingly, and pointlessly, antagonistic towards each other as a result... let's try to keep this friendly and positive if we can. If you love what Larian are doing here, that's great - but that's not an excuse to shout down or shut down other people who aren't feeling as rosy as you about what they're seeing and experiencing. Remember that for the most part, everyone who is taking the time and effort to post here, on these forums, is doing so as someone who either loves this game, or who wants to love this game - those who think that it's great right now and are excited for it to succeed, or else those who very much want it to succeed and be great and want the game to be the very best it can be. We're actually, ultimately, all on the same side here - sometimes you just have to step back far enough to see it. It's worth doing, especially any time you find yourself getting into an increasingly antagonistic quote-to-quote post exchange with someone.

How kind of you to try and tell me what I'm posting. Because that's totally not jackassery or anything, is it?

Seriously tho ...
As i said abowe, i would appreciate if you would aim your focus to those topics that actualy are ment to compare BG-3 with previous titles, or are adressing specific matters that should be improved, so this game fits your expectation better ...
This particular topic is supposed to be about numbers of testers ... what does it have in common with "how much Baldur's Gate is this game" ? O_o

Didnt i?
Twice now.

In the words of the wise Tarn Adams of of Bay12 fame: "Let us maintain our chill composure"

::finger guns::

Given the popularity and critical acclaim for D:OS2, saying anything bad about it is about the same as saying anything bad about having sex.

A fringe opinion.

I liked DOS2 a lot, however I see no reason for DOS2 features to be in a D&D game, specially when the main criticism about the game so far has been this frankesteinian mix between the two.
Solasta proved that pure D&D plays better. It will still be made by Larian if they remove the DOS2 stuff.

Yes, to Firesong, it is a rather strikingly fringe opinion - one that few people other than closed-eyed sycophants will agree with; I'm glad you're aware of that, though of course I wouldn't discourage you from stating your feelings.

Acting like D:OS2 was perfect just because it was (very) popular with a particular crowd (much of which, in the ven diagram of gamers and roleplayers everywhere, are not the same target audience as those who like story-based RPGs, D&D or Baldur's Gate) is itself deeply irrational and a stance that is, to the vast majority of sensible people, objectively false and misguided.

There was a great deal that was poorly done, badly designed, frustrating, and unsatisfying about D:OS2, all of which are things which drastically turned me, personally, off the game, and which I personally do not care to see repeated in this one when they don't need to be (I tried to conduct a second playthrough of D:OS2 after finishing the first, and I simply couldn't stomach it. I genuinely tried, but couldn't bring myself to slog through it again... Whereas, I'd very much like to be able to enjoy replaying a game called Baldur's Gate 3, in the future). That we can then see many of these things being repeated again, therefore, is cause for genuine concern for many people.

If you don't feel your personal opinion on each of those issues is properly represented, then I'd strongly encourage you to go and find the various threads where each of these things are discussed and reasoned through in great detail, have a read through them, see what you think, and then if you still feel like you have an angle that hasn't been covered, absolutely join in on those discussions.

This is lunatic cultist way of thinking and some of you really have to listen to yourselves talk before hitting that post button. Are you guys so determined to turn Larian into the next CDPR?

No one's denying that DOS2 was a great and wildly successful game. But to deny that it had any huge flaws at all, and acting like transplanting as much of it as possible into BG3 is a great idea that can't backfire is going to lead BG3 into a very unfortunate trajectory. Do you know why 'too much like DOS2' is an actual criticism here? Maybe actually think critically for a moment and realize that IT'S PRECISELY BECAUSE ALMOST EVERYONE HERE HAS PLAYED D:OS2 FRONT TO BACK, people have lived through the flaws inherent in that game's systems, and don't want those same problems being brought over into BG3 too!

Or did everyone somehow forget how bad DOS2's endgame was when it launched, and arguably still is?

Hell, I'd be willing to bet that a good amount of people using this criticism are actually FAR more familiar with DOS2 than people making ridiculous statements like the quoted post. Like I've beaten D:OS2 on Tactician with a full party without lone wolf cheese, and even I couldn't come up with a laughable analogy comparing it to sex.

Then grats, the comment wasent aimed at you I was talking about people who have complaint but cant narrow down themselves what their complaint is, and then proceed to hurl abuse your way when you ask them to clarify. I never said it applies to ALL people who have unclear feedback. Just alot from what I can see.

Say with your list of complaints id ask what you mean with surface effects and youd spend 5 paragraphs cursing at me about how im a Larian fanboy for not agreeing with you and all of this sheit wasent in BG2 or something like that thats the kind of stuff im talking about...

Id love it if people 1: Dident put words in my mouth that I dident say and 2: used words with the meaning that that is tied to them....

From quikly googling the word Gatekeeping: the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.

In the context of this discussion im assuming you think im trying to gatekeep the feedback that gets send to Larian. Correct?

Where did I say that people cant post those comments or anything to that nature? Good luck finding it in my post because it isent there. If anything, the opposite is true. I WANT people to share their feedback. But I want them to do it in a manner that actively helps the developers improve the game. I want them to provide constructive feedback. Not just feedback. Because generic feedback contrary to what you say is infact NOT usefull in this case.

You were bringing up the point that 'maybe look at the criticisms from an objective standpoint. Because since people keep bringing them up, perhaps they actually exist for a reason?' which I find an interesting take on generic non-descriptive feedback. Which I found abit of a misleading concept to begin with. Something beeing brought up alot doesent mean its true. And for all the people that brought it up, a good portion of people dident bring it up. We dont have numbers exactly but say 1% of people feel like this. Would that warrant this feeling to be something that needs to be investigated? Would it if 50% did? Or 90%? Regardless, let me explain why I think it isent helpfull at all no matter how many people bring it up.....

Say I go to work at a place and my employer thinks im not doing my job well and can do better. Ok, thats fine. People make mistakes and im sure theres room for improvement if im just starting out there. In what area and how should I improve? Oh no particular area. Just do your job better. Do you, or do you not think that helps this situation that I just described?

Another example. Say im hired as a cook and my job is to cook steak. My employers tells me im not doing a good job but need to improve. Ok but how? Are the steaks to raw? Are they not well done when they need to be? Do I keep burning the steaks? Do I need to much time to cook the steaks properly? Am I not seasoning the steaks properly? Theres so many areas to go with this very generic feedback. Without more input other then 'you need to do better' I dont know in WHAT area I need to improve, or how to improve. If I dont know what exactly im doing wrong how do you in gods name expect me to fix it?

Add to that 100 people might offer 100 different anwsers and its (at least in my opinion) not hard to see why very generic non-descriptive feedback is getting both the players, who wnat something fixed. And the developer who wants to produce the best possible product, exactly 0 result.

For the rest of your post, I know fully well that alot of people ARE providing very solid feedback. Im very happy with that! But theyre also not the ones coming to threats to complain about completly different topics then the threads that they are visiting. They are for a lack of a better term 'not causing a fuss' and my comment wasent directed at them. And the fact that my words get twisted to paint some narative that im painting everyone with the same brush and am some tyrant that wants everyone to only read the feedback that I approve of is, in your own words 'either overtly disingenuous, or wilfully ignorant.'

The past 15 replies were indeed getting nowhere. And maybe its time people learn to do what (at least in my youth) was very normal and actually a sign of beeing an adult. Agree to disagree and move on. People are allowed to disagree on things and like you said; we all want the game to be the best that it can be. Maybe things arent getting fixed because Larian is working on it, and need more time. Maybe its not getting fixed because it goes against their vision and theyre ok with it. Maybe its not fixed yet for a meriad of other reasons. Maybe it is fixed and we will see it in patch 6? Who knows! I see no point in lingering on the forums for months and brining up your gripe with the game by invading tons of threads because it isent getting fixed fast enough in your opinion. Thats not healthy behaviour either. Take a step back. Relax abit. Its a game. We all want it to be the best thing since sliced bread. But some things are seriously not worth raising your blood pressure to such levels.

It's supposed to be Baldur's Gate III, not the definitive adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons.

As for the user interface and party management system, they're still closer to the Original Sin games than to the Baldur's Gate games.
In some ways, that's good, but in others it isn't, and they're still unlike Baldur's Gate.


I finished Dragon Age: Origins, but I don't remember a lot of it, so I'm not sure what you mean.
If you're trying to say that it would be daytime while they happen, that isn't true.

About the concealment system, if you mean how lighting is part of the stealth mechanics, I don't see any reason why that system would have to be recreated.


I would agree.
The degree of interactivity is one of the elements from Original Sin that Baldur's Gate would benefit from.
Likewise for environmental effects.


Not just the separation of the story into parts, but...
And apparently...
There are also other parallels.


The names from Larian seem to focus more on words and actual variants of names.

Regarding personalities, I haven't seen much about the party members (and Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Wyll are my main party members at the moment), but from what I have seen, they seem like remixed versions of the Original Sin II party members (from what I can remember of them at least).

Right now, I'd say that:

Astarion:
Backstory elements - Sebille
Personality - ...

Shadowheart:
Backstory elements - Lohse
Personality - Ifan

Gale:
Backstory elements - Fane
Personality - ...

Lae'zel:
Backstory elements - ...
Personality - The Red Prince

Wyll:
Backstory elements - The Red Prince
Personality - Lohse


If it's an adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons rather than a new Baldur's Gate game and must be turn-based because of that (I doubt it), then they shouldn't call it "Baldur's Gate III", just like they didn't call the turn-based spin-offs of Divinity "Divinity III-V" but "Divinity: Original Sin I&II", and like the action spin-offs of Baldur's Gate weren't called "Baldur's Gate III&IV" but "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance I&II", which showed that they were spin-offs.


In other words, you don't want another Baldur's Gate game.
You want a faithful adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons.
In which case, as I said, Baldur's Gate III should be called "Baldur's Gate: Dungeons & Dragons", "Dungeons & Dragons: Baldur's Gate" or something like that.

As for not needing consent from the fans of the series, that's true, but it's not really nice to take an established series and basically turn it into a different series.
That said, I don't really mind that much since Original Sin isn't a bad series.
I'm more upset about the role-playing aspects of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout being simplified with each game, but that's neither here nor there.
I just hope that they'll fix and add more things to Baldur's Gate III.


I haven't played Solasta or Pathfinder, so the quality of those games isn't known to me, but I wouldn't exactly call Baldur's Gate III polished at the moment.

As to Baldur's Gate I&II, they're obviously not going to be state-of-the-art by modern standards.
Many of the games from that time are now seen as clunky, unpolished and unwelcoming.
However, that doesn't mean that a modern take on the series would be as clunky, unpolished and unwelcoming.

I'd think that people who like turn-based games would understand that, considering that there have been many people who have called turn-based systems boring, outdated and unwelcoming and have said that those who want long-running series to still have turn-based systems are stuck in the past, but it seems that a lot of people don't know or remember that.


Even if people say that the game is Original Sin III, it doesn't mean that those who are saying that didn't know that the game would be like that before they bought it, or that they don't like the Original Sin series.

Telling other people that their feedback is not valid is not okay. You did this. I'd appreciate it, personally, if neither you, nor anyone else, did that. That's all. I apologise if you felt personally attacked - I quoted you primarily, but the remark was intended to be phased in an open way to anyone reading as well, not just you specifically.


I'll try to explain it to you, if you're interested (if not feel free to skip over):

If you are the steak chef of a restaurant, and one day someone tells your boss that they thought the steaks were bad but doesn't, or can't, give any greater detail, that's one point of data. It means very little on its own, practically nothing, because it is one point of data. There are countless ways it could have come about, only a very minuscule percentage of which could actually point to there being a problem with the chef's work. Even if that person, instead of saying the steaks are bad, wrote an essay with detailed bullet points about why they found the steak unsatisfying, and spelled out their thoughts and opinions about every aspect of the cooking process... it's still only one point of data, and it still means virtually nothing on its own; again, there are countless reasons for how and why the reviewer came to the point of writing that review - only some of which may point to there actually being a problem with the steak, especially if there are few or no other complaints.

If, however, on another day, another person reports that the steaks are bad, and on another day, a dozen more people say the steaks are bad, and then more, and still more, and still more, all leave their comments to say that the steaks are bad... then that IS useful feedback. It tells you that there is, indeed, something that should be looked into and addressed, in a way that a single point of data, no matter how complex and in depth it may be, does not. It confirms that there is a problem that resources need to be devoted to fixing; there is no longer a plausibility of it being just a bad day for the chef, or just a bad day for the reviewer, or any other small one-time anomaly... At that point you can look into WHY people are coming to that conclusion, and you can examine the reports for more detailed feedback, or seek more detailed feedback, and you can examine the situation yourself and see if you can pin down the core reasons that are leading to this dissatisfaction... but you wouldn't be doing that without that initial confirmation that there was, indeed, an issue that many people all felt.

You can try to say that each of those individual reports that just say "it's bad", and little else, aren't helpful or useful but the simple fact is they are: they are serving a valid and valuable purpose in the process

So again - even if it is lacking in detail or specificity, please don't try to tell anyone else that their feedback is not valid or useful because it is vague. None of us are in any position to tell anyone else what feedback has merit and what doesn't, or how much of some feedback is enough; I don't, you don't, no-one here does. I agree with you that it's good to encourage people to give as much detail about their impression as they can, and be as directly helpful as they can, but that is what we should be doing: encouraging, not railing at vague ill-defined groups of people for giving 'unhelpful' feedback.


So you understand, this is why it looks like you were saying that to some people:


Your choice of phrasing here reads as though you are, quite genuinely, saying that Most of the time, critical feedback offered is vague and lacking in detail, without anything tangible to take on board or respond to... it reads further that you are saying that, while Most of the critical feedback is like that, Even When it's not, and people do elaborate further, Those accounts end up being based on falsehoods, or else have nothing to do with the game.

You don't allow, in your words, for the suggestion that there is actually a lot of good critical feedback provided; you use fully encompassing terms, with no room for anything else in your description. That is what you wrote, and it comes off as you saying, without any middle ground or alternative, that all negative feedback being offered here is either vague or unfounded, and that all of it is, thereby invalid. Those of us who have put a lot of work into providing detailed and focused feedback over the course of the EA might understandably feel the need to object to such a statement - you can't really say you weren't talking to us because, by your wording, whether you intended it that way or not, you ended up doing so.

This isn't an attack, and I've no ill-will here... it's just intended as an explanation for why myself or others seem to have read that as being your opinion, or why it came off that way by the end of the post.

As I said before, the original BG saga's fundamental design philosophy was to recreate DnD within the framework of a video game. BG3 has the same spirit. That makes it a Baldurs Gate game above all else for me.

About the companions, sorry mate, but that just makes no sense. Because Wyll mentions a devil that must mean they copied the Red Prince's backstory? U are serious? They are nothing alike, Wyll and the Red Prince storywise. I don't even understand how can one make that claim. This is what I mean when I say that these "criticisms" are divorced from reality...

There have been quite a few developers who tried to recreate Dungeons & Dragons in a video game, before and after Baldur's Gate.
That doesn't make them Baldur's Gate games but Dungeons & Dragon games.

Also, regardless of what might have been meant to be done with Baldur's Gate originally (I can't find any source for your comment about BioWare being forced to create a Diablo clone, though I wouldn't doubt it much), the games that were made were liked for being as they were, not for what they might have been or were supposed to be.
If the games had been turn-based, they might not have even been as well-known as they are now.


I'm just saying that they are going with similar elements.
Wyll is a noble who is known for fighting, and he made a pact with a devil.
The Red Prince is a prince who is known for fighting, and he summoned demons.

I start with the companion stuff. No, you were saying they copied the backstory. And Wyll was not a noble who is known for fighting who made a pact with a devil.
Those surface level similarities that you highlight def do not mean that Larian simply copypasted the backstory. Just one example though. So your argument there is very arbitrary.

If you want to know some basic info about the creation of the original saga, I can recommend the youtuber Chris Davis is making an excellent series analysing crpgs and he has an episode on all of the saga entries (he is really good, does excellent research).

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnPgGFT3fRVkXKL59iFDzQ

I never said that peoples feedback isent valid. I said it isent helpful if its overly generic. But can understand that it might come across like that. English isent my main language and maybe not for everyone involved here, but I can come across as rude or direct at times. Im Dutch and people often misunderstand directness or however its called for beeing rude or commanding. Maybe that shines through a little to my English as well, il try to keep that in mind. Il try to rephrase what I mean and hope it comes across better that way. I dont feel personally attacked by you though, no need to apolagize

There is merit in providing feedback, even if it is non-constructive; but only up and til a point.

If plenty of people (like in the example of the cook we use) complain about something then you might narrow down where the problem lies. Were the steaks just not good? Was the cooking method not done properly? Was the sauce not good? Were they expecting well done and got medium? etc. It does help to a sense. However in our cook example its narrowed down to something. In this example a steak. Say the steak is the UI in bg3. Great! The devs can work with that! Say the Steak is the overall game though. In that case it doesent narrow it down at all and theyre back to square 1 to look for where the problem lies. Say that each person that complained about the Steak complained about something different beeing wrong ontop of that, and you are again back to square 1. Infacts its worse, they all say something is wrong but theyre all saying different things... Each time something went wrong with the steak but no 1 person complained about the same thing.

And thats what im trying to say here. I know alot of people wrote very detailed revieuws and/or feedback points. Thats great! After my 1st playthrough I wrote a lengthy post here myself! However theres also alot of people who arent doing that and thats what I was commenting on.

Dont worry I dont see it as an attack im not talking about everyone there. Infact at several points in my post I say im talking about a fringe group that does this. Not everyone. If I were talking about everyone id say everyone. If im talking about what a group of people are doing im also generalizing. Maybe not helpfull at the time but thats what I was doing. The group of people that I see doing it probably arent all the same ones every single time either.

Im talking about how people are providing, in my opinon non-constructive feedback; and how I think that isent helpfull. Im not saying it isent helpfull. Just how I perceive it. But people telling me to kiss my own backside (for example, wont repeat the things people have said to me, lol) when I ask them to clarify what they mean isent beeing helpfull of them either. Were all on the forums to help improve the game right? Otherwise we wouldnt be here. People asking for clarification is something to be expected I feel. If your peers cant make sense of what you are saying theres a good chance that Larian cant either. But attacking others (not you, the people who I was commenting on) because youre asked to clarify is weird in the sense of what these message boards are about.

I didn't know about...
...as I haven't gotten that far, but I never said that Larian simply copy-pasted the backstories.
When I mentioned backstories, I even said "backstory elements", and if I hadn't, that should've still been obvious, considering that I had placed party member names on the list right before personalities.


I watched about seven minutes of the Baldur's Gate retrospective video, but I can't sit through an hour of someone talking about Baldur's Gate or anything else.
Anyway, I didn't hear anything about Baldur's Gate being real-time with pause because of Interplay wanting BioWare to make a Diablo clone.
Rather, what I heard was that BioWare was creating "Battleground Infinity", which was going to be like an MMO, but when Interplay acquired the license for Dungeons & Dragons, BioWare ended up making the game singleplayer, adding the AD&D 2e rules to the combat, setting the game in the Forgotten Realms and changing its name to "Baldur's Gate".

I mean I cannot really discuss the video with you if you are not willing to watch it (though I understand if you are not a fan of the longer video essay format).

Thanks for these video. It looks very interresting.
I really love the firsts lines of the third video : new RPGs = grind loots + skill trees + a lot of incoherence in the story.

I don't have much time now but I'll watch them.

It's not exactly that I'm not willing to watch it.
I just have a difficult time watching long videos.

I get that. I usually watch these long-winded video essays when I am cooking or doing house chores, as background noise.

I will look into the channel later, but what Bioware initially might/might have not intended is rather irrelevant - as it is not what they ended up doing. Ideas and goals in game development get changed and discarted all the time. Mass Effect1 would be a far different title if it was what was originally intended. When new devs tried to immitate unreasonable ambition of OG Mass Effect1 idea, the result was mediocare Andromeda. Baldur's Gates were made and had a big impact, gathered a fanbase, and left a legacy. One would hope if anyones has guts to made a sequel they would try to respect that legacy, even if it wouldn't in 100% fulfill fan's unreasonable expectations (like new Deus Ex games).

Larian has no interest in making a BG game. It's that simple. They already did their RPG, and it was successful and they continue to expand on that. One can point to many things that are different in BG3, and while one can find excuses, at the core it is this: Larian doesn't want to make a game like that and WotC don't want them to either. Luckily for me, BG3 has so little to do with BG1&2 I don't even see them as same series by that point. I am somewhat teriffied now of old characters like Minsc or Jaheira appearing. The less BG3 reminds me of the old games, the better.

Ah, I see.
That might make it easier to watch.


Exactly.
Also, it seems like Wizards of the Coast doesn't even care really.
Neverwinter is an MMORPG.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is very subpar and quite different from Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance I&II.
Baldur's Gate III is also different, but at least it's far more likely that it will turn out to be a good or great game.


I might be wrong, but I think that...

I see the problems with D:OS2, too, thats why I'm "on / off" vocal about the severe QoL issues the divinity engine has: shopping, inventory management, looting. All three of them are horribly implemented and require intense micromanagement which doesn't add anything to the game.

Shuffling inventories doesn't add anything to the game.

And the "endgame" of D:OS2 was a joke, I even agree with that - the last fight was among the easiest in the game, I finished D:OS2 4 or 5 times and even on the first attempt it was, mostly, a more "facerolling" experience than anything else, this didn't change with tactician dificulty level.

The worst part of it was the two puzzles, which were really only annoying and also not contributing anything meaningful.

So, there is that.

But - the spirit of what makes Larian game a Larian game is that rich world, the rich storytelling and characters, the ability to play WITH the environment and the 3D world.

And I see the greatest divergence here - the "Larian formula" is very friendly and compatible with modern expectations when it comes to a video game. Even EA BG3 is already a wonderful example of that, the world is full of chances, of things to exploit for tactical, but also stragetical, purposes, players really have agency here.

What the hardcore D&D cult people forget:

AI is not there yet to reinstate player agency after a series of failed story related dice rolls - surely you can go the "Solasta" route, where the story is linear and decisions don't matter eventually (which is a cheap implementation, a cop out, honestly speaking, I will say more about my impressions about Solasta a few sentences below), but it's, looking at an RPG as a whole, by far not as satisfying as what one can do in games which abide to that "Larian formula" (a term I just invented, but I think it describes D:OS2 and BG3 well).

So, regarding Solasta:

I don't see Solasta as a proper RPG game, quite frankly. To me it's more like "playing chess with D&D rules", or a "D&D 5e combat simulator", instead of a fully fleshed out story driven game. I don't care in the slightest what the story of Solasta is about, this died the very moment I read that "your decisions don't matter, there is only one path through the game anyway" for me, so I use it to get a kick of "yes, lets slay some baddies of irrelevant agency and origin with my custom 4 PC party", nothing else.

Am I harsh?

Yes.

But is that necessary?

I most certainly think so. The D&D people get all their races, lore, dice, stats, skills, spells, etc..., this needs to suffice, and I'm dead serious about that. The video game people with attachment to modern role playing, and this is the same crowd that D:OS2, with all it's apparent limitations and weakness, spoke to extensively, want that "super high end game master (or was it "dungeon master"?)" which the "Larian formula" provides.

That guy on the table that tells a AAA story (and yes, the stories I have seen so far ARE AAA material) and allows for sneaking into combat, abusing environmental circumstances, creative use of whats available in the location where a fight takes place.

Also, because I read this here as well:

No, the stories and origins are NOT the same as what we got in D:OS2. We will forever - FOREVER - have to live with tropes and archetypes, yes. Wyll and Ifan Ben Mezd share the same archetype, so do Astarion and Sebille (to some extent, the backstories are different enough in both cases, mind you), but there is only so much one can do within the confinements of "swords, shields, fireballs and healing spells" anyway.

It's time to accept that this is October 2021, not September 2000 (when BG2 was released).

This is super spoiler territory so please don't read it if you are sensitive about that

Is Solasta a Baldur's Gate game, then? How about the Icewind Dale games, are they Baldur's Gate too? Planescape Tormet?

Obviously these are ridiculous questions to ask, but the point I'm hoping to make is that it takes a little bit more than just being a D&D game with a fancy title to actually capture that feeling of Baldur's Gate.

And of course we can analyse the actual gameplay in details to try and understand in detail what Baldur's Gate was back then and how Larian have interpreted it. But I'm not sure we've quite got the toolkit to do it correctly. Personally, I do work with software development, but I'm not a game developer. We could probably iteratively grind our way through it an eventually get a proper analysis put together. The wildly different backgrounds and skillsets and worldviews of people on the forum would be an advantage, but it would require a level of trust and goodwill that frankly doesn't appear to exist at the moment.

That is pretty cool. But shouldn't it be
?

I really don't understand the comparison with Solasta.
There's something between "a faithfull adaptation of D&D with a linear story" and "the Larian formula with story permutations".

Saying that BG3 does not look A LOT like DoS is lying or being dishonnest.
Gameplay mechanics, story telling, map design, companions plot, animations, UI,...

DoS improve the genre a lot if we're talking about several gameplay mechanics but it's far from being perfect for players that are looking for a good, immersive and coherent story/experience.

TW3 shows us than players still like very immersive games in 2021 (well, ok it wasn't release in 2021).
The Larian formula is anti immersive by nature.

So are there mindflayers, dice, Drow, +1 items, etc... in D:OS1 or D:OS2?

I really have a hard time seeing how BG3 is NOT D&D. It's all there.

I told u guys I cannot recall proper spelling of the guy but u know whom I am referring to.

I haven't say that BG3 doesn't look like D&D for some things. I said it looks like DoS for many things.

Not sure I read a lot of people complaning that BG3 doesn't look like D&D enough except for a few mechanics (rest, reactions, highground,...)

But I saw many people complaning because it does not look like an improved BG game at all.

Right.


Definitely.


Obviously, but seeing characters with similar tropes and archetypes in the next game that a developer makes is weird.


I'm not sure about that.

I have a different impression here.

I brought up that "heavy metal scene" example already a few days ago. When, in late 90s, more and more metal bands started to introduce keyboards to their lineups (even extreme metal bands did that), there was a similar outcry, because "purity" and "it's is not teh metalz aNyMoRe!!11".

Similar situation here, it's like a deja vu.

I would wholeheartedly agree with the D&D people if something was taken away from them, but it clearly is not. All that BG3 does over BG2 is to make it BETTER an experience, offer more options, offer more player agency and make it a more cinematic experience.

For me this whole discussion is far too reminiscent of "who is TRVE METAL" and "whimps and losers, leave the hall" (to reference Manowar).

Come on, we all know that this will be an amazing game, we will get tons of dice to roll and lots of lore, even good old Volothamp Geddarm is with us here, like back in the good old days.

And with D:OS2 (much more so than D:OS1) being a groundbreaking game, I welcome that all the good things that were learned are put into action here as well.

No 500 square kilometers of necrofire was good choice, of course (blackpits... you know what I'm talking about).

Besides that, I will not stop being vocal about the micromanagement issues Larian games sadly still have to a great extent, and I assess that, at some point, Larian will fix that, too. If not in this game, then in a later one, but I'd prefer BG3 to already have a state of the art inventory / shopping / loot system in place which doesn't act as handbrake on the flow of the game.

And, to mention endgame once again: people were VERY vocal on all channels about the endgame of D:OS2 in the past (and still are). I think that this time it will be different. We can even already extrapolate a bit that it will be because the prologue area of BG3 is already a big improvement over the Merryweather, while still keeping the good things (exploitable, rich starting area environment and stuff) in place. What we could deduct from that is that also endgame will be much improved.

Lets have a little faith and never stop contributing our voices.

And thats what I don't see here - even the characters which are MOST similar to anything even remotely resembling "counterparts" in D:OS2 are very different from them.


We have seen, at most, like (my best guess) 20% of the full game. With all the permutations and suprises yet to come I'd even say that this is quite a high estimation.

I don't think that we have seen more than 20% about our companions, yet.

I'm not sure why you keep mentioning Dungeons & Dragons.
The people who want an adaptation of seem to be mostly happy with Baldur's Gate III.
It's the Baldur's Gate fans who are saying that Baldur's Gate III isn't a true Baldur's Gate game, and that it's basically Divinity: Original Sin III.

As for your music analogy...
This is like if a band changed members and started playing a different subgenre of music (because that's what the new band members are used to playing), added more instruments from the main genre, but kept the same themes of the original band for the lyrics.
The fans of the original band would probably say that it's no longer the same band but a variation of the band that the new members came from.
Whether the fans of the original band or the fans of the main genre like the new band would be up in the air, but it doesn't make much sense for the new band members to continue calling their band the name of the original band, since they're not even in the same subgenre as the original band.

Hmm. So, what's the difference between "drag to group" and "draw a square around party members to group select"? Where you have to click with the mouse? How is it much different from having to select a single character, and then click a button to make the party stay where they are?

Why even mention anything beyond Act 1? Did you read something that said we'd be getting more than that in EA? I certainly never did. Can you provide some links to that, before I start a bonfire, and start sharpening my pitchfork? Most of us weren't expecting more than what we were promised on the store page when we bought in to the EA. What was it that you were expecting?

CDPR released CP 2077 as a complete game, not an Early Access alpha, although it seems like that may be what we got, by and large. This, however, came with a clear warning that if you were expecting a polished experience, you should skip it until release. So being surprised that we're not getting any information about anything past Act 1 is unsurprising. In fact, it's what most of us were expecting. I say "most of us" because it's becoming increasingly clear that not everyone understood that. Just reading this post leaves me believing that you expected more than what was offered, and it's not leaving me with a poor impression of Larian, or the game...

Knowing that WotC et al have a very hands on approach to handling licenses in this IP, I'm not concerned about "rules not being sorted". If it's in game, the "higher ups" approved it, for better or worse. I mean, it's not like there was a lawsuit filed against them for breach of contract or anything by the original creators of the Dragon Lance series. Oh, wait, there was one, because of their "hands on" approach.

So I'm not all that fussed, at this stage in development. I have walked away from the EA, but it's got a lot more to do with not wanting to be burnt out on the game when it actually releases, than disappointment at getting an Alpha version of the game to play around with while bug hunting. As I said, that's exactly what it was implied to be on the various store pages, expecting it to be anything else would be my problem, not a problem with the game.

So was ME or DA just a DoS clone too? They all have companion plots. I mean, not to set too fine a point on it, but one of the Comp Plots in DA 2 set up most of the whole scenario for DA Inquisition. Ignoring the Comp Plots in ME 2 can have a drastic effect on the ending. But let's keep it BG? Were Khalid and Jaheira generic NPCs, or did they have some story lines tied to them? How about Imoen? DoS 2 was a great game, but it hardly reinvented the wheel. But pointing to "companion plots, so DoS3" isn't even close to accurate, is it?

Better is very subjective... But I totally agree that BG3 is going to be an amazing game.

I also agree that DoS add groundbreaking things to the genre and I'm glad some of them are in BG3. TBH I think it should be in any games even if I don't always like "how" it works in BG3.
To give an exemple I think that every modern RPG should have some kind of surface effects and items you can interract with... But I hate that every single arrows create a surface and that rocks are flamable in Larian's formula.

I also like that we have a lot of tools to play with but I hate when it's at the expense of the coherence of the game.
Diping is a great exemple because it could be a cool tool... but it's done as a ridiculous one. Shove is also something great but it also look ridiculous both from a visual and mechanical point of view.
Same about throw, about crates and barrels you can pick in your bags, about cow that can climb ladders,...

There are others things that are imported from DoS...
Animations or visual effects that often does not suit the setting, the map design that create stupid questions about the story, the main "character" that is an empty box, the origin characters that have a specific story from the beginning to the end (>< the MC), the lack of day/night cycle, the control scheme, the feeling of a frozen world, the cheesy combat mechanics,...

These core things of DoS were not so good but they were imported in BG3 too and that's exactly what the (moderate) "frustrated BG1/2 old fans" including myself are complaining about.
No one can deny that DoS 1 and 2 are great modern games but we should not forget that BG1 and BG2 are not unanimously considered as legends without reasons.

I guess Larian does not try to think about it before doing BG3. And that makes me really sad because the game will not enter the pantheon of games that revolutionized RPGs as DoS1/2 and BG1/2 did before them by simply improving "their formula" with cinematics, voice acting and a few UI tweaks.
But it's too late for core design decisions so we'll deal with it.


That's absolutely not what I wrote. And I absolutely didn't wrote anything like "DoS3". You won't find something like this is my posts.
My idea was not the single line you're talking about.

TBH I was not really accurate writing "plot". I was more thinking about the fact that everyone have the same problem, the same introduction to the story, the same goal, the same reason to follow the "MC" and so on.

How else are you going to get this cast of characters to be motivated to work together? All of us start in the same place, after all. The only thing that separates us is where we land when the ship crashes. But the plot forces us together because we're all in the same boat, metaphorically, since we all have a new little friend in our heads. I'd be more outraged about that, but since it ties into the main story, I'm not sure why I should be?

The cast of character is not really the problem here. It's more about the origin system and how the multiplayer mode works imo.
The fact that everyone has the same main story, the same problem, the same introduction, the same goal is very specific to Larian games.

A druid could become a companion because he wants to learn more about the strange things he noticed right next to his grove.
A bard could become a companion because he wants to reach Baldur's Gate after being captured by goblins in the middle of nowhere.
A fighter could become a companion because you decide to help him finding a powerfull artefact in the underdark if he gives you half the reward.

You know... characters that are living in the world and have their own motivations, different goal, different introduction to the story you're writing and different reasons to eventually follow you.
Of course it does not exclude that "some" other companion(s) have a tadpole in the head.

Just like in DoS the origin characters will be more deep than the main character because the main character is just an empty box with the "common" story of everyone.

This would preclude many of the game features and story options, I think.

I don't know anything about how this will unfold eventually, but I can imagine that those with the special tadpole 3.0 (1.0 is the one that turns people into bread and butter mindflayers, 2.0 turns them into Absolute cultists, 3.0 makes them BG3 player characters and companions) will eventually have to fulfill a mission of extraordinaire importance.

Also we have things like "resurrect" and "Illithid spells" and "psionic transfer of data between brains", all of this would be gone if the average Joe could join the party.

No, no, it's good as it is, but I start to see your point.

Not even a hardcore BG fan, but comparing BG2, the Baldur's Gate everyone thinks about when they think Baldur's Gate, one of the best RPGs ever made and a game that set the foundations for all CRPGs onwards, to the glorified demo of a Dragon Age-esque game, and saying the latter provides a better Baldur's Gate experience, is just plain silly.

Alot of naysaying happend here rather then reply to it all il reply to 1 seeing as you guys seem to share the same (kind of) complaints..

-Diping: A nice concept. Say you have a torch but need to light it, dipping it in an excisting fire source could be a nice way to go about it. Agree that it shouldnt work for everthing. Weapons yfor example they could change that you need to coat them with grease or something first before you can put your weapon attacks alight. If they manage to change that, dipping is fine. It allows the PC to interact with the enviroment in numerous ways and could be used for RP and exploration problems as well.

-Shove: A 5E DND rule. You can do that by the rules inplace of one of your melee attacks. We can argue whatever or not you feel its implemented in a way thats visually appealing but its not something of their own make.

-Throw: See my point about shove.

-Crates and barrels: lol. Ive had weirder things in my inventory in bg1 and bg2.

-Cow can climb ladders: DnD 5E rules. Everything can climb, every feet that you climb justs costs 2 feet of your movement. Agree that its er.....interesting to see a cow do that. But by the rules every creature can do so, you dont need a climbing speed for that.

-Animations and visual effects: They are imported because theyre tied to their engine. What do you expect? For them to completly rework it so it looks differently? Considering people are already complaining that its taking them to long, asking them to change the visuals would just delay it even further....

-Map design: Thats Larian's design there. Honestly im not for or against the idea of having 1 map vs having 5 smaller ones that combined form the same map. They could break it up but honestly, whats the point? What would you gain?

-Main character beeing an empty box: Is.....Is this your first RPG or something? Thats a thing developers do so players can fill in their own characters backstory.

-Origin characters having their own backstory: welcome to every RPG companion, ever.

-Lack of day/night cycle: design choice I suppose. That said, I dont see its inclusion beeing needed to provide us a good BG title. It was in bg1 and bg2 but only ever came up sparringly. Mostly when you were doing 'naughty' things like stealing. With the vampires in BG2 it was also a thing for...obvious reasons. That said, we dont know whatever or not it will be added later or not. My guess is no, but quite frankly; I give very little about this point myself.

-Control scheme: No clue what you mean here. Can you elaborate?

-Feeling of a frozen world: welcome to gaming where 99.99999999% of the time the worlds is essentially frozen and only anything changes when the PC comes along. That said, in DOS2 things happend in the world if the player dident hurry as well. So considering they did it in previous titles I dont think its unlikely that they wont do so again with BG3.

-Cheesy combat mechanics: Can you elaborate on what you mean with this?

Im not sure what you mean with this bit exactly either. Could you elaborate?

Honestly none of us know what thinking/planning went on before doing bg3. I sincerely doubt they pitchedf the idea to WoTC and only then started to think about how to implement things. Thats obviously not how it went. Assuming that it wont be a great game like DOS1 and DOS2, BG1 and BG2 seems abit melodramatic to me as well. Its still in development after all and each major patch adds and changes alot.

Dipping : grease would be better... but it would also be better if the whole weapon was not on fire (including your hands, your clothes and so on...)
Shove : is an action in DnD, not in BG3. And you don't shove so easily and so far in DnD.
Throw : is not a specific action in DnD. Not sure you tried it but what you can do in BG3 is ridiculous (at least, was... I did not try in patch 5)
Crates : wierd things in BG1/2 certainly... but not crates and barrels. Ofc a bag full of armor is not really "realistic"... a bag full of crates and barrels is even less.
Climbing : Climbing a ladder in the FR has the same prerequisites as in our world : hands and fingers.
Animation and visual effetcs : I expected something that suit better to the setting. Hulk is not a part of the FR. Jumping create an unecessary and unapprorpiate shockwave. Another exemple is how some characters are falling asleep - looks like a cartoon.
Map design : the story sometimes feels inconsistent - the most common exemple being the goblins not finding the grove. The exploration is also very limited even if some things are great (lots of secret). The world is not coherent (a "forest" with 6 trees, a "swamp" that is not bigger than my garden, hostiles harpies living right next to the druid grove,...)
Main character : the main character in BG3 have the same problem, the same introduction, the same goal, the exact same motivations than any companions. That's not at all how it works in other games.
Control scheme : the chain system. Classic control works better both on console and computer.
Feeling of a frozen world : no, I don't have the feeling that everything is waiting for me in other games. In BG3 even the night is just waiting for me to click on a button.
Cheesy combats mechanics : things that create a good way of playing and a bad way of playing, leading to repetitive tactical combats. Highground, hiding to ambush,OP shove, OP diping, OP throw,... You can play without it but it's really balanced arround some of these things (especially highground and hide/ambush all the time)

I mean that Larian include all the good of DoS1/2 but they also include the things that were criticized in these games, didn't include what was already lacking and/or things that were okay in Rivellon but that looks wierd in a universe everyone have read books about for years (and play video games or even watch films...). We all have a pretty clear vision of how things work in the FR and just like on the Middle Earth cow doesn't climb ladders - and any other exemples - on the FR whatever you may say.

I did not wrote "good game" : my first sentence in this message is that BG3 is going to be an awesome game.
I wrote "a game that revolutionized RPGs as DoS and BG did before".

IMO they had the opportunity to combine what was great in those two games to create a perfect 2022/2023 party based RPG but they "just" choose to improve their formula and adapt it to DnD.
BG3 will probably be the best "Larian experience". With such an IP I was waiting for more but ofc, I'll deal with it.

Chubblot’s latest YouTube vid says they’ve moved attacks out of the left hand panel – but he didn’t say what was in there instead. Maybe they are making room for Dodge and Ready… I’d be curious to see what else has changed other than adding the Sorcerer. I’m actually surprised we don’t know more already. They may have fixed a bunch of stuff we’re still complaining about.

The spelling isn't the issue, the gender is.

Space. The final frontier. These are the voy... Wait, sorry, got sidetracked.

Anyway, the point is space. Right now, the gobbo camp is literally just a football field away from the "secret" druid grove and in between them are a dead village that gobbos have taken over. Take the wrong exit and you end up in a swamp that somehow manages to exist in the same climate as the rather dry village or the reasonably vibrant forest right next to the village that somehow hasn't grown into the village despite nobody holding it back for a very long time.

If Larian had used multiple maps then these things could exist independent from one another rather than physically right next to one another. And the respective maps could then have a bit more room in them as well. Imagine if Baldur's Gate 2 had placed Trademeet, Umar Hills, the Shade Temple, De'Arnise Keep, and the Exit from Underdark map in pretty much the same place, right on top of each other. That wouldn't have been all that immersive, would it? Same problem we're seeing in Act 1, really.

Since Larian is the developer, the odds of Baldur's Gate III not turning out well are low, but I doubt that Wizards of the Coast will have much to do with how it turns out.
I mean, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance was probably approved by them as well, right?
If so, I'm not sure how that happened since it seems to be quite awful.

The reviews mention poor AI, unimpressive combat and a lack of enemy variety among other issues, and if Wizards of the Coast has a very hands-on approach with Dungeons & Dragons, I'd think that they'd have done something about the game's development after seeing those problems.

Likewise, Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale also seems to be awful enough that it doesn't make sense for them to have let it release in that state.

Grease is an AOE spell. You cant target it on just a weapon. IIRc some weapon oils excist in the game though that give you temporary buff so I cant see why you could grease up your weapon and set it alight for an ingame hour or so.

PHHB page 195. You can knock an opponent prone or 5 feet away from you. There are feats in the game that allow you to push in other ways but yeah, feats. Dont know how far you can push people in BG3 though but the last time I did it someone only moved a very tiny bit. Granted when EA came out you could toss people off roofs very easily but that hasent been like that for a while now AFAIK.

Throwing something counts as a ranged attack. Also PHB page 195. Dont know what you think is so ridiculous about it though? I havent been throwing stuff around myself, have I been missing out or something?

Consider I have infact, had barrels and crates in my iventory this point is kinda moot.... Yesterday I was carrying 3 bodies around in 1 person in his 'inventory' so id say BG1 and BG2 still have BG3 beat on this one. Specially when you consider the amount of metric tonnes that you can fit inside a bag of holding..... Ive dropped entire armories in there lol. BG3 has got nothing on that!

No infact, it does not. There are no rules for that. Climbing up 1 feet requires 2 feet of movement, unless you have a climbing speed in which case you use that. PHB page 182. Show me where it says you need hands for that. Bears dont got hands either but got a climbing speed for example. Have you ever seen goats on very steep hillsides/mountains? They can more freely there then we can and they dont got hands and fingers either. Is it abit silly to see a cow climb? Well yeah. But mechanicly theres nothing stopping any creature from climbing other then the DM going 'uh. No. Thats stupid' Another fun real life example is a snake. No hands on that bad boy. Heck, it even doesent have feet! Yet they move up vertical surfaces just fine...

Dont see how the hulk favours in this but ok. The shockwave is more to portray the fact that you landed then anything else id say. Its a little exegerrated, I agree on that. But thats the style they went with. About the falling asleep part. Might wanna replay BG1 and BG2 and see how characters fall down. Exactly the same manner.....

With a squashed map thats bound the happen. Not to say that the same dident happen in BG1 or BG2 btw. You often run into people who have a problem thats like 10 feet away from them. Or have to solve 'riddles' that are incredibly easy to solve. Like the murders in the bridge district in bg2. Seriously if you are even half competent you will snooze your way through that quest but the city guard cant? If we start looking for realisme in these games we will find most of them lacking in alot of areas... With this point I often see other people bring in Fallout new vegas as a simular comparison. And my counter argument is: would you want to slog to the real life sized mojave as the map rather then the ingame one? Dont know about you but I dont got in real life days to waste walking from location to location without running into something. These gameworlds ARE compressed, but thats because they need to be. Noone would find any enjoyment out of a real life sized map either. Then wed complain that wed have to travel for hours before finding things. They have to find a middle ground between the 2, and thats what we got at the moment.

They have the same problems, goals and movitations as your companions. Thats right. Because that motivation is survival. Its maybe different from other games because you arent implanted with a tickign time bomb in other games... Aside from that, your character has whatever goals, motivations etc etc that you set for it. We just only got act 1 to play off for the time beeing so we never really reach a point where we can move past the inmediate danger of our situation.

Oh thats what you meant with control scheme? The chain system! Well I agree with that tbh. Although the chain system gives some freedom to move your party and 1 person seperatly, you could also do that with the old system. Unchaining and rechaining is abit clunky which is my biggest complaint about it. But yeah thats indeed a left over from DOS. Dont know if they will keep it but personally hope they dont. But that said, that by itself wouldnt make me move away from the game either xD

I honestly have that feeling in the vast majority of games. Maybe we play different games then? I dont know *shrug*

Having the high ground is a very advantageous thing though. Wars have been won in our history because 1 side got the high ground and used it to their advantage. That said, I agree its abit much atm. Maybe just giving a flat bonus (or your opponent a penalty because the high ground gives you cover) would be enough. Flat out giving advantage is way OP. Hiding to ambush. Im a DM for a pnp group. My players ALWAYS try to get an ambush. Because a round of suprise combat is outright DEVASTATING. The inventive things they try to get it are quite hilarious and if theyre smart about it il reward them with suprise. But holy shit does it make the encounters significantly easier for them... If youre doing the same thing then grats: youre using tactics.

Youre playing semantics. I replied to the quote and in there you stated 'not enter the pantheon of games that revolutionized RPGs as DoS1/2 and BG1/2 did before them' which implies that it wouldnt be a good game. Or at least not of the same ballpark. Which honestly we dont know if it will, or will not be. We dont have the finished product yet and we dont know during what timeframe it will be released exactly. Maybe when it releases it will infact move the industry forward. Or maybe it wont.

Surely you're not going to argue that there's no difference between Edguy and Sepultura. And if someone expected Sepultura but instead got Edguy then that might not be entirely satisfying. Both are music, obviously, but they just don't really sound the same. That doesn't make one better than the other and thinking in those terms is hardly the point. What is the point is that if you expect something on the deathy side of thrash and what you get is happy disco metal, it feels a bit like buying a chocolate bar and getting a banana.

And while it really doesn't matter much if a band is metal or not in terms of whether a band is worth listening to, I reckon that at least vaguely having a feel for the difference between what is typical rock and what is typical metal doesn't hurt. I don't mind Rammstein or AC-DC, but I do get a little miffed if I express a fondness of old heavy metal and someone says "Oh, you like Nickelback too?!?"...

Getting this back on track, you could argue that BG3 does everything BG2 does but better, but that's like arguing that St Anger does everything the old albums did better because the sound quality was better. And it may be, but I still miss guitar solos and drums that don't sound like plastic buckets. Also, I seem to recall a fair bit of repetition in the composition that eventually got a bit frustrating, didn't it? Some of the ideas weren't bad and the songs could have ended up pretty decent, possibly, but what they released just wasn't the Metallica people expected.

So really getting back on track, in order to understand why some of us old people aren't really feeling it, I think we have to look a bit deeper and look at how certain things were used in the old games before deciding that BG3 is actually just BG2 with added awesome. And that then takes us all the way back to the starting point of this topic, there just aren't enough people playing the game at the moment that the pool of old timers willing to provide feedback despite the grief they'll get for it is going to be all that high.

I'm sure Metallica played St Anger for their friends and the record company, and I'm sure they all said "oh yeah, this is awesome, especially the plastic buckets!". That's the risk of not getting a wide enough audience for feedback.

It's mechanically implsausible, it would weaken the metal that the sword is made of and certainly not do great things for your edge, and do you really want brightly burning fire on a blade that isn't that far from your eyes? You're probably only making it harder for yourself to see what's going on. Further, if the blade is aflame than aren't you cauterizing the wounds you're making? Why would you even want to do that?

What he meant is that shove is an action, not a bonus action. And that's what PHP says too.

As for distance, try shoving someone off a ledge from up high. I've seen the Giths take some amazing flights because they seem to keep whatever horizontal movement speed they had when coming off the ledge all the way down and then do a skidmark landing. One of the smugglers went from around the barrel in the back end of their cave to all the way out near the side at the vertical bottom. And survived it too. Mr Hobgobbo did his special attack on Shadow up on the rafters right next to the ladder and she ended up at the far end of the room.

You don't seem to be able to miss with throw potions and some of the surface effect from some of them is a bit much.

Those bags of holding contain a pocket dimension so anything in them isn't really in them. The bag just contains the gate to said dimension, not the actual stuff inside the pocket dimension. And I'm not sure when you get a chance to carry 3 bodies unless you're doing things in a weird order. There's that sick guy you need to give to the harpers, there's the bones of that priestess from the shade temple, and are there more than that?

Obviously the bulk of how much one can carry can feel over the top, but you only have so many slots and the weight limits were standard D&D, as I recall. In BG3 you have infinite slots. And barrels are probably still a bit underweighted. Come to think of it, however, I do not recall quests in BG1 and 2 that involved hauling crates and barrels around.

Climbing a ladder specifically. Not just climbing. Obviously there's a difference between climging regular terrain and climbing up something that is very hard to use without fingers. You would also not expect bears and goats and whatnot to climb up ropes or vines.

Please don't even begin to claim that De'Arnise Keep and Trademeet are located right next to each other, with Umar Hills squeezed into a corner.

What we've got at the moment is the most ridiculously compressed map that Larian could manage to create. It isn't a happy medium, it's an extreme that laughs at any notion of immersion. Here's a forest with a dozen trees!! Here is a druid grove right next to this colony of sirens! Here's an actual swamp that manages to be swampy despite clearly being in the same climate as the previously mentioned forest that isn't swampy at all.

And of course it becomes ridiculous when you get to the grove fight and the mercs are all out of breath from having run the what, 150 meters or so from the village? "What, you led them HERE??!", the tiefling dude asks. Well, couldn't really lead them anywhere else given the layout, could they?

If you're DM then I'm guessing you're not just throwing blind kobols with tinitus after your group of players, though. And one would expect to have to do different things to ambush different enemies. And if the enemies are intelligent, you wouldn't expect them to literally be at their wit's end because you're playing honest to god peek-a-boo with your stealth-capable character.

Ragnarok get out of this body !

Dipping : you said "coating weapons with grease". This is also what I was talking about in my answer.
Shove : is a bonus action in BG3. 5 feets in DnD, not more. With coherent checks.
Throw : just try it, especially with ennemies.
Crates : 3 bodies ? Not sure there are 3 bodies to carry in BG1. Anyway the inventory is limited in the old games AND a body is very very heavy. Carrying common crates and barrels is not in BG3. On top of that, carrying a body or very heavy items on our hands rather than in our inventory was complicated in 1998. In 2022 this is something that exist in most games. To make it a bit more coherent, this is in exemple something they could have done (with eventually consequences on our speed movement, stealth checks and NPCs reactions).
Climbing : I was talking about the FR, not DnD. But even in DnD most DM would probably assume that a cow climbing a ladder is stupid.
Sleep : no, the animation is not the same in BG1/2.
Map design : I don't asked for a full open world but this "half open world" is incoherent as hell from a story / world perspective.
Main character : Larian's design decision. Creating his own "background" doesn't exclude to have a proper role, proper motivations and a proper influence on the story. Same about the companions, like in most other games.
Cheesy combats : tactics is good when you have to do different things against different opponent. If hiding/ambush and going higher always makes you win it's not tacticaly interresting anymore whatever the difficulty level.

And no, not good and not legendary is not the same.
TW3 IMO is a legendary game even if I personnaly don't love it as much as most people. Wasteland 2 is an excelent game I really LOVE but not a legendary one.

Well said, exactly my thoughts on the current state of the game.
Yea people can nit pick this rule and that rule, but doesnt change the fact that you said in the end. They had the opportunity to combine what was great with the prior games to create a perfect modern party based RPG but just choose to improve their Larian formula. Some people will love this, many will dislike it.

You likening criticism as motivated purely by some sense of regressive conservativism is a gross overgeneralization. Nor does MOAR mean BETTA. You use the word PLAYER AGENCY as a mantra for something purely positive when it's clearly not that simple. In fact, player agency can and oftentimes does hurt other aspects of the game. Particularly immersion and balance that many value higher than extra choices that often are redundant.

Maximuus touched on some of this, but allow me to rehash some of these mechanics:

DIP mechanic: A redundant system that promotes objectively poor and repetitive gameplay, is unbalanced and contributes to making an already overly complex game, harder to get into. D&D already has a plethora of balanced and immersive ways to achieve similar effects from cantrips, spells, coating with alchemical fire or poison, etc. But in ALL these cases; are finite resources to be managed and not basically freebie largely benefitting certain melee classes. A dual-wielding fighter with extra attacks, action surge, perhaps hastened benefit infinitely more from this mechanic than a warlock for instance. The player's OCD level/patience is made the biggest balancing factor in dipping, similar to how the now fortunately removed flanking/backstab advantage functioned. The fact this implementation is downright anti-immersive for obvious reasons adds insult to injury. The enemy AI does not exploit this despite it being a universal mundane mechanic, which is another negative. In short; the negatives of this Larianism FAR outweigh the positive. Objectively so. It's TRASH tier game design in my honest opinion.

PICKPOCKET mechanic: A legal exploit mechanic that adds player agency. When you know what to do; pickpocketing is completely risk-free and the quickest way to near infinite loot and money. It completely obliterates the risk vs. reward mechanic of the game besides the economy. It incentivizes anti-roleplaying or roleplaying kleptomaniacs because this again is a near endless resource without balance. It also incentivizes extreme hoarding which is also boring and unimmersive for actual role-players of a roleplaying game, cause looting everything is the only other way to afford buying (some of) the merchants loot. Roleplay a consistently heroic character like the majority tend to prefer, and you lose out.

RESTING mechanic: Rest whenever, wherever adds player agency. And shatters any pretense of balance in a game where the balance is built around strict adherence to said mechanic. Besides causing perhaps the grossest narrative dissonance in any roleplaying game ever; by being under the impression you're in a desperate race against time, but time obviously not mattering to the point of it not existing. The camp supply system that removed the anti-immersive heal food items (that also promoted player agency while ruining class balance and immersion), is a step in the right direction - but it's currently not balanced and largely illusory.

BARRELMANCY mechanic: I think you get the gist of this now. Added player agency seldom come without some hefty negatives in Larian's game design.

I have no doubt BG3 will be truly OUTSTANDING in MANY ways; I believe that is why many ardent critics still linger about. However, Larian has doubled down on many problematic game design choices that made me leave DOS2 uncompleted. A significant majority of players fail to complete their games, and being drowned in options is one issue that contribute towards this end. Excessive loot focus (partially at the cost of player build focus) & inventory micro-management is another biggie. D&D is not really a loot focused game, but BG3 like DOS2 most certainly is.

Well, at least barrelmancy is less prevalent than it was. And with some refinement (e.g. less food in the world) the food requirement could at least limit the amount of reststops you can make. Overall patch five was a good step in the right direction. They definitely should keep the crate stacking stuff to be honest, as it allows you to make alternate routes to higher areas (plus it fits with the roleplaying part imo). I never really bothered spending 3 hours stacking all barrels under the sun to cheese my way through encounters personally. I mean... I usually like to play the game as intended. As long as it makes sense for certain barrels to be in a place, I have no issue with it. I mean.... if the Zhentarim want to stack their storeroom in the goblincamp with gunpowder, I am not responsible if they go boom .

I think the only thing I think highground should apply to is probably archery. I don't really see how someone being on high ground would be harder to miss with something like guiding bolt,myself. Or if they wish to keep it applicable on spells lessen the advantage/disadvantage bonus/malus that applies to it. Patch 5 lessened guiding bolt missing to some degree but still. I think highground is more of a bow thing (being higher up = more range. Maybe they could lessen the advantage to hit a tad also. just boost engagement range or so).

I just kind of want to know what patch 6 will change under the hood. I hope they finally seperate scroll learning for wizard (no more cleric spells please), although I am not counting on that until they have made more of the spellcasting schools. As for the rest.. I am pretty sure within one week of release we will see: Game finished in 20 minutes or something along those lines. As speedrunning is somehow seen as proof of short game by some, lol.

it's funny you bring that up because I use that same argument in the opposite direction. I understand that things change and especially culturally I also want things to change. That being said, if I want to listen to some 80's heavy metal or early 90's black metal, that's just what i''ll do, I don't need today's bands to "re-create" those already existing records. On the other hand, there is only so much a certain genre can be 'stretched' before it is more another (new or different) genre than that which it claims to represent or speak to. And this is not about identities or conservatism towards additions, actually the opposite.

Consider BG2 having a D/N cycle, many interchangeable companions, NPC routines, random encounters, etc. etc. one can rightfully ask why these elements - which for some made up the crux of what they liked in the old BG games- are no longer present anymore. So while I admit that people can become a bit too attached and invested in meaningless sectarian genre arguments, yet if you want to play David Bowie covers on an ukulele and call it metal music you would need to convince me why exactly - besides the self-labeling - you consider your ukulele covers of David Bowie metal. Maybe the ukulele has distortion, maybe the vocals are growled, but in any case if something defines itself as related to something already existing instead of portraying itself as something new or different, people will make the comparison and evaluate that claim based on their own perceptions of what makes something 'metal' or 'baldurs gate'.

That's just how it works and this doesn't necessitate labeling people on either side of the debate as reactionaries of sell-outs, rather it could provide a starting point for an interesting discussion on what constitutes the genre.

For me for instance, the absence of day/night was so surprising that if I had to equate it to metal terms, it would be like someone calling Bob Marley and the Wailers a metal band because they have guitars, drum, and bass.

Heheh now I just want to see Lae'zel in her Slayer T, spitting on the ground at the flea market, when Shadowheart shows up in the parking lot blaring Metallica's Black Album from her Trans Am.

Like damn istik, 11 pages to get there, but I'll take it all the same! Sign of the Devil!

Hehe, I would def buy or download a kind of metal-faerun crossover DLC or mod.

Meanwhile Astarion keeps scrounging the vinyl boxes for those sweet Mayhem and Burzum releases, while Gale - wearing a black sabbath shirt - is having a somehow escalating scholarly dispute with Will about the precise role played by Led zeppelin's song 'communication breakdown' on early metal music because Will can't refrain from randomly - and very loudly - interrupt the discussion with his rendition of Manowar's 'Warriors of the world' .
Meanwhile, the rest of the grove is waiting for that new grindcore band "the Ritual' of which the rumor goes that it is fronted by a druid in animal form, apparently bringing a whole new level of authenticity to the genre's trademark pig-like growls and screams. The goblins - who prefer punk rock - in contrast were having an absolute blast with a few local bands performing, although some of them are starting to wonder why the organizers of Absolute-fest put that Volo dude and his boring spoken word stuff on stage.

That's great, and who knows what's coming in the next two chapters? Maybe we get all of this, maybe we get none of it. It's hard to say what's going to happen from the beginning of Chapt 2 to the end of the game. Personally, and I know I'm not alone in this, I prefer my main character to be a blank slate. That allows me a lot of freedom, within the confines of the game, to do what I want with my backstory, instead of being locked into someone else's idea of what my character is, or should be, before the events that trigger the actual game. I have to admit to a bit of surprise every time I see this argument presented though, because everywhere else I play where "RPG" is part of what the game is, MMO or otherwise, "I don't want to play the developer's character" is a very common position. There was a ton of controversy in AC Odyssey about this very thing, stemming from one of the DLCs, and a situation that comes up near the end. So it confuses me to no end when I read the equivalent of "I need Larian to tell me who my character was before the events of the game". There is a solution for those specifically looking for that, play one of the Origin characters. There's nothing snarky intended there either, it's a good option to have, and adds to replay-ability, as one could choose each Origin character for a specific playthrough, as well as rolling their own. The only reason for an Origin character to be "more deep" is because the player didn't put any thought into the character other than gender and class. Especially now, with the backgrounds mattering, to some extent. At the end of the day, even if there was a "generic" storyline for Tav, it would be exactly the same as it is for every Origin character; one story to rule them all.


Except that that's not what was said? It does provide a better experience overall. As to how "BG" it is, it's really hard to say at this point, since we're plinking around in the Alpha of roughly 1/3 of the game. I say this as someone with thousands of hours in BG and Dragon Age. I mean, as a 10,000 foot generic overview, I could say "Skyrim/Oblivion" clone too. I mean, we roll a character, level them up, gain new skills, and abilities and points, etc. Doesn't that mean that all cRPGs are essentially the same game?

Interesting aside, I tend to go to BG 1 when I think BG, and I've got a lot of completions in both. BG 2 built on to what BG did, after all, meaning that BG laid that groundwork. That's highly subjective though, some will like one over the other, and it's the height of hubris to say that "this is the game everyone thinks about when they hear BG." There's no other real way to interpret your claim here other than that though. Especially when I think about BG, and the music that plays when you first find the Friendly Arm Inn springs immediately to mind.

Thanks for this, I needed some entertaining reading this morning.

The nice thing about player agency is that you, as the player, can choose to ignore all of it. I hope that they add toggles for some aspects, such as resting, etc, for MP sessions, but in a SP player environment, none of this breaks my immersion at all, because if I think it's a "broken mechanic", I can opt out of using it, and what Joe Casual is doing in their game has absolutely no bearing on what I'm doing.

Don't like dipping? Don't dip.

Don't like Pickpocketing? Don't do it.

Don't like barrelmancy? Don't use it.

Don't like the way resting is handled, handle it how you prefer.

What do all of these items have in common? They are examples of player agency. Isn't it a great thing? I mean, seriously, what's next? "Players shouldn't be allowed to side with the Goblins"?

Another interesting thought, when's the last time a non-magical melee focused build hit mobs with Eldritch Blast? "But dipping is imbalanced", until level 5? That's when Wizards, and soon Sorcs will have access to Fire Ball. It's more than a bit ironic that you point to one of the more powerful classes to compare how imbalanced dipping is, isn't it? It's even more ironic when I sit here remembering how SSG totally spit on 7 years of character development in DDO because melee were crying about how OP ranged builds are compared to melee builds. That melee character can dip all they want, it won't really matter, once ranged characters come into their truly powerful spells/abilities, and melee builds are struggling to even hit something before it dies, right?

In real life, yeah. In dnd? Youd do it for additional fire damage :P and flames are hot, but not 'cauterizing at a touch' hot.

Ah. Thats fair enough. Not sure why they made the switch but it sent needed id say.

I did try it and aside from people at ledges I really wasent pushing people that far away. Maybe theyre more suspectible when theyre near an edge or something? Il have to try it again some more I guess but last time I checked it was alreayd toned down alot compared to what it was initially.

Like with shoving, il have to give it another go then. You really shouldnt get the benefit if your attack misses or at the very least the projectile should land somewhere else and put down a surface eeffect there.

I know what a bag of holding is. My point was that in bg1 and bg2 you could also carry some funnky things in your inventory. In 5E theres also a limit to the amount (and the size of) things that you can put in your bag of holding but in bg1 and bg2 that dident seem to be the case. I dont know if thats due to the item changing over editions or if it was a game design choice. Also the fact that your inventory was limited was also....off. Fill your inventory with potions or with sets of armors. To the game it doesent matter, theyre both 'full'. Potions take up a fraction of the weight and dimensions of the armor but to the game that dident matter. Im not to sure if limiting the number of inventory slots does anything other then just add restrictions to what you can, and cannot take along with you. Some items like gems, some bits of food, etc take up very little space in actuallity but the game does not differentiate between how big an item is. Each is locked to 1 inventory slot.

Funny you should mention not hauling crates and barrels..... I know siege of dragonspear wasent OG bg1 but it actually has a quest involving sacks of grain xD not exactly the same as a barrel, but in essence the same. A container that holds other products. They weighed like 20lbs each some of my characters were carrying a dozen or so (yay high STR). At the end of the day, does that matter? In bg1 ive had instances where I was carrying multiple carcasses of Ankhegs around to sell to armour smiths. Sometimes find bodies that you need to pick up and deliver somewhere, etc. If you find the story of a literal son (or daughter) of a dead god lugging around the corpses of fantasy ant-lions is less weird then carrying barrels with varying amounts of things in them then uh....we have very different things of what we think is weird, I suppose.

Considering there are no seperate rules for climbing a ladder. No. There is no difference. The only rules that excist that might be valid to mention that there are rules for surfaces where you have little to no grip. And even then, you could still climb it. You just need to pass a (IIRC) Athetlics check to do so.

That aside. Have you seen bears actually climbing trees? Seriously a tree has nothing to hold onto aside from bark and maybe very tiny branches but they practicly fly through those things. What makes you think a bear would see a ladder and go 'welp I dont have opposable thumbs. Guess il stay down here!' and be unable to go up there?

Same story for a snake. They can climb up the side of trees and they dont even have limbs.

Ladders do not have seperate rules adressing them how you can climb them to my knowledge and if they do id love it for you to point me in that direction. But as it stands you just keep moving the goalpost because animals climbing things is weird to you...

Never did. Im saying its a design choice and thats what you get when you work with a squashed map.

It could be that the grove has magic concealing it, that only breaks if you come to close. It could be a meriad of other things, But yeah compressed map is compressed. I get it.

Ive had my players support eachother. 1 of them cast pass without a trance on all of them while they staked out the encounter. Stealth checks of over 30 are kinda hard to spot if the passive perception doesent go past the 15 mark xD but indeed. Different areas require different forms of stealth. Mechanicly a few things are always true though. If light sources are present, try to avoid them. If possible try to move in areas that make little sound and try not to bump into things, etc etc. Once combat has started though stealth, while possible; doesent stay reliable anymore. Even if enemies only know your general location they would come looking for you. And you cant stealth infront of a person if they had direct line of sight to you. That said, dont think thats possible in bg3 either, is it? Few times I tried instantly failed so always assumed it wasent an option to the players. If you can infinetly restealth (like I assume you mean with peek aboo stealth character) then thats indeed something that they needs to be adress. Thats silly.

-I assumed you meant the grease spell, not grease itself. In that case we agree on that then
-Il try throwing and see whats up. Must admit that other then testing the mechanic abit I havent done much with it.
-Youd be amazed by what kind of things you can lug around as questitems in the original bg's. Im replaying bg1 and 2, just completed bg1. So many weird and quirky quests that I forget about. Good stuff. That said yeah inventory was limited but 5 potions held up the same space that 5 suits of armor did. Doesent really hold up to scrutiny as well im afraid... What would you suggest they do about it though? I personally like using backpacks and sacks to avoid clutter and keep simular items with eachother so my inventory doesent bloat that much. Maybe reward that more or something?
-Like I said above, mechanicly each creature can climb. Would you see an actuall cow do it in real life? No. In a game? I doubt it either, but then again considering we have settings where actual gods walk around, magic is a thing and theres planes like the hells and whatnot, it defenitly wouldnt be the strangest thing one could see....
-Sleep animation is basicly the person falling on his back in a very overly dramatic way. Considering the models are small and details are hard to see anyway the best thing they could have gone about it, considering it conveys very well whats happening.
-Not a huge fan of the design choice either. But can see why its beeing done. Honestly adding a 'travel to swamp' or 'travel to ruined village' area prompt wouldnt mechanicly add anything. Other then that you could more easily say that its not all literally next to each other. That said, what would it add? Immersion I suppose and considering immersion is a big part of playing an rpg id be all for it. But maybe its alot of work or they dont want to do it. Who can say?
-Dont know what you mean with the 'main character' bit. What is your problem exactly with their take on it because I dont understand what you are saying.
-cheesy combat tactics only go so far in most fights. Some enemies that we might eventually see utilize ambush tactics themselves or can completly negate high ground bonuses. (well the normal bonuses. Dont know if they can negate the perpetual advantage...) and thus need completly different tactics to be countered. Heck, some might use our height advantage against us by knocking us down. Causing us both extra damage and maybe knocking us prone. We only see act 1 so far (and I assume the easiest part of the game) so lets not assume that these tactics will work for the entire game. Well I certainly hope not because that indeed would be very boring xD

Map is as compressed as it is in D:OS2, thats true.

Personally I prefer that over having to click x times to move my party from A to B, but thats me - I always hated MMORPGs for their intentionally complicated cities (which serve to increase play time and keep people subscribed longer), but ok, one can of course say that uncompressed would be better.

I cant properly express amount of love i have for this kind of mindset ...
I wish there is more people understanding this. :3

//Edit:
I was Quoted three times and so i came! xD

Agree on the mindset. But also appreciate that people bring up the feedback that they dont like it, or what parts they dont like. Without that kind of feedback barrelmancy wouldnt have been brought back alot, cantrips wouldnt be nerfed, etc. And I do consider those example to be changes for the better.

Dont understand what Maximuuus meant either

One may like pickpocketing in games and hate how pickpoketing works in this game.

Is "ignore a mechanic OR use a broken one" what you call players agency ?
Isn't pickpocketing "player agency" in other games because it's more coherent and/or less easy ?

Who would complain if pickpocketing, highground bonuses, shove, stealth, dipping (and so on) were more coherent and less broken ? I can't be sure but I guess it would be just like when they finally decouple jump and disengage, remove healing food and remove backstab advantage...
Yet many players claimed that everything was perfect and that nothing should be changed... The concept or the idea behind many mechanics is often great but how it works in game is often bad. To the point that "if you don't like it, don't use it" could be a meme of the game.



You didn't understood me well... or maybe I didn't explain my thoughts well but you wrote something very interresting : "before the events that trigger the actual game".

I never asked for a background before the event starts and I truly hate playing Origin character precisely because it's someone else's characters.
What I asked is different problems and/or different introductions in the story and/or different goals and/or variations in the main story for the MC and for the companions.

While every companions have something special after the events that triggers the actual games... Tav just has nothing for more than 25 hours.
Like everyone else he was taken by mindlfayer into the nautiloid and he has a tadpole is in his head. Like everyone else a strange force save him after the crash. Like everyone else he wants to find a healer and like everyone else, he's making dreams and have special powers.
What a main character ! Once again from a story perspective Origin companions will make better main characters than custom one because the main character even does not have any specific story line.

Oh yes, feedback is good ...
Keep demanding absolute destruction and deleting any evidence of its previous existence, after something was alterned to better suit both sides ... its not.

Actualy i was hoping i get the chance to use this video (i have found today, even tho its a little older) in some debate soon, but i didnt even imagine it would be so fast.
So:
The important part starts on 1:33 and ends on 2:39 ...
[video:youtube][/video]

... and coming out of Swens mouth, im glad to hear they understands. :3

I believe i do.
Dont bother with that, its not important.

Not QUOTING again, but you aren't wrong

Can't believe people are arguing that cows can climb ladders. How low can we get?

Cows are persistent. One day, it may happen. Until then...

I'm just waiting for the day when they laugh about how "they've polished up the cow climbing animations so they look goofy and silly, and isn't it hilarious and funny, and great that they don't clip or stutter any more, look at this awesome stuff we're doing! Haha! So funny!"

While halflings are still using broken animations for climbing that see their models getting stretched and distorted into ridiculous motions and poses as they attempt to anchor their animations to points designed for medium sized creatures...

One of these days, I'll get around to playing those EE versions. That said, carrying 20 lb bags of stuff isn't that weird but of course 2E strength girdles letting a character run around with hundreds of pounds of stuff is. Carrying a bunch of dead insect carcasses might feel weird but I vaguely recall the description to be shells, meaning the squishy bits were presumably removed.

But like I said, the bulk factor was a bit comical in BG1 and 2, but at least there were limits. And the inventory wasn't a magic warpgate that allowed instant transport of matter across large distances. Can you imagine how neat it would have been if you could leave your pickpocket in town and just bring the other 5 out in the field. Then just dump off the stuff at the pickpocket's end of the party and have infinite loot capacity. And if you run really low, the pickpocket can buy a health potion and teleport it out in the field.

A ladder is built to be climbable by humans, not so much animals that don't have the right feet to make the steps or the right joints and flexibility to move a foot or a paw out of one step and onto the next. The D&D rules don't specifically mention ladders but then there's a DM around to make sure things do not get out of hand. There are also no rules specifically saying that a druid in bear form with some monk levels cannot go full kung fu panda, as far as I know, but if you try that then the DM will probably have some fun with you regardless.

Yes, bears can climb trees, to the extent that their claws can find purchase. Why wouldn't they be able to? But how does that help them climb ladders that lack the curvature and bark of trees and the width for their limbs to really fit? How would them climbing big round trees with good bark help them climb up vines on which their claws have no grip whatsoever?

As far as snakes are concerned, I suspect they shouldn't have too much trouble with a ladder, depending on species. But how about cows and goats and horses and giraffes? How about various kinds of dinosaurs? And have you ever seen dogs climb ladders? They are not good at that and untrained dogs probably fall off enough times to grow bored before figuring it out.

If the swamp had it's own map, it would be a map of purely swamp with plenty of room for just adding swampy atmosphere that doesn't conflict with anything else. And maybe a different nuance of the lighting to indicate either time passing or just a different weather. It would also be a perfect point to bring back the iconic "You must gather your party before venturing forth." message. The same applies to the other major areas of the overland map, IMO.

Shouldnt they be more like jumping?
Im not sure how to put this exactly ... it would make sense to me if they were attracted mainly by hands on side of that ladder and actually just hopped to the next rung. (Translated by google)

Aren't halflings more or less the size of human kids? I think Niara is more referring to, that halflings should get a seperate animation set that makes sense for their anatomy rather than rigging their 3d model to the animations of the elves/humans/dwarves 3d skeleton. I too hope they fix the animations to suit more the halflings . I mean... I guess having the halflings climb a bit more believable would increase immersion . As for cows climbing ladders, yeah.... maybe they could disable that hahaha.

I personally prefer the current map design to the pathfinder map design where about 90% of the maps were claustrophobically small. We are in 2021, the bg1 size maps are a relic.

As for climbing ladders, this is just a change that was needed if there were a lot of ladders in the game. Due to the fact that the number of druid transformations is very limited, the need to get out of the form every time you need to climb somewhere would be irritating. This could probably be remedied by increasing the amount of possible transformations available for rest, but this again would cause dissatisfaction.

Don't be silly. A normal ladder for a hafling is like if you're climbing by taking every other step. Maybe not super comfortable but you surely don't need to literraly hop from rung to rung. They're small but they're not 1 foot garden gnomes small.

I also agree that most pathfinder maps are way too small.
But there's something in the middle between very small maps like in BG1/2 and an incoherent "half open world" one.

About wildshape, unlimited transformations outside combats could also have been a solution.
You still need to get out of the form but would it be a problem if you don't loose your wildshape slots ? I mean... it's just one click and you're not climbing ladders every 10 minutes. It could also have been automatic so the only click required is if you really want to transform again on top of the ladder.

Ladder animations aside, what interests me more about the coming patch most is: what is changed in mechanics, gameplay. I mean, new class is always welcome, but seeing the game evolve towards the final product is also important. I hope Larian manages to do this game justice really. For me this game is firmly in the pile of: Covid made development too vague pile. I noticed good a many dev being way too lax on their communication strategy the past two years. I mean I can see most of them care about their product, but they seem to kinda lose sight of the fact that people kinda crave consistency in what for many has been a very inconsistent time.

As I recall from DoS 2 EA they communicated (or seemed to?) a lot better in that EA cycle. I mean I am sure this game will be finished but a roadmap could really help alleviate some of the fears/worries you guys point out. Because right now we don't really know in what order they are tackling things. Panels from hell are good for presenting patchers I suppose, but it doesn't really outline the whole development process that is going on outside of this Act 1 bubble we are actually able to see.

I mean... Give us some idea of:
a) how many companions are planned including the good and/or neutral orientated companions?
b) What troubles have they run into which they did not anticipate when they started out in 2020 with the current EA cycle
c) How have they managed to keep development throughout this whole work from home cycle etc
d) ROADMAP PLEASE! I mean yeah hoping for a release in 2022 is a bit vague xP.

Roadmaps aren't sacred but at least it gives us an idea on what the process may look like. Even though in some cases I think devs stuck too ardently to their roadmap. Just taking Solasta as a example, I think although the devs released quite a good foundation gameplay wise, it definitely shows they were too focused on keeping to their 6 month release window. The story suffered for that, in my opinion.

Larian really needs to work on their communication strategy if they want to get people to buy into their next, post Baldur's gate EA venture.

The problem with "different introductions" is Act 1. You can't skip part of the narrative because you want a special start for a character that could be the PC. Party members sure, but they'd have to skip all of Act 1 to start the Player in Baldur's Gate, and who knows, maybe they'd have to skip more than that, if we're not going straight to the city for Act 2. Also, as I said previously, even if Tav had a story, it would be the same one for every Tav, just as all of the Origin characters are. That's what I meant by "generic" story. I tend to look at the main story as Tav's story, with Origin characters getting it if there is no Tav, which is a distinct possibility. A lot of people love the Witcher series after all, and may find playing one of those predefined characters enticing.

Using a mechanic, broken or otherwise, and ignoring a mechanic are exactly what player agency is. Let's look at resting: It's been an issue since release, despite the fact that one can simply not rest after every battle. It's what I did, I took long rests, when I remembered them at all, at story beats, instead of spending a lot of time on the forums worrying about what Joe Casual might be doing in their game. As far as implementation is concerned, is it broken, or is it "but someone else might be able to do something"? That's not facetious either, I haven't tried to do any pickpocketing, so I have no idea. I've seen a lot of "barrelmancy" videos on YouTube, but if you could see my actual gameplay footage, you wouldn't find any of it. I wasn't aware that it was a problem until I came to the forums. Why? That pesky player agency, it never occurred to me that I should be packing around 100s of barrels to make major fights easy, and so, I never did it.

You see, you read my comments and go "but that's broken" instead of the context of what was actually meant, and explained: Player agency isn't a bad thing. If, as is to be surmised from reading someone complain about it, a mechanic is an issue, then players have a choice to use it, or not, or to use it where it makes sense. For example, a powerful mage is standing next to an exploding barrel, or is forced to move by one during their turn, and so, you blow them up, or use a dipped arrow on a spider web, to drop the spider to the ground. So what's the real issue? "But someone can do something easier than what I did it" is a usual suspect, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that statement mixed in amongst all the complaints. "But the economy", in a SP game, really? Yes, there's a MP aspect, and as I stated previously, there need to be toggles for some stuff that apply to MP. But in the SP environment, it just doesn't matter at all, unless you read the forums. Why is that?

I played AC 4, Black Flag, and thought, since I was way late to the party, I could catch up on their richest pirate leader board, until I saw some YouTube videos about how players were getting there using Cheat Engine. I could have followed suit, but I chose to just continue playing normally, and put the thought of getting into a high position, on PC, out of my head. Someone that sees Pickpocketing as a problem is going to have a stroke when they see what some players will do with Cheat Engine. I mean, there's a tutorial video on YouTube that teaches players how to max out all of their stats in Pillars of Eternity, do you believe players won't be trying that for their SP characters, or worse, for their MP characters. Neverwinter Nights had an "Enforce Legal Characters" toggle for servers, and something like that may be required here as well, for MP. What they may do in SP doesn't bother me in the least.

I cant imagine that honestly, since personaly i have inexplicable horror from heights, ladders and scaffolding.
So i would NEVER EVER EVER.

But i get it was probably silly idea.

I'm sorry to hear that. Personally, I don't have any problems with heights at all. Doesn't bother me one bit. But compulsive thoughts about the risk of falling down are exponentially increasing with my distance to the surface of the planet.

Yeah, I really hate that part of a flight where you're some few hundred meters above the ground. Makes it feel so real. Being above those soft clouds with beautiful sunlight above, on the other hand, is no big deal.

Don't you have the feeling we're turning in circles here ?

The purpose of the message you quoted 2 pages ago was there exactly to say that they did the exact same thing in BG3 than in DoS : Act 1 (and maybe 2) that HAS to be the same for every companions and the main character is a problem "by Larian's design".
That's only a consequence of an Origin / Custom character system that has not be improved at all.

Thanks for the definition of players agency. As you confirmed, it does not mean that things have to be broken to allow players more "agency".
Does it mean that players that don't like doing broken things and/or that don't like "glitching the game" (to quote Swen in the video Ragnarok posted) have LESS players agency in BG3 ? Yes, and that's exactly my point.

Wierd things that makes the game even more a joke or less players agency including basic RPG mechanics like stealing or stealth and cool fresh ideas like a coherent dipping or throwing (things or ennemies) mechanic.

Pot, kettle black. People who fail to comprehend that resources are finite and just about everything is a question of priorities, has no business shaming others as "low". Larian prioritized "climbing cows", a needlessly unimmersive and resource heavy quality of life implementation for a single class over for instance more complex combat animations. Dipping, barrelmancy, super cantrips with surfaces, throwing enemies across the screen, are the things that get prioritized over for instance a day & night cycle, or more subclasses, more feats, etc. By a company that is lowering expectations by implying they can't implement a great deal of things for fear of falling into a "development sinkhole".

I am still really concerned that Larian chose to continue focusing on their Origin system, when backgrounds appear to have been completely ignored in comparison. Really not going to help the perception that custom characters are going to get shafted compared to their special origins instead.

Except that they don't. As I said, I haven't tried any pickpocketing, but if I can attempt to pickpocket w/out using whatever the glitch or exploit is, then it's not forcing me into less agency. In fact, the only way an exploit can "force" a player into less agency" is if they feel like they have to abuse it, because it's there. If I can play the game w/out choosing to take a long rest after every battle, which I can, then it's not affecting my agency. If you mean "but someone else can abuse it", yes, they can. In a SP environment, that's not affecting my agency, or my gameplay at all. Toggles for these kinds of things in MP is a solution to this issue in MP, which is the only place it will be an issue. Other than that, it's a whole lot of worrying about what Joe Casual might do. Unless, of course, you're stating that if it's available, you'll be abusing it? I'm not logging into any SP game to be competitive with any other players. So whether they're using a "broken" rest mechanic or pickpocketing mechanic in their SP environment has 0 (zero) repercussions for me. It has 0 impact if they accomplish similar things with Cheat Engine, or mods. If they're exploiting in a full time MP game, especially one with PvP, it's an issue. Other than that, it's simply none of my business.

Odd that you mention stealing here, since I have stolen a few items, but didn't have to exploit anything to do it, one time was even on accident. How is it supposed to work if it's not "don't be seen, and grab something off the table"? Maybe I didn't notice a problem because I didn't get caught? On another note, what generic story line do you want to be pigeonholed into that will cover every possible race/class that Tav can be? That's every playable race and class, btw. Is it ideal? Not really, but when I look at the game as Tav's story, and the party members as NPCs, it's fine with me. It's not like I've never played any games where NPC party members had their own quest lines, and some of those games predate Larian, let alone DoS. I mean, they run back to BG and BG 2, and even the first Mass Effect had little things tied to specific squad members. The Geth data for Tali, and Wrex's family armor, for example. So party members having story quests doesn't bother me a bit, I've come to expect that they'll have something that serves to flesh them out as characters, instead of sprites on the screen to do damage, or tank, or heal the PC.