Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback How limited is the engine? Is that why so much can't be done?

Like... why is the metamagic "quickened" not in? Simple things like that? I mean, if quickened isn't going to be in the final game, that's ridiculous. Is it the UI that limits it or engine? Solasta handles all these things so well, but it seems that Larian has huge problems with the simplest things. I remember Sven talking about how hard it was to implement something like the "protection" fighting style, since it means an adjacent character can help out another who is attacked by a third individual. But... stuff like that is done excellently well in Solasta. Is Larian's engine not capable of doing basic DnD rule things?

It was extremely obvious from the beginning that the game's using a modified DOS2 engine, which handles everything well except for defensive calculations triggered outside of your turn. The only things in DOS2 similar to reactions are the automatic opportunity attacks and the Reactive Shot ability that archers have, and reactive shot automatically launches up to 3 basic attacks if an enemy walks into the AoE while it's active. And true reactions are a great deal more complicated than those.

Quickened metamagic though? Not sure why that wouldn't be in. I'd chalk that up to a conscious balancing decision instead, or something broke when trying to convert main action spells into bonus actions, since I don't think a similar interaction exists elsewhere in the game yet.

Shouldn't be too much of a stretch to implement the required features into the engine though? Or is it? I am certainly no programmer, so I wouldn't know.

Actually, it was Nick (in this video). And indeed, that wasn't the finest display of programming mastery at Larian Studios. While everyone can make a mistake once, this is part of a range of reasons why I have, admittedly, only a moderate faith in Larian's technical skill. But I feel that this competency issue is only secondary to will and vision.

Partly, I personally feel Larian isn't very concerned with "details" such as UI, usability and quality-of-life, nor with things like rules accuracy (I'm thinking about how Saving Throws to save-or-suck spells were initially at the beginning of the turn instead of the end) or balance.

Partly, there are probably a lot of things they are simply keeping back for the full release. The full list of Metamagic options is quite probably of that kind.

Wait, they've removed quicken? We did get it with the sorcerer. The main problem with it was that it allowed sorcs to cast two leveled spells per turn. That coupled with for example fireball and hello easy fights

Well they already allow all casters to cast two levelled spells, which is messed up. In the PHB you can only cast one slotted spell per turn. Sorcs with quickened spell could cast a cantrip (that could be twinned) if they wanted to do bonkers dmg, but of course now we have a buffet of spells per round anyway no matter what, so yeah... maybe quickened would be too good then.

I just wish they would follow the rules more, but oh well.

So do I. A sorc with a haste effect and quickened spell in BG3 can theoretically cast 3 fireballs in one turn by clevel 6 the way it worked last year. But I didn't know they removed it. That's not what we asked for, just that they limit the action turn to a cantrip. But maybe that's to much to ask for from their engine.

Are you level 3 yet?

Quickened is in the game.

Larian's engine being very limited in the things it will allow is a huge factor in a lot of the issues with the game that have been brought up in this forum, such as day-night cycles, the chain movement mechanic, proper reactions, no pause during real-time exploration, etc. But that engine is what allows for all those "cool" things in the game, such as elemental surfaces and pretty graphics, and those things are what matter most in Larian games.

the engine is fine, why [insert whatever] isn't in the game yet = because other things are... adding extra 50 vids, a dozen classes and of curse bug bashing takes time

Can we not give fault to the engine? I doubt that most of the people here (myself included) actually know what's possible or impossible with it. Saying "the engine can't do it" just absolves Larian of responsibility and fault. Many of the things mentioned here might actually be possible with the engine!
-e.g., Day/night cycles: change the lighting (definitely possible) and possibly NPC cycles (almost assuredly possible) after a certain amount of conversations, time spent exploring, short rests taken, or one of many different criteria. Bam, day/night cycle.

Also, Larian/WotC chose to use this engine to make BG3, so they're still ultimately at fault even for the things the engine can't do. The question then becomes, are the benefits of this engine worth the lost potential features?

Yep. No idea why so many people keep using the engine as a scapegoat.
Sometimes even for the most trivial technical details. I remember how at some point I've even read someone guessing that my pet peeve against bows and crossbows tracing "floppy" arcs with their projectiles could have been a limit of the engine being unable to manage straight projectiles... In the same game where we have Eldritch blast and similar stuff.

Well, I mean in my mind, I am guessing most things can be done or implemented in the engine given their budget and the amount of people they have, but I have ZERO knowledge about programming. Maybe some things would entail ripping the engine up from the ground and change stuff around? I have no clue. o_o

Funny you mention that. I recall arrows in DOS2 mostly flying straight unless elevation differences were involved.

Actually, I remember that the Ballistic Shot ability in the base version of DOS2 was basically an arrow that flew straight at the speed of a lightning bolt, and had the sound effect/impact to boot. The definitive edition IMO downgraded the animation to a slower moving arrow with a slight arc with the impact sound effect not being as pronounced, which I found slightly off-putting since the former version really conveyed the sheer power of that attack (which inflicted more damage the further away the target was, it was one of the most damaging abilities that archers had in that game - so much so that I don't recall a single enemy archer in the entire game ever using it against you).

Hm. Now that I think about it, the old Ballistic Shot animation was actually rather similar to Eldritch Blast, just that Eldritch Blast is obviously a lot more pronounced all around.

For me it's really more of an academic question. I'm curious whether Larian could reasonably make certain changes and just choose not to, or if the engine they're using makes certain changes impractical. It'stheir fault either way, I just want to know more about the process.

Precisely!

Fair enough. Not being able to pause the game during real-time exploration was something very specifically Larian confirmed couldn't be done because their engine won't allow it. So to my mind, many of these other things that have been raised in this forum, all major issues that are reasonable for people to want to see changed/fixed, not being addressed by Larian, and not even being brought up for discussion, COULD be because they are all things that are simply not possible with their engine.

As of Patch 8 we still don't have Dodge... REALLY?... I doubt that's a limitation of the engine...

So, my guess is that Larian just does whatever they want.

I don't think any of their designers believed that 5e rules would translate to enjoyable combat in a video game. Tactical Adventures, however, totally embraced 5e and proved them wrong.

Just as any other developers since this whole gaming-industry was created? O_o
That dont seem like hard guess. :-/