Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback My take on BG3

My point was that we do grasp why you don’t like this design but do not agree.

If the map was split up it would run into the same problems lots of these sorts of games have. With smaller maps it’s very easy to tell when you’ve fully explored and exhausted an area. Because Larian’s maps are large and filled with little nooks and secrets, it’s easy to miss things, which makes it more rewarding to find them. Chopping up the map would diminish this.

From what I see in the responses I don't see understanding , Instead I get... Why would we want an empty map or a boring map , why would anyone creator make a boring map ? If the game is boring the developer fail , you can still make interessting maps full of life but with a more realistic scope on things !!

It seems to me that you aren’t grasping our objections.

All of the top down RPGs with more realistic maps have been boring to us, at least in terms of traversal.

Either you space the map out and then you are just watching your character walk across empty, pointless terrain, or you make the maps small, and the exploration is trivialized and undermined by the small scale.

I think you need to realize that you're by and large dealing with people that enjoy the game as is (at least in this aspect). You're trying to argue that "no, what you like isn't the best way, Larian should have done 'y'." If you're going to try to make that kind of argument, you'll need to do a LOT better at convincing people.

Some people simply like the theme park style of map design. They don't want to have a realistic feeling, performance friendly map. they want to walk for 10 seconds, and have something interesting happen, or something interesting to see. You need to first understand why people like it as it is before you can attempt to convince them that they're "wrong", and you've not come remotely close in this thread.

For what it's worth, I agree with the OP. I strongly dislike Larian's map design and have done so since the D: OS games.

Personally, I'd have prefered an overland/world map with separate locations which would have felt much better and would have allowed for short random encounters. BG3's approach doesn't really give you any feel of distance at all when Moonhaven (Blighted Village) is literally just 500 m from the druid grove. It just feel immersive and believable that way.

obviously you have to think of the map in larian's games abstractly. not everything is in actuality within walking distance from each other.
this shouldn't be new though. every single 'open'/seamless world is unrealistically spaced out. look at even one of the better open world games, the witcher 3, it's still unrealistically small. a way around this is like others have pointed out, separate maps for areas, like in the first 2 BG games. when you get a message that it took you 16 hours to journey to the next area, that's probably the most realistically way to portray distance in a video game.

but...

it shouldn't be necessary. just use your imagination for bg3 and other open world games lol. instead of a text showing that you traveled 16 hours, just imagine that you did. it isn't hard to do.

Not to mention the big narrative point in Act 1 is that the Goblins are actively looking for the Grove and they're having trouble finding it... But the grove is literally 300 meters away from them.

I got to Minthara and she was like "hey can you help me figure out where the druid's grove is?" and I was like mate... Just walk east for 10 minutes... Come on...

But yeah it sells cause people are addicted to dopamine so they need to kill or loot every minute they play or the game is "boring".

or, another route would be to use huge procedural generated worlds like the early elder scrolls games. that would be a way to convey distance. but i can imagine a lot of people not liking that.

to me larian's maps are maps with the fluff cut out. it requires a bit of imagination though, just like using dice rolls and role playing. when i have my party go from the blighted village to the druid's grove, i don't see it as a 2 minute travel time. i imagine that it probably took hours.

Don’t be a jackass. That’s not the reason why people don’t share your opinion.

I’m a big fan of Larian’s dense theme park map design. I don’t get any enjoyment from uselessly padded out maps for the sake of realism.

And what do you think is happening in your brain with a game designed how YOU want it?

If i want the game to be slower and the occurences of satisfaction and rewards are therefore more spaced out.... Less dopamine ? Idk what you are implying there.

Yeah, I think that's a good example of how this kind of map design falls completely apart. You can't take this plot point seriously, or at least it takes a hell of a lot of playing pretend in your mind to do so. It would be 100x cooler and better if the map was separated into distinct locations like in, oh I don't know, BG1&2, and the grove was an actual hidden location that you have to get someone to mark on your map, or pass a perception check while travelling near it or something.

That's not to say BG1 did map design perfectly either. It lacked overmap travel and the way you discovered new locations was, although fun, pretty weird. (Exiting locations on different edges would mark new locations on the overmap)

i honestly don't see the issue with using your imagination. this is a tabletop dnd simulation. how is that any different from on-screen dice rolls to simulate lockpicking for example? pretending is part of it

I don’t think BG1 and 2 were very immersive at all. They were low res pixels on a screen. The best parts of those games often happened in my imagination. I don’t mind flexing my imagination for BG3 too.

Everything you're doing is still for the dopamine. You just like it slightly different than others. Pretending that people are somehow wrong because they enjoy different levels/frequency of dopamine hits is silly.

And nobody is playing a highly narrative, turn based RPG because they are addicted to dopamine rushes. Just saying.

I tell you what, that constant rolling of the die, the slow turn based combat. Whew, gets me going that's for sure. Don't even get me started on long cutscenes and conversations.

Lol what? I never said people were wrong. Larian's style caters more to the casual audience that is used to dopamine-heavy activities like scrolling social media, mobile gacha games, or even most modern games in general. You said it yourself : "Some people simply like the theme park style of map design. They don't want to have a realistic feeling, performance friendly map. they want to walk for 10 seconds, and have something interesting happen, or something interesting to see.".

Yes I would've liked it better if Larian went a different route. That doesnt mean everyone else is WRONG. Like, if I don't like mushrooms I don't think people liking mushrooms are wrong, I just dont like it myself. People like what they like.