Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Feedback regarding the last map (spoilers)

I'm creating this topic because I would like to give some feedback, on my player experience, regarding this last map (The High Hall) and talk about some points where I see the possibility of improvement.


First off, I consider this final map conceptually to be one of the best in RPGs. It was exactly what Mass Effect 3 should have done, utilizing the choices made throughout the campaign to have an impact on your party and calling allies to help at the decisive moment, and I personally felt vindicated after more than 10 years finally an RPG managed was able to execute very well this concept.

However, although conceptually amazing, I believe that a certain level of polish was lacking in this final phase. Basically, I found in this small piece of the game more bugs than several other maps put together and some design decisions that weren't fun at all.

Jump/Fly Pathfinding - This is a problem that occurs throughout the game
where you are interrupted during movement by hitting some ceiling/corner, but it was especially accentuated in the final part where you are running to reach the final boss. Almost all special movement pathfinding gave me problems, being necessary to manually move the characters away from the corners if you don't want the movement to be interrupted (and falling into an area that will be bombed)

"Frozen" NPCs - Several times the game stopped apparently trying to decide what action to take. This is also an issue that has been going on throughout the game, but it's especially pronounced when there are more than 20 NPCs in combat trying to act.

Damage taking a long time to register - in some cases, there was a delay of 5s to 20s after the hit landed until the game became responsive again.

AI Behaving Strange - Apparently low-level creatures and the high amount of enemies in combat cause the AI ??to take strange action prioritizations, like completely ignoring enemies beside them to take attacks of opportunity to dash towards some distant enemy, or the casting blidness on enemies that could have simply killed. Overall I felt that the AI ??was pretty disappointing in its actions.

Knockback pushing to inaccessible locations - Had twice (Eldritch Blast/Telekinesis) pushing enemies to inaccessible locations. Also, the illithids can charm without having a line of sight, being able to cast through the walls in which they were trapped.

Nightsong - Not exactly a bug, but I didn't have access to her because apparently I forgot to talk to her at the end of Act 2, and I discovered this only about 20+ hours after the event by reading Reddit while looking for information on where she was in act 3.


I imagine that the lines above are mostly bugs or simple improvements to be implemented, but I would like to give feedback on some conceptual changes that I believe could improve this map:

Calling the NPCs to help is extremely fun and a key point of the map, but it ends up being a bit chaotic and without player interaction if you call too many reinforcements. I would suggest none of the reinforcements call more than 2 people, or give the player the option to choose 1, 2 or 3 NPCs for one of the reinforcements and adjust their power. In this way, an extra tactical layer is added to the player's decision and he would not feel penalized for choosing not to use reinforcements.

A parallel solution would be instead of physically summoning them for battles, having the options to use them indirectly and/or in cutscenes (sabotaging the enemy, casting a spell in the area at the beginning of the combat, buffs, etc...), avoiding the accumulation of allies on the battlefield that ends up preventing the player from playing the game, having to wait a long time watching the combat instead of playing.

One part that I believe could be improved is the final staircase, the Nautiloid artillery mechanic in conjunction with the enemy respawn is very thematically appropriate. What is not amazing is the combination of it with enemies that can spawn and using area stun followed by knockbacks that easily knock you out of the map. There are solutions to the problem mainly involving spells like dimensional door or others spells, but it's not fun these effects that have little way to play around. I imagine that a more interesting version, instead of stuns and knockbacks, would be using spells like slow (where there is a more evident counterplay by breaking the concentration) or ground effects like freeze/grease that hinder movement but do not generate automatic deaths like some knockbacks.


TL,dr: pathfinding revision, less but more powerful allies or indirect use of them, changes of the stun+knockback to something more fun/counterable, general mass combat AI/code optimization.