Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Divinity vs Bakdur Item&crafting systemDisscussion

~My novel for item system:

---As much as in divinity items could be fun, there are problems with them. I certainly would not like to have in games like Baldurs Gate 3.
Personally I really liked in divinity 2, that you can pick up everything, the crafting system up to the point, I created my first smashed potato and
could dress up my characters with the basic armors, so they do not die after each hit.

~BALDURS GATE, some memorable item examples:

The silver sword for which you are chased by Githyanki, 10% that enemy has saving throw vs death, then soul goes out of body animation.

Human flesh, you need to kill silver dragon to make from a crappy armor (found in quite a generic quest), the best armor for rouge.

Cloak sewer, you gain Shapeshifting abilities, to rat, troll and slime, one of the most unique early game item.

All the crafted weapon were special, and some of the strongest in game, only with 3 ingredients, that were all found at special quest and
specific places, not some generic leather scraps and garbage, or magic potatoes, which can be bough in every shop.
They only had like 10 items in normal bg2, maybe 20 in throne of baal, but still it was a way better crafting system then in divinity,
sometimes less is a way more.


~DIVINITY 1&2 system:

1) Does it even make sense to have a crafting system, which has like 1000 recipes? When 980 recipes are useless and add little to no benefit.
I got only 1 recipe from like 200, that seemed somewhat useful after completing act 1 of DO2.

2) Too much meaningless items, meaningless recipes, meaningless item drops, meaningless buffs from items, meaningless grenades, meaningless books, meaningless arrowheads.

3) 99.99% of the items are "rubbish".
Chaotic inventory, you would sell quest items, without a second thought. The only reason I did not do it, is because
I never touch inventory, till I carried too much item, or till I needed desperately some better equipment to defeat one of the boss.
When I saw "Artefacts of the Tyrant" quest, and I realized, that these useless cursed items, were quest related and I needed to go through, so much
trouble to get them..

4) No difference between items. I cannot tell one memorable item I ever found, besides mask of shapeshifter, maybe the gloves till I got the
teleport spell...

~Conclusion:
I think a drastic reduction and randomization, is needed, so we can only randomize healing potions or gold amount, or items, that are less valuable....

Less rubbish items, less confusion. Less "great" item, but more unique and some "cheaper" magical items, which still useful.

I saw the feature in BG3, that normal weapons have some special attack, which would be a good base to introduce special items, which are rare and powerful enough at least to use it till end of an act...

If crafting system remains, please add legendary crafters like in bg2, who make only items, that are meaningful, so you do not
have to google for recipes, you never make...

Holy shit, let me tell you the formatting in your post isn't helping readability at all.

you are right changes in progress

I'm pretty sure they will try to follow the 5e Dungeon Master guide which list a lots of pre-existing generic and unique items, explain how to create new ones (either as a designer or via crafting) and even provide loot tables.

BG1/BG2 items are from AD&D manuals. The Holy Avenger, the Flame Tongue, Boot of Elvenkind, etc. Enemies gold/gems drop were also based on D&D loot tables too.

In other word, Larian just has to follow the D&D manuals.

I absolutely agree, DOS II Crafting System had great potential, but
99% of items lack of meaning craftable or not.
Some good, memorible items in general were

-Dallis 2h hammer, (Reckoning?)
-Bloodrose Potion ,
-gloves of teleportation
-braccus spear in fort joy
-migos ring

And at least for me, that items got some "wow!" on me

That would be great. I wrote the post, because right at the beginning of the demo, you can see apples, and love letters, cheese on dead bodies.
I am sure, that is what they were carrying before they were kidnapped by Mind Flayers...

I do not see any difference in this, from divinity in that yet... We see maybe in next modified, demo or alpha stages...
I want to feel, that if I find magic item, I want to change my weapon, not like in divinity, where I only do it if I am killed at a battle.

Corpses having mundane items doesn't go against D&D. BioWare only choose to list what qualify as treasure on enemies loot drop in BG1 and 2 (beside quest items). Larian seems to want to do a bit more world building, like a proper GM.

As for the cheese, I'm pretty sure that's a developer joke, both Larian and BioWare go a bit overboard with it sometimes.

Wasn't there a pretty cheesy cave in The Witcher 3 as well, the one where you get The Emmentaler-Sword

Didn't like the D:OS crafting system. Feel reassured though that they'll do something similar to Baldur's Gate by following the D&D manuals.

The one in TW3 sounds vaguely familiar, though I don't quite recall the specifics as it's been too long. I recall that in TES, Sheogorath is rather cheese-obsessed, and in Dragon Age Inquisition there were a number of cheese-scapes and, of course, the Wedge of Destiny.

A dungeon with a maze full of toxic fume generated by the cheeses. The quest is named Of Dairy and Darkness and I learned that tyromancy is a real thing while playing it.

There was some cheese stuff in DAO and DA2, but BioWare went overboard in DAI. Trespasser even had a spa cutscene where you get tiny-cheese wheel on your eyes instead of cucumbers.

As for Larian: No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses!

AdmittedlyI've NEVER been a fan of super-elaborate crafting systems in RPG games like these.
They either end up devaluing the loot that you find adventuring OR becoming mostly pointless because you'll get the best items elsewhere.

I liked crafting Baldur's Gate 2 a lot precisely becuase it kept things extremely simple: you gathered parts of notable artifacts, you had to find a blacksmith capable of putting them back together. Done.

Another variant (very similar in concept) is having the most notable monsters/creatures in the game dropping very rare materials that can be used to craft unique pieces of equipment.

When we start going into systems where you have to pick different stat points from a list and similar shit, we are already adventuring in a level of complexity I'm not particularly fond of. It starts to feel too... cheap, so to say, in terms of exploiting numbers, messing balance, etc.

This is a trivial opinion. Why even bother worrying about such things?

Well, several reasons. I can quickly give you two.

One, I care about the topic at hand.
Two, you are under the erroneous delusion that your approval of my posts is required or even just remotely valued.

I agree with the OP and I have good news:

At some point Raze has confirmed that the game uses the DnD equipment, not the DOS system.
The number of items in the demo seemed very large, this could still change. ( I hope so)
He also said that they added a lot health potions and such stuff to the demo because you could not save/load.

Sorry, I do not find his post at the moment, but it is somewhere in this forum.

I agree. Crafting is usually pointless and a waste of time in nearly every game.
It's either OP or useless, but developers insist on cramming it in, simply because they feel it HAS to be in there.
Development time and resources are better spent elsewhere IMHO.

After you, you're supposed to be adventurers, not blacksmiths. Leave that to the professionals.

I'm against loot tables.
Enemies should drop what they have equipped, period.
If that bandit was not wearing the Boots of Elvenkind, then he should be dropping them.

Abso-bloody-lutely.

I don't mind crafting in the sense of the odd powerful item can be crafted for you by experts if you find the 5 magical shards of Narsil within the cupboard of Narnia under the stairs of harry potter in a galaxy far far away, but I don't want to be spending half the game crafting useless gear or making shops utterly redundant.