Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hello! My thoughts and feedback. (Open Spoilers)

Hello!

I have just signed up, not read much of anything here as I wanted to get my thoughts out after playing through the Early Access. TLDR will be at the bottom.

Full Disclosure: I'm an old gamer, play a wide array of games, and have more time into Baldurs Gate and Baldurs Gate 2, than I would like to even know. I'm into RPGs mostly JUST because of the Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights series (which I learned to script for Mods for, which lead to my current occupation!)

So, thats my history with the Series, DnD, and such.

1. I do not normally do Early Access ANYTHING. I consider it a questionable practice, but I saw 'released October' whatever the date was, saw "Baldurs Gate" and said 'oh, well its time to buy this!'.

That was a mistake. I crashed almost immediately, once I got to the Helm. Very soured! The big 'EARLY ACCESS" in the corner should have clued me in, but I do not play any of Larian's other games, I didnt know what to expect. I was hooked with 'Baldurs Gate' (BG from now on).

So, yeah, once I got over that annoyance, I came back to it. I've put the game aside a few times out of frustration (multiple other crashes, straight to desktop...at least it doesnt freeze the PC.)

2. Camera took some getting used to, I bound Q and E to the pivot left/right, and that improved it for me, but it felt really clunky otherwise. Is there a setting to allow it to just pan with the mouse on the edge of the screen like BG?

3. The combat system. At first, I REALLY was not enjoying it. New game, I figured something simple like a Fighter would be the way to go, to learn the game's systems. 1 swing, tedium. 1 swing, tedium. I actually stopped playing a few times because of it. It just felt so limited and boring.

HOWEVER. Once I get a few levels under my belt, once I had some items to use with my extra actions, and once I started actively looking for pits and edges to push people into...I really started to enjoy the tactical sense of the combat. It took a bit, but by the end I was really enjoying it.

4. The Companions and other NPCs.

Shar Girl Shadowheart...why is Shar always in these games? I really would like to see some other gods get some attention lol. All told, I didnt dislike her. Great voice work, interesting model, I even got use out of her 'Hide the Party' ability for one of the quests (that ended up breaking...more on that...) No real issues with her.

Gale. Really enjoyable character. I liked him most out of all his dialogue throughout.

Lae'zel. Good. Nice looking model, good voice work, consistent characterization. Thinks she's better than everyone, lets you know it. Being told 'You could have had all this, but you didnt do the work, so I'll enjoy myself instead' was pretty funny! In combat...I dont know but I think her voice may be the same as what my male PC had...

Halsin. Gives a funny vibe, enjoyable dialogue, his form after rescue...I couldnt find how to turn that off, until he died and I brought him back...

Wyll. Never used him.

Vampire guy? Never even found him, not sure what I missed.

Quests and Encounters - And the many many failures.

I had dialogues bug out multiple times.
I had quests that should have been resolved, loop dialogue. (The chest for the people in the underground would not complete, I snuck in and stole it!)
I had so many cases where a roll was needed for a dialogue, which is fine, but failure was SUPER punishing for what I was trying to get out of the result, and it almost always just leads to more combat. Which is..fine, but the DC values on some of these things are really high.
I had MULTIPLE cases where tadpole dialogue was used, I passed of course, and then was attacked anyway. In one case I had cast Hold on a target, then it opened up a dialogue. Well when the hold came off, they went hostile. Lame.
I came across people and the dialogue options did not reflect what my character already knew. There is a group of 3 cultists that you could meet very early, if you do not (and I didnt I was almost done the EA by the time I came across them) I had no knowledge of anything I had already learned.

World Build

So the maps are gorgeous. The sounds are great, the spell effects are fine. Can we tone down some of the things like Jump? It's quite...impressive, for someone jumping.
All those book shelfs, can we put like...lore books there? Baldur's Gate taught you about the world, if you wanted to read them. Give me something to look at since I compulsively need to click/open every.single.object.
The Underdark looked really good, and the (2nd) last fight was quite fun. I really enjoy the verticality of some of these areas, and the destructible terrain/ladders/bridges/barrels, are all POTENTIALLY incredibly interesting.
Enemies are good. I'm not sure how I feel about the goblins voice work. Feels like they were transplanted from Total War Warhammer, but then, whats a Goblin supposed to sound like?
Animations/Movement on the really large enemies seem to not flow properly, kind of disjointed, especially the ones with large jump (again, jump seems excessive) moves.
Cut Scenes have model animation, model duplication, and basic 3d model issues REALLY often. Again, I dont make a habit of playing Early Access games, so I trust those will be addressed.

Expectations

I trust we will be getting the rest of the races, classes, and hopefully a vast selection of sub-classes. Variety is great.
I hope we will be getting a 'size' slider of some type. I want to be able to (within reason) modify the size (height, weight) of my character, within the racial expectations set by D&D.

Questions

I couldnt find how to split my party up, to come at an encounter from multiple directions. Noob issue? Maybe. If there isnt a way to do this, and move the companions independently, there needs to be.

Requests

Lower the DC values on dialogue options. Some of it is excessive.
Maybe ramp up level progression early. As I mentioned, combat at the start was...super boring.

TLDR

By the end, I was into this game big time, and I think the potential for it to be amazing is really there. I was taken in thinking it had been released fully, my mistake, and was put off by some of the obvious bugs, crashes, and quest dialogue loops, but once you have a full party to work with, and your characters have some levels under their belts, and consumables, combat is dynamic, and tactical.

I'm sure I missed some stuff, but I am very hopeful that this game could be great, and worthy of the name of the Baldur's Gate series.

Good stuff . Agree with most. In particular the maps/sounds/visual affects/interactive environment.... probably some of the best ive played in some of those respects...

Ive done a few beta runs for different games and took that attitude towards bugs/drops... helped... ;D ...and hopefully we are helpful to them in that respect...

I kinda went the other way on combat though the more i played though... pushing stuff was fun.. at first. With respect to reality, rules and potential usefulness, it should be an attack/action...

...and as much as i do like how jump was implimented for moving around the map, i abhor how they marryed it to the disengage action... what they did to the action economy in general really... probably one of the few deal breakers for me... im here because this is a "d&d" game also though and ill judge it by how much they hit/miss that primarily...

I really hope they do add body sliders also... kinda correct some of the model properties in my own mind more than anything... seems a common feature that imo would add big to immersion...

Good points you have there.
I also bounded Q and E to the pivot camera, helped a little but the whole camera management can use some tweaks for sure.
Fighter - I still feel they can use some extra actions (Available from the get go) - i wish if they would be able grab somebody (though i heard if you are strong enough you are able to throw bodies?) or able to taunt (maybe these will be availble only higher levels?). Also if piercing/slashing/bludegoning damage could be explained how they react with enemies armor and hp that would spice it up a little for melee chars.
Jumping +disengage mix and the current action economy (you can swap weapons, dig in the inventory for no cost) is just wierd. I understand what they wanted to achieve here, but as many others already said, its only fun to shove and jump during combat the first 3-4 times. But it gets really repetitive, tedious and strange once you are over some battles, also it slows down the combat (also yeah jumping distance atm really breaks immersion). I think an implementation of some kind of flanking/positioning rule would be nice. Dodge could be an action for characters who would just stand there otherwise. Diverse enemy AI would also help (different behaviours as per monsters' intelligence so you need to accomodate to their tactics and vulnerabilities)
For dialogue checks, these will be easier once they explain more how you can improve your chances (potions, spells, scrolls) and once they implement that other party members can assist to checks(if i remember well they said in an interview they are working on this) but it would be nice if you could also increase your chances more as you can in Disco Elysium, with doing things/exploring (e.g.: you found a letter so you have a better chance to convince this guy, you spoke to her friend so you know what to say etc.) and that is rewardingly visible on the UI (encouraging you to do more if you feel you have low chances).
It can be a huge game for me, the foundation is there. but atm combat did not convince me and there are tweaks needed for other stuff as well. but this is EA and hopefully Larian listens and at least give us toggles for all stuff people are complaining about.

It's encouraging that my immediate off the cuff thoughts have some resonance with folks. Hopefully some of this is commonly seen as things to be addressed.

Splitting party :

a) I think you mean for movement : you have to manually *drag* a portrait away from the other portraits. You will see a chain animation between the portraits.
( it is counter-intuitive, annoying and I really want them to change movement to a simple select character 1 and/or 2, 3, 4 or all. )

b) A character in sneak will not be auto-followed by those who are not in sneak.

c) If you mean changing companions, that is done at the Long Rest Camp, but I think you know that.

The last few updates screwed up animations and such and they started changing dialog for npcs as well. You probably was experiencing problems caused from that, truthfully I would recommend reverting to a previous patch if that's even possible.

Ah yes it's what you have described in item A. Thanks!

Hi Scribe and glad to have someone new join in as it's always great to get new opinions thoughts and ideas.

As for the splitting the Party, I agree with the fact of dragging the party members manually to separate them and always thought that there has to be a better way, But IIRC this was the same way in BG 1 and 2 as well someone corrects me if I'm wrong on this.


B)This bugged me why does the whole party follow along with the one for which is sneaking. You would think that if your thief or ?? went into sneak the other party members wouldn't all have to tag along there has got to be a way to fix this.

In BG 1 and 2 you can simple select the individual and they move independent of the party.

I always cheese an early quest in BG1 this way.

Ok it had been a while since I had played either one so I wasn't sure