Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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#784336 31/07/21 09:22 AM
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EvilVik Offline OP
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So overall patch 5 is fixing a lot of things - very nice work indeed.
The flow of battle, the death of barrelmancy etc. are all good changes.
Game overall feels a lot more polished in the mechanics.

Edit: added suggestion 3 for chains

The bad:
Everything can't be perfect, and these are the things that are still up for fixing
- The chain system. This is worse than ever. Every time i go up or down a tall ladder/climb two of my party members will climb back up again. Headless chickens comes to mind.
Suggestion 1 for fix: scrap the chain system. Seriously.
Suggestion 2 for improving the chain system: Don't make party members run around and position themselves around a chosen character. If I haven't initiated an order/clicked somewhere, let them stand still. Selecting different party members should not cause any party movement what so ever. This small change would make for a big improvement. And also fix the ladder/climb nuisance.
Suggestion 3: make positions for the party fixed for all party members when you click the ground instead of relative to the selected character. That way they will run the shortest way instead of headless chickens or up/down ladders.

- Crashes: In patch 4 i bumped into one or two crashes. In patch 5 I've had a lot of Vulkan related crashes. I had to play with DX11 to even start the game for a while. Problem with DX11 is that I get cutscene freezes or lag spikes. Gone back to Vulkan now and no lagging, but still the occasional crash to desktop.
I'm assuming these will be fixed over time, but patch 4 wasn't as crashy.

- Astarion vampire spawn quest line:
So nothing has been done to fix the triggering here yet. I've had him talk wildly about Cazador and even had him mention him being a vampire spawn, without the game recognizing this. Bumped into the Gur and Astarion oneshotted him with a dagger in the eye. Questioned his corpse and got Astarions name, but still no recognition.
Think the main issue is that Raphael's cutscene happens before Astarions nightly snack scene (which has yet to happen in this playthrough).

Last edited by EvilVik; 31/07/21 09:52 AM.
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Another one as well:
- Pathing seems totally bonkers this time around. A lot of time, 2 out of 4 party members seemed to get stuck along the way on long walks. Many times due to climbing. And Glut the mushroom dude gets stuck just about everywhere, and he doesn't automatically jump across the obstacles.

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Originally Posted by EvilVik
Another one as well:
- Pathing seems totally bonkers this time around. A lot of time, 2 out of 4 party members seemed to get stuck along the way on long walks. Many times due to climbing.
Yup, yup, yup. Companions kept getting lost on the way pretty regularly, usually thanks to ladders.

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Some more feedback after finishing the whole Act 1:
- Crashes still very present, even after latest hotfix. Mainly Vulkan-related
- Cutscenes with companions are still difficult to trigger and you miss a lot of them. Astarion's vampire "reveal" came after we had talks about Cazador and him being turned. Probably should have more triggers than just the dead boar to get the night time feeding scene.
- Wolf form for druids has very buggy animations when walking down cliff sides with "climb steps" (not ladders or climbing). Didn't check the other ones.
- Pathing still horrible, but very likely linked to the broken ladders/vines/climby things.
- Size of creatures/animals/monsters and walking around, especially in the underdark, was a mess. If you resurrect a minotaur or the bulette, it becomes very apparent that some of the paths doesn't have enough space to move around, even though they visually would "fit" in that space. Wolf form spacing has the same issue, but not as much. Mainly where to fit in next to companions in battle.
- Missing magical/special clubs. As a druid you get very locked to staffs.
- Gith patrol: If you walk up to them in animal form with Lae'zel in party, you automatically skip to combat. There is no automatic "human form for conversation" added. Also the general triggering of conversation vs. combat is still glitchy and more than once I ended up in combat before having a chance to talk to them.

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And another thing I've forgotten to comment on:
- Camera control is really awkward, especially when climbing different heights. It gets stuck on the previous level and you can't continue to move around with WASD. The solution is very often to double click on your character so it re-selects it and zooms in on it again. Seems the camera is very locked around selected character instead of just freely moving around. Also effects targeting, spells etc.

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I'm not sure if I should mention it here, but there is a massive performance loss betweern patch 4 and patch 5. I noticed this as well on an Intel Mac and on a M1 Solicon Mac

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I have finished the early access and I also have some feedback to share.

First of all I want to +1 everything that was previously said. Party movement is clunky / buggy. Automatic jump is weird:
* Sometimes characters with small strengh with follow characters with high strength in impossible jumps
* Often characters will auto jump although it's not needed
* Characters sometimes jump and take fall damage although there's a ladder that's accessible
* Sometimes character can jump in one way, but not in the way back. This means you have characters that will get literally stuck (I had to reload several times because of this).

Ladders are completely broken:
* I had several death ladders -> character go up the ladder, and once arrived at the top they fall to their death
* I often encountered "can't reach" ladders
* What the other said about characters going up ladders when you are already down

Inventory / Camp system is a bit buggy:
* I can send items to camp, their stack. But splitting a stack won't work. So leit's say you have 11 supply packs (11 * 40 rations). You can't split this stack. If you want to use it for the night, it gives 440 rations...
* It would be nice to access camp inventory without being in camp. Expensive items are sent to camp for later sell, but you need to spend a night to get them.

Camera is buggy:
* The up and down thing that the other described!
* Sometimes I have cutscene blocked by clothes/armor textures and it's impossible to tell what's happening
* I had a camera shot from inside the character head and I could see the back of their eyes. Freaky.
* A lot of the time, I don't understand what's happening in cutscenes because camera is weird (angle is not great).
* Camera effects when you roll a 20 in combat happens sometimes after you watch the creature die from damage. This is super weird.
* They are cutscenes that film you sleeping, even when you are an elf. This feels weird.
* Camp camera that films the fire down->up triggers twice when you sped the night.

Combat is great, but a few adjustments are needed:
* I want to know why I have advantage / disadvantage agaisn't a target. Half of the time I'm guessing.
* Sneak attacks are iconsistant. Sometimes I get them, sometimes not, and I'm not sure why.
* Hiding during combat is weird. I can't guess vision zones of ennemy characters, so it's a guessing game. Sometimes I can hide in plain sight, sometimes I can't. Guidance doesn't seem to work for stealth.
* Hide should be a bonus action for rogues only.
* Range is weird. Sometimes, higher ground character will get incredible range. Sometimes not. It's not clear.
* Bless should make us select 3 characters. When I cast bless and my familiar is blessed instead of my warrior, this sucks. Same for bane.
* I want the dodge action. Grapple would be nice. Shove rework would be also nice (less powerful maybe ?).
* I don't like pin down/cleave/dip. They don't feel great so far.
* Burning hands needs a proper shape. For now, it's too large (it's supposed to be a cone).
* I should be able to sneak attack a special arrow, no ?

Animations are clunky:
* Astarion putting a knife under your throat is really weird animation wise. It's like movements are not natural (although it's motion capture tech so it should be smooth ?). It's the same for a lot of the cutscenes animations.
* Jumping animation + sound effect is meh (especially with autojump). It feels really weird currently.
* Combat animations are great.

Let's talk about traps:
* Traps are cool, but they are maybe overused in some area (exploding plants in underdark comes to mind).
* Throwable that explodes don't feel great at the moment. They are enough AoE spells to reduce the need to have exploding projectiles.

The dice system:
* Dice system is good, although dice animation is really slow.
* It's weird that I have to click to see which things I can use to improve dice rolls. I want to use them all the time, so I want to see them all the time.
* Guidance should work on stealth/perception/insight/whatever check


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