Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback (Spoilers) Improvement Ideas after taking a year off...

After almost exactly 1 year off, I finally re-installed BG3 and started playing Patch 6. Thoughts...

Lots of minor but excellent small improvements: Containers, Graphics, Personalities.. and I am only a few hours in.

The biggest issue I currently have is the connection between the resting system and the progression of relationships and some story events and plot lines. For various reasons, I tend to avoid Long Rests and I'm sure I am not alone. But that is a problem when so much of the game's content revolves around them. I feel like Larian needs to make an effort to address this.

Using food and camp supplies as a new rest requirement actually makes the problem worse. I was reluctant to Long Rest before, now that it requires a limited resource, I am even more reluctant.

Here are some suggestions to address the issue.

1) Remove the stigma of Long Rests. Have NPCs actually recommend them.

Instead of having the ceremorphosis progress whether you are awake or asleep, treat the tadpole like any virus or bacteria invading the body. Our bodies have natural defenses. A healthy, stress free body can delay and ward off the invasion for several weeks, possibly even months. But when we go too long without sleep, our bodies become stressed and that gives the parasites purchase to make headway. (See what I did there... )

If Gale or Laezel say something to this extent, "We need to find a healer, but it is also important that we stay well rested. If our bodies grow too tired, instead of taking weeks, it could take days or even less"... Such a line early in the game (And the removal of a few other lines) could take away some of the urgency or at least not make us feel like we are making a huge mistake by resting. So embrace the fact that staying well rested will improve survival odds in more ways than one.

2) Add Weariness Level and make Long Rests necessary.. for NPCs.

Back to the "Long Rests are needed to ward off the parasites progress" mentality, let companions gradually get tired as well as dirty. Weariness Level could increase at different rates when: Idle, walking and stealth. Attacks and abilities could also carry a weariness cost. Jump a lot, you get weary faster. Wear heavy armor, you get weary faster... etc...

At some point each companion will reach a max. When this happens, an event will encourage going to camp to rest. IE: The companion detaches from the group and attempts to path to/force dialogue with the player. They tell the player they MUST get some rest. (Friendly or instant. I'm sure it would vary). Say yes, and you get a mild like, they rejoin the group and you insta-telport to camp. Say no, and they leave for camp as if dismissed. Users wouldn't be able to recruit weary NPCs, but a rest at camp would reset all weariness levels.

Not sure if you want weariness level affecting the player. (Thinking about multiplayer games and solo play throughs). A warning from the narrator may suffice, but if someone really wants to play with no long rest, I think that should be their choice. Taking away companions is one thing. Forcing the playerto do it is another. But you could if you absolutely needed a long rest for game plot reasons.

Of coarse a combination of 1 and 2 would also be nice: Remove the stigma of long rests with a doctors order + have NPCs insist on resting.

3) Replace need for Long Rest\Short Rest with need for sleep:

I don't expect Larian to do this one because it would be drastic (Doubt Wizards would approve), but I will mention it anyway because it is what I REALLY want...

When I read the section on long rests here:

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Resting#contenthttps://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Resting#content

What grabs my eye is that rest in general, doesn't necessarily require sleep. It just requires not fighting or casting spells for an extended period of time. That happens to me a lot when I am walking around, talking to people, looking at wares (picking merchant pockets).

I read this and I say to myself...why can't HP gain and Spell point gain simply be a gradual climb that always happens without the need to hit special buttons to replenish the values. People would still enjoy a home base to store all that stuff they hoard, craft items, make spells/potions and a place to change out companions.

I think the reason is that Larian needed an area to stage all the cut-scenes. Knowing where the cut scene will happen and what type of ennvironment/furinture is around is vital to some of the scenes. You can't just fire them anywhere. So Larian needs an excuse to get players to go back to this one map where they can fire off the various story progression scenes. But that is the root of the whole problem, right? Larian has built the game around this "camp tv" mechanic but then implies that going to camp for long rests is bad which leads to missed content and frustrated players.

Well, people can still be tired even when they have full HP and Spells If you introduce the idea of weariness and the mentality that "Sleep is necessary to ward off the parasite", you could actually have all three of these suggestions. Camp would be "needed" for sleep, and companions would eventually insist if they had a player who went too long without. But going to camp wouldn't be about SHORT/LONG rests or recovering HP/Spells (just a nice side-effect).

And if resting isn't directly about HP/SP gains, then there is no reason food couldn't simply replenish both HP and spell points as well. Albeit... very small increases. I don't know if I would allow eating the equivalent of 40 camp resources worth of food be enough to restore all HP and SP across all characters.

Finally... this helps to separate the Sleep/Cutscene mechanic from the games difficulty level. If HP/SP gain are gradual, an easy way to increase/decrease game difficulty is to increase/decrease the recharge rate. At easy level, HP/SP might fully recharge in a few minutes. At Normal, it might take 20 to 30 min. At hardcore it could take an actual 8 hours of real-time. Though in all cases, going to camp and sleeping would give you near instant results.

Anyway, there are my ideas for fixing/decoupling the LONG/SHORT rest system and its connection to the content. Of all of these, #1 would go a long way with little effort.

Excellent suggestions! What you did there!

I think it would help with the game's sense of pacing overall if that was established fairly early on too. Have the basic concept be reinforced by Nettie, or Gut or Ethel whichever healer the player chances on first, like actually performing a ritual that makes that point completely explicit. Press too hard without rest and the warding magic will be weakened. The worm fever will get worse, your mind might fail. They need to develop that narrative conceit pretty forcefully, because during the prologue it's all tick-tick race against time. They basically set it up like the Running Man, where our heads could explode at any moment. And Lae'zel is go go go! When we hit the beach we need someone to explain that Lae'zel is kinda trippin' and this more of an endurance long haul situation we got going on. Basically Nettie needs to break the news to us softly, we got the big T. It's more like a chronic illness than acute one. Something we can manage better with our tadpole meds and sufficient sleep, until we meet Halsin or whoever. Cause otherwise, yeah, I think everything in the story is telling the PC, don't sleep! Like it's nightmare on Elm Street, and Freddy's coming if you hit the Zzzzz button. I mean I'm already an insomniac to begin with lol

Anyhow, nice points there. Welcome back

This...is actually not a bad idea. It's a nice compromise between those that hate the resting mechanic and those that want to keep the balance between spell casters and martial classes. Those that want to blast through their spells in every encounter can do so, but will have to wait between fights, and those who are more conservative with their resources are rewarded with a smoother gameplay. I support this. Hey Larian, hire this person, now!

For sure!

Also when we talk to Nettie she makes it sound like we could turn anytime. She wants to kill us, or have us drink from the poison chalice, or get us out of town immediately like we could go full flayer at the drop of a nap.

We've got a lot of voices in a our ear telling us not to sleep or delay, and they all seem a little suspect and unreliable, but they're the only voices we hear. We have no clue really, from a story presentation, that resting is actually the way to advance the story beats, rather than a thing to be avoided. Our first decision to rest is questioned immediately during the opening camp cinematic. That's all pretty strong suggestion during the first rest.

Sehanine should appear that same night, and the Lady of Dreams instructs the PC that "it's not a matter of time, but of resolve - and now you must rest!" Basically so the player has someone with a lot more credibility than Shadowheart or Lae'zel or their own thoughts, basically commanding them to do the sensible thing and camp.

Faerun has a Pantheon, and deities that exist and which can intercede directly in mortal affairs, but the game isn't really making much use of that concept. Or where it does it obfuscates. We don't know if any of the narrative is reliable, or if it's all some trick of the absolute. It's a little strange, since you'd think Larian would be all expert by now at putting divinity to work. Just have a god do the talking. It seems to be the thought of the moment lol

A dream visit from Sehanine is an interesting idea (Or whatever deity saved you from that fall when you fell out of the nataloid). They could kick off a convo after the fall cutscene with a more trusted but vague source... I like it. However, that would be a lot of work for Larian and critics would be fast to point out the parallels between Divinity 2's prologue and BG3s.

So while there are some excellent ideas, personally I prefer to focus on the simplest solutions, Adding cut-scenes is complicated business. Altering existing dialogue is much easier. Especially if you are simply truncating an existing line so that certain things are simply not said. The good news is a solution that simply cut certain lines short and removes other lines would also be ease to do as a mod. And as a modder, if Larian doesn't address this, I would probably make that mod myself. But... I want this game to do well and not everyone installs mods. So I would prefer in this case that Larian address the issue themselves.

So anything would be welcome. A dream visit from a god. Making NPCs say less... or more. An elder tablet that you pick up to get the codes needed to open the door to the nataloid and the narrator tells you about visions of thralls being kept awake to maximize the parasites progress with the host. Other ideas are welcome.