Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Getting rid of DOS gimmicks/features

Of course the ranged beam has utility, but it makes no sense whatsoever to casually lob an arrow at an enemy standing 10 feet away. It’s very immersion breaking and makes me not want to play an archer. They could easily telegraph if something is or isn’t a valid target without using a nonsensical goofy animation. Just make it a straight, forceful shot if there’s nothing in the way.

how is that "goofy", its just showing you a line.
Youre ust grasping for straws here.

How can you not understand what I’m saying? Forget about the curved line. We’re talking about the animation of firing a bow and how the arrow travels. It’s absolutely ridiculous to lob an arrow at something standing near you. Look at some gameplay again.

It needs to change.

what?
you dont "lob" it at them.
holy shityoure one of them, youre one of them who try to appeal to the realism purtiy spiral.

You activeley want the game to look worse, not for any actual reason, but just to virtue signal about how serious you want things to be.

I don’t care about realism. I care about immersion. The path of the arrow fired is literally curved, and it looks absolutely ridiculous. Plenty of people on different forums have pointed this out.

Larian is probably aware of the silliness of having something like this in a Baldurs Gate game, but it’s still concerning.

Most animation are very bright, and each action are very bass heavy.
Each spell makes the earth move, which is okay for some skill, but when even pin down and magic missle makes that, that is a bit too much.

They should approach it very differently, more realistic, if they ever want to a dark atmosphere...
No matter, what is the music like or where the fight takes place, if everybody is shinning all the time, it will never be dark.

Edit: I was talking only about ability and spell animation during battles, jump/push.
Cut-scenes and other animations, during dialogs are good.

Of all the objections being made, I think these animation complaints baffle me the most.

3) overusing surfaces interactions (water, grease, blood etd - same as DOS; please enough with DOS features),

I really disagree with that. The first time I heard BG3 announcement they emphasized player agency, a feeling like you are playing with competent GM. My imagination went wild - like casting fireball-ish spell into a wall and making it explode, leaving holes in the ground, freezing rivers to be able to pass them, burning trees and bushes to force enemies out from hiding etc etc. I really really like depth added by being able to exploit your environment for all kinds of advantages. Obviously I am not getting what I am imagining, but the the direction - making environment more responsive to your actions is an awesome immersive thing for me.

And I must admit I’m genuinely confused as to how someone can like something like the shooting animation. Proper animation is often more important than graphics when it comes to immersion.

I agree with #4 and #6, as well as #3 to a limited extent.

DOS2 inventory was a complete mess of a time dump and the useless or roundabout crafting was part of it. I hate to say I'd like something streamlined, but I think that mess needs to be toned down by half at least.

The teleport and jump abuse with the puzzles was annoying in DOS2. It can still exist, but needs serious toning down as well.

As for the environmental effects and combos, those should absolutely remain, but there were situations in DOS2 where things were outright absurd. So I can understand the negative opinion towards it.

As for the rest, I wholeheartedly disagree. Those are all quality of life features that should, if anything, be improved upon, but need to remain in the game.

D&D was MADE for the element effects of DOS2.

Since I started playing D&D back in 3.5, we always encouraged lateral thinking:
He's wearing full plate armor? Shocking grasp, since metal loves conducting electricity! (DM gives a +1-2 to damage)
It's raining and the enemy is soaking wet? Frost spells bite harder! People get a penalty to Dex as their clothing freezes!
He's wearing chainmail (or plate armor again)? Heat metal!
People climbing a wall to get to you? Gust of Wind! They have to make Str (or Dex, whichever's better) checks to avoid losing their grasp and falling!

at this point im convinced that i should just filter any post that contains the words "darker athmosphere"

Weaksauce animations that feel floaty and non threatening are "dark"?
What a load of nonsense.

And on bows.
No CRPG does bow combat right and no CRPG ever will.
A party based video game will never come close to showing the effective range of an english longbow.

If you wanna go there, youd have to go full shadowrun where one of the players is essentialy not even on the battlemat.

All those things are good, and extra choice/depth is good.

What would be less good is constantly tripping over barrels/puddles of goo/oil which often have no reason for being there. Environmental interaction was very heavily used in D:OS, and that level might seem overuse with a different rule-set.

To be fair, I have not noticed the environment being overloaded in what we have seen of BG3 so far.

you realize that was there for the tutorial.
In the divinity games explosive barels ten dto be pretty rare outside of some areas where they make sense, unless you actually carry them around

Mate, what are you arguing against? I feel like some people have taken a stance to defend the game at all cost, no matter the nature of the critique. I really see the potential in BG3 and want every aspect of it to be great. That’s all. The goal is not to belittle the game, but to show opportunities for improvement.

If the game gets higher quality, more immersive animations, that’s a good thing, no? Personally I’m a player that care about the feel of combat. How it looks, how it sounds, and of course how it plays. Why should we set the bar low because it’s a CRPG? BG3 is a very ambitious, next-gen game with realistic graphics and a third person camera. It deserves animations that fits that ambition. The current animations worked fine in DOS2, but as Larian keeps reiterating, BG3 is a very different game.

We don’t need the realism of an english longbow simulates perfectly. This isn’t about realism, it’s about how things make you feel when you experience them. Does it get me excited to be a stealthy assassin that lurks in the shadows and crits baddies from afar? Currently no it doesn’t, far from it, but I hope that will change.

Mate

how about you lurk a bit more huh?
Ive already voiced multiple concerns about the direction of the game, i just happen to disagree with you here.

I am agains tmore "Immersive" animaitons. Ive seen games like kingdom come deliverance or mordhau.
The combat in those games feels weak, floaty and embarassing.
I prefer systems that feel like dragons dogma, systems that show a grounded world but have an effectfull combat system, even if its not realisitc.

Its one that feels right rather than looks right.
I dont trust you people with understanding the difference between realism and authenticity.
I prefer authenticity (within the bounds of the universe) to realism.

But the kind of people that complain about the exact curve of an arrow, are those kind of people that do it exclusiveley to virtue signal to others about how pure their dedication is.
so no.
Realistic animations are not a net positive. To me they are a negative because they directly subtract from my expirience as it gets less satisfying

Aside from MAYBE 6 and 4, I have no real issues. Some visual markers are like they are fora reason. Red is associated with danger. I don't see a recon to change thing just for the sake of trying to look different.

Speaking of 4, personally I hate how packrat/lootlord friendly many RPG games are. I'd rather not have you pick up, carry and sell everything that isn't nailed down. I don't mind enemies dropping everything they carry (everything you can see on them) as that makes sense, but you should pick what you need and move on, especially since there is a sense of urgency to the plot.

Did you reply to the wrong person? I’m wholeheartedly confused.

If anyone is interested in longbow effectiveness, Tod Cutler, a re-enactment enthusiast who makes weapons for a living ( https://todsworkshop.com/ ), has got together a group of modern specialists to do practical examination of medieval bow warfare. They have a couple of youtube videos so far looking at the English warbow, including one testing against Agincourt-era French plate armour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE

Reading a little around this subject, it seems that although maximum effective longbow distance may be 150m or more, that would need massed archers against barn-sized unarmoured targets to make it remotely worth expending the arrows. A more practical maximum distance for a one-on-one would be flat-shooting at 50m, which is still 5 or 6 turns of movement in D&D terms.

Oh, yeah, he lives nearby. He demoed one of his crossbows to me (slight sense of deja vu, so please excuse me if I'm repeating myself, I have an awful memory) which was a big bugger and it took a lot of winding. Very impressive, even though he said it only had about as much impact as a .22! He nearly let me have a go but it was unfinished. I suggested it was probably a terrible idea to hand it to me anyway! Best case I'd just drop it on my foot.