Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Early Access gameplay feedback compendium

Reactions could maybe use more work to add some player agency in deciding when to trigger reactions more strategically (especially if more intricate reactions like counterspell, bardic cutting words or shield are added).

Thought I would suggest since I haven't seen it elsewhere.

My biggest concern so far is the exploitability of Firewine, Smokepowder and Oil Barrels. While they may be rather heavy, collecting and depositing them in the Camp is fairly simple.
Once you run into a difficult'ish encounter, such as the Githyanki or the Hag, you can simply hide outside their view, place barrel after barrel after barrel in the middle of their position without them reacting, then finish them off with an Alchemist Fire, Fire Arrow or Fire Bolt to bypass the entire encounter without ever being in danger.

My second biggest concern would be the exploitability of stealth vs. the AI in its' current state. To stress the absolute broken state of this, I just finished completing an entire playthrough, killing every single thing that I could find while exploring the entire map with the exception of the encounter on the boat while sailing to the end of the Early access content. I did so without a party, twice, playing a Rogue Thief and then a Dex based Fighter. The simple tactic, hide, activate turn-based when approaching enemies, fire from high ground when possible, then walk half my movement away and end the turn. Repeat.
The AI will default to "Planning Next Move" in 99% of the cases without the enemies ever thinking to take cover, group up, search for me or flee. Granted, a few encounters I cheesed even harder - a handful of which I used the Barrels mentioned above and another I used the wannabe Beholder in a necklace. Oh and lastly on the theme of AI, walking through loading doors resets battle entirely making a handful of locations even easier to beat.

Now, in terms of requests I would really like to see;
The Crossbows be affected by the Loading property that disallows multiple shots from it during a single round. A heavy crossbow can deal way too much damage in the hands of a fighter with access to action surge in a single round.
Bless, Bane and other spells that target a number of creatures to allow the player to actually select the targets and not just have it randomized in an area.
Add the Word of Radiance cantrip for clerics.
Remove the ability for Wizards to learn class specific and divine spells from scrolls.
Add an interface that shows details on progression for a given class and subclass - i.e. when I create a Fighter I would like to be able to see what I can expect from the coming levels.
Show DCs, Dice rolls and bonuses instead of adjusting the DC to your bonus, I know it might seem more complicated, but I think it highlights what you are good at and what you are not more clearly.
Add an option to see dice rolls on attacks etc. instead of or in addition to x%

My biggest, most precious dream for Baldurs Gate 3 is the inclusion of the Import/Export/Pre-generate Character options which were found in the old Baldur's Gate games. Second to that would be an option to Roll for stats rather than Point Buy, or possibly add 2 more options for Point Buy, one with less points and another with more - catering for those who want a harder or easier game.

As others have said in different threads the percentage number to hit should be an unknown when you first encounter a new creature. You are not supposed to know its AC, Resistances, ect.

The solution imo is what they do in alot of other games, make a Bestiary of sorts to keep track of known information. Where at first you dont know the creatures stats at all (maybe not even its name, that that might be to much) then as you attack it and test abilities on it you learn its stats. I would tie this to difficulty since im sure many newer players would prefer to just see the %. Likewise you could find lore books, talk to NPCs or perhaps make nature/religion/arcana rolls ect to have a chance to learn a number of the creatures stats. This is how it is done at the table in DND and i don't see why it should be done differently.

edit/Link to thread: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=91032&Number=695613

By showing just your Dice Roll and Bonus (i.e. 12 + 3) you would not be showing the AC of the target

I have to agree with most being said here. My worst concernsa re this

1) Highlight feature (ALT) not highlighting nearly everything interactable. What the hell?
1b) when it actually highlights lootable objects and you click them, they go into your inventory. I mean like... seriously? Why would I ever want to pick up a chest full of items? Ok, there might some reason sometimes, but it absolutely totally should never ever be the *default* action

2) party size - I really hate how a lot of modern (c)RPGs cap party size at 4, it is so pointlessly limiting. I really loved the flexibility of 6-man party. So much more fun. I mean, if there is enough choice of characters, the current origin characters are just not enough, but I assume there will be a lot more eventually.

3) yeah, do let us cast buffing spells during dialogue

4) yeah, the companions seem to ignore a lot of what my character is doing, having not much opinions of their own

5) jumping - please, when you are jumping in normal mode, make other characters jump after the leading one automatically. ordering everyone to jump one by one is the most annoying thing ever, it makes no sesne out of combat.

Funny bonus issues:
6) so I think Wylle died before I could meet him. Was I supposed to meet him after the goblin fight in fornt of the druid grove? I noticed there is a corpse named Wylle, it was a random defender that jumped into the fry, trying to melee solo five goblins... Kinda unfortunate, really, I am playing an evil cleric and I was quite looking forward to running with a warlock...

7) Astarion - it is pretty funny that he has issues running water, being hurt because of vampiric flesh, long before you learn he is a vampire. I mean of course he cant not have issues, but maybe the effect could have different name at first?

I don't approve of this list. It's far to subjective and a one-liner sometimes doesn't do the feature request justice.

One of the things that bothers me (and I haven't seen it mentioned) is how experience is handled.

I feel like the "getting experience for killing" is a highly limiting approach - it enforces the mindset of "kill first, speak with dead later".
While there were moments during exploration where I was given some amount of experience, I have no indication to suggest that the "diplomatic approach" give me any experience (I legitimately don't know if you get experience for that - I did not look it up and, as mentioned, there was no indication of it happening in game).

Another thing to note is how experience that is earner (the actual method is irrelevant) gets distributed. There are several ways that I have seen this to be handled:
1) Global type where the progress bar is the same for everyone ensuring that there is zero disparity between all of the characters. This, I believe, would be the best option since multiplayer exists. And even in single player, it would be preferable to NOT have a party member that is 2-3 levels behind (I don't actually know if the party members that stay in camp get any experience, because I only had 4 people for reasons beyond my control).
2) 'Follow the leader' type, which is similar to the Global type, but where the "main character" has a marginal lead over everyone else (who are otherwise equal to each other), however, not a significant lead (5-10% ahead). Dragon Age uses this method, I believe. This ensures that "your character" is always equal - sometimes superior - to the rest of the party, however, this won't translate well to multiplayer, so it's not a valid solution.
3) Individual experience with various degrees, such as only active party members, only living party members, etc. In some modes of play, such as solo play - even though the 5e ruleset should not allow for it, from my experience - this is preferable, because the idea is to have a single character that is significantly ahead of the curve. This is a fairly common approach to such games, although not everyone enjoys it. Pathfinder Kingmaker seems to have made a good - if obvious - compromise: there is a setting that changes between "global party experience" and "active party only".

I simply could not resist. One-liner is okay, though, for dismissing the whole thread?

This is really cool feature in Pillars of Eternity and I'd really like to see that in BG3.

Maybe roll Investigation checks for humanoids. No idea how it works in 5e.

Has it been mentioned yet that nobodies hands move during dialogue? Everyone just keeps theirs hands flat, no pointing. Seems very strange and distracting once you see it.

Hello, my 2 cents as well. Like what i see so far, this EA is a great foundation to what's still to come.
All in all, there's a lot what i like in the current status of the game, the Larian team did an incredible job on this EA start, here are things what i personally would prefer to see in upcoming updates/patches. if im overlooking something already in there, sorry.

- couple of things need double-clicking atm, if there is no specific reason for it i would prefer to click less on an action to make it work
- some actions would be nice if they can apply to whole party with a shortkey? (all party hide for example). this might be solved with some party selection mechanics
- im very pleased with spells/cantrips and the idea of actions like throw, jump etc but im with those saying the basic actions like jump with the automatic disengage (and probably dash/shove) need tweaks and combat actions need more experimenting as currently combat is a little bit samey in the long term (and unnecessarily long with the whole party keep jumping/dashing around at the end of most rounds) and positioning beyond getting the high ground and attack of opportunities dont have too much weight atm. my understanding is that characters with more physical abilites (rather than magical) could use exclusive access to some unique physical abilities and skills, so they can make sure an enemy is not getting through them to attack the party's backline (wizards and archers) directly (taunting the enemy, knocking them down with a charge, disarming them or grabbing them so they cannot move, jump on their back etc). not sure about the weapon-specific special skills anybody can do with the weapon like pin down or cleave. my wizard is pinning a couple of enemies down with a bow which is a little strange. some experimenting with which characters have access to which actions based on skills/class/abilities would be good to see, it's EA after all and we are guinea pigs
- i hope we get teamwork feats/actions (careful targeting, secret language, team manouvers)
- i know more difficulty options are coming, i would like to have a difficulty option at final release which enables to save any time during the game but not in combat. this would make combats tense, the choice to get into a battle more tough it would probably generate more pre-planning before and during combat actions, and this would obviously make the RNG premutations much-much more valuable. I dont save scum every roll (never at dialogue skill checks) but i tend to load a save back quickly during combat instead starting to think in alternative solutions also im not that cautious with initiating any combat overall and usually im getting away with that and the occasionally bad RNG just frustrates me instead of making me think. Battle Brothers is a good example, it has a turn based combat system with not a lot of actions (no magic stuff), still the combat is really tense because you know you cannot save during it, not even when you had some bad rolls, you just know you have to win the fight somehow, from the start (when you are not even sure if you will have a good or bad streak)
- to be able to build traps would be nice (not by anyone but maybe with a specific skill/class), this could be ecouraged again with a no-save-in-combat difficulty option
- im also +1 for the idea to not know enemy stats/percentages until i dont experience them and to have a constantly growing bestiary (maybe difficulty option?)
- please give XP for non-combat solutions as well
- so far my favourite moments of the game is when the party discusses how they should solve their problems. very nice to see their thoughs and interactions it gives them a lot of character and it has a great im in a party where everybody thinks differently vibe, which is what i liked in earlier BG games. related to COOP my favourite moments in DOS1 was when we were able to criticize/admire the way the other one solved (or wants to solve) a quest or mock each other related to a critical fail or just pass some wisdom via our characters words regarding the world around us. cool and unique feature and i think it would go well with the approve/doesnt approve system
- would be nice to have a wait for evening button. the party might (especially an evil party) want to sneak into a goblin camp at night instead of daytime or rob an area. the game doesnt really need to have dynamic day-night cycle and npc schedules per se, but i think if the game has a cool light/dark dynamic already it would be nice to build on that and have the option to be able to wander around at night too
- i saw mentioned during interviews more use to social spells are coming which is great (charm, detect thoughts etc)

That's all, its already looking great im looking forward to future patches and improvements

A really cool way to implement such a bestiary is to link it to stuff like the books of the world and making successfull skillchecks on various bits of lore. So the bestiary starts out mostly empty, but f you read a book about goblins or owlbeards or ancient forgotten magic that stuff gets added to the reference page.

Animations during dialogue is clearly something that is heavily subject to both change, full implementation and polish. Hand movement, mouth movement, holding items properly (Astarion keeps trying to threaten you with the backside of his knife when you forst meet him.), etc. All that stuff is at a rough draft stage. Enough is there to present a sketch of what you might be able to expect in the finished game, but its not done yet.

-Mage Hand doesn't seem to work with anything. I've not been able to put out any candles or throw switches/levers?
-Concept art for loading screens? I'm confident you're holding back stuff for loading screens, but I'm getting bored of seeing the same few splashes; it would be nice to see concept art for the environments, or to be extreme, have a folder in the game's directory to load them from, so players can add their own

That's why each one is a link to a thread discussing the issue.

And that's why the following request was made:

But few seem to be following the format, which is unfortunate because I think that will make it harder for Larian to assess each proposal.

I'm pretty sure that's not how dual wielding works. The offhand is NOT used automatically.

This is so correct. And it's an universal flaw with discussion forums. Unless the topic is very precise or the forum is split up into very precise sub forums, people tend to not bother reading the threads first or check to see if their idea is already under discussion. Because that takes time and many don't even find discussion interesting, but they still feel that their opinion matters and that they should be heard. So they create a new thread to say what they want to say. Meaning a forum flooded with threads were many deals with the same topic, drowning out the few that don't. And that is Vometias point. Remember, she stated that she does this in her spare time, which means she doesn't have time to read and merge every single thread.

I myself is a bit guilty for an enormous one-liner list in this thread, but that is because, after spending the majority of my day off, reading 841 threads in one go, in an attempt to compile what the community had asked for so far, when I was about to put in that list, with explanations and controversy mentioned, in a new thread, I discovered that Vometia had already done what I tried to do. But better. And I just couldn't bother going through all those 841 threads again, to be able to link them. Sorry for that, but I had a day off, not an eternity of time reading this forum.

This! Personally I love the tactical challenges the Divinity games offered. The remark on the cooldown mechanic is spot on! DnD is a wonderful system for tabletop, but I don't see how its combat (spell and skill) system can be ported to a fun computer game without altering some of its aspects to better suit the medium. At the end of the EA, I found myself reloading the cutscene before the combat just to pass the skill check of avoiding it. (It also had to do with already hitting the XP cap, and I was sleepy, and whatnot.) Wanting to skip a combat without a good story reason is not something that ever happened to me in any of the Divinity games though. (That said, I'm aware the this Early Access, and issues in general are to be expected. That's why I wanted to make sure to leave feedback.)

Overall, I did enjoy the game, and I agree with most points raised here. With the exception that the combat system should be more like textbook DnD E5 if that results in a more bland combat (see point about further reduced cantrip effectiveness removing even more renewable options).

Larian should adapt improved combat system from DOS2 into BG3, cause the one we have at the moment is a big step back.

I agree. Players really shouldn't be getting much experience for killing things, because it just encourages them to kill everything in sight. D&D even has a term for people who go around killing everyone: murder hobos.

I like how the original Baldur's Gate games handled experience. The bulk of it came from finishing quests, which I think would work great for Baldur's Gate III where they want to encourage players to find creative ways to accomplish their goals.