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

Let me preface this with I'm a DOS fan and not overly acquainted with 5e rules. I won't be offering any set solutions to these issues. This is more how I feel about it and maybe suggestions on how it can be changed, but I don't feel I know the Balder's Gate series or 5e rules enough to make these decisions.

1. Jumping - I think this is OP as well, but I'm not sure if it needs to be removed as much as it needs a check similar to stealth. If there are ranged present and you jump? They should be able to hit you mid-air. Melee standing near you should be able to stop you from jumping completely. Also, one of my companions looted an item that can be used to help another companion jump? I'm confused as to why I would need this if I could freely jump at will anyway. I guess I think it either needs a check or it needs to be an ability that can be cast on you.

2. Surfaces - I'm okay with them, but they seem inconsistent so maybe this is a bug. Sometimes they only do damage for the one turn, sometimes their effects don't work (fog), and sometimes the effects stick around long after you've passed through (I actually died to a ground effect well after passing through it). I've dropped water on a burning area to no effect. This is early release so I hope they already are aware of this.

3. Camping - I've heard some say that time is of the essence due to this tadpole, but I'm not seeing it so far. I initially tried my best to not camp too much and conserve my unique actions, but after the companion who complains about time the most said she needed a break after doing nothing more than walking through a basement and talking to a mirror? I then felt I should have just not worried about skill/ time management and spammed my best action skills like I would in DOS.

4. Successful rolls: This may be a bug, but I've had my companions discover an item and successfully identify while I'm on another objective. I decided to keep working on my initial objective rather than stopping to investigate more. I went back maybe 5 minutes later to investigate further and I get the check again, but this time none of them identify it? Did they all get amnesia? I'm sure it was some roll that didn't go in my favor, but once it's identified it should be done. I've also had them not be successful on identification and come back later to positively identify. To me this could make sense for some characters depending on their talents (maybe it just took them a while to remember). I think automatically adding these to some type of sharable knowledge log would be nice, not just for further checks but for lore reasons as well.

5. Companion approval - There are companions that are not in my party, but they approve of my decisions. This is fine I suppose, but if they can approve my decisions while not in party then I should at least be able to access their inventory when selling items or equipping party members. If party size increase is not an option, then the camp party's bag items should be transferred to active companions.

6. I think the Nettie quest is weird. I was given the option to talk to her - when I chose to not tell her about this tadpole I had already decided to try and find Halsin. Even DOS would record this decision and not try to force the confrontation, but I feel in BG3 it is being "forced" to some degree. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way though. I understand I don't have to go back to her after lying to her, but since it stays open I feel I have to.

So I might make a seperate thread but it does certainly not hurt to add to this list so Larian have some overview.

D&D Rulebook

Great Weapon Master (GWM): Please please stick to the 5e rules and make it optional to use. GWM's efficiency is always dependent on the characters to-hit modifier and the enemies AC. Especially in early levels a forced -5 on hit is really hurting

User Interface

• I was not able to find a list of taken Feats e.g. GWM in the character sheet
• Skill Proficiencies should be displayed in a list and on hovering them the source e.g Class, Feat or Race should be shown
• The Sort Inventory button should be placed near the inventories and made more prominent
• Combat Dice Rolls should be visible at all times

Companions

Please let us adjust the stat blocks of companions when we first recruit them. I do not want to have a Fighter with a rather random 13 DEX and 11 INT if almost all enemy stat blocks are optimized for their purpose

Battle Encounters and their Balancing

• Surfaces should be much less because it does not fit into the 5e Rulebook, especialls Cantrips creating surfaces that deal damage even though the cantrip missed
• High Ground should be less useful. Right now it is basically a must to straight rush to the high ground to get boni on to hit
• Amount of Enemies per Encounter should be reduced. Action Economy is real big deal in 5e and having 10 enemies with 10 actions versus the party with 4 actions is making fights really difficult if you do not cheese them
• Weapon Alloys (dunno what it is called in English. I talk about the poisons and magic arrows) should be much less frequent since they are able to boost the damage immensely. Same goes for spell scrolls that you find around every corner
• Amount of Spells/Grenades on Enemies is way too high. If every enemy mob can either AOE my party or use spells then the current amount of enemies per encounter is just way too high
• Forcing the players to long rest after every fight because you had to use almost all spell slots for a fight is really tedious since it involves loading into the camp and going to sleep so often
• AOE abilities other than those from 5e should be avoided. Why even play a Fighter or Ranger that have to rely on skills or Spells to deal AOE damage when one can use grenades or other tools to deal way more damage to more enemies
• Initiative is sometimes really strange where one member of the party gets 2 turns before another member gets their first turn
• Jump should be no free Disengage or at leat take up an Action in order to balance it
• Fix the stat blocks of enemies. Some of these are so overtuned for their intended level.

Performance Issues

• Game taking sometimes up to 2 seconds to open a loot container is really annoying
• Game taking much time to load in objects and textures after a rather long loading screen makes no sense to me

Quality of Life Changes

• Please let Companions automatically jump when the currently controlled character jumps because it is tedious to do this 4 times and sometimes the AI will let the other companions walk to the spot where you jumped if there is a way to walk there
• Improve the pathfinding on the maps. If there is a clear path to a door and I click the door I do not want to be greeted with the "You can only reach this spot using Jump" message
  
  Probably some of the stuff is already mentioned in other posts but I do not want to read every single entry (Plus stating it in multiple posts shows how important the point is)

You can already toggle GWM effect on/off in the reactions box. The UI will certainly be improved at some point, there's been several other elusive UI elements that I've found by accident or read from forums.

Hellish Rebuke: This ability should automatically hit the attacker, being a saving throw spell, but currently it uses a projectile animation that can instead hit some obstacle.

Oh thanks for the hint. Kinda strange to put it into the reaction box.
Did you by any chance find out where Feats of characters are displayed in the character sheet?

Hi everyone. Just to preface; I thoroughly enjoyed my time with EA. And a huge thanks to everyone at Larian. BG is back after 20 long years! It's clear a lot of hard work and love has gone into this. I have about 35 hours in it and "completed" the content available. I'm sure there were some things I missed, but I got the ending cutscene. I think the amount of work that has gone into the game is incredible and when it's done will be amazing.

I am not very familiar with DnD 5e in general as I'm mostly just a BG/DoS fan. So please excuse any incorrect information/questions. The following is some input about my experience. Some may have been mentioned already. I have gone through many of these pages, but may have missed something. Apologies if I did.

This forum seems like the best outlet. Steam and Reddit are just full of people complaining about everything. I don't have those. I want to see a masterclass of a game, which is why I am here. I realize some of this may be in the complete version of the game and not yet implemented, but since we don't have access to that, no way to know yet.

Sorry in advance for a long post. I tried to make it as detailed as possible!

Character Creation:
- I realize the UI is still incomplete, but it seems like a mix between DoS and BG. It doesn't have it's own identity. The character creation screen is clearly influenced by DoS, which is fine, but needs to look more BG.
- Have ability to invert certain tattoos. Some are on one side of face. Option to invert would be nice
- Believe this was mentioned but, Heterochromia. Separate color eyes, or split one eye color.
- Some of the starting gear seems "too nice looking". I get that Lae'zel is a Githyanki Warrior and Shadowheart a Cleric of Shar, but they were abducted onto an enemy ship and thrust into a situation. As prisoners, should they have this great looking gear? I understand the need for their "Signature Look" but consider more out of story context.

UI:
- Do not close Inventory each time a scroll/book/note is read. Extremely tedious to reopen the window each time you want to read something.
- Piggybacking off the previous: The "new" notification disappears when you hover over the scroll/book/note in your inventory. This notification should remain until document is read, resulting in less time guessing which we have already viewed. There's lot's of documents!
- Piggybacking further off previous: Add some kind of appendix/log book to consolidate all documents once read.
- Further: For magical scrolls/etc. add a Tome of Holding for these to reduce overall clutter in inventory. BG2 had something similar.
- Add item such as Bag of Holding. This is a magical item that will reduce weight in inventory or be able to keep certain kinds of items (wares, etc.) for ease of access for players. I do not suggest it be given to the player within the first 5 minutes of play, but make it a drop/quest reward (reward for exploring/etc.)
- Character Portraits are extremely bland. Remember what you told us about boring main PC's? I know it was a joke, but consider spicing portraits up!
- In the Quest Log, make it so if you hover anywhere over the quests you can scroll up/down. Currently there is only a VERY small area where you can scroll.

Gameplay/Exploration:
- Food is OP. I appreciate food restoring health and there being another alternative to healing spells. There should be a "Full" status depending on food consumed. Make it based on a point value ie. small food (fruit, etc) is shorter than a chicken leg. Being able to eat endlessly is useful but too powerful.
- Camera panning through buildings/doors. I'm not sure this is entirely possible, but it's like x-ray mode currently. I know you can turn camera panning off. I'll give easy example. Door where Troll/Orc (might be wrong about races, I forget) are getting it on. You can open the door to disturb, or keep moving. But if I pan up slightly, I can x-ray through the door and see the NPC's inside. This can also be abused out of combat sometimes to see what's waiting for you on the other side. If my character can't see it, I shouldn't be able to either.
- Puzzle speed. Wasn't sure what to put this under. The moon puzzle is extremely tedious. I LIKE the puzzle. I do not like how long it takes each wheel to spin. I know it's stone. Consider speeding it up slightly.
- Illithid Powers: Running into another touched NPC you can exploit results in the same line every single time "Symbol Glows, Power courses through you. Authority" etc. This line gets stale very fast. Consider adding more iterations of this line.
- XP. Ah the source of much discontent right now. How you gain XP. I realize you level up fairly quick at level 1. Almost too quick. I was level 4 in no time at all. Consider a bigger scale. You gained XP in BG1/2 by learning spells and picking locks successfully. Not sure if this is something removed in 5e, but to echo, more options should be added to gain XP for players.

Skills/Abilities:
- If I am using a skill or ability to target a party member, I should be able to use spell by clicking on character portrait, even if detrimental.
- Lockpicking/Pickpocket seems broken. What is my level 1 mage with low Dexterity able to pick practically every lock in the game for? What purpose does rogue serve at that point?
- Not sure if this is a 5e rule or not; forgive me if it isn't. If a character has a shield, we should be able to take a defensive posture for a turn (using their action up) to reduce accuracy. Unless this is factored into having a shield.

Story/Plot Development:
- Consider adding another cut scene at the start of the game adding more background for brand new players. A la animated story scene in DoS2. How was I abducted? What is Avernus and why was the city of Elturel pulled in there? It doesn't specifically need to be that, but giving the player more back information at the start will help draw them in more. Not everyone here plays DnD. Not everyone wants to read a campaign before playing and would be nice if there was a little tie in between BG2 -> BGIII
- PC created by player. What is the point of this character? Again I realize it might not be entirely fleshed out yet, but in BG/BG2 your PC felt like YOUR PC. It was happening to you and was made very clear from the start you had a role to play in the story. In BGIII, they are more or less a blank slate. And by choosing an Origin character you are seeing a more interesting tale. Why should I care about a PC if they don't have an interesting back story?
- "Guardian Angel" character (Who you dream of) only seems to trigger if I exploit my Illithid powers. This seems like a very important plot thread. If I choose not to use my powers, will this still occur? I noticed it more the more I used my powers. Which may be intentional. I'm not sure because the rest of the game isn't available. But it seems imperative to the plot. What if we never use the powers? Will I still have those dreams?
- Spreading of companions - I'm sure we will have more NPC's both temporary and full time as the game goes on, but I can't guess how many. I'd say another 2-4? Either way, having your entire party given to you within the first hour of playing (even if there are a few we did not meet), how is the rest of the game going to be fresh? In BGII there were companions everywhere. You could miss several of them in one play through if you didn't click/missed a certain area.
- Companions in camp are very temperamental. They hate everything you do in certain situations, but because the plot demands it, you speak to them and they spill their guts to you.

Camp:
- Camp. How does it get there? I fall out of the sky and meet a companion within 5 minutes. If I tell them to go wait at camp, when I go there, it is just there. Already set up and waiting for me. Was sort of immersion breaking. I can easily look past things for the sake of plot, but it would be nice to see HOW your camp initially would be nice. Have your PC/available companions set up camp. Or at least talk about it.
- Build up over time. Again I realize this will happen as I play, but the camp just building up each time I visit takes me a bit out of it. Introduce a NPC that oversees camp construction and has limited amounts of wares and restocks as you travel. Similar to Bodahn in Dragon Age. Not as egregious though. He had tons of OP wares. This NPC would only have basics to help your party out.
- Dog should be relegated to specific areas of the camp. Or unable to get too close to certain areas. As I am going to rest for the evening, the dog comes into camera literally walking over sleeping bags. Keep him in background sniffing around. Or add borders to where he can and can't go.
- Companions can be exploited to have the same conversation over and over to gain their favor. This should be removed once favor is gained/lost.

Some sort of indication that you need to jump the gap in the beginning would be great. It wasn't until I accidently clicked my touchpad on the other side did I get some indication on what I was supposed to do (I play with a controller).

strong +1
Not only have they no interesting back story, they have no special place at all in the story. If the pc was missing you would play the same game (with only 3 party members), they feel more like a mercenary as companion ... an definitely not as the main character

So much this. I was playing origin characters in DOS2 because of how well they were integrated and how many personal stakes and reactions they had. I love the game, but the characters don't feel "mine" so to speak.
Baldur's Gate is a different beast imo.
I feel like BG 1 and 2 touched so many people was because the story felt deeply personal - you start off as a kid and then your foster parent gets killed so you embark on the act of revenge, then you are tortured for your powers and your childhood friend is taken, etc. The companions were colourful and had personal stakes, but they never overshadowed your character. To be honest I'd rather they completely scrapped the ability to play origin characters and just focused all those resources on our protagonist. Giving us such an amazing CC with so many race, class, and appearance options seems like a waste when it becomes more interesting to play pre-defined characters.

Exactly, they sacrificed depth of our custom character to flesh out origin characters that actually compete with one another to be "most interesting character in the game". Honestly, I have zero interest in playing an origin character because that's how someone else invisioned that character. It is not my character and never will be. The connection isn't there. They would be more in line with the spirit of BG 1/2 as companions only (after toning down their 'specialness' a bit).

big +1 to this, my character feels like a blank slate and I can come up with as much backstory as I want to in my head but it doesn't really have the same feeling to it, especially when all my dialogue options won't reflect that. If they won't just go full deep dive on the custom PC's background, at least give us some way to make their background more personal in the character creator. Like create your character, then you go to a screen that lets you alter your backstory and such. DOS2 has this in a small sense with the "tags" system, where you could choose 2 tags like "barbarian" and "jester" that let you open up more options during dialogues according to those tags. I'm sure writing a 3 page backstory isn't something they could feasibly allow in the game, but let us choose certain things like backgrounds, where our PC is from, what they used to do, etc etc to give them more flavor.

On a side note, does anyone have any idea what the "who do you desire?" page where you create what seems to be your lover(?) after character creation is all about? Like, what am I supposed to do with this exactly? xD

My submission: camp conversations with companions are cut short for no apparent reason if you don't talk to them first. Link to my existing thread on the matter (spoilers inside).

if you could pick an origin story no companion has, it would help to fill the gap
you could even include the "who do you desire" into the origin story

Link to discussion
http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=689193&page=4

Experience in D&D is awarded by the Dungeon Master for whatever she wants. Since Larian is the DM, award Exp for whatever you want.

Considering how outrageous the current companion origin stories are, it shouldn't be hard to make one they don't have lol. Literally any origin story that is less out of this world wacky and insane would be something the other companions don't have, and I rather like making a character that's more grounded. Sure my warlock may have signed a pact with a fiend at some point, but they certainly aren't stupid enough to do something so dangerous that it literally turns them into a walking, talking apocalypse waiting to happen (looking at you Gale)

Oops didn't notice this thread afore posting my own, sorry, will just add my comments in here as more likely to be seen by devs.

Overall I enjoyed what I've seen so far, bugs here and there obviously but generally nothing too bad. So rather than a long spiel just a few points on the plus and minus side. There are more items in the negative list but most of those negatives are things that could be sorted during EA and don't entirely spoil my enjoyment of it.


Positives

Graphics - prefer how the graphics have been done in this game compared to the Original Sin series, less cartoony, particularly armours.

Story - interesting from the get go, but not entirely revealed as yet to keep ones interest

Quests - yeh no delivery quests! Nice variety of sub-quests, with a variation in difficulty and duration. Obviously various ways of completing main goal. Progress isnt too slow or too fast.

Combat - not just hack and slash, need to think and plan.

Length - based on the early access looks like a decent amount of hours need to be invested, particularly if you like to do side quests.



Negatives

Party control is something of a pain, especially when jumping. Prefer the old school method of individual selection or hitting a button to select all rather than having to chain/unchain the group.

Too much emphasis on height advantage. Not too familiar with 5e rules but not so sure about bows getting both range and to hit bonuses from height. Similarly Im pretty sure there's not supposed to be an advantage to landing spells from height which there seems to be? Also too much emphasis on knocking people off heights as a way of doing damage. Not sure I've seen any areas that are flat and where you/opponents can't gain a height advantage. So overused especially as climbing should require a lot of your movement allowance which it doesn't appear to do.

Too much emphasis on lingering ground effects - spells have been altered to provide these, elemental arrows likewise have been altered to give a pool of the element, way too many barrels of oil etc. This is all straight out of DOS and I don't think it fits in with D&D. Lingering effects are fine if the original D&D spell specifies it. Aside from not being very D&D like it also causes problems when trying to cast against opponents that are in melee with one of your party.

Seems to be a bias towards ranged as against melee.

All but one of the available companions seems to be on the evil side - perhaps Larian want to push us down that road, or there are nicer companions further down the road. But personally I prefer playing a good character and doing so basically alienates most of the current companions. I'd like a bit more variety in the companions at the start though.

Limited to only 4 party members - think it should be 5 or 6, to allow for a little variety in the party.

Shouldn't be able to use food for healing in combat but given how relatively scarce healing potions are and how little they heal something needs adjusted espeically given that the cleric healing spells at this level are also rather limited in combat.

As usual in Larian games there are way too many containers in the game - why have 12 containers in the one room when all but one or two are empty, or in some cases half a dozen containers all with similar items in them, again why not just have a couple with a greater content. Would ignore them altogether except that they can contain useful if not needed items. Also don't highlight which is a pain although possibly a bug. I don't think having to open hundreds of containers (and that's just in early access area) is fun or adds anything to the game.

And lastly for the sake of poor Gale, possibly a little less emphasis on attacking the mage!

I'm happy one of my points is getting some traction, and not just because it's a post I made. (I'm sure several others have said the same) I feel it's a legitimate issue the game currently has. I don't know often a mod is going through this thread and adding to the list of points, but the more people that chime in, the more likely it is to gain traction.

I'm also very happy I'm not the only one that feels this way. So far you've got:

- (presumably) a princess Githyanki with a chip on her shoulder
- a hero who is bound by a contract with a devil
- a cleric who has had her most important memories removed by Shar
- a mage who needs to eat magic items
- a vampire who is bound by a greater vampire

These stories are extremely out there. Where's your average Joe? I don't mind interesting back stories, but these people have the craziest lives! Anyway, that is to say, the more people that hammer home (without being trolls or obnoxious) important points, the more likely we are to get positive change.

Rather than retype everything I'm just going to link to the post I pulled together for my latest run

http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=88859&Number=690603#Post690603

Yeah, having the high ground does not give advantage in D&D, it was poor decision since having advantage is a big part of combat and getting it is now so easy that most of the time it's harder not to have advantage that to have it. Not to mention they consider the tiniest amount of difference in ground height to constitute "high ground" like I'm not even half a foot lower then this guy, how is that advantageous high ground?

Another big +1 against the ranged bias, melee characters are completely pointless as is because if spells and arrows don't shred them, the unnecessary amount of surface effects will do it for them.

As for healing potions, I don't find them scarce at all. Maybe I'm not using them quiet as often or I've just had better luck finding them, but I have a pretty decent stash of them tucked away and keep finding at least 1 more every combat or new area I explore. They toss out healing pots and magic scrolls like candy on halloween.

Yeah I agree. By the time I was "done" with EA, I must have had about 25 lesser potions and 5 or 6 regular size ones. And I was using them fairly regularly. Not like elixers in a FF game. I still feel food needs to come with a "Full" effect as to not be abused.