Originally Posted by Milkfred

The background is simple: the player, seeking to be healed of their brainworm, goes to see a healer - Nettie. Nettie promptly poisons them and the player is faced with an option: pass multiple skill checks to get the antidote from Nettie or die. Alternatively, the player can kill her or pickpocket her.


I chose to lie to her and not tell her the truth initially. The only reason I went back was because I did feel the game was pushing me in this direction. If once I had lied they removed other options to seek her help? I'd have been fine with this and possibly even preferred it. At this point I also knew of another druid healer who was missing (and maybe I could find) as well as another option.

Originally Posted by Milkfred

DC 5 feels terrible when you fail. A little bit of randomness is fine, but I think BG3 is bit too heavily loaded towards the dice roll.

And you don't even get experience for making the skill checks either. Oh, and the fact that so many of them are just DC10 (aka coin toss) is another related problem. I assume a lot of the numbers can and will be changed, but the underlying structural issue of it not being fun or interesting to fail is a deeper problem.


But aren't all games dependent on dice check? They are not as obvious as the ones in BG3 are made to be, but it's still a form of RNG. You can fail when attempting to persuade etc in OS games. Sometimes they just don't allow you to try, but I assumed it's because your stat is so low there is no "roll" that will make it possible.


Originally Posted by Milkfred

3. Players Want to Experience Everything

A solution to the Nettie thing is to just not talk to her. But players generally want to experience all the content they can in a single playthrough.


I don't expect this at all especially in the most recent Larian RPG's. In fact, I prefer RPG's that aren't on rails. There are quests in OS2 that I have "failed" and I'm okay with it. Also in OS2 there are at least 2 ways to escape Ft Joy. How can people choose multiple ways of escaping since they either escape or they don't? I smashed the brain during the BG3 intro so maybe in another play through I won't.

As for not wanting to kill NPC's that aren't red - there is some truth in that. But then I tried to kill the first druid after Arabelle was killed (didn't go too well). Bad guys aren't always "red" and sometimes we get to choose who the "bad guys" are.



Originally Posted by Milkfred

6. Combat Downgrade

Move/Standard Action/Free Action is a step down from Divinity: Original Sin 2's AP-oriented combat system. BG3's combat is perfectly fine, but it's also not nearly as interesting. Again, the issue is that BG3 is doing it as close to tabletop as possible. Some people are upset over the surfaces being so common, but I think without them the combat would be far less interesting than it is.



I never played the original BG games and have only played OS series, but I'm actually interested in BG3's combat precisely because it's not the same as OS2. Also, I am not well acquainted with 5e systems since I didn't play a lot of D&D so this isn't just me protecting a game system I enjoy. If anything, I enjoy learning new things, learning to work with a different set of rules, and that's what I've had to do (5e, weapon stats, etc).

You said you didn't camp much on your play through and maybe that's the problem. I too tried to camp as little as possible due to NPC's stressing the tadpole maturation timeline. Because of this I rarely played around with special abilities and just used whatever ability meant I didn't need to camp to regain. But maybe Larian expects us to use these abilities or assumes we will want to and it is okay to camp more? So while it may seem like some of this is poor on Larian's part I also notice that I chose my play style based on the NPC comments which is on me!