Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Again, Battles are TOO long

That's... what a pencil draft is?
In fact, even less than it.
...Am I being trolled, by any chance?


At no point I ever said Larian "doesn't want us to comment on combat". I'm commenting on combat all the time myself.
What the hell are you even blabbing about?



"Thinking differently".

I haven't had the issue of falling asleep during a large battle... When I took on the entire goblin camp, yes, it did take a while for 18 enemies to move and attack and it was a little dull just waiting for my turn, I'll grant you that, but...

I don't think this is entirely Larian's fault. This is just D&D.

As a DM, I had a tabletop game where I pitted my players (3 players + 1 NPC all at level 6) against a horde of goblins. They had out-levelled (the basic 1/4 CR) goblins, but I wanted them to fight goblins for story reasons, so I just threw a ton of them at the players. And yeah... they almost fell asleep as I moved mins and rolled my d20 for 30 goblins. They did not find it fun at all and I'm never going to do that to them again. Lesson learned.

As for real-time... I don't see how it would work and stay with the 5e rules. You have movement limits, you have actions, bonus actions and reactions. I played BG1+2, Icewind Dale, more recently: Pathfinder - Kingmaker etc. and I was never, ever a fan of the real-time with pause. It may appeal to some players because it's faster-paced, but it isn't D&D (as far as I'm concerned). The number of times I've laid down a fireball in RTwP games only to have it explode with nobody in the blast area because they'd all moved out of it and were now killing the wizard in melee... it's a bad fit with D&D rules. I think if you had RTwP in BG3, you'd just get overwhelmed and die constantly.

A better suggestion would be to have a game option slider to accelerate enemy moves/animations in combat. Find combat too slow? Change the slider from 100% to 200% and just watch them fly around the map until your turn. And, it may seem flippant, but the other option is just to try and avoid large battles with more than 4 or 5 enemies. Not always possible, sure, but one way to deal with it. (And if you do need to have a large battle, use AoE stuff - grenades like Alchemist's Fire + Grease spell so that you whittle down the numbers quickly.)

Play groups of nearby enemies at the same time? Personally I didn't find the fights too long, but I really like turn-based games so I'm not objective ^^

being the rude condescending person I am, stop getting butthurt, when someone jackass states his opinion poorly, or an alternate opinion. Adult up, open your mind, find middle ground then move to debate.

Yes there is a problem with the length of combat when it comes to 7+ people, making it live action is not an option, or if it is one that will lead to more posts such as this. same with Real time with pause.
Turn based vs live vs rtwp isn't the issue, and why the combat is taking so long. One it's EA, Ai scripts have issues, not always the same fight that takes 30 minutes one time can take 10 minutes the next. Its the script going derpy derpy during some combats and not others. Seeing as how it's EA it will (it better) change, one of those things that is slowling combat. Is the health of enemies, the high AC, and burst damage every enemy seems to have at their fingertips, and all of them having heals, AC boosts etc. That is a problem with balance as well. Which I can see, Larian put alot into everything in EA to test out their ideas, and wants, or they are stupid, or they're not used to 5e balance, what ever. When balance is found with their ideas, and our feedback combat will be shorter. There will be less script clutter for the AI to try and figure out, which leads to streamlined combat.

It is EA alot of ideas are in it, completely wiping out anything such as turn based combat, is a pain. Stop with the extremes, or don't run when your first learning to walk. It's what we are doing, learning to walk, so stop running!

But why not implement concurrent turns like ToEE(a TB game) did? So enemies act faster? Why not END the hp bloat? Making goblins with 50 hp and spiders with 138 hp? https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=703529#Post703529

So, to be clear: You are basing your statement that the developers of an early access video game do not want to hear all feedback on their game in the feedback forums is because if you, personally, were drawing a picture you would want to hear feedback on the contouring of the draft instead of the potential color palette you had chosen during the creation of the hypothetical picture? I just want to make sure Im connecting the dots correctly on this - also dont comment on how the dots are arranged, I only want to hear about the lines (yeah yeah, when you connect the dots it draws a phallus, I DONT WANT FEEDBACK ON THAT PART)

Well, you surely are trying to drag this around a lot.

I'm simply saying that asking for things that are CONFIRMED as already on their way is a waste of everyone's time.
Not that this has ever stopped a lot of people in this section, on the other hand:

"I want an option to hide helmets" (as if there was ever the risk they wouldn't include it? They even already said it's coming).
"Please, Larian, include paladins and bards in the final game" (once again, confirmed).
"I want less bugs and for the game to crash less often" (no shit?)
"I want a quicker AI that hangs up less frequently" (No Shit? 2: The Big Revenge).
"I hope that the final game will include Act 2 and 3" (Surprised Pikachu).


I didn't even imagine it would turn into a controversial statement.

There is a difference between explicit statements made by the studio regarding impending changes and you speaking for the developers by saying "they dont want to hear about x" and then having 0 supporting evidence for what the studio is looking for in that regard. Yeah, its ridiculous that half this stuff gets posted because its an eyeroll and "they already said..." and I could link to the article. This particular issue, I have never read or heard anything from them on. Trying to stuff suggestions on their behalf with no reasoning other than you can imagine situations where if you were doing something you would want particular feedback regarding a singular aspect is just asinine. This isn't about dragging it around, its about making informed statements so informed suggestions and decisions can be made. Going around telling people your own feelings on the subject masqueraded as a statement by the developing studio is antithetical to the purpose of these kinds of discussions.

had me rolling die comes up 20 on persusion. lol

I think alot of threads, and arguements are stemming form the informed, vs. the uninformed. or those that generally just hating on the game for whatever reason. Which is why in so many posts I'm coming across as condescending, rambling, or people are feeling that things are being dragged around. To much assumption, conjecture, opinions based on partial information, or just blind ignorance, or blind belief that one as in this case (not that OP is blinded could be they are) one mechanic is superior to another.

When others look at it unbiasedly and try to gather data to make an informed decision the uninformed are going to either A) ignore it B) try to counter it or C) lash out. Wether or not it's ethical, or unethical isn't part of the equation for most. It's human nature, more importantly it's the nature of the beast. arguing schematics isn't going to change someones opinion who doesn't want that opinion changed.

You both can argue the points and validity, but take into consideration human nature, that isn't going to change over night. (which it would, would be helpful.)

I'm a ramblin maaaan!

You're right...I shouldn't judge the colors of the quantum theorized drawing :\

no you shouldn't. and what thread am I in....

A redundancy parade.
Up next: PLEASE DEVS, MAKE LOADING TIMES SHORTER.

Followed by the bitter defense "Maybe they didn't know we wanted them!".
After all they never promised explicitly to work on it. Speaking of asinine.

False equivalency between battle - a complex scenario of dozens, if not hundreds of variables that are constantly changing for a variety of reasons - and loading - a static function of allocating memory, rendering graphics, and adjusting the elements of the area to the last known positions and dispositions based on the flags stored as metadata in the save file where the primary resource drain has been the complete dump and reload of memory allocation based on the the way they en masse handle the module youre in, but alright. Performance is an ongoing objective process in technology but AI priority calculation and number of environmental variables introduced and precedence ordered is a set of logic rules that are a "best guess" to efficacy, time, and enjoyment and are highly subjective by nature. But sure. Youre right. They are exactly the same and should be treated as such.

+1

Except no one ever said to NOT comment on battles. Nor claimed the devs didn't want us to.
I commented on the speed of the AI which is EXACTLY comparable to the speed of loading times, as both unintended technical issues.

You're either guilty of poor reading comprehension OR deliberately trying to waste my time with bogus rebuttals at this point.

honestly he lost me when he started speaking techenesse.... would you restate in engrish please?

The "long story short" is that they can't tell apart an unintended technical issue from a deliberate design choice.

Even with DOS 2 the AI got exponentially faster the closer we got to the release (and then better and faster again with subsequent patches), but we are trying to pretend this is needs to be strongly suggested otherwise the devs couldn't figure out it's a welcomed improvement.

No, youre still thinking of speed in battle as PROCESSING power. If they just tighten up - something? Im not sure what you even think they can tighten up to make it FASTER - the LOGIC of the battle then you get SPEED. If the logic is 100 steps long because they are looking for the most devasting thing they can do without taking damage and in youre in a room with barrels that explode and have a certain radius and 2 of the enemies have abilities that can cause ignition but some of the barrels are just acid then there is a lot of checks being made. If they check, every time, starting from the top. What are my abiliies, what elements do those abilities have, if any, what are all the objects, do any of them interact with my abilities or elements, can I hit one that doesn't interact, if so does the element in that thing i am hitting interact with any of the other things in the barrels, if they do, what is the AOE, am I in that AOE, are any of my friends in that AOE, are the enemies in that AOE, are the enemies resistant or immune to that damage, what if I shoot them, what are my odds, does it do more damage than the element and on and on and on with elevation meaning more DPS, threat ranges, lighting conditions, flanking conditions.

Since its YOUR computer running the calculations it takes a long time. It is client-side computing that is running a pure number crunching routine based on the defined logic of their combat system. They cant make YOUR computer faster. They CAN simplify the logic by changing combat variables and the determination checks the go through. Saying they are both "technical issues" is a grossly reductionist, if not driven out of pure ignorance of how development works (ive been in IT for 25 years, almost 20 as a developer). I don't know where your authority is deriving from on your statements of the nature of how this stuff works but you must have some crazy dev experience because I have never run into what you are describing.

Mentioned this in another thread, might as well do it again here. For Warlocks, change the Hex spell to debuff ability checks automatically, or just remove that effect completely. Will save and annoying time waster.