Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 rn feels like playing with a sh*t DM

[quote]
To confirm with Max,

-No, it's just as it was, no change
-Not much; two cantrips had their surface generation effect taken away, that was about it.
-Yes, that's still very much a thing that is encourage, and going in 'normally' almost always leaves you at a dramatic disadvantage otherwise.
-Yes, you can still do this; you can also do it by getting one person into combat while the rest are far away and then sneaking them in while the combat is 'frozen'. Not only is this it a thing, but it's somethign that Swen is particularly excited about abusing and exploiting, and loves as a 'feature'... it's part of his game design 'philosophy' in fact, so it seems unlikely to change.[/quote]

My thanks to you and Maximuuus for the quick reply. Not that happy with the answers though. xD Gonna be very dissapointed when it actually releases. D:

They have some "design philosophies" that really hurt the game's quality and most of all immersion. I really expected all these problems would be fixed, because they had a good ruleset to use. But when you just start homebrewing willy nilly with a complete disregard to game balance... /sigh

At the moment it looks like they'll use their old receipe for every games but maybe they'll finally realize that other IP may be better with a different taste.

That's what a lot of us here still hope. Without this hope a lot of fans here wouldn't be fans anymore^^

The entire game design 'philosophy' looks like a dreaded hippo to me (highest payed persons opinion).

That is why basically all feedback is ignored and we will get the greatest game about high ground jumping and barrelmancy ever created, since that is awesome and nobody cares about sword and sorcery anymore.

The best thing about BG3 I can currently say is that I read about Solasta here and I had a ton of fun playing that game.

P.S.: The first game I played was on a monochrome display on the Ohio Scientific Challenger, so I can live with second rate graphics. But what I want is a game mechanic that I enjoy.

[quote=Thomson]
The entire game design 'philosophy' looks like a dreaded hippo to me (highest payed persons opinion).

That is why basically all feedback is ignored and we will get the greatest game about high ground jumping and barrelmancy ever created, since that is awesome and nobody cares about sword and sorcery anymore.

The best thing about BG3 I can currently say is that I read about Solasta here and I had a ton of fun playing that game.

P.S.: The first game I played was on a monochrome display on the Ohio Scientific Challenger, so I can live with second rate graphics. But what I want is a game mechanic that I enjoy.[/quote]

Solasta is a bit jank in places, but at least the DnD 5e implementation is well done. I don't mind the graphics either. I also love the visual clarity with the grid system, which was definitely a problem in DOS2 and I assume from what I've seen, in BG3 too.

The creative freedom Larian provides with several things are great ideas for the most part. Just the implementation... ehhh. Most "creative" solutions feel like exploits. It didn't make me feel smart, it felt like I was cheating. Getting ambushed and insta-killed, after which I load and setup with my meta knowledge feels like cheating if anything. Keeping a dialogue box open and positioning everyone left a bad taste.

I don't necessarily mind barrelmancy so much, as it's an exploit that seems like an oversight more than by design. Also, it's not likely you'll start using it by the third battle, as with most other exploits/"clever strategies".

Yeah, that's pretty much DOS2 combat in a nutshell.

Whoever said they were able to defeat that damn scarecrow by simply walking up to her and starting the fight there is a liar. Same for Alexander at the end of Act 1. Then again, the game by that point really drills it into your head that you're a dumbass if you're not stealth alpha striking every encounter, which is the entire point of being able to see potential enemies from so far away. The more I played the game in Tactician mode, the more I realized that each battle was more of an elaborate puzzle of how I could take control of the fight immediately and maintain control.

BG3 feels the same way to me. The main difference is that you're lacking the tools that DOS2 gave you to regain control of a fight if something goes awry, and combat fields are even larger and more vertical than they were in DOS2. A bad dice roll in regular DnD is an unfortunate occurrence that your team suddenly has to adapt to. A bad roll in BG3 can immediately spiral into a wipe (especially if it's shove-related), and if your plan placed all bets on that one roll succeeding, you're probably shit out of luck.

The problem with continuing to design the combat like this is that it runs counter to the idea of having deeper character interaction mechanics that DOS2 did not have (in some cases you're just making it a lot harder on yourself by talking to that boss instead of ambushing them immediately, but you'll miss out on all that interesting dialogue and skill checks you'll want to make!). People ask for skill checks to be shared among the party, but what's the point if the following combat encourages you to keep the party split up? Are party members going to interject and assist in skill checks from halfway across the map? It's super immersion-breaking and I'm sure Larian has already run into this exact concern.

Strangely enough, DOS1 actually didn't give off this feeling at all, even though you had a lot of similar tools there. I suppose the main difference is that the game wasn't balanced around the idea that you'd be playing so dirty that it's basically mandatory.

Unfortunately, the problem here is that the concept of immersion is completely detached and alien from anything related to encounters and combat, for Larian. Worse - given the comments we've seen and the jokes that get made, they (or at least Sven and by extension the team) are aware that so much of their game design is complete anathema to immersion; they simply don't care, because it's not an important consideration to them, not as much as the other things they're putting ahead of it.

Because the ways DOS1 and 2 approach combat are actually very different. DOS2 places too much emphasis on pre-positioning enemies, providing high grounds in too many fights just so enemy mages/archers can get on (which is, of course, what these enemies spend their very first action to do). If it's not high grounds, then it's oil barrels and other things that are only waiting for enemies to use against you. DOS2 also eliminated the "skill check" system, meaning a character without armor is guaranteed to be disabled. This naturally leads to you doing the same things enemies do - pre-positioning your own team, getting on high grounds yourself, etc. - and more, in order to balance the scale. You can tell that the devs really wanted you to follow these strats, because it is these very elements that set their game apart from other, similar games, and they take pride in these home rules. I, for one, wish they had stuck with DOS1's combat design.

Don't mind me, I'm just generally using the 'immersion' argument partly to highlight the detached absurdity between the serious effort spent on character interactions and cutscenes, while the combat may encourage you to ignore it in the same breath against certain encounters. But it's mostly to mock people I've seen who don't want to entertain something like how Solasta handles reactions because of it, when the entire combat system itself as it is currently designed already buries the concept of immersion six inches under the ground.

Seems the original comment in the thread focused on the desire to be heroic. Agreed.

My suggestion to Larian would be create and allow for more:
- heroism
- anti-heroism (perhaps with new classes? see also Petersen Games)
- nefarianism (you know what I mean?). DOS2 did a pretty good job of making evil NPCs pretty evil, diabolical
- a feeling of the mystic (both the diabolic and otherwise - I do get that this is in the works, particularly w/NPC backgorunds but just more please)
- humorous (I realize that it is early days but seems BG3 could use some of the BG2 humor, always an important ingredient in a good D&D session)