Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General perception check succeded at what?

multiple time I've succeeded at perception checks but don't know what I'm supposed to have noticed. there's no log to check. the thing I "noticed" isn't highlighted in any way.

Fact, I wish we could get the old purple and red outlines again

And they need to improve the textual feedback through the log window. On top of the fact that it closes and resets to the top every time you load a game or enter a new area (presumably a bug), it just doesn't give enough information. When you succeed a perception check, it has to say what you fucking noticed. Once or twice in the game, there'll be a voiceover like "you notice some scratches on the floor." But most of the time, there's just no indication of what it was. You see a perception check, and there's some half-second-long, pixel-small glimmer of light that's probably obscured by geometry and character models, and that's all you get. That needs to change.

Current game mechanics feedback in BG3 is atrocious, to so say it mildly.
Innate abilities dont show up, Its that bad. Picking level 2 two hands weapons specialization for the Ranger for example doesn't show ANYWHERE in your stats screen.

There is a sort of white-blue flash on the screen that stays for a second. So there is feedback. It might also be size sensitive, so the smaller the things are you noticed, the smaller the flash. As you often have your whole party perform the same check only half a second apart, the check bar might obscure the thing you just perceived. And perception checks often happen when you move your party and have your screen somewhere else, so you struggle to find the Pos1 key on your board, when you hear the sound cue (which only plays when the check failed or succeeded) just to come back to see that it already disappeared. Your attention might also be diverted elsewhere.

When you succeeded with the check you might even see the new thing, but have no idea what it is or what it actually does. So this is a button, what is it for? Is it a pro-active trap? The vent on the floor, I assume it is a trap? It does not help that you have to right-click it to see if it is a trap, and disarm it that way. So in case of the button there is nothing more that your awesome perception check tells you.
In BG2 the perception check or clicking on it with the mouse would have prompted a text like. There are a couple of wires connected to the button leading to the gargoyle heads at the far end of the room. There is an electric humming noise coming from the wires. Upon clicking it you would get a text like. The electric humming noises stopped. The switch seems turned off now.

Any feedback about the environment can only be described as awful at the moment.

It's just another example of cumbersome UI design that comes as a byproduct of the game being thought with multiplayer in mind.
I can't say I suffered this specific problem too much, but generally speaking I wish at least for single player sessions Larian would let us set autopause/highlight options.
It's kind of telling that even 20 years older games like the previous two BG had a far more sleek/ergonomic and pleastant-looking presentation when it comes to this stuff (spotting traps, hidden things, etc).

I had the same problems as OP at multiple times.
I have to find what I found each time I succeed a perception check...

Yeah, I agree. This is definitely a problem. I would prefer objects highlighted the way they do in Pillars of Eternity. Because there is no point as a player to search for something your characters have clearly seen. A waste of time.

Most things you notice is afterward added to "showed by pressing left Alt" group of objects, especialy bags or other lootable objects.
Not all of them tho, i certainly second this topic ... just saying that in some cases, you have it highlighted, you just dont noticed that this thing was not there a few seconds ago.

Yeah, I've definitely had times when I had a Perception check and then couldn't figure out what I'd allegedly spotted. Needs improvement.

Agreed on this. A plethora of character management screens with somewhat overlapping functionality (to ensure the player is confused), but neither is fit for purpose. Ideally there should be one, or maximum two such menus, with as little overlap as possible. Use submenus if you have to.

+1 to OP, it's far too easy to miss the perception check highlight.

Agree, and also I'd like an option to toggle "pause on check". Sometimes I'm not even looking where my peeps are moving and have missed checks all together. Be nice if they would pause on the roll, and also the log should reflect all trivial chat. Sometimes the off comments as peeps travelled are missed and no way to go back and see what was said.

But yes, better highlights on the items successfully checked is needed. Sometimes I have to seriously zoom and mouse hunt just to find it.

There should be a log and when you click on the entry it should zoom to whatever you found.

Yeah perception is super uneven and confusing. Sometimes the characters will comment about finding something, sometimes you will see a glowy object, sometimes you get nothing, and sometimes the characters will comment but will do it so vaguely I have no idea what did they find.

Agree.

Also with traps - you might suceed at perception and still not have the trap shown on the screen, so while you're figuring out, what on earth you've just perceived the whole party goes boom. (Goblin Camp outside area to the left of main entrance).

Furthermore some items are ridiculousy hard to zoom in and pick up (lonesome keys, letters etc)

This happens most of the time, rarely can see what is highlighted and just a few seconds. This needs a huge red sign and keep the highlight until I move cursor over.

I think Larian wants these brief perception check animations to be a hint for further investigation, not a full explanation of what happened.

Sometimes it's explicit, like a successful check showing a brief glow highlighting a gas vent on the floor. Other times, we're expected to hunt around the area with the mouse to see what shows up under the mouse pointer, like a classic 2D Adventure game. Sometimes that works, but other times what we're supposed to find might be hidden from view due to camera rotation.

I like that we need to do a little work scanning the area sometimes, not just hitting the Alt key for a pop-up. But it needs to be a little easier to mouse-hunt for the reason in some of these locations.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker does that very well. It highlights the item or whatever you found with a purple border. impossible to miss. and very easy solution.

I wouldn't mind that, but that manual search on our part should still work in a way that we don't actually fight the UI and the camera (that's what we do now, unless the highlight happens exactly in a place where we have the camera already focused).
Has to be clear. We get a hint based on perception check > now we should investigate in a properly made search mode, leading to an usable result.

The current short hint just isn't working with the current camera mode.

What I do now, is have quick saves every 1-5mins, and every such things makes me reload and approach slowly and repeat until I found what was detected. That's a lot of loading screens.