Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Suggestion - make failure fun, case study.

One of the most common PR crap we hear about Baldur's Gate 3 is that Larian wants to make failure fun. It's important because unlike most of the games (at least most of the games I'm aware of, please let me know if I missed something), dice rolls for skill checks in the dialogue are something that not many RPG video games tried. usually, in a typical RPG video game, the game players a zero-sum game, if you have enough skill points you pass, and if you don't you fail (or the choice doesn't even show up). this adds a lot of randomness to the game, and on the one hand gives even a half-orc with 3 charisma the chance to succeed, while a 20 charisma warlock has still a chance to fail. On paper, I don't see why not use the system. Unfortunately, there are several problems (most of which were discussed here in the forum on different topics with this system. Just in bullet points:
1. changing the system from a black and white win or fail to possibly win or fail with odds means you can always give the option
2. no real alternative - most of the important dialogue options in the game have one of three outcomes - fight, convince, or give up.
3. The dialogue system in the game often relies too heavily on persuasion checks (which means that characters without charisma are less viable option unless you intend to fight everyone all the times)
4. it's often less rewarding to fight - you just end up battling and usually, you get nothing to show for it.

Case study - the case of Minthara.

when you meet Minthara in the druid grove you have more options than usual:
1. fight her.
2. side with her by revealing the location of the druid grove
3. same as 2, but betray her in the fight itself
4. leave without making much progress.

Depending on your goals in the playthrough, you may consider killing her or joining her. not much depth there. the more interesting choice is to side with her but then betray her. this choice seems odd, and if you got Wyll with you, once he protests, you can tell him that it's a trap for her. fair enough. the battle itself is one of the highlights of the EA Imo, very epic and reminiscent of Helms Deep. But I think Larian had all the ingredients here to create a cool and interesting failure, but somehow they kinda screwed it up.

the good path can be completed by either killing the three goblin leaders or by surviving the attack on the grove. As the game works now, which one of them is completely up to the player. My suggestion is to use the skill check mechanic instead. When approaching Minthara, if you choose the right dialogue, she will try to find out where the grove is from your mind. why not instead, making it the result of a dice failure? you meet Minthara, and she asks you to find the grove. if instead of saying "I will" you choose the other options (concerning Helsin) make Minthara become suspicious of you, and then have you pass a persuasion or wisdom check. if you pass, the location of the grove remains hidden, but if you fail, she explores your mind and discovers it. the change is very subtle, but it makes your possible failure matter, and also means that you don't necessarily have to tell her of your own initiative about the grove to trigger the fight. And than the fight becomes something that happens because you failed, and not because you are playing both sides.

Bit of a tangent, but on the topic of "making failure fun": even if Larian succeed in making every path that can result from a roll a fun adventure, the fact remains - you failed. This is something I think they've overlooked. If you see "check failed" on screen, you don't feel good about it, no matter how interesting the outcome and how well-developed the path. I'm betting that most of the time, players won't even connect "I'm having fun with the story right now" with "I failed that check". Meanwhile, it feels good when you see "check successful". "I won!" That's a reward in itself, inconsequential as it may be.

As for die rolls in general: I don't really want to say it, as I like this whole "roll the dice like in tabletop" thing, but there are problems with this. Success/failure, story branching and RNG are all mashed together, which... I'm not sure is a great idea. I don't think much room is left for player agency during dialogues, if the most important branches are hidden behind RNG rather than behind actual decisions or roleplaying the character. The "success" is not a result of the player's cleverness or being prepared in some way; it's random. With some modifiers, but still.

And, as per what you say, even the execution of the "fun failure" design leaves a lot to be desired.

I sort of like it, I think you have to learn to live with failure. Making/failing dice rolls can change the course of the adventure, and not always in a terrible way.
It causes some variation in playthroughs as your successes and failures will change every time.

Also I don't think the fail roll is always bad in the game now, sometimes it just changes the story.

Agreed. I'll say a little more about it below, but for now I'll mention that like you said, it works both ways, and success is great. I think it's a matter of quantity and significance. In any RPG I played you fail in stuff during combat sometimes, but you have so many opportunities one single failure is not so bad but one crit is fun. I'm not sure it's possible to translate it to dialogue.

True. There's a reason it has been a part of dnd forever but only now we get it in video game form. I assume other companies who adapted tabletop rpgs to video game just realized it and preferred to make are success or failure totally dependent on our stats.

Agreed. The Mintara case is an exception. Usually failure in this game is useless unless you wanna kill everything you see. And like I explained, even the Mintara case doesn't really work that way right now, which means that unless they'll try to make things like I suggested, it is quite the same.