Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback So is Larian actually listening to feedback here?

Ironically that tells me that my predictions are somewhat realistic.

Quick lesson in software development: it becomes more and more expensive to fix issues the longer the project is progressing. This doesn't just mean money, it also means time, effort and resources. So if it takes them lets say a month to arrive at the conclusion that "the player base is unhappy with the current implementation of the core mechanics and its for XYZ reasons" development of new encounters, maps, mechanics, balancing you get the idea would have already progressed based on the old assumptions to be true. So if they then decide to change the core mechanics that means a significant rework of essentially everything they have created up until that point and that frankly seems not very realistic within one year.

Two things that would hurt literally nobody and would only stand to broaden Larian's audience with BG3 are as follows:

1. The dice-roll minigame when selecting certain dialogue options should be entirely optional. If toggled off in the menu, should be replaced with the same non-intrusive environmental dice roll, with a short sound effect to at least signify your character made a dice roll. Many share the opinion that this minigame is monotonous, mind-numbing, gimmicky and intrusive. Alternatively, there are people who love it. Which is why it should be OPTIONAL. Personally I can't stand it any more and it's lost its novelty after like the first 5 times. And once again, this hurts literally nobody and only gives Larian a chance to gain something - more players, and more engaged and happy players who are less frustrated. Less Save&Exits. More hours invested.

2. The previous issue leads me to this one. Perhaps I just haven't figured out how to do this, but nothing I've tried has worked, even straight up mashing the keyboard... I can't even find a keybind option to set to let me do this - but clicking anywhere on screen during a dialogue cutscene should literally just skip to the next line, with NO time-consuming transition or anything. Plenty of people scum-save, and if I've heard the same dialogue 10 or 15 times already, I don't have any desire to waste any more of my life away being forced to watch it any more. I can't tell you how many times I've just quit playing because I get sick of trying to get through a conversation after a couple of failed dice roll gimmicks that don't align with my playthrough agenda for that character.

The purpose of digitalizing the original saga was to remove some real life aspects of DMing a game that a lot of videogamers find tedious and jarring, both of these included. This is especially the case with players who prefer a single player experience.

I will reiterate that enabling us the OPTION to decide for ourselves whether we want to play the dice roll minigame hurts NOBODY, and only stands to allow Larian to gain. I will also reiterate that it also hurts nobody to let us simply click through redundant dialogue scenes if we wish. To argue against giving us these options makes it obvious you will swallow any pill Larian gives you, and I personally find it distasteful to have spent $60 on an EA that forces things on players that don't affect anybody else but that player should options not be given to avoid them.

I could also go on and on about broken lore, too many European accents (granted Larian is a Euro company but the saga is as American as it gets) but I'll leave it as these two major issues which absolutely need a change.

I agree with ABSOfficial

I think Larian should give the possibility for infinite re-roll. Why you ask ?
Here is why.

When I talked about the bad-feeling I get from the roll-dice, LOT of gamers said "just reload if you're unhappy".

So for my second game, this is what I did. I reload.
For an example, yesterday night I reloaded exactly 11 times my save just to get a positive roll-dice.

FACT IS : it was not fun and it was a lot of time lost.
FACT IS : I don't feel like I have time to lost in video game. I loved them but my time is precious and spending 5-10 minutes loading the same save again and again is a terrible waste and decrease of fun.
FACT IS : I don't have (or I wont take) times to do a new game crossing my fingers, hoping to have a better reroll this time in all the game...

So I understand people who love the thrill of the roll-dice. At least, I get it.
But I think this people should also understand and get MY point of view.

And this is why I think Larian should add a button "infinite re-roll" for the gamers like me (and I know, I'm not alone).
So the players who want to live in one roll-dice, keep living with one roll-dice, and the players, like me, who want to live "fully" control and choose the story they live, could reroll (I even think I could find funny to see how many times I have to roll to win a persuasion test at 3 !).

I call it a compromise.

Sadly I have the feeling it's something hard to accept for Larian (and even some people here)...

Optimally, they could add these two modes:

1) Commit mode, where each roll and dialog choice is autosaved and cannot be reverted

2) Freedom mode, where you can attempt skill checks many times

Or integrate something along those lines to difficulty modes / hardcore mode. But their time is probably better spent on making the baseline experience as good as possible, then figure out how they want to adjust difficulty settings.

I don't understand infinite re-roll?!
In essence you are saying you want to succeed any check you make in conversations? Or Just in gerneral? Why? Why is "failure" such a bad thing? There are usually other methods of getting round said failure (unless a fight ensues) and trying again later (like with character conversations).

But ok, let's say that's your point of view and all views are equal, then I don't think infinite re-roll is the way forward UNLESS you want to be able to select when you fail and when you don't, in which case in an easy option or optional selection box, yeah, you could add infinite re-roll points, I forget their name, the ones you can earn. Otherwise infinite re-roll is a waste of animation time, you could just remove the die and have auto-succeed.

I personally would rather more nuances to "failure", I want to charm Shadowheart but she rebuffs me now, but later on I do something heroic or evil that opens her eyes and she initiates a conversation recognising that she was wrong before. Black & White Suceed / Failure sucks. Sometimes it has to happen, I mean if you fail a last ditch intimidation roll and a fight ensues and someone dies, then that's that.

EDIT: This topic now seems to have it's own thread here: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=721465#Post721465

Reading through this thread, the one phrase that keeps popping into my head is "massive sense of over-entitlement". Seriously, you sound as tbough you think that 100% of your suggestions should have been both acknowledged & implemented within the 3 weeks that Early Access has been available. Like I said, over-entitled much? It might surprise you to know that you're all just a tiny fraction of BG3's total player base. It might also surprise you to realise that Larian is under no obligation to implement your suggestions in a time-frams that suits you. For all you know, tbe fixes & improvements in the latest patch might well have been stuff they had been working on since before EA started.
Anyway, the impression I get is that you're all pretty clueless about how game development actually works.....

Good Idea.....an Ironman mode, basically. That would be a great addition.

FTFY

There is actually a good example of this in her romance scene. You can ask her to reveal something about herself, fail the roll, then have it be a mildly awkward moment as she teases you slightly for prying.

And then there's the scene when you ask her about her Sharran worship and fail that roll.

"I sAiD nOt fOr dIsCuSsIoN!!!!!!!!"

I know its early days but it sure doesn't feel like they are listening.. Time will tell i guess.. They have all our money so we are in it either way.

I hope they listen. Solasta did absolutely great job so far (It's EA) in getting 5e rules from book to game and it's working mostly great. So Larian has no excuse with "ooow, this rules are not easy to put in game". Yeah, no.

I would like to at least see feedback that they actually read and listen to feedback.

Probably not.

+1
Got Solasta as well, and outside a few things, that game feels very close to 5e and they are limited to SRD.

Nobody is clueless here, and it just happens a lot of us have played countless other games (including BG1 & BG2) which have had much more faithful adaptions to the actual D&D rules.

And Solasta is a great example, since it's an EA that came out right after BG3 using D&D 5E rules (although limited to SRD).

And you know what is amazing - I pointed out that Green Mages couldn't learn from scrolls which are in the green mage spell list, and guess what? They fixed it in the first patch.

A friend of mine also commented that heavy armor was still considering Dex modifier (something that is actually right in BG3) and guess what? They also fixed it in the first patch. Plus a bunch of other fixes related to the rules. THAT is listening to feedback and trying to move in the right direction.

Solasta is not the only example. Pathfinder: Kingmaker started out with a LOT of bugs and mistakes, but you could see from the beginning that they were trying to be as faithful as possible and nowadays it's a nearly perfect game that goes by the Pathfinder rules.

I mean, we also must not forget about the legacy. BG1 and BG2 were also very faithful - as much as a real time-based game based on D&D could be. Same with NWN.

Anyways, hopefully they will hear us at some point. I wish more people spoke out in social media (such as Twitter) instead of just this forum. Most of Larian's Twitter responses are endless praises, and stuff about romance & relationships.

D&D players are not a tiny fraction of BG3 player base. See how many Twitch views Critical Role gets for example. Most of them just don't voice out their opinions/criticism as much.

Employees - writers and developers, owners, investors Larian Studio of course read this forum in their free time. They are all people too, just like us, it would be very strange if they did not watch the forum discussing their work.


Technical problems and bugs go to the developers and they are solved very quickly.
I am 100% sure that writers who write specific characters monitor ALL topics and feedback about these characters and take notes.
Writers who write quests monitor all discussions of their quests.

Another question is that they have no right to answer so as not to draw attention to something, or not to give spoilers. (NDA)
Plus an important point - how they discuss it within the team, who makes decisions (complicated bureaucracy), what feedback is accepted and what is not, and so on. It takes much less time to collect statistics or fix minor bugs than if you need to change something in gameplay or quests.

If the next community update is devoted to the problems of "Evil Root", it means that we are doing everything right and our feedback is important to them.
If not, this can only be explained by bureaucracy and corporate culture.

What about the good characters and good route, you know the non edgy customers are wanting.

The evil path, if done well, would not be the "edgy" path, simply an alternate path. As for the good path, having the knock out ability, which I made a thread about, actually be a viable option for fights and quests could be a good improvement for that one. That said, is this thread not a straight forward question that has been answered?

Listening maybe.. doing not so much.

Dear god they are listening to twitter muppets my expectations for the game just took a meteoric nosedive. Unfortunately, for me and many others, if they are doing twitter feedback there is no way to communicate. I mean a two line forum post wouldn't be too much to ask for right? Explains why they jumped on the romance crap nobody but a twitter parrot would give a shit about.

If you are a paying customer there is nothing entitled about offering honest feedback, this isnt a charity donation. There is nothing wrong with expectations that ask Larian to be faithful to the original series and D&D. That being said, Larian have been handed the BG legacy if they choose to make it for their loyal DOS fans their isn't anything anyone can do if they have the DOS fanbase to fanboi the feedback. Can't even get a refund, long gone are the days EA playtesting was free now you get to pay for the honor of doing their job for them.