Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Yet another post-playthrough feedback from a new player

I was finally able to give BG3 EA a go, and as I stopped taking notes couple sessions ago, I think I am ready to express my thoughts.
Overall: I am glad I gave it a go, as while I had mixed feeling regarding D:OS2 (as a side note, I am currently having a COOP playthrough with a friend of mine, and as expected I have been enjoying it much more), but I have enjoyed my time with BG3 thoroughly. Companions are far stronger, story more cohesive, I feel attachment to my PC and I feel I have a pretty good selection of roleplaying choices. Overall, I have been looking to playing more of BG3 every time I got a chance, and am going to play some more. I will probably leave EA after completing current run, and wait for 1.0... unless, one of the updates will peak my curiosity again.

I know the game is in Early Access, and I won’t bother to try to guess what issues are the result of the game not being finished, and what are as intended. With that in mind lets focus mostly on all that is BAD.




• “Chaining” and “un-chaining” characters together – the system is transferred from D:OSs and is just as awful. Now, I won’t request to completely redesign the system and follow the traditional RTS style grouping and selection (though IMO that’s far more efficient and superior way of doing things). What I want to ask is for the system of “chaining” and “unchaining” to not be as unreliable. It takes serious effort and multiple tries, to re-order, detach or reattach characters. I don’t know what the problem is, but similar problem existed in D:OS2. Just please, make it snappy. Even clicking on a portrait is a very unreliable way of selecting said character. Shortcuts F1-F4 work well, but is mouse selection so wanky?

On a positive note, I do appreciate making multiple characters control more smooth. Giving someone order and switching to another character doesn’t cancel the order anymore. Skill and abilities are nice and snappy.

• Stealthing and unsteathing one after another – that’s another negative side effect of the odd party control system. Having to manually switch between characters and switch them from stealth to not stealth is tedious. A possible solution would be to have all chained characters go to stealth, but that only would work, if “un-chaining” wasn’t as tedious as well.

• Automatic jump – so I know it was added as a solution to having to manage each party member separately while jumping, but the system is very dodgy. Sometimes characters follow, sometimes don’t. Especially, if we doing while sneaking, it is anyone’s guess if they jump after me, or run all the way around in plain sight of the enemy. Also when it works, this system essencially turns all your party members into superjumpers covering distances they are not technically allowed to cover. I had one particularly frustrating situation when companions would refuse to jump down. Had to jump down manually (which due to distance woud get them prone), but when I switched to another companion to jump him down, the rest of the companions, those that were on the ground would magically jump up (way beyond their range). Had do decouple all companions and jump down manually. Tedious.



• Combat log – I know Larian will hate me for it, considering how hard they work to hide actual combat information – but I like my combat log, and I want it to be good. An option to turn it on in combat automatically would be welcome, also if it could scroll down by deafoult.

• Option for actual combat information – I appreciate, how Larian tries to explain combat via percentaged and descriptions but it really doesn’t work for me. It also feels slightly odd with the rest of the game where dices are embraced to the fault. I would appreciate a UI, that would allow me to see what is happening in more detail. Kingmaker’s turn based mode has a UI element which I think would nicely replace current percentage indicator:


It works very much like BG3 own skill check – adding modifiers and showing what we need to roll (or in Kingmakers case what we had to roll) in order to success. The left panel with buffs/debuffs could show actual modifiers (enemy AC, and our modifiers +3 from dexterity etc.) That I think would be far more helpful, engaging and informative.

• Movement preview – it would be nice if movement bar would should us expected depletion and we plan our next move. Also I would appreciate if the game could take into account difficult terrain and calculate accurately our available range.

• Movement very fiddly – can’t walk around smoothly (weird grid?) pathfinding is awkward – doesn’t take into account surfaces – characters walk around only certain surfaces and bathe in others. When charting a path to a backstab in one move, it’s common for the game to eat a reaction unnecessarly. Also it is common for the character to stop moving after a set of two – I have no clue what’s the problem there.

• Joined turns – I find myself not taking a proper advantage of that feature – generally making a move with a character automatically given me under control, before realising I could have make my turn more efficient with other character currently at my disposal. Perhaps some popup banner highlighting whose turn it is would be beneficial?




• Being able to drag items directly to hotbar – that’s nice! I see a new option or scroll I want – I can drag it directly to the hotbar or container within the hotbar and character will automatically pick it up and it will be there, ready for some quick use.

• Have multiple containers open beside each other, not on top – when opening container and wanting to put an arrow to my arrow back I need to open both, and then move on aside. It’s fine, but I think it would be nicer if they would automatically open beside each other.

• BUT WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE – I don’t know what we are role-playing, but having to manually sort and manage my inventory is not what I look for in DnD. Please, just give us a working “item folder” like in the “sorting bags” mod for D:OS2 – just one that doesn’t break the “wares” feature. Let me just assign “arrows”, “scrolls” or “potions” button on the hot bar, and that when hovered over or clicked will show my all potions in my inventory. While the doing it by hand is possible, it is really tedious to do for all companions. I can quickly add arrows and potions to my main’s hotbar, but to add scroll to Gale’s bag, I have to either switch to Gale and go through the same process, or send item to Gale, then enter Gales inventory, try to locate the item and then put it in the bag manually.

• Allow for the bags to be opened when trading – as of now I can’t open a bag and sell individual items from it – I can only sell the entire bag. Not happy

• Spell sorting – hotbar is not any good here. It wasn’t any good in Divinity2, but here it’s on another level. Skills are main action or bonus action, some are cantrips, some consume different resources. Pillars of Eterniry has exemplary UI, allowing for quick access to all spells, and automaticall sorting them into - per-encounter, per-rest categorries.


I think BG3 could benefit from something similar - seperating main and bonus action abilities, creating "folders" based on resource they consume. I think the upper half of the hotbar could be easly used for such purpose, leaving bottom one as "quickslots" for favourate items and spells.



• Attack while dualwielding attacks with both? – as it is attacking when dualwielding will perform both main and bonus action. I didn’t find a way to do just main attack, with bonus action available for use. It’s a minor issue, but still. I would prefer to have a finer control over what attacks I perform

• Sneak attack – is there a reason for it being a separate action? I am used to sneak attack just being a passive which triggers when appropriate. I think I didn’t use sneak attack about 50% times, simple because I need to use it manually.



• No more item vomid! – thank goodness, ALT only highlights important items. Makes things more manageable, while still leaving all the interactive and situational junk objects.

• Manually rolling every skill check – I don’t know how I feel about it. I like it, but it does get slow and tedious after a while. I really creates a hole in pacing of conversations. I think something more snappy, and requiring less clicks on player part would be preferable.

• Too easy to click on re-roll by accident – after failed skill check, a reroll button appears where normally “continue” would be. I used multiple rerolls unintentionally in my playthrough because of that.

• Minimap spoils surprises – thats a minor but a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Minimap spoils surprises or ambushes – like the bugbear assassin.

• Double perception required – one by the character, and one by the player to figure out what was it that our character noticed. PoE2 has a nice feature, where we can click on the “perception successful” note in the logbook, and the game will centre on the found object.

• What's up with trading? - I assume charisma manipulates prices, but items seems to cost about 3x more then advertised.



• Manual turn based system – love it! Makes so many things so much easier. It is kinda easy to abuse. Perhaps, once entered enemy should be able to take his turn as well, before we can switch back to real time exploration?

• Sneaking in real time while party is in combat – that’s just weird. It gives stealth companions infinite movement and easy sneaking paths with stationary enemies, when other companions engage in combat. Why not put everyone in vicinity into turn-based mode? That would make so much more sense.

• Summoned companions not joining the fight – I have summoned hand time out before I remembered to use it, as it doesn’t automatically join the fight. I assume it’s a bug, as summons should be immediately put into action cue as it was in D:OS2.

• Inventory weight – what’s up with that? It exists, but triggers when the characters carries twice as much as he or she is supposed to be able to carry

• Wrong person engaged in the conversation – naturally, I want my avatar to do the talking whenever possible. When NPCs engage in conversation they seem to speak to whomever is the closest. Give us an ability to set “party leader” who will lead the conversation if nearby, or even better allow to switch and join in with every present party member

• 4 tries at any skill check – as NPCs don’t seem to register us as group in most cases – you can go through the same conversation up to 4 times and try the same roll over and over again. Silly

• Jump & disengage – I feel it makes reactions irrelevant. Bonus action for bypassing the engagement is simply too low of a price to pay. It also makes game tedious – enemy archers who are impossible to lock down as they can disengage, run to a high ground and still take a shot with an advantage. This is bad from both enemy and player perspective.

EDIT1:
• Push - very much like above. While sending enemies flying (often to their death!) is undeniably fun, I am not sure if always available, bonus action is the right price for such gain. I would implore considering shortening distance A LOT, so pushing enemies would be only possible if they were to stand literally on edge, and save up the pleasure of blowing enemies away to spells, and other more valuable actions. I would also consider making JUMP/PUSH main actions.
END OF EDIT.1

• Giving out advantage & disadvantage like candy – I think I get where Larian is coming from. They expressed dislike to regular misses in D&D already. But I think it really hurts the combat – advantage is too desirable, and too easy to get. You ALWAYS want to attack from high ground or from behind. And with easily available jump that allows to cover distance, bypass wall of enemy, disengage, and change the hight – all for a bonus action only – that’s pretty much the only thing one needs to worry about. Makes combat far more repetitive then it needs to be.




• Order of interactions seems to be a bit of a mess right now – Wyll, told me a story about losing his Eye and Spike twice – once when facing Goblin by the windmill and once by camping. Then again when we faced the spike. He also told me about his situation with the cambion. And then, after all this, and after we killed Goblin leaders, back in the camp, he congratulated me for killing goblins by the Grove’s gate, and dodged his reasons for chasing goblins and capability as a fighter – clearly conversation intended for before I learn anything about him

• Story zone separation - so once again, it feels a bit like people aren’t quite aware of what is happening. No one in the grove seems concerned about the alien ship that crashed 2 minute walk away from them. I get that they have other problems but some reaction would be welcome.

• Some convenient story beats – none of the companions appeared where they are by chance – and yet they run into relevant characters – like Wyll who just happens to run into Spike, whom he wanted to kill since he was a child? Tadpoles everywhere.

• Loading screen spoilers – do you really want to spoil companions through loading screens? Though then again, “Origins” will spoil them anyway.

• I was surprised that sneaking through Grove’s underground passage with the goblin prisoner didn’t feature a unique interaction with the goblin party waiting there. Maybe it’s just not in at the moment.




• Is it necessary to switch to close up conversations during short character barks – fade to black does break the pace, and doing so for just one or two short lines does more harm the good I think. I can’t stop myself from expecting a deeper conversation. There are moments in the game that don’t do that (speak with dead, speak with animal, some other minor conversations) and personally I find it to work fine. I don’t need to zoom in every time. I will take quality over quantity. Which brings me to:

• I am still not convined if close up dialogue is worth it. For now, it’s more distracting then evocative. I will let Larian polish it up before I make my mind. However, there is a tendency to use awkward extreme closeups. Mass Effect does that too, but they had more custom face expressions, and characters where more steady – having someone lean out of frame just looks broken.

• Switching between vertical hights is really awkward. We kinda need to hope the camera will guess where we want to go.

• Common bug – transition between areas spawns me by the door I tried to enter though – not on the other side as expected.

• Game breaking bug – during the fight with the hag my avatar got pushed into the depth and she died – I could resurrect her as there was no body, and I couldn’t come to camp without her.

• Wrong tooltip – game predicts wrong AC


• Game breaking bug – during the fight with the hag my avatar got pushed into the depth and she died – I could resurrect her as there was no body, and I couldn’t come to camp without her. Her body appears in the camp

• Human tag triggered, even though I am a halfling during the conversation with the HAG


• Gloves of Power seem to grant Bane to both attacker and attacked? Nothing in description says about that.


EDIT2: Ahhh something I forgot to mentione, which somewhat disappointed me considering the marketing so far - making our character building choices irrelevant. It is nothing new to BG series. BG2 have inner party conflicts, party members leaving if you stray far enough from their moral compas, time companion missions... or so I am told, becase all that can be bypassed through sheer Charisma, and very conviniently in the most likely first quest that players stumble across they are rewarded with supremely powerful and valuable ring that gives players 18 charisma.

I was expecting that with wide range of classes at our disposal, and skills to choose from spells like Speak with Animals, Speak with Dead, various mobility and elemental spells will allow for each playthrouigh to be somewhat different - opening new doors and closing others. Alas, no such thing. Quite quicly I was rewarded with medalion which granted me "Speak with Dead" and by the end of the run I was swimming in Speak with Animals potions, which lasts for the entire long rest! high strength jump ability also seems to for the most part replace mobility abilities from previous games, and automatic jump allows for the rest of the party to join in, no matter if they should be able to or not.

I don't think access to consumables that grant skills we don't normally have access to is bad per say, but those should be valuable - few and expensive items we can use everyoce in a while, while taking a specialist would allow us to explore this content to fuller extend. I hope that Speak to Dead will not be used as crutch to fulfill arbitrary "you can kill everyone!" rule, without contributing anything interesting on its own.

Hi wormerine,

I'm glad you finally tried the game.

As usual, your message is very interresting and constructive.
I appreciate your feedback and I agree with almost everything you said.

The Gloves of Power cast Bane on the target but also on the wearers if they don't have the Absolute's mark.
It's not a bug, but the tooltip could be a bit more clear.

I want to say "thanks" and "hear hear !". I too am one of those people who wrote a big feedback list at some point. I'm always happy when I see another one coming. I tend to think this is very valuable and probably easier to exploit by Larian Studios. Single-topic threads are probably good in some way as well, but I'm not sure how much is read in them apart from the original post and the recording of the number of replies (the biggest issues generally yield the bigger threads).

It's also interesting to see how the lists of issues raised in these feedback reports overlap that much.

I considered rebounding on some specific points you made, but I know that would start as "just one thing" and before I noticed half an hour would have passed. In a very good first approximation, I agree with and plusone all the points you listed. If you haven't done so already, perhaps consider also sending this to Larian through their in-launcher feedback form.


Ok, quick thing, if you go on playing a bit more : there is a small toggle below the standard actions and the weapon-set toggle, which activates or de-activates dual-wielding. When de-activated, it does what you are looking for.
(Ok, second thing : I thought the same as you about Sneak Attack. But there are cases, for a dual wielder, where you might want to save Sneak Attack for a potential use on an off-hand attack, and not have it trigger automatically on the main-hand attack. Still, the way it's currently done is bad.)

Hi Maximuuus. Thanks for kind words. I was lucky to grab RTX3070 early this month so I treated myself to proper gaming rig.


Naturally it didn't long, before my curiosity took better of me. That said, as I mentioned in my initial post I am glad I have BG3 a go, as I enjoyed it far more then I anticipated.

I see! Thanks for clearing that up



Ah, I didn't notice the in-launcher feedback. I will post it via it, the next time I play BG3.

I have still some content left (mostly underdark). When it comes to dual wielding are you refering to the buttons on the left with sword and target icons?


I was playing around with that, but I thought it just switches between two weapon sets (which in the case of my rogue are two short swords and a shortbow). I will give it another go next time I play.

Even more well-hidden than that. Underneath the buttons you're talking about, there's a little toggle between the words "One Handed" (which I'm realizing should be hyphenated) and Dual wield (which should be capitalized). If you set the toggle to one-handed, it won't auto-attack with your off hand.

Ha! Thanks. I thought those are descriptins for the buttons. I will test it later tonight.

Hey there! I'll add to what others have said in saying thanks for taking the time and effort to write up detailed feedback like this. Even though much of what you raise has been brought up and chewed over by other people, every single individual write up like this, that another player comes to of their own accord, is another point of data, and it's all worthwhile.

I agree and second attention being drawn to most of the issues you bring up here; though I have to say, buckle in for more of those extreme face close-ups that add nothing to the story and don't convey anything of value. Larian is deeply in love with them at the moment, and it compounds their already poor cinematography and scene choreography. Myself and others have spoken at length about this, if you're interested:
(https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=739508)
(https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=714845)
(https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=750765) [contains spoiler information]


Regarding losing companions and not being able to travel to camp:

The game does NOT communicate that you can do this and it's very unclear - to the extent that I know many others have submitted bugs reports about it, or felt forced to reload... but, you can fast travel to the camp without going to "Take a long rest", using the normal fast travel system - you arrive in the camp during the "day", and going this way won't block you from traveling with a dead companion. This is how you're supposed to go back and fix a character that fell down a pit, but the game does not give you that information clearly enough.

Anyhow, thanks again for taking the time and effort to do this! Every report matters, especially ones that are well thought out and clearly reasoned.

Worst idea ever. :-/

Right now my Cleric have 10 different Level 2 spells ... i presume it would be much more in max level. :-/
Just imagining i would need to search between all of them every time i wish to use any of them ... makes me sick. :-/
Even curent system seem better, and i hate it with burning passion.

I honestly dont quite understand why so many people is against casting from spellbook, when you open it ...
Honestly i dont know what for this option to open spellbook just for single character is even there ... since the only thing you can do is: left-click implemented for memorizing, and de-memorizing spells ... and drag spells to your hotbar, wich you can easily both do with spellbook opened whole party. O_o
Solution:
Simple change bind for memorizing to right-click, and add possibility to cast with left-click and voila!
You get spells UI, sorted by levels, all at once, and bindable to any button you find comfortable. O_o

But every spell level section should be also somehow sorted tho ... i would recomend at least alplabetical order as default ...
That should be ofc. done no matter what, since it really tedious to search there for anything. -_-

Not quite, but it will get unwieldly doing it that way regardless.

Your cleric always knows every spell they can possibly cast, but they'll only have a limited selection prepared each day - that number will increase as you level; at level 20 it will be ~36 spells prepared, including domain spells. At level 10 it will be ~24 spells prepared including domain spells.

The issue is that even though these would be scattered across your spell level range, without more than a few per level bracket, the reality is that with up-casting and the way that Larian is currently struggling to implement it on their current system... you might only have 4 1st level spells in your first level window, but then you'll have the 3 2nd level spells you've prepared, PLUS the 4 1st levels spells being upcast to 2nd level, in the second button. the third button would then have the three or four 3rd level spells you've prepared, PLUS all of the 2nd and 1st level spells upcast to 3rd, etc. Your 9th level button would then contain all ~36 spells you have prepared that day, despite the fact that you only ever have one 9th level spell slot... it's a desperately inefficient way to do it. On top of that, many spells have casting options built into them, which are decisions you make when casting them; this kind of system cannot handle that as well.

I'd still say that Larian's current design is still worse, by a large margin.

I have been wondering about that. I am not familiar with DnD5, and it’s system is quite different then those of old.

So far when making decisions, I have thinking in those categories:

1) is it main/bonus action?
2) which resources does it consume? Cantrip, Per-short rest, per-long rest, lvl.1/lvl.2 spells, consumable.

Dividing skills through those categories make the most sense to me. I didn’t know that we can upscale spells all the way from lvl.1 to 9. That would get messy very quickly.

Transferring old UI system to BG3 might not be the best idea, but I will take anything that doesn’t force me to rearrange entire hot bar with every level up or change in my prepared spells.

Nice compilation Wormerine.

Agree with almost everything.

• Story zone separation - so once again, it feels a bit like people aren’t quite aware of what is happening. No one in the grove seems concerned about the alien ship that crashed 2 minute walk away from them. I get that they have other problems but some reaction would be welcome.

Super valid point.

Im aware ...
When you see that screenshot i added, you can see that i was only talking about prepared spells ... also only level 2 spells ... not domain, not cantrips, not racials, not item-spells ...

I still believe that casting from spellbook, with additional sorting inside of spellbook is best way. :-/
Right now spells in spellbook seem to be sorted randomly ...
If they were sorting aplhabeticaly (or even better, by type like: "Healing / Buff / Debuff / CC / Dmg") ... and in at least two rows, where first row is action ... second row is bonus action.

It just seems to me like the the best (and honestly only good) option, since you will allways have problems with hotbar in this game, there is simply too much things you can have there ... this way you could have there only few spells you use the most (i mean why even bohter having Air, or Mage armor on hotbar, since you use it litteraly only once per long rest), and the rest could be casted from spellbook (aka. spells interface).

But why not have "spellbook" properly implimented into game UI? The goal is to do what you want to do with as little fuss and as little clicks as possible. BG3 ain't the first nor only DnD game. It's been adapted successfuly to PC for 20 years. The closes comparison is Solasta as it uses 5th edition as well, but I refrained myself from refering to it as I didn't play it myself just yet (I do love those snappy dice rolls - quick and informative). Still their UI seems to do just that and at least to me seems to provide better organization and better information with no manual player management

As someone who has played Solasta, their approach to UI and spells is far better, almost to the point of not even being comparable. I always know how to do what I want to do, upcasting spells is clear and simple, I understand what my various powers can do, changing spells after a long rest is easy (if you can swap spells after a long rest in BG3 then I haven't figured out how, at this point I only know how to do that during level ups and I've played for a decent while) and generally it's fare more intuitive of an experience.

One point made here is why I feel BG3 plays janky and feels clunky. There are way too many clicks. You need to click several times to Sneak Attack. You need to click several times to use Self Only abilities (clicking once to activate the "casting stance", then clicking to confirm). I disliked this in the DOS games as well and it just slows the game and combat down, in a tedious way. A proper UI, with organized spell casting and doing stuff with as few clicks as possible is a thing that I feel is kind of needed to make playing the game feel like a smooth experience, and not a slog to go through just to enjoy the fun parts of it.

The Solasta UI looks basic and people complain it does not look good/looks like a mobile game UI. While I agree it may not look visually too appealing, it is much better than the BG3 (And DOS it borrowed from) UI. Fancy, nice looking UI does not do much if the controls are clunky and not intuitive and is just annoying to deal with.

Do people complain about Solasta's UI? Why? I think it looks smooth and swish... it's clearly your user interface - it doesn't need to look like some piece of fantasy world setting. I found it to be unobtrusive and inoffensive... functionally, the UI itself never drew my attention, and that's exactly what a good UI SHOULD do.

I have seen plenty complaints about it and people called it to be a mobile-game looking UI, but it is organized and functionality wise it is brilliant. I'll take it without a second thought over what BG3 has personally either way.

Asthetic is pretty poor and uninspired, but it is layout and practical design I am more interested in right now. I wouldn't say that visual flurish isn't important, but UI's role is mainy functional - players interface with the game. And as function go, Solasta's UI does seem to be designed pretty well.