Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [Feedback] Drath's report - Longer term considerations (part 2)

UI, Controls, QoL : Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
Roleplay, Story, Immersion : Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Mechanisms : Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Longer term considerations : Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

DEVELOPING WITH THE FUTURE IN MIND, AND LEVEL PROGRESSION

I feel that your approach to game development is very much that of gardeners (in GRR Martin's terminology), but it would be great if you could be architects just enough to make sure that what you do today will work with what you may want to do later, i.e. that you future-proof a number of things.


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We know that the level cap will be more than 10, though there is no new official cap. Now, you may want to later release an expansion (or two) for BG3. Please, have a clear idea of how much additional story you could or would release, what level you would see our heroes reach at the very end, and thus work out what maximum level we should be able to reach in BG3.

For instance, let's say you envision an expansion (or two) providing a (combined) total play-time equal to 40% of that of BG3, and that you imagine us finishing at level 20. If we assume a linear-in-time level progression, that means we should not exceed level 14 in BG3.

Throne of Bhaal had a lot of road to cover to wrap up the Bhaalspawn saga, but Shadow Of Amn had left us around level 19. So ToB took us to crazy level 40, and Bioware had to make up the high-level progression. Please don't find yourselves forced to choose between going over level 20 or making massive cuts to your intended story.


Level progression is way too fast at the moment.

Please adjust the XP rewards and/or the XP tables (which are the 2 dials controlling the Character Level variable), once you are finished with all the story content, and in particular all the sources of XP in the game.

At the moment, we reach level 2 by merely recruiting Shadowheart and killing 3 wounded intellect devourers. We reach level 3 in the Grove, which can reasonably happen in the second or even first day of our life as an adventurer. Level 4 can be reached by dealing with the goblins. This is all a bit ridiculous. On the other hand, this situation is very convenient for play-testing, as we can reach max level within a couple of hours, and I would bet this was essentially the intent for EA.

If we assume that Act 1 will be about 1/3 of the total content, and that the level cap will be 12, then, assuming linear level progression, that means that the complete Act 1 should see us playing through 4 levels. So XP tables and rewards will have to be adjusted.


Level progression : how much of the content should be required for max level ?

There isn't necessarily a unique good (or best) answer to this question, but please come up with a good one.

On the one extreme, reaching max level well before the end of the game, like midway through Act 3, by sticking to the Main Story isn't good. It feels as if we are no longer progressing. On the other extreme, reaching max level probably shouldn't require us to complete at least 95% of the game's content. This would make all side quests feel a lot less facultative, and force players to choose between roleplay (refusing quests that their characters wouldn't naturally do) and gameplay (potentially missing the last few levels, and levels in DnD's short scale bring a lot more new, fund goodies to play with than levels in game where levels to up to 100 and only bring generic ability purchase points).

There is a middle ground to be found. Doing a fair share of the game's side quests and non-essential content, in an immersion-compatible way, should lead us within one level of max level. ( Vagueness intended.)


Expansion and writing : please plan the plot ahead.

Save that, please accept that the set of stories that will be able to be told after BG3, the additional adventures of our heroes, will be restricted by what happened (and didn't happen) in BG3. Especially if these additional adventures you propose are the continuation of the Main Story.

To take a recent example, Star Wars Episode 9 reminded everyone that pulling a "oh, actually, it was X pulling the strings all along" from nowhere, with no preparation for it, is likely to fail.

Also, I suppose that doing a continuation of the Main Story rather than an independent adventure is preferable in an RPG. Otherwise, the risk is that players are too high level for the end of the main game if they do the independent adventure first, or too high level for the independent adventure if they finish the main game first.


Expansion and new mechanisms.

If you release an expansion, in addition to new story content, you might want to add some new technical options (races, classes and subclasses, spells, etc), in addition to all the new options coming naturally from higher level. Various DnD supplements provide these.

Please plan ahead, notably in terms of how to implement those additional racial features, (sub)classes, spells, etc.

For instance, the Druid subclasses from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything have new uses for the Wild Shape Use resource. It would be sad if your current implementation of Wild Shape does make implementing these new subclasses difficult, and you end up having to resort to acrobatic hacks and tricks for a moderately good result. (Perhaps similar to how Jump is currently hacking the Throw function but the game engine otherwise makes characters very bad at navigating a 3D world.)