Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback First playthrough feedback

Figured I'd compile my thoughts from my first beta run. Patch 4, Fighter PC.


Art/Environments
Really nice. I like the style and the execution is high quality. Lighting especially is lovely much of the time.
Performancewise my computer doesn't like it as much, particularly when going into cutscenes (and probably don't need a 'cutscene' for every 1 liner NPC interaction?). I havn't spent much effort on optimizing settings though, likely very fixable.

Story/Characters
I'm intrigued. Story and characters have a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to more. The tadpole crew, all with their various secrets, definitely seems like a select lot picked by some unknown logic.
There appears to be a lot of choice in how to handle quests and to RP which I like very much. I may never really go for the 'evil' options but their very existence makes choosing the other options more enjoyable.
The "brain worm is eating you" hook isn't novel but it is effective. I also like how it becomes clear after a bit that there's more going on and you're not on some fast death clock, reducing narrative dissonance of doing sidequests, while still having some sense of urgency to move forward.

Gameplay
Difficulty seems appropriate for a 'default'. I have a lot of cRPG experience so it was fairly easy for me, only fight that required multiple attempts was the big spider (PC level 3). I assume there will be harder difficulty settings on release. There are many tools I did not use such as stealth, scrolls, dipping, so the room for higher difficulty tuning is large.

I see a lot of feedback concerned about the power of bonus actions like push, dipping, jumping. This did not concern me that much (I have not played 5E). Yes, the bonus actions are very powerful, but you do have to choose between multiple powerful options, if the game is balanced around their power it can be ok.

I will say that backstab/highground advantage may be too good though, the correct move is almost always to use your bonus to Jump and get advantage, so the game turns into a bit of a jumpfest. Also the other things in the game which grant advantage seem a bit useless, why use a full action on a spell when you can just Jump. Jump's dominance is further compounded because it's also a disengage.

Other than Jump, Shoving is strong but I used it to good effect like twice. It's not like some dominant strategy you must employ. Healing is also strong but reasonable, and eating to heal is of course silly but I guess it's a videogame trope at this point. As I said I only used Dip once but just forgot about it the rest of the time, higher difficulties will likely bring it into my gameplay though.

Surface/barrel madness is much reduced compared to DoS which I think is good for this game.

Overall its promising but currently pretty simplistic. Jump behind stuff and whack it is like 80% of gameplay. Only being level 4 at most and being on the low 'default' difficulty contribute to this heavily though I'm sure.

Gameplay: AI
The AI is currently unshippably broken much of the time.
There were many fights where one or more enemies just do nothing. Enemies a bowshot or more away from a PC especially seemed to have trouble pathfinding. The fights which seemed to work were the ones where I confined my PCs to a small area of where the enemies initially are located, but do something as standard as pulling to a defensible position with a bowshot (ex. pulling Goblin Camp to bridge) just breaks the AI's brain something fierce. Verticality may compound these issues in that it makes pathing more complicated.
When not bugging out the AI doesn't do anything particularly smart, any difficulty is from their numerically overpowering attacks. However 'intelligent' AI is a pretty lofty goal, I don't expect it


Overall I had a lot of fun and am excited for the future.

Thanks for your feedback Aimlessgun.

I really enjoyed reading this because this is something I 100% agree with.



Just to add something : it's not really a matter of level 4 or not. Advantages to improve our %to hit will be used during the 80+ hours and you won't have better choices than the actual jump/disengage and highground.
Pretty simplistic as you said. It is the same when dipping become something you often use. I fear we'll have the same feeling at higher difficulty levels when we'll HAVE to add dipping (and/or any other OP mechanic) at every combats to beat the game.

At the moment they drasticaly reduce our viable tactical choices and impose us things to do. Not sure it's intended or not.

I don't know 5E but I suppose those who do know what higher level stuff will available. Maybe there will be a magic item that just passively gives advantage, that's probably what it would take to make me not jump constantly

Setting up dipping on every encounter might be interesting or horribly tedious. Maybe I'll try it on a 2nd run and see if I grow to hate it haha.

It would be even more simplistic with an item because you wouldn't have to do something to increase your %to hit anymore.

There are many possibilities and tactical decision to have an advantage in D&D but they'll stay useless if Larian continue with their "simplistic" solution.

This is probably THE thread to read if you want informations about this.
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=719930&page=1

Just out of curiosity, as I genuinely don’t know, but what exactly does advantage/disadvantage do? I recognize that it makes things harder or easier to hit, but what is the math. Does advantage give you say a +2 to hit +5 etc. it may be that this was explained somewhere, but I must have skipped over it if so.

When you have an advantage or a disadvantage, there are 2 rolls with the D20 instead of 1.

When you have an advantage the best result is used in the maths.
When you have a disadvantage, the worst is used.

It the best bonus/malus to your %to hit in D&D and there are many spells, class features or "tactics" to have an advantage/give a disadvantage.

here's a link that show the influence it has on your %to hit.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/07/12/dnd-5e-advantage-disadvantage-probability/

I.E you have 55% to roll a 10 without advantage/disadvantage (if you only roll 1 dice)
... you have 80% to roll a 10 with advantage (if you roll 2 dice and keep the higher result)
... and 30% with a disadvantage (if you roll 2 dice but keep the lower dice)

In other word this is the main reason why you'll try to make smart moves in combats.
That's why many players hate those 2 rules : In BG3 you just have to go behind or go higher (this doesn't exist in D&D)
It completely removes a huge part of the tactical value of the game because you never have to find a smart way to have the best bonus.

As @Maximuuus says, you roll two d20s and take the higher (advantage) or lower (disadvantage).

If you need X to hit, then Advantage is roughly equivalent to a Y Bonus to a single d20 roll (not accounting for crits dealing double damage)
X Y
2 +0.95
3 +1.8
4 +2.5
5 +3.2
6 +3.75
7 +4.2
8 +4.55
9 +4.8
10 +4.95
11 +5
And symmetric for values 12-20. This averages out to a +3.5 bonus.

However, it's almost always true for D&D 5e that you need to roll somewhere between a 6 and a 13 to succeed. Thus, the true effect of Advantage is closer to +4.6.

Wow! Rolling two dice and using the best/worst of both. That is better than rocking a +5 sword or having a +2 set of full plate. I haven’t played TT since 2.5, and it looks like the game has really changed. This really needs to be used sparingly or it risks overshadowing all else.

It absolutely overshadow everything else and many choices we could make are just bad/worse choices than Larian's 2 homebrew rules.
(I.E the spell faery fire is implemented in the game but it's close to useless)

I enjoyed the game but these bonuses should be something that takes ingenuity and effort to obtain. I guess at high level almost every attack will hit regardless, but this could really spoil the early game. I genuinely think this needs to be tweaked or it will turn every battle into a formulaic process, which I think is the opposite of what the devs intend.

Honnestly I don't really know and/or understand what their intends are but yes - about combats it's exactly the opposite of what they say in every interviews : we don't have any choices. The only good ones are "backstab" and "highground" and/or a few choices "for fun" (if barrelmany, abusing shove, throwing ennemies,... at every combats makes you laugh, ofc)

*Bought into EA back in early December, have "played" through the game multiple times but always avoided the Duegar boat until this most recent playthrough, so technically I only recently "beat" EA*

Have played through the majority of content with: Tiefling, Human, Halfling, Drow, Wood Elf // Cleric, Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, Druid
Only played single-player. My friends and I are longtime Larian fans and enjoyed playing through DOS 1 & 2 together. They are purists though so I'm the only one in EA.

IMPRESSIONS:
- Excellent depth and mixture of content.
- Absolutely love how combat is avoidable in most circumstances.
- I like the effort to cut down on the infamous "Larian cheese", but tbh I was always a fan of the cheese. Early-game ruins encounter is the best middle-ground to me and I wish there was even more of that content. Story-driven cheese!

ISSUES:
- Combat is almost unforgivably dull in larger encounters. I respect how battles are scaled up but everything moves so slowly.
- Rest / fight balance is too easy. There needs to be some kind of real cost for resting, maybe even literally financial like how some games force you to pay for the supplies to rest. Otherwise it's merely a quick break before maximum power.
- Illithid powers feel too much like a story "gotcha" and not a genuine gameplay cost analysis. I get the narrative, but it feels like a possible interesting choice being removed for a story purpose. Make the cost of Illithid stuff real in the immediate.
- Probably just a personal preference but I would like skill check base difficulty to be more obvious - perhaps against the 5e spirit though?
- The loot system is still really bad, especially now that loot is far less important than it was in DOS 1 & 2. Only rare items are worth paying attention to, and I swap equipment way less often so it's just so much junk.
--- Addendum on that comment - I actually like the de-emphasis on loot in terms of actual items of worth, but wish the clutter was just handled better. Maybe just making the crap easier and less tedious to ship to & from camp?
- Character animations are far too twitchy. Likely already smoothed out, but in case it was a house-style I just wanted to say I do not like it, simply because it makes all of the characters' mannerisms identical.

SUGGESTIONS & THINGS I'D LIKE:
- Option to not bring out created-character in single player.
- V IMPORTANT - Please, please bring back DOS 1 rock/paper/scissors for multiplayer, at least as an option! You're already bringing in voting. I missed it so much in DOS 2 and it made multiplayer so much more engaging.
--- Addendum - just more competitive & choice elements to multiplayer in general. If this is a DnD campaign, make it harder for us to get along! It should be a triumph to cooperate well.

Oh I forgot to mention this. But honestly I think they're just screwed on this point, Vancian magic IMO flat out sucks for videogames but they can't very well get rid of it because it's an absolutely core aspect of DnD. I've never seen a videogame rest system I thought was good.

I tried to help the game out and RP and not rest constantly but even from an RP perspective it's pretty weird to teleport to some camp location then instaport back...why cant we just camp where we're at. I guess they have too many setpieces/cutscenes they wanted to do at a camp.

You know, I don't actually have a problem with porting to camp as long as you are not in a danger zone.

Everyone looks at it as teleporting, but all it is is Larian is saying Fade to Black. They aren't showing you traveling on foot there and back. That's all.

I think to be honest the game relies to heavily on advantage and disadvantage. In 5e the number of times I swing with advantage is like 5%. And with spells, fucking never. I think the game should avoid giving these dumb bonuses for things that don't even really give you an advantage. You feel like an idiot when you are playing to not always be above or behind your enemy, but frankly there's so many other things that should be used but just aren't because its too easy to just run to the top of the mountain and rain hell fire while the npcs struggle to hit anything and cant figure out how to navigate anything but a flat surface open field.
Its super boring, repetitive, and easy game play that really kills the excitement of a D&D like game. Problem is that the game abuses the fuck out of everything it can so if you don't also do it you'll just lose ever combat. I wish that sneaking was a more core gameplay feature because of all the things they got wrong, sneaking is dead on from an advantage stand point to an ambushing opportunity attack. Problem is that ever single battlefield has near to no cover and when you do successfully hide, the npcs bug out like you just ceased to exist rather than searching for you. The opportunity of sneak is especially ruined since height is king which means even if you have something to hide behind, the enemy will just always choose to go higher to see you rather than run in on you.