Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Looks like Larian cheese is here to stay

I'd argue the cheese just fits DoS. It's built with it in mind, it's a main mechanic of the setting. Everything covered in future is the standard and everything constantly escalates.

But dnd is meant to be more tame, ramping up more slowly and with less extremes. If everything is on fire, you are either doing tomb of horrors and are going to die, or you really messed up with a fireball.

The main issue is that DOS realm is Larian-originated and no one has anything to compare it to. They had 100% control and IP over what they did and built what they wanted to build. As shown by numerous videos and streams from them over the years, the personalities that work there seem very jovial and playful.

They crammed a lot into DOS, sometimes too much, at the expense of losing some of the cohesion. The adage Less Is More does not really exist for their way of thinking.

With BG3, it is based on an exist set of rules which are very restrictive and defined. There is a little room for some homebrew, but I think the conflict comes because Swen always talks about how he has to sometimes curve ideas because they go down rabbit holes often wanting to add, change, and experiment with things.

As Saito Hikaru has said before, they are serving two masters. There is a part of the player base who wants almost pure DnD 5e rules. There is a part of the player base who does not want dice rolls, hates all the RNG, hates the restriction of some of the 5e confinement.

So they are never going to make everyone happy with whatever they do. I can only hope there is a lot of things in the Options menu to turn certain things on/off and it be a one-time thing at the beginning of the game that does not toggle.

If Story Mode or whatever wants no-effort advantage and all of that, cool.

But whatever Larian will call Tactician should definitely not have a lot of the stuff placed in EA.

Well, I don't think the argument really is as simple as 'DnD VS DOS style'. From my own point of view, I'm only really arguing as such not because I may be a purist (I'm actually not), but because the changes Larian actually did implement basically interact with each other in a way that has resulted in a massive feedback loop undermining all of the core DnD mechanics.

And it seems people are waking up to this. Even the BG3 subreddit today had someone come out saying that BG3 doesn't have to be like DnD, and it instead resulted in a ton of detractors coming out in droves to say that they kind of agree, but they also weren't really trying to say that they actually want it to be a strict interpretation of DnD to begin with, they only take issue with the specific changes that Larian made for very valid reasons that can't be summed up as 'lol purist' at all and would be a problem in ANY tactical turn based game. It is actually making me think that majority opinion on the game's combat design is shifting, and I think part of it is that people are starting to think a lot more about it with each subsequent playthrough they make.

And again, if that many people feel this strongly about it now, imagine this spread out into an 80+ hour game at official launch.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/mmd1ms/baldurs_gate_3_shouldnt_be_exactly_like_dd_5e/

If people haven't figured it out by now, I am the user 'Alilatias' on Reddit. And I will repost something I said from there that fully encapsulates my thoughts on Larian's changes. For the past few months, I felt there was something off, but I never really understood why I felt that way until it came to me while reading those comments today.

Just wanted to say you were totally the dick in this conversation. The guy even specifically said he wasn't directing what he said specifically at you and you went nuts. I agree with their point that there seems to be a lot of entitlement in these forums. People seem to think the game needs to be exactly how they want it and complain about stuff they could avoid by not using it.

I really don't know how Larian could deal with this

https://ibb.co/5GByJ9R

Just a joke, the reality is way more nuanced as Saito explained very well (here and on reddit).

There's only a few players that want a 100% D&D game.
There's only a few that wants something totally different.

Many just want a good tactical TB game in which you have many meaningfull choices and possibilities.
A better balance between D&D/Larian's homebrew is all we need.

I think that's one of the purposes of early access and something we can expect to see, we just can't expect to see it quickly. It's not like Larian want a wildly imbalanced shallow game either so the question is going to be how they will strike that balance and how successful they will be. Unfortunately Larian have kind of settled on the "not communicating at all" style of communication so really we're going to have to be very patient.

Please refrain from personal attacks, ad hominems and insults. Why even attack me? Why write a specific post with no other content than to attack another person on the forums? A person you do not know? Rude. Very rude. I hope you get a warning for that. I am pretty sure this kind of behaviour is not OK in these forums. If you keep harassing me, I will put you on ignore aswell.

I think most are completely OK with the game not being 100% DND, but I think that if you've made the choice to base the game on DND rules, set in Forgotten Realms, it's kind of weird to then not use the system you are supposed to use and market that you use? Now, obviously, Larian *DOES* use the DND rules to a large extent, and I don't think most people mind homebrewing, myself included. It's just that so far I think the majority of those who are not satisfied are merely such because the homebrewing isn't really done well so far. Or not well enough. In many instances the Larian homebrewing is either making things unbalanced, or they give too many options, while in other cases they give too few options. Things could certainly be finetuned, changed, added and fixed so far.

But hey; that's why we're in EA! =)

Just a reminder that this forum is not the place for attacks and insults. If that's the style of argument you are looking for then the internet has many sites to cater for your tastes.

This includes, by the way, snarky little digs and snotty little comments designed to rile other people. The moderation team are not stupid and we can usually spot when you are being insulting or dismissive but trying to be subtle about it.

If you think you are being insulted or have any other issues with a post then Report it. Let the moderation team deal with it.

Thanks!

I also think this is a major contributor to the unrest on here and Reddit. No one knows what is going on at all.

I do agree with this! I get that it is bloody hard to communicate everything when you are making a game and they have plenty things on their minds, but as of now it feels like we only get occational glimpses every now and then in interviews or their videos.

It would be lovely if they could have a Q&A or something where they state what they have been reading and where, what their thoughts are and basically what is unnecessary for us to communicate or not. I am sure they do have some things they refuse to change and it would be nice to know about those. Also what they feel is possible or not to implement.

I do not expect there will be any direct exchange of views. Unlike a small indy with a tightly focussed target audience ( e.g. the Solasta dev team ), Larian are now a well-known studio, making a game with a broad audience, and need to balance the views of their entire player base.

With 1 Million+ EA players, even the subset that hang out on forums is too large to engage with directly, and inevitably will contain a cohort of toxic players that would be counter-productive to communicate directly with.

If I were Larian. I would do exactly as they are doing. Solicit information from any sources that they can ( including actual player behaviour that they obtain from the game ), assess overall sentiment and adjust where necessary.

It would be interesting if they were to offer another AMA, because at least they can prepare their position for expected questions, and not need to engage in a potentially hostile two-way exchange.

However, it would be incorrect to think that they are not listening, because thay do attempt to put forward their position in their videos. The whole reason behind Jeremy C's appearance on Panel From Hell 2 was to have him sanction changes to the 5e desktop rules for a product that is not desktop-based ( if you didn't understand this "sub-text" in the video, you should watch it again ). This is not a revelation, WotC have said it before, and even their own digital products are not 5e compliant.

I completely understood the "sub-text". I still have hopes they will communicate more and better with us so we can find out what they might be listening more or less to. What concepts are set in stone and which ones aren't. Some pointers at least. Also with some luck, they might change their position on some of their homebrewing.

Good.
You know what? larian cheese is good.

If you played any older DnD editions youd probably run into very much the same stuff.
"Im gonna flood the dungeon"
"Im going to set everything on fire"
"I use a ten foot pole to inspect EVERY SINGLE FLOOR TILE IN THE DUNGEON"

I cannot understand how this is "not DnD" to you. What is DnD? Just playing the rules with no roleplay and no trying to gain an upper hand? DnD doesnt play like that.
it never did.
Hell i remember two years ago everyone as PSYCHED about Goblin Slayer and how cool it was that the characters in that series improvised like an actual DnD party instead of just running up tot he monsters and beating them up.
And now its suddenly bad because larian is doing it?

And im not even going into the absolute cheese you could do in the infinity engine with absoluteley rule breaking stuff like kiting

Welcome back Sordak.
Looks like you missed a lot of discussions because your exemples are not at all what's usually considered as "cheese" in BG3.

Kitting and cloud / fog of war abuse are exploit of the system, not the basics of the system.

well it doesnt realy matter if they were the basics of the system if they were basic in actual gameplay does it now?
Entire genres were defined by "exploits"

It doesn't really matter if everyone can choose to exploit the game or not.
It's not really what it's about here.

so what is "larian cheese" according to the new state of discussion

Is it DnD for players to be able to jump clear over the head of the enemy he has engaged to land behind him, and as the enemy watches you helplessly (due to it being turn based and it's not his turn to move) as you stab him in the back?

Is it DnD to be able to go invisible and then push an enemy that is twice your height and weight to his death with 100% chance of success?

Is it DnD for a character with 17 STR to be able to pick up an enemy, with perfect acquiescence from the latter, and then hurl him clear across the room? Mind you, the enemy cannot even do anything to stop you from lifting him up. Is this how DnD is played?

Is it DnD for low level goblins to shoot fire arrows that, even when they miss you, light the ground beneath you on fire and do guaranteed unavoidable 2D4 damage?