Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback a big tip Laria Studio

Really, of all time? Like all gaming history? You sure you are not being hyperbolic? My gaming experience dates back to Ultima IV and Wasteland and between now and then I can think of plenty of games that didn't do turn based very well. BG3 does an excellent job. Needs work, sure it's EA, stuff is being tested.

When I say the S-word is an "inch" deep its because its only really a D&D simulator and has nothing else to offer. None of your choices matter. Its 100% linear. The story is very basic.

BG3 by comparison is a work of Art. The story is miles deep, embedded not just in scraps and whispers, and from the utterances of the dead., but also baked into the clothing, murals, jewelry, accents, and symbols. I am STILL finding new bits and pieces at 800 hours. The world is crafted, not just generated. Past the first 20 minutes and the Druid grove you have free reign on where you can go and what you can get involved in. The world will react to who you choose to be. I have faith that they will get the combat balance figured out. I enjoy it and I am not worried.

if you want to get an idea of how deep some of this goes you should check out Harbs Narbs youtube channel.

+ 1 for Harbs Narbs!

I think when its relevant it can be fine to mention, in particular when discussing mechanics and bringing up specific comparisons, like when people were talking about how Solasta handled reactions and how that might be applied to BG3.

However, just saying Solasta is better doesn't help much in the way of feedback in my opinion, and generally it is good to bring up other examples as well to help deliver the point.

I have to be honnest, no I'm not sure
But BG3's combats aren't deep at all. What they did to their base material is terrible.

DnD works perfectly well in video games. You don't have to play Solasta to understand it, just read the rules.

This very small game has STRONG foundations in its mechanics whatever we're talking about combats, resting, (fast)travelling, crafting, leveling, rewarding players, inventory management, user interface, control scheme, movement, tutorials, character creation, verticality...
Close to everything is good about it's mechanic.

At the moment Baldur's Gate 3 has close to nothing that works about these basics points and it's not only a matter of "balance" (creatures AC, abilities and so on), it's a matter of foundations.

Ofc you may enjoy better graphics and a "deeper" story much more than combats.
But I personnaly would be more confident about a small game that has strong foundations for the future (and things to improve) than a beautifull game that's close to perfect technicaly but that has a repetitive and boring combat gameplay after a few hours.

Let's wait and see what game Larian really wants to make.

If I remember well you said you only played Solasta 2 hours (refund) ?

Do you want to get them all in one place and then burn it to ashes? If so - yes, please.

It might be easier to just merge the threads to the one with the most honest title. At least then we can know if we want to read the thread or not.

OP, I wouldn't really get overzealous with this. Solasta gets to release as it is today because it's a much smaller game in scope, and the devs have set actual reasonable expectations throughout. Not like BG3 which is a much larger project, and the devs ghosting the community for entire months on end likely for development reasons we'll probably never hear (of the bug-filled variety). The latter is something that should be called out at every opportunity, but Solasta's actual relevance to that point is very minimal. Dates and exact timeframes aren't really necessary, but maybe something that gives us something clear and concise about the development process goes a long way so that we aren't ripping into each others' throats over something that is already planned to be changing anyway.

On the other point brought about in this thread, I'm not wholly convinced that BG3's world and writing as it currently is during this early phase of EA truly is that deep. It's certainly not as uncontested as people would have you believe.

The world details are no doubt extremely well crafted, but the companions are nowhere near the quality of those in Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous so far. Though it's probably less the writing itself, and more that the narrative is hamstrung by the idea that the BG3 companions all appear to have cynical hidden agendas at first glance, and barely interact with each other except a couple snarky comments here and there, to the point that we're operating under the assumption that some of the companions have to leave you at the end of act 1 for reasons. WotR's companions in comparison still quarrel with each other a lot, but they appear to be written within the context of their place within the entire cast itself with the massive amount of inter-party banter there is. Instead of being seemingly disconnected from each other like in BG3, when the BG3 companions have their own special arcs that currently feels like the player character is just an observer to their special story.

In a few months, some of you will understand what I mean.

When it's happened before, it's precisely because it was stifling conversation because all paths led to the same debate.

Alternatively, I could tell the autocensor to replace it with the novelty cheese of the day.

Perfect!

tbh speaking as one former moderator to another, doing something like that will achieve naught but poking the beehive. It's a natural thing to see something like this crop up, considering Solasta has just released, and there's A LOT of pent-up frustration in the BG3 community over the lack of literally any word period in comparison.

I'd say give it a month or so and the Solasta talk will eventually die down on its own, when everyone actually trying it out finally realizes that the entire point of all this talk to begin with was always purely focused on the combat design, but it got misconstrued by people on both sides into a bunch of other meanings. Especially when Larian finally breaks their radio silence.

Hey. You could say a lot of bad things about the Solasta evangelists, but to their credit at very least they aren't Halsin/Astarion/Minthara simps.

Also, a lot of RPG forums usually have at least one generic section dedicated to "other RPGs" if not even one for "other games" in general.
I was sort of surprised when I realized there isn't one here.

Then again, I'm not sure the volume of traffic would justify it.

Team Halsin!!!

You have my vote of either making a sub forum where that is where Solasta comments can go, or name it cheese. Just make sure to update the forum rules saying if you want to talk Solasta...>GO HERE>>>

I may not be Team Halsin but I'm always amused by your enthusiasm any time he's mentioned on this forum!

I vote just leaving it as is, but like only if the mention of Solasta is genuinely on topic for comparison and is more than "Solasta did X better", more along the lines of "X in Solasta is better cause of Y and Z. You can see something similar in Base 5e DnD and OTHER GAME MENTION"

Same, I enjoy the optimism for Halsin and other NPCs in the game.

So I get what you are talking about. The-game-that-will-not-be-named has baseline 5E mechanics like requiring food, spell components, and the action economy is correct. Where BG3 has some blaring holes like barrelmancy, broken throw mechanics, extra actions, free disengage, and leftover DOS2 mechanics. So the foundation is better for building the 5E combat.

I played two hours, and then my save game broke and I requested and received a refund. I also watched some videos on Fextralife and WolfheartFPS.

But here is the thing, this game is not really selling - they are niche af. Only 200k sold and they are already discounting it. It doesn't have broad appeal. It appeals mainly to high-functioning people who are obsessed with D&D rules. In doing so it fails to get the overall point of D&D, which is "a story we tell together". Its like trying to argue that Art is the sum of its parts and insisting something is a masterpiece because you have good paint.

Given that - Multiplayer would not make sense in this game anyway because there is no way to be creative, nothing you do really matters and you are heavily constrained in needing a perfectly balanced team.

And this highlights two separate niche demographics of players: Players who think D&D is the rules and players who think D&D is about the story you tell (focus on companions, romances etc.). Probably the healthy demographic here are the ones who put equal value in both and tbh that makes the most sense to me personally.

More than Solasta I still believe that Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous to be the WAY better game. Lot closer to classic BG2 but Improved than anything else out there.