The problem with BG3's antinational tools is that they're way too powerfull on both side.
- The game is extremely easy if you use them and it would be terrible if the AI was able to use them as much/as smart as us (diping, shove, backstab, avoid 100% of the AOO, and so on)
On the other hand, the tools they added to creatures and the combat design supposed to balance our "homebrewed tools" are also completely broken.
- A lot of creatures can litterally kill one or more of your characters during their first turn, concentration is broken way too easily, the harpy fight is a pain because they can fly, the combat outside the goblins camp is a pain because there are way too many ennemies, you miss more often because they increased some AC, they increased the goblins HP so you have 0 chance to OS one of them, lots of creatures makes better ST than they should because their dexterity has been increased, and so on...
The result is that combats are often unfair and frustrating (please, try to set your mind in the head of a new player that hasn't played hundreds of hours and/or that doesn't know DnD) and that your sucess rely on several custom and OP mechanics. The most challenging combats are limited to "smart moves to nuke your opponent before being nuked". This makes combats way less deep than they should and reduce A LOT our creativity and the usefullness of many tools that are included in DnD (and in BG3).
Solasta may be too easy but Solasta has fair combats and every spells and choices are valuable even if some are better than others depending the situation.
You can end the game without spirit guardian and fire wall even in scavenger or cataclysm mode because other level 3 and 4 spells are also powerfull. Will we be able to end BG3 at higher difficulty without using any "op larianisms" ? (from mechanics to consumables and so on...) I really doubt.
If Larian's will was to create more challenging combats (I don't think so, really), their answer was completely wrong according to me.
If their will was to add new custom mechanics and/or tools, I'm 100% fine with it but the answer was also wrong and created many huge issues everywhere that doesn't exist neither in DnD, neither in Solasta.
This is a difficult conversation to have because the charge of 'elitist gamer' starts getting thrown around, so I will take this in a different direction. There are some gamers out there that are what some would describe as "high functioning" - and people who are high functioning are constantly trying to stave off boredom by finding greater and greater challenges and things to occupy their minds. If they get bored then they get self-destructive.
In the gaming world there have only ever been a handful of games that are designed to have the challenge level necessary to keep the attention of a high functioning individual. Invariably these games - over time - have been nerfed into oblivion to allow for greater mainstream appeal. The most famous example of this is of course World of Warcraft. In Vanilla it was an uncompromising and incredibly fun experience. You couldn't just run around soloing anything you wanted. The world, especially in pvp, did not make any attempt to be fair. Like all great Art it mirrored the unfairness of life. It rewarded cooperation, and punished those who were anti-social and avoidant. It was easy to learn but hard to master. Only 2-3% of players even managed to kill the final boss before the expansion was released (although this was party because Blizzard released the expansion too early. I think it would have been much higher if they gave people a few more months).
And people complained. "Too hard" they said. "Why should we be forced to get better? Make the game easier." And Blizzard listened, and they proceeded to nerf the game until it because not a game, but a simple interactive experience designed for innocent unremarkables. No accomplishments were celebrated because no accomplishments mattered. And once everyone was standing side by side wearing all the same Epic gear they realized how hollow unearned accolades are and they simply stopped playing. Subscriptions plummeted so much that by the third "expansion" they stopped tracking them out of embarrassment.
But then an interesting thing happened, someone figured out how to run a vanilla server based on the original game. And so private servers started to pop up, and people flocked to them by the thousands. And they would run them for 2 year cycles and then reset them and everyone would start over. People just wanted a taste of that original difficult and uncompromising experience. The game was so complex and well made that people were still figuring out new things to do 10 years after the game was released. It was genius.
The gaming world follows the general model of not creating games, but instead creating "Interactive Experiences". An Interactive Experience does not force the player to learn and adapt to move forward. An Interactive Experience is simply meant to be consumed, you are not expected to learn or grow.
IMHO In a real game if you are not losing then its not challenging enough and you need to move on. When I started BG3 I made all the mistakes and had to learn 5E rules to understand what I was doing wrong (a lot it turns out). I lost a lot of fights and loved every second of it. What is wrong with New players losing fights? Good for them. You're welcome!
I cannot comprehend the mentality of a person who expects to win all the time and is convinced they were created perfect straight from God's hands and no additional knowledge or growth is needed. However, I don't need to. There is a whole world of "games" for people that just want to constantly win with no expectation of improvement. Meanwhile the rest of us don't have a lot of options. Sometimes the hardest difficulty setting isn't enough. Witcher 3 on Blood and Broken Bones? yes please! Honor mode, heck yes!
Larian does a great job of trying to make games that require you to adapt and learn. If people are coming to Solasta/BG3 and having trouble but don't think they need to learn and adapt whose fault is that exactly?
No one is ever forced to use Exploits. I never use them and never will.
One other small point. It is rare to see a game that creates so many optional encounters as Larian does. I want them to create more of these. I want there to be areas of the game that if you start a fight then you are going to die and you have no hope of winning. That's proper D&D right there! So many people that complain about combat difficulty are complaining about optional encounters. Can you imagine a world where you can't win every single battle? Where running is the only thing you can do? or successful dialog, or being sneaky?
So this is my ask, let us have THIS game - I am sure there will be nerfed AI settings/easier combats for new players. Meanwhile I will have my crew on Tactician/Honor mode getting occasionally destroyed by the jerk AI and loving every second of it.
I can't talk for anyone but me but don't get me wrong if that's what you understood. I'm not frustrated at all when I'm dying. I LOVE dying because it means that my choices were not so good. That I can find a better strategy than what I tried.
I'm definitely not the most "hardcore" gamer, the best at creating builds and the best to exploit games mechanics but I'm far from being a "casual" gamer (I'm using those words to explain my feeling, not to hurt anyone).
Dying is a challenge to me and retrying the same combats 3, 4, 5 times or more is never a problem to me whatever my "skills". I'm never starting any game in the "normal" difficulty mode because I like being challenged.
I can also retry some combats if a character is dead or if things aren't going how I wants. To give a BG3 exemple I did the combats at the mill more than once because I didn't understood that killing ALL the goblins wouldn't be possible if I did not prevent damages on "the named one" (don't remember his name).
My challenge is to find ways to improve my strategy and make better personnal choices. When a game keep throwing at my head that what I choose is NOT an optimal strategy, I don't feel rewarded at all. And that's exactly what BG3 is doing : it forces me to play a suboptimal gameplay if I want a bit of challenge and variety OR to embrace the optimal mechanics that will make the game way too easy or repetitive.
That is completely unfair and uninterresting to me.
I want to feel that my choices are optimal even if yours may be even more. I want my creativity to be rewarded.
Here's another disclaimer but I personnaly never complained about what I call "choices for fun" : barrelmancy, stealing merchants, throwing a chest to OS anyone in DoS, being able to put tons of things in their backpack, being able to make the bulette fights the minotaurs, being able to rez any creatures with guth (guth ? the mushroom... not sure of his name), being able to take the 2D12 weapons of minotaurs... All these choices and many others require efforts from the players and when they achieve it, they are rewarded. Being able to blow the entire map is not a reward I'm interrested in but who am I to say that the others shouldn't be able to have this reward ?When you're a player that wants to find the best tactics he can think of depending the situation and depending your character/party build... the game is not satisfying at all after a few hours because the best tactics are obviously always the same.
Of course you can choose not to use the buttons but it has a huge impact on the experience and the difficulty. The only reward doing this is something like "cool, I beat the game without using the OP buttons". You may like this reward but I don't think that it's something most players are looking for.
The game is definitely balanced arround highground and backstab, free disengage and so on...
Higher difficulty levels will be "nuke even faster or being nuked even faster", which means using dipping, eating the best healing items, shoving creatures as a bonus action, using the broken consummables, eventually using surfaces to break our ennemie's concentration and deal damages to creatures that aren't smart enough to jump, and so on...
A balanced game doesn't prevent you to find "more" optimal builds and tactics and it doesn't prevent the game to offer you a challenge that suits you.
An unbalanced games doesn't make me feel rewarded when I click a suboptimal button for the sake of not cliking the optimal button that is right next to the other.
DnD is balanced to offer so many choices and creativity. Rewarding players whatever their choices is probably what every DM is doing and I think that this is what most games succeed at.
That is my feeling when I played Solasta and any other tactical turn based games.
Baldur's Gate 3 only rewards me if I use the mechanics created by Larian (see the disclaimer). If I don't it punishes me, making the game harder.Games shouldn't ever have so obvious and so easy better tactics. It's not a matter of difficulty at all. It's only a matter of balance.
EDIT : Please, like other did on other threads don't come with obvious exploits. No one has ever used cloudkill and the fog of war exploit in BG2 because it's an interresting and optimal strategy. Players used them because they cannot killed the dragons without it
This is the old equivalent of barrelmancy, not to highground advantages and any other unbalanced mechanics (>< choices for fun)
EDIT 2 : you didn't answer but what were the abilities of your characters in Solasta when you started the game ? Did you roll or used point buy ?
Feats are obviously more OP when you don't have to increase your abilities at level 4 and 8
