Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New interview with Sven by Gamespot

@<Redacted>
Just don't use Height Advantage ez. Always move (no jumping) to be on even ground with enemies before attacking. If you can't move far enough with a single move action to do that, then spend your dash too!
Oh, and if it looks like you'll end your turn in a place where the enemy will attack from low-ground (at disadvantage) then reload an earlier save and do the combat differently! Can't have the game detecting that players are benefitting from enemies on the low ground.

Defending the Druid Grove will be difficult, but if you have a party of all spellcasters AND if you reload until all your characters win initiative, then each character can Misty Step to get on even ground with the goblins and negate height bonus/penalties. The dozen+ goblins and Trolls all get to go before you'll get another turn, but I'm sure you'll survive.

^ will lead Larian to conclude that "Players aren't using Height Advantage and thus BG3 should focus less on it" and certainly not "Players aren't using Height Advantage so we should add more situations with high ground to allow players to benefit from it!"

p.s. Oh and don't forget to use Bless at every opportunity. You'll almost certainly lose concentration within a single turn, but that just gives you the opportunity to cast it again next turn!

It's not that simple. I should point out that telemetry isn't solely used for combat anyway, there are a lot more use-cases, but as far as combat abilities go, at best it can be a conversation-starter. You can see the amount (or lack there of) spells are used, so if you see for example a particular offensive ability rarely be used. Though that's where the usefulness of telemetry goes on its own, from there you need discussions, other forms of feedback or any other means of approach to interpret and process why that is.

So Larian may see that people aren't using a spell very much, but that data won't necessarily be very clear at why. There may be some fringe cases where you could argue it though, say gimmick spells like Speak With Animal. If it's used very little, perhaps the world design and monsters doesn't invite much use for it, perhaps there isn't enough use for it to be worthwhile enough for a slot, or the animals that are worth talking to, aren't that obvious that they can be/should be talked to. Though even that may benefit from some more in-depth discussion.

I thought I might just load the game up and let it run for a few months. Then they'll understand how much players like standing around doing nothing.

Edit: And as a bonus, how much we enjoy not using height advantage, backstab, jumping, shoving, etc!

This is almost literally half of my World of Warcraft playtime haha.

This is incorrect ... also its not what i suggested ...

I say that if people will stop using certain features, then the metadata will tell Larian that people dont use those features ... and (and here the difference between what i say and what you read is created) if people keep "not using" those features, (combined with Reddit, Forum, Discord, and every other source of information, btw) ... in time Larian HAVE TO get to the conclusion that they dont like them.

I even tryed to give you some sort of algoritms in previous post ...
I really dont know how to say it more clearly.

Please tell me some ...
I honestly cannot figure out even single one. O_o

Ofcourse you can ...
You simply do not climb higher > therefore you dont have High Ground > therefore you dont have High Ground advantage. Simple as that.

Is it hard? Yes it is.
Is is ridiculous way to play a game? Certainly.
But its is possible? Yes it totally is!
Would it give Larian data that you dont use High Ground? Yes it would.
Would it combined with every other source of infomation have better chance to actualy showing Larian that you dont like it, compared to complainging on forum with few other people? Yes it would.
Simple as that, once again. O_o

You have all the tools you need ... now you just have learn to use them.

I really have some comunication problems ...
This is second time (and i only count this hour, this forum, and this topic) someone tells me that im wrong ... and then explains me exactly my point.

I dunno if you all get from my post some feeling that you single time dont use advantage, and then sudently Swen appears in your room and personaly recreate whole game ... but that is not what i ever meaned.

We are here complaining about eating pigheads (for example) ...
Yet data tells Larian that several millions of people eated several dozen millions (in total ofcourse) of pigheads during combat ... what feeling should Larian get from that data?
A) People really dont like eating pigheads and this option should be removed to improve our game.
B) Few people really dont like eating pigheads, but few millions people either dont mind, or is totally fine with this option ... so we either satisfy few, or please many ... easy decision if you ask me.

Simmilar with jumping ...
Simmilar with backstab ...
Simmilar with learning cleric spells ...
Simmilar with ffs everything! Yes i admit that detecting high ground likeliness would be harder than others, but its still possible, even more after they start to question all their homebrewed rules, based on that f***ing data!

There is expression in my country: Sometimes even a journey is a goal.
And there is one more expression: Show dont tell. (that is usualy used differently, but it fits when you think about it)

This to me is the perfect feedback, both in content and in how it is presented. It should be a template on how to give feedback and how to make good points with examples.

The only thing I disagree with is that he keeps saying "I don't want to make things harder in the game". I totally want to make things harder in the game for people. Like Dark Souls, Cuphead or Vanilla Naxx level of difficulty. The tears of frustrated gamers is a culinary delicacy.

I realy hope it should not provide any informative value ...
Bcs i dont find any. :-/

It feels just the same as if you simply tell me "you are wrong, dont ask, just thrust me"

It's the same shit we talked about for months in video format.
Also, I think he's wrong about height advantage and I took my time to explain him why.

I am happy someone else noticed the high ground changes from patch 3 to 4. Did he skip talking about low ground disadvantage though?

Why are we wasting time on it? It's simple buddy.

20 YEARS. 20 VERY LONG YEARS. Have we waited.

We knew it wouldn't happen.

BG2 got it's enhanced edition and a DLC few years ago.

It became obvious BG3 will be here sooner or later.

It arrives.

The devs tell us " 5th edition isn't fun in a video game when translated 1:1" . They are correct to some extent. No one denies that. 0 Surprise. Larian is perfect, BG3 will be perfect.

They balance the game around their homebrew and tell us bless isn't fun. When BG2 was all about buffing your party.

We cry.

Some people come here and tell us to shut up cause " just play another game if you don't like it".

The other game is called BG2 and we played it for the last 20 years. Go back to first line. Start over.

Until you understand why Tuco is eating his own keyboard right now.

At this point my hope for height advantage/disadvantage is that they make it modable.

Hard but fair is good. Hard but unfair isn't. Despite enemies and such having large HP pools and Damage in Souls games, I consider the experience fair because most everything is telegraphed visually and with audio cues and the whole game is about timing. Similarly, Cuphead is about learning enemy patterns. Essentially the hcallenge presented IS the challenge presented and enemies do not cheat, they may pull a trick out of their bag but once thats known it is known and can be accounted for. On difficulty though, I want BG3 to avoid RTS levels of difficulty where the AI is cheating and knows all while also just spawning in things for free.

Agreed. No AI cheating is a big one with me. Its a lazy shortcut that some developers take with AI on higher difficulty settings - instead of making it smarter they give it information it should not have.

Then again should it have the same information that we have? We can examine a creature and know its stats which is a huge advantage when selecting spells. Should the AI have that same info? it should know if we are elves, half elves, or drow so it knows not to try sleep spells against us. I'd say yes, if we have the info, they should have it.

I'd say Insight, Arcana, and Nature should become skills that can give that Information and both us and the AI have equal chance at failure and success with that. Perhaps a difficulty mode where the AI is given bigger numbers but that should be presented upfront.

he selected Lithovore when he was creating his race?

Assuming an aluminum mechanical keyboard of course...


It is good advice though. I played a game for a lot longer than I should after I wasn't having any fun anymore. Its funny that my methadone for WoW ended up being BG3.

I played a single incredibly fun multiplayer game with 3 other great people and I flushed WoW out of my computer. Go find another Raid Leader you ungrateful jerks. The funny thing is, I think more than half the people in Raids were in the same place as me - not really enjoying the game anymore - but they didn't want to/couldn't stop playing for some reason so they just made everyone around them miserable*.


*this last sentence is not directed at anyone.

You guys are just lucky ...

17 years of waiting for Bloodlines 2 ... and look how it seems right now.
17 years of waiting for Knights of the Old Republic III ... and its not even anounced.

And you can play Early Acess of game that you were waiting for, yet its not how you imagine it ... totally feeling your pain.

Half.
That sounds quite a bit like hyperbole.
Which half of the rules do you think are homebrewed and why do you think they are worse?

Also in no way tells you anything about the options you don't provide in the game and whether people would prefer them.

The only way of alternating the .EXE file without having access to source code is tedious. Tried it for a game to fix the multiplayer camera for 9 parchments and yeah. Let me just tell you it's nowhere close to easy. Obviously not an expert, maybe @ Composer would tell you more but that would go in the " Modding BG3 thread".

Meanwhile you can check out the cheat engine cause that would be the way to start creating an app that would change it.
Basically you create a cheat, save it and run it every time you run the game with all the changes you made.

I would say not allways.
I dunno how commonly known is this Elvish feature in forgoten realms, especialy between less educated species ... aka goblins.

Drows should know better for sure, aswell as Duegars, since they probably encountered enough Drows to know ...

Certainly they should notice that spell dont do anything to us.
When i fighted goblin camp, one goblin tried 3 turns in a row to put me to sleep. :-/