Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Dialogs exploit - your opinion ?

Hi guys, I'd like to know your opinion about an intended exploit in the game : freeze the world through dialogs with a character and doing things with your other characters.

To be sure you'll understand what I mean, here is an
exemple.

- when you enter the blighted village, one of your character talk with a goblin.

If you select any other character you can move while the whole goblins group + your character doesn't react.
This allow you to take good positions while everyone is frozen. The other goblins never become hostile even if you enter the village.

There are plenty of situations where you can littereraly exploit this system.

What do you think about it ?

I personnaly find this totally gamey and immersion breaking.
It increase the feeling of a world that is frozen, it devalue the appeal of dialogs and their consequences, it increase the feeling of individual characters that doesn't act like a party... well, it just make no sense.

Shouldn't we have a timer to answer ?
Shouldn't in this exemple the other goblins attack if my characters enter the village before the dialogs end ?

Shouldn't it eventually be possible only if the other characters are unseen ? (hidden in exemple).

Oh wow. I never knew you could do this.
Certainly hope it's one of the things Patch 5 will address?

It won't be addressed because it's another one of these "deliberate exploits" Larian loves to leave in their games BY DESIGN, since as they explained multiple times they think this stuff "rewards the players for thinking outside of the box and make them feel smart".

That said, BG3 is at very least A BIT better than DOS 2 in this aspect, given that in some cases your attempt to act with the other characters while your main is engaged in conversation is detected and triggers the combat immediately.

I also think it is intended.

I remember Swen talking about the possibility in MP to backstab a NPC while one of your mate talk to him.

It could make sense and be really cool if it was not another full exploit without any rules and limitations.

Honestly I'm totally fine with this existing as an optional exploiit because it's a thing you can very easily ignore. I like the idea of having things like this in a game particularly because they can give newbies a way to get around challenging encounters and give themselves a leg up. Unlike a lot of the other exploits in the game, this doesn't mess with the D&D rules and its existence doesn't disrupt play unless you want to use it. This is the kind of exploit I consider to be actually a net positive for the game.

Ohhh! NOW I remember in my first multiplayer playthrough, my husband snuck up - controlling Astarion - behind a goblin NPC I was in the middle of talking to, and stabbed the goblin, one-shot killing it "because it's what Astarion would do". It was hilarious at the time.

However I do think there should be time limits imposed and you shoudln't be able to just leave a character stuck talking to an NPC forever, the world should still continue and react to other characters...

Can't really say I share the sentiment.
I somewhat agree that this stuff can be mostly ignored/not leveraged and usually when you spot this kind of "vulnerability" in a game the tendency is to shrug and think "Well, you can't really cover all basis". There will always be cracks to infiltrate through, every game will be vulnerable to some exploit if you know where to push, yadda yadda...

That said, I'm definitely not very fond of seeing an attitude from the developer that goes more or less "Yeah, we aren't doing shit about it [even when it would be trivially easy to address a problem or when the problem was created by our own changes to the system in the first place] because USING EXPLOITS IS A FUCKING RIOT AND WE WANT USERS TO DO IT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE".
As a designer you shouldn't puff your chest and take pride on how broken and exploitable your system is. You should work to fix the obvious holes at the best of your capabilities, and then at most watch in amusement when/if your community spot few other ways around the new limitations.

Yeah that's exactly what I had in mind.
It's another mechanic (or "system") that could be really interresting to use IF it was not implemented as another exploit.

Having a few seconds / turns to act during the conversations could really allow us to be creative and to strategize rather than "exploiting" the game and breaking any sense of realism/immersion once again.
And characters with specific skills or high charisma could try to earn a bit more time/turns (performance check) for our companion(s) to do what they want to do.


As Tuco said it looks like there are "some limitations" "some times".
- When your character is stopped by the druid, you enter a conversation with the druids and the tieffelin crowd. You're stuck in the conversation but some characters are not : they can enter. When you go far enough and come back, the conversation trigger for your active character.
If you do the same but after the tieffelin crowd get back, you cannot pass. The dialog always trigger and if you cross through a jump or something, the druids attack.
- When you talk with the kid next to the harpy, I got stuck in dialog with 2 characters. The harpy appeared when I go next to their position with the 2 others. But they never attack the characters stucked in the dialog.
- When The dialog trigger with Arabella and Khaga... 3 characters were stucked in the dialog but the last one could enter and do what he want.

It's really weird and it seems that this kind of system is designed in such a way that it becomes "uncontrollable".

Its exactly as you call it: Exploit ... willing one even, since you cant simply do this "by misstake".
You cant effectively defend against all of them, and honestly ... if someone wish to ruin his game experience by this, i would say its his poor choice and i see no reason to spend both time and resources for trying to figure out how to prevent them from doing so, while keep other possibilities intact (like casting guidance, or other buffs). :-/

Certainly not ...
This whole game is made based on "the world will wait for your decision player" idea ... it should remain intact, either in all cases, or none.

Certainly yes ...
And if you try the same approach in Windmile, one of Worgs will spot you, alert the others, all goblins will attack you and conversation is ended.

This sounds like good example of solving the situation imho.

Certainly yes ...
But that i would say in included in previous quote.

The first second you are seen > attack!!!

Well, in Multiplayer this is something that makes sense since you can't have everyone be frozen just because one person is talking. Also the ability to distract an NPC with conversation while another character sneaks up on them to attack/steal is fair game.

The reason it stays in single player is because if it didn't then multiplayer would have even more obvious advantages than it already does.

As has been pointed out you can still get caught sneaking and anything you do the system can respond to separately.

Not an exploit. Intended feature.

I think that sometimes this exploit "makes sense," like when talking to a merchant to distract them so your rogue can try and pickpocket them.
However sometimes it makes no sense it is less a clever use of mechanics and more a straight up exploit.
The way I'd argue to "fix" this is that it doesn't entirely fix a group. Perhaps it will redirect their vision cones but it will not disable every flag, so like with the gobbos, you can't just move your party while you talk unless your party stealths and does so successfully (vision cones + contested checks) cause in this situation you could consider it the face or talking character distracting the others. However if it is a situation like the gobbos where they are about to be hostile unless convinced otherwise then those party members being spotted not right near the face could cause a combat/interrupt the conversation.

I just tried something else.
When you attack a non hostile NPC, he usually say something like "ok, you want to fight". Then you click "end" and the battle begin.

If you switch on another character before you click "end" with the one engaged in the dialog, you can attack the NPC until he die while he's stuck because you haven't clicked "end".

I agree that it "CAN" make sense in some situation but not without any limitations. I really think that it would be way more interresting with rules rather than a system totally uncontrolled.


Why couldn't everyone spotted enter the dialog or enter turn based mode rather than being able to act like if the world was totally frozen ?

I'm fine with them leaving this alone because 1) distracting someone with dialog is a thing - it does make sense in many situations, and 2) it's easy to not abuse it - I don't feel like I have to lose out on gameplay content. It's one of those things that can be abused to hell if you want to, but do make sense and have good roleplaying value when used in moderation.

Personally fixing it into more controlled mechanics would actually make it more uh rewarding and fun so it'd become less an exploit and more a proper part of the game.

In a city environment that would be a nightmare.

It would be extremely disruptive to game flow - I am having a conversation with someone and a party member walks by and gets pulled into it without a choice? Just, no.

The way its implemented is closer to how actual D&D would play out with each player taking their own actions and making their own choices. In a given D&D session other players are welcome to tell me how they would act - including stealing from an NPC distracted by a conversation.

Imagine saying to a player "well you can't do anything because that player is in a conversation" *blank stares*

I feel like this is another example of the most zealous players "grinding the game to dust" and 'finding' problems that don't exist.

Well, in a DnD session you wouldn't be able to cross a line that your opponent doesn't want you to cross without consequences.
And just read the exemple I gave and you quoted... This wouldn't happen in a DnD session.
And in a DnD session you wouldn't be able to cross the entire map while someone is stuck in dialogs (or in combats).

You can make your arguments but please, stop thinking your point of view is the only valuable one.

I was waiting for you here because I knew you'll bring interresting arguments for MP... But your last sentence is just stupid and out of topic.

This system is far from being perfect. This thread was made to discuss about it and eventually think about solutions.

Pretty much the same with stealthed characters not entering combat. You can exploit the turn based system and move them wherever you please while enemies are frozen in time.

I think it's a stupid system. Sometimes you even forget they are stealthed and skip their actions for a few turns if you don't like to milk these exploits. There's no reason why a stealthed character should ignore the flow of time.

I never feel clever or accomplished when I use these Larian exploits. On the contrary, I feel lame. It's like cheating.

I think the most obvious solution would be to make combat triggers for each potential enemy IF engaged in a dialogue as opposed to standing still. But then you end up with " inconsistent" encounters where you don't know how far you can go as the 2nd player before it starts combat.

Alternatively you could simply include the player trying to move around freely FORCED in the dialogue the same way the 1st player was if he's not sneaking.

You could have a discussion with the goblins ambushing you, the other player tries to move around without sneaking , he gets to close ( maybe based on existing LOS features?) and simply gets a short dialogue " You there, you think I didn't see you? Stop right there or die!. Staff like that.

Not necessarily a mechanic preventing you from moving ( as @maximus mentioned entering turn based mode where effectively...you have to wait for the end of the enemy turn. That turn being his dialogue).
Rather a clear warning " One step more and we kill all of you. "

Listen, fair enough, but I can't think of a solution that wouldn't be worse than the problem you are describing. Sure, its silly that you could hold a convo open while someone travels half the map but it doesn't count as some game-breaking exploit compared to say - instantly putting the entire crew in Turn-based mode, dragging them into an existing conversation etc...

I'd rather the system be forgiving and be allowed to flow even if it means the occasional person can pull off something they wouldn't normally be able to do - than to create a lot of exceptions which would slow the game to a crawl and just irritate everyone.

And this is just going by my experience is multiplayer and what annoys people. The "who put us in turn-based mode?" is one that comes up a lot to the point most of the veteran players have remapped the keybindings to take TBM off the Spacebar.

You have an option to require confirmation from all other players to confirm they want turn based activated