Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Reactions like Solasta!

In defence of Larian, maybe they're not aiming for internal consistency ?

I mean, some writers made time a big pressure in the story, while some other devs programmed the camp cutscenes so that you need to rest frequently if you want to see them all. Some PR folks made a big thing out of verticality, but the devs still program mostly for a 2D game world. The speed of the enemy AI hasn't dramatically improved, but Patch 4 made the fight against the Druids during the Minthara's Attack involve even more numerous (and tankier) enemies. I can no longer list the Jump/Disengage action that would expose you to Opportunity Attacks, but I could easily go on. Point is, perhaps it's unfair to criticise them for lack of internal consistency if that is not what they're shooting for.

What? I mean, sure maybe Larian isn't aiming for consistency. But that doesn't mean it's unfair to criticize them for that or that lack of consistency is good.

This is bad game design [...]

I was being sarcastic.

In part, I was saying that given BG3's rather poor track record with internal consistency so far, we shouldn't be too surprised if a given mechanics (Opportunity Attack) has different names in different places.

In part, I've long been of the opinion that our goal when providing feedback should not be so much to tell the devs "I think you should aim for this rather than that, because I like my games better when they do this". Rather, it should be tell the devs "your vision, what you're trying to achieve is that, well, the way you're currently doing it fails at delivering that because reasons". At least that how I'd like my feedback to be.

With that in mind, I was thinking that it was maybe pointless to tell Larian "hey, your game isn't even consistent with itself", if this would lead Larian to reply (virtually, in their heads, since they don't reply to anything) "oh but internal consistency isn't remotely part of our vision. We simply don't care about consistency".

Unfortunately, the specifically said they don't want to grow much bigger. Founder of the company already founded one successful studio that grew too big for him to actively work on games. TA very purpose was to be small enough to avoid that

I never participated in EA, so I never had a bad taste in my mouth (the growing pains).

I imagine that they went through their share of negative feedback on their road to completion.

I did, although I was pretty late to the party - I discovered and bought the game maybe 2-3 months before the release. The "taste" wasn't bad at all; of course there were some issues, but devs were pretty quick to address them. Also, their presence on their own forum was considerably larger than that of Larian's - despite the fact that their own preference was (and I believe, still is) Discord.

It was not like this. It was not the vacuum we're experiencing here.

But then, the fan base was much smaller. 18,000 BG3 posts at one point compared to 2-3,000 Solasta. Not quite the same. People weren't flooding Solasta with gazillions of posts hourly.

Sure, BG3 has a lot more EA players and feedback. But Larian has a many more employees (and indirect-employees, and possibly volunteers).

And while processing the textual feedback, i.e. the players-to-Larian communication, takes more time when there's more feedback, giving updates on what's being worked on and what will not change, i.e. the Larian-to-players communication, does not.

Larian's policy of no-communication with players/the forums is a choice, not a technical limitation.

I support this too

-1

I much prefer a more cinematic flow to combat and pop-ups that freeze combat is unimmersive and therefore eeevil. Yes, even in a turn-based game. I imagine something like a slow-motion effect when reactions are applicable affording the player a short time window to decide whether to react - similar to the renegade/paragon reaction check (but in slow-mo) of Mass Effect would make for much better gameplay.

EDIT: The current rigid pre-set system is unacceptable though. If Larian decides to go with this lazy implementation, they should compensate the character with more reactions/reaction resources as you can't decide to use as situations occur and therefore likely to waste many reactions stupidly.

I don't think its elegant, but you have near total control - and I'm prepared to pay that price. I have just finished another run through of Solasta, so speaking from recent experience too. I don't want assumptions made on my behalf by some gaming system. That sacrifices my agency. Sure, some people won't want that. Give them the ability to set up some sort of defaults. I want *full* control.

The final boss in particular (that I have to admit I liked in principle, despise not being exactly the most standard "D&D-like experience" out there) highlights how terrible the current reaction system can be, not to mention it makes the absence of ready actions more annoying than ever.
Before finally dispatching said boss for good I experienced several cases where an autoattack/reaction triggered when I was trying to lure the golem in a specific direction, usually with consequent outcomes that forced me to a reload.

It's also worth noting that one downside of "new shiny UI" introduced in Patch 7 is that it makes circling between ALL your characters, selecting the "Passive" submenu and disabling their Attacks of Opportunity even more cumbersome than before.
And it's not even a "one and done" thing, since there are moments during the same battle where you DO want to take these juicy AoO, while in others you definitely don't, so it's a constant "cycling and switching toggles" that becomes annoying fairly quickly and makes me chuckle a bit when I think about the people (a minority, admittedly) that in the past months said "they would hate a Solasta-like reaction system with quick case-by-case confirmations because it would slow down the combat".