This was a fun read, and I definitely agree with you. Especially regarding counterspell.
It makes me a little sad, because I was thinking earlier tonight about all the various ways that a cool Wizard's tutorial might be presented, and of course that's a feature that wouldn't get touched on with the current scheme in place. I also can't help but feel that this is one area where Larian's bias towards Action MP and against anything resembling a "Pause" function is kinda working to the detriment of the game overall. I think probably what they need here is something a bit more like the Red Dead quickdraw feature, but done up D&D style. You know where the game naturally expands time and freezes the animations. To say, allow the Wizard to make some sequential decisions and commands in response, but then compresses time again for the final action animation, once the inputs are confirmed. Just to clarify I don't mean that the game should be Real-Time with Pause, but rather Turn-Based with Pause. The "with pause" part being the critical element that's still missing in my view to make things like reactions actually feel reactive, instead of like preset. I often encounter these weird situations where the turn based BG3 game nevertheless starts to feel like it has definite real-time consequences. Despite eschewing the concept of Time generally, I am still fighting against the game-clock in ways I shouldn't be, since I can't hit spacebar to freeze what's happening lol.
That's a different general point I suppose, but I think its related, because the game doesn't really have a way to delineate time from the player's POV. Either you're in Combat on your own turn in which case the gametime is frozen, or you're not on your own turn, or perhaps not in combat at all, or anymore, in which case the gametime is then ticking and totally outside of your control. People have tended to complain about it more in the very obvious instances, like "why the fuck am I now burning to death on the floor, when 2 seconds ago I was in combat, and gametime was completely frozen?" or "how come player A is in turn based combat, while player B is still running around doing whatever they want like the Flash?" but it really permeates the whole game in subtle ways. The primary justification would seem to be, "because Co-Op multiplayer flow" but that doesn't really hold up for me. I don't think I'll ever play this game in Co-Op, it's just not something I need from a BG game, but even there, yeah if I was a Wizard and my buddy was a Warlock sitting on the same couch... I can easily imagine that discussion, like who's going to react? And to me that would elevate the experience and make it feel engaging, rather than slow. Even if technically it was a bit slower. It wouldn't feel as slow and passive boring, which is the point. I don't really see how Reactions would slow things down anymore than the regular turn taking process already necessitates a slow burn, but it would certainly make those turn cycles feel more dynamic and less like watching the autothon.
Honestly I think the main problem is that, on the one hand they want their game to present like a dazzling ensemble cinematic performance that we watch in real time (because that's how such sequences work in cinema) but on the other they're using a game system that was designed to abstract all that into a sequential narrative where everything happens 1 by 1 by 1. They cut their teeth on a turn based action game, but one that didn't have to pay this kind of obeisance to how things work in D&D. So the goal of making stuff look cool there, didn't really have to butt up against something like Reactions in D&D.
Other turn based games, or games based on older TB systems, often feature something kind of similar as a way to maintain engagement or input from other players even when it's not "their turn." The tradeoff is usually that the rules then become increasingly complex as the game moves from a strictly Rotating Turns conception into more Same-Time or Simultaneous-Turns territory. To use a simple example from a totally different turn based game, Scrambling Aircraft in Axis and Allies Global works in a similar sort of way. It's your choice as the defender, but a reaction to the attacker's move that takes place on the attacker's turn rather than your own. So it blurs the turns distinction a bit. Scrambling works very well on the table top, because all the players are sitting next to each other and it's a quick response question, but if you're playing by email say, it means grinding the game to a halt and waiting for a reply "Do you want to scramble in sea zone X?" The workaround would be to telegraph your moves in advance, e.g. a preset response, but that's not exactly a great solution either because it signals your intentions to the enemy. D&D is more cooperative, whereas Axis and Allies is principally competitive. In D&D our opponent is not the other player characters, but the DM or the game itself. Still it seemed kinda similar to me, like you don't want to be all announcing to the DM in advance "if you do X, then I'll do Y, so maybe don't X please?" lol. Or like if they tried to make G40 without scrambling, just so it would work better for multiplayer online reasons, the entire game would change into something rather different. The bid would go to hell, and probably everyone would cry foul that it's not "real" Axis and Allies G40 anymore. Same deal here with Reactions, just the D&D version. I imagine a year ago, some people might have just said, 'well it's not really possible to do Reactions properly in a computer game' so we just have to take whatever as given, but then Solasta showed a way it might be done, so now that's sort of the yardstick to go by.
Anyhow, here is a link to the mega-thread
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=749449#Post749449You may find it encouraging to read, or depressing in equal measure lol. Since it's like 14 pages long and started way back in Jan of 2021, but we still don't really have a clue as to how they're going to tackle this stuff. I don't expect to see it in patch 6, otherwise they'd probably be repin' it pretty hard right now. But one can still hope for the best I guess. Like that we haven't learned anything new about it, because their ultimate solution is a masterwork and way better than Solasta's, cause they're just going to copy that and make it look way cooler hehe. Fingers crossed!
Also, just cause there was a lot of confusion in the other thread initially, and this one will likely be merged with it if it continues to get replies...
The important thing about Reactions is that they generally occur on someone else's turn, not your own turn. So any idea that we'd have Reactions requiring us to prognosticate or do presets in advance or set up contingencies and the like, is not really a viable execution of the concept. I bring this up because I think a good solution for how to adapt what Solasta did into BG3, but without necessarily hitting us over the head with it, was offered on page 2 of that thread by LukasPrism:
The best solution to appease everyone would be to leave the reactions icons where they are but give them three states (off, manual and automatic). Off and automatic work how they do now, manual means there is a three second popup on the screen to allow you to make a reaction. If you’re not paying attention, too bad – it is a reaction after all.
I don't know about the 3 second thing, which seems a bit brief, but the main idea to have a default Reactions toggle with "Off, Manual, and Automatic" I think is solid. Where the middle option is something more like what we'd want (Me or the OP, et al), but the other options are there to accommodate people who basically don't want Reactions or pop up prompts, and are content with this stuff being automated or nixed out of existence during their gameplay. Other similar suggestions include some sort of time-pause window during which a reaction can be made, similar to what you're describing at the top. Saito put up a video on page 13 that kind of shows how it works in the other game, with the ready actions as well...
Starts cracking after about a minute, when the Game of Thrones knock-off music first kicks in hehe. Sorry the BG3 forums won't dislay it full screen without really taking up the full screen, so to see what's going on you need to open youtube in another tab probably. I bought the game a while ago, but really haven't played it much to be honest and haven't checked back recently. Still, many people seemed pretty pleased with how these things were working there at the time, the lack of BG3 production values notwithstanding hehe. I've heard a lot less about Solasta here, ever since Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous dropped, which seems to be drawing more of the BG3 comparisons lately. Not as useful to this convo though, since Pathfinder 1e is based on D&D's 3.5 ruleset and not the 4e/5e stuff that made Reactions what they are now in D&D. That's like a Pathfinder 2e thing I guess, which has yet to receive a computer translation. Maybe while everyone is distracted by Pathfinder WotR though, now would be a good time for Larian to start stealthily swooping the goods from Solasta and crib a few of TA's better ideas?
