Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why gith patrol is ultra hardcore

Since you're the only person in your session, what isn't fun? You're not abusing the exploitive tactics, so if you're losing fights, you're losing them because your knowledge of party tactics is flawed, and it should be a learning experience for you, right? That's how it works for me, along with crap dice rolls resulting in poor initiative orders or misses when I really needed that hit. Barrelmancy isn't an issue, I don't use it, and with the game difficulty being what it is, I've never seen a need for it. In a finished release, anyone struggling with this would be told to play a lower difficulty. This is standard fare across the board, MMOs, cRPGs, ARPGs, etc. Including games that don't have barrelmancy.

But complaints about destruct-able environments? So trying to force enemy NPCs into a potential bottleneck, by breaking a ladder, is cheese now? Maybe, just maybe, someone puts a ranged character up on a bridge not because "Combat Advantage" per the rules, but "Combat Advantage" because it takes longer for the target to actually get to them, and maybe they'll be dead before they do? In every other game I've played, this is called thinking tactically, here, it's cheese? To be clear, I'd be putting that archer there to take advantage of their strength, ranged combat, and to cover their weakness, less defense than that heavily armored fighter, with more HP, which is also a defensive resource.

You see, the problem I'm seeing with the claim that you don't care what someone else is doing falls a bit flat, when I know that combat encounters can be won w/out using the cheese, but you continually go on and on about it. If someone tried to do this cheese in a MP session I'm in, if I can't kick them, I'd drop. I wouldn't be coming to the forums afterwards to complain. I may, however, attempt to completely avoid ever running into it by hitting up some of the people that I've gamed with for years, across various platforms, to see who's playing, and if they have any interest in MP, and forming a party. That way, I know who I'm grouping with, and what to expect. I do the same thing in MMOs, choosing to group with my guild/legion/clan, whatever designation applies. I am not, however, concerned with what another player is doing in their SP sessions. It has no bearing on how I play, despite "but combat is balanced for cheese". I've beaten enough encounters in game w/out it to know that it can be done, and don't see the circumstances that someone using this argument sees.

I see digital cRPG as constant interaction between the player and digital DM - so how campaign is structured, what it allows for, what it encourages and rewards is, I think, rather important part of the experience. As to make clear what my issues are when it comes to combat:

I never had a massive problem with barrelmancy - because, like you said, for the most part it is a mechanic I can just not abuse. My two current main issues with combat system are:
1) Push
2) surfaces

The problem I have is that I can't quite opt out of those. Like highground before, I find push in many combat encounters to be single most deciding factor in how combat will procede. The only way I can "ignore it" is by adjusting my tactics specifically to avoid it (like avoiding going anywhere near drops - and with how riddiculus push range is, I mean ANYWERE near. At least, it seems Larian redesigned combat encounter right before Grimforge - the pushfest that was happening there was a joke. Hilarious, but not... good.

Surfaces on the other hand, make it really difficult to engage with the systems that I am at least used to thinking of as core part of DnD - spells. With surfaces doing guaranteed damage, and things like throws having what seems like practically unlimited range keeping any buff/debuff for even one turn seems like an impossible task - those are systems for which concentration wasn't designed for.

So not only those are mechanics that I don't think are very interesting or rewarding to use, but they actively interfier with other combat mechanics overpowering them. Even if they weren't use against me, I still believe their current implimentation is bad to the overall gameplay - if game tasks you with problems to figure out, and the best answer is always option A, then I think it is just uninteresting, even if I can solve the problem in more complex way and satisfying way. At this point I, as a player, have to create a challenge for myself (and by challenge I don't mean difficulty - just odds to overcome) meaning that game itself doesn't provide much to offer. It's a bit "If you don't like game's story, you can write your own". Yes I can (or rather: I probably can't - I am not a writer/game designer. I know I like a good coffee, but in spite of how hard I try, I can't seem to replicate it at home. Still if I go to a specialty coffee place and pay £3+ for a cup I do expect them to do a half-decent job.)

After those two, would be stealth and stealing - and while I can not use those, and I don't, lack of balanced implementation that would play nice with other systems cut into replaybility of the game. Stealthy characters, luckily aren't my "go-to" but if I want to replay the game as thief, using those mechanics too greatly imbalance the experience. Perhaps, I am extra salty about this one, as the first character I created in BG3 was a thief - only to find that stealthy/stealy play isn't enjoyable.

After spending some time in online forums I realised that people look for quite different things in games. My tastes seems to allign quite closely with Josh Sawyer, so I will just add link to his argument for a need of reasonable balance in a single player cRPG.

As to argument that asking for better balanced experience would ruin game for everyone else - did nerf to highground and backstab break the experience for anyone?

EDIT:
Forgot about that. That would be ideal situation - for push, positioning, use of enviroment to be tactical considerations. Best examples I can give are changes Larian already did - prior to patch6 I did consider high ground to be "cheese". It pretty much made "chances to hit" irrelevant, was more powerful then defencive spells I could cast, was easy to obtain, and enemies were wired to abuse it (as they are with push) - to have high ground was simply the thing to do to win any encounter. Now it's a tactical consideration - it's benefits and can be comboed and countered with other systems.

The reason I am perceiving as breaking the ladder as "cheese" is because AI is not capable of responding to it properly. But, like with barrels, it is just something I can ignore, but it does take away from a fun of the "challenge" - I much prefer game where I can use all tools on my disposal and trust that the game won't freak out - at least not as easily as BG3 does. Perhaps that's the cost of ambition, and would enforce my preference was smaller focused titles. It's a bit like using AoE spells, like stinking clouds in BG1&2 to kill dragons without triggering combat. It breaks believability of the situation, and therefore found it a bit lame to discover. But again - not a big problem IMO compared to things I have mentioned - it just feels sloppy. If narrative goal of making this challenge harder then other content was to underlie how dangerous the Gith are, than that kind of stuff detracts from it. Just like DS1 bosses loose their mystique once you discover they don't know how to deal with hugs. What confuses me is that those kind of things are usually a result of devs oversights - not expecting players to play the way they do. Larian seems proud of those, and I just don't connect with that. To me it's like a musician being proud of playing out of tune.

Maybe it's not quite the topic, but I still remember the discussions at the premiere of PoE where people mentioned that the game is too focused on the balance which makes it bland (mainly casters).

Haha, I expected that to be the first comment once I cited Josh, but I still think his argument is completely logical, even if one can argue how far the balance should go, or rather what can and cannot be sacrificed for the sake of balance. While I don't quite agree with that assesment of PoEs, I think perhaps they sacrificed a bit too much flavour for the sake of bringing spellcasters/mellee a bit closer together. I think Larian might be trying to achieve something similar albeit by going the other way - giving physical classes access incredibly powerful, reality defying "spells".

I will stand with him, however, by the notion that balance DOES matter. And I think BG3 can become a better title, by tightning the design a bit, without loosing flavour that it provides. I don't expect, nor want Larian to go all "Sawyer" on us.

EDIT: If PoE nerfs decreesed a fantasy of playing a fireball casting archmage, doesn't BG3 issues do the same? Does riddiculus push AI/player abuse really play into a fantasy of melee fight? Don't surfaces detract from a fantasy of playing is/fighting a mage if anyone can prevent them from maintaining spells by lobbing molotovs over incredible distances? Doesn't freezetime stealth break a fantasy of sneaking and hiding from enemies?

Got to be honest, I don't even bother with that encounter any more in these play tests. It just is not fun to do. The last time I did do it was back in Patch 3.

Now you see why I look at some of this stuff and go "WHAT???". I've played games where tactics and strategy mattered just as much as other combat considerations. I may not have the 5e rules in mind, in fact, I don't, since I never played 5e, I quit in 4, when I plan out a combat encounter, I may just be thinking of how to best use the classes I have in the party. That an enemy NPC doesn't, or can't, use the same tactic, destroying a ladder, doesn't enter into the equation. It's up to the game to best use the party it has arrayed against me, it's up to me to counter that, however I can. When I use Push to push an NPC off a ledge, we're really close to the edge. What would be more immersion breaking for me would be the previously suggested 5 limit to Push. So if we're 1 from the edge, and I push them, they go 5, and then what, do a Wile E Coyote style fall, where they hang in the air for a second and maybe hold up a sign that says "Bye"? The laws of physics apply. A pushed NPC is going to go both "forward" and "down", in an arc that's not going to end until they hit something that doesn't move, usually the ground. If it's a wall, they're going to hit it, and land at the bottom of it. Some characters will get a better result than others.

If I'm using a spell to create a surface, or, if there's a surface causing barrel already there, there's no cheese involved. It's either creating the surface myself, or using what's already there in the environment to do it. It's not like it can't be done in a TT session.



Merilwin's Meat Grinder, it's at 25:59.

The laws of physics that apply means that you're not going to be able to push people with enough force to achieve the momentum to keep them going forward to land much further than 5-10ish feet away from the ledge. It's the difference between these falls:

Yes, and I would love to see that happens in BG3, and it's up to Larian to balance the game so the challenge and tools at my disposal lead to interesting and rewarding gameplay. And for that to happen the game needs better balance.

I've seen the gith encounter solo'd so it can't be That hard. I've never tried it.

Every time I encounter that quest, it's very hard to beat them. I often wonder of maybe the Gith Patrol is meant to be a later when you and your companion have leveled up. The problem is we only have level 4 available and we don't get enough gear to loot that is better than what we have. For example, in Dragon Age: Inquisition I learned early that it's impossible to kill dragons unless you are at least level 20. In Baldur's Gate, it might be the same where some regions are meant to be a higher level, they just don't tell you. It seems that in EA everything is at you current level but it doesn't feel like it. There are moments where enemies seem to be more advanced that you and your party and are harder to beat.

This fight is going to be difficult so that players cannot get into the SCL too soon.
This is a fairly common play in open world games with no level scaling.
In a full game, you should probably clear most of underdark before killing the patrol.

You can kill the dragons at 15. There's at least one lower level one. I've done it. You also need the right party comp for it.

But I do agree, I had a hard time with the gith patrol unless I resorted to barrelmancy so I'm just one of those "I'll come back to it when higher level" people.

If level gating were the intention that would make sense, however, I am pretty sure other map exits aren't that hard to get to.

It also might work better if they actually be on higher level - their artificial power padding just feels odd.

That said, act1 I think is supposed to be lvl4-5 content, so I don't expect to be higher then that once we play 1.0. We will see as the game develops.

I have watched Stream where Wolfheart killed Githyanki patrol at level 3 ... it was not easy nor short fight tho ... but he managed it and that should count. :P

Also i believe (or want to believe, strike out what does not apply) that Githyanki were put there on their power level to try us ...
I mean Larian need to figure some range between combats, to see how hard enemies we are still able to kill, and where people starts to fail ... cant help the feelint that they were lot harder in the past. :-/

Sin tee on YouTube does solo runs. Collects buffs and there's minimal barrelmancy, just a lot of clever tricks.

He's done it on a number of classes now too, latest was sorcerer.

Surprisingly enough, my results have varied on that chart, but mainly come somewhere in the middle. However, take both lines out 5, and then stop. That's what's being asked for with a hard limit. The closer one is to an edge, the further out the target is going to go before gravity interacts with momentum sufficiently to make the drop seem more straight down.

The only time I'd seen npcs launched way out there on a shove, was with high str. Maybe that's what they were aiming for?

This fight is not balanced. The gith are all a complete level 5. They have on average double the PC's group hit points, at least 2 attacks per turn (some have 3), and other very over powered attacks. They can take the main group down in just a few hits and always have initiative. The only way I make it through this encounter is to tell Lae'Zel to be quiet and have a very high persuasion character talk to them. I remember when the game first came out this battle was challenging but not impossible. Now, it us impossible. I keep trying but it is the most frustrating and unfun encounter. I usually end up just giving up and deciding "screw the creche. Lae'Zel can just deal with it". I hope that as new updates happen, and we're able to level up. I'm suck if the just below level 5 cap

It's almost like they want us to murder the Githyanki Patrol with a surprise attack from the platform using cheesy exploits without triggering the dialogue cutscene at all. Even the Dragon and the kithrak conveniently flee when you attack.

Why is there a dialogue cutscene then in the first place if you are encouraged to ignore it? Isn't the dragon there so you wouldn't attack them without triggering the scene?

They are also the last fight on the map before you find a way out that way. So, out of Early Access, I'd expect the fight to be more "even". In so far as "balanced", what party are you running? What party is Joe Casual running? What party am I running? My party has, twice now, done this encounter with no combat at all, so if it were possible to do so, I could have just hit the area transition to the next phase. No "cheese" required.