Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback How to make combat more engaging?

I'm a working man 45 years old with a wife and toddler. I don't have the time for more time consuming combat

The BG series is my favourite RPG ever, and I've probably played it through 10 times at least the past 20+ years.
I bought early access as soon as I could, but was quite heart broken after playing through the first couple of fights with the imps. The amount of time that first little fight took and all the misses and micro management had me quit the game. Of course battle is a huge part of the game - and it should be - but there is no way I can find the time or will to play through the game if every tiny little fight will take several minutes. Enabling some kind Combat-AI or auto-attack similar to BGII is a must if you want someone, who is not a hardcore D&D fan or with with loads of free time, to find the time and enjoy the game.
The story, the progress, the character building, the character interaction... That is what made BGII the greatest game. If I need to spend as much time clicking and crawling and targetting in battle, as I do moving around looking for clues, interacting and progressing the story line, then the game has lost it's magic, and I'm quite sure I will never find the will and energy to play it through when it finally launches.

So im not the only one ... phew.

He basically talks about combat immersion and increasing it with adding soundeffects, cinematics etc.

Something like this can be nice but it will not fix the underlying problems with the mechanics in general. And if you do to much of it, it can become very annoying very fast for a lot of people.

Larian is at a point now were they can only adjust small things anyway, so completely revamping the combat system is not in question. But i dont think it is bad thing, Larian did what they know and had success with, which is the most locical thing to do.
A turnbased system like this has certainly drawbacks (like everything else). It takes longer and is basically like solving a puzzle each time and if it feels like you just solve the same puzzle everytime, it gets boring, plus some people just dont like solving puzzles. Especially with TB systems the "solving puzzle" part is very important, because there is no mechanical skill requirement, so the strategy is the main thing.

Another point of the approach larian is taking with their combat system, that can be both a problem and a good thing, is the freedom of choice. If you give someone a lot of choices, its possible that also a lot of them are boring, so if a player dont discover the more exciting ones, hes quickly bored. Same goes with the "cheesy" strategies, if it feels that you can solve everything with just one mechanic its also boring. As far as i know Larian wants cheesy strategies in their game, because they think its also rewarding if you discover them. But i think its more of a problem if you have just plain obvious overpowered abilitys, that work in almost all the combats. At least Larian tries to adress these things, like with nerving high ground a bit.

This is what I fear as well, and for your same reasons.

Hehe. This is exactly what I suggested as well, right at the beginning after it was revealed combat would be TB.

This is second time you guys are talking about surface/underlying problems, what exactly are those.

Turn-based can be damn fun, just play XCOM2. But like I said it takes tons of time what Larian doesnt have, well they have so much other stuff to do. But they could put more money into the characters and make the combat feel better that way.

I figured theres "overpowered" abilities, thats why they gotta use Narrator, player feel the game is easy and simple, guess what Narrator throws a curve ball at you and you are in danger. More Enemies are coming from nearby houses at you for example. Or Giant have heard the battle and runs in. Or group of Bandits finds this is great opportunity to kill both sides. Or Mysterious Healer comes and heals all enemy units.

Good music could help alot too. Ive suggested Larian should use Pianist, its easy to make arps, rhythms, strings, with it. Not that expensive. Is there any game what uses Piano? I dont think so.

I agree that turn based-games are fun but XCOM2 may not be the best example. I started to enjoy XCOM2 more after I altered some of the code to reduce the RNG. The game played more like chess rather than just me watching it play without me.

As others have mentioned, the tedium of combat can make the game feel like a drag.

You want turn based without RNG? Play Mutant Year Zero, it had very little of RNG. Its not that fun in the long run. It worked for that game, partly. RNG needs to be there, I estimate DOS2 had 100ish battles. I think Narrator gotta help the player, if you're very unlucky, miss, miss, miss, miss, and enemy just scores critical hits.

What if there was "Wishes" all DD players know what I mean. You could use Wish from Narrator to change thigns around. "Fuck Im screwed, Im gonna use my Wish now".Or you're standing in front of Vendor and theres the item you want, Im gonna "Wish" more money. Hmm, its kinda Cheat Stuff.

Wish brings so much Memories, we used to play tabletop DD with Wishes, all begged stuff from DM.