Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Panel from Hell soon?

I totally get what you are saying. You should know that in Multiplayer we try to define beforehand what kind of game we are going for, sometimes we are just there to be goofballs and sometimes we go in with clear objectives and roleplay our characters in discord.

I really don't see them being able to do this correctly without having some way to 'define' the game through settings before you start playing. Bg1 AND Bg2 had the same features - where you could define the level of rules you wanted to follow. Believe me, I would choose the Barrelmancy = NO selection on every serious game. I think a "Core Rules" feature is essential - and that means no homebrew nonsense.

You are right about Barcus also, he seems to be defined by his incompetence as an actual adventurer - something he admits to later if you bring him into your camp. His head is so far up his ass he has neglected practical considerations like "what's your gameplan here?". I don't think Larian made a mistake in including him or his Arc - his incompetence is a foil on why it is important to be in an adventuring party with a diverse skillset. I could see him relying only on stealth to get to the Underdark - and as a deep Gnome he may have found another entrance we didn't know about - and then getting caught by Duergar.

Stealth. That's what I'm going with. He maybe sneaks past the ettercaps and phase spiders and somehow climbs down into the Underdark without them somehow detecting him? Invisiblity potion maybe? You know, like Larian loves to have people have in this game - like they are mass produced by Invisiblity Potions R Us and on sale. Buy 1 get 4 free!

I think I'm just starting to wonder why I'm continuing to try out here. When I really think about it, all I've seen changed are a few minor elements. The major items are ignored and most of what I get is people telling me I'm wasting my time.

So, maybe I am. Maybe I should just stop. I hope Larian does do the things I've hoped for most, but the evidence is showing that they probably won't. Day/night? Not likely. Party of 6? Probably not. Actual 5e rules and stats. Hah! Dream on. Consistency in storyline? I'm not confident.

I'm not even expecting all the races and classes at this point. Yeah. My moral for this game is dipping fast. I'm just so tired of the negative responses to every suggestion I give, and more importantly, Larian's lack of communication about our suggestions.

What I want from PFH? "Hey guys. Let's talk about Day/Night. We're going to do it" or "we're not going to do it and here's why."

More like a David Brent.

[quote=Blackheifer][quote=GM4Him]

My bad, I didn't mean it as an insult but I understand it could easily come across as such. I actually greatly appreciate my friends who're "on the spectrum" but I can not deny they share some character traits such as for example becoming super excited and obsessive about something and becoming seemingly unaware of how others live the experience. But anyway, I know "normal" people also have these traits, I admit these are a bit cliché and probably offensive if your on the spectrum and have been facing them for years, so yeah even if it wasn't meant as an insult, it probably would have been better had I chosen other words... apologies

Edit: I just wanted to point out the weird power imbalance and tension that arises from these 'your boss is your best friend, but not' kinda situations, shouldn't have used "autistic" for this...

I didn't read as "it's my boss" tension. Rather, not everyone has experience in giving a presentation on camera live in a professional setting. And then you can end up looking like that on camera. Because that wasn't really a gaming session, even though they have stylized is as one. For Larian that was a sales pitch.

I agree, though I think most of the panel, e.g. as throwing a character from a ledge with a spell, was scripted and planned for. That's why they already had so many saves prepared, since they were playing a dev build, just in case a game-stopping bug happens.

I had my computer crash right when the last patch was released before getting to play it. I haven't re-installed BG3 since even though I was only down for about 3 weeks. Larian has been fairly clear now that they view the D&D rules more as general guidelines/suggestions and insist they can make it more fun. Sven specifically mentioned wanting to bring more "fun" options to fighters in reference to weapon specific attacks. Everything has to be bigger and flashier. While they have made some changes to things based off our feedback, no I don't see them changing that dramatically in their view for what BG3 should be.

I bought the game purely off the BG name immediately when it came out. Never heard of Larian before this. I did buy the game expecting I was going to be modding it to some extent and had read people talk about Larian's other games being mod friendly. I can't say I regret my pre-order and I've already got hundreds of hours of play out of it, but I don't really share Larian's vision for BG3 I guess and as it is I'm going to have to mod the crap outta this game post release. Luckily enough there are modders already hard at work on such things and that is without the official modding toolkit being out.

Just to hammer a point about this whole shtick being just a marketing for game's features:

The term you are looking for is: addiction.

I had it the same with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 ... and believe me or not, my pain was much worse, bcs that game was going through some much more serious shits than BG-3, its also there much longer, even the silence is deeper since on the contrary to BG-3 there isnt even any youtube chanels talking about this game anymore ... and people dont telling me that i shall get the game wich would not contain things i would not like, they tell me that i dont get any game at all. :P
And yet i hope.

Im affraid you got this right ...
But take it positively, now you can only be surprised pleasantly.

Don't worry, it didn't come across as an insult by any means. Blackheifer's just grasping at straws to make people he disagrees with come off in a bad light.

Watching that DOS2 video does provide some clarity into their design decisions.

I think being able to screw your party members over is a completely different game. And it brings the question, is it worth the dev time to develop two different games into one? A story driven party based RPG, and a goofball mess around game where you are hindering other players rather than working together.

How are you going to be able to progress in the story if you're focusing on messing with your companions? Unless also combat is made trivially easy through cheesy exploits, so the goofing around does not make it impossible to continue the storyline. You can always toss a few barrels to solve a problem or just metagame or alpha strike the hell out of encounters.

This is the core of my problem with Larian I guess. They want everything in one game. They can't focus on what's relevant or to make a chosen aspect of the game great. Is combat tactically challenging, or just a meme generator of pushing everyone into lava? Is the tone mature or juvenile? Is it an immersive RPG world, or a casual videogamey romp that constantly reminds you it is "just a game"? Baldur's Gate 3 touches on all of those things, but it's not great at anything except production value. And I wish the direction and vision was a lot tighter.

When you try to be too many things at once, the end result is inevitably a lame experience on all fronts. So far in EA, I'm not enjoying the combat, and I'm not immersed in Faerûn because BG3 feels far too videogamey and inconsequential. Like when someone is incinerated in a sea of lava, they just appear in camp where you buy a cheap rez from a convenient vendor. I was more immersed in Neverwinter Nights 1, which has crude 1st gen 3d graphics and doesn't even have a proper D&D party. And the direct prequels BG1&2 still feel far superior as a D&D experience and as a take on Forgotten Realms. BG3 is just a meme factory of cheesing, exploiting and screwing around in comparison.

Larian needs to save all their goofball energy for DOS3 and take another long hard look at what actually makes BG1&2 and D&D great.

Yeah, that's why D:OS1 is still my favourite of Larian's titles - it was straight up silly nonesense with little to no effort put into a compelling narative or characters. In D:OS2 Larian already tried to fulfill desigers of more narrative focused RPG crowd - for some they succeeeded, for me it was the opposite.

BG3 frustrigly does narrative stuff much better then D:OS2 and I can envision it being a cRPG that I would adore playing. But there is still the "playground" attitude and that and narrative constantly undermine each other, in my opinion.

Funny thing both was possible in BG1 and BG2. You could screw over companions; it was a very popular solution to get rid of one the pair and keep the other one (Jaheira or Khalid, for example), either by killing them or locking them in a building, because the other companion would not care. It worked because BG1 had no reactivity to that.

Same goes for ease of combat. Unless you mod the games, but those difficulty improvements are all thanks to mods, not the developers. BG1 is easy because of fireball arrows and wands, and BG2 because the arcane spellcasting system is ridiculously overpowered.

I love the focus on narrative and characters in BG3! I also love that it is a modern game.

I am excited to hear when the new patch will release and what will be in it! 😊

It's entirely different to develop systems specifically to let players screw over each other in creative ways. BG 1&2 simply allow PvP or attacking your own party members. It's not the same thing at all.

Probably you can cheese in the old games too, but it's not as in your face obvious as in BG3 where the player is being showered with powerful consumables, barrels and environmental exploits.

Speaking of environmental exploits... Why do you always have a 100% chance to hit a rope or a beam from maximum bow range that collapse a platform or a bridge for easy mass destruction? Because Larian chose to ignore D&D rules and promote fun cheese.

Lol, there is nothing "probably" about it. The spellcasting system was already cheesy in BG1 and became even worse in BG2. And instead of fixing the numerous bugs and exploits, once ToB came out the devs just went for it with abilities like improved alacrity. BG2 sorcerers became a joke on how you attain godhood long before the game end, that is how overpowered they were. Pay attention when playing a mage, and it's very noticeable. For example, you can murder your way through Candlekeep in the prologue using the charm spell, because for some hilarious reason Gorion is scripted to only kill your character on the stairs to the keep. Charm him, move him a bit, and your character can start on the quest to become the next lord of murder already.

Same goes for items. BG1 lets the player have so many powerful arcane wands (and every shopkeeper is capable of recharching them) that you can go through the game with a level 1 character with ease. I've never tried BG2, but there was a funny yt playthrough of a playere beating it with a level 1 character thanks to the overpowered items.

AD&D or 2nd edition spellcasters were absurdly powerful at high levels. That has nothing to do with Baldur's Gate 1&2 devs but everything to do with D&D.

It's more relevant to discuss Larian and their design choices and homebrew rules in this game.

+1

Did improved alacrity - which removed the one spell per round limit - exist in 2nd edition pnp, or was it something that the devs made up? What about the way illusion clones worked? Or spell resistance?

A lot of the power of arcane spellcasters comes from deliberate design by BG devs (such as wand recharging), and also from the exploits and bugs they never bothered fixing.

And therefore it is beneficial for the game to break more polished version of DnD for no reason, and implement half-baked homebrew?

Older BG games had a huge number of exploits, most of which are fairly easy to exploit.
Staking exploding skulls to kill a dragon in seconds, or maybe the famous immortality exploit that is even easier to use.
Neither of these exploits was related to 2e