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

Thief's traps (especially Spiked) were the barrel exploits of BG2.

They basically broke the system as enemies had no defenses against them (bypassed ACs, saves, any spells, etc). It required no resource (just need to rest), and just like barrels and explosives, you can even do it right in front of the enemies and they'll do nothing to stop you if not aggro'ed. Demogorgon? Traps. Firkraag? Traps. Final Irenicus fights? Traps.

It's actually uncanny how similar some of the exploits are. I.e. you can exploit dialogue in BG3/DOS by having 1 character lock the enemy in dialogue while you position the team advantageously ahead of a fight. In BG2, you can exploit exploit the dialogue by repeatedly "pausing and talking" to keep your target neutral while you stab it repeatedly.

BG2 is absolutely loaded with broken exploits and implementations (i.e. simulacrums cloning items, infinite damage via reflecting Lightning Bolts or Agannazar's Scorcher, staff of the magi's equip-invisibility). Because the "game world" had no object interactivity, there's no physics engine, etc, most exploits are at least attached to a "class or item ability", so that's why people find it easier to stomach?

Maybe Larian is just using the same approach as Bioware? All these bugs and exploits didn't stop BG1&2 from becoming very popular, even though the devs never bothered to address them. And now the games are quoted as a positive example, so it shows perception changes with time.

That, and the illusion clones copying thief traps and ignoring the trap limits. And the time stop traps...

Yeah, I think maybe it's because I've played so many mages in the original games, but to me a lot of similarities are there between BG1/2 and 3. Although I'd say the ping-pong lightning bolt was an example of an environmental interaction in BG1 (since you needed something to bounce it off 😁), overpowered as it was.

The reason people find it easier to stomach is that they are products of their times, and standards and expectations have changed in the twenty years since their release.

It's frustrating to me that 20 year old games are being used to argue why Larian's bad design or implementation is "ok" in BG3.

First of all, why? Is there a large part of the player base who actually enjoy exploiting or cheating in a game? Does it create a sense of accomplishment? Why should we have exploits that ignore the rules of the game?

Secondly, there's a difference between intentionally and unintentionally allowing exploits. Larian have a tendency towards intentional exploitation. They leave exploits in when they could fix them. Clearly someone over there likes to win by cheating a little.

Example. The Ogre encounter in BG3. You can place your party on the roof and just whittle them down with ranged weapons. They either stand still and do nothing or throw stuff at the ceiling without a line of sight and can never hit you. In PnP a DM would have the Ogres smash the walls to bring the whole building down and make the party roll Acrobatics checks or fall down as it shakes. Larian insisted on having a HUGE emphasis on verticality. But now that verticality is undermining the game itself by making it trivially easy. I didn't feel accomplished killing them that way. I felt like BG3 sucked. And before the inevitable "if you don't like it don't use it" argument, don't. I will use it, and the game will suck. If Larian insist on having such verticality but can't do what the PnP DM would do, they have failed and their game sucks.

No idea why you think the BG devs were not aware and somehow were allowing the bugs and exploits unintentionally. Players were reporting those on the forums. The devs simply didn't bother for the most part, instead they focused on things like the bonus merchants with even more overpowered items. And you've demonstrated yourself why such a design strategy works, because most players don't even remember them after playing the game. Just like most players didn't care that their level one character survived that kobold arrow in BG1 because of an in-built cheat.

In my experience, this encounter counts as an example of good game design. In my first playthrough the loud ogres were noticed and so were the holes in the roof. Thinking themselves smart, the brave adventurers in my party snuck upon the roof and circled the hole before launching an attack. It did not end well. Some party members fell down when parts of the roof collapsed, others were caught in area effects on the roof. It became a very challenging fight. Of course, in the next playthrough the adventurers were better prepared and better positioned.

I guess the point is: there is not much that game developers can do against a form of cheating that is widely available to everyone: foreknowledge.

Yeah to an extent I agree. I prefer to bribe them and send them against the gith patrol :), that way I can *feel* like I am not exploiting the game. They make good cannon fodder tanks.

Game devs can a) not make encounters that have such glaring game breaking exploits or b) develop ways to deal with the exploits e.g. make the entire building destructible. These are giants you're fighting. Or c) make the AI smarter than just stand there and do nothing when you're getting killed.

This encounter is in no way well designed. The Ogres even get stuck in the area if you fight them fairly head on. It's baffling devs get defended so much for poor design.

Game devs can also design encounters in a way that metagaming isn't as prevalent or powerful. But Larian seem to think metagaming the hell out of encounters is fun. Maybe for some, but role playing it is not.

To start with I don't like that any criticism leveled at BG3 is being countered "but in 20 years old games". Whatever those games did, it doesn't bypass issues that current game is encountering.

And there is always the issue of old games being old, and being able to get away with more. I will praise (and still prefer to play) OG UFO: Enemy Unknown (also known as XCOM: UFO Defence) over Firaxis XCOM reboot. But in no way I would tolerate UFO's bad UI, horrible mid-late game balancing, and many awkward spikes in difficulty in a modern title. Gaming is just a bit more mature and professional then it was 20 years ago.


I don't know if it means anything, but even though I played through BG1&2 many times most of those are new to me. On the other hand I can have a playthrough of BG3 without encountering a broken feature. Bg3s issue isn't that some spell combination or character builds are OP - it's that basic systems, like stealth or action economy, just don't work well.


And things that I was aware of in BG2 (enemy AI being dumb and dragons not reacting to hostile AoE attacks, or traps being OP) arent things that made BG1&2 good. Those are enjoyable games in spite of their issues. A bit like Deus Ex's shooting and stealth are really not very good, but game is still a classic due to other factors.

I think it is also a mistake to ignore a different focus of a BG3 - as a game it is drawing far more attention to it's mechanics and sacrifices a lot of "immersions", quality of storytelling and world building for the sake of gameplay. It's gameplay not really being good is a bigger problem, then in BG1&2 where world and story were at the forefront. Like yeah, KOTOR's combat is garbage, but it's means to an end, rather then the main feature of the game.

Mostly for lack of answers to question: "Why not?".

Since they all are optional and there is litteraly nothing stoping you plaing as rulehardcore as you wish ... everyone can be happy. :P

Dunno ...
What we can claim with almost certainity is that part of the player base wo do use exploiting and cheating ... "exists" ...
Larian knows how many, they have data on that one.

If they are enjoying it, or not that is impossible to tell unless you ask every single one of them.

Nah, it creates fun ...
I know its different value, but also important.

Same as in first question ... why not?

I think calling it intentional exploit is a little harsh ...
They are intentionaly "unremoved", that much is true ... but personaly i find it quite unprobable that Devs in Larian are spending their time with implementing rules, just so next day in the work they can spend simmilar amount of time to allow players to bypass the rules.

It seems more likely that they just implemented two separate rules and didnt think about how will they work when colide ...

Just as Skyrim ...
First rule works perfectly, Vendors have their line of sight, and take objects that you can use for hiding in concideration.
Second rule works perfectly, objects are removable and you can carry them around.
Sadly ... those rules can be combined together to block vendor's line of sight by a bucket ... nobody thinked about that, during development, but it was so famous (and fun ... at least at begining ... it kinda loose its shine when you do that 100.000.000 times ) Exploit, so nobody every fixed that either. :P

Larian position is the same ...
They implement rules, but taken together they are exploitable ...
+ They have numbers of players who are using this exploit ...

Now they are standing before difficiult decision ...
They can either expect all those (maybe dozens, maybe ten thousads) players to actualy hate exploits ... even tho they are using it for some unknown reason, with maximal possible self denial ... and then they can fix it, and bring them better fun.
Or they can expect all those (same numbers here, i really dont know) players to act like reasonable persons, wich would mean that they do exploits bcs they actualy want to do exploits ... that would mean that all those people like outsmarting developers in their own game, and find potential uses of rules that Developers never thought about ... and then they can again fix it, and ruin them all their fun.

Personaly im from both groups ... sometimes that, sometimes this ...

When i want serious game ...
I simply play serious game and when some Exploit, or Bug happens to me i simply ignore that option and continue in my serious game (last time Astarion was unable to join the fight even if i get directly to Minthara and slap her face ... so i rolled my own dice, and decided wich character will Astarion take turns with ... and played as if that never happened)
Why you asked? Bcs that is what i want ... therefore that is what i do. It feels odd that i have to tell you this.

Then there are days when i want just mess around ...
And that is the day im messing around. Taking stuff from vendors without payment, locking NPC in conversations while i kill their friends in front of them, buging infinite amount of gold to buy every single Magical Item in game, so i can play with them ... i have done it all, and it was fun when i did that.
Bcs i wanted to. :P

Maybe you should try that sometimes.

As far as i know there is part of the roof that can be destroyed ... and ogres do that if at least one of your characters stay on that part ...
Of course you can purposely avoid that by runing back and forth for every single attack ... but that is once again not fault of engine, but you Exploiting the game.

Well in PnP a DM have the luxury that nothing is just texture that cant be interacted with ... wich kinda limits options of CRPG DM ...

What Ogres COULD do in this environment tho would be runing away from your reach ... hiding behind the wall, or deeper in the building.
Question is ... where is fun with two parties skiping every turn, bcs none of them is willing to left position that gives them tactical advantage?

Well ... this complain is true, at least so far ...
This game indeed dont have verticality, Z axis is practicaly missing, and game isnt able to even count with it ... at least so far, i still hope it will change in the future.

I think its safe that saying that "this game will have huge focus on verticality" sounds better in marketing than "we will not use flat maps".

Feel free to corect my english ...
But the word "inevitable" in my language translates as something that will come no matter how much you try to avoid it ... so, even tho you tryed to avoid it ... here it is, as you wanted:

"if you don't like it don't use it" :P :P :P

Well ... we applaud your dedication ... you just willingly and purposely ruined your own single player game ... nobody cares ... hope you happy about yourself.

We shall not use it, and the game will be awesome.


(I dunno what to do here ... that image was lot smaller when i uploaded it)

Or their goals was simply not the same as you wanted.

Yes, and I hate to resort to any form of generational finger-pointing but my experience as a Raid Leader in Vanilla WoW in 2004-2006 and Classic WoW 2019- 2021 could not have been more different. *Generally* modern gamers do not have the focus, the discipline or the integrity of older gamers.

Luckily Classic WoW was HEAVILY nerfed, had far less bugs, and we had much better connection speeds so all encounters were made much easier. Boss abilities in Classic were tuned down or removed from Ragnaros to Kel Thuzad. It was made stupidly easy, and still people would prefer to cheat if it saved 2 minutes.

Heigan the Unclean had an exploit that allowed you to stand on the platform and attack him and avoid the Heigan Dance (which even with Modern connections and Systems we had half the people in the raid unable to do it no matter how easy I tried to make it for them) - until Blizzo fixed it a month later.

I could not even imagine having Modern gamers spending 6 hours learning a single encounter like we did in ye olden days, they would all ragequit.

* There ARE exceptions, I have met younger gamers who play games with a serious level of integrity and they know why that is so important.

I don't agree that modern RPGs have a different standard - I feel like exploits are inherent in any games with complex systems and a high number of interactions. And we see that with tons of modern RPGs. Whether it be abilities and spells, environment objects/actions, as long as there are sufficient options, people will find a way to combine and exploit it.

The question is more so whether the developers aggressively patch them out when discovered, or simply embrace them. And honestly, for single player RPGs, I've seen the developers lean way more into embracing the cheese instead of removing it. For example, if we look at a couple of DOS2/BG3's contemporaries (some of my favorite games):

Pillars of Eternity 2:
I think this series gets a bad rep for being "too balanced", when tons of broken exploits exist. Stealth + Auto-heal out of combat means you can cheese almost any encounter by witling down enemy forces 1 by 1 while resetting. You can achieve immortality and unlimited resources through the basic Wall of Draining/Salvation of Time + Brilliant Inspiration loops. The entire game is designed around no pre-buffing, but you can also easily work around that with the Magran belt + Rakhan Field boots - allowing you to solo Megabosses in seconds (normally a 10-30 minute endeavor). Instead of patching these things out though, Obsidian actually embraced it and turned it into a max-difficulty solo-run contest (The Ultimate), which I thought was brilliant and a great celebration of the game.

Pathfinder KM/WoTR:
These games are both loaded with exploits, but they work because of Owlcat's philosophy to basically embrace OPness in all aspects of the game. The Mythic paths introduced in WoTR double downs on this in terms of brokenness. Enemies are simply overtuned to match up against spells and class abilities implemented without PnP limits - i.e. tons of "illegal" stacking (smites, natural attacks, haste + speed, magical vestiment, etc), or AOE effects stacking and infinity damage with Cave Fangs. But none of that feels too egregious because a normal Kineticist with Deadly Earth is just as broken. The current option to switch between RTWP and Turnbase mid-fight is completely broken and cheesable too (you can use it to basically deny the enemy all their turns). However, it's clear that Owlcat would prefer to give players freedom and allow for exploits, rather than restricting that for the sake of "balance".

I think this is my main worry about the way this is going in terms of unhinged narrative and unwillingness to invest in 'immersion' (D/N, NPC routines, distance being wrong, plotholes, tadpoleus ex machina plot, etc) and where I fear a CP2077 scenario is much more probable then releasing it unfinished and full of bugs.

On Topic: If anyone at Larian still reads this forum, maybe some of the issues in the megathreads could be addressed (and closed) in this next PFH ? If not live, perhaps in the patch notes ?

Unwillingness to invest in immersion is a good way to describe what is holding BG3 back from becoming a great unforgettable game for me.

I would really like to hear Larian's thoughts on immersion and gameplay and why they feel ground surfaces and extreme verticality are more important than D/N cycles and why theme park maps are better than separate areas with real distance between them. And why every companion in a party of 4 needs to be strikingly attention craving as opposed to at least someone being a more ordinary hero playing a support role for a protagonist.

Now would be a great time to evolve to the next level in storytelling and immersion, since they are developing a third installment of a genre defining franchise.

To derail this topic back to its original purpose, it's seems we'll be getting the update now in February

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/shg41u/good_news_guy_we_are_definitely_getting_a_new/

"Rough translation: happy Chinese new year guys. BG3 will have a new update in February and more surprises waiting for you guys to discover."

I allways hated this ...
It just seems odd to promis (or give in Blizzards case) something just for part of your comunity, while ignoring the rest. :-/

Hope it gets more official in english soon. :-/

Well considering more or less the whole of China goes on a one week holiday it might be that they wanted to give the news before the holidays, and we will get it more officially during that time.

I'm just happy we're getting a new patch this month!

Great!😊

Again, the problem isn't with BG3 that OP builds exist but that basic mechanics or basic interactions dont' work very well. Finding a way to "break" the game can be satisfying in itself if it requires explorations, some thinking and learning the systems. BG3 foundations are shaky. Push, stealth, combat bubble, current implementation of action econmy and its implications for multiattack on later levels - those are not things required effort to exploit, it things that just don't work well and need to be improved.