Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Fast Travel Limitation Poll

Yup thats basically it.
For most people here RPGs are a chore now...console Command whatever you want to win and be done with it.
Clicking stuff and moving around is such a chore. So archaic and old school.
Soon the closest thing to an RPG experience we will get are auto-running Tell tale games you just watch. Because STORY is everything right? But that too will become a chore. I mean, you have to turn on your computer and start the game.

And since all RPGs will in essence become just Tell tale movies, I am calling it; THE FUTURE of RPG gaming are couple minutes clips watching OTHER PEOPLE game rpg games. Its the least amount of chores and effort for the max amount of content and satisfaction.

Aaah, the <real life> argument? Really? lol

If you hate these <mondain> chores, why are you playing an RPG then? Basic rpg elements like Day/night , creative random encounters, no auto health regain, more written dialogue, no fast travel for example fleshes out the world MORE. It adds atmosphere, risk/reward and urgency.

I am not saying everyone needs a bathroom break every 5 minutes or you need 100% isopropyl alcohool and bandages to heal. You have games that do that called SIMULATIONS.
Though ironically people don't seem to mind real life and realistic SEX simulations in their <RPGs> lol.

Aren't we there already? No data to support it but I feel like games being fun to watch when streamed is more important nowadays for success then games being fun to play.

No limits, video games are about having fun, anything that could potentially get in the way of that is possibly a detriment to that.

So no class restrictions? No item restictions? No health bars or need to rest? Everyone can use spells and all abilities? Everyone can use ALL items? Unlimited time for everything? Unlimited lives for everyone?
A rogue can use all wizard spells, and wizards can backstap because who cares for limits? Because a single godly character that can do everything is really more fun? Really??

Point being, LIMITS and RULES is what makes RPG games fun and interesting. Its what makes boardgames fun. Its why we have, uuuuuhm, fun sporting events?? Is the state of mind of modern gamers that naive?!?! No need for rules and limits in video games?
Baseball games, 3 strikes your out...yea fuck that its not fun lets just remove that LOL.

Don’t feed trolls/stupid. Games by definition are a set of rules and limits - that’s what makes them games.

I think there's a happy medium between "no limits at all" and "no quality of life at all" and that medium really isn't hard to achieve. Like with UI design for instance. UI absolutely should lean towards being clear and easy to see. In fact clear and easy to see/understand should be the bare minimum for UI. And brighter, easier to see graphics in general? Well, real life is actually quite bright and colorful and, if you're lucky, easy to see. With graphical capabilities getting better, of course games will look brighter and more vibrant. With weapon types, that really depends on if there's gonna be interesting stuff to do with those weapons, as it were. Having lots of types of weapons you can use feels to me like a lesser requirement. The type of thing you devote time to after you've shored up other features, such as races, classes, etc. I think that spells that bring nothing to combat should be excluded if they also don't add to gameplay. A game where spells have good uses outside of combat would be awesome. They don't get ported in as often because the devs will never be able to be as creative as all the people who will play their games, and even with a relatively simple spell, there is the potential to drastically overwhelm the scale of the game if you try and account for every potential use of it within the game. Also, a lack of day and night cycle isn't a quality of life feature. It doesn't make the game easier in any meaningful way.

Fast travel in an open world game is kind of a necessity because you can potentially have massive amounts of space between point A and point B, and having to traverse it all on foot would get boring, especially when the player wants to get on with the story. It's effectively taking the principle in old rpgs of going from one area to the next and putting it in the player's hand. For example with Dragon Age: Origins, you go from the circle tower to Redcliff and the game doesn't make you traverse all the space between them. That's effectively fast travel, just more limited. But the principle is still the same, the devs saying "there's nothing interesting going on in this stretch so we won't make the players experience it."

Regarding lack of random encounters, I'm of two minds about that. Wrath of the Righteous has them, and I don't like them at all. Solasta has them, and I actually like them a lot. So sometimes a game can be made in a way where random encounters just don't serve the experience and the game would be better without them.

You bringing up tutorial areas and story mode are points I entirely disagree with though. Providing a way for people to experience the game more easily is a very reasonable thing, because why not, if it means more people get to have fun with the game? Plus it can benefit players that DO have the skill anyway. I've run through Wrath of the Righteous about four times now, and have wracked up over 500 hours in that game. If there weren't the option for me to tune down the difficulty so that I could engage with the story directly and breeze through the battles, I wouldn't have been able to experience nearly as much of the game, which has firmly become my favorite game of all time. In fact with me, I tend to start games on story mode and increase the difficulty as I become more comfortable with controls and tactices bit by bit. And tutorial areas are just a no-brainer. It's straight up just smart game design. Of course you make the first area easier so that your player will be able to get a handle on the various mechanics. The first section is always going to be the easiest anyway, if you don't use it to teach your player how to play, then you're just wasting an opportunity.

All this is really to say that yes there should be some quality of life stuff included in games, because a lot of times quality of life just means "we've learned how to make better games now." But at the same time, that doesn't mean excising anything that would give games any challenge. It's not a choice between one or the other. Different individual titles will benefit from going farther to either end of the scale. Though I do think that while a small number of players would enjoy the most difficult, tedious extreme, basically no one would enjoy the easiest extreme.

A lot of this speaks to what I was getting at with Morrowind. A limited fast travel system as well as a smartly designed map that utilized the limited space of the island efficiently.

Otherwise I think there's a difference between game design that improves something, making it easier to understand and use for the player and game design that removes those systems or automates them, taking them away from the player.

Because mobs in BG:3 don't respawn, nor does anything seem to change over time for us to witness, having fast travel points just cuts down on mindless backtracking sure, but it also stops those things from being a possibility. That and this funny thing that happened for me in Gyrmforge where using a fast travel point seems like the solution for traversing the map, bypassing a puzzle and a combat, probably with a split party (I'm not sure what 'legal' way of getting to the forge is). I also noticed that so many people weren't hitting the portal outside the druid grove that they made its discovery automatic. Having fast travel points that actually do away with map exploration doesn't strike me as good.

My vote would be for portal-to-portal travel only, that way people still can actually explore the map a little, even after they might already have 'cleared' the area.

Eventually you'll have made it from the beach on the Chionthar to a Temple of Shar deep in the primordial Underdark, and travelling between the two is as easy as clicking a button. I think that such a distance deserves a little more than that.

So very sad, but so very true.

Yes, having unlimited fast travel doesn’t excise all challenge from the game or make it story mode. That is just people using dramatic language in their arguments against it.

Its a matter of self discipline.

I have done Skyrim where I only use Carriage and Horse to travel and it was fun.

Latter play-troughs I just wanted to knock out familiar territory , then slow down.

What?
You purposely ignored covenient mechanic that nobody ever forced you to use, since you simply didnt want to ... and had a good time, while not ruining anyone else game?

Imposible!
Lies i say! LIES!!! *insert ironic smilie here* *and here* *and here aswell*

It depends...

Dungeons are supposed to be a few combats not too challenging one after the others before you can rest (or with a risk during your rest).

If combats are not challenging + you can freely rest between them yes, it excise all challenge dungeons.
Except maybe from bosses.

Nope, Icelyn is right ...
*It* doesnt excise anything ... you do.

Thats the beauty of curent state.
If dungeon is set to be too challenging people get frustrated.
If dungeon is set to be not challenging enough people get frustrated.
But when you hold the tools, its allways exactly as challenging as you make it.

[img]https://images.app.goo.gl/w3d2XBmdy7vH1goa7[/img]

Oh stop with this stupid argument. BG3 is a game. A game is a set of rules, not a set of tools.

At least the game should have coherent rules and eventually options for players like Icelyn that don't like them. But a game should not lack of rules to the point players have to create them in their heads.

At this point they could also remove any consequences when you carry too many things in your inventory so players could eventually decide a weight not to exceed.

I've finally found the right words to voice why I actualyl don't like this argument. It feels like too much of a coppout on the part of the devs. It's putting the onus on the players and saying that if players don't enjoy the game, it's their fault for not playing the right way, absolving the creators of responsibility. Especially since loads of other games make concrete choices and establish limitations regarding the stuff mentioned, like fast travel and resting, and it works out fine for them and creates a satisfactory experience. And not only that, but I feel as though that isn't even what Larian is going for anyway. If they were to come out and say "hey, we want to make things as free and loose as possible so that players can regulate their own play experience" then sure. I'm not sure if it's a good choice, but it's at least a choice, a creative decision that can be judged on its own merits. But short of that, especially since this is a still developing game, why should we think that's what they're going for when it's not an approach that is at all typical of game design? Why should we assume Larian is trying for some unique, avant garde approach rather than assuming they're attempting a far more common approach, one which was also taken with the other two games of the franchise?

We both know that i will not.
Certainly not until someone at least *try* to explain me what is so "stupid" about it.

Except its completely right, and it dont fits your *perfect experience* model.

Actualy "a game" is set of both ... that and many more.

Hope you are prepared for hard question then: Why?

Also the game do not "lack the rules" ... they are right there, they are simply loosened enough to fit everyone.
Have you ever thinked about why games even have difficiulty settings?
THIS is the reason.

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I dont believe this ... especialy that part where player "is supposed to play the right way" ...
That sounds like direct contradiction to what im trying to say ...

When player try to "play the right way" he is "trying to play the way he presumes Devs wanted him to play" ...
Question is if there even is any "expected way to play" in the first place. O_o

What im trying to say is that player should not "play the right way" ... he should "play the way he is having fun and dont give and fuck about the right way" ...
And in that case, yes ... its totally players fault he is not having fun ... i know people dislike to hear it ... but who else is there to blame, if you can do EXACTLY what you want to ... but you dont do it bcs you dont NEED TO?

This kind of mindset fascinates me from psychological aspect more than game design ...
We demand to swim with our hands tied to our waist, since we presume it would be better ... but we refuse to try swim, while not using our hands, to find out what would it be like.
Do you know what will happen once our hands will be tied and we will be thrown in the water?
(Yes it is absurdly extreme example ... but it should help you understand.)

This is inctedibly close minded argument ...
Yes, it certainly bring a "satisfactory experience" for people who likes those limitations ...

Oh surprise, surprise, people who likes something were happy about receiving it ...

But as you can see, their lack also creates satisfactory experience ... for exaple for myself and Icelyn.

So what can we learn from this?
Different people have different taste ... how shocking. :-/

Its certainly possible that curent mechanics are (or not) there just to gather data.
After all, they should have some measures about how often people rests, if they plan to include any limitations in the result.

But even that would be argument for "play the way you want to" ...
Since (quite logicaly i would dare to say) if nobody will clean whole surface of Act 1 with as little Long Rests as possible, how would Larian gather any data supporting that *this* is the way people wants to play it?
Quite the contrary, if we all will rest after every single combat (just bcs we want to) all Larian will see in their data is that litteraly MILLIONS of peope do exactly that.

I believe their exact wording was that they would like to "create the same (or as close as possible) freedom as you have on tabletop session".

Bcs that is what we have, duh.

What other reason would be there to give players "to test" any other mechanic, than the one you are planning to use?

I came to conclusion from this forum, that list of things that "were taken with the other two games of the franchise" and are not present within BG-3 would be quite long. :-/
So ... i honestly dont see much reason in such argument.

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I just did it with an exemple.

But maybe weight as implemented fit your *perfect experience model* so it's hard for you to admit that the lack of rules if our characters carry tons of things would be more in line with

""

You mean this?

Even if i put aside that i see no connection between limmiting curent state of things ... and removing curently existing limmtis (wich you claimed are not even present) of something entirely different ...

Are you not aware of "send to camp" button?
There is effectively no carry limit allready, if you simply send everything to your camp ... so, players can make this decision, if they want to.

And yet, it doesnt seem like people are bothered with that as much. O_o
I wonder why ...

Oh okay, so they created coherent rules and add convenient options or QoL features about weight ! Nice.

They could do the same with fast travelling