Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Short Rest Poll

And I still have a problem with the map being abstract. It would be one thing if they pulled a Final Fantasy 7 (the original) where when you get into a fight you suddenly shift into an alternate plane of existence where the town of Moonhaven, for example, suddenly expands to reveal more buildings and objects, etc.

But no. The entire world of BG3 is very detailed down to the foot/meter and they even make it so every jar and vase can be searched even if they are empty. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Again, it's like they can't make up their minds. Is it abstract or literal? One minute it's abstract and the next it's literal with absolutely nothing to transition from one to another. It's weird.

That's not a great notification because the result is what you have currently. I've literally LR'd and run through Moonhaven - not even a single fight - and I had a character tell me they're tired and it's been a long day. Not even 5 minutes of adventure, and not a single fight, and the game is telling me to End Day already.

That is why a long time ago I suggested that SR should also allow for dialogues at camp. An SR is supposed to be an hour or more of resting, repairing armor, etc. So, why not transition to camp for SR as well and allow dialogues? Or, better yet, just allow dialogues while you're traveling on the road together? Why do they have to take place at camp?

I also would probably miss a lot of content if long rests have a lot of the story, because I try and do well in fights and conserve resources. It's strange because the better you are at the game, the less you'll need to long rest, and the more content you miss, and that's backwards.

I can agree with the sentiment that short rests should be tied to hit dice - although you should not be forced to spend them if you don't need to - and/or no more than 3 permitted per long rest. It generally feels like it's a reasonable idea to limit long rests to after 3 short rests. If that framework was put into place, it would force Larian to take a look at what story beats should go into long rests, and whether they can put some of those long-rest only scenes elsewhere, such as in areas between combat encounters.



Tying some of the long rest scenes into short rests is kinda interesting as well.

Yeah, that's reasonable to ask. The question stands on how deeply integrated everything is and how much work it will take. I'm just super unsure on how even to approach suggesting anything about the whole resting system currently because I feel like any step might make rest feel basically not impactful at all either introduce too strict of a limitation. Smaller, more isolated/location-based maps would probably help (although I don't have an issue with current maps per se) but it cleary won't happen.

[quote]Both long and short rest mechanics (including cutscenes & dialogue) in BG3 need to be changed to fix the BG3 resting system; making changes to only one will likely do little. if anything, to help.

- Increase the # of short rests per long rest. There's no reason it should be limited to 2, especially because:
- Hit Dice are a natural limit to # of short rests. Since you only get back half with a LR, this naturally encourages players to LR when they have ~1/4 their hit die left[\quote]

This is exactly what I'm suggesting and why it would work best. Hit Dice naturally limit the # of short rests. But, even if you short rest beyond your hit dice, in order to restore things like Action Surge and a Warlock's Spell Slots, that's GOOD. That's what players should try to do. Anything that would promote short rest over long rest is good because the idea is that in D&D, the DM is supposed to encourage short resting over long resting. That's why Warlocks and Fighters have such rechargeable at short rest abilities. If you strip short rest resets from their classes, you severely nerf their classes. Druids are the same with Wild Shape.

See, here's how it is supposed to work:

Party = Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Warlock

You crash on the beach. You fight intellect devourers. Wizard and Warlock both use their spells; all of them. Fighter uses Action Surge and Second Wind. Short rest. Wizard recovers 1 spell slot using Arcane Recovery. Warlock recovers spell slot. Fighter recovers Action Surge and Second Wind. Everyone uses all their Hit Dice. Party continues. Reaches the crypt and fights Gimblebock and company. Wizard uses last spell slot. Warlock uses spell slot. Fighter uses Action Surge and Second Wind. Short rest. Wizard is out of spells. Fighter and Warlock, however, have their abilities replenished. The party can still continue. Why? Because although everyone is out of Hit Dice, the Fighter and Warlock were still able to replenish their abilities. So the Fighter can still do Action Surge and Second Wind, and the Warlock has spells again. Sure, the Wizard is now out of spells besides Cantrips, but the trade-off is that the Wizard, especially at later levels, will have a LOT more spell slots and a LOT more spells to choose from, while the Warlock - especially at later levels - will have far less spell slots and spells to choose from. But the thing that makes a Warlock not a complete waste as a class is that they can recharge their spell slots via a short rest while the wizard and sorcerer are forced to reset only at Long Rest. Allow Long Rests between every fight, and you give wizards and sorcerers and clerics and such a huge boost in importance as a class while severely hacking Warlocks and Druids and such at the knees.

See, here's how BG3 works:

Same party.

Same scenario except that instead of using a short rest, you can long rest without restraint. So why bother with short rest when everyone can, and is encouraged to, long rest? The result? Full health for everyone and full spell slots. Day 2, the adventure continues. You reach the crypt and fight Gimblebock and company. Wizard has full spell slots just like the Warlock, but gets MORE spell slots because that's how the class is built. So, while the Warlock is stuck with one or two spell slots for many many levels, the wizard's spell slot allowance increases every level. Skip ahead to level 5. Wizard can cast Fireball. Between every fight, he can Long Rest and reset ALL spell slots. Warlock is stuck at only 2 SPELL SOTS even at level 5. Meanwhile, the wizard has - what is it, 10? I can't remember off the top of my head - so the wizard is able to blast enemies with a couple of Fireballs, maybe 4 magic missiles, and so forth, while the poor Warlock only gets 2 spells and that's it.

Why is resting mechanics so vital to this game? THIS is why. They might as well throw the Warlock class in the trash if they don't do something to fix this because it's a completely useless, trash class, if you don't limit long rests and try to focus more on pushing players to short rest. Short rest NEEDS to be the resting that players feel they should go to unless they really feel they cannot continue without a long rest. Short rests should be a valuable mechanic - so much so that players feel they can't play the game without them. It should be their go-to resting mechanic, not their afterthought.

The answer to your opening question is in the post you quoted to ask it.


So we have one overland area, so far. Area transitions aren't required in a single area, so no, it's not "obvious". What it is, though, is seemingly complaining to complain. When we go to the Underdark, we have an area transition. When we go to interior areas that aren't sandboxed into the main map, we have area transitions. Why do we need a transition to a position on the map that isn't a new area?

You're right, there's no transition area in this "overland area" too !
https://cdn.dlpreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/plan-gratuit-disneyland-paris-zoom-scaled.jpg

The names are just different : Beach land, Druid land, Blighted Village land, Risen Road land, Swamp Land, Goblin's Land.
https://dm-gaming.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/map_surface_20-e1611303739109.jpg

Still waiting for names of plenty games that have such a map design. But that's not related to the thread.

How many places can you travel to on the actual World Map? Not the area map, the actual world map? What's that you say, we have 0 overland world map travel locations in EA?

I listed two such games in my first post on this, NWN and NWN 2. Dragon Age Inquisition has a really long bridge that you have to repair, that leads to three dragons, with no area transition. So, let me know when you walk across that bridge, and wind up in Waterdeep. Until then, since everything is contained in one area map, there's no need for a transition.

What exactly is the complaint?

That you don't have to walk your character for five hours to reach Moonhaven? That you don't have to sit through loading screens?

Several reasons ... its faster, often its all you need, it dont require any resources (i know its hard to imagine but if you are not hoarding everything you see, you can actualy run out of them ), it dont bother you with any cutscenes you dont really care about (and im not talking about talking with companions, you can easily skip that ... but turning night, raphael visit, astarion midnight feast, pissed of elf coming for revenge ... those events are unavoidable), immersion (you know the word people use so often around here when it suits them).
And many more. :P

May be ...

But how long is that bridge?
How long is that mudy road between the bridge and city gate?
How long is that mudy road between druid grove and the bridge?
etc. you get the idea

That the area look like a disneyworld area rather than a believable forgotten realms area.
This because there's no "suspension of disbelief" (if I understand correctly what it mean) when the games shows you the whole map like an open world game.

Solasta's resting system has been brought up, and I will say that while it does some things better, like a more elaborate short rest system, it's not perfect. It does limit long rests to specific map locations and require rations, and there is a random encounter system, but there are some caveats.

Rations are mostly impactful for long-distance traveling - and only if you don't have the Goodberry spell. Once at the locations, rations tend to be fairly generous to find lying around. Random encounters only happen during travel, and only one a night, so for random encounters, you can just use all your spell resources because you'll have a long rest before you continue.

All encounters in-dungeon are pre-placed and one-offs. Long rest points are pretty generously placed, and usually you can just walk or fast-travel back to a previous point if you haven't found another one. I've never had a random encounter happen in a dungeon. In the main campaign, only the final dungeon really strains your resources because you get the long rest before entering the dungeon, and there isn't any long resting inside at all. There are four smaller encounters before the two-stage final boss encounter. That's the only time in the main campaign when there's serious resource management.

So even in Solasta, which has a good system, it's still pretty generous. I think the big difference between the two games might be in the difficulty of encounters. BG 3 might have a higher tuned difficulty which encourages more long resting. Smaller encounters which need less resources to consume would organically lead to more players using fewer long rests.

More or less 40 meters, according to the game.

Wich - is - not - litt-e-ral.

What is so hard about it? O_o

Written and respectfull to all other measures (characters, item and building size, movement,...)... But not litteral. Amazing.

The non sense is hard to understand. Whatever, thats just in your head

Size maybe ...
Count? Hardly ... unless you really believe that Blighted willage was school, blacksmith, apothecary, windmill, barn ... and litteraly nothing else.

Im glad you mentioned this.

[img]https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress...fit=crop&w=960&h=500&dpr=1.5[/img]

Step 1) Follow the road, and cut it to 10 pieces (one of Tiefling litteraly tells you its 10 day long way to Baldur's Gate) ...
Step 2) Run the whole way 1 of those pieces ...
Step 3) Realize you just walked one day.

Rest should come naturaly.

The Blighted village doesn't look like a village at all. So is "the forest" and so is the "beach".
Looks like according to you what's said is true and what's designed or written is not. The map design doesn't make sense, I guess we agree

I can live with that

Let's just say that Ragnarok is right. It is all abstract - the environment. If that's true, then the following makes no sense:

The Dank Crypt's entrance is on the beach. You crash on the beach. The nautiloid is north of your position. It's tentacles are still around you and over the beach where you crashed. So, you KNOW the nautiloid crashed on the edge of the beach.
You travel around the bend to the pier with the dead fishermen. There's the Dank Crypt's entrance on the beach. Intellect devourers are all around, having come from the nautiloid that has crashed right there next to the dank crypt. If it was all abstract, it would take hours to get from the beach where you start to the dank crypt entrance and then from there to the nautiloid and then from the nautiloid to the upper crypt area with Gimblebock and company. The only way the entire collection of scenarios makes sense is if it is all one map with everything literally near one another.

Think about it. Shadowheart, if you don't have her with you by then, is pounding at the door and mentions finding another way in at the top of the cliffs. So, the ONLY path to get to the top of those cliffs is a great distance from the beach through the nautiloid, up another long path, back through the nautiloid, along another path where you meet Gale and then another good distance? Should we assume it takes hours to take this very interesting path? You mean to tell me there's no other, shorter way around the nautiloid? No. It only makes sense that the crashed nautiloid is blocking your path around, and the only way to get out of the area is through it two times - unless you cut straight through it and skip Astarion's area.

But let's then say that the entire first area, including the Beach, Nautiloid, Astarion's Locale, the Path Where You Meet Gale, and the Dank Crypt are all one location that is literal. Then, after that, it becomes abstract between that basic area and the Wilderness/Grove where you meet Lae'zel and then get to Silvanus' Grove. If that's the case, first of all, why NOT then make it a single map and have a transition point to the next area? I mean, why make it literal and then have some sort of weird abstract-ness happen and then have it literal again without a transition to tell players that it is, in fact, transitioning from literal to abstract? That's very immersion-breaking and weird. But let's just say it's because you're avoiding transition times to speed up gameplay. Fine. Weird, but fine. Moving on.

Second, doing this actually strips players of freedom of choice. What if I don't WANT to continue along those paths? Now that I'm clear of the nautiloid and dank crypt area, if there is a good distance between this location and the Wilderness/Grove, shouldn't I be able to skip past it and avoid it? There's hours worth of terrain between the two locations. Right? So if there are hours of distance between them, I should be able to choose to bypass the grove altogether. But I can't. I have to go right past the grove. But, you know, one could argue that there literally aren't any other paths through the terrain. Again, it's possible. Weird, but possible.

Moving along. In the grove, it has been argued that there is a good deal of distance between the harpies and the grove. Here, again, we have a strange circumstance. First, there is a smooth transition from the grove to the beach, and you can even follow it along so that you are wrapped around the south side to look upon the Dank Crypt, the cliff where Nadira is with her telescope, and Orn the bear down by the shore... all as one smooth setting. But other things don't make sense if it is miles away. Is there no path from there to other areas at all? Is the only path, even when you pass for miles of distance, out through the eastern gate of the grove and down that single path? And boy that's an awfully far distance for the tiefling boy to wander from the safety of the grove even though there are lots of goblins lurking about looking to kill them - and gnolls who months before slaughtered a lot of them. Kinda weird that he'd wander to the beach so far away with so many dangers lurking around. He might go a short distance if he was poking his nose outside the grove a bit and heard some enchanting music, but miles? Not likely. Thirdly, the harpies are singing a tune that mirrors Alfira's. Now that's strange. Why would they sing a tune that is close to hers if they didn't hear her singing the tune? How could they hear her sing the tune if they were miles away? Nope. All the evidence points to it all being a literal distance.

Moving along. Other things that don't make sense from an abstract area perspective. In the bog, there is a camp. A child and parent were killed there by what appears to be ettercaps. From where did they come? Moonhaven's Whispering Depths, most likely. This is an assumption. Yes. But where else would they have come? I suppose anywhere, but the inference is Moonhaven since you meet ettercaps in the Whispering Depths. Now, why would ettercaps travel so far from their nest for food when there are goblins and other creatures right in Moonhaven for them to feast upon - especially if you assume that the supposed "forest" that Moonhaven is surrounded by has actual animals in it - assuming an abstract environment that actually WOULD and SHOULD have animals? It makes more sense that the ettercaps might have been patrolling about the general area near their nest for food late at night when the goblins and such went back to their camp, but it doesn't make sense for them to travel miles away into the bog. It is therefore implied that the bog and Moonhaven are close to one another. I'm sorry, but it makes a lot more sense that the bog is close to Moonhaven and the nautiloid, for it is presumed that the parent and child crashed their boat in the bog because of the crashing nautiloid. This is somewhat of an assumption, but I don't think it's as much of a stretch as saying that the bog is miles away from Moonhaven and miles away from the nautiloid. It makes much more sense that it is close to both locations because why would the father/child crash their boat there unless they were in a panic?

But, even if all of that doesn't convince people - which it probably won't because some are dead set on everything being totally abstract - what about the fact that I have engaged the Gith Patrol in combat and run to Waukeen's Rest and actually received the aid of the Flaming Fist to help me fight them and kill them? Are you implying that while in combat my character ran miles upon miles along a single road with Gith hot on my trail? And while they're fighting the Gith, I could then run miles upon miles back to where my companions fell, near the bridge, and heal them back to full all during the same combat? And then return in time to help the Flaming Fist finish the Gith? So - just to be clear - initiated the Gith fight at the bridge, three companions fell, with Astarion I ran to Waukeen's Rest and led the Gith into the Flaming Fist who then helped fight the Gith, then while the Gith were distracted, Astarion ran back to the bridge, used potions, and revived my fallen companions, and finally we ran back to Waukeen's Rest and finished off the Gith - and somehow that actually took hours of time? And that makes sense somehow?

This is why we have a problem with the whole "The Map is Abstract" mindset. It ISN'T.

And yet... it is. And that's the problem. How could it NOT be abstract? After all, the camps - both main and mini - aren't anywhere? You can only Fast Travel to them. Also, the goblins are either stupid or blind or plain dumb if they can't find the grove so close to their main base when it is so obviously not hidden enough. Stand on the Harper's Lookout Cache location, and you'll see the grove plain as day. So how could it NOT be abstract? It MUST be miles away. Moonhaven is too small. The bog is too small. The forest is too small. The distance from the grove to the goblin camp is like 5 minutes of jogging at best, but it took Aradin and his companions over a month to go there and return with goblins on their heels. But Baldur's Gate is only ten days from the grove? How does that make sense from either a literal or abstract sense?

And how can you drop down from the Whispering Depths into the Underdark where you land near the Selunite Outpost, but then the Zhentarim stash in the Underdark, which leads up to the Zhentarim Hideout under Waukeen's Rest, is just up the path? But not far from the heart of the Whispering Depths is a secret way back into the blacksmith's forge area in Moonhaven? The distances don't add up?

But, all this aside, even IF it is all abstract and it takes me 8 hours to travel from the grove to Moonhaven, or whatever, I STILL shouldn't have a scenario where I am standing at the entrance to Moonhaven after fighting the goblins, I long rest, I reappear at Moonhaven, I run through Moonhaven to Risen Road, and just as I'm reaching Risen Road, I have a companion say, "Gosh. I'm tired. It's been a long day. Let's get some rest." Even IF I traveled for 8 hours from Moonhaven to my camp, slept the rest of the day away, woke up first thing in the morning, and traveled 8 more hours to return to Moonhaven - and even IF it took me an hour to get through the whole of Moonhaven to Risen Road - why on God's Green Earth would my companions then say they're tired and we should call it a day? We haven't done a God-blessed thing? What? You want to go all the way back to camp and do it all over again? We didn't explore ANYTHING.

But that's what happened to me - and it's happened on more than one occasion. I don't care what way you spin it. The game encourages Long Rests - OFTEN!

And what I'm saying is, players should be encouraged to Short Rest, and frankly, the fact that it's "more convenient" to short rest is not really that much of an incentive. If I'm only short resting because it's slightly more convenient than a long rest, then it's pointless. It's a dumb mechanic. This is especially true if upcoming battles are tough - like the spider lair - and you know you need a full rest to take the monster on. Oh yeah. You're going to take a few extra seconds to End Day and return to fight the monster rather than the quick Short Rest.

And THAT is one of my other points. The encounters are designed so that you are meant to Long Rest before them. But that's not how RPGs work. You aren't supposed to know what's coming, and if you don't know what's coming, you need to still be able to beat it without having to reload. The whole point of a ROLEPLAYING game is that you are taking on the role of the character. You are meant to be able to survive EVERY encounter even if you have absolutely no idea what's coming. If you make the fights so hard that you are expected to trigger them, die, reload, prepare better a second time, and then try again until you win, you're playing Undertale, not an RPG.

There's absolutely 0% chance that Ragna is right about distances GM
Larian has chosen this way of designing the map to offer the best gaming experience according to them but no one has probably ever thought "distances are not litteral"

The most credible explanation is undoubtedly that they didn't want to create a world as large as an open world but that they wanted to offer a different experience from other cRPGs at the same time. The map is really small and that's why it's not really called an "open world" game.

The act 1 surface map is something like 500m² (let's say 1km² if you include the underdark) while the full map of TW3 are something like 130 km² (skyrim = 40km², RDR2 = 72km², GTA5 = 125km²). BG3's full map may probably reach 10km² at best. The map may look bigger and you play HOURS on a "small" map because the content is very condensed.

The fact that the map design is not a "problem" for everyone does not mean that this statement is false and that we have to go into delusions to explain things.