Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Some Suggestions after 300 hours

I've gotten almost 300 hours in this game, testing out all sorts of character options like race/class combinations and even messing around with alignments and just how chaotic you can be, like how I recently did a "kill everything you see" playthrough with 4 custom characters. After that, I have some input and I'd like to start at the character creation interface.

Sliders are great for character customization since they offer a wide variety of customization options and can help a player really create the character they are imagining. bg3 uses sliders, but not correctly. A slider should only be used when it shows a gradual change in what the slider is effecting, so then why do we have a slider for our characters face when they really only cycle through presets? This is less than ideal compared to a selection interface where you can skip right to other faces. Ideally this is done with a selection of thumbnails, like how Final Fantasy 14 handles character face selection. This gives the player a chance to see the face before actually clicking on it but also in a selection of 6 faces would allow the player to go back and forth between face 1 and 4 without needing to cycle. In short, if the slider does not show a gradual change, it should not be a slider. I know, the face, horn, hair, and facial hair selectors are not technically sliders already, but they function like one without actually having its functionality. The exception to this rule is the background selector, since it is very text heavy, it makes sense to not overload the player with too much text at once.

Class progression should be visible. When choosing a class you should be able to click a button and see a simple class progression chart, such as spell slots and basic features to at least level 3, ideally level 5. Leave subclass features out of it except when actually choosing subclasses to prevent giving the player too much information. This would mean Clerics, Warlocks, and Sorcerers would be the only ones who can see their subclass roadmap at character creation, the rest have to wait until they can select a subclass. Subclass information could also be passable as a summary of what the choice is meant to mean. Not everyone who plays this game will have intimate knowledge of 5e classes and subclasses, but also some classes got changed because they do not translate well into a CRPG, such as the ranger. It would be very good to know what kind of character we are committing to before we locked in our choices.

Players should be notified of when they are doubling up on features. Sometimes this is not a bad thing, like getting weapon proficiencies from race and then picking Fighter, but the player should be aware of these things happening. I remember I was going to make a ranger but hadn't settled on a race, so I locked in ranger, chose the fire resistance option, and then went back and made him a Tiefling without thinking to check on my ranger choices and accidentally doubled up on fire resistance. I wouldn't suggest making this too intrusive since doubling up on some features happens naturally, my suggestion is listing any features you have twice or that are redundant on the left with your character information with a small notification symbol that the player can easily notice, but unintrusive enough to not be an eyesore. A peaceful warning, I suppose.

Now we get to the in game bits

The Journal, Map, Short rest, and Long Rest buttons are awkwardly spaced. They are small buttons with simple graphics that would seem to imply they are comfortable being close together, but then spaced significantly far apart from one another. Why is this? Functionally it doesn't hinder anything being far apart, but it does look worse aesthetically and being close together also functionally doesn't hinder anything. While we're on the topic, why is there a button to finish the day, but not a button to go to camp without resting? We can go to camp by pressing M and fast traveling there, but isn't that a little awkward and immersion breaking instead of having a singular button to return to camp? I have supplies there and maybe some armor I want to change out because I want to lose disadvantage on my stealth checks but want to save my inventory weight for other items instead of carrying around extra armor, or Gale ran out of spell slots but the rest of my party is doing well so I want to switch him out with Astarion or vice versa because Gale has a spell perfect for my situation? It's a strange choice to me. My suggestion is to move those buttons closer together and remove the long rest button in favor of a Return to Camp button and have a long rest possible by interacting with either a bedroll or the campfire.

Passives are awkward to navigate. In our action hotbar there should be a secondary section that doesn't move with our selection of actions, possibly a smaller bar above that displays only icons that toggle when clicked. I'm assuming this is not the final system for reactions, but having reactions on passives makes it even worse. Toggling on and off Great Weapon Master is incredibly annoying and while turning it off is rarely actually worth it as a Barbarian for their constant advantage, Fighters and Paladins will want it to be simple, and maybe even some Ranger and Valor Bard builds might, so instead of creating their own tab, a small toggle switch above the characters actions where the passive is dimmed or greyscaled when off, but lit up when on, would be far better, especially if reactions are staying on the passives system. I might not want to use Hellish Rebuke right now. It's very strange to me it's not listed in our defult actions.

Pressing Home forces your camera to face North. Why? I'm going South not North. Solution is simple, either keep the Camera direction and center it on your character, or have the camera face the direction your character is facing. I can discern directions based on the minimap, I don't need the hinderance.

The chain link system for character selection is fine, I don't hate it, but after 300 hours, I still don't like it as much as other systems. Pillars of Eternity has a great system of holding shift and clicking on character portraits as well as a click-and-drag selection from the floor. Am I saying do this? No, I'm just saying we can do better than the chains for party selection. For the most part I just press G and move each 1 manually anyway since the pathing can be a little... let's say imperfect.

Why does a character in stealth not follow the group? They can stay in stealth and move slower, but if I enter Initiative with Astarion 1 mile behind me one more time I'm going to punch my monitor.

Time to talk about balancing.

I fully understand that some things are going to be stronger than others, some builds are going to be insane when min maxed, and some are going to be weaker for just wanting a fun combination, but the disparity between some things in this game is asinine. Some of what I'm talking about his how a Fiend warlock gets Dark Ones Blessing, which having Hex and Scorching Ray for is pretty much a guarantee you will get those temporary hit points, which means why even bother taking Fiendish Vigor as an evocation when you're always going to have temporary hit points on take down anyway, but GOOlock gets nothing so they might actually need to take Fiendish Vigor just to keep up with tankier classes? It's one thing to give a different choice a weaker ability, it's completely different to give one choice something really good and then give the other choice literally nothing.

It's not just the warlock, though, some races are just better. High Half Elves get incredible stat increases and a free cantrip that casts off intelligence, but you don't need to pick something that even uses your modifier, like the decidedly overpowered Friends cantrip. Drow Half Elf gets Dancing Lights, a cantrip that I have not used even once. They get nothing else. At least Wood Half Elf gets movement speed. These kinds of differences are numerous, and while they exist in 5e and it is technically faithful, this is not a TTRPG where the whole table agreed to pick fun characters over functionality, this is a CRPG where the player does not have a say in other characters and enemies being either roleplay choices or min max choices, and so while some imbalance is fine, the larger differences should be made up for.

Something about weapons really bothers me. If I'm playing a ranger I can equip a shield and dagger for my melee options and not use a single melee attack or ability. Then, I'll fire with a longbow and select my melee weapon again, gaining the +2 AC. Effectively every character that as shield proficiency but will mostly be using bows as a free +2 AC permanently because it is free to switch what you are wielding in your hands. This includes Rangers, Valor Bards when they come out, Clerics with crossbows, Archery based fighters, and even Druids. In the future at level 5 will a fighter or ranger be able to attack with a melee weapon and then use a second attack with a ranged weapon? Why can I switch to a dual wield option and then use my bonus action to attack with that offhand? I can shoot with a bow and switch to dual daggers and stab someone as a bonus action, and when you bring in things like Hunters Mark and magic weapons this adds a lot of damage, and you can do the same thing with dual hand crossbows, so you can potentially wield a rapier with a shield, make an attack, switch to your ranged option and make another attack, then go back to your shield and sword top get your AC back. Abusing the way you can swap weapons is very overpowered. My suggested solution is that once you take the attack action you are committed to that weapon option, also fixing the multiple attack abuse we may see later. Essentially everyone has bonus action attacks and +2 ac as long as they are proficient in shields. You do not need proficiency to use the bonus action attacks, this is rarely relevant but still worth mentioning.

Shove should be an action, it's too good. In 5e it's a modified attack action, but is bound to 5 feet. In bg3 it's a bonus action and can potentially shove someone super far since it's based on strength. It is better than it is in 5e, but also cheaper to use in terms of actions. I can see Lae'Zel at level 5 going Battle Master, doing 2 pushing attacks, then shoving to force a enemy very far away so even if they aren't near a cliff, they are now.

EDIT: Adding this now, but Searing Smite (and presumably other smites) should be just bonus actions that act as a buff to your next attack instead of being limited to being used as both in the same turn. If my Tiefling Fighter wants to dash up to someone and I don't have or want Action Surge, I should be able to start concentrating on the spell that turn and attack on the next turn so I have my bonus action on that second turn. This will be important to Paladins on their release, since you may want to go nova in a hard fight and pre-emtpively channel a smite so that your next round can be Smite spell + Attack + divine smite into a second attack of Smite Spell + Attack + Divine Smite. Planning ahead should be rewarded as opposed to forcing the player to attack when they prepare a smite, and since it requires concentration to keep the smite up, I don't see it being a balance issue either.

I'm not going to say anything for smaller balancing issues since this is still at minimum 7 months from full release, I assume balancing will be tweaked, but those are things that really bother me.

Now for a few pieces of feedback that are even more opinionated than anything above. Something I always say to games is that if the players are going to mod it in anyway, you may as well put it in the game as a feature. It's already known they will have mod support, so here's things I think they should just put in as a feature, possibly as an opt in rather than a base feature.

Racial Ability scores should be optional, otherwise let the player choose their scores like Tasha's Guide allows us to.

Add variant human.

Roll for stats, I know they already want to look into this, but I'm listing this to show my support for the idea.

Certain non-PHB subclasses such as the popular Hexblade

Let the player choose their party size (the infrastructure to do this is already in the game, you can use a tool to edit your save file and increase it up to 8) This would be great paired with difficulty settings. Highest difficulty with 3 party members or lowest difficulty with 6 party members for maximum stop. I did this myself and I will say if you turn up the difficulty 6 is the magic number for large encounters like the goblin camp. The more characters you can control the more engaged you are instead of sitting around and waiting for 15 goblins to make their move, but in its current state using 6 is just too easy.

That's all I have to say for now, thank you for reading.