Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Option this, option that

Rag, we all understand that you don't write / test code for a living, that much is clear.

Honestly, I would recommend you to keep your speculations and assumptions to yourself, as far as purely technical topics are concerned. All of your arguments, save for the "default option", are kindergarten level, sorry. You don't know how this stuff is done; you think you know, but you don't. This is Dunning-Kruger at its finest.

Despite that i keep repeating that in mo professional programmer, and have only the basics? O_o
I can only asume you are not very carefull reader. :-/

Sure ...
We can make such deal, i have no problems with it.

As long as it will apply to everyone who wants to participate in such discusion, or demand it from others ... why not.
And in such spirit ... please, be the first.

Yup ... agreed on both parts.

Sure they do ... they have to test everything beyond EA ...
Spells, encounters, dialogues, cutscenes such stuff we were never ment to see before release.

Im not quite sure what do you mean by PR move, but if it is what i tink it is ... its still some kind of testing ... you put things into EA and watch how people react ...
Example of such test would be that Illithid on the beach that eat us, when we are not carefull ...
By this test they find out that quite a lot players of this game is unable, or unwilling to take responsibility of their own actions.
Another example would be whole Evil route ... many people claim they dont feel any appeal to take it ...

Such informations are usefull, if the studio is willing to use them.

I still cant quite understand how something you have can cost you more to keep it ... but i guess nobody will tell me.
Anyway even if you were right ... this works both way, without any insight people cant aswell claim that cost of some option would be too great ... so the best we can do is dont bring this nonsence at all.

---

See? Finaly at least something.
Even tho ... still hardly enough to fill at least one page.

Just one note:
In context of this topic ... "options" are things you can turn on and off ... things that would simply change the game without option to turn them off are not.

So ...
Theese are suggested changes ... not options. :-/

Theese are actualy options ... so ... we managed to get 8 of them together.
Some of them are obviously unrealistic (28) ... some of them are actualy really good ideas (i would especialy support 8, 9 and 10) ... some are, well i gues they just are. :-/

Theese are obivously just random bullshits ...
Im not quite sure why are you trying to discredit yourself with such trolling. O_o

And my english skill is too low to decode whatever you were trying to say here ...
If there even was any message in the first place. O_o

Lololol!

The whole list was a joke, Rag. I was trying to make a point via joking, and you still picked it apart and are trying to argue with me about it.

The point was, we ARE asking for a lot of random options collectively. We keep adding and adding. It's true. But is it really a big deal to ask? Let Larian decide what they will ACTUALLY implement. Why do some keep arguing about how hard it is to implement something? We can ask, but naturally Larian is the dev. They will decide what is too hard to do.

But I was only throwing out a list of some genuine options amidst stupid stuff because I was also just joking. My favorite is the one about Astarion being replaced by a Teletubby. I also considered a Smurf and thought about replacing Gale with Orko from He-man.

Yeah i still believe some of them are good ideas and dont deserve to be put in a same box as the others. :-/
You got me there, i believed you were serious ... good one.

Quite honestly, I agree. I sincerely hope Larian is prioritizing things appropriately. Since we still have broken Shove, I'm worried they don't.

I also want you to know I wasn't intentionally trying to trip you up or be a jerk. I was just reading all the back and forth and thought a little levity might be good.

We DO ask for so many options. SO many. I do think it's a bit excessive. I just started a game of WotR, and thought, "There are SO many options. I don't care enough to go through them all. Heck with it. I'll just select Normal difficulty and move on."

I wonder how many people do that and never play with all the options. So you have to wonder, are those options really worth the work?

Most options in WotR doesnt represent a lot of work at all.
But most options allow the player to custom the difficulty rather than the whole experience.

Many people here are just asking two different systems for the same things, which doesnt make sense.
They won't create 2 UI or 2 reactions system but it doesnt prevent options.

- Food supply OFF / ON
- What food can you use to rest ALL / SUPPLY BAGS
- Unexpected encounters ON / OFF

Would definitely be good options and probably not so hard to add... at least if the game have good basic mechanics at release (unexpected encounter/events/...).

On the other hand asking an option to turn shove as an action OR a bonus action is just ridiculous.

It's a conundrum. There are those that won't even look at them, and just play Normal, or maybe even Story mode, if there is one. Then there are those that will go through the list twice to make sure they didn't miss anything they might want, no matter how extensive that list is. The trick is, which group is the "core group"? Because both will claim that they are, in fact, the "target audience". They'll believe this because their "bubble" will all want the same things, or choices on those things, and so, they'll believe that that's what everyone wants, regardless of what may actually be true. I see this a lot, especially in MMOs, but I'm not really "in on the ground floor" like I am here on a lot of other games.

But, just as an example, the fact that this game is based around 5e had no bearing on my purchase decision. I was drawn in by Baldur's Gate 3, not a particular edition. Does that make me the "target audience" for the marketing? I legit have no idea, because I'm not in any bubbles. I'm not sure if any of my NWN crowd is looking at this game or not, I've lost contact with some of them, and none of the ones that I'm in anything like regular contact with have expressed whether or not they'll be playing, let alone what drew them in, if anything did.

So, it comes down to background numbers, and how hard something would be to implement w/out spending a year on it. When one reads "we were too ambitious", this usually translates to "we were trying to provide too many options", in one form or another, and not necessarily "a separate icon for each level of a spell". (Just a random thought there) For me, more options is better, where feasible. I may even pick through them to utilize some of them, especially on playthroughs after the first one, where I may actually ignore the complete list, unless there's something I know about that I want to include/exclude from my game, such as the EZ Mode dice that got added a while back, which, once I discovered it was on by default, I turned off. So, adding options for players is a good thing, because I can't imagine the "I want more 5e" crowd was going to be happy with loaded dice, right?

option this option that? so why not remove permutations altogether too?

Hehe. Great observation.

Isn't an RPG all about options by definition? Options for character development, companions, dialogue, what quests to do and how to do them, even combat?

Conflation.

Really? That's what an RPG is supposed to be, on a mechanical level. Maybe I'm looking at this sideways, because I'm beginning to believe that this thread isn't about options per se, but about options that maybe you don't want. Don't misinterpret this, there's nothing wrong with that premise, but dismissing core features of an RPG as "Conflation" doesn't add much weight to the argument. It tends to take away from the legitimacy.

So, do you want different difficulties? These are, after all, options. What's your stance on loaded dice? What about character classes and sub-classes? Dialog choices? What about consequences of those dialog choices? Build choices and stat distribution? How generic do you want to take it? Do you want a Skyrim style character, that can, eventually, do everything? I mean, once Multi-Class is added, this will be possible, should that option not be added, or be heavily emphasized? Yes, this is taking it to absurd levels, to demonstrate just how absurd "Conflation" is as a response to core mechanics of an RPG.

Oh come on people, its not his fault that english lacks thousand of different words where every single one of them would be different kind of option. :-/

^Nice.

Conflating character development with an endless slew of mechanical options is, by definition, conflation.

It's conflating options for story quests with options for whether or not shove should be a bonus action.

Honestly, I understand why Larian isn't as responsive to some of the chatter here as folks would like.

I'll happily deny another consumer less fun, if it makes the game more fun and convenient for me. It's Larian's Job to appease the masses, not mine. If I or anyone else begin to not like their product, then I and everyone else need to accept the product is not for me/them anymore, and move on and find another product to consume that is. Nothings wrong with you wanting less options, since it would make the game more fun and/or convenient for you.

Okay, but isn't it more likely that the game will be maximally fun and convenient for you if there are options?

Fun
It's unlikely that Larian chooses the set of mechanics that perfectly matches your tastes. But with options, if there's some mechanic you currently *do* like, then Larian making an option differing from it *shouldn't* (see below) hurt you. And if there's some mechanic you currently *don't* like, then Larian making a different option should make the game strictly better for you.

*depending on the effort involved in adding that option and the corresponding lack of effort put in other aspects of the game, of course. But on average, this unwanted (to you) cost should be made up for by the benefit of options to mechanics you dislike!

Convenience
By definition, the options I'm talking about will make setting up the game more convenient if you want them, and no less inconvenient if you don't. Larian is--almost certainly--ALREADY including at least a few different difficulty settings in BG3; having an unobtrusive "more options here" button won't affect people who don't care, but will be greatly appreciated by those who want to further customize their playthrough.

The problem is, of course, "Option this, option that", and context. When I read the quote chain that led up to my reply, none of this has anything to do with whether or not shove is a bonus action. Whether I think it should be an option or not, which I don't, doesn't matter. How I approach combat doesn't have to have anything to do with shoving. Neither does how I approach doing, or skipping certain quests.

Nope. It's definitely something very, very wrong, because you are not in any way, shape or form gaining any "fun" or "convenience" from denying those options for others. It is pure cussedness and nothing more. It is about denying things for others just for the sake of doing so. Being selfish/looking out for your own interests is one thing, and even understandable. This is something else entirely.

My problem with having so many options is that it starts to feel like you are able to change the rules/core mechanics of the game at a whim. Isn't the point of playing a game to actually play by the rules that the developer sets? If things like food, etc. are optional, why have them at all? It actually bothers me in Solasta that I have so much freedom to change the game mechanics. It's nice because I can turn things off that I don't like (like needing free hands for spells) but it makes me feel like I'm cheating when I do because it's making things easier.

I'd rather the developers take a stance on how the game is meant to be played and force me to play that way. I don't want to build my own game and I'm not interested in testing tons of options to see how I like to play the game best. I'm not going to be upset if there are a ton of options in the final game, but it feels like a cop out to try and keep everyone happy.

Also, I don't see the relation to dialogue or subclass choice. Those are part of the core game experience - decisions that the game forces you to make. Now if there was an option to turn off dialogue or subclass choice, that would be weird.