(It's not JandK or Ragnarok that needs to be convinced anyway, it's Larian. Perhaps I'm biased against long pointless rambling arguments because I have the privilege of just making sure feedback is heard and delivered personally. So technically most of this is entirely pointless as I've personally forwarded feedback about it to the team myself, beyond that only new interesting ideas that isn't already forwarded is worthwhile. Whether or not it's put to use or to what end is beyond me, but I rest comfortably knowing it's at least heard.)
Is there a place where we can find out how to give good feedback? Or do you know what constitutes good feedback/suggestion? I want to give my opinion, but I'd rather tailor it in a way that is most helpful to the team and folks delivering feedback/suggestion to the team.
+1
is by far the best, as it skips a few steps and goes more directly to those who is meant to hear it. What I've collected and forwarded is assimilated into a large document and given to my connections which forward it to the same people. So you could hope I or someone else happen to lurk the post, or you can send it directly 😋
As for how to write good feedback, there's no like formula to that imo. But I can answer it from a developer's mind, or rather a game designer in this case and how Larian's hierarchy goes. To grotesquely simplify it:
What you like or don't like, and why. Often, the player doesn't know why they don't like something. Or maybe they think they know, but is in fact just a symptom of a larger problem that a designer recognizes. To them it's just important to understand what causes players not to enjoy something, or what causes them to enjoy something and the ramifications it has.
I can give you a very specific example for BG3 that changed and was a result of feedback, and how the feedback was presented and later understood:
Baldur's Gate 3's narration was written in 2nd-person past tense I believe, and player dialogue in 1st person past tense. See the picture below for an example.
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/NggoSan.png)
Some feedback said they didn't like it. Many couldn't explain why, but it was weird. It felt weird and "off".
The explanation to why was because when you tell a story in past tense, you present something as if it's already happened. You're not present in the moment, the there and now. You're not actually making choices, you're not forging your own path, deciding what to do. You're just hearing the re-telling of a tale that took place in the past. Someone's reading you a book. This takes away from the adventuring feeling and diminishes the player's immersion of exploring and roleplaying through a world. It's bordering a tell-tale game.
Where the line goes of how much of "why" a player needs to explain or where the game designer needs to figure out where the "why" is, isn't really a fixed metric so that's hard to answer tbh. Basically just describe what you like and don't like, and why that is to the best of your understanding. For example long rests and how they're spammable, but that it feels unimmersive or weird because we're supposedly in a hurry because of the tadpole in our heads. Perhaps Larian knows something that'll later make it make sense for the player in hindsight, and that it was never a hurry to begin with.
Then it becomes a matter of... Yeah, the presentation comes off as weird in early access, but has more purpose in the full game and isn't going to change in EA because of it. So maybe the tadpole front isn't the way to go. That's hard to know (And I don't know), but I assume this is the case later on. Instead my main focus on the long rest discussion is the ebb and flow of when it feels natural to long rest (or lack of that natural feeling for players) and how it pairs with companion events at camp. And how that's communicated to the player while adventuring. I see tons of players on platforms I lurk that talk about how they constantly go back and forth from camp to check if there's more companion dialogue to be had because they don't want to miss anything. I think that's bad and needs fixing because I think it adds unnecessary tedium for those players for no good reason.
