Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 8 Feedback

OK, so I just completed the entirety of Patch 8, and got greeted by Swen's final words (which is always a cool touch, btw), so now I feel its time to provide some feedback on the overall experience.

Whilst I have enjoyed the entirety of the EA experience, I can honestly say that this is the most fun I've had with it since launch. The Bard is a very versatile class, with a cool combination of abilities. The visuals-especially the cinematics-continue to improve in leaps & bounds-though I did still notice a few minor glitches (like the transition from Long Rest back to the normal game, & the clipping of the Mind-flayer's tentacles in the crashed Nautiloid). The new UI is very good, and easy to navigate, though an ability to adjust the size of the panel in the settings would be very handy. Truth is, I have very little criticism to make of the game, though I do have a few suggestions about improvements I'd like to see in future patches.

Long Rest: I still feel its a little too easy to "cheese" the long-rest system, making it almost unnecessary to even remotely conserve spells and abilities in difficult encounters. There are several ways I can think of to help balance Long Rest a bit better:
-Make Camp supplies a bit more scarce within the world-either by having them less readily available, having fewer items contribute to your Camp Supply "points", giving some items a lower value and/or by bringing back the ability for food items to grant small hp boosts (thus forcing players to make difficult decisions about how to use these resources). In particular, I think condiments and alcohol should only provide a bonus to any Camp Supply "points" already granted by actual foods (like fish, cheese, vegetables etc).
-Have a cool-down "timer" that prevents you from using long rest too soon after the previous use, and/or maybe Long Rest cannot be used until you've used up at least one of your short rest charges.
-Have more areas on the map where you cannot Long-rest, and other areas where long rest has a higher Camp Supply cost (by extension, some areas could have a lower Camp Supply cost).

Aside from that, I do hope we'll also see some more Long Rest "backgrounds" put into the game at launch, to further aid with immersion. You've already provided us with quite a few, but more wouldn't hurt .

Character Creation: Whilst I do appreciate the level of variety we already have in creating our character, I'd definitely love to see a bit more. Aside from "head presets", it'd also be great to see a handful of presets (3-4) for certain facial features-such as the size/shape of the eyes, size/shape of the nose and size/shape of the mouth. Ears, too, might be cool....but not essential. What is most important to me, though, is having a handful of presets for Height and for Girth-within each race. So for height you might have short, average, tall and huge (like Halsin), and for girth you might have slender, average, bulky and hulking (again, like Halsin). This would definitely help with making even more unique characters for each game. Lastly, I'm not sure how possible it would be to do, but it would also be great if we could get a couple more voice options, for each gender.

Reaction System: You guys have probably heard this a lot, but I think as more "reaction-centric" class abilities start getting introduced, some kind of full-fledged reaction system will be needed. One way to do it might be a Solasta type system-though that might disturb the flow of combat too much. Another approach might be to use a system like when you target a spell or ability at one or more opponents. You select the opponent(s) that you want your Reactive Ability to be triggered by, when you select said Ability.

Party Size Whilst I don't have an issue with a 4 party limit-at least at the current difficulty)-I would like to see more opportunities added-especially in Acts 2 & 3-to temporarily add an extra player to the party, like we could choose to do with Halsin.

Some additional things: A few things I'd like to get a chance to test in any remaining patches for this year would be:

-the ability to have level 5 & 6 characters.

-the ability to multiclass.

I would definitely like to start playtesting/balancing things like this before the game gets into the final stretch.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on these matters. Had a magnificent time playing the game, & can definitely feel it slowly clicking into its final form. Indeed, I already can't wait to get back into a new game. I never got to play a Barbarian during Patch 7, so I think that would be cool .

Ah, I forgot one other thing with respect to Character Creation. I'd like to have more choices for my starting equipment, and I'd like to have more control over assigning points to my various attributes.

Long Rest: If they limited long rests they'd have to rework their companion quest triggers (Gale, Astarion,etc) , boss introductions (Raphael), tadpole dreams, pets and followers joining camp... so, no thanks. They are already popping up one after another, or not showing up if you get even slightly too much approval between two consecutive rests...

Also, if someone wants to beat the game by resting every 5 minutes, let them. Most of act 1 is easy enough to beat, with plenty of team combos that mow down everything without blinking, but if anyone needs it, let them do whatever they can to experience the entire content.

The finished version will have different diffficulty levels. They may limit resources (or modify the AI so that players will have to practice good resource management anyway.)

Character Creation: Additional voices have been datamined (4 more iirc) but they don't have as many recorded lines as voices 1-4 so we probably won't be getting them in Early Access.

+1 to having different body shapes. Unless I invest in strength and constitution for some weird RP reason, I don't want my 8 str wizard looking like my barbarian.
Body sizes might present an issue because animations already look wonky on smaller races... and hopefully smaller races will get their own custom animations like the elves did... but I can't see them going the extra mile just for body sizes.

I thought that another mechanic that can punish taking excessive long rests is if time actually went by, and the amount of "days" that you waste in act one had a repercussion on the story moving forward. It could be many things, like your situation with the tadpole getting worse every day, or that you miss on certain things or content if you don't beat act one in less than X days. You could also give away loot with some magical attribute that fades away, so if you want to have that +2 sword by the time you reach Baldur's Gate you better hurry up and make the most of each day cause the magic will fade soon.