Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Preference poll: Automatic Reactions or Prompt Reactions?

I'm just saying I won't play the violin if Larian decides to get rid of Reactions. It seems to be more trouble than it's worth in a video game. Many Reactions could be changed into active abilities that more or less do the same thing.

I like the principle of Concentration but too many Cleric spells require it. Sometimes it feels like you can't cast anything if you have an active concentration spell. It's good at stopping the buffing galore 3.x suffered from, but they took it a bit too far.

Easy choice: definitely the Solasta way over the current BG3 way.

The issue of concentration-based spells that's come up here is a very interesting topic to me. I truly don't get why there are so many of them within every spellcasting type (wizard, sorc, cleric, ranger, paladin, druid). I understand this is actually a 5e issue and not a BG3 issue, but nevertheless I don't get the point of having so many spells available to your character that are concentration-based. In Solasta as well as in my TT D&D games I only bother to take 2-3 of them per spellcasting character.

Solasta-style reaction system out of those two options.

But if some reactions could be handled automatically or toggled on/off, that would be a plus.

There is already a ~25 pages topic on this subject. It has been discussed to no end on Reddit and on the Steam forums. Larian even acknowledged it. I find it fair to said that this topic is redundant (and your posts only incite for an ad hominem response most of the time).

I will always choose full control.

I will admit that this thread only really exists to clear the air and get some kind of headcount on where people stand on this issue. There was a spat in a different thread where people were claiming that the majority preferred one side or the other, which necessitated this.

If you still think something like this is redundant, this poll was not meant for you to begin with. It's actual hard data for Larian to look at.

You are not listening. I just told you that this thread exists entirely in reaction to another discussion where people were wondering what the "split" looks like in this community.
There was no intent to "tread new ground" whatsoever.


And what you are describing as a "ad hominem" I describe as "Calling you out for your (surprisingly consistent) recurring behavior".

Prompt. Because why not.

Although…I kinda think it is a fun challenge to anticipate what could happen and set a reaction up in round one to go off for in round two. You can get a sense of who is moving tactically to attack you, decide if they are enough of a threat to warrant a reaxtion, and set up an autocounterattack when they do attack you…with the chance you may lose it if no one takes the bait.

I did that with Will alot using Hellous Rebuke and it was satisfying when it worked out, frustrating when it did not. I enjoyed it tbh.

Between the two extremes choosing the Solasta option is my preference.

I also want a prompt that reads "Are you sure you want to BREAK CONCENTRATION on this spell to cast another CONCENTRATION spell?"

Yeah... I voted for Solasta, prompts are just helpful.

I command the effort but a poll is pretty much a vain effort, since automatic reactions is an objective flaw of BG3. The fact that Larian themselves commented on the issue proves that it isn't meant to stay that way. In my opinion, the real problem here is Larian communication, which is maintaining the mystery about what the feature will look like later and letting mega-threads grow without a hint for the community.

I want a full screen animated quick time event that pauses until you decide how to resolve the reaction and then action resumes accordingly. You could clean up some clutter on the ui panels this way, this isn't an mmo afterall. In fairness I like the progressive changes over time, ui is a lot easier to navigate like the spell level toggles etc, full screen inventory button etc. I've been playing the game with 3rd party mods that allow more spells, feats and level 6 and it's been interesting.

+1

That would be a nice prompt

Ugh no. Please no. Full screen?

Imagine it.

Level 6 rogue hit by goblin 1. Full screen animated qte. Uncanny dodge? Nah. Goblin only does like 8 damage. Pass. Goblin 2 hits. Same thing. Goblin 3 hits. Same thing. Minthara hits. Same thing. Giant spider hits. Hmmm... maybe I should finally use it. Okay.

Now add a few more reactions to that if your mage knows Counterspell or Shield or Absorb Elements... plus AOO triggers...

Yeah. No thanks. A small unobtrusive prompt would be better, and maybe some presets to cut down on prompt frequency please. Like a preset that Uncanny Dodge would only trigger a prompt if an enemy does more than 10 damage and Counterspell only triggers a prompt for select spells you choose.

Fullscreen dont bother me ... since the game wouldnt continue without our reaction there wouldnt be much to look at anyway.

Quick time event does ... a lot actually ...
This isnt action RPG ... its turn based ... whole game is build on premise that EVERYTHING will wait for player ...
And that premise should IMHO remain intact.

As for that uncany dodge you like so much ...
I would preffer the style Maximuuus suggested ... player would have option to set at the start of every battle wich enemies should be ignored if opourtunity for reaction occurs ...
Yes i know its a little more tedious ... but at least you wouldnt be cheating.

I chose to leave it as is, because of the two, that's the better choice, since I would prefer something different, and decided to vote anyway. An option for "Other" would have been preferrable, even as hard data for Larian, because it would indicate that there are more than two sides to this debate, even if what that "Other" option should be isn't ironed out. They can then peruse the myriad of threads to find the most consistent types of feedback and go with that as a template. As it is, this poll is more self-serving than useful, since it's essentially limited to "You are either with us, or against us"...

Again, the vote on the extremes is more or less a headcount on which extreme people would prefer if it ever came down to that.

It would also offer insight on WHAT a middle ground should look like, and on which side of the extremes that said middle ground should be designed around first. There is a big difference between the following two 'middle ground' concepts:

- Design for full automation first, with options for prompts afterwards.
- Design for full prompts first, with options for automation afterwards.

There are certain implications with either approach. The first approach has an implication that certain abilities may be designed and implemented based on ease of automation before anything else, with options to control how they are used through prompts later. The second approach would instead have an implication that certain abilities may be implemented in ways much closer to their tabletop versions, with options for automation to reduce the frequency of prompts in situations that players may find redundant later.

It's quite a big difference, and it's definitely worth measuring preferences based on that context.

As for a few other things I should probably mention, I made the poll hide results until after voting for two reasons.

1) To force as many people as possible to log in/register and vote
2) It is not really meant to be used as a bludgeon for or against either side of the debate, hence my posts in this thread trying to remain as impartial as possible. Larian appears to favor hard statistics in their feedback over all these megathreads that no one is sure what kind of feedback they are taking from them, and I would not taint these results with personal bullshit.

How many permutations are you going to go through to get something close to a TT experience? The problem with trying to get close to that is that we can't really get there, in a CRPG. Where a GM can say "this happens, what do you do", and the player can then respond from whatever list of things they have on their character sheet that they can do. Trying to replicate this in game would amount to spending x amount of time either before each combat, or at the start of each round, going through that list, for each party member. It's also more likely to be per round than per combat, because as characters are removed from combat, the situations will change. What if a Concentration check fails in the middle of the fight? What if the biggest threat is removed? There are a myriad of possible scenarios that can occur that would change what a character may choose as their reaction.

If the solution is going to be a prompt for every possible reaction, every single time, combat is going to become a nightmarish mishmash of confirmations, more akin to QTEs than actual turn-based combat. Considering that the game isn't based on QTEs, that's counter to what we should be looking for. Going through the whole list of possible reactions at the start of each turn will also lengthen combat, which can already be "slow". What we have isn't ideal, but it's vastly superior to QTE based combat that a steady stream of confirmations could be for reactions. Constantly having to push Yes or No is no different from mashing X. I can play Tomb Raider, or AC 3 if I'm looking for something like that.

I voted prompts because - as others mentioned - I prefer full control over speed of combat when it comes to RPGs and tactical games and if I would have only those 2 extremes to chose from I would choose prompts. But Im also open to any middle ground or a customizable conditions system.

I have some wishful thinking in that Larian is going to change things for reactions or at least extend the current version with more control, because we were not provided with Shields yet. Its kind of a signature spell as per my understanding and it would have been relatively easy to implement it for EA already as a simple toggle, but they did not add it yet. This shows to me that they are still testing things out for reactions. I might be wrong but I also can see too many people (and I dont think its a vocal minority) who doesnt like the current version of the reactions or reaction-like abilities we have in EA to ignore that entirely - so i dont think Larian will.

Im just hoping we are going to have the opportunity to test any alternatives/extensions coming to it before release. It's already a great game for me but how reactions work currently is the thing which causes me think "it could have been much better" when I'm playing.

We are still in EA, so fingers crossed.