Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Do YOU enjoy BG3's systemic design?

Same!

And to be the honest same here! But systemic design isn't the same as procedural generation. Being systemicaly consistant and being full of handcrafted content aren't mutually exclusive. While Wierd West has a decent amount of precedurally generated content and absraction it is not the requirement - Systemshock2, Dishonored, Messiah of Might and Magic, Thief1&2, Prey - they are all very handcrafted game. It is just that you engage with them through systems rather then though abstractions. That allows for a more tactile and potentially creative interactions.

BG3 is already full of systems - inventory, combining items, being caught when stealing etc. I just that BG3 could benefit from bring those systems to a bit higher standard of consistency and interactivity. I worry it is in danger of introducing tedium to the game, but no extra gameplay beyond what was scripted outside those systems.

Well, the good thing is that this thread made me continue my Weird West playthrough - which is an enjoyable, a-ok game, which brough my attention to a good example: DIGGING!

You can dig in BG3, but it being a new system it isn't utilised well at the moment. There is stuff to dig, but outside presentation issues - there is no interesting content to truly utilize it.

In Weird West (and games like Wasteland2&3) digging is part of the world - treasures are hidden (and I mean treasures - ones someone buried and you need to find clues to find, not large chests in maps dead-ends to "reward players for exploration"). Bodies can be buried and unburied. Graves in cementaries can be digged up with potential rewards and loss of reputation if spotted. That is kind of stuff that BG3 could use more of, I think. Create handcrafted content with systems you have, rather then having a scripted content with bunch of systems to the side.

Stealth stands out to me as a really janky mess in a game that can be very polished and quite high quality in other ways.

The way everything freezes in a 'turn based bubble' while everything outside is in really time creates soooo many weird interactions. Like the aforementioned ability to just walk around enemies frozen in TB with a stealthed RT character. Or the reverse when enemy reinforcements arrive in RT while you are in battle (hook horrors and goblins are really bad with this), or if an enemy spots a member of your stealthed party, enters TB, and then spams rapid-fire perception checks over the rest of your party (that it initially didn't spot) and drags them into combat before you can actually take advantage of them being stealthed.

There's other weird jank systems in the game, attitude stat with npcs when you do something they don't like, the knockout mechanic, npcs that home in on you even when you succeed on your checks to steal from them. etc. Everything surrounding stealth and the RT/TB system really stands out to me though. Pulls me right out of the game, and usually in a rather irritating manner.

Thanks! I think this is a really nice summary. As combat and exploration systems aren't separate entities in BG3, the way they are in jRPGs or even PoE2, I think Larian needs to carefully examine the transition between the two modes, and their interactions. Why stealthed characters aren't included in the initiative roll is beyond my comprehension.

Something I noticed on a run couple patches ago is lack of neutral actors in combat encounters - there are some scripted ones like kid during harpy fight or cowering gnomes in the forge - for for "dynamic" NPC it seems like being caught in turn based bubble is equal to being aware of the entire battlefield. Perhaps that's why Larian keeps their bubble distractingly small, and limits active participants to the minimum.

I wonder if recent swarm AI could be repurposed for a "neutral turn" that could allow NPC beyond players immediate vision range to enter turn based bubble without slowing down turns. That way if they join the encounter or the encounter spills closer to them, it would make it less jarring as they would be in the same mode as the player. For example, having goblins patrol in real time, as you go through turn based encounter just feels very wrong to me.