Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Opinions on Items

if its a gnome and turnip related , it can have a pass, jokes about turnips are the only acceptable jokes

Counter question: Why does that bother you?
Would anything be different, if those items would have regular white tooltip, rather than green?

Feel free to do your own counting:
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Weapons
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Armor
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Accessories

Or you can believe me that "majority" of items DO have consinstent usefullness.

This is just matter of point of view mostly ...

People keep complaining about "when you have 50% HP" items the most ...
I wouldnt say it translates to "you have to be half dead" ... after all, person with last 1HP is working in this game as just as healthy and capable of doing things as person having full HP, wich we are certainly not if we are single punch from beaing beaten to death ...
So you simply have to be wounded, wich is quite common condition in fantasy, in Dragon Age there is whole magic type based on spilled blood. O_o

Sure we can still ask who and why would create an Magic Armor that is powered by its own wearer blood ... but that is again just matter of poing of view.
Its creator could (just for example) see potential power in that spilled blood, and decided that if you are going to get hurt anyway, you could at least gain something of it, rather than just being harm without any use.
Or it could be failed experiment.
Or ongoing research, if that power of blood would actualy work.
Or it could ben sucesfull experiment, that didnt really catch with people.

I mean, this is the same story as with the tadpole over again ... there is countless (resp. as much as you can make) ways to explain things ...
You just need to open your mind a little, rather than just repeating "you would need to be bad, crazy, stupid, or all that combined to ... w/e" ... but ofcourse if that is the only explanation you are willing to accept ... well, its quite sad story i would say. :-/

Opinions were asked for, and answers given - when you asked for an explanation one was given, Ragnarok, and you decided to back-handedly belittle it. Now you're attempting to 'counter-argue' those opinions, and demeaning them further as closed-minded and sad.

Is this really a productive use of your time and energy?

@Rag, honestly I feel that for the most part you submit many interesting and insightful things in these forums but sometimes it feels like you have to get the last word in just for the sake of it, or to be in your own eyes proven 'right' in any given discussion, continuing to argue somewhat pointlessly over minutiae when a lot of the time we are dealing with opinions.

The issue with colour coded items I find is really quite simple; they seem to be associated mostly with action RPGs and MMOs where probably the biggest, and often sole, motivating factor is in gaining more, better and rarer loot. I won't deny for an instant this isn't a factor for many playing a D&D CRPG but it is by no means the only one.

It would have been very simple to mimic BG2 and have lovely little bits of history behind the item in a pop up window but instead we have this nonsense colour coded crap to remind you yet again this is a video game and the your green item is rarer than your blue one or whatever it is; there has been no attempt to ground you in the world and the history behind the items you find in a nuanced or immersive way.

We are hating on color coded items now? When even the tabletop RPG has that distinction? A reminder for everyone from the DMG :
MMOs and modern RPGs haven't invented it, it is just a tool that have been successfully used since the dawn of the genre. Sure it isn't perfect but its benefits vastly overweight the roughness of the estimation.
And also, some items do have a lore attached to it, be it written in the description or told by the environment. Did we really play the same game?

I currently have covid and have been in bed for 4 days so excuse me if I misread the attached doc but I couldn't see anything about colour coding items in there? Variations of rarity sure, but I do not see the need to colour code them when it could have made abundantly clear from a nice bit of descriptive text. Colour coding reminds you this is a game, however convenient it is.

I have taken the liberty of attaching a few screen grab of items from BG3 and BG2 at random; it is not an extensive list of course. To my eyes, the items in BG2 do a far better job of grounding you in its history and therefore the history of the world at large around you. Many of the items in BG3 don't seem to tell you much more than cosmetic descriptions. I know which I find more immersive and interesting.

[img]https://ibb.co/SPVTPQr[/img]

[img]https://ibb.co/vk4jrPk[/img]

[img]https://ibb.co/nCqgrwX[/img]

[img]https://ibb.co/FJ6Ng47[/img]

[img]https://ibb.co/0mDWr4L[/img]

[img]https://ibb.co/Gfm1nQ3[/img]

Hope you feel better soon!!!

Many magic items in the game do not really feel like D&D/Baldurs gate items, more like common color coded MMO stuff.
I hated magic items in DOS1 and DOS2. This is what really destroyed these games for me...over magic itemization. Halfway through the game, it got boring very fast.
I am really worried for BG3's case. Looking very similar.

First priority to rectify all that : get rid of ALL color coded stuff. Just have common stuff, rarer magical stuff, and unique magical items. Instead of a mmo rainbow tier of magical rarity.
Why?
Way less JUNK items. More specific use unique and interesting stuff to design. And you can have a custom HISTORY/STORY in the description of all these magical items, like...dare I say it....(lol) in BG2.

But I think Larian's target audience expects MMO / Diablo style magic items so I don't think much will change; as long as its fun! As a D&D Baldurs gate game my expectation are now rock bottom...but as a fun Larian RPG turn based game, I am really happy on how things are progressing!

Speaking on color-coded items, I don't think that the color-coding is really the issue. Even if they got rid of it, that wouldn't lead to them changing the logic behind their item design. I'm not a big fan of how they've approached items overall, but the color-coding doesn't bother me since, unlike quite a few things I do take issue with, it's very clearly an out-of-world feature, not something that's in-world that requires us to suspend our disbelief in any way. I think that if they changed everything else about their itemization, then color-coding wouldn't really detract all that much. It's only because of the other, bigger issues that it becomes another straw breaking the camel's back.

And etruscan, I too wishyou a speedy recovery. Take care!

Icelyn you really are a sweetheart. I know I'm a grumpy old f**k so thank you. Likewise @Gray Ghost.

So ...
Basicaly "i know it from here and it reminds the that, wich i dont like" ?

Feel free to corect me, if i read it wrong, im just trying to translate it.

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I for one kinda agree with snowram on this one, its just graphical mark of something that was part of this game since ever.

On the other hand ... i must admit that i never really understand this kind of mechanic (uncommon/rare/very rare/legendary) at all ...
I mean:

How is Worgfang "uncommon" ... does that mean that someone have strip production for Daggers specialy enchanted to fight Goblins? And that there is litteraly hunderts of them in the world? O_o
And if so ...

How about Sussur weapons?
WE created them, they are basicaly first prototypes (or at least that is what i get from that quest, maybe im reading it wrong) ...
But presuming that im right ... why is Sussur Greatsword only uncommon ... meaning (again if i get this right) that they are "not that special after all" ... but Sussur Dagger is rare ... meaning one-tear more rare than 2H Sword ...
Even tho we just made one or another, and unless i indeed read that quest wrong, they are both first-of-their-kind. O_o

I mean how can anything that is one-of-its-kind, something quite unique on the world even be uncommon or rare?
Isnt its uniqueness contradict to both? O_o

😊

In essence, yes you could interpret it that way though I don't have a problem with action RPGs or MMOs per se, I'm just not that keen on the notion of something which feels quite so 'gamey' rather than trying to tie you into the game world. A personal preference I acknowledge that.


These are valid points.

I'm pretty sure that rare, uncommon and so on here stands not for exact model of a weapon, but level of quality so to speak.

Yes indeed, the world would be a brighter, happier place without item colour-coding! I would not be spending my time trying to work out why the developers had included something in the UI that appears to have no purpose, which would lower the cognitive load on my poor addled brain, which is quite inportant as I am old and increasingly senile.
I'll assume that you misunderstood the meaning of the paragraph that you have selectively quoted, as English is not your native lnguage. That paragraph outlined how I generally would like items to appear ( to paraphrase myself; consistent and logical, unless created by a known loon).

The paragraph that followed...
...expressed my view of the current BG3 items.

Yes, of course it's point of view. Personal views are exactly what people are expressing in discussions like this; even if we sometimes like to pretend our views are objective fact, they are never really more than opinion and preference.

This particular example you cite ( an item activating only when you are injured ), fails my personal tests for a thoughtfully designed magic item; but I appreciate you, and other players may find them interesting. Dragon Age ( as you brought it up ) does indeed have "Blood Magic" for the mage and "Reaver" for the Warrior, where a benefit is exchanged for loss of personal health. The magic item equivalent of this would be, for example, a weapon that does additional damage to your target by drawing power from the wielder, probably in the form of health damage. Such a weapon, even without an interesting creation story, is consistent in it's behaviour, as well as being logical, so long as it inflicts more damage on the target than the wielder; so I would probably like such a weapon.

By contrast, in BG3 you can find magic items that I find very interesting, when someone has thoughfully designed them as part of the game world and story. The amulet you can obtain near the forge in the underdark stands out, but even the "Sword in the Stone" added to the underdark during EA, which was nothing more than a +1 longsword, was interesting because it had a story, and you don't get it just by clicking on a chest or dead body.


I can't really respond to this, as I don't have a clue what you are talking about. I don't recall ever contributing to any significant discussiom concerning the tadpole. To date, I have played through EA several times, doing everything from refusing all interaction with the tadpole at one extreme, through to accepting all interactions such that my status flips to "True Soul" at the other extreme. If the released game is good enough, I will probably play through the whole thing several times, playing with different character mind-sets; that is really why I like to play RPGs.

No, not hating. I pointed out that player familiarity with a concept frequently causes game developers to copy the concept, and try to incorporate it into their own game. This makes sense from a sales/marketing perspective, but you can still ask the question as to what the point is within a given game.

Just because everyone has copied WoW for their item tier colours, doesn't mean it's a good idea. D&D had the concept of "Artifacts of legend", which were unique items, but otherwise really just categorised everything into magic or mudane, from a player viewpoint. And for magic items, identifying properties is part of the game.

DMs may have tables to determine drop likelihood (rarity), but it has no real bearing on the player experience, which is probably why BG3 doesn't really seem to have any practical use for tier colours.

WOW adapted Diablo One’s weapons tiers. I fondly remember my %95(?) Kings Ax of Haste. I screamed like a giddy school girl when it dropped as I was an Ax user. Good old days in my guild trying to keep me ears .

IIRC
White = Basic
Blue = Magical
Gold = Unique

Less is more when it comes to magic items for me anyway. I don’t mind some Larian style as long as we don’t end up as d&d god characters at level 6…….

I wasnt implying this ...
It seemed more like the feeling that this should stay there and dont belong here.

Anyway, im glad you made this clear for me, thank you.

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Oooooookey ... i gues.
Still dont quite understand how should i apply that to Sussur weapons.

Get enchantment to a 2H sword, its uncommon, aka fine but nothing too special.
Get the exactly same enchantment, created through exactly same process, and exactly same amount of resources ... and its rare.

Does that make any sense?

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I get that *you* dont need it.
But saying it serves no purpose seems like overstatement. :-/

For items, whats wrong with just having :

Magic (any 1 color)
Non-magic (no color)
?
Simply the best, imho. Anything more becomes MMO/Diablo Tier xxxx junk.
This will naturally make the game have LESS magic items (you dont have to design a common slot, uncommon, rare, etc...with all the stats calibrated to fit these...), which is a GOOD thing I believe. As a Dev, you can now concentrate on making more unique detailed stuff. And magic items become more fantastic and historically rooted in the world. And as a player, it becomes way more exciting discovering these.

Think of it like playing DOS2, removing every single colored magic items (green, blue, purple, red?..I forgot) ; but just keeping and improving only the unique magic stuff, and adding a bit more of those.
Then again, DOS is a silly world...so it kind of fits having a silly amount of magic items...not the best example lol.