Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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What was really cool with ammunition in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 in my opinion is that among other things, it structured your adventures.

You were travelling in a huge world and at some point you were forced to rest in town or village. To buy ammunitions, to restore your party, to sell your items because your bags were full, to spend your money because they weren't magical items at every corner...

When you left a town you were never sure when you'll be able to find the next merchant. You never knew how long would be that quest or the dungeon you were preparing to explore, you never knew how many night you'd have to rest in the wild.
Exploration and quests were adventures you carrefully had to prepare.

Sure, you were able to buy tons of arrows... but the more arrows, the less slots in your inventory. Ammunition was a ressource, and sometimes a very precious one.

I would like ammunition in BG3 but I don't think it would really add a lot of flavor : The map is a lot smaller, there aren't any villages, there's mostly no point at coming back to places you have already visited, you can teleport for free, there aren't unexpected danger, you can rest everywhere safely, inventory is unlimited, the game is turn based (which mean you use a lot less arrows...)....

Last edited by Maximuuus; 27/02/23 07:53 PM.

French Speaking Youtube Channel with a lot of BG3 videos : https://www.youtube.com/c/maximuuus
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Yeah, the same old problem since the beginning of the early access. The story of BG3 gets better and better, but the adventure itself is still bland, thanks to the unrestricted camp access. Guess it's a common illness of 3A games, to cover as many gamer-bases as possible, at cost of sacrificing in-game mechanics even it was the actual core of its own game's type. And here, in BG3, the most important in-game mechanic for both DnD and cRPG is the Long Rest, which was ruined. Pity.

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To be honest I deeply despised ammo management in BG2 due to the amount of clicks it generated while posing no challenge. Like you could have easily couple thousand arrows if it pleased you. Easily.

Rather than restoring the ammo system I would say the ressource management system as a whole needs way more love but that really doesn't come without major re-design of certain concepts like endless fast travel making any system of this kind straight up pointless.

My best proposals regarding this particular aspect:
1) Separated maps/zones( like grymforge for instance!) where you know in advance your ressources will be limited and you will not have the ability to reach to your endless bag of goodies could be one way to adress this( giving devs control over player's ressources, the player party has only what's in their pockets at a given time).

From player's perspective he receives the info he won't be able to rest too much in the given area he's going to and worst case scenario , if he thinks he can't complete all encounters he will be able to leave. But he won't be able to return.
The logic behind it:

In a more controlled environment choosing when to rest and engage combat suddenly becomes a real issue if failure due to ressource exhaustion linked to planning failure on player's part is an actual possibility in a given scenario. Grymforge is quite large but let's say you cut off the boss /lava area(just to illustrate my example, i'm not saying grymforge should be shrinked lol).

The player receives the option to leave the area( but he can't come back at all).
He can long rest once.
Short rest twice.
Consumables suddenly get an insane value in such a situation.
We don't introduce ammo management so poor virion doesn't throw his keyboard throught the window. Win win!

Such areas could have quests linked to them( small quests) involving some kind of investigation to discover what awaits you, what type of enemies you will face, what challenges(Maybe it's a very montainous or dark region?).

Maybe what kind of equipment you would need for this particular zone?( Like a grapplin hook or something, just a quest item you could obtain/buy as part of the " preparation quest" while on site having this quest item could open a new passage. --> I'm giving this example because it sounds insanely cringe in the light of BG3 verticality , right? Well in this context we have no idea where we are going whatsoever. We don't know if we can afford using our spellslots to jump around like rabbits.

Imposing all those restrictions and preparations on a player makes little sense on the scale of the entire game. But in the context of 1-2 special areas ? I think it can be very cool.


2) Essentially all larger areas could be seperated by a larger distance this way making the druid grove a hub ( with endless storage) while the " travelling " setup would indeed limit your inventory space, sleep count, what you take away with you etc. Below it's just me talking about random stuff cause it makes non sense in BG3 whatsoever in the form i described it.

Bah, you could even go crazy with it and make travelling an actual challenge with food rations in the early game limiting your effective travel range while introducing the concept of caravans to not make it a hassle in the mid game and this way reduce the amount of resupply runs required( while coming back to ressuply etc can be fun once or twice if it happens too often it will be insanely annoying too).

Depending on your allegiance with certain factions some areas of the " travel map" could be more or less dangerous etc maybe with some random encounters but we're talking about a different game here. Like literally, BG3 with it's concept of a no -loading screens at all and fast travel simply can't afford to go crazy with this because that entire concept assumes portals either don't exist or are heavy limited.

Solasta attempted to adress that issue by having travel time+random encounters+ portals at key places. It worked ok -ish , wasn't too crazy either. Like I wouldn't trade BG3 for Solasta over that system, that's my point.


So there are ways to make that aspect of the game interesting and enjoyable without feeling like someone forced it onto BG3. But yes, any ressource management system is bound to fail in an open environment with infinite fast travel , endless pockets and ( admitedly?) infinite sleep.

Last edited by virion; 02/03/23 02:46 AM.

Alt+ left click in the inventory on an item while the camp stash is opened transfers the item there. Make it a reality.
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Yeah, you guys have the point. The game's problem is not the lack of ammo but the lack of pacing of camp/vendors' access. I now totally agree.

Originally Posted by virion
From player's perspective he receives the info he won't be able to rest too much in the given area he's going to and worst case scenario
Good Idea. And maybe some companion reaction, for example, before questioning Zorru, if player rest more than once, Lae'zel may want to leave the party for good. And if finding the Githyanki patrol takes too long, Lae'zel may want to leave as well and look for her kins alone. And Gale, if too much rest without feeding him with artifact, he may want to steal from the player or steal from the Druids. If he did steal from the player, he leaves the party, and if he steal from the druids, they turn into hostile.

Originally Posted by virion
Essentially all larger areas could be seperated by a larger distance this way making the druid grove a hub ( with endless storage) while the " travelling " setup would indeed limit your inventory space, sleep count, what you take away with you etc. Below it's just me talking about random stuff cause it makes non sense in BG3 whatsoever in the form i described it.
Actually, the map feels too compacted. From the shore to the Gith patrol and goblin camp, it is like 15 map in other cRPGs: the Shore the 1st map, the ruin temple the 2nd map, the druid cove the 3rd map, the passage from cove to blighted village the 4th map, the blighted village the 5th map, the goblin camp the 6th map, the goblin occupied temple 7th map, the bridge and barn 8th map, the gnoll queen's gang the 9th map, the toll house the 10th map, the inn on fire the 11th map, the gith patrol the 12th map, the auntie's wetland the 13th map, the auntie's den the 14th map, the spider cave the 15th map. But in BG3 they were zipped into one big mega map and 4-6 sub maps. And since these maps were so compacted, most of the areas only have enough room for placing some mini-bosses or bosses, not enough room for placing horde of weaker enemies and no place for some random encounters occur.
Too bad enlarge the map or separated the map means tons of reworks. It's something too late to suggest even in day 1 of the early access.

I think the "worst case scenario" you mentioned could be the best solution for both better storytelling and better resource management, if there were some tickers. For example, the tiefling vs druid scenario, once player arrived at the cove, starts count down the ticking of the tiefling vs druid clash. Make the countdown ticking set to 8(at normal difficulty, and 4 at highest difficulty), each long rest counts as 1 tick, each area changing(fast travel or not) counts as 1 tick, and after player reaches the blighted village or owlbear cave or auntie's wetland, if player head back to the druid cove without defeating all goblin bosses, it counts as 3 ticks. When the ticks run out, if the player did cleared the goblins in blighted village and gnoll queen, then the tiefling will leave the cave, if not, they will have a fight auto started against the druids.

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