It's so stupid that a figther with action surge can bring back from a death door state the full party to a maximum hp with just throwing potions. And he can trow at least 6-7 potions .
This is so baffling to me.
Their game has always been too easy, yet they just keep adding new nonsensical exploits like this to D&D for the player that cut tactical depth from the game. Having a Cleric in the party provides no tactical advantage with Mass Cure Wounds anymore, because anyone can just throw potions to the same effect. And Fighters can just spam them.
Not only do you not have to actually drink potions anymore but they are also AoE when thrown. As far as immersion goes, this is the most ridiculous gamey invention ever. Personally I don't think meme stuff like this belongs in a mature RPG, for immersive world-building reasons alone.
Same with the unlimited "Help" action that effectively counters tons of enemy damage without failure. Boss hit a party member for 75 damage and downed them? I'll just click this button to get them to +1 again. And the boss has to try to down them again, and again, spending excessive amounts of damage against 1HP. And then you can just revive, again and again.
If they fix combat and limit player damage output so that you can't cheese bosses or alpha strike them in one turn, these issues will rise up next in removing tactical challenge from combat. I'd start with removing the healing exploits from harder difficulties.
I just don't understand this barrel placement and explosives taking no action or bonus action. To select 89 explosives placing it on the floor w/or spending an action or anything then trow bomb or a fire arrow spell whatever. Deal 6000 damage then scratch will use the help action . Encounter won w/o effort.
I understand that they allow this on story mod but on the hardest difficulty. Why I even need to fight just insert a i win button somewhere on the screen.
They removed this bull from divinity 1-2 . Why the hell is it available in bg3?? It erase all the work and effort what they did in 38 minutes.
The suggestion/feedback is for Larian to make the game more difficult.
Coming in and saying "you can self restrict!" is not helpful. Everyone *already* knows that they can self restrict whatever they want. Do you think you're enlightening someone with a new idea?
Again, the game is too easy. The suggestion/feedback is for Larian. The "want* is that Larian upgrades the difficulty. A few suggestions ha
- Careful planning required.
Restrictions on availability of resources need to be very carefully planned. Otherwise, it will be just another way to cheat. Think about this: if you raise difficulty to your suggested new level, how do you want the game engine to remove items/resources from the game? Which/what/how many items to be removed from where and also exactly when?
- Ramifications have to be considered.
Also, keep in mind: if it's not a player self restriction, if you want Larian to implement a new rule, the change (new rule) will equally affect millions of players worldwide. However, the perceived "too easy" is not universal at all - no known data suggest that. If I had not spent a lot of time, the game would still be very hard to me too. Regardless, I suffered a full party wipe on the first day I played the game.
Among roughly 20 million BG3 players worldwide (which is an estimate by a company based partly on Steam's data), according to Larian, 1.3 million playthroughs had been completed by end of Nov 2023 (in roughly 3.5 months after the full release of the game). Think about this: if ~95% of BG3 players have not completed the game, how do they even know if the game is genuinely too easy or too hard? If you have completed the game and can confirm the game is too easy (or not), you are minority. You are among the 1.3/20 = 6.5% of player base.
- On the technical part.
Technically, the abundance of resource items cannot be the most relevant source of perceived "too easy" - such that: let's remove some items and the game will immediately magically become harder. if you remove weapons, I can switch to scrolls. If you remove scrolls, i can switch to the actual spells - you cannot remove spells themselves, right? by removing weapons, you cannot remove my fists, right? I can switch to monk class and continued to feel "too easy". if you remove food, I personally don't care. I can always take a long rest without using food and still get half of the full rest effects. On average, I play 10+ hours and take 1 long rest.
- My opinion: The ultimate reason for perceived "too easy" is that Larian has deliberately kept the game manageable to millions of players, thereby making it inevitably feel "too easy" to a tiny number of more experienced, returning players, such as you. All the players like you, put together, are possibly less than 1.3/20 = 6.5% of player base, as 1.3 million completed playthroughs could very well be done by much fewer players than 1.3 million. If 1.3 million playthroughs were done by 1 million players, you are among 5% of the play base.
- The game deliberately tries not to raise NPC levels to match the player party - at least in Act 3.
In Act 2, most guards are level 8. My Karlach party of level 6 are already powerful enough to kill all of level 8 guards.
In Act 3, most guards are level 10, with some variations, whereas robots are always level 11. But my party can quickly earn enough XP ready to hit level 12. Yet, potentially hostile creatures and bosses seem to be capped at level 11 most of the time. Very few are level 12. How can level 10/11 enemies beat a party of well-armed level 12 characters?
Additionally, every party of 12 can create a huge army of summons, making the total of a player party up to 30+, if I counted correctly. On a fast computer, a player party of size 30 is still manageable.
To make the game feel "too easy" you really don't need items. One way to do so (without any items) is: just use spells to create a huge army to outnumber your enemies - that's about it.
Here is a concrete example of how Larian has deliberately kept Act 3 easy enough to millions of players:
A most deceptively easy fight in Act 3 is when I expected a serious wizard duel in a wizard tower. Before I entered the portal, I was even a bit nervous, as I was recalling my memory about the tower called "Watcher's Keep" - an unforgettable experience from BG2. I hesitated but decided to level Gale up - he should lead any wizard duel - making Gale the only level 12 character in my party. However, after I entered the port and saw my opponent, I was hugely disappointed... Do you know that human mage's actual level? Or at least give me a guess about his level, please? Anyway, we finished this "duel" with zero HP lost among all my 4 party members. And that was on Tactician difficulty. That was in Act 3. This kind of perceived "too easy" has nothing to do with there being too many items and so on. I don't use potions, scrolls, barrels, etc. Larian has also made it unnecessary to use items in such a mage duel. Gale, being a level 12 wizard, is supposed to be miles ahead of a lowly low-level mage, who is no better than a wizard in Act 2 who at least fought us in a more or less honest way and felt mighty in Act 2.
In BG2, dragons and hordes of creatures are summoned to guard occasionally worthless treasures. In BG3, only a lowly wizard tries to guard a huge collection of most expensive scrolls. And all the traps/locks are more cosmetic than a real deterrence to any thief. Unbelievable. Yet, believe or not, this mage has given quite some players and even reviewers a headache. Some reviews picked by MSN even claim this is a hardest battle in the game.
The only thing is bothering me is your math with 1.3 million is 6.5 % of 20 million. Where did you get this number??? That's not 20 million players. I tell you till October I already did 8 times tactician.
And another thing is I played for example elden ring and fallout 4 and Skyrim individually more then 500 hours but I never ever finished any of them. ( I do plan to finish elden ring I just wait for the dlc) You know why because some people have the urge to try out with another class or they have a better idea ect ect... It doesn't mean that the game is too hard for them. It can be a lot of other things. Another thing I played bg3 ower 3400 hours but I only complited 16 times mybe more but . Some ppl reporting that they did 10 times with less than 1000 hour's.
In BG2, dragons and hordes of creatures are summoned to guard occasionally worthless treasures. In BG3, only a lowly wizard tries to guard a huge collection of most expensive scrolls. And all the traps/locks are more cosmetic than a real deterrence to any thief. Unbelievable. Yet, believe or not, this mage has given quite some players and even reviewers a headache. Some reviews picked by MSN even claim this is a hardest battle in the game.
In BG2 even a single wizard could be a formidable opponent: insta-casting a bunch of impenetrable protections then proceeding to call a Time Stop. In BG3 the big wizard fight usually starts with the big wizard being killed in the first turn, and the player is left to deal with a horde of powerful elementals. The only way BG3 can make fights challenging is by throwing more and more trash mobs at you, which does not jive well with the already slow turn based system. By the time the big wizard fight ends, you had already forgotten about the existence of the wizard. They even had to add two random water elementals to the dragon fight. Why wasn't the dragon made powerful enough on its own?
The only thing is bothering me is your math with 1.3 million is 6.5 % of 20 million. Where did you get this number??? That's not 20 million players. I tell you till October I already did 8 times tactician.
Based on PS5 trophy statistics 12.4% have completed the game. I assume it is similar for PC too. There is a large drop between the prologue and the end of act I. 86% have escaped from the Nautiloid, but only 40% reached the end of the first act. This is not uncommon for these types of games. People stop playing for all kinds of reasons. It is not necessarily related to difficulty. That being said, it is pretty safe to assume that BG3 was quite challenging to many players. It's a niche game hyped into the mainstream.
Tonight, I watched two bg3 streams, both in honour mode.
First was WolfheartFPS. He began by beating the steel watch titan. It happened before the titan even had an opportunity to act. Then he took out Sarevok. Sarevok never got to act. After that, he finished Gortash. All that encounter took was an Otto's spell followed by Lae'zel's sword. There was never a moment where any of it felt difficult or dangerous.
Next, I watched ThePowerHour stream his solo run. Which he won tonight. Now, what he did was not easy; I'm not saying it was. But the fact that he was able to do it solo speaks volumes.
- My opinion: The ultimate reason for perceived "too easy" is that Larian has deliberately kept the game manageable to millions of players, thereby making it inevitably feel "too easy" to a tiny number of more experienced (...)
Honour was just supposed to offer a "one save run", not a (so) harder content. There is already 3 difficulty modes (you can switch between at anytime) + new Honour and "Custom" you can manualy max the difficulty with, so Larian probably already loudly kept this way BG3 "manageable".
Question for fans of ultra-opti-builds and GodKiller stuffs (that most of players, including in harder modes, don't care) => "custom mode" doesn't offer a better challenge ?
Why is it impossible to select honour mode options in custom difficulty? I have completed the honour mode, now I want to play with saves. Are there plans to change the custom mode?
No to limiting long rests, or food, or taking away multi classing, that is a surefire way to get people to play honor mode just once and never again, way too limiting in a game that emphasis freedom of choice. It's your choice and right to go full nova each fight and long rest, just the same to self-impose restrictions on yourself by not doing so.
The major glaring issue I see with honor mode is the braindead AI and easily manipulated, Larian seriously needs to polish enemy behavior and slapping a couple legendary actions is not enough.
I have lost count on the amount of times enemies dash/disengage straight into my AOE spells (cloud of daggers, not just a fire surface mind you) and they explode or end their turn in the AOE giving me freebie kills.
If a party member goes down you can just healing word them knowing the AI is going to just focus them down again and waste their actions trying to kill the companion outright when they should be turning their attention to you.
Other times if I am on high ground and the enemy can't reach me they just stare at me out in the open ending their turn (very rarely will an enemy have a "pull" skill to knock you off) there is ZERO self-preservation in the AI to run to cover or draw me out of my position by throwing things at me.
Other than the occasional hold person or burning hands the AI also fails to use the plethora of spells or throwables in the game to actually change up approaches to combat and make spellcasters an ACTUAL THREAT.
As it stands the AI in this game feel very like a neutered version of their DoS2 counterparts, the problem with that is BG3 has limiting actions while DOS2 enemies can take multiple actions in a turn so the threat is very real if you allow a spellcaster to chill in the backlines uncontested.
That is why NPCs like Anders is so feared because he actually uses his class abilities like any paladin would, we need smarter AI.
The only thing is bothering me is your math with 1.3 million is 6.5 % of 20 million. Where did you get this number??? That's not 20 million players. I tell you till October I already did 8 times tactician.
And another thing is I played for example elden ring and fallout 4 and Skyrim individually more then 500 hours but I never ever finished any of them. ( I do plan to finish elden ring I just wait for the dlc) You know why because some people have the urge to try out with another class or they have a better idea ect ect... It doesn't mean that the game is too hard for them. It can be a lot of other things. Another thing I played bg3 ower 3400 hours but I only complited 16 times mybe more but . Some ppl reporting that they did 10 times with less than 1000 hour's.
Some sources have estimated how many copies of BG3 have been sold in about 3-4 months so far. All the numbers center around 15-20+ millions. Though one copy can be played by more than 1 person (two family members don't have to buy two copies and a whole family may only want to buy 2 copies for playing co-op), it is reasonable to assume 1 copy sold => 1 player of BG3 resulted. So, ~20 million player base is a best estimate we can get so far.
1.3 million is only the total number of playthroughs completed. Some may have completed several playthroughs, some may have spent a lot of time without completing even once. However, on average, it is also a best estimate we can get to assume ~1.3 million players have completed the game. Example: you completed 2 times and I completed none - on average, you and I each have completed mathematically once - this is just math - 2 players have completed 2 playthroughs in total. Another example: you completed 10 times and 9 players like me have not completed - on average, 10 players have completed 10 times - again, this is just math - each of the 10 players has completed mathematically once on average.
If you have more data, we can refine our estimates. So far, however, 1.3 million / 20 million = 6.5% completion rate of BG3 is, for lack of more accurate data, the best estimate I have got from known data sources.
No to limiting long rests, or food, or taking away multi classing, that is a surefire way to get people to play honor mode just once and never again, way too limiting in a game that emphasis freedom of choice. It's your choice and right to go full nova each fight and long rest, just the same to self-impose restrictions on yourself by not doing so.
...we need smarter AI.
I agree with you. Honor is just a "honorable" variation of Tactician. Smarter AI is the only right route to take for creating a genuinely challenging mode. Players choosing to limit their long rests, their use of resources, or their leveling up options does not contribute in any way to creating a "smarter" AI.
Originally Posted by JandK
Tonight, I watched two bg3 streams, both in honour mode.
First was WolfheartFPS. He began by beating the steel watch titan. It happened before the titan even had an opportunity to act. Then he took out Sarevok. Sarevok never got to act. After that, he finished Gortash. All that encounter took was an Otto's spell followed by Lae'zel's sword. There was never a moment where any of it felt difficult or dangerous.
Next, I watched ThePowerHour stream his solo run. Which he won tonight. Now, what he did was not easy; I'm not saying it was. But the fact that he was able to do it solo speaks volumes.
The game is too easy. It just is.
The game is hard to millions of players who can't afford 100s of hours doing just 1 game (to entertain themselves), let alone like certain YouTubers who may spend 100+ hours / week preparing "amazing" BG3 videos to entertain random strangers for "views".
To me, Honor (as it is right now) is just a calling for a new achievement. Once it's done, forever it's done - you can't even trace your steps backward as there is only one save. So, an Honor run is supposed to be VERY different. The easier the Honor mode is, the better. The faster a Honor run goes, the better. Shortcuts, tricks, high-level spells, legit abuses, etc., should all be used to get the achievement.
The only meaningful goal of an Honor run is just an achievement. And any "amazing" YouTuber would show potential Honor runners how to get the achievement in an amazingly short time or otherwise amazingly easy way. In a way, they have to make the game ALWAYS look easy (to you the audience).
It is very understandable if a YouTube only wishes to make a Honor run more or less look like a walk in the park. This has little to do with how easy/hard the game is to millions of players who merely play or role-play the game to entertain themselves.
Imagine this: Should an "amazing' YouTube choose to be silly enough to fight Titan/Gortash/etc. in a "normal" way (like a first-time newbie player) - on Honor Mode - would you still feel their gameplay videos "amazing" at all?
The game is hard to millions of players who can't afford 100s of hours doing just 1 game (to entertain themselves), let alone like certain YouTubers who may spend 100+ hours / week preparing "amazing" BG3 videos to entertain random strangers for "views".
To me, Honor (as it is right now) is just a calling for a new achievement. Once it's done, forever it's done - you can't even trace your steps backward as there is only one save. So, an Honor run is supposed to be VERY different. The easier the Honor mode is, the better. The faster a Honor run goes, the better. Shortcuts, tricks, high-level spells, legit abuses, etc., should all be used to get the achievement.
The only meaningful goal of an Honor run is just an achievement. And any "amazing" YouTuber would show potential Honor runners how to get the achievement in an amazingly short time or otherwise amazingly easy way. In a way, they have to make the game ALWAYS look easy (to you the audience).
It is very understandable if a YouTube only wishes to make a Honor run more or less look like a walk in the park. This has little to do with how easy/hard the game is to millions of players who merely play or role-play the game to entertain themselves.
Imagine this: Should an "amazing' YouTube choose to be silly enough to fight Titan/Gortash/etc. in a "normal" way (like a first-time newbie player) - on Honor Mode - would you still feel their gameplay videos "amazing" at all?
Dude. For the sake of brevity:
1. I don't find them amazing. That's the point. The game is too easy. I've personally walked through Honour Mode.
2. If millions of people find it hard, then the hardest difficulty probably isn't for those millions of people.
3. The hardest difficulty should be difficult.
Why some people are so against the game being difficult is beyond me. If you don't care for a difficult playthrough, play on a lower difficulty and let the rest of us find the challenge level we're looking for. While I'm sure you find your own input valuable, I'm curious why folks asking for a harder challenge warrants that input.
Since the Gold dice were a nice motivating factor, they should keep with that. Like there could just as easily be the Green D20, the Red D20, the Black D20 etc. for the full spectrum like belts in martial arts or whatever.
I think I would also be interested in achievements which would play up or highlight different riffs on the difficulty curve, like with different characters or classes. Maybe with Duo Tone D20s for more variety.
Maybe we get a D20 for the "Autumnal Hues of Gale" if you complete the game with him as your partner, or I don't know, but they could do that for many things where the challenge keys off a particular set of tactics or goals that might be associated specifically, so it needn't be a one off or one size/color fits all.
I can think of a number of ways right now that the game might be made more difficult, or perhaps just more tedious or more meta depending on the perspective. Ideas for that might be...
Withering Silence: Where you never say hi to Withers or use any of those features of the game, declining when offered. Some sort of Black and White D20 that looks like it's from the silent film era.
Dirt Nap: the above plus permanent death for the Companions. So perhaps a companion can be resurrected once, but you gotta drag them to a temple or use some form of divine intervention where they can cap it. I don't know say it removes all the revivify scrolls from merchants or just makes them so prohibitively expensive that it's effectively off the table after the first time. This way you can keep the narrative stuff in play that may require a death/revivify mechanic for story reasons, but where that's limited to just one near death per character. Or something along those lines.
Or you could do some stuff in between. Say a narrower limit on the total number of camp followers so that Hirelings/Zombies only come into play once the regular group is thinned out.
For something on the other end of the spectrum, the Rainbow Bridge D20 might make it so that there is never a Pet Semetary situation with Scratch. Basically so he can be part of the team the whole time. You know like for the custom difficulty riffs, where you can pick and choose, cause that's one I'd like. To my thinking Scratch sort of becomes the animal companion for a Ranger or Druid in this game, or a familiar for whichever character doesn't generally get to have one as part of their class package.
For that I think it'd be fun to isolate out certain things from the difficulty mode that way, to make it more forgiving along one axis to make room for more challenge on another if that makes sense. I guess the general idea there would be a way to encourage/force the player to use the Help action, which is typically just completely overshadowed by potion healing or divine healing magic. There are some bones in the cupboard on this one, like with the idea of stabilizing the downed, but it sorta goes instantly out the window once you got a few potions in the pack and ranged healing spells. Here maybe that is removed, and in exchange the dog never truly dies while playing like that. I just feel that should somehow be a thing here, not necessarily for the challenge, but just as a nice touch and thing that would surely make me give it another run around.
I like how they somehow captured the haptics of rolling dice here, even if they're not actually in-hand and just a trick of the flickering screen, I think it's a bit of a hallmark now.
I hope that whatever Larian ends up doing for their next game, that they will be remembered for really capturing that D20 and making it feel special. It's something BG3 gave us that really adds to the sense of BG legacy. Because, for all their gloriousness in so many other respects, BG1 and BG2 kept the dice pretty under the hood, whereas BG3 really tossed em out there on the table for all to see!
I thought I would get tired of dice animations eventually when I first started playing this game, but it never really happened for me. I still dig watching em roll! That's a bit of a feat right there in and of itself hehe
Anyhow, just a thought
ps. knock on, so a further idea would be to associate a D20 with the player character, rather than the player. So say Astarion rolls a check for the lockpick, might show his Ascended/Redeemed color combo. Or like maybe Shadowheart has a Moonlit D20 and Shar D20 depending on what the player did with her character in the various runs. Same deal as like in MP where two player characters might want to rock different colored dice. Not that they need to go so insane with it all that it feels arbitrary, but just a progressive way to complete a big D20 ultra bag through replay. I think this could also play into the whole idea of NPCs unlocking as companions or other similar rewards of that sort. Things which don't necessarily alter all the mechanics at once, but that could play off whatever the desired/hardest setting, by setting alternative parameters that might be entertaining. People will likely keep looking for ways and excuses to run it again, cause it's good a BG game, but anytime it's a customizable choose your own adventure type difficulty I sometimes get lost in the weeds trying to pick. The other reason I like it, is because if you can get out to say a couple dozen color combos that's a lot more room to get two or more ideas working together. So I don't know say the Red and Muddy Green Nightmare on Elmstreet D20 achievement has a way to pace the long rests built in to the challenge, or perhaps nerfs back down to one short rest like in the earliest access, but then add on top of that you might be a Wizard, with some extra safety color to the Die, and suddenly it's got a different dimension to it right? I think something like that could certainly work, cause they just did it, and it was pretty.
I'll just still keep with my general and totally highball it. We have 3 different D20s right now, but to do it right maybe we need 256? lol
I mean that is one way to make good on the whole 'more endings than you could possibly fathom promise. People would definitely probably want to work through the palette for Baldur's Gate of Many Colors. Dyes for the Dice more or less, but making it part of the gameplay challenge.
pps. oh oh, and in Nightmare mode, fallen companions might return and visit us in our dreams for weird surrealist nightmare interludes. So the Haunted One background could be properly haunted. I don't know if it's even possible, but like say they got some stuff on the cutting room floor that didn't quite fit, maybe it gets tossed into that one. So like Minthara's revenge to break our mind from beyond the grave. Or Halsin's still trapped in the Shadowfell. Alfira's playing the lute at the Last Light, but then suddenly we're in the boiler room with Marcus and Isobel. The music boxes all start playing backwards. Wither's has hair! For the below ? I have no doubt mods will pull something together and this game will have some legs, or just really long arms. I look forward to it, but again the pick and choose can overwhelm. I mean you never know, maybe some devs will mod, or mods will dev, stitch it all together in one nice package, but it just takes a lot longer, because they wouldn't have the same sorta push, where everyone is all on the same page there. I think it could work on console more readily too, where modding is just not really an option. Ideally they would all sync up in presentation. Probably a moonshot, but while we're tossing em out there.
I personally would prefer extreme challenge modes as more of a thing for mods as opposed to stuff the developer does. As people could then tweak the game to their hearts delight. Although we might have to wait until the sdk becomes a thing.
Well i tryed to run honor + custom mode with *4 camp *3 price and - 1 proficiency. Solo I wanted to record and give the feedback. But sometimes I can just capture 20-30 minutes w/o any editing.
Its almost impossible in act 1. It's simply just too many misses.
Conclusion: the real problem is armor class and variety of enemy spells lack of ranged weapons. I don't think the AI is too stupid it just don't have tools to do something else.
If they will not adjust AC saves spells it in act 2-3 the game will be never hard enough. I could do it by myself. But someone have to pay for it. I kind a need to quit from my job to do this. I just don't have time right now. My wife went back to work and I have just 50-60 min/ day to play sometimes even just 20 or nothing at all.
I'm almost in act 3 on honor mode, it's been taking me a while but so far it's been a bit too easy and I'm not even using any illithid powers (haven't absorbed a single taddie yet lol, going into honor mode I thought taddies would be necessary but so far they ain't). One day I'll really have to try soloing it. But once I have gotten my golden dice, I will deffo return here with some criticisms.
IMO, Larian has repeatedly demonstrated that increasing the difficulty of the game is not a priority for them.
If you want to play a tactically more difficult game, I suggest self-imposing restrictions or mod the game, rather than waiting for Larian to overhaul the game for people that want it to be more challenging.
IMO, Larian has repeatedly demonstrated that increasing the difficulty of the game is not a priority for them.
If you want to play a tactically more difficult game, I suggest self-imposing restrictions or mod the game, rather than waiting for Larian to overhaul the game for people that want it to be more challenging.
I agree with this. Larian has now done several attempts to provide harder modes, but it looks like the gamers consider them failures, i.e. not achieving the goal they asked for. So, modding, or a DLC could be a better option. One of the reasons I say this, is that the game is already very big. If an additional difficulty level needs entirely new enemy combat AI's and a new distribution of magical items, I imagine it will increase the scripts enormously. For all the players,not just the few % who eagerly wait for this. So an optional DLC would be better and could maybe really attack the core of the problem.
Personally, I don't have a problem with combat difficulty, but I would love to see some more roleplaying options and sidequests using diplomacy or treachery, and also an extended character building. But this would similarly bloat the game for everyone, while only a few percent of players would use it or notice the difference. I would be willing and eager to buy an optional DLC for this, if that could make it happen.
