Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Concerns about: Tooltips, Teleportation, and Immersion in the Final version.

After playing the beta for a while, I have some concerns about how the final version of Baldur's Gate 3 will turn out. While some players may consider these issues to be nitpicks, I believe they are important enough to address.

One major issue is with the tooltips, which could use some improvement in explaining why your to-hit chances are what they are, especially for abilities or spells that require attribute saving throws. It can also be unclear how certain mechanics work in general, which can leave players feeling confused. In some cases, I found myself having to consult with more experienced D&D 5th Edition players to get a better understanding.

Another issue is with the ability to teleport to any gate at will. While this may seem like a handy feature at first, it actually breaks immersion and makes encounters trivial. It also renders short rests pointless since you can quickly teleport to camp for a long rest. While supplies are required to use, the abundance of them means that abusing this feature doesn't have any real penalty. In the tabletop version, a DM would add risks to just camping in the middle of an adventure. Additionally, the lack of a day and night cycle makes it even more unrealistic when a character mentions wanting to camp after a single battle. This all detracts from the game's difficulty and immersion, and I worry that even higher difficulties will suffer because of this.

The inventory system is also a bit of a mess, and speaking to NPCs with a specific character can sometimes force you to miss out on conversational options or solutions from other party members. I also felt that the game didn't present enough enemies to make battles challenging and engaging. These are issues that I've seen addressed very effectively in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which was created by an indie developer and does these things very well. For example, that game logically chooses the character with the highest ability score for dialogue choices, and has a wide range of menu options to adjust difficulty. These are features that I would love to see Larian add to the game.

Overall, I am concerned about how the final version of Baldur's Gate 3 will be delivered. While some players may enjoy it regardless, I believe that it's important to address these issues before the game is released. That being said, I do understand that Larian may not have the time or resources to address every concern, but I hope that they will take some of these issues into consideration.

All said before ...
Kinda surprised you dont know, concidering how long are you here with us. O_o

I haven't been actively participating on this forum for over two years, despite having been a member since October 2020. As for your comment about my knowledge, I must say that it's rather presumptuous of you to assume that I should be familiar with every single topic that has ever been posted here. I have better things to do than nonstop peruse the forum, as I'm sure you do as well. In any case, I hope we can continue this discussion in a more constructive and respectful manner.

Thats the funny part ... its not matter of "every single topic" ...
More like showing here at least once per month, or at very least look at megathreats, since theese three things in particular, are mentioned quite often.

Thank you for your suggestion, but I'll decide how I spend my time on the forum based on my own priorities and interests, not yours. It's also worth noting that just because some topics are discussed frequently doesn't mean everyone is aware of them, and it's not fair to assume that someone hasn't been paying attention just because they haven't participated in every discussion. As for your wink, I'm afraid I don't see what's humorous about being condescending and presumptuous towards others.

Hey Omkara, thanks for taking the time to speak up and add your voice to these issues; every voice that weighs in as a fresh set of eyes finding the same problems as others have found is further evidence that they are indeed issues and not just the complaints of one or two.

Please forgive Rag; many of us have been around and seen the same problem come up again and again, from nigh countless others, and sometimes we can forget that the people we're responding to may not have seen the multitude of similar voiced concerns that we have.

The unfortunate truth we're facing in these late days is that many of these issues are ones that members of the community have been writing about, often in depth and with care and thoughtful analysis, since very very earliest stages of the beta, and while Larian have change many things in that time, they've remained steadfastly silent, or even occasionally mocking of some of these complains. One common point is that Larian's design team seems to come from a position that finds the concept of immersion in space to be alien at best - they're not interested in it, and don't tend to think about it when they're creating. They've made comments about trying to respect immersion, here and there (I think), but their actions and commentaries during streams shows that hey genuinely don't really know what this means, and don't understand why reality-breaking cartoon gags and over-hammed flashiness are often harmful to it. They delight in these things, and look for every opportunity to squeeze them in. As such, other more subtle immersion-harming elements don't appear to be on their radar, as far as we can tell; they either don't understand the problem, or they don't think it's important enough to change.

We're only a month or two out from full release, the game is feature complete behind the scenes, and the odds of any substantial feature changes or design improvements are slim at this stage - and slimmer still that anything we say here may, at this late stage, have any further impact.

If you want to make sure your voice is heard, and you can spare the time and energy, I'd encourage you to submit your feedback to Larian's feedback form directly, in the hopes that every extra voice may matter. You can find the form here.

I agree that the tooltip and tutorial are really lacking.
They tried to make things "easier" with the damage range and so on, but in the end it is just confusing. The game is absolutely bad at teaching its rules. I don't have much hope for release to be honnest because they are very bad at designing good UI elements.

Fast travel is a system I usually like in games, but I like when it is well integrated in the experience as a whole.
In many games you travel from a region to another using a map or interract with convenient items that help you to travel faster.
In BG3 you open an awefull list of teleport points no matter where you are and teleport everywhere like if everyone was able to teleport everywhere at anytime.
The teleport runes are badly integrated, they doesn't make sense and no one but your group see them, apparently. It is totally immersion breaking and designed as a tool totally out of context.
The name of points doesn't make any sense and don't even help to know what locations they are reffering to.

Nothing is good with this system, except that it is VERY convenient... which doesn't prevent to have a good and beautifull UI and a system designed to be more integrated in the whole.

For what it's worth (and that's probably worth very close to peanuts), I agree with all the feedback points raised in the opening post.


Regarding the tooltips, Larian has make some tweaks on them throughout the patches, so I think there's possibly hope on that front.


Regarding the inventory, there's been a couple of changes, but things have improved so little despite these that it's rather discouraging.


Regarding immersion in general (with the waypoints/teleportation, the lack of day/night cycle, the conversations that can't involve and leverage the entire party even though the cutscenes clearly show the rest of the party being 1m behind us, ..., being but a few specific issues), I feel this is not even on Larian's list of concerns.

Overall, I feel there's a huge issue with tone in the game.

On the one hand, the game tries to be a bit dark, grave, and heavy at times. It also has some fairly deep reactivity, a rich world full of small details, and a probably 100-hour long playtime for a full playthrough. Basically, a CRPG to get immersed into.

On the other hand, the game is cartoonish and explicitly video-gamey. Basically, it is meant for goofing around, with some friends a couple of casual hours, or with the chaos of the chat on stream, and it is not meant to be taken seriously.


________________________


While tooltips are being discussed, I have a question for the other players.

After you press T to freeze a tooltip (and possibly do so a couple of times to freeze open a couple of hyperlinks), how do you close the tooltip(s) ?

My guess would be to use RightClick, as this cancels many actions selected from the hotbar. Or Escape, because it's a general thing that Escape does in any software.

But, if I remember correctly, only a LeftClick outside the tooltips work.

I'm always bothered by this, as I feel a LeftClick on the world will cause my character to move, and that a LeftClick on a hotbar action will select it. So I tend to target LeftClick somewhere neutral on the hotbar.

Overall I feel that this part of the UI is very counter-intuitive : the inputs I expect to cancel the tooltips don't, and the input that does feels wrong.

Thank you for your response and understanding, it's good to know that others have also voiced their concerns about these issues. However, it is concerning to hear that Larian may not be taking these concerns seriously, especially since this is a passion project for them and they should want to create the best possible experience for their customers. It's not professional or respectful to dismiss or mock the concerns of your customers, and it's disappointing to hear that they may have done so in the past.

I appreciate your suggestion to submit feedback directly to Larian's feedback form, and I have already taken that step. I hope that my voice, along with the voices of others, can make a difference and encourage Larian to take these concerns more seriously. Thank you again for your thoughtful response.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the tooltip and tutorial issues, as well as the fast travel system in BG3. I completely agree with you that the game is lacking in terms of teaching its rules and that the damage range feature only adds confusion instead of clarity. It's also disappointing that the UI design is not up to par and fast travel system feels out of place as well as immersion-breaking.

It's a shame that Larian, with all their experience in RPG game development, has missed the mark on such fundamental aspects of the game. While convenience is important, it shouldn't come at the expense of immersion and overall game experience.

Hopefully, Larian will take feedback like ours into consideration and work on improving these aspects of the game before release. As players, we want to be fully immersed in the game world and feel like we're part of the adventure, and that includes having intuitive tooltips, clear tutorials, and a fast travel system that feels like a natural part of the game world. It should go with saying that a game based on the mother of all classic roleplaying tabletop experiences would garner videogame fans that want an as immersive experience as possible.

Thanks again for sharing your insights, and let's hope that Larian takes our feedback to heart.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the game, and I'm glad to hear that you agree with the feedback points raised in the opening post. It's encouraging to see that many players are noticing similar issues and are voicing their concerns.

I think you make a great point about the tone of the game being a bit conflicted. On one hand, there are serious and heavy themes that the game tries to tackle, but on the other hand, the game also has a cartoonish and video-gamey feel. It's difficult to strike a balance between these two aspects, and it's possible that Larian could have done a better job in this regard.

Overall, I appreciate your perspective on the game, and I hope that Larian will take player feedback into account and continue to make improvements before the full release.

Okay folks, let’s keep it friendly. There is no expectation that people will have read everything here, or remember if they have. It’s fine to politely point posters to previous discussions on the same topics, and to encourage them to add to existing discussions rather than creating new threads, and it is also good forum etiquette (here and anywhere else) to search for similar topics before creating new threads. But given the search functionality here isn’t fantastic and it’s hard even to find discussions when you know they happened, let’s not assume people haven’t tried that.

The tooltips definitely need work, as does the tutorial. I'm willing to give Larian a bit of leeway here since tutorials are typically the last thing to be finished in a game, since of course they need to be certain of all the features going in. That's less of a justification for the poor quality of tooltips though.

The thing that bugs me about the teleport circles is that it's an entirely unforced error. They could have not drawn attention to the system at all, left them as just a purely gamey thingthat the players could rationalize away. Instead they explicitly make it an in-universe system, and then don'tmake any effort to explain it. The worst part is that the explanation could have been something cool. They had an opportunity to flesh out the world and add more color and uniqueness to it, but instead they went with what feels like the worst of both worlds.

Agree completely with the OP. At this stage however I don't hold out much hope for changes, which is a shame because there have been many great suggestions made during EA.

"tooltips" - i agree, could explain things better. i like they way to can press T and look up extra information to explain the game.

"teleport to any gate at will"- i don't mind, its a qol feature so you don't spend 50 hours just running around the map. Im ok with players choosing to not use that feature though...

"The inventory system is also a bit of a mess"- i agree. Sometimes when searching you cant move items, you cant select multiple items at once, sometimes its a bit slow.

"Overall, I am concerned about how the final version of Baldur's Gate 3 will be delivered". I agree improvements are necessary but im not "concerned" about the final version. Once they fix the bugs, add in all the missing spells, subclasses, feats etc i cant wait unitl August and quite confident i will very much enjoy revised act 1, and act 2 & 3. Is it August yet?

Agree, but as the title also is about "immersion" I guess the QoL aspect of it is not what is pointed at here.

If waypoints were teleportation runes in The Witcher 3 or in Kingdom come Deliverance, it would look wierd ! Of course it is not the only thing that makes the "travel" system wierd in BG3 (camps and mini camps nowhere on the map, teleportation even in a full of hostile creatures dungeons,...).

It's actually more about teleporting to camp from anywhere (bar some situations were its not possible), at any moment, which, like mentioned in the opening post "detracts from the game's difficulty and immersion, and I worry that even higher difficulties will suffer because of this."

Examples: At some point when nearing the Grove for the first time, one of the characters will mention hearing shouting up ahead. At that moment, you can simply teleport to camp and have a nap; come back and it's all good. I want penalties. This should have caused some serious mayhem at the gate. Mercenaries all dead. Perhaps even Wyll dead. Take too many trips to camp for a long rest? Halsin dead in prison. Take too long to get to the point where Lae'zel is trapped in the cage? Killed by those 2 Tieflings. I want logical repercussions for my actions, like you would have in a normal tabletop d&d session. It's 2023. We have the technology to make it happen.

There are some world events that progress if you leave but otherwise I am happy with how it is handled in BG3! It would be pretty harsh to miss out on recruiting companions because of taking too many rests. I also don’t want to feel pressured to skip side quests because the main quest is timed.

I generally agree with Icelyn that I don't want the majority of quests to be timed. Though in my case it's mainly because of how much companion stories are already tied to long rests. I do think the game tries to have its cake and eat it to, and as a result the narrative and immersion just doesn't work.

The fact is Omkara, this isn't a normal tabletop d&d session and, far more importantly, it's not actually trying to be. If this were actual tabletop, you wouldn't even think to try and behave that way, you straight up wouldn't even have the ability to. There's an implicit understanding at the table that's not present with this game. It's using the system, but I sincerely think that any talk about it trying to replicate the experience of tabletop is referring to a different understanding of what that means. I think Larian is trying to replicate the tabletop experience of fooling around with your friends and having a laugh and havng fun that way.

Yeah but that's the thing, the game doesn't need you to take that many rests at the moment. It's too easy, but if you want, you can literally take a long rest after every single battle, which not only breaks the immersion, but should have some form of repercussions, if only for the players that want to challenge themselves. I'm giving examples under which the situations would make sense for you to think twice on making certain decisions.

Another example: You're told Halsin was captured by Goblins, which tend to not be the nicest group of creatures as you find out when you get there (in time), but it's fine if you first go and do a gazillion other things. This should have repercussions, also because it isn't logical to first go do other things as this druid's life is on the line and should have priority. Same goes for one of your characters stating to hear shouting up ahead. I can already picture it in a tabletop setting. DM: "You here shouting up ahead, what are you going to do?" Players: "well, we're first going to take a nice long 8 hour rest, I'm sure the shouting will still be going on when we're back". Yeah, no. Every action, or lack thereof, will need to have consequences. This would simply add to the replayability as each decision will have both positive and negative repercussions, as it is in real life. It's what adds to the immersion and makes each playthrough that much more unique.


I think we simply both have a different opinion of what "fun" is and what makes a good game. I've been playing video games for decades. I'm bored with all the standard tropes. We've seen it all before in other games. There isn't a single reason why what I'm talking about can't coincide with having a laugh and fooling around. Just as in real life, fooling around is fine, but can have consequences and this might result in missing out on stuff. Well that's fine. Buy yourself a prima guide and know what you're up against, or don't and let yourself be surprised on a second, third or fourth playthrough.