Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Late to Early Access

I finally caved this weekend and bought the game through Steam.
I am enjoying what I've played so far, even though it feels more like DOS3 than a Baldur's Gate game, but I do have some feedback:

1: I adore the dice rolling for tasks and conversations, although it would be nice to be able to speed up the animations. However, I would LOVE it if the dice rolls could be added to combat too (as an option, not as default), with the same options to add advantages, buffs etc. This would extend the tabletop feel massively and help expose the mechanics of combat to the player.

2: Density and quantity of interactable containers is a big problem.
Quite often, seemingly random containers in a scene will actually have better loot in them than containers that highlight when you press the highlight key.
This is a problem because it feels like you may be missing out on something unless you search every last box, bag and crate in a scene. And this can take AGES in busier scenes.
Maybe fill non-important containers with no-value trash, then colour their nameplates accordingly?

These ones are more subjective criticisms:
3: Party size. It's probably hard to balance this so close to release, but this is a Baldur's Gate game, which has traditionally had a party size limit of 6. If the game had been properly built around tabletop rules, encounters would have been simple to scale, as they could have been built around hit die, but I suspect that's not the case here. I've modded my save game to allow 6, and I'll do so on release too. It's not a matter of making things easy, but wanting more options and interactions.

4: This one's almost certainly impossible to address, and quite hard to convey, but essentially boils down to this:
Encounters and the narrative seem to have been created as if the game were a DOS one, where skills had cooldowns. The trouble is, after almost every encounter, unless you're taking a long rest, you will lose access to a lot of spells and abilities that make said encounters fun. And this is a problem when you've designed a narrative that implies the more you rest, the quicker your "condition" accelerates.
Basically, there seems to be a core disconnect between Larian's encounter design and D&D's rest mechanics.
It's also weird being ripped out of your current map into a campsite map every time you restm especially after other games with rest mechanics have managed to allow for resting in your current location, such as the Pathfinder games.

1 - you can click on the die to stop it ...
2 - yup, a slight bother
3 - matter of taste - once I've gone through BG1 with a four strong party I cannot imagine going back to six.
4 - spells always had a once a day quality. Having everybody cast their spells like Sorcerers in earlier editions is a great facilitation already.
BTW - it took me a quite a while to discover that quite a few actions/bonus actions come back after a Short Rest. And that Wizards have a special ability to recover spells without resting ...

On 1, it's not stopping the dice, but rather the insistence on playing a little animation for each buff / debuff / advantage, even after the target DC number has been reached or exceeded. Yet a natural 20 or 1 immediately bypass these animations.

On 3, as noted, yeah, I know it's subjective and therefore a matter of taste, but I'm getting really fed up with small party RPGs and hanker for a return to the complexity of managing a larger party.

On 4, it's less a problem with the D&D rules regarding resting, but rather that Larian's encounter design and narrative don't seem to fit comfortably with them. Again, almost like they were designed around a different set of rules entirely.

On 1 - skill check dice animation has been bugged the last time I played and skip was impossible - I don’t know if it was fixed.

I do agree about dice rolls in combat.I though Solasta did a wonderful job clearly communicating dice rolls and bonuses in a fairly elegant manner. I do find it a odd inconsistency that skillcheck embrace D&D to a fault while combat obfuscates information behind XCom like presentation. At the very least I would want an option for more accurate info.

Regarding your 4th point, this may just be my personal experience with TT D&D, but spell/resource management is big part of the game. Sure you can blast a fireball on every encounter, but you'll be out of 3rd level slots pretty quick. I don't look at this as BG3 encouraging me to rest more, but instead it's encouraging me to be more selective with my resources. To be fair that's obviously subjective.

I think the larger pain point here, is how to manage the rest mechanic (which has be brought plenty on these forums). They have to balance encouraging enough rests to get the story beats in, while not making it spammable after every encounter, and keeping some sense of urgency. I've completed a playthrough with 5ish rest for all of EA, and definitely noticed some missing camp scenes. With that being said, I'm fairly conservative with my resources (IE lots of cantrips for casters), so I'll probably always have fewer rest than most.

If I am understanding the OP correctly, his objection with 4 is that the narrative gives urgency, so you feel compelled to continue without long rests because the parasite is going to change you into a mindflayer if you take too long. Most people on this forum have been playing EA for ages, so know that the initial time urgency is bogus and nothing bad will happen due to resting. But newcomers to the game will not know this, so the narrative pressure will spoil their game. I think this is undeniably true.

Thanks Arkhan, yes this is definitely part of it, and along with the proviso that we don't know if there will or will not be penalties / negative narrative progression linked to rests in the full release, it leaves me uncomfortable.
Much like there are currently no penalties for using Illithid powers, but there might very well be in the finished game.

What Arkhan said ...

I have to partially rescind point 1, as clicking in the dice area does skip the animations. However, it's a little sticky, only mouse clicks work (hitting the space bar feels like it would make sense), and this feature isn't relayed to the player at all.

@Arkhan, Fair point. I was more speaking to the below line from point 4.


As for the narrative point, I won't go into spoilers but there is at least 1 point in EA where the game explicitly tells you that there will be consequences if you decide to take a long rest due to a time sensitive matter. So I wouldn't be surprised if more of those situations are included in the final game.

OP - agreed on all points but #2. Although I might be in the minority on that. To me it replicates the experience of searching the room. Sometimes the DM says "you don't find anything".

Hope you also send directly to Larian - the party size is a major issue (as #4 but I don't know how to solve it)

Glad you're enjoying the game! As folk have said, it's always interesting to hear other perspectives and a wide range of views should help Larian make the game as good as it could be.

Though, of course, they need to somehow contend with the fact we don't agree with one another .

My own take, just in case you're interested in comparing and contrasting some different perspectives, is that:

(1) I also love the dice rolls in conversations, and if there were a non-intrusive way of including them in combat that didn't slow things down, then that might work. Though what I really want is a better combat log, that also records other dice rolls. I'm not sure if you've noticed that it does give you some of the info you are after already - it took me a while to get into checking it - but there are definitely improvements to be made!

(2) I'm with KillerRabbit on looting and I like the illusion that not everything in the world is there for me, and once I'd relaxed and let go of my completionist tendencies, learned to appreciate that there are lots of containers that don't have good stuff in, and even that occasionally you can find good stuff in an unpromising looking place. It now feels more immersive to me. That said, I certainly wouldn't object to there being a stronger correlation in general with the fanciness of the container and the value of the contents, or it being more obvious why the highlight key highlights the specific stuff it does, though personally I kind of hope it'll still be left a bit open and we'll be able to use the Detect Magic spell to perhaps find something good that we might otherwise have missed if we didn't rummage through all the crates, or so we might find different stuff on different playthroughs (I tend to loot more with some characters than others, depending on whether they feel to me like the sort of person who might turn over a place completely, and also at some times more than others if I'm running low on money, potions or arrows).

(3) I feel like I'm in a minority on this, but I like a party size of four and feel that six would trivialise the interesting challenge of party balance in 5e. I like trying to work out how to cover required party functions with four characters, and the strengths and weaknesses that naturally appear in a smaller party encourage me to find different ways of attacking problems in different playthroughs. Plus four feels like a manageable number both for exploration and turn-based combat (where I want neither longer battles nor fewer turns per character to be the rule). What I would like, though, is a core party of four that can occasionally be supplemented by guests for specific missions. But there’s a huge, long thread here which you can flick through if you want to see some more views on party size.

(4) Certainly others have felt as you do that there's an inherent tension between the urgency of the narrative and the fact we can (in early access) rest as much as we want. It's not something that bothers me, given that I liked that we can share our characters' tension not knowing whether something terrible will happen if we rest, but felt that the game by encouraging us to short and long rest in the tutorial provided enough reassurance that we could do so, and it pretty quickly becomes clear that our ceremorphosis isn't progressing. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if this is made a bit clearer in the full release given the confusion it has caused. With respect to not having all my spells for every fight, for me that's an important part of the fun, and learning to ration my resources over the course of what I would consider a mission (such as the assault on the goblin camp) is one of the challenges that I find interesting about the game. But at the same time, I wouldn't want to get stuck and need to reload if I'd run out of everything, and I certainly wouldn't want to spoil the fun of people who do prefer to rest more frequently and start battles with all their spells, so I'm pretty happy with how that element works now. I'm not happy with the way the game encourages us to long rest more than we need to because of the way camp conversations are triggered, and hope Larian will be revisiting that in the full release.

And just one final comment. You say that the game feels more like DOS than BG, which is another thing that has certainly been said before, though I do wonder if that's an initial impression that people naturally form due to the fact that the same engine has clearly been used as the basis of BG3, but that wears off over time as people get to know BG3 for itself. That might not be correct, but I have noticed that there seem to be fewer people mentioning DOS3 now, though that could be because they've got fed up saying it rather than because they no longer think it! Personally, as someone who loved BG1 & 2 and thought the D:OS games were okay but wasn't wowed by, I definitely feel this is a natural and broadly desirable evolution of the BG games when it comes to the world and story and feel. Of course, I've played BG1&2 way more than I've played the DOS games so there's a definite possibility that I'm just not seeing similarities with the latter as I don't know or remember them well, whereas I know the BG games more than well enough to spot connections there.

Good points but for # 2 :

To me this is great. In my RPGs, I LIKE to feel that I might of missed something. This isn't a heavy loot arcade game like Diablo. Otherwise what in the world is the point to make containers and add objects anywhere?
You would rather enter an area and auto-get everything with a simple button? No point hiding stuff anymore. I would actually go a step further and REMOVE the ability to highlight areas that can be searched. Or tie it with a perception skill or certain attributes. Now that to be would be amazing.

One step further, In games like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001), the loot in some containers in the game is generated based on your character's name, and possibly other characteristics such as gender, skills, race and background. Keeping things fresh for a new playthrough. Man is that game amazing, playing through it right now. Rad item designs. I adore slot based inventory systems. I know I'm weird Restrictions for me are a PLUS in the RPGs experience.

Oh yes so having a system that highlight an empty container when you click your keyboard but that doesn't highlight the container with a loot (no matter what it is) right next to the previous one is fine ?

No it's not... The highlighting system is clearly broken.
It's like a stupid DM saying - "you should look in that container" - "that was a joke ! there is nothing inside" - and then in his head : "they didn't find the loots in the container I didn't talk about".
Freaking fun and immersive !

There are too many containers to expect players to look into all of them. It is just a chore in Larian's games because everything is interactive (which is a good choice among other).
If Larian keeps so many containers for reasons they either have to improve the highlight system and/or make some of them non interactive and/or create a "loot all" feature.
I'm all for a better highlighting system as we would have to click the "loot all" button every 10 steps without being even able to know if we miss something or not.

Remove it entirely is a choice I would absolutely hate but I at least I can hear that. But please don't write that you like a broken system or Larian will add some more on purpose on their next games.

Sorry for my D&D ignorance but when you search a room for items, is there a skills or attribute check?
Maybe do something like:

No empty containers.

visible to all
Tier 0 objects : Empty but TRAPPED. (skill check, highlighted color depends on class/skill of the party) Every containers can potentially be a trap.
Tier one objects : mostly junk (opportunity for Larian to make funny or collectable junk...), MAYBE a useful item. (white highlight)
Tier two objects : Useful items. (green)

not visible, skills check
Tier three objects : hidden very useful item (blue)
Tier four objects: hidden very rare item (purple)

skills, class, attribute check
Tier five objects : very well hidden extremely rare items. (pink)

I've been carrying around a statue of Selune and a statue of Shar in my playthroughs on the off chance something might happen. I don't want the game to tell me they're just junk items I'm supposed to sell.

To the OP in general, thank you for your thought-out criticisms, they're interesting. It's always fascinating to see new people and to see what needs concerns and opinions they have, and what issues they have that are consistent with stuff we longtime EA participants have had.

As for the inventory and looting issues in particular, it's my opinion that the reason all the chests and stuff are a problem now are because no part of the looting or inventory systems are inherently interesting to interact with. Count Turnipsome, I see your point but just think that the way BG3 currently handles things is simply bad. The game isn't asking you to make interesting choices with its looting. It basically says "just loot until you're bored." When dealing with inventory, the only question you're asking yourself is "do I want to go through the hassle?" That's not a way to make a fun, engaging system. There's no actual reward. It's not a puzzle where you have to weigh what's important at the moment, it's really not that hard to carry basically everything you want. It's entirely mundane and forgettable.

In fact, I think the overall idea you had about tying highlighting lootable objects to a skill check (probably perception) would be great, minus the tier 0 stuff. I think items should only be trapped if it makes sense that they be trapped, which depends on context. And certainly empty items being trapped is usually silly. Maybe the container was set out specifically as a trap, but otherwise if it's empty then the trap was probably triggered already. But otherwise, your idea would make looting actually interesting. It would require mentally engaging with things, not just mindlessly clicking until it gets too annoying or boring.

I for one agree with OP on 2 ...
If there is a function that is supposed to highlight important items and containers, it hould be reliable ...

I don't see the problem with the current implementation of looting. Having a container highlighted even if potentially empty until you actually check it is the most sane system I can think of for a CRPG.
Now the real issue might be that container quality doesn't reflect content quality. This was a big issue with release Diablo 3 where the best farming method was to destroy wooden crates. With a proper loot pool, you can actually tell visually if something is worth your time just like you wouldn't dumpster dive IRL to find gold.

I still believe that, though I find it irrelevant to the quality of the game. I am fine with Larian doing their own thing, as long as what they do is coherent and of high quality.