Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Panel From Hell/Creator Day Impressions

Truthfully that's something I'm trying to keep reminding myself of is that there are plenty of gameplay things that I don't like in principle, but that didn't actually bother me when I was playing EA. So I'm hoping that continues to be the case.

Really? GOG doesn't have an hours played timer for refunds? Could people in the know please confirm?

I have all my games on Steam, but 2 hours is a ridiculously short amount of time to figure out if a game is for you. I won't even have got out of character creation yet. But I do also have a GOG account ....

Which doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad game. It only means, it doesn't suit your taste and you had totally different expectations about it. I think it's crucial to understand, that there are people (a lot of them, actually), that are very much hyped and thrilled, of what they saw and read so far. There are also others (also many), that may feel the way you feel, because of different reasons (be it a suboptimal cast of characters, turn based combat, not enough homage to BG1 /BG2, or something else entirely). That's the way this industry works, unfortunately. It's like with Bethesda, some were thrilled Fallout went fully 3D, others absolutely despised this direction. Again, this alone didn't define, if Fallout 3 was good or bad game.

Again, just to be clear, I don't take a joy from your disappointment, it sucks to feel that way, but you already know, what kind of game it would be and you must realize it won't change a minute before the launch. I really don't see the point of torturing yourself about the game, that makes you sad or angry.

I have my concerns too, you know. I wasn't that much impressed about the story of DOS2 and I wasn't also as proficient in combat, to breeze through it on Tactician. In other words, DOS2 was a very good game, but that's it. There is a chance I may be overhyping BG3 and it may turn out not to be the game of the year for me, but that's the risk I'm willing to take, being an equally long-time FR fan as you. Moreover, it's precisely because I'm a fan of this setting, I want to keep an open mind, before I play it, and specifically avoided playing EA, not to spoil myself a fresh experience.

Am I a player that usually plays good-aligned characters? - Yes, at least during my first run.

Do I believe that BG1/BG2 had very limited options to role play evil-aligned characters? - Yes, and on top of that, you cannot really compose a full party of evil characters that covers all roles (not to mention having a choice).

Do I believe BG3 remedied that? - Yes, and in the best possible way, by giving me *an option* to play good or evil, with all the ramifications of playing both ways. If you play totally evil lunatic, you will end up with no one left in your party, with everyone being either dead or ditching your sorry arse. Your character may be extremely powerful, but will end up alone and miserable. And I know you don't acknowledge this, but to me personally, redeeming a certain companion in WoTR was one of the most rewarding accomplishments in this game.

Do I believe BG3 won't have enough typical heroic characters? - Yes and no. I wouldn't mind having one such character. A purely good one (not in a zelous way), who would try to stay on this path no matter what. But given the time and resources Larian needs to create another joinable character, one such companion would be enough.

Do I believe BG3 glorifies evil approach and is too brutal? - Not at all. I totally trust Swen Vincke, that this will be a game of choices, and you can play this game as a heroic character (not simply avoid doing evil stuff). The only problematic part may be the tadpole inside your head, which represents evil influence trying to take over your body and mind, but so was Bhaal's blood in original trilogy. The difference is that in BG1/BG2 this aspect was completely ignored from a gameplay perspective and didn't affect your choices. It was just a background. In BG3 tadpole is a real deal, which you must face. Wether you emerge victorious from this struggle or succumb to the powers it gaves, is entirely your choice.

Believe it or not I agree with a lot of what you say here. The one thing I feel strongly differently about is whather the game will allow me to play a true good hero AND where that path is fun and enjoyable and satisfying and not just a lame option where the game effectively punishes you at every turn. But this is an empirical question, one that will soon be answerable once players start playing the full game. So I am going to wait to see what the individuals on this forum whom I trust to be honest with me will have to say on this once they have played the game next month.

You mentioned the whole "redemption" issue as well. I've been thinking a lot about that, and I think a huge part of my disconnect with others here is in the imprecise use of the language. It's the difference between whether someone is a sinner or a victim, which are two entirely separate things. The concept of redemption is associated with sinners, who are people who knowingly and willfully did sinful things but who have now had a change of heart and are seking redemption for their past sins. A victim, OTOH, is who is a person who was forced or manipulated into a certain way of life against their will or without their knowledge, and who are now seeking, NOT redemption (because that doesn't apply), but rather justice for their victimization. And so to clarify, I don't have much sympathy for sinners seeking redemption. But I do have complete sympathy for victims seeking justice.

So, let's say you have two characters. One is a young man that is crazy in love and finds out his love is cheating on him. In an act of jealousy, he kills his rival and then hides his body. He did it fully consciously. Then after a while the guilt consumes him and he wants to redeem what he did. He is a sinner. Then, let's say when have a slave that knows no life other than blood and death. He managed to escape, killing his oppressors and realising he does not know life other than violence, he groups a band of other misfits and starts to terrorize the area, doing exactly the same as the slavers that caught him. So, he is the victim.

Who do you think deserves redemption more?

I'm not sure how well you know the companions but everyone other than I guess minthara maybe is some level of victim.

Even Lae'zel is a sheltered child seeing her fascist culture in reality for the first time and can quickly get herself killed by her own people because she actually believed her kin would take care of her.

Well, for one thing, I did not say being a sinner and a victim are mutually exclusive. One could potentially be both (and also obviously neither). In your example, the second person is both. I would feel strong sympathy for their victim past, but complete revulsion for their subsequent life of sin in the present, which in my view was a choice they made.

That's mostly sad to hear.

The ability to ungroup summons is good. That will make playing a summoner a bit less of a struggle against the UI.

But the inability to have the character portraits stay in a fixed position is a real pain in the QoL.



Well, again, this is minimally encouraging. As in, maybe Larian has improved the "pathing" of the camera. But I fear that, in order to raise the altitude of the camera, in a location/battlefield with verticality, we'll still have to make the camera go up by making it climb along walls, ladders, etc.


[...]


Sadly, this sounds as if the Ambush problems haven't been addressed.

I don't have a problem with Ambushes being open to cheese. I'm not even sure what cheesing an Ambush means, and I don't care if other players can pull that cheese easily. My issue is that I cannot successfully perform an Ambush in the first place.


[...]


As you said (in your answer to yellowsapphire88), this is both good and bad news. At least, it seems that Larian is trying to address the issue. But I'm not thrilled by the fact they seems to struggle with it. We also saw during the PFH that they still have difficulty triggering a Relationship Camp Scene with Karlach (and, as Niara noted in her PFH synopsis, despite Swen's claim that this was a first, it wasn't, we've been having difficulties triggering Camp Scene for ages).

I think one possible beginning of a path to a solution (or a less bad situation) would be if more than one Camp Scene can trigger when we visit Camp. Moving some Relationship Scenes away from Camp is good too, but I believe there would also be value in getting all appropriate Camp Scenes to play when we visit Camp.


At any rate, thanks a lot for your answers, Red Queen.

Then, is the person who is a sinner and a victim at the same time worth redeeming or not?

I agree, that usually the person's backstory is not a black and white and there's always a trigger that made them do evil things, but that's also applying to BG3 characters, like Shadowheart. Admittedly, I haven't played EA, because I didn't want to spoil myself the story before playing the full game, but my friend told me, we don't get to learn Shadowheart's full backstory in Act 1 (which is EA's content), so we cannot see the full picture. We don't know what led her to worships Shar and if this devotion is strong or not.
We can of course threat a character like a set of statistics on the character sheet, with their alignment, class, worshipped deity and so on, and said that this character is evil and not worth taking to our group, but IMO that's oversimplification.

Like I said before, I'm just philosophically not inclined to be a redeemer of anyone for their sins. I'm someone who feels there are some things that can never be forgiven by me, certain lines that can never be uncrossed once crossed. But as I also said, I am equally very strong on being a champion of people who've been victimized. So, it all depends on the facts of the situation.

Re. SH, I think ultimately the real problem is Larian's writers. More specifically, the problem is our not having been given adequate reasonable dialogue options when interacting with SH as Tav. My PC can even kill SH, but I am not provided the opportunity to call her out for being a Sharran? I cannot tell her that she's a fake, a fraud, a phony for claiming to support good actions even while being a Sharran? To tell her to her face that anyone who worships Shar is a monster? That Larian does not provide those dialogue options is my real issue.

However, I am willing to grant that maybe, just maybe, that is because they were trying to avoid spoiler situations in EA, and that in the full release of the game those kinds of dialogue options will indeed be available. One can only hope.

As I've wrote before, I haven't played EA to not spoil myself fun, so I can't speculate much about Shadowheart, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn they keep some things out in EA about her, especially knowing how much content they added or changed in EA for final release version.

Besides, even if they said couple of times, they want to encourage people to play an evil character (which I applause, given how awfully limited this route was in original trilogy), I'm pretty confident they realise, that majority of their playerbase prefers to play good-aligned characters, and limiting their roleplaying and gameplay options would be a big mistake. We'll see in less than 3 weeks, I guess.

I'm a little puzzled by this as I'm not sure how I personally would cheese the system if it now works reliably as it did when I tried to test it. Sure, I could use it to get each of my party to complete an attack at the top of the first round, rather than having to wait for their place in the initiative order, but that sounds a reasonably fair reward for a successful ambush to me, and would have no benefit beyond that first round. What am I missing?

(As an aside, I'd suggest that more detailed discussions of what a good-aligned playthrough is and whether BG3 allows one should be taken elsewhere. It's a perfectly fine topic to debate, but as I think I said earlier in this thread, I'd like to keep it for the Q&A on the creator day. Short exchanges to clarify or comment on answers are fine, but if if starts getting longer than that let's take it to another thread.)

I think the main issue with stealth, for me, is that you can still (?)
1) simply switch an out of combat character into TB-mode and traverse the entire battlefield, and simply navigate past people's vision cones (and now, threat areas?) and they have no passive check to detect you (or has that changed)?
2) as a rogue, stay out of line of sight ,and the threat area, and sneak attack + hide BA as before? Ranged sneak attack wouldn't be fixed by melee threat area, unless they have done something else.
I am speculating, but it sounds like these may still be possible.
I think (1) needs passive (out of turn checks) - Solasta does this (as far as I recall - they have a 'visibility meter' that fills as you sneak closer, and it was much harder to avoid triggering combat, certainly with players in armor)
(2) needs the rogue to be placed in the initiative order when they make an attack (of any kind). Of course, if the AI continues to ignore them, that is not good, but at least they are in the same time regime as all combatants.

There was a lot that they weren't telling us in the PFH and the reason for that was they were trying to avoid as many spoilers as possible. Which I personally respect their decision in that. So I guess what we currently don't know we will find our in the next couple of weeks when the game drops. One thing for which they didn't give us is the time the game will drop anyone know?

its 30 days from the order i.e, the day your $ leaves your account and goes to theirs

number of hours played or even if you didn't install Galaxy is not the point... its just a auto buttion on your orders page that gives you the money back and removes the game from your Gog account

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006129837-GOG-Voluntary-Refund-Policy?product=gog

I assume that they have securities in place so people don’t abuse the system. So if they suspect one buys, completes and refunds games they might start refusing you refunds. I also found in general GoG refund process a bit more interactable - whenever I had technical issue and tried to refund the game I was contacted by GOG rep trying to fix the issue before agreeing to a refund. I haven’t refunded game there in a long time though, so maybe it got automated by now.

BG3 EA is the only game I refunded due to not liking it straight up after initial playthrough, did it through Galaxy and didn’t have any issues doing so - had probably more than 30h at that point.

They also used to have a policy where you could refund “games in development” anytime before 1.0 release, if you don’t like how the game is shaping up. I don’t see this clause anymore.

They were trying to fix the issues before, but it's not the case anymore. For example, I bought NWN2 3 years ago and I had K+M problems with it (a well-known bug). A helpful guy of the support suggested a few workarounds, but when that didn't work, they refunded.

I think they don't have the time for that anymore because they're overwhelmed (the typical delay to get a reply is 2-4 weeks). I had to do it 2 or 3 times recently: one game that they didn't update because THQ Nordic weren't sending them the patches; another game didn't support other keyboards than QWERTY.

Refunding is not an automatic process but they're usually quick to respond and don't ask questions anymore. It's usually done the same day or within a few days, unlike the actual support.

Is it true that they removed the race ability scores? :O

EDIT: I see now there was a discussion about something like that before in this thread. After the removal of class prerequisites, this is starting to worry me.

Yes.

They harmonized the racial ability scores in line with what is currently in 5e(2024).
All races get +2/+1 and you can put them in any distinct stats that you wish.