Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: Replacing companions' starter class

10-4, copy that, Roger Roger, 5 x 5

No.


Even within those restrictions the the sample must be randomly selected from the population.
The make up of opinions on this board are markedly different than those on Reddit which has a larger population.

These survey results are limited in scope, from a biased subset, and can't be extrapolated to the general population.


Yes.

Most players of any game love customization over rules. Hence dnd moving to be less restrictive.

@Alodar: I don't see how your quote changes negates the content of my post. I specifically mention the issues with (lack of) representativeness due to a small sample size and the fact that we're selecting from forum users only.

You can always lower sample size if you're willing to accept a smaller confidence level or larger margin of error. The numbers you quote seem to be for 95% confidence interval and a 5% margin-of-error.

Also, polls are regularly collected that use ratios MUCH smaller than 10%. US election polls don't survey 15 million people after all. Other sources I'm seeing suggest that "A good maximum sample size is usually 10% as long as it does not exceed 1000."

Even if there is an extremely clear warning about the consequences of changing the class of an origin character, I am pretty sure players will not blame themselves, but Larian for screwing up their game--which will ultimately damage Larian's reputation.

Guys class changing won't even mess with any of their narratives this while chain is silly

Such faith with those people is inevidable ...

No matter what Larian will do ... or not.

Okay, I'll try. The key reason is that by making something an option, you send a message. This is especially true if you deliver that option via an npc in a story-rich game. "Have you devoted your life to Shar and having second thoughts? Has the sight of Halsin's bulging muscles made you green with envy and wishing you'd spent all those years honing your physique for battle instead of praying? Worry not, because we at <Spoiler_name> inc. have you covered! For the low low price of 100 gold you can change your life in an instant and become the adventurer of your dreams! What's that? Fighters train for ages to be as good as they are? Oh please, that's downer talk! We don't do that here. We have already notified your loyal friends and mortal enemies of your unexpected transformation and in the spirit of politeness requested that they refrain from commenting on you suddenly swinging swords instead of spells. Oh and don't worry, we won't tell a word to Shar - you'll still be her favourite errand girl!"

I am exaggerating for comedic effect so please don't look too much into it, but see my point please - allowing anyone to simply change their mind about something as integral as their class communicates that the above example is something normal that can happen in the world and isn't even worth noting by its inhabitants. Making classes changeable mid-run removes nearly all commitment and renders that choice casual for both the player and the writer. I no longer have to carefully consider what class I want my character to be and all the unique class dialogue and reactivity may as well refer to my clothes. Is this something you can relate to at all, or are we of completely different minds?

Yes. 1000.
Which you'll notice is larger than 70.
And this is a non-represntative group.

That's the problem, we can't just assume that the views of the forum population are an accurate representation of what the total population will be like. From what I've seen, and I guess most people would agree, this forum is a bubble comprised mostly of players that are already familiar with D&D that also seek to actively partake in discussions regarding the development of the game. The amount of active members of this forum that could be considered casual surely pales in comparison, and isn't proportional to that of the total BG3 casual audience.

This forum just isn't a good population to sample if you want actual representative data of the whole BG3 population, I agree with @Alodar.


Obviously no one expects you to survey 100% of the population in order to get reliable data, but if you work with a biased sample you'll get skewed results.

I think you're looking at it from a different angle than it's intended. Instead of considering it a change of class, consider it more like retconning the class. We're changing who they've always been. Sure, it's immersion breaking, but it's also immersion breaking when I get up to refill my glass.

The option being offered is "hey, so you think Shadowheart is more interesting as monk or druid? Knock yourself out!" It's just a different way to tell the story

Yup, just going to have to agree to disagree. I don’t get it at all. Every game has elements that are purely gameplay- for convenience or fun or whatever. I don’t look at Skyrim and say “we have fast travel, what’s the point of walking anywhere? Walking doesn’t mean anything in this world, why doesn’t the story reflect instantaneous, risk free trade among polities as you move goods through warp space?” That’s weird. We all know it’s a gameplay feature, not a canon part of the world, and if we don’t want to use it, we walk because that’s where the fun of the game is found.

I also don’t see how the option to change my mind about my character matters at all. I’m not going to change anything fundamental about the characters I build because I care about their consistency. Committing to choices is where the fun is found, and knowing that I can change them doesn’t diminish that at all, because I know that’s just a gameplay feature. Nothing is being communicated about the world by its inclusion.

To be honest, knowing how easy it is to just ignore this feature but requesting it’s removal despite knowing others are excited about it, strikes me as a bit petty. Not trying to insult you, that’s how it comes off to me. But as I said, we can just agree to disagree.

One thing I did like about Owlcat's games was the many customization options you could select at the onset of the game. It really felt like you were having a little bit of a dialogue with a DM and deciding what was what. I think the expectation for those folks that wanted to adhere closer to the ruleset, have/not have respec, have differentiated races, and multiclassing restrictions was that there would be some kind of toggle that would allow a degree of the same customization. That sort of dialogue with the omnipresent authority figure detailing how you want your game to play out. So, it could have been a toggle, respec for companions or respec only for the MC, multiclassing restrictions or free form, original differentiated racial attributes or egalitarianism. I would have been perfectly ok with that kind of framework, as it would ultimately allow the player to dictate how they wanted their game to unfold, but, echoing Llengrath's comedic analogy, I think what is essentially being told is that it is only one way and it is up to the player to decide within the game to do so. So it feels a lot less like 'this is the contract and conditions being selected for your unique experience' and more like 'yeah, you can pretty much do whatever you want, break narrative, break immersion, but it is ultimately up to you to decide if you are going to do it'. The situations are, for all intents and purposes, effectively the same--options, but the approach feels significantly different, at least to me.

@KLSLS: sure, I think we ultimately agree that this poll is probably not the most meaningful. But why bother having a poll if you're not going to examine the results? There's still *some* useful data in the poll.

+1 This matches with my previous post about issues with Larian's design philosophy for BG3.

Did the existence of ShadowKeeper for BG2 bother you? Would it have bothered you if it had been bundled with the game?

People are going to mess with their party configuration one way or the other. The more I think about it, the less I mind having that option baked in. Also somewhat reduces the risk of issues when the game expects one class and we've used a mod or something to force a different class.

Yes, that was my expectation at least. I don't know about others, but I fully expected either a "5E core rule" toggle or gameplay mode.
Now I have to rely on mods and either have to learn to mod BG3 myself rather than spend time playing it or I have to trust that someone does a mod that accomplishes what I want.

I get what you’re saying @zanos, but a toggle feels like a distinction without a difference. If you put the option to hide respec in the menu, or just put it in Wither’s dialogue, you are still ultimately choosing to use it or not. There is also the possibility that somebody could toggle this off accidentally and become confused when Wither’s doesn’t let them respec and they don’t know why. Not a big deal, but that is a consideration with toggles: are the necessary? Here, I would say no, but we disagree on that point. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to a toggle.

I don't really care. If people want to break immersion, that's their thing. If I was Larian, and knowing the human species... I'd be afraid people will break their party and then complain they broke the party.

Consequently, I *would* call it bad design philosophy, but it's not going to actively bother me while playing. It doesn't unbalance the strenght distribution of races, I don't have to fight the game and double check as if it's multiclassing, nor will enemies even abuse it like shoving and jumping.

There are no flaws that will persist no matter how positively you see it, unlike... pretty much everything else Larian messed with. It's an invitation to shoot yourself in the knee. I think Larian may very well regret the feature. But, do I care? Is it my problem? No.

Getting to 5E core is a bit of a journey, considering we stepped off that path so long ago. I suspect the biggest problem will be balance. Consider what happens once you return ranged weapons to what they used to be in 5E. Eldritch spear should mean 300 feet eldritch blast range. I'm pretty sure that will break just about any encounter in the game, because the AI just can't see that far. But then the AI gets those abilities too, and suddenly encounters might well begin to overlap.

I don't see Larian really changing their map layout approach, which means everything is so ludicrously compressed, which means 5E distances will almost necessarily get really weird. And to fix that, it's going to be necessary to compromise on the rules.

The point is, once we start changing the rules, the logic of encounters changes, and trying to fully grasp what each change does to each encounter across the game is sufficiently enormous that I can understand why Larian don't care much to support multiple different sets of rules. I imagine this would also be an enormous problem for a modder.

I mean, I see your point but you can already make Shadowheart a druid or monk via multiclassing. It's bad enough that you can also make her any other class just as easily and I would personally leave unrestricted multiclassing and removing that 1 cleric level to mods. Before someone asks 'but what's the difference if a mod does it and if it's a built-in feature?', I'll try to answer that too: It's a way for Larian to set respectable boundaries. That way they say "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar. This is our vision for her and if you choose to deviate from it somehow, the game may respond in incoherent and immersion-breaking ways." This is a message I'd respect. Class respeccing and the removal of multiclassing requirements is more like saying "This is Shadowheart, she's a devout cleric of Shar but you know what, who cares, make her a barbarian or wizard if you want lol". I can understand that to some this is simply Larian being inclusive and wanting everyone to have fun, but to me this is them being a DM who can't say no even to suggestions that break the lore of their world.

I can't speak for everyone, but I know that when I open Kingmaker and ask "hey, Valerie has great stats for a Paladin, can I make her one?" and the game firmly says "NO", I have much more respect for it and its creative vision than for a game that lets me turn a githyanki soldier into a bard or remove all druid levels from a literal archdruid.

I'd like to say though that viewing it as a retcon didn't occur to me and it helps me see a perspective from which this is not so horrible. I liked how Deadfire handled this - each companion had a set of 3 lore-friendly class and multiclass options to pick from. This was a fine compromise that allowed some variety while keeping everyone restricted to options that made thematic sense for them.