Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Swen Vincke on Dropped Frames show!

Oh, that's interesting to know. Thank you.

Consider my argument null and void for the time being then

I don't know, compared with the length of the game Auntie is still relatively early.

I think that someone progressing through the story at a reasonable pace and investigating things as they come, then they'll have gone through a chunk of the Grove and probably a lot of the blighted village. That's a best case scenario since it's very easy to see a bunch of other stuff first as well. There's a decent chance they don't see it until we'll into the act, they're not exactly funneled there at all. So there's two other zones they might explore in the very best case scenario, not to mention they might go through the old temple earlier on. And there's a decent chance that they explore the general swamp area before going into the tea house itself, which is a decent sized area. I'd say generously speaking, including the nautiloid itself there's like, 8 hours worth of content that an average player could easily see before getting to Ethel, which is in my opinion far too late to be introducing a principle of the game's pacing like danger zone rests. Those should be introduced and reinforced as soon as possible, probably before the druid Grove if it were up to me.

Well, if I understood the whole system correctly, there is almost nothing to prevent spam long rest after every combat, but the problem will be that you will run out of food supplies very quickly.
I think that food supply is kind of like a soft lock on excessive long rest abuse.

They won't let you run out of food supplies because that would just end the game. If you do somehow, there will have to be a merchant somewhere who sells more. And then running to that merchant will just be another trivial chore.

To meaningfully restrict Long Rest, there would have to be random encounters or some other actual consequences related to where you decide to rest and especially how often. Or quests and events should be time sensitive. But as it stands, there are no consequences. You just have to collect, manage and click on food before resting.

I can't imagine what they were thinking adding that food tetris minigame before resting. It's a pointless non-mechanic. What they really want is a game that is balanced around per-encounter resources like DOS. Until they can commit to a D&D mindset about resting, the rest system will always be a fake one that just makes you go through the hoops when you want your abilities back.

They should have gone full D&D for a rest system, and then simply removed the inconvenient consequences of spamming Long Rest on easier difficulty modes. But instead, everyone gets a half-baked non-system now.

Zero thought and creativity was given to the rest system.

There should be consequences for resting a lot. Not a stupid mini food game. These consequences should be linked the game's difficulty or be enabled as an option even, for people who wanted all easy.
What kind of consequences? That Larian's job to design and implement. Maybe random encounters depending on the area, environmental hazards, stat penalties etc...

I don't think that's true or fair. It sounds like they sweated over it - and even tried to playtest different solutions. If you watch the video Swen says playtesters HATED the Danger Areas where you could not rest.

However, nothing stops you from modding in whatever fantasy logistical restriction rest conditions you want to have in place.

And look, I plan to do that as well. We are going to have runs where we work against logistical limitations once we have mastered the tactical challenges.

Because when you get really good at something you love, the only way forward is to start tying one hand behind your back.

I didn't mean that the game would run out of food that you could eat, but the fact that you will have to leave some areas and go to town to buy supplies if you want to use long rest too often. That's why I said "soft lock".
And I definitely think there will be dungeons and areas in the game that you won't be able to leave to replenish your food supply.
In that case, you'll have to think carefully about each long rest, because you don't know how many tough fights await you before you get the chance to buy more food.

I haven't read the entire thread, so this might have been mentioned already, but people spawning long rest will end up locking themselves out of certain paths/interactions. The game world isn't 100% static/waiting for you.

Two examples from early access:
- the owlbear mother can be found dead, killed by another group of "adventurers".
- Waukeen's Rest event is on an invisible timer the moment you crash land on the beach.

Except they did have a better camp system in place which makes it really sad that they scrapped it all.

I am not 100% sure but my experience has been these are both location triggered, not time.

If you visit - or pass by - Waukeens rest but don't deal with it then it concludes on its own at the next long rest.

I am not sure about the Owlbear but I thought it was once you visited the Shattered sanctum and didn't deal with the Followers of the Absolute with Edwin then they go back and return with Goblins and so you find dead Goblins in the cave.

I mean, if they want to introduce it sooner - and maybe they do that, since they easily could change that from EA - it would be in the crypt, where you meet Withers, Ethels is the bigger dungeon, where it has more impact, but they could easily do it with the crypt too and maybe with the spider matriarch cave system.

I think that the crypt is the perfect place to introduce such a system. The important thing with a system like this is that you introduce it early so the player can internalize it. They need to see it as a feature to take into account, not an aberration to the way they've been doing things for hours already.

For the Owlbear, I've seen report from people who found the cave and long rested before going in and it was dead, not just after going to the Shattered Sanctum first.

For Waukeen, they might have changed it, back in the early days of EA people were talking about it having a X long rests timer, but maybe they didn't realize it was just going near and long resting first.

Oh, I think I finally get it. Sven doesn't recommend Dark Urge as a first playthrough because he assumes most people will want to play it because of the insane murderous psychopath route.
I guess if you kill most of your companions, you're really missing out on a big part of the story, so it makes perfect sense.
But if you don't plan on giving in to darkness, then Urge is definitely a better option than Tav, especially because of the extra content.

Literally in that same interview he says he just finished an Evil Dark Urge playthrough with Lae'zel, Shadowheart, and Minthara as companions so not missing that much...that's a full party of origin or special story characters. He even added that he wend full dark, as evil as he could, and became ruler of the forgotten realms. Sooo yeah...you can be as evil as you like and still have a full party.

The thing I like about danger zones is that they make you think differently. “Oh no, I’ve run out of spell slots. Maybe I should sneak around to avoid combat or maybe I should start using these consumables I’ve been hoarding the whole game.”

If you’re able to backtrack out of them though, it kind of defeats the purpose. I’d rather they be zones where you are trapped but have lots of potions and consumables to find if you search. Maybe even introduce a consumable that replenishes a spell slot. But I totally get why that might not be the way most people want to play. Honestly being able to spam long rest isn’t the worst thing in the world. Most video games let you heal and replenish your resources instantly anyway. It gives you the flexibility to not hold back with your spells so much.

Most games that let you do that also have a time limit.

I understood it as "don't play that one first, it makes more fun when you see how it diverges from a more normal playthrough".
Basically, Tav gives you the baseline experience, Origin characters give you specific backgrounds for your companions and Dark Urge has a diverging path.
If you play an Origin before Tav, you kinda know how the Origin Character thinks.

If you play Dark Urge first you do not know how their path diverges and is different.