Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Community Update #24: Looking To The Future

We are in agreement. I think the sting would be reduced if there was an adequate questline and rationale. The moment needs to be earned. Most, if not all, of our companions sacrifices occur before the very end of the game. This particular character's sacrifice is an afterthought that is a last second decision in the game. This character needs a questline in Act 3 and a means of earning the ending, and the decision for sacrifice needs a buildup and pitch before the endgame, not after.

Exactly! In fact, I wanted to romance Shadowheart and ended up with Lae'Zel, both of which were so well written into the main story, that I really had a great experience with the game, even with the ending, because the way Lae'Zel's story ends is well done, imho. And it can vary between happy, epic, bitter-sweet, sad, depending on your choices throughout the game.

Had I romanced Karlach instead, I'd probably not have had such a great experience.

Not gonna happen.

For all the talk of "increasing Minthara reactivity" and whatnot in the "Looking to the future" sermon, there wasn't even any mention of her in the second patch.

Some of us can't even recruit her, let alone experience her reactivity. Apparently Minthara doesn't like bears, that's her sole character motivation.

Sadly with the new patch, the performance is rather bad. ItsS nearly unplayable for me

It's supposed to be improved. Haven't tried it, yet.

I wonder ...
Does that mean that we can hope for Stat Rolling in some future update?

Problem is solved luckily

This is a non sequitur post for two reasons: My machine can’t run the game; when you’ve got a brand, run with it.

Looking back through the community updates, I believe this is the second time that Larian have directly responded to player feedback. The first was late ‘22 when they stated they wouldn’t annouce a release date for BG3 until they had met their own standards.

More of this, please. More responses, more interaction, more insight into Larian’s plans and thought process.

The way I understand Larian’s communication strategy, they value action more than words. They would rather implement real changes than post on hypotheticals. That’s understandable and, in my book, praiseworthy.

But words fucking matter. (See what I did there, mods?) I know Larian know this, or they wouldn’t have spent so much effort bringing millions of words to life. So, while most community updates have been about how Larian are truly doing a great job, it’s actually nice to see a post saying “here’s how we’re interpreting feedback; here’s our planned response”. This is good. I’m praising Larian.

This was what I was hoping for from early access. That ship has sailed, but a new one may dock yet. And that ship may need a more weathered captain:
I don’t know who writes or approves of these posts, but direct contradictions like this aren’t a good look.

The point here is that practice makes perfect. Larian are known for extensive rewrites to their scripts, which can’t happen in reactive communication with the community. What can happen is making this kind of post more often to get better at making them over time.

Larian could make that an integral part of their next early access. Imagine if we didn’t have to wait for Swen Vincke’s Game Design Conference speech to find out why hide was turned into an action after 3 years of dead silence on the matter.

I hope future Larian fans will get more insight into the games they love. I strongly believe that maintaining the level of communication of this update will benefit both Larian and their community in the long run.

Community interaction and company reactivity are probably the main reasons I like Larian. They make good games, but I'm not in Bethesda, Obsidian, or BioWare's forums. I'm here because Larian is quite responsive and apparently obsessive about getting the game just right. If the community has a problem with something, they'll look into it, while still respecting the integrity of their initial vision. On the other hand, direct communication is the best, and we don't always get it. So +1 to everything you've written. I'd be more inclined to support the next EA if it had the current level or higher of community engagement and company reactivity to feedback.

Wouldnt justice for a Lolth Sworn Drow mean death ... ?AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH !!!!!!!

You can do whatever you like but I'm staying away from that.

I've rolled enough stats in BG1+BG2 to last a lifetime. No, several lifetimes.

Thank god for character editors !

And, in BG3, pointbuy.

If they were so obsessive then they would not have shipped bg3 in this state, "hinted" at so many things in their marketing that were not in the game like the upper city or consequences or made so many questionable decisions. They are so communicative that they did not even notice that their announcment of patch 2 is broken.

No, Larian is just another company.

Is it intetional that patch 2 thread is inaccessible?

I've been waiting for the patch 2 thread to be fixed but it doesn't look like anyone at Larian noticed it's broken yet.

Personally I have to say I expected more from the "new" Karlach ending...it's not really a new ending, it just adds a couple options to one of the existing endings and expands with a bit of a cutscene that elaborates on what happens in the immediate aftermath but nothing about it feels good or better than it did before. As of now Karlach still doesn't feel like a companion worth bothering with. But still a lot more to come for the game in future patches.

But if this is the end of Karlach content I'm not too fussed about it personally, my eyes will mostly be on the kind of content Minthara gets, THAT will be the one companion content that will mold a lot of my longer term feelings about the game...her, the epilogues, and whether Larian implement any of the Raven Queen content in the game before support for BG3 ends.

Larian are great at damage control. They respond to criticism by throwing the customers a few tid-bits padded out with pie-in-the-sky promises about what they will be doing at some point in the future.

To say that "they [Larian] value action more than words" is pure fantasy.

Do people actually believe tosh like this from any company? "when they stated they wouldn’t annouce a release date for BG3 until they had met their own standards."
Larian set a release date for the end of August then brought it forward by three weeks (for reasons unexplained). By the time we reached the original end of August date they had had to fix over 1,000 bugs.
We have now had 4 hotfixes and two major patches in less than a month. One of the hotfixes had to be fixed as did the first patch and now it seems there may be problems with the second patch.

"But words fucking matter." Yes they do but 'actions speak louder than words'. (See what I did there, poster?)

Since the early days of EA people have been asking for various spells, feats, etc. to be fixed or made to work as in 5e. They are still asking for most of them. Larian gives us a camp you can turn into a menagerie, the ability to choose different colours for horns and now Wither's Wardrobe. Larian really nailed the essence of DnD.

But what about what Swen said? What about all the battalions of actors Swen was bringing back according to you?

Ah, tomorrow. Everything will be fine . . .tomorrow.

Well that stuff isn't going to happen overnight...calling the actors in to do more work won't have content put in the game in two days. At any rate, you really shouldn't try to re-instigate old arguments.

I think they made that thread inaccessible on purpose as damage control. The technical threads have been blowing up with complaints about patch 2.

That’s pretty much exactly the opposite of what I was praising Larian for in my previous post. It’s not great, but I’d rather point out the positive aspects of Larian’s communication and request more of that than harp on failures.

This is a critical time for communication. Larian want to avoid backlash and the reputation of releasing unfinished games, especially if Patch 2 breaks BG3 for a lot of players. It looks like the strategy is to batten down the hatches and release a fix as fast as possible.

In this instance, Larian are opting for control over transparency; in that sense they are just another company. Still, they undeniably stand by verifiable principles (microtransactions, choosing not to release yet on Xbox). So maybe they could be coaxed into transparency because what used to be coy silence during early access (no spoilers, tee hee) now looks like obfuscation with regards to a released product.

I’m sure Larian will put out a statement about patch 2 (they might have done so already, I take a while to write). I would encourage them to not wait for the hotfix to be ready.

I’m going to agree with a lot of what you say next, but not with this.

The way I see it, Larian’s communication during early access was announcing new features in upcoming patches. All of those words were wasted because downloading the patch told us what there was to know. It was about hype, not information; meanwhile Larian were happy to stay mum about reactions for months on end while working on a fix in the background.

I stand by my statement. It was a polite way of saying Larian don’t value direct communication very highly while acknowledging they do act in response to some feedback.

In truth, that statement from Larian was kinda smug and repeating it now sounds sarcastic no matter the intent. My guess is they haven’t quite met their own standards with release, but I do remember believing that statement at the time.

What you say next is true, but that doesn’t necessarily make BG3 a bad or incomplete game. If Patch 2 really is bad, though, that could spell trouble for Larian.

No? I guess your point is you’d rather Larian hunkered down and finished polishing BG3; I think that’s their plan already. My point would be: while they’re doing that, they could keep us updated between hotfixes.

^^

At this point, I’m looking to understand the design rather than change it. If stuff like multi-turn saving throws are fixed by the definitive edition, then great! In any case, BG3 will forever hold a place in my heart as that DnD game with no flight or fireball.

P.S. Please look into accessibilty, Larian. I don’t know if volume of feedback matters, but I believe it’s important so I’ll mention it when I remember to.

Personally for me Patch #2 runs slightly better, enough to notice a meaningful difference in smoothness. Though other than vast amounts of stuttering prior to Patch #1 and now Patch #2, I haven't had any other tech issues with the game. Zero crashes and such.