Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The latest very disappointing developments

Sorry Larian, but this time your patch 6 and hotfiix 18 are really catastrophic. For me, nothing works the way it used to. And I'm not just talking about mods. Some of the new features have disappeared since the hotfix, and even frames load slower than before. In short, the results are really negative this time. My opinion is that you should focus on new things rather than fixing minor bugs, which ultimately degrade the game and frustrate the community. But hey, that's just my opinion, right?

Larian's silence toward their community is causing people to turn on them. Twitter and Discord are absolutely on fire about Patch 6 and Hotfix 18 breaking mod support.

The vagueness and silence towards what is being added to the game next is causing a culture of bullying to emerge surrounding it. There are constant arguments that lead to belittling shouting matches surrounding what was promised. It's also caused conspiracy theories to emerge that certain updates were meant to break modding because Larian secretly hates it. Or that the modding toolset was cancelled because Wizards of the Coast shut the idea down.

Had they told us the status of planned modding support (which was originally supposed to drop back in September) I doubt any of this would happen. Then we'd at least know "okay things are rough but soon things will be okay". Instead we're just greeted with "..." and we don't know if mod support hasn't been cancelled outright. It's causing the community to fracture into two halves, players who just passively play the game and players who want to modify and document it. And the latter community is shrinking day by day as this continues. I really want Larian to succeed and I want its community to prosper. But it's hard to not lose sympathy for them if they allow it to continue without even a simple "hey guys don't worry here's what's happening".

So, y'all don't think the new kissing animations are important, huh? Neither do I. BUT ... the Greenbed Regeneration works now, and that is something to celebrate. Larian is 2 for 2 on my requests. It seems a little early to me for modding tools, but I guess a lot of people have already been playing for years with the early release. What I'd like to see first is a save-game editor, like the trusty old GateKeeper and ShadowKeeper programs. Those were great.

I'm not even saying "hey release something tomorrow". I just want them to go "hey guys, been a while, here's what's coming up next". Doing that would go a long way towards repairing the community's animosity right now.

I'm of two minds.

On one hand I would like to have a bit more communication so I could know if a definitive edition or a directors cut is being prepared. Because the main story of BG3 - the emperor, the end game battle - is trash and needs to be rewritten.


On the other hand I just expect patches to break mods. This happens with every game and it's just good practice to hold off on mods until the game seems stable. That may be unpopular opinion but it's a good practice to expect trouble when installing mods.

But both my minds agree with this: sending out the Larian CEO to do damage control would be bad, bad decision. In EA he stepped in it time and time again. Even during his own scripted events! If they are going to send someone to communicate it should be one of the authors.

This would be nice. Waiting for the definitive edition would be logical as they'd have to redo the toolset for the definitive edition if they released it before. They had to release two separate toolsets for both DOS1/2 for this reason. I'm not opposed to them doing this I'd just like it if it were told to us.
There are solutions to this that still let them preserve their precious mysteries. Like they could just contact people like the creator of the Script Extender, get him to sign an NDA and send him the update ahead of time so he can adequately prepare for it.
I don't really care who does it although if it was anyone it would probably be Swen. Since he's now the face of the company and the one who was doing most of the interviews around the game.

It's kinda ridiculous how players keep bashing on "Larian" about BG3 patches. Most companies are said and done with their game after an official release. A lot like how "Volition" ditched "Saints Row Self Made" after it was finished which is full of bugs btw and makes the game absolute trash.

"Larian" actually keeps trying to make improvements to the game and fixing bugs and BG3 isn't even an MMORPG. Rejoice that they actually care about their non mmo game and updating it. Considering they keep saying more patches are underway, you should really stop modding and just be patient. Everyone knows new patches break mods.

Not to mention, Larian hasn't even released proper modding tools yet, that's what needs discussion the most. What kind of capabilities it'll have, will we be able to make our own story expansion?

Nobody from "Larian" is gonna step out and answer feedback, they are spending there time on better things than walking out into a mob. I don't blame them one bit on that.

There will be a day that updates will come to an end, that's when players will really be sad. I'd appreciate players to give positive feedback about the game and polite responses to bugs, people respond better when they are treated with respect. "Larian" just may give up one day for all the negative feedback.

Larian is absolutely failing at making improvements at all. Every patch makes the game worse and breaks more stuff. We have reached a point, where gaming magazines in my country start writing articles about the miserable state the game is in, with major questlines being broken and a community that is turning on Larian. And instead of adressing those issues, Larian tries to make characters more likeable, tinkers around with kissing animations, one patch even prominently mentioned the positioning of trees have been improved.

Do they own anything to the community e.g. clear communication what their plans are? No. Are other companies doing a lot better regarding community communication? Absolutely yes. Will this behhaviour have repercussions down the line? Probably. My best guess is, a lot of people will never pre-order a Larian game again. At least I will not do.

I'm aware that Larian doesn't owe anything to its community. However it's a bit rich for them to brag at awards shows that they encourage devs to build a community in-order to make money and then undermine it by treating that community like it doesn't exist after the game releases. I wish they'd take a break from the awards circuit and address their community for once it's getting tiresome watching them pay lip service.

Like I said before I'm not asking nor encouraging Larian to adjust their release strategy whatsoever. I just want them to address the community finally and just give us a heads up. I don't think that's too much to ask.

At least, they give us patches. I know of a lot of other games, that are still a mess.

I use mods and am cautious after a patch, I paused my honour mode run for now. But I don't think, they do a bad job. A game of this size will always have something not working and the good thing is, that they are fixing it still.

I would however like to see story beats addressed and they really should stop listening to the overly vocal thirst crowd. The discussions after every new kiss animation are ridiculous.

I agree with this as well. Like focusing an entire update around kissing animations was a disappointment. I just hope that Patch 5 wasn't the end of major changes to the game. I think to an extent Larian is more interested in appealing to the vocal twitter crowd that celebrated the Halsin romance scene reveal. As opposed to the community that has been patiently waiting for the things they promised and haven't yet come to fruition.

I think by now most people have realized that Halsin was a mistake. I only use him to get abducted by Orin, to not loose a companion or npc, important to me. Same with Minthara. She seems to be pretty broken still and I wrote in another thread, that there are story beats, I like to see mor in-depth than romance and sex scenes ( I gave the example of the House of Hope, where I would have preferred to go deeper into the story of the Hearthflame sisters, than having Haarlep creeping on us for a potential and very boring mic drop on Raphael)

It's true that Larian seems to be in an in-between situation which doesn't give confidence in the future. They fix bugs and add small storytelling elements. But in the end, we especially expect more depth to the game with new quests and expansions. The rest could be left to the community, if they agree to that.

Finally, the games that remained in the memory are those like Witcher 3, where the quality of writing and the quality of the expansions left an incredible experience, or some games like Neverwinter the community was able to improve. Here, we don't really know where Larian wants to go, hence the current frustration. Especially since it's actually been 3 and a half years since the game was released. Don't forget the pre-launch. They are still fixing bugs which add to the bugs and they are adding unnecessary things (kisses for example) believing that this pleases the community.

In my opinion, Larian is at the crossroads on his game. And they should now communicate on the future of the game and the franchise.

Larian doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between a character being liked by an extremely loud minority (Halsin, Ascended Astarion) or being generally well-liked within the community (Shadowheart, Karlach). This is just a side note, but I found their choices to market this kissing update truly baffling too. Why choose Halsin (the least popular character in the game) and Ascended Astarion to promote this patch when they have Karlach or Gale as a choice?

The most disappointing part is that the company keeps acting like the game is still in early access, tinkering with kissing animation and introducing game-breaking bugs, since the GOTY doesn't seem to do basic QA.

Sorry for the rant, but few things disappointed me as much as this game's ongoing updates.

This! I am waiting for the definitive edition (or when they stop doing patches) to use mods because I know they are not currently supported and might break after patches.

I am very happy that they are continuing to fix and improve the game after release! The last patch had two things I really wanted: 1) The game prioritizing your avatar as the main speaker when dialogue triggers automatically, and 2) Fixing Halsin’s missing barks. I am sure the other things in the patch were things other people really wanted as well! I am looking forward to future patches and what they might add and fix!

No game company ever did take care of mods when patching. How could they when there is such an abundance of different mods? Of course mods were broken by the patch. And I would not play the game without mods. Two to three days after patching all of my mods at least did work again.

That Patch 6 introduced some new bugs is annoying but was to be expected, given the massive nature of the game and the patch. I hope they removed a lot of the old bugs, for me that was mainly the Error 516 in Act 3 in my first playthrough. Never had a noticable bug in my Honour mode playthrough however.

Anyway, my main criticism of the game is not bugs, or the game stability. I maybe had 3 crashes since start of EA. I had one crash during my whole Honour mode playthrough, with no negative consequences except that I had to replay. BG3 is one of the most solid games I ever played.

So with the game prioritizing your avatar as the main speaker thing, I don’t think it’s actually fixed. I’ve seen two cases where a companion was selected over the avatar for a very important cutscene. Act 3 spoilers


So as with the persistent “Continue” bug, I’m not confident that this issue has actually been addressed. (No mods for the scenes I mentioned and both occurred after patch 6.)

From what I can tell it seems half-fixed. eg. Ethel will still default to talking to Lae'zel in Act 1 in the dialogue that occurs prior to her offering her +stat hair, but other instances it's been working properly, like when you rescue Rolan in the shadow-cursed lands.

I'll be on the lookout for other instances.

Also been looking for that new Shadowheart banter in act 2, I've just walked into Moonrise (map is cleared apart from the Reithwin Mausoleum/Gauntlet of Shar) and haven't encountered a single instance. Wondering if that isn't working as intended either.

Passing on these instances (and the ones reported by alienspacebats and Ecc2ca) to the team so they can look into it. If you encounter more, please do let our Support Team know so they can forward it along!
The team is also aware of the "1.Continue" instances in dialogues and looking into them.