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.

Thanks for doing that! Here's another. If you resolve the burning tavern quest by opening the door with the key Florrick will talk to the first person she see and will not not be able to recognize that Wyll is in the party unless you position him so he's standing in fire.

Also, this will take more doing but there are times when I want a party member to take over dialogue and the patch prevented one of those. When saving the man from the exploding mushrooms I send in Lae'zel to throw a bottle of water on the torch. This initiates a dialogue that involves a strength check. My squishy wizard has difficulty passing that check but Lae'zel can pass it easily. It would be nice to be able to designate a speaker in such instances.

Larian was very supportive of Mods for DOS 2 so I expect they will ultimately offer similar support for BG3. I think it's great they are so far continuing to support it through patches and hotfixes imperfect as they may be. As has been mentioned several times plenty of publishers are done as soon as a game is released.

edit

as per the "Larian needs to surface" thread, Salo makes it clear that Mods will be supported.

I hope so. All I want is confirmation that custom level support is in the bag. It's what I'm the most worried about them cutting as it would drastically limit the kinds of mods we could theoretically make.

People seriously need to chill, updating this game is probably complicated as hell.
I don't mind Larian adding new stuff in without being afraid of breaking things.

I understand the annoyance but come on, chillout.

Like I said before I don't want Larian to rush things or cancel anything. Just a little heads up on what they're working on from time to time would solve so many issues they run into with their community.

Meh I lived through EA, If its more manageable for them to add new stuff and with the help of community identify and fix them a short time later than to slow down/scrap content than to risk making things break.
Anyhoo not like we make decisions anyways

For this to even make sense, they would need to also add support for creating/adding cutscenes and voice acting. Having now dungeons filled only with monsters, where the story is solely told by dialogues and/or lorebooks would be jarring. The problem is, that even if they do this, there is no modder or group of modders who will have resources to pull off cinematics and voiceovers on the level of original BG3. And even if we do get modded cutscenes, these will be screaming "mod content" (and people will be complaining anyway to someone).

That's why I think this mod support will be focused on gameplay features and/or UI, not on adding now story content. But we'll see, Larian proved they can reach high, so who knows what they are cooking for us.

Are you sure about that? Seems like they were perfectly content with the status quo of being non-comunicative about mods until the community forced their hand.

And I keep seeing this awful comparison, which publishers stop all updates as soon as the game is released?
Unless they're making shovelware, I'd say most publishers do have post-release support.
The previously used example, Volition with Saints Row, kept updating it for another 6 months before they went under a few months later. Even Redfall and Gollum got updates.

Adding voice acting was a feature in DOS2. Assuming they created an editor for adding cutscenes they could just let us use it. It's unlikely Larian licensed a custom editor just for cutscenes it's much more likely they upgraded DOS2's toolset to include a cutscene editor. It's also not unprecedented for a developer to let people use their own cutscene editor. The editors for The Witcher 1 and Dragon Age Origins came with robust cutscene editors. Dragon Age Origins was so robust it led to a highly impressive machinima being produced called Warden's Fall.
I strongly disagree. One thing you're not considering is that this would actually be more appealing for coop play. Since players would actually prefer a more hack and slash approach to dungeon design in this respect. One member on this forum mentioned a flaw Baldur's Gate 3 has is because it's such a long game the vast majority of coop playthroughs never make it out of Act 1. So having custom dungeons would be extremely appealing to players who prefer to play in coop. Additionally, Neverwinter Nights had hundreds of modules akin to this.
You're making a lot of assumptions. Namely that
A) there wouldn't be a group dedicated enough to create cinematics or voice overs. Which is inaccurate. There are extremely notable high profile examples recently. A great example is there's a mod in development right now called Fallout London which even got Astarion's voice actor to contribute to it.
B) that because someone might make a cutscene you personally don't like, that the developer shouldn't work towards it. Just because people might make art that isn't visually appealing doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed. There's incredible value in modding for it's ability to inspire developers to then get jobs in the industry or grow their skills and start companies based upon it. Killing Floor's developer Tripwire admitted in an interview their company wouldn't exist had it not been for a modding contest Nvidia setup for Unreal Tournament 2004. Which brought the team together to produce the mod Killing Floor.
The only reason I can see Larian neutering the SDK in comparison to DOS2 wouldn't be because of any of the things you listed. It would be because they use licensed components in the engine. A good example is they use Granny for models, Noesis for GUI and so forth. However none of these are insurmountable on Larian's part and they've already announced being able to make custom GUIs. It would be extremely disappointing if they prevented us from making custom environments as it would lead to the modding community not being anywhere close to reaching its full potential. However Swen has said in an interview back in July that custom environment support was one of the things they're looking into so I'm very hopeful they don't abandon it.
I'm unfortunately inclined to agree. As everyone has pointed out previously Larian has remained conspicuously mum about what they're working on. And it's only recently due to the recent Hotfix that it's started to cause issues.
I also agree with this. It's actually more in-line with a practice developers have started doing recently where they ship a very unfinished game, then patch it later. No Man's Sky is one of the best examples of this where the 1.0 release of the game was barely finished and didn't feature promised features like multiplayer. And after years of patches it is finally what the developer initially promised. With Baldur's Gate 3 in general it feels like its first year is just another unadvertised Early Access period and it's likely the eventual Definitive Edition of the game will be the true finished product.

I understand that the question was meant to be kind of rhetorical, but I still want to voice polite disagreement,

I think that these animations are important. They bring a lot more character to a part that was lacking (the mid-stages of the romances where you had a long time without much change).

That said: a friend of mine absolutely loves Astarion, so I think focusing on him is fitting. Though I didn’t romance Halsin either. But maybe I’m just not the target audience for that Character.

I have a lot of trust in modders. However if no new content would be possible to make, the interest in the game might wane. I currently already have all mods I need for normal gameplay (and I would not play the game without mods) but I would really appreciate the creation of new environments. The best part of the whole game for me was exploring Shar's gauntlet and I hope for additional "simple" dungeon crawler content. I would not mind if scenarios made by modders hadn't less or no cutscenes, and voice acting is nice but not mandatory. I want some adventures where you look for treasures or the lost person or ..., without the necessity to constantly save the world.

“Larian” is a useful rhetorical device to remind us not harbor personal animosity towards any specific employee. I don’t think it’s useful to call out the lead systems designer by name, for example, when the same feedback can be given more neutrally to “Larian” as a whole. The exception here is Swen Vincke, as CEO and armor-clad face of the company, though it’s important to remember BG3 isn’t solely his game.

It also reminds us that Larian is a company, and that companies don’t have feelings or an innate sense of ethics. So when they sell a full-price game that doesn’t exist to mac users, it’s important to do more than praise the good parts. “Larian” giving up for all the negative feedback would amount to abandonning a succesful business model to cater to the non-existant emotions of an administrative entity. Capitalism won’t let that happen.

Thanks Ecc2ca, Crimsomrider, and alienspacebats for reporting the bugs, and thanks Salo for replying and putting them on the list to be fixed! The game prioritizing your avatar as the main speaker will be a great feature once all the bugs are fixed! No more running to the front with my sorcerer to try to get dialogue!

I fully agree with this.
There are also certain parts of the game I really liked and would like to see expanded upon. Like my favorite combat arena thus far has been in the Guildhall in Baldur's Gate in Act 3. I would love to see that arena in particular expanded upon with unique encounters. That sort of thing is what truly feels exciting to me and I genuinely hope it becomes possible.

Another annoying instance is in the distillery in act 2. When the group comes close to the bar, it is not the selected player that sits down to challenge Thorm for the drinking contest, but whoever reaches the "perimeter" (wherever that may be) first. In my PT's someone else was systematically chosen, so finally I ungroup every time when I get here, and walk up to the bar alone with my chosen PC.

(I haven't been back here since patch 6 yet, so maybe it was fixed)

That is just untrue and I think you mean 'done and dusted' not 'said and done'.

The kissing animations do not mean much to me, mostly because I will never see most of them in my gameplay. There are other animations, however, which I thought were brilliant. For example, when Karlach gets her first hug after getting a dose of iron ... that was a perfect scene. And I do like Astarion in just about any animated scene.

Here's what blew it for me on the romance animation stuff (please read no further if you are under 17 years of age): date with Karlach, Henk serves the wrong stew but who cares, we go upstairs and somehow end up in a missionary position with my character on the bottom, Karlach standing. I wonder, hey isn't this backwards? What is Karlach thrusting with if she doesn't have a ... oh wait a minute, she does have a spiky tail .... oooh nooo! Argyle now wears a Chastity Belt +1, encrusted with frost.

This is the 3rd time I've seen this mentioned so I'll chime in.

That position may not be typical but it is possible without a tail. I don't enjoy it but it has some advantages depending on how the partners are built.

I'm kinda glad to see it because in porn it's pretty typical to see two women doing things that aren't much fun and few women actually do when they don't have a camera aimed at them. "I mean I guess you could do that but why would you. . ." So there's a part of me that's happy to see a sex scene that leaves men scratching their head.

Agreed.

I have held a Bg3 Multiplayer guild for 2.5 years now and I can say we had a much higher completion rate in EA when the game could be finished in 8-15 hours (we just did the 8 hours that 1 time - it was a speed completionism run with highly experienced players) - but we saw a completion rate of about 30-40% with most runs 'failing' in the Underdark.

The current run completion rate is sits around 8%-10% on our Discord - and those take a lot of work to get across the finish line - we have a whole procedure we go through to check in on runs, and each run has a leader, a private text channel and a private voice channel and I audit the active runs once a week, reaching out to the leaders to get a status update if there hasn't been any activity. We have to swap out people who just disappear, or have life events and can't play for a bit - I have a team of admins who help recruit replacements. On the Larian forums the completion rate is probably closer to 1%-2% - with 90% of runs never getting out of Act 1. A full run can take about 50-80 hours.

We also have a Graveyard channel for honor runs that end in a TPK, and a Hall of Fame for honor runs that successfully complete. Runs that are abandoned are unceremoniously deleted.

I agree with everything you said here Owl. Good modding tools are essential to this game - and a core component of my long term strategy. This engine is absolutely brilliant for multiplayer, we just need smaller, less epic and sprawling adventures to run. Ideally, being able to run a 8-10 hour campaign for multiplayer would be a great start. We don't need a lot of cinematic stuff, or really any, it's not what people are primarily interested in on multiplayer runs.

very long term -I would like to run a persistent version of the city of Baldur's Gate that can be joined by scores of people and can be a jumping off point for other adventures. That may be a pipe dream until AI lets us simply program anything ourselves - because the engine would need a major overhaul to allow that to happen.

But holy shit that would be amazing.

Well, I'm of two minds here. My initial reaction was I thought it silly that they were worried about fixing kissing scenes.
WTF cares about that?
But, then I thought, at least they're doing something, not just raking in profits, so kudos to them for that.
It does seem to me that they are trying to keep the game updated, to a point.
So, there's that.

Most studios don't deal with patches like Larian does so deal with it yadayadayada excuse...

Firstly that isn't true. Many studios do patch their games. Some really good. Pathfinder WOTR, Pillars of Eternity series, Solasta etc...just check their patch history. About the same level of patching/fixes.
Secondly every time larian patches BG3 the game GETS WORST.

Frankly I am not seeing a huge difference in patch quantity or quality compared to other studios. They are just more vocal/in detail about it...maybe worst since the game gets even more unstable??
I just don't understand everyone's borderline craze that OMG Larian patches their games!! Its a testament on how unstable everything is. Is this do for praise??

Firstly MAKE THE GAME STABLE and PLAYABLE with no critical bugs...before adding new kiss animations, "quality of life" changes, etc...

Its like a totally different team is taking care of the game post release...or for every patch?? This would account for all the weird "WTF, that wasn't a problem" changes.

I fully agree. The number of patches, things patched and hotfixes kinda highlight that the product has some severe issues. If you know a bit about software development it's easy to see a common pattern here.

I'm working in the software industry (not games) for over 20 years now and it never fails to amaze me how different people react to different types of software. If it is a game people tend to be very forgiving, you read things like "it is a game, bugs are to be expected" or "what amazing support, they still fix things". Well, it is their job, simple as that and it is their job because they failed to do it right in the first place and on the way of fixing stuff they accidentally broke more. Guys, always remember, you paid full price for professional product, you are entitled to it working 100% as advertized on the day you buy it, not after 20 patches and hotfixes!

Now imagine your banking software would have the same level of quality, or the x-ray machine in the hospital or the autopilot in the plane on your holiday trip... Would you be like, how great that they fix the bug in 3 weeks that just cost me a 1000 bucks? Probably not...

Ugh, more hyperbolic nonsense. Objectively, and verifiably untrue. They have made incredibly complex changes to the game and massive QoL, stability, story, and more improvements across the board. In process a few items have been temporarily broken, but they always get fixed.

Multi thousand fixes per patch including big overall changes and you are upset that a handful of things get broken. Sheesh, touch grass.

At this point I have to wonder if you even played BG3. I did multiple playthough since launch and haven't encountered a single game breaking bug. Same with dozen of friends, who also did multiple playthroughs, same with multiple streamers who played the game day 1 and enjoyed a smooth experience.
I see you mentioning WotR and I also doubt you ever played this one too. Iif you ever played that game at launch, you would know that it was broken at a whole other magnitude. Even months after release and multiple patches, you could see plenty of people complaining about it.

The goal of our updates is to strike a balance between fixing bugs and introducing new content, but we acknowledge that finding that balance isn’t always seamless.

Your suggestion to focus more on new features instead of smaller fixes is noted, though addressing bugs remains a crucial part of maintaining the game's foundation. Feedback like yours helps us better understand community sentiment and guides future updates to avoid disrupting the player experience.

If you'd like to dig deeper into performance or compatibility issues, tools like ForceWind might help pinpoint where the slowdowns or conflicts are happening, especially if mods or specific settings are involved.