Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General On contradictory and inconsistent feedback

Since the EA I've only read the forums and never posted, until recently. Initially joined in order to help the game improve throughout the EA stages, participated in discussions about companions, game mechanics and story, and shared my experience.

Now I come back and see things that have been actively promoted before and made it into the release - suddenly were bad or poorly executed, according to the very same community. Or vice versa. Let me give you a couple examples.

Shadowheart, Laezel, Wyll. The first two were insufferable at some point, had zero tolerance for simple questions and roasted you on any occasion. This was changed based on our collective feedback, they made SH and L much more compliant, yet as of now I see posts here and there about 'missing the old days' when they had 'personality' and ’agency'. Wyll was trash talked all over throughout the EA for inconsistent temper, constant show off and poorly written story. On release, they give us an absolute Chad of a character with a steel will and resolve who is perceived now as... Karlach's sidekick? Whaaa?

BA shove with extended pushing range. Discussions were boiling, on how overpowered, unnecessary and unfaithful to the source material BA shove was. Post release, I've seen little-to-none talks about it, except for some general statements such as 'I still wish shove was a BA' with no justification behind the idea. Why wasn't there any justification? I guess its cause with the abundance of other bonus actions and the scale of encounters mid/late game BA shove just became OK, if not bad sometimes. Imaging blowing a whole action during some fight in act 3 in order to push someone a couple of ft. Nonsense, right?

Therefore I wonder if the feedback we'd given on some matters was any good, when in the end we were not satisfied with the result. Was the request properly conveyed, or was it just blatant criticism with not enough substance. And if it was just that, is it fair to complain about things we ever asked for?

Are references to other games and their success always applicable as a valid sort of criticism/feedback? For example, we got reactions with pop-ups aka Solasta, yet everyone seemed unhappy with how they interfere with the combat pacing. IMO the whole idea of copy pasting this system clashed with the general direction of speeding up the combat (Larian tried to take this route with simultaneous turns and Swarm AI), which I found very refreshing for a turn based game. Now late game fights are mentioned as 'a drag' while we ourselves contributed to it.

Just wanted to give my internal thoughts after revisiting the forums once more. This is still a great place to hang out and discuss the game we love (or hate), just wanted to get this out of my system, because I am a bit confused by the tonal shift within several long lasting discussions.

I will add:
Forum used to be:
- "I hate it that it is not Tav who is doing the talking, that the game takes the nearest party member for the dialogue, like totally ruining immersion for me".
Larian changes this, the forum now full of:
- "I hate it that it is always the Tav who is doing the talking".

I think there are a number of different factors at play here. Those people who want change have more motivation to make a noise, so when a change is made the group wanting it tend to get quieter and those who preferred it as it was then have more reason to speak up. And on some long-running discussions, everything that can be said has been, and while we love rehashing discussions here even we have our limits Especially when there seems no prospect of things changing so we just decide to live with it and move on. And I think there are also cases where something that seemed important when we were playing and replaying the start of the game in EA turned out not to matter as much in the context of the full game.

Personally, not previously having had 5e experience, I didn’t have strong opinions about reactions but am very glad they were implemented as they were as a result of feedback. I always have them set to “Ask” but it’s good that they can be set to auto-trigger or not to trigger for those who don’t want to faff around with them.

There are other changes that were called for that I do think improve the game, such as making stealth harder to cheese, adding honour mode, more epilogue content and being able to recruit Minthara without destroying the grove.

But I always enjoyed SH’s nippiness and protectiveness of her boundaries, and was disappointed she was softened in response to feedback. For me, her character suffered as a result, and I ended up not liking her quite as much as I’d hoped in the full release.

I was among the people calling for changes to Wyll as his EA iteration seemed all over the place, but I think that’s consistent with my now not being happy with the specific change that was made. Perhaps I’m a cynic, but I can’t take that much righteousness without a bigger dose of humour (thank heavens for Mizora bringing some amusing touches). We’ll never know whether the original vision for the character might have succeeded after all, but my inclination is to trust that the writers made the correct call that he wasn’t coming off and that fundamental changes were needed, even though what was done instead doesn’t work for me.

One change I’m still a little disappointed by is the one to the way dialogue options are presented. In the very first look at the game before EA, rather than lines that could be spoken they were past tense descriptions, as though we were telling the story of what happened. People hated it, and it was changed before EA started, but I thought it was really interesting and created a unique mood. I can accept it might have got irritating, but wish we’d at least had the chance to experience it for ourselves in EA.

With respect to changes not made, there are some combat balance tweaks I agreed with in EA that never got implemented (eg nerfing shove, not retaining AC bonuses from shields when using ranged weapons, not having free swaps between ranged and melee weapons) and I’ll admit those don’t seem that important now and don’t feel as though they unbalance the game in any significant way.

I still really, really wish our avatars were fully voiced and that we could swap between party members during dialogue, plus I have a number of other personal bugbears about the overall framing and missed opportunities to embed our Tavs more in the world, but it’s pointless to keep banging on about those now!

There were also some popular requests, such as increasing party size, that I’m personally glad Larian didn’t accede to.

I do believe that fan feedback has made the game better than it would have been on balance, even if some of the changes made are ones I disagreed with. And I also think that we do the right thing by giving our honest feedback, whether it’s just a feeling or a fully worked out argument. It’s Larian’s job as the professional games developers to decide whether and how to incorporate that into the game they want to make, and while they retain responsibility for the finished product, I’m glad they gave us the opportunity to contribute while it was still in flux.

Consider this:

Communities are not homogenous.

Something can literally receive both praise and distain due to the simple nature that... Different people have different opinions.

Furthermore, in places like forums, you will most often find people who have a problem with something, they came here seeking to provide feedback to a problem they perceive. Thus, you will most likely find people who have issues with things that exist (While people who are content are busy... Playing the game), thus an increase in "Complain about X" into "Complain about the change to X made based on prior feedback"

It's simply a natural part of any community and forums in general.


It depends.

The base point is there's no need to reinvent the wheel, especially if what you are seeking is an object to help something be more easily moved.

Video games on the whole are focused on creating systems to enable players to engage with the game. Thus, it's possible that a system might have already been explored that does something similar to what you're looking for. Thus bringing up systems from other games can be relevant.

At the end of the day, it will come down to the developers to decide what exactly is used. What systems they want and how they go about it (For example, BG3 is TB but some people could have wanted RTwP or full RT). This often means that it requires outright disregarding some players feedback/wishes and stating "This is what the game is" because again, different people have different opinions. Some people would like RTwP, some would like TB, some would like both options (Some games let you swap between both modes. PoE2 created a TB mode after being originally RTwP)

I had a great time during EA and think they made a lot of great changes! For example I loved the change they made where Tav gets dialogue that starts automatically. They made a lot of other great changes as well. They considered a lot of different people’s feedback and added many suggestions from different people’s lists.

People have different tastes, though, which can result in somewhat contradictory feedback at times.

For my own feedback the only thing that didn’t work out was the feedback to add Halsin’s romance. I was very general in my feedback, though, and should have been more specific. I just assumed they’d add a serious romance to match a serious character, but it turned out the opposite!

I also enjoyed EA and it was exciting to get to play the full game and see what changed and what did not.

Overall I think they did a great job.

Throughout EA and in 1.0 Larian DID address many of common complains - not change the core vision of the game, but they did react to feedback.

For example push is more difficult to pull off (and seemed less common. I also spotted far less use of those pushing arrows - perhaps Larian kept the more outrageus uses of it by AI for hard mode, I didn't check it yet). As the game progresses balance goes so out of wack, that frankly push just becomes part of the noise - I still don't like Larian's implementation of it , but I also don't like many other of their changes. So it's is not like push is fine and balanced, but more that there are even more poorly balanced things in the game as you keep leveling up. For me its a big no-no, many others it seems, don't mind.

Have there been complains about reactions? There really shouldn't be. For one they are great and they are optional. If one wants to automate it, one can.

Feedback from the audience will always be flawed - it might not align with the games vision. Players might complain about something, while actually wanting something else. There can be a vocal minority making a fuss out of something, while in reality it is not a big problem for the vast majority of the playerbase. That's why there are also metrics and playtesting that's being done. Devs take all those into account. That some feedback was not acted upon, doesn't mean that the feedback was bad or uncalled for.

I seem to remember a lot of the feedback wanted the option to choose who would do the talking.

Larian mentioned EA as a form of back and forth with their community. They clearly had some direction in mind for the turn based combat, tried to make it feel fluid and quick. For example, besides Swarm AI and simultaneous turns, they also drastically quickened the pre-cast animations for spellcasting when compared to their previous titles. We are not only talking hypothetical here, maybe I phrased the question poorly so that it might suggest it. I think the idea to straight up borrow reaction system from the other title should have been disregarded in favor of something organic with no pause. Presets for conditional triggers, maybe? An even quicker paced combat could have revolutionized the turn base genre and pulled in some fans of the RTwP or full RT. Instead we ended where we started, with the pacing slowed down.

In any case, reactions we have now are way better than toggles we had before! It was a safe bet for Larian. I just wish we were more idea-driven with our feedback, rather than focused on other games and their ways, sometimes.

What's now clear to me is that EA being limited to a small portion of the beginning of the game might not be the best way to gather feedback. It shows that players didn't have enough farsight in order to leave suggestions about certain matters.

Like, Wyll didn't have to be an outright badass hero with no flaw, he could get his peak development in the later acts. But we didn't have the faintest idea of what's to come, so our judgement shrinked to the miserable Wyll we got to play around with.

We didn't have a chance to playtest the high level combat either, yet somehow we had to give meaningful suggestions on how to improve and balance it. Therefore we ended with pathetic spells like Grasping Vine and overpowered consumables such as Arrow of Many targets on release. Hm.

I just don't think that Larian lack the courage of their convictions to the extent that implies. Yes, in EA we were giving feedback on part of the game, but they knew that and surely were capable of looking at that feedback and taking a call on whether it had merit given their vision for the overall game. And given that it was always Larian's decision whether or not to make changes in response to feedback and no matter how much they involved us at the end of the day it's *their* game, I don't think there's any reason to assign responsibility for any issues in the final product to fan feedback. There are certainly plenty of popular requests that they didn't accede to.

And in a sense EA wasn't limited to just the start of the game, as Larian have continued to develop and tweak it in response to feedback over the past year. But it was always going to be the case that the more of the game that existed the harder and more expensive it would have been to make fundamental changes, so it made a lot of sense for Larian to get some earlier feedback on the basics before some things got locked in.

So, while there are some changes made in response to feedback that I don't agree with, I have no problem with the process as a whole, and still believe that taking input from fans early led to a better product overall.

I think the EA feedback had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the game. There is a very simple reason why most players consider Act I to be the most polished.

yes its really the only act that was tested

making changes is one thing... making half assed changes that break someting is different

I rather say EA caused that only Act I was polished.
And don't forget that EA also gave us Halsin or unnecessary mechanics like nonlethal damage.

I wouldn't say that EA gave us nonlethal damage. Larian already had the knockout mechanic in there early on, they should have just removed it when they realized it was untennable to keep it in.

From what I remember for a period of time there was a lot of calls and requests for nonlethal damage on this board, despite it being obvious from the start that its impossible to implement it in a satisfactory way.

Non-lethal attack was there from the very beginning, though it’s implementation changed during EA - initially it was a seperate low damage attack, that required you to bring enemy HP down through conventional means, and than finish him of with this generic attack. Later they switched to what is used today, so a passive which changes all melee physical attacks into non-lethal damage.

I do agree that considering how sporadically and inconsistently non-lethal option is used, it would be better if non lethal was scrapped entirely, and was implemented through scripting alone. But nothing fundamental changed based on EA.

I do think that arguining that EA was detrimental to the game a hard position to argue. Surely one polished act is still better than none. And there are plethora of changes that were made during EA which I think made BG3 a flat out better game. Perhaps a lot of changes would be done with internal testing, maybe not.

Only Larian can judge how much EA informed their 1.0, but overall they seem to think it was worth it.

It depends. A lot of speculation is required for an accurate assessment.

Like, how polished would all 3 acts be if they didn't spend an inordinate amount of time fine tuning Act 1? Having 3 "Decent" acts could be considered better than 1 "Good" act and 2 "Bad" ones (Even more so when Act 3 is typically the climax of the game's story).

Just, we don't know what Larian can do with a game without this method of extended Act 1 EA. Since all their titles thus far have followed that same formula of having Act 1 in EA, with extended development and polish... Then they quickly remember there's another 2 acts for the game and smash them out as fast as possible (With deteriorating quality as the game progresses).

All we can say for certain is EA and its extended development time is overwhelmingly positive for the specific act being worked on. (Which is not a particularly groundbreaking revelation... We already know that more development time can lead to improvements on its own. The EA thing is less demostratably impactful - We don't have samples of games using the same development time but one using EA for feedback and another being totally in-house to be able to gauge the impact of the EA feedback itself) It's impossible to say whether it is positive or not for the game overall.

I am particularly curious as to what exactly Larian can actually do on their own, given their constant EA usage. Like, they're using AAA studio budget, so they should be capable of QA and development in-house to a standard that is expected* from such.

EA would be most beneficial for smaller, indie studios that simply don't have the resources to test so many variables, so outsourcing testing to EA players helps provide the information they need to make adjustments. (Not to mention, the additional cash flow from EA sales can often be what enables such a studio to actually maintain development)

Though I suppose one could theorize that for a AAA studio, EA can allow for feedback be provided, allowing more paid development on actually implementing improvements.

*Modern trends having many AAA studios push out cash-grab slop aside.

I would even say that without EA all 3 acts would likely have been good as Larian would not have wasted so much time rewriting the story and characters to whatever the most vocal EA players wanted. And without the rewrites and intact artistic vision BG3 would be a much better experienced than the mess we have now where so many things do not fit together because of rewrites.

Well, even if bg3 was a mess, it would be a universally and critically acclaimed mess

Sure thing a considerable portion of earlier feedback was focused towards a limited, ever-changing portion of the game. I think a competent developer can easily discern feedback by its quality and applicability.

However, the feedback itself can be deeply flawed and misdirected if it's been gathered from an access to an incomplete version of the game. I can't see why any developer would want to overcomplicate its routine work by gathering sub-optimal feedback, reassessing its worth in the context of the full game, then discerning it based on technical and other factors.