We haven't heard anything official since the beginning of May, and the last community update was in FEBRUARY....Are we going to be getting any information on the status of development or anything? I would expect so, this being EA, and Larian apparently being so invested in player feedback and all.

It's difficult to stay invested in the EA cycle if it feels like the entire project has stagnated, because the devs have literally ZERO official communications with their apparently valued community...

I'm just wondering if we should continue to invest our time into testing the game or not.

Yeah I must say, I too, am starting to get annoyed.

I haven't played it in months. Besides this slow, slow process...I have no complaints. I pretty much have loved everything about EA so far, and the game/story and depth of it. I think this is my first post even though I've been lurking the entire time. There have been plenty of posts I wanted to chime in...but just...didn't...or couldn't. Everything I'd want to say has been said pretty much, by every viewpoint haha.

But I've pretty much had to put the game out of my mind, because there is just nothing released. I've put 173 hours into it, not sure if I can put anymore until it's officially released.

I'll continue being patient, but it would be nice if Larian could at least from their social media, post SOMETHING besides this cheesy romantic fan art that look like the diaries of a 7th grade girl. And I have NO complaints about the romance in the game or anything about that side of things at all, but the romantic fan art stuff is just ultimate cheese to me...I dunno...

I like the way romance is handled in the game at least...


I just am ready to play the full release already...or at least have some meaningful expansion. I know these things take time, which is why I haven't complained until now...but...well, enough time has passed IMO to be at least a little salty...

The most recent news post would answer part of your concern, in that a larger community update is being brewed. You can read it here.

Thanks Composer, I appreciate the link. And I read it previously. It just seems like 'SOON' is so arbitrary. What does that mean? in a few days? a few weeks? a few months? We have no idea because communication has been so poor and inconsistent. I don't think the community is asking for much. A tweet once a week, letting us know 'We're neck deep in *insert random game development item*' would at least let us know that the game is continuing to progress. As it stands, everyone is completely in the dark about current development that we were told we'd be a part of. I haven't played the game since patch 4, and I don't see myself picking it back up anytime soon. Which is a tragedy, because I don't think you'll find a bigger supporter of both Larian, Baldur's Gate, and D&D in general.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

You aren't alone. 300+ hours and I was going strong. Now, really starting to fade. Why? Because all we're doing is saying the same things out here and having the same arguments about what should be in the game. With no info at all as to what they are even working on, I feel like Im maybe wasting my time. I WANT to believe they are still working hard and taking our feedback serious, but with NO communication, it is starting to seriously wear on me.

And some on the forums are speeding up that weariness. SOME communication more frequently would be better than one big communication every six months.

I hope they are not waiting for us to send them Beer or something similar... <grins>

Their community-relations department may be sorely lacking, but at least Steam Database helps me keep the faith because they've been updating things multiple times a day now.
They've got to be close to releasing something...right?

I've uninstalled the game about a month or so ago. I don't see any point in giving Larian any more in-game player input since I'm not convinced Larian actually cares enough about DnD combat rules to refrain from interpreting data in a way that will conform to their own preconceived notions of what "fun" and "creative tactical decisions" mean. That is, I think they already believe what makes turn-based combat fun (their gimmicky combat) and read into the data whatever that will conform to that belief. I don't wish to give them any more data for them to misread.

Larian isn't going to change their communication style, or they would have already. In the mean time, there are just too many games out there to spend my time on. I'm sure Larian is still working on the game, there is no question of Larian running away with our money and leaving us in the lurch with an incomplete game. They will finish it, and they will make it how they think will suit their brand. If the final product has the shitty combat it has now, then BG3 will be the last game I bought from Larian, as I didn't enjoy DOS2's combat either.

Couldn't agree more with the OP. I invested in BG3 (first time ever buying an EA game) in the vain hope that mine and others' feedback would, where relevant, be acknowledged, considered and then ideally addressed whether certain feedback would be dismissed or incorporated and the reasoning behind those decisions.

A handful of statements such as 'we're listening, we fixed cantrips!", "we added loaded dice" don't really address some obvious feedback such as the almost universally panned party control system. Some open communication would have a gone a long way to lessen the endless hamster wheel of bringing up the same points over and over again with no word from Larian as to what their plans are. It certainly conveys a sense of that Larian already know what they want to do and won't deviate too much from that plan. I would love to be proven wrong but at this stage I struggle to see myself ever playing this game again, bar some major changes.

This sentence is pure gold.
"Invested his time" to play a game.

I realy would like to say something to topic, but i cant help the feeling that the only acurate reaction would be posting picture of infant with tears in his eyes. :-/

Yep. All of the "are we there yet?" reminds me of my 4 year old. :P

I dont want to be mean ... i get they do want it ... i want it too.
But honestly ... how could anyone believe that write an angry topic will help somehow? O_o

Do people really believe that Larian pays someone to check media, and estimate the level of anger within the fan base ... bcs they refuse to tell us anything "until we are angry enough" ? O_o
Since that would be the only reason i would get to write this. :-/

Let's be the better wo/men and rise above the personal mockery, shall we?

I think it's fair to expect that Larian monitors their forums for feedback. That's the point after all, isn't it? I just think that if Larian is so dedicated to receiving our feedback, and that if a post gets enough attention, they might make modifications to their process where appropriate. All I'm saying here is the communication with their EA participants needs to be better.

Are we not all a part of the EA process to play the game and give constructive feedback on our experiences? Isn't that the point of this entire thing? I paid FULL PRICE for a game that is YEARS away from being completed, under the guise of actively being a part of a community that plays the game and provides constructive feedback to the developers, in order for them to make community driven changes that will make the game better in the end. 'Investing my time' seems appropriate.

All I'm asking for (and what I think a lot of people are asking for) from Larian is better communication. We all have invested our time and money into this game in order to make it better for a company that will no doubt make MILLIONS off of the brand name alone. The least they could do, is communicate with the EA base a little bit better.

Yes, you did ...
You did pay the full price for game that you were told is still in development ... its one of "i have read and agreed to the terms and conditions" ... i get that you might not like the conditions now, since you didnt read too carefull and more like "expect" ... but that is not Larian's fault. :-/

Yes, you are ...
You are part of comunity that is suppose to give constructive feedback on your experiences for developers ... and they take your feedback under concideration with future planning ... i get that many people would like it working as pure democracy, as if "when this petition will get 10,000 signs, Larian is by the law forced to change XY to exact specifications writed in this petition" ... but its not. :-/
Its still their project, and it will (and imho should be) driven by their vision, since it will ultimately be their business card (is this expression used in english?) in the future.
So it seem quite understandable, that Larian will do interface as they want, combat as they want, spells as they want, rules as they want ... then we test it, and tell them "we dont like this, we would like it like this" ... they take that feedback, and try to find a way how to make it as they want ... but more to our liking.

Also notice how many people is actualy typing on this forum ...
I counted few dozens, maybe hundert, since i dont check every part of forum too carefully ... but in topics im watching its usualy the same names over and over, never more than 20. :-/
Larian sold millions of copies, and they get data from most people, if not everyone ... so even if there will be hunderts of people complaining about XY (Barellmancy for example, or high ground and flanking rules) yet Larian will see that 750k players across the world are using XY as they are implemented ...
It seem quite understandable that they would expect that "majority likes it". :-/

And even if anything else ...
I still dont believe that topic with this name, stating when we get last news is any helpfull. :-/

I don't feel like OP wrote an 'angry topic' at all. They merely stated that the communication from Larian's side is lacking. Given how Larian stated multiple times that community feedback and communication is an important process in this EA for them, I think this is a fair argument.


This is a feedback forum, and we give feedback. It is Larian's job to decide if that feedback is helpful or not.

Do we really need 2 topics about Larian's poor communication skill?

Feel free to concider it mine feedback.

I can only say that I do know why I don't do Early Accress *hardly ever*.

I think at this point I'll settle for people not flaming each other. Though contentious topics do unfortunately tend to encourage the wrong sort of, erm, "passionate" discourse.

I just don't buy any of this. When we pay into an EA, it's an implied social contract that the devs and EA participants enter into. I don't care what the legalese says on a pop-up when you purchase. We are all effectively financial backers, with monetary stakes in the project, and in my opinion, morally deserve the courtesy of simple communication. I understand what you're saying Ragnarok, but this cynical take of yours is mental. And these topics are, in my mind, essential to the forums. What is the alternative? Sit in silence as Larian does whatever they want behind the curtain with our money? These topics are in place to show the developers that they are putting out a perception of detachment from their player-base. Sure, they can conduct themselves however they see fit. But those actions and decisions could and SHOULD have consequences. Good or bad. CURRENTLY, in my mind, Larian is putting off the perception that they really couldn't care less about you or me as financial backers of the project that inherently RELIES on us to be successful. These posts are in place in case Larian is simply ignorant of how they are being perceived. Because being ignorant can be corrected, but knowingly being silent, is something else entirely. So THAT'S why these posts are made.

It occurs to me to express my disagreement decently, to condition it with arguments and, if possible, to avoid personal attacks ...
As the moderators sometimes recommend here.

//edit:
Anyway, i would personaly ... to be compeltely honest ...
Wait at least until that last community update will be released, when we see what larian sees as "some detail about how we process & parse feedback and data we get through talking with you, and the telemetry we have in the game".

No, you are a customer who pre-ordered the game, and got access to early build of the game to have a taste of the final product, provide telemetry and, if you so desire, provide feedback. You don't finance the game, nor have any control over it. You are not owner or investor of BG3 or Larian studios.

I understand, that EA games are done in various ways, and you might have bought in expecting a more live-service experience. A game with regular updates, and a roadmap to completion. I don't think it was ever promised to work like that for BG3, nor did Larian previous EA suggest such process. You get build, they gather data and feedback and continue working on the game. One can assumes that if there is something they want to test, they will add it to EA. And if they don't - then they won't. It sure would be nice to have more regular "crowdfunding" like updates, but it is not necessarly the most productive way of spending ones time - while frustrating now, none of it won't matter once 1.0 drops some time in distant future.

I can see both sides to this, but I am erring on Ragnarok here on that we should at least wait for the community update and get their answer on how they are processing data and feedback. From there we should react accordingly. If they do something hollow and then we get another few months of radio silence, I will admit I will be irked, but for now I am giving them the benefit of the doubt with this update.

If they reveal that they have been lurking the forums (Here, Reddit, etc) and reading all of this and have noted what people have been saying, I will be very happy.

Heck yeah, me too! That would be AWESOME! =)

I mean, that's what has basically been happening the past eight months. People have already waited for that community update... and waited.. and waited.

Honestly…I bought the EA because:

- Cyperpunk 2077 was a massive letdown, and went from a great idea for an rpg to looter shooter with a leatherclad Keanu Reaves sidekick

- DA4 still a long way from being done…damn ye Bioware! Lemme play my warden again!!!!

- Bioware released ME Legendary edition (ugg) to capitalize off nostalgia and the rpg desert —- and I would sooner gnaw off my own foot than give that franchise another cent after MEA.

- I completed every bit of Ass Creed Vahalla out of sheer boredom…which was surprisingly ok because the male voice actor was amazing. But…I still kinda hate myself for supporting Ubisoft…the company that treats their customers like cash cows.

In summary…I was in a massive rpg funk.

Then…I saw a dev video where some very uncomfortable looking blond dude was wearing full plate mail that was obviously choking him. Yet he endured and spoke with such joyful enthusiasm about the game his team was working on that It made me smile and remember why I love rpgs.

So, thought I would go ahead and get the EA of BG3. I did not even know feedback was part of it. I just wanted to watch it all come to life in real time and get into something new in the DnD universe.

Not having expectations beyond some gaming fun means I have no expectations regarding how the company should keep me updated (or not). No idea if that puts me in the majority or minority tho.

People are getting more and more frustrated by the lack of communication, and it's hurting the game and the EA process. Surely, Larian must be able to see that as well?

I think the main communication lapse from Larian was in the beginning, day 1, when they should have done a much more thorough job of explaining what the EA is and what it isn't. Of course, not even that would have helped in some cases--I read one post by someone who was mad because he bought the game without bothering to read that it was the EA version, and only part of the game, a fraction of the full game, would become evident during the entire course of the EA. He's been looking for more content in the game--that isn't coming during the EA. Someone else neglected to read the part about the full game being at least a year away from shipping. Etc.

But I don't much understand about Larian providing feedback to everyone who makes a suggestion. That's unworkable. Programmer would spend all of his programming time patting people on the back for suggestions instead of working on the full game. I've made several suggestions and not a single one of them has prompted a response from the programming team, but then that was not what I was looking for. I saw some things I had commented on a few times actually make it into the EA game itself--and *that* is the kind of feedback I want to see from Larian! Last thing I need to see is Jess saying: "Hey, Kudos to WaltC for suggesting some things we've implemented!" etc. I don't care about being answered individually at all. My comments are intended to try and make the game better by pointing out what I consider to be weak spots in the game as it is being made (from my perspective.)

That's another thing--this is Larian's game. It's not a "Hey gang, tell us how to make BG3" game, because they have a fairly ingrained, rough idea of exactly where they want this game to go, and my only interest is in helping them get there insofar as it is possible in Chapter 1. So I look at the EA as helping Larian make the game it wants to make--I've no interest in them making the game I want to make because chances are it wouldn't be as good as what they will do with BG3. So I'll continue to look at what they're doing in Chapter 1 and point out any improvements I think would benefit their game, but I have no illusions that everything I suggest will be integrated--it won't be. And that's because for some things they simply will have better ideas in mind than mine--things I hadn't even thought about and so on.

I think the biggest angst people have about the EA is that they thought they were buying into an EA spanning the entire game. But I knew what I was buying when I bought it and so I have no disappointments, no crosses to bear, and no malice to impart...;) I've said it before, but I think this game could do for Larian what the Witcher 3 did for CDPR--if not more. It has the potential to be a really great game and my mind is completely open to whatever Larian wants to surprise and entertain me with in the final game! I believe strongly that having preconceived notions as to what a game should be ruins that game (any game) for the people who have such inflexible notions, more often than not.

This is going dangerously close to a full strawman now.
That's not how interaction with your user base is supposed to work. No one is expecting or demanding to have an open, direct ongoing dialogue with every Larian employee.

But let's not pretend there's no middle ground between "We'll answer each one of you personally commenting on every single suggestion" and "We aren't going to say fuck all about what we are doing, not even in the vaguest terms and especially not even when ACTUALLY publishing one of of our incredibly sparse community updates. Oh, and that issue virtually everyone and their granma is complaining about? We'll pretend it doesn't even exist".

I agree with the criticisms of Larian's near non-communication. Would have loved a stickied thread with general feedback on the feedback, perhaps even specifically addressing the main criticisms & suggestions. But clearly, the days when developers (and Larian is far from unique in this) cared about their own communities beyond as a source of hype and revenue is long gone.


This is a highly subjective point of contention. Look at the Dragon Age series; 3 entirely different games from Bioware within the span of just 5 years. It's been 20 odd years since BG2 and Larian is a different developer. Major mechanical changes should not only be expected, they should be welcomed. Seems to me BG3 is a Baldur's Gate game when it comes to narration, story and companion interaction. The origin-system makes the player character much more generic than the power fantasy of the original series though. I would argue it's less faithful to D&D than it is to BG - and needlessly blundering so.

I don't see why unless they are clear improvements.

Great post (just didn't want to quote the whole thing), though I will say even on their best day, they will NEVER match Witcher 3. That game is just too epic, and Larian is not that type of studio. I think it will be an entertaining RPG when finished, but W3 is a high bar to get over.

Well honestly it's been in EA for over 6 months now with barely an update to the community - yes some things have been fixed, there has been an occassional positive surprise among those too (pacifist options for example). But too keep a fairly large community interested during all this time one would expect at least some updates to the content as well. Not even Chapter 1 is complete yet and I personally cannot see a valid reason for not releasing the content that is (or was not sure about current situation and honestly I CBA to check) accessible via exploits at launch.

Also I do believe the full release deadline should have been set by now. And let's not get into COVID excuses - they do not exactly work in healthcare now do they?

If they actually want us to keep replaying the EA, they should motivate us to do so and no replaying the same thing over and over with new skin tone is not really my idea of fun. If they don't want us to keep replaying than why release the EA at all?

no, absolutely not. we have seen too many games lately that failed spectacularily because some arbitrary deadline was set to please fans, but the development team needed more time, and then the game sucked.

I'm guessing you're referencing Cyberpunk? Maybe I was lucky but my playthrough has been fairly smooth in stark contrast to overwhelming criticism. Was it all everyone was hoping it to be? No, but Witcher 3 was also extremely plagued at the release and yet it has become one of the best games ever made in time. Let's also remember Cyberpunk was set for release and eventually released at the peak of the pandemic and neither of the two mentioned games ever had an EA, which should really help in making the game playable at release (That's kinda the whole point, no?)

If you ask me I'd rather have a plagued as hell full release than not even a light at the end of the tunnel.

At this rate GRRM might release Winds of Winter before we ever see full release of BG3

Well then we obviously have vastly different opinions. I don't think there is a point in arguing about this.

I'm not sure why people seem worried about BG3 "being late" or "releasing at all". That's not their current problem at all.
They are probably doing just fine on that front. At worst the game will take few more months and that's it.

As I said more than once I'd be fairly more worried about WHAT they are planning to release exactly rather then when. And most of the things that could be addressed to make the game better arguably are not even particularly time consuming.
The main requirement would be Larian taking a clear decision on what they want to do with the core mechanics.

I'll take that bet! I've been reading the series since the beginning - when I was a freshman in college back in '96 - and I am pretty resigned to the fact that GRRM will die and somebody else will have to collect all his notes and finish his work for him.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to shoo some kids off my lawn..*grumble*

You dont get update for few weeks, when the word "soonâ„¢" is promissed and sudently everyone looses their mind about "will it even be released", "is it even still developed". -_-
That is pure overreaction ...

Im one for this with Tuco, the question is not "if" this will be released, and it might, but should not be "when" this will be release ...
But how it will look like when released. :-/
And i honestly hope that next comunity update should help us have some idea.

Of course the game will be released. I'm happy to wait as long as it takes.

What I'd like to know is when the promised community update and/or Patch 5 will be released...

Yeah, I was right there with you. I had 2 full playthroughs of CP2077, and yeah it had its issues but it was a great game. I mean I know it wouldn't run on consoles but the PC version was pretty stable, though it did have some crashes, a couple framerate issues. I think it got to the point, that it just became cool to hate on it, and people jumped on the bandwagon.

My experience is that it had a lot of issues; mostly with minor glitches, but there were so many, plus a great deal of conspicuously unfinished stuff. That said, I loved playing it: it was a great venue for my usual habit of aimless wandering about. It's certainly become cool to hate it and that gets quite annoying, but OTOH it's conspicuously unfinished. I'm reminded quite a lot of Oblivion in that regard, which was a similar experience (more crashy but also more completed). Both additionally needed a lot of modding to get them closer to where I wanted them to be but both also stand out as firm favourites.

Mostly I had a problem with memory leaks, but your right it really wasn't a finished product. But by the 3rd patch they had really fixed a lot of things. I was a little annoyed that when I played as a male character I couldn't romance Judy, so I played through a second time with a female character just so I could see that storyline. I mean the story was great, enjoyed leveling up a swordfighter too. There was a crapload of side quests and the world was stunning. I was also able to complete the suicide mission with Johnny, that gave the good ending, and talk about a tough fight.

When it comes right down to it, another game that gets a lot of undeserved hate was Mass Effect : Andromeda. I got the game way after the failed launch and all the silliness that entailed. But I have to say, with a few good mods, it was awesome. I mean that game had some of the best combat out of all of the ME series, the world discovery was great. I was actually a little peeved when I found they were selling out with that "Legendary" rehash rather than coming out with a sequel that would be better than the first. It also sucks I will never find out what happened to the Quarians.

Playing the brother, rather than the sister saved me a lot of messed up convo animations, but there were some definite issues with some conversation writing (:ie "my face is tired" I mean wtf was that?). But that was another game that it was "cool" to hate on as well.

It is also 14 years old, and not pushing the limits of modern video cards. That is trying to compare apples and oranges...sorry.

So hating on Cyberpunk was just the popular thing to do for no reason at all? This kind of garbage sentiment vindicates rushed releases and broken promises and contributes to perpetuate a serious industry problem. One of the main reasons I support Larian by pre-ordering BG3, is their track record of being the antithesis of this (ironically also why I originally supported CDPR/CP77 with a pre-order having been told the company was customer-centric).

All my Cyberpunk playthrough attempts were wrecked by what I consider game-breaking bugs on PC; from corrupted saves (which CDPR had the gall to shift blame back on players allegedly using duping exploits), to not getting quick hacks (a known, fairly common bug CDPR has failed to fix in 6 months since release), to not getting weapons with any critical stats. The game was extremely buggy and unfinished beyond that; ie loads of perks and cyberware had no effect, to the balancing being atrocious (worst ever in my 25 years experience of gaming), to crudely implemented or missing features. Countless hours met with frustration and anger. This is not people jumping on the bandwagon, this is CDPR throwing them in it.

Of course, if you're the kind of gamer who just like to point and shoot, follow the basic hand cuddling script, and not scratch the surface, then the game has some admirable qualities that will make up for the obtrusive bugs and instabilities even the willfully blind must have noticed.

To an earlier thing, I have seen Oblivion described as a very ambitious title, and it did attempt to push certain things but had to roll things back cause of how they weren't working (The goal based AI doing things like attack a player cause he has 20k gold). Oblivion right now looks like a potato but in 2006 it was considered good (if still potato-y) and would crash to desktop on newer PCs. However, I never had it crash my PC or my Xbox, nor did I ever have a corrupted save. For as incomplete and glitchy it was, Oblivion was more stable than some other RPGs I have played.

That said, I do not want BG3 to have the Stability of Oblivion cause Oblivion wasn't that stable...

I would be great if Larian would release a list (and update it accordingly) with suggestions that have been made and that they have noted.

Something like: 'here is a list of issues that have been raised, and we have seen them! We have read about them and we will keep them in mind.'

this would not confirm that they will or will not implement any of the features, but it might allow us on the forum to move on from a subject, and not discuss the same things over and over again because we don't know if Larian has seen them or not.

What is it with people like you that you feel the need to try and belittle others gaming abilities to try and promote your own "ability"?

Because they're trying to troll and get a rise out of people, before the mods step in...

I just thought the CP77 story was shallow and the rpgs elements were lame. I liked driving around the pretty city and shooting stuff tho. I just don't usually dig those types of games, so it was meh for me.

Ie, my point was the rpg slump that made me get the EA of BG3. Thus, I am not fussed about BG3 despite its faults because at least it actually *feels* like and RPG rather than a looter shooter or action game, etc.


EDITED --- OK -- I missed the final page before I responded --- I did not realize the argument was getting so heated! People like different things! It is all good! I am NOT trying to take a "moral" high ground by liking slower paced rpg style games. In fact, my lack of quick-twitch reaction is why I suck at looter shooters! LOL

Quite. There were numerous attempts to fix it, some quite ambitious, but it turned out to be impossible as they'd done "something bad" to the memory management at a level that rendered it unfixable (someone mentioned a problem with macros which sounds like the sort of programming nasty that would explain it). Plus an obvious lack of error checking and so on. It needed a lot of mods (IMHO) but of course that used more memory which hastened its inclination to keel over.

Re CP77 crashing one's entire PC, in my case that turned out to probably be an AMD driver bug where a recent update messed up the fan controls and caused my card to cook. Although my R9 390 was a bit long in the tooth, I wasn't quite ready to look for a replacement and had no idea about the ongoing GPU drought. Well, until I did. I was probably lucky to get a not-quite-current-gen Nvidia for about RRP.

And re. "garbage sentiment", "handholding" etc, let's not go there, 'k?

I'm always surprised when I read people claiming they enjoyed playing Cyberpunk 2077 and that "they didn't experience that many technical issues".

Even putting aside anomalous issues, crashes and what else, the game had one of the worst feelings in moment-to-moment gameplay that I ever experienced, no matter if you want to classify it as a RPG or a straight shooter (let alone as the city-sized "immersive sim" I hoped it would be).
I never really liked a single Bethesda RPG and I still think that in some aspects even they run circles around this game.

Controls are bad, the UI is bad, shooting (and combat in genre) feels bad, the enemy AI is at "early prototype" levels, NPCs keep colliding/compenetrating into each other or into walls and scenario elements, reactions to the player range from poorly made to inexistent and the itemization is one of the worst I've ever witnessed and the summary of everything I despise in recent trends, especially with that "looter shooter" vibe of constantly showering you with trash.

Literally the only redeeming quality of the game I can point is that the dialogue close-up look excellent and are pretty much what I dreamed a modern Bloodlines 2 could have looked like in that aspect.
Even then their ACTUAL reactivity to the player's inputs is underwhelming at best. Most of these conversations seem to go on a set binary where you have hardly any liberty to steer the direction.

There is a bit of a problem where player choices seem to only slightly flavour the story at best, but it's going to go where it wants to go anyway. I guess that's not a unique problem but it is quite obvious; what is much more problematic is that what should be the standard "good" ending is the wrong one: it doesn't make any sense, until you choose the obviously bad outcome... and get exactly the same ending. I dunno why that still wasn't fixed last time I looked unless they've actually lost the original assets or something.

I suppose a lot of what I consider to be "unfinished" may indeed be subjective, though; but I personally found a great deal of stuff to be either missing, extremely irritating or actually unplayable: the driving as it is being very much the latter. Certainly not like any car I've ever driven, anyway.

Yeah their endings were weird, I think the only "good" ending is the secret one:
https://www.pcinvasion.com/cyberpunk-2077-secret-ending-guide-dont-fear-reaper/

Wow now I feel guilty for throwing the gauntlet although that was never my intention.

I'm just a bit surprised since I haven't really played or followed BG3 for about 4 months and now I wanted to check the news and play all the exciting and fun stuff that surely came out in the meanwhile - yeah... even the forums just revolve about the same old issues.

In other words the atmosphere is getting kinda stale (somehow I feel thathould not be the aim of game developer but what do I know) ...

Oh well peace out

PS: I've honestly crashed a lot more with BG3 especially on Vulkan than I ever did with Cyberpunk (not one crash, not one corrupted Save - I know I'm in minority here)

That was

POSTED
Wed, May 12, 2021

I am getting worried that everything is slowing down, each patch / communication is taking longer and longer. This is starting to feel like another project that is going off the rails.

Or maybe the simple things are done, and they are now focusing on more complex?

You know what would be funny?
I mean, i know the probability is quite low, but it would be funny as hell:
If Patch 5 would provide us all things we asked ... new location, level 5, new race, new class, etc. ... the usual things that people hungry for content keep demanding.
And if it will show in the end, that we had to wait this long, bcs Larian actualy listens to our feedback and decided to give us more ... since when they added druid last time, people was complaining that its too little to be called a major patch.

oh yes, the great "Miracle Patch" which in my experience when people state, just wait for the "Miracle Patch", that Miracle never happens.

I know you not saying one is coming, I have just heard stuff like it's only in development, everything will be fixed, etc.

If it happens I'll be pleasantly surprised but not really expecting patch 5 to be any bigger then any pervious patches.

My problem is mainly than in several month there was not significant progress.. Aside from the cinematic department the D&D system inside is still bare bone. Many things are missing or are just not D&D enough.
Of course in an early access in full development swing but having a whole video dedicated to the release of One class in a patch that was released month ago is a bit underwelming.

I am still waiting for the next patch however i do hope the priority is get the basic D&D rules in place as they should be. Homebrew is ok but when is meant to replace totally core mechanics is always bad.

Excluding final release i presume?

Bold prediction: when the next patch will release a lot of people will be MAD at how little improvements/additions it will include.

Would you blame them for being upset if the next patched dropped after 4 months of radio silence and there were just minor tweaks made?.....

I honestly think that is the likely scenario.

And the issue is, we have no idea when patch 5 will even come around.....we're waiting on a COMMINUTY UPDATE...... about how they receive and view feedback from us. It's not even a major undertaking. They know all of that information already. It has nothing to do with the content currently being worked on. It's just an update on their official in-place process they use.....and here we are. Almost a month later after "Coming Soon" was dropped. Without a single official word since.

What?!?! You are investing time to test an unfinished product. We all bought in to do something that would have cost this company money. I dont know about you, but my time is precious and im not going to spend it doing something that I dont enjoy (which currently includes playing this game. I wanted BG3 not D:os3) without, at least, being entertained by what im doing. We bought early, before release, before reviews, before complete information was given, to have our feedback heard and applied to this game. That was the implied deal when we started this whole thing almost a year ago. Where are we now? One class released, one section revealed and a lot of dissatisfaction on small things that can easily be addressed and worked on. We get no responses from the Devs and we are supposed to be happy and grateful, towing the line? Why? We have invested in our entertainment for this game. We have provided them with free quality control and bug testing. We should have the ability to vote weekly on topics and have someone, maybe a communications person, reach out and answer questions. I work for a software company and we do this. We change code based on feedback from clients. They seem to be at the ready on Reddit or Twitter, because every "save state" post I make on either of those is deleted in seconds. No offensiveness, just questions on the game.

Stop acting like they are doing us a favor by making a game. We are their customers and we deserve proper feedback for the agreement that was made when we bought into EA. I was told im buying BG3, and that my feedback would shape the game. Now they have our money and we have silence. I understand this is an unfinished product, but if they brought us a sample of a meal and we said "this isnt what we want" and we went back to the kitchen and saw they didn't listen to us, we would demand our money back and leave. We are doing Larian a favor by investing and testing. We need to be more vocal about wanting our feedback heard.

I would realy like to say something to RagnarokCzD, but I cant help the feeling that the only accurate reaction would be posting a picture of a shocked fat guy living in his parent's basement, trolling the internet.

I suspect you may be right.

I hope you are wrong, I genuinely do.

This is a scam!
This could always be said, regardless of the amount of content in the next patch ...

Could you please link source of that sentence?
Since i dont remember them telling anything even simmilar. O_o

I remember them talking about smaller downloads, wich would be coming faster ... and they do, we get 4 hotfixes since then. o_O
But i really never heared anyone in Larian talking about another classes. O_o

You dont know that ...
What if they want to do video of "here is how it looked before, and here is how we just changed it" ? :P

Clearly not precious enough ...

I mean isnt this irony?
Talking here how we "invest our precious time" instead doing something more fun, or productive ... while wasting our "precisous time" by talking about "how precious our time is"?

At least i can admit that i play this game, bcs i simply like it.

What "complete infromation" you mean?
That, when Swen multiple times warned you that game is not yet done, and things will take time? O_o
That, when Swen multiple times warned you that if you want polished finished product, you definietly should wait? o_O
Yes, you are right ... you bought early ... you bought early, after being informed about everything that means to bought early ... now you complaiging about it. :-/ Maybe you should have listen?

About "heard" ...
We, as comunity are heard ... if you dont see that, play patch 1 and then patch 4 ... you should notice. Or read patchnotes, that should give you some insight.

And about "aplied" ...
As far as i know, nobody ever promised that anything in this game will be changed the way peope would want ... especialy since that is complete nonsence, since we are not even able to get unified wish.
But if you have heared such promise is some interview, please ... share it with us.
I gladly admit that i was wrong and you were totally right ... but im not affraid of such situation. :P

I bet Larian is hiring talented developers (you never get too many), if those things are so easy.

And our entertainment we get ...
I dont see your point here ... if you buy ticket on action move, you should not complain that you expected horror. :-/

We do ...
There was countless surveys, and even few topics here have voting ...

I know that you wanted to actualy say that Larian should commit to adjust the game acording to those votings ... but this is not komunism, where govermend was dictating everything to people ... you cant decide for someone else how should he create his product, you can suggest, sure ... but that is all.
We provide feedback, nothing more, nothing less ... and then they decide wich they find relevant, and wich not.

That sounds like free ticket straight to mad house. :-/

I never said this ...

Again, please show me ...

And it does ... again, read patchnotes.

Actualy we have promissed new Community Update ...
So we have silence for ... 3 weeks? If i count corectly.
Thats thrully horrible. xD

That is not acurate ...

First of all we dont went to the kitchen ...
We keep sitting to our table repeating "i dont want this", "i dont want this", "i dont want this", every time they brought to us another sample of meal ... and with every sample we completely forgotten that this meal is not served only for us, but for whole room ... and the goal is not making it perfect for us, but the best possible for most of all of us. :-/
You want vegan diner ... i want meat (or other way around, it does not matter) ... the chef will comit a suicide before he manage to please us both with same meal. :P

And they are doing us a favour by taking our testing and feedback into concideration ...

That is how ballance is maintained.

To achieve what exactly?
More locked topics, bcs we broken another rule of this forum? If so, you are on right track.

I bet you feel good about yourself now.
Strong, confident, alfamale incarnated. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Actually, when a game is in late beta, release is not that different. I can't remember any game changing that much in the last few month of beta VS release. I expect what we are seeing now will be overall how the game will play at release unless this game going to be delayed for a few more years so they can do major reworks of systems and honestly don't know if that would lead to a better game.

The time for major rework of stuff was months ago. The farther along the project goes, the less chance major changes will happen.

Again, I would love to be surprised but past experience is having me lower my expectations for BG3.

OMG I just entered this thread, I saw the bottom of this message with a quote for every sentences.
I knew who was writing.

Then I read a few answer and I was definitely sure.

I think sometimes it's better to just ignore a poster than continue to engage with them (just click on their name, go to their profile and you can ignore them)

**mod note** quote snipped for ease of reading


Yeah man, great points you made there about nothing. The point of the EA was to allow us to test this game for them. In turn they save a few hundred thousand paying testers, at the very least and have profit margins proven on nothing more than the license and the anticipation for a new release. There are expectations to this franchise and they have moved away from quite a few of them. The endless complaints calling this D:OS 3 should be a key factor of review for Larian, but it’s not. Also I knew I was buying an incomplete Baldur’s Gate game, not an incomplete Divinity game. So please prattle on about how we were warned by Swen. No, most people knew without question what we signed up for and I was fine to test BG 3. I found out it was the same garbage so far as the 2 meh Divinity games. Save state questions on a game that is supposed to represent 5e D&D should’ve been an easy answer to people’s questions. Barrellmancy should not have been something we had to beg to have fixed, and it’s still a thing. Defend Larian, I don’t care. I am a customer that was promised one product and so far it is not that product! If a movie is bad, I can walk out halfway through and get my money back. However I cannot do that here! If they offer refunds on EA, are you confident half the people that signed up will stay? I’m not. You can’t polish a crappy game and call it BG3 while using all the ingredients of D:OS3. But please go ahead and tell me how I’m wrong for my perception of facts cause you feel that Larian is our best buds and doing everything perfect.

Can we not quote things that are that long? You could have just said @[User] or put the entire quote in spoilers like so Especially since neither of you were responding to specific points.

That is usual problem with sequels ...

Producers have vision, and consumers have vision ...
The product as is only that sucesfull as many people share the vision with producer. But, the producer is the one who is seting the course ... here producer is willing to hear consumers, that is still more than what most do. :-/

Well ... im not Larian ofcourse, but the "calling this D:OS 3" tells me litteraly nothing about what people dislike ...
So if i would be in their skin, i would simply expect this to be toxic people who cant bite the fact that Larian created divinity, and now they are creating BG:3 ...

Maybe they see it simmilary.

And incomplete Baldur's Gate game you get ... its not what you expected i get it, but that dont make it anything else.
No matter how often you repeat the same, information value of such statement is still zero. :-/

Im sorry, i dont understand this sentence.

Some people find it fun ... and there is litteraly nothing forcing others to use it. O_o
I honestly dont understand problems you people have with Barells ... i have 345,5h played this game, i finished it more than dozen times ... yet i blowed maybe ten barells top. O_o
Why does existence of something bothers you so much?

There is your problem ... it is that product, you only expected it to be different.
You buy and Orange and then complain about you expected it to be sweeter, its still and orange tho.

Well ... that is certainly interesting statement. O_o
I dunno how that works in your country, but in ours they certainly dont get you your money back, just bcs you didnt like first part of movie. O_o

Why not?
Actualy you can use all the ingredients you want ... that is one of privilegies of being a developer.

Never said that.

You never said this, you never say that. Yet you continue to go on and on about nothing. I’m dissatisfied with the game. You think posting ramblings on my comments are going to change my mind? No you, clearly don’t live in the US. We have a higher standard here. Not all of us, mind you or we wouldn’t have had a Cheeto for President, but some of us demand quality for our time and money. Also I’m done with my monthly check in on this game. It’s still garbage, my time too precious to continue explaining to you, why I think this way. Buh Bye!

*We

Dunno, dont care.
As people like repeat here "its not my job to change your mind", i simply state mine.

I didnt know that is condition to write here ...

Doubt that, since you have no idea what standard we have, hardly you can find yours higher. :P
I mean objectively ... you can ofcourse smugly concider yourself superior to anyone, that would also explain some things. O_o

And you were telling me that my posting dont change your mind ... it seems to me like you understand at least one thing.

Enough, Vekkares and Ragnarok. I'll do you both the favor of ending the back and forth quips at eachother, and I know how tempting that last word is to settle it. Just move on

Agreed man. I get carried away because of my disappointment for a lot of the things Larian is doing. Then seeing Rag call someone that is opening discussion a crybaby, just infuriates me more. I fall into the troll trap and argue about nothing.

My biggest complaints about the game are the rules implementation and having to play as one of the companions if you drop into a friends game. I feel that loses the flavor of D&D and embraces Divinity way too much. I hated the companions in Divinity, I hate companions in BG3 and just want to play with my friends without starting over all the time. I like the idea of bringing my higher level character into my friend's and my wife's game. Either to help get past tough battles, or just trade gear. You can do that in a ton of games, and I feel without it, it loses some of that replay and character creation enjoyment from previous games. I am more passionate about it than I should be I guess. lol

I totally get this. When we have someone who has to drop out of a Multiplayer game the person who replaces gets that characters toon or the host has to re-assign them. It would be great if we could have somebody come in with a new toon that is leveled to wherever we are and we could put the person who left on the backburner.

More importantly this ties into the larger dream of having the ability to export characters for play later or in other campaigns.

I think The Composer wrote an interesting piece on that yesterday

On the challenges of adding new players to multiplayer groups:

"I think it's a cool idea with random MP groups, would love to see it! I can think of a few hurdles though, most of them doable except for one. Characters made in character creation are marked as avatars, it's why you can't dismiss player created characters and replace them with a henchman. That'd need a reword, which would cascade into a whole lot of code needing reiteration as well. There'd probably be an interest in having some narrative cue to why a new dude would show up, but there are many easy to more complex solutions to that. The biggest difficulty I can think of is moving various progression data from an avatar to the new henchman, tags, flags and other code the current and future content relies on being there, in order to function properly. That isn't as easily transferred as say, getting the host level and leveling up the new character to the same, or duplicating its items and sending that to the camp stash."

On the idea of Baldur's Gate itself as a kind of Multiplayer/Singleplayer new campaign HUB - Jumping off point:
"I've been advocating heavily for what I call "reversal traversal" because it sounds corny and funny, yet oddly descriptive, which basically means the ability to travel backwards, to previous acts. That way, the community could make new content in a more modular fashion and add to other projects. Otherwise it's solely a linear experience, and once you leave the area, you can't go back (which is the case in Dos2). Also, that'd allow for Baldur's Gate to be a hub you can travel to as a hub, not as a once pass-through. Imagine having Baldur's Gate as a hub where people put down a new NPC to start their own quest line, and you download a mod to play someone's interpretation of the Curse of Strahd campaign, as extra content of your usual vanilla playthrough. That's probably my personal biggest passion and hope to see happen."


For me these are the greatest Hopes I have for this game, not as 'merely a game' but as a Platform - like NWN was - except vastly improved in terms of core ruleset, balance, and possibilities.

With respect to The Composer, I hope you don't mind me quoting you.

I don't mind anything I write in public channels to be quoted ^^,

I would not call it "last word" more like personal honor ...
Especialy if other side keep insulting you, even after being warned to stop ... without any visible responce. -_-

I'd just like to note that it's been almost exactly a month since 'SOON' was dropped. For a community update. Not even a full patch mention. Pretty discouraging, if you ask me.

Thank you, this is exactly what im talking about. Divinity was a huge disappointment to me, because I felt it lost the D&D feeling without the character import/export. I am just very nervous they are going to continue that awful forced narrative in multiplayer by making your friends be an NPC. There is no investment there. I dont want to be the annoying vampire, or the grumpy elf and gith. I dont like the lame Warlock or the magic item eating Mage. I just want to make my own Party, use MY characters in games with friends, maybe they are stuck or an item I acquired would help them. Again this is D&D, lets make it feel like that community and allow us to use the characters we invest in.

Roflmao..The fact that you think the US has a higher standard is so adorable. Bless your heart.

I know there are advocates for this both in Larian and outside of Larian so its on the Radar, but my expectation is we likely won't see it until after full release. However the idea of making it a Platform means that Larian can continue to build and sell separate Campaign DLC for the platform, so WoTC wins, Larian wins and the players win. There are - conservative estimate - 40 Million D&D players worldwide so the market for this is considerable.

Yeah making it a platform would make me drool. <3

I think it would make MOST D&D players drool. The issue is building the platform with a solid foundation rooted squarely in 5e. Which, at this point, Larian seems either hesitant to, or resistant to...

I also think a platform isn't happening unless Larian plans to abandon the Divinity Original Sin series, the next DOS game gets its gameplay completely transformed, and/or Larian gets straight up bought out by WotC. The potential licensing otherwise is going to be extremely messy.

I would also think we can get a better platform than one that apparently struggles to implement any kind of true flight or proper reactions.

Ive been secretly replaying DOS2 with some MODS and I actually really like the gameplay...all the silliness just works in this world. If it weren't for the stupid OVER itemization of things. There are WAY too many magic items and it gets old VERY FAST. I wish someone made a MOD that could completely get rid of GREEN and BLUE items, reduce magic items in vendors + increase prices x5 , make stealing way harder, add more Uniques and tone down purple/red drops.
Really hope BG3 doesn't head that way.
Oh and Ragnarok, if you have something to say really not interested on what you have to say, nor care about your opinions. I hope the feeling is mutual. Cheers.

Cant say i understand that sentence ...
You "hope the feeling is mutual" ... so you "hope i dont care what you have to say" ... yet, you said it, even tho you "hope" i would not care ...
And what is even more interesting, you said "if you have something to say" ... that condition would mean you dont care only, when i have something to say ... when i dont, you care then? O_o



So, please enlighten me ... what exactly was your goal here? O_o

I dont know man, im trying to stay positive about this. I know its a much needed feature to really make this feel like DnD. The fact so many other games have done this and some still are, I just see it as a huge blowback to a lot of BG and DnD fans. Its why I have tried to be noisy about it. Together we can get almost any feature we want, but with the DnD franchise and the huge desire for the DM mode on this, I really dont see why it wouldnt be implemented. Let make some noise! lol

For those who think Hasbro & WoTC would save BG3 if they took it over, I don't think so. Look at the new Dark Alliance game. It makes BG3 look like 100% pure and true, 100% vanilla, by the books, D&D game. It not like Hasbro has really cared how fateful a video game for D&D is, as long as they get their licensing money. Look at the Sword Coast Legends, another D&DINO game. I do wish that Hasbro would protect the rules of their D&D games more but since they never seem to in the past, not expecting them to do so now.

Love you man. Have a metal and a BIG hug.
You are so right on so many levels. Really no point arguing with you on any kind of topics. I still think the game is a pretty bad state of communication with players right now, after 6 months of EA. About you? Do you think milk and cookies are unhealthy? If Boo was a bear and Winny the poo a hamster, could Minsc tell them apart? Ah I love red wine, about you? Kiss kiss peace and love

Most of it sounds like offtopic ... but since value of this topic cant go lower, why the hells no.

Nah, im fine as it is. Game is fun, and we get something new to talk about often enough to keep myself entertained.
Yeah, i thing they are unealthy ... but not so unhealthy so you cant have some from time to time, if you keep sporting sometimes.
That is tough one ... i belive Minsc would get them both on adventure, and protect them with his own life.
I more for mead to be honest, but red wine is certainly better than white wine.

This is going to sound cynical but we don't know if Dark Alliance is good or bad yet since it doesn't release for another 11 days. It may be brilliant or terrible.

I mean looking at it I know its not MY kind of game but who knows what the audience may be. Hopefully that isn't affecting Larian's radio silence since I don't see an overlap in the market for those two games. Except for the small niche of people who will buy anything with D&D plastered on it.

I honestly didn't even know Hasbro made video games until you mentioned they had control over Dark Alliance. Then I read this:

"In the deal, Atari's parent company acquired a 10-year exclusive deal to produce video games based on 10 key Hasbro franchises, including Dungeons & Dragons, Monopoly, Scrabble, Game of Life, Battleship, Clue, Yahtzee, Simon, Risk and Boggle."

One of these things is not like the other...

Off-topic but the good thing about Dark Alliance is that it's now getting couch co-op!!! This is likely because of the massive amounts of feedback and negativity when it was earlier announced that there would be no local multiplayer. The devs said "We heard you loud and clear."

I will now put this game back on my wishlist, if only to support the developer listening to player feedback.

Sorry, I did not mean that Dark Alliance is a bad game, just that it not really using the D&D ruleset, just the D&D lore.

I want both in my D&D games, using the rules I know and the lore I love.

Well, conversely, from what I've seen I'm almost ready to bet on it.

Honestly, I don't really know nor care if Dark Alliance will be good. Perhaps it will be a great action game (I think thats what it is going for) and perhaps it will be terrible, but I don't think it'd have any bearing on BG3 because other than the connection to D&D they are two completely different beasts and I don't think would impact eachother's development unless they contradicted themselves in canon which would give BG3 some minor rewriting at most (unless Dark Alliance does something stupid like Blow up the entirety of Baldurs Gate.)

It astonishes me how you think that a complete lack of communication from Larian on this project is just okay.

But hey, to each their own.

I dare you to quote where i said that.

Or i can save your some time and tell you imediatly that i didnt ... therefore i dunno where you get that, but it was certainly not in my mouth.

Such a thing exists as an 'implied statement'. You didn't say these words specifically, but almost every post you've made over the last week has been passive-aggressively downplaying the issue at hand, and repeatedly besmirching people for rightfully being upset about the lack of communication. And anyone interested only needs to read the first page of this post to see that.

For instance:

"i cant help the feeling that the only acurate reaction would be posting picture of infant with tears in his eyes. :-/"

"Do people really believe that Larian pays someone to check media, and estimate the level of anger within the fan base ... bcs they refuse to tell us anything "until we are angry enough" ? O_o"

"you dont get update for few weeks, when the word "soonâ„¢" is promissed and sudently everyone looses their mind about "will it even be released", "is it even still developed". -_-
That is pure overreaction ..."

...just on my post. Not even considering the other post about a similar topic you've spent a considerable amount of time fervently dismissing what are, in my mind at least, valid concerns. I just don't understand your complete lack of empathy toward the topic. If you paid someone to make you a full pizza, they made one slice, and said 'more is coming soon' and then you sat at your table for like 45 minutes without a single update, would you not be slightly agitated? Or would you appreciate an update on where the rest of your pizza is in the process? Surely you can recognize the concern some people are having about the lack of communication...

Dude, just ignore him and move on. He entertains himself more than he does others, while making moot points that he thinks are very clever. Its best to ignore and move on.

I gladly take full responces for what i said ...
But not for how did you understand it.

You could ask instead of presuming ... maybe you even should have asked, when i told you that you are presuming wrong ... instead you start to conving me about that you are right, and therefore you know the reasons for my own actions? O_o
Well, all that remains for me is to tell you as it seems.

All abowe, is about the very same thing i keep criticise in this topic the whole time of its existence ...
You people are overreacting ...

- Being concerned? Totaly okey.
- Politely asking for another info? Quite allright. (BTW ... i do that all the time on Twitter, if you watch Larian there is totally possible you have seen some of my questions about the promised Community Update. )
- Demanding something? Not quite okey, but mangeable ... if that isnt happening too often.
- Spamming all social media with your own demands? Unacceptable (i dont say that you do that ... its just accelerating of attitude and it would not feel complete without this)
- And finaly ... starting conspiracy theories about game not being developed anymore, even tho not even whole month ago we get promissed that another info will be provided "soon" ... well, i presume you can gues how fine such attitude is.

Am i making fun of this topic?
Yes ... totaly ... and i was not even much subtile about it, so i ges it should not surprise you.
But ... you kinda asked for it. :P

I would have to adjust that example, bcs it dont seem acurate:
If you paid someone to make you a full pizza, and that someone will warn you that this is very special kind of pizza, that will be baked for a unpecified, but certainly looooooooong period of time, but before it will be done ... they offered you to taste one slice, and tells you :"if there is anything that is not good for your taste, let me know and i see what i can doo about it ... then, after some time they bring you another, much smaller slice ... that contains some new ingrediens, and some that tasted badly for you are allready missing ... then, after some time, they said 'information about more, and more importantly about that baking process you asked for is comming soon' and then you sat at your table for like 45 minutes without a single update, would you not be slightly agitated? Or would you appreciate an update on where the rest of your pizza is in the process?

Now when our example is acurate ...
Yes, i would be agitated.
But i woul certainly not ambush the kitchen screeming "WHERE THE HELLS IS MY PIZZA! I DEMAND MY PIZZA! IT DOES NOT MATTER THAT YOU NEVER PROMISED ME ANY TIME, OR DATE I DEMANT IT NOW BCS I PAYED FOR SOMETHING, AND NOW I DECIDEED THAT I NO LONGER CARE ABOUT AGREEMEND WE HAD BACK THEN!"
But maybe that is just me.

Concern ... yes.
But the rest? Well ... as i said abowe.

The quick and easy solution: Don't care about what others think. What I mean is, if your entire post is about your opinion on someone else's opinion, it's probably a post not worth posting. This goes for you as well, Ragnarok.

Focus on the topic, not the person. Further inter-personal ramblings of "he said, she said" or any forms of quick "gotcha" snips at others will result in the thread closing. That includes the slightest attempts at having the final word.

Just stop it.

Maybe we should start evaluating "soon" on geological timescales. A thousand years, give or take a century?

Coming soon: the heat death of the universe and the full release of BG3. Buy your reservation at Milliways now - it's going to be great show!

Could I get a Gin N Tonic please?

But that place is like way out at the end of the universe.

Don't forget your towel.

Maybe we should capture Larian and force them to listen to poetry.

Vogon poetry? That might be hard, since no one but a Vogon could stand to read that stuff out loud, and Vogons are - fortunately, and for the moment - scarce in these parts.

Maybe that is what happened, and the flood was a cover story? Its always those damn Vogans!

Nope. This game is no longer being made.

Vogon Poetry ... just to be extra special about it.

Oh freddled gruntbuggly...

Do you mean Gin N Topic?

No, the game has been cancelled, and replaced on the schedule with Backyardiggans on Ice, an FPC and the Prequel Saga Baldurs Gate 1/2: The Construction of Candlekeep, a construction Sim.

You jest, but something like Dragon Quest builders in Faerun could be a fun and dumb thing to play.

Seriously?
I heard that when the developers found out how popular Solasta is, they decided it is not worth trying to compete with such a masterpiece ... and the day after that Larian went bankrupt.

//edit:
Or, maybe, they are simply vaiting for another flood ... just to honor the tradition.

My laundry room flooded on sunday (grr!) and the thought crossed my mind, "I wonder if this counts as a flood that triggers a BG3 update?"
I have no association with Larian of course, though, so it did not. :P

Do we have a window on the next update? The lack of news is a bit concerning.

They will be back "soon" with news.

That's what they said 4 weeks ago, without talking about a patch.

At this point I just do not worry overtly about their silence to be honest, a lot of games I am following in EA have suffered slower than usual decelopment the past 1,5 year due to, among other things, the pandemic borking up all our lives. While I would love to hear from Larian, I have little doubt that Baldur's gate will be finished. It would be folly to expect a 2021 release though..

Overall my experiences with their past EA titles, such as Original SIn 1 & 2, give me little cause to be concerned though. I can only hope they will fix my biggest gripes with the game so far, namely get the cleric and druid spells out of my wizard spell list! lol. Oh and make stealth checks more frequent and have enemies look for you more actively, like they do (somewhat) in real time mode.

the barrelmancy end surfaces do not bother me too much, but tweaking the height advantage a bit for this title seems also to be a bit necessary. I would like height advantage/disadvantage only to apply to bows and cross bows for example... no need to make spells easier/harder to hit based on your position on the cliffside

And even though I've played every D&D title since Baldur's gate I & II, Icewind Dale I & II, as well as torment and the neverwinter night series.. the Larianisms don't bother me too much, but I guess I can be a minority in that.

It just needs tweaking, as I feel the height advantage seems to augment the already strong ranged classes a bit too much sometimes. Especially if they also have access to double attacks. But to get back on topic, Larian where art thou! Volo wants to help you fix your eyesight, him being the expert on well.. everything

it needs a lot of tweaking, and many things I expect to change quite a bit, I mean... a wizard learning all the spells under the sun? that would make druid and especially cleric pretty much not needed lol. Not sure if I believe the claim that it will be up to 3 times bigger than Original Sin 2 mapwise though. But I guess act I is already a lot bigger than the prison island from DOS 2. And we are still missing the overland routes of act 1 to get to moonrise (Mountain Pass and Shadowlands/Risen Road or some such).

But hey.. at least they made wizard feel a bit like it used to in BG I and II compared to Solasta lol. One of the drawbacks in wizards in that game, in my opinion is the inability to stack blur and the missing mirror image (still not sure why they took that out, lol). I cannot be the only one who loved stacking protections on your wizard before facing a dragon for example, in Baldur's Gate II.

Solasta might be more faithfull to the D&D 5E ruleset so far, but it felt a bit rushed sadly. The combat was nice and all in Solasta, but the story quickly fell off a cliff, well at least for me. I know it was due to budget constraints, but dogmatically sticking to their six month release window, hurt the game in the story department somewhat.

But you can stack Mirror Image and Blur in DnD 5e, can't you?

as far as I know yes, since mirror image doesn't require concentration

Ah gotcha, so is blur and mirror image supposed to be concentration based or durationbased under 5e? Bit hard to know sometimes. Too many games homebrew it for gamepurposes hehe. Overall happy with both games though. Just hope Larian will add some easy to use modding tools to BG3 to make it possible for community to come up with costum modules in case Larian never learns the art of expanding existing games hehe.

blur is concentration based but lasts for a maximum of 1 minute. Mirror image is not concentration based, but lasts also for a maximum of 1 minute (in 5e). in the game, (I think) both last 10 turns.

Yeah that is correct, I wonder if we wil get spells such as shield in this, seeing it is not a spell with explosions.. Is Chromatic Orb still a thing in 5e?

Maybe it was not enough ...
Try to use more water next time.

You could also try lobbing a water balloon at Swen, rusty armour might just be the motivation he needs

Meanwhile, on my third play through of BG2 since EA. Trying out the Bard Blade kit (with updated bard wizard spell progression and extra songs from ice wind dale via mods...) with a custom buffed up thief/mage pseudo dragon familiar
That greater Olyugh from the first dungeon is super OP (SCS/Revised battles mod) tricky fight. He summons Skeleton warriors and has tons of debuffs...
Go for the eyes BOO!!

I dont know about Swen ...
But i would welcome water balloon in this hot weather sometimes.

Will have to wait and see anyway I'm not expecting the spell list to be as expansive as the original BG's anyway hehe. I hope if they do do cameos of original cast members of the old series, that they bother to get the OG voiceactors. Which is why I'd prefer them not to bring in old faces as such lol. Most of the time those cameos get a bit meh or overtly fanservice-ey

I'll probably do a 3rd playthrough of baldur's gate series again to get my D&D fix.. or might just finish Planescape Torment Enhanced Edition.

EDIT Wow, I did that.
Posting a message in the wrong thread 😑

So to pass the time, I made a poll on Reddit purely in an effort to gauge everyone's priorities.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat...d_larian_prioritize_for_early_access_in/

We can crow about the design of the combat system all we like, but I do wonder what the community cares about *more*, which is why I deliberately left out 'closer to 5E rules' since that means so many different things (and encroaching into the 'add reactions' option). That's something that hasn't really been measured yet.

that is an odd survey to put it mildly. What exactly am i voting for if i choose the 2nd option? the evil route? more companions? better interactions? All of the above? what made you choose those three specific things? Are those the most important things to everyone? Was there a survey to create the survey?

Yeah, I could have worded the second option better. I basically tried to balance out the poll options by sort of categorizing them as such:

- The first option is for people who prioritize the combat design.

- The second option is for people who prioritize reactivity, story/writing, and party interactions.

- The third option is for people who prioritize character customization.

I originally had 4-5 options, but decided to try to condense them into what you see now, because I knew reactions were going to win in a total uncontested landslide otherwise because the other four options would have split votes to hell.

Poll making is harder than I imagined.

Which option for us that want Larian to add more classes so that we get a proper chance to test them out before launch? D: The biggest priority imo would be to add more classes / subclasses so that the community can try them and see how well they work with the Larian homebrews. :]

I left out more classes because that's the obvious priority and I imagine Larian is working on that above all else already. But on second thought, I should have included that.

What I should have actually taken into account was multiclassing, which someone on Reddit already pointed out... But at the same time, working on multiclassing now is probably a bad idea without having all of the classes available first.

Oh... Okay, option 2 it is!

Voted for option 2 for more companions and banter. I rarely play the evil path in games, though, so it was strange to have that grouped with wanting more companions.

I voted for option 2 too.
I read Improving the evil path as "making the story around the evil path make more sense", which would be good, and of course anything to do with companions, banter, character development etc gets my vote.

I grouped that there because the biggest criticism of the evil path is that it currently locks you out of one of the companions, it feels completely unrewarding, and that it's seemingly extremely poorly written otherwise. As I've said, option 2 is basically the 'story/writing/party interactions' option above all else. Though I should have listed 'improved Evil path' last in that option instead of first.

I'd have voted for a mix for 1 and 2 if possible haha. But better evil path and companions are always welcome. Would be nice if Larian hinted at what sort of good companians and other alignments they have planned though. Personally I expect Halsin to be a possible companion, just seems odd to have him sit around the camp all day :s

At this point, there might be riots in the streets if Halsin doesn't become a full fledged companion for later parts of the game...

Riots? some might even start world war 3! haha. In all seriousness though, he is pretty well written and he makes a nice druid companion. Hope they do more with Khaga as well once you thwarted her plans or something.

Please have your full-fledged companion in return for a half-fledged elf

Though, I would rather like to see non-tadpole followers/companions that will enter for a limited time to accomplish a specific goal. Perhaps even making these +1 to normal party size limit, allowing for some more large-scale battles - while also throwing a bone to the many who wanted larger parties.

I voted the first because having a "mechanically tight" game is by far the first priority and the FOUNDATION on which everything else should be built over, as far as I'm concerned, but I'll second that it's a bit of a strange poll in terms of options offered.

For a start it's dangerously close to a false dichotomy since none of these options is strictly mutually exclusive and there's a also a blatant disproportion on the workforce involved in achieving each of them (first and third points piled together arguably don't come close to the overall cost implied in the second point).
Last but not least, I'm not sure how to feel about having the "evil path thing" (something I personally hardly even care about) with having a lot more reactivity and interaction between companions/characters (something that on the other hand I would like to see a lot).

I can see why you'd say that from a cost standpoint, but again, the only thing I'd be interested in is gauging what the general priority should be: Combat, Writing, or Customization. Although I probably really should have just *really* split up the options, but at the time that I originally considered doing that, I also realized that a lot of options weren't really mutually exclusive either and splitting those up made little sense. Which is why they were tightened up as they were. Maybe too tight in hindsight.

- Reactions and Ready Actions will likely use the same type of coding on a fundamental level. And resource-related abilities such as Smite probably will as well.

- Again, I probably shouldn't have listed 'Improved Evil Path' first for option 2. I only grouped that in there because the biggest complaint about it is that it's pretty nonsensical compared to the regular path, AND you lose a companion doing it. Improving reactivity and writing in general would lead to the evil path getting improved too. I initially wanted to put in 'improved cinematics' in that option too, but decided against it because it's super vague as hell and also a given (which is also why I didn't put 'additional classes' as an option either, because we already know that's the absolute highest priority).

- The third option is pretty self-explanatory.

It indeed should have ben named better. :-/

I voted for first option, since third one is in my opinion granted, so there is no reason to vote for it. :P
And since second didnt make much sence to me, after all im completely OKEY with how "evil" game lookalike. :P

Eh, what's done is done at this point. I tried. :P

Not exactly interested in getting into a poll-related argument after observing how it derailed a different thread a couple weeks ago, ha. Someone else should take a swing at it in about 2-3 weeks if we still don't hear anything about the next update by then.

How is it nonsensical? In the end both paths lead to infiltrating the evil cult in the Moonrise towers, but the 'evil' path gives you a much better cover story and cultists wont know you are a traitor by reading your memories about how you slaughtered True Souls in Act 1. 'Evil' path isnt about joining the Cult of Absolute because you believe their doctrine it's about feeling more comfortable when dealing with them on their turf.

I believe Saito didnt state his own opinion right now (unless its the same), but only told that "people complaining about" the most.

I haven't done the evil path myself, I am only going off of what I've heard, and the general consensus is that it's awkward and unrewarding. I recall most of the objections revolved around losing Wyll with nothing to make up for the loss of a companion, and something to do with how Minthara behaves. That said, I haven't really seen anyone defending the evil path either.

Yes even this would be really good!!
We already have the ability to take some specific NPCs along for short quests (Us, Glut), would be nice to be have them for, say, an entire act of the game before having to part ways.

Evil paths are usually a bit meh in most RPG's sadly. Either you go full ham cartoon villain or you still end up facing the badguy for reasons and plot railroading xD. I do not recall how it worked in the previous BG's either to be honest. I generally gravitate towards good or grey-ish morality at best in most roleplaying games. And I guess that also explains why half the time Astarion and Lae'zel hate my guts haha. Although Neil Young's Astarrion dialogue turning your PC down at the post druid grove is pretty rewarding in of itself. As if I'd ever romance a character that reminds me too much of the nobleman's NPC's from the original Baldur's Gate. Away with you beggar! And fetch me my golden pantaloons fortwith you smelly peasant!

Give it a try, definitely.
But yes you do lose Wyll, and because Minthara isn't a full companion like Wyll is, a one night stand with her isn't really a fair tradeoff. The "evil" path currently feels lacking in story surrounding it, it's not nearly as fleshed out story-wise as the "good" path is. Less conversations, less reasoning overall for it. (Also I did an evil playthrough immediately after a Tiefling Druid playthrough, so I felt awful about slaughtering Tieflings and Druids!)
Also it's interesting to see the companions' reactions, taking them down the "evil" path with you, and how this affects them.

It's not really awkward and unrewarding if you look at the bigger picture. There are gonna be some negotiations with the Cult leadership in the future and while you pose danger to them because of your knowledge about tadpoles being the real source of True Soul power, being friendly towards the cult, not trying to deceive or harm them will help you get some kind of deal with the leadership. The real reward here is that you don't have to worry about someone reading your memories about killing True Souls in Act I once you get to the Moonrise Towers, you will feel much more comfortable and secure compared to an infiltrator who saved the grove.

Losing a companion isn't such a big deal if you don't actually use him. It makes sense, considering that he is a good person. Gale too wants to leave the party but can be persuaded to stay. I let both of them go for my evil playthrough, because I was using only astarion, shadow, laezel anyway.

Minthara makes total sense too. You are a danger to the Cult, because, once again, you know the truth about True Soul powers coming from an illithid tadpole, that's why Minthara gets an order to kill you after you wipe tieflings and druids together, but she can be easily persuaded into becoming your ally, giving you an extra route to Moonrise Towers and promising to meet you later.

Sazza, and most importanly ... HALSIN!!! :P

Fingers crossed!!!

Since it is already established that saying "Solasta" three times in the mirror will summon a random nerd that causes your spine to twitch - will saying "Halsin" three times summon Icelyn that will shout: "TEAM HALSIN", throw confetti around, and then granting you an inspiration buff before vanishing in magical smoke? :'D

Exactly so!

new interview with swen:

Translador refuses to help me with this word ...
What is "onboarding" that Swen was talking about? :-/

Get people up to speed on the game's mechanics.

are you kidding? swen specifically mentions that there are big changes coming, and that they even turn around entire systems based on feedback...

OK, little bit of hope with that interview but still getting that Swen really hates D&D 5e rules and gameplay.

Happy that they are targeting 2022 but would not be upset if it slipped to 2023, if they needed more time to make it great!

He says that "shoving" and "throwing" work well. This was not what I wanted to hear.

He mentions shoving and throwing specifically and only IN THE CONTEXT OF melee fighters having not that many options in the first few levels compared to other classes, which is a fact of DnD 5e... this is NOT Larian homebrew, and swen did not say in any way that 5e doesn't work in a video game here... he did NOT say 'throwing and shoving is what feedback tells us players want'.
It's literally just that it helps make classes like the fighter more interesting in the beginning, and I would argue that thats very much the case.

Personally this interview makes me hopeful again. He is specifically saying that they are working on a lot of thing behind the scenes, and that big changes and content updates are coming. Yes, there were no specifics, but Larain has so far not given me a reason to distrust them or believe that they are lying, so for now I believe what Swen has to say.

The video does not make me particularly hopeful. I will keep an open mind, but I suspect that this is the last Larian project that I support in Early Access (next time I'll wait till a post release sale).

All that video confirms is what I have said on this forum for months. Larian is overwhelmed with this project and understaffed.

For the record, if after this long waiting time (sprinkled with the utterly annoying silence), there will be no half-orcs in the game




run.

You know, I'm almost done watching that video interview and there's something I'm struggling to understand.

Swen Vincke keeps teasing "things that they are changing according to feedback" (and *which* feedback exactly could be in itself a cause of concern), but he seems to be adamant about keeping the secret on what these changes would be and I can't help but wonder... What purpose does this serve exactly?

It seems to me like a counterproductive strategy. If your user base is vocally asking for something and you are actually listening to them and doing what they asked for (whatever he's referring about) it wouldn't just help to give everyone peace of mind if you were going to be open about it?

This has me slightly worried as well. I am very happy to hear them SAY that they are overwhelmed, and "silence means working" - but I also thought it was really weird that he was like "We been working on stuff that you guys wanted! But I won't tell you what" like... Alright? O.o

Either way! Happy to hear from Larian and I do look forward to being updated "soonTM".

Agreed. I dig the video and finally giving us some sort of interaction, but at the same time, nothing was said that we really didn't know before, and even gave hints that they have no intention of fixing certain mechanics that people have been asking to be altered.

Finally some interaction, though.

The feedback they are hearing is that there is too much D&D in BG3 and all that boring D&D stuff needs to be pruned out of the game. MORE BIG & FLASHY STUFF! streamers need stuff to meme about!

I'm already waiting for Mr. Vincke to announce something along these lines:

Now that they're such a big name and have much more media exposure, this is understandable. With streamer influence being such a big factor nowadays, it's only natural that you want to create simple, in-your-face "flashy" stuff that can be easily shown and appreciated on stream. You may call something a "cheap laugh", but to many in the general public that's enough to get them excited and to try the game. This may be disappointing but from a business standpoint, it makes sense. Even memes can help make the game more popular, meaning more people hear about it, becoming curious and wanting to try the game out.

This probably means they're going to adjust things, but the major stuff, the core system, main frame, will be the same.

Haha yup. Saddly prob true?!
Lets not forget:
"We will not add any other playable NPCs so we can concentrate on the current ones to be AAA PERFECT!"
"Telemetry seems to indicate people prefer a smaller sized peni...uuuh..party. So <Menage a trois (threesome)> it is!!"
"Food and drugs will now replace all cleric spells."
"Double jump action and fart action than can be used with a lit candle or dipping for explosion/poison effect."

Man cant wait for the next panel from hell. Its going to be HELLARIOUS.

Yo guys, wtf. Sven literally went from " Usually our EA lasts 1 year, so maybe we will manage to do the same with BG3 " to " MAYBE 2022, but I'm not sure".

Like he literally thinks about +2 years of development time compared to his initial expectations. Of course they made changes to their initial plans.

No point being harsh to peoplde from Larian.

Really curious what the next update will bring. And the next panel from Hell. And until we get it.... BG2 is still there waiting for you ;0

I honestly don't care about the overall development time. Anyone with any sort of project management sense immediately recognized the game is going to be in EA for at least a few years. What is bothering us is the total lack of communication on Larians part in keeping us updated. We just ended almost 5 months of radio silence for Sven to basically tell us nothing new. He said they are working on things based on feedback, but refuses to tell us what. It's the lack of communication for no real apparent reason that's the issue. Not the extended development time.

Just to be clear.

I would love to get some updates and havent done much in game for a couple of months now. Gaming in general has been pretty blah. Right now this game feels too limited and thats my main issue as the class restrictions, low level, and inability to min/max or roll stats makes the game feel meh. That being said I would love a timeline or current projects update from them. For all I hate on other game companies, I can at least get a broad "heres what we are planning in the next few months" from Scopely while they stealthy find ways to subvert the gaming community while blood letting their player's wallets. And timeline/more communication aside, at this point I would rather them spend the time to get it right than a quick release that still feels like it should be early release. Dark Alliances dropped this week and looks terrible, Magic Legends dropped a month ago and the reviews only got positive when reviewers had played 10 to 20 hours and noted how bad the first hours were. Its a game so bad it gave its players Stockholm syndrome. This game isnt that level of bad so I hope things get corrected and more acknowledgment to address the community with what they are doing and what the expected timeline is would be a good first step. You can miss the time goals just let us know. If you expect to have barbarians and monks by August and it doesnt happen you can update and say September, just give us something.

Rolling stats in a videogame is borderline cheating, because in the actual tabletop environment, where rolling stats is sometimes used (not always, my DM prefers standart array only for example), you dont get unlimited rerolls. Unlimited rerolls make no sense, you might as well use an editor to give yourself overpowered stats if basic pointbuy is too low for you.

Rolling stats though is still part of the feel of what makes a Dungeons and Dragons video game feel like a Dungeons and Dragons video game. Yes there has been a movement under Wizards to remove the stat rolls but for older fans the dice roll is an important part of character building. This was the way the first 2 Baldurs gate games were (and dragonspear) and yes you could easily put an auto roller on and get thousands of rerolls which is outside of the games design. But in the games design was saved rolls so you could roll over and over again and if you wanted to try to go for a 90+ in your summed stats, then you could roll for an hour or however long you want to try and take your best. But it wasnt just BG1/2 The first DnD game I played was the Eye of the Beholder series (still recommend if you have a DOS emulator) where the stats were rolled but after the stats were rolled you could adjust them without restrictions so if you wanted all 18s with an 18/00 you just clicked the stats up.

Translation from the table top game this is usually done by modifying the way rolls are done and most gms allow some sort of modification to the stat rolling guidelines in the books, and the various editions have changed their guidelines to give players more options from the 1st ed 3D6 down the stat column, in order, and I only ever had one DM do that to their players, whom didnt have much fun being stuck playing characters with so many bad stats, though it could be argued that being able to choose where to put the stats, going to 4D6, and 4D6 drop the 1s and rolling multiple sets of stats and choosing one feels like DnD, being stuck playing a Captain Above Average does not so much.

And to tie this back to the OP, I still hope that the suggestion that we will one day get to roll stats comes to fruition before the full release, as it can create balancing issues, especially if a reroll option is available. Maybe if you want to keep the feeling of cheating down (still dont consider this cheating historically in DnD video games). Make the stats available at the time of character generation with no actual roll, game generates the rolls and when you click the stats page the first time and can assign the rolls to each stat. I wouldnt like having to roll a few dozen characters to get an 18 but if thats what the player base wants i can get by playing DnD Vanilla Edition.

You cant look at this like that ...
Name any mechanique, and i bet with some time we can find some way to exploit it ...

The main expectation is you will not use exploits, bcs the only effect such behaviour would have is ruining your own game in the end.

It can be exploited but same time having distributed stats the way its done sets limitations to it that isnt present in any other dnd game currently released. A better balance would be simply giving 2 options where if you re-roll stats more than twice you cant access any achievements added to the game additionally you could disable it as like a difficulty feature. But it is something alot of people do like having that option to vary up characters as typically a 4d6 method is going to net your character on average ability score counts around 75-83 vs standard array with bg 3 is going to cap you at 75. So most of the time your ability scores are going to be below average at 15 - 14 - 13 - 12 - 11 -10 also the game limits you to raising an ability socre to 15 where standad dnd lets you go to 18 if you want.

I myself when dming always use to allow roll 4d6 if your roll is under 75 total ill give 1 reroll and you can +1 / -2 if you want to adjust a stat. So less people complain and cry over bad rolls but its rare youll see anyone roll below a 75. But you do see some really low scores show up time to time and some above average rolls some of the time. Its what you see in most parties as you get alot of people just wont play if there scores are like 10 9 10 15 8 6. You could also be rolling for several hours trying to get 2 18's its not that common and if you do it will often come with 1 score of like a 6.

Also currently the game lacks 90% of the half feats you can take for +1 ability score and something beneficial like slasher / piercer / crusher or Shadow touched / Fey Touched which is most of how people get ability score benefits in 5E without taking full bonuses they take the half feat and another bonus cause the half feats are better than most regular feats when you get a +1 twice to the right stats over course of 2 feats. Alot of the feats were just meh and the +2 to an ability score was only impactful if you rolled really low for some classes like a barbarian whos using armor might not care after hers got his str and con maxed out. so having those extra feats just gave more options to people that the rolling system helps counter balance that. Some classes are impacted more by ability scores being limited.

Something to consider with a mechanic is "How easy is it to exploit this?" Exploiting something like shove takes nearly no effort and trivializes encounters. But exploiting rolls is a bit more tedious as it is luck based and can take forever as well as not providing as much benefit as one would think, as numbers is only a part of dnd and can't compensate for bad play not does it guarantee hits. So as much as I dislike mechanics being easily abused, I think rolling isn't as abuseable as it would seem, or at least that is in my experience. Stats still matter though and one in theory could roll an 18 in everything ending up with a character good at everything, the most I've done is roll an 18 in 4 stats when physically rolling in pnp (though I think I got straight 12s one time... My luck is very... Odd. Also decided to not play a character who had 3 3s in his statline with only one stat above 10 one time, rolling can really backfire...)

nonsense, then grinding easy monsters in an rpg is borderline cheating. They both take time and no skill

I know people are overdefensive about this topic but I happen to agree.
"Rolling for stats" in a videogame equates basically to beg the player to take few minutes to exploit the system.

Why should anyone settle for "point buy" when you can get consistently higher numbers across the board (that basically ignore racial restrictions too) by taking four-five minutes to reroll a bunch of dices?

Going back to the original Baldur's Gate 1/2 experiences. My original character in 1 I didnt roll exploit rerolls, but I did go through the game multiple times and imported him to BG2. The issue being, there were tomes and manuals in the game, meaning you could bump your stats to max fairly easily if you played through the game a few times. Will we get tomes and manuals in this game? Who knows but if we have the import export character system, and you import a character into multi player with a manual of gainful exercise, hand off the book and reimport the character with a new book then export with two books, then repeat ad nauseum until you have a full inventory of books to max your bad stats to maximum. Theres always going to be loopholes but how Larian addresses it can be done. Why not build in the multiplayer system with character generated restrictions and achievements. Dont want imported fully geared characters, just fresh characters with generic stats, click the boxes. want a quick run with fully geared people to see how fast you can finish the game? Let people have it as well. Want to see if you can make a character on 3D6 straight stats, no rerolls Congrats heres your achievement trophy. Why not give multiple options to people.

Also sorry to OP for driving this a bit off topic, but it goes back to the timeframe and expectations I had on a game and not having heard anything on stat rolls since a brief mention in an interview a long time ago.

I
And what's the problem ?

It's not like if the entire game was balanced arround OP abiliites. Don't do it if you don't like it

I personnaly love rolling abilities because it gives me more versatility when creating builds. In exemple create a correct paladin build with a (sub)race that doesn't have charisma bonuses.
Also because it makes combats a bit more fluent (missing less often) and not "so much" easier if have your own limits.

When rolling mine is 18+ in my main ability, 16+ in the second one... Then nothing under 10^^

Positives of Rolling for Stats

• fun
• enables detailed character customization

Negatives of Rolling for Stats

• can create OP characters relative to the game. However, this is one of the situations where "don't use it if you don't like it" is actually applicable. It's the same as save-scumming. Also in BG3, Larian's homebrew ~overwhelms character stats, making optimized characters closer in power level to "average" characters than PnP.
• can create OP characters relative to other players. However, this is irrelevant if you're playing single-player, and if you're playing multiplayer then your friends can just do it too. It's not like PnP where if the DM only allows a single roll, one player can end up with [18 18 17 16 14 14] and another player with [12 11 11 10 9 6]

I don't like it.

I'm not a fan of games expecting from me to self-impose some restrictions to not leverage their broken mechanics.

Also no, no matter how many of you repeat it about ANY topic, "don't like it, don't use it" is never a particularly clever advice when it comes to balance.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I say allow rolling, point buy, and default array. Let the player choose the method as part of their self selected difficulty settings.

This is different in my view from restricting yourself from backstabbing, for instance.

If rolling is an option I'll use it, but I'll be quick to give respect to a streamer that uses default array on hardest difficulty in ironman challenge, because that would definitely be harder.

What balance are you talking about ? IMO it never broke "the balance" to roll abilities in a DnD video game.
Especially in party based games in which you only roll for 1 character.

Rolling for stats over and over until you get a couple of 18's and a bunch of other high numbers will definitely make the game easier, even if its only for one character. This doesn't bother me though, because it happens at the same time (more or less) that I will select the difficulty settings for the game, and essentially gives me another option for tuning that difficulty.

Creating powerful exploitative characters is part of the fun in RPGs to me. I hate average or balanced.
To compensate I usually play in the highest difficulty setting though.

then you're a sucker for punishment because that's going to be Baldur's Gate 3 all the way. I assume you hated wands in BG1 as well?

i like to create "powerful characters" while inside a set of rules that are fair for everyone involved.

I don't like to just sidestep the rules and add to myself magic bonus stats. May as well playing using a trainer to rewrite all my stats and skills at that point.

A point buy system is perfectly fair: "Here's a bunch of points for each one of you. Find a way to make the best possible use of it".
A roll system without a game master acting as guardian? It's basically a free pass to cheat your character creation. And let's be honest here, if the game gave you all only, say, three rerolls for your dices and forced you to stick with one of the results, you would hate it.

Why is even rolling stats an issue of debate in a game where the very game mechanics are legal exploits?

1. Pickpocketing. Virtually zero risk & time for the best and repeated supply of loot and money in the game. Completely trashes the risk vs reward mechanics in the game.
2. Unlimited rest. Breaks balance completely. Imagine the Champion Fighter with its emphasis on passives vs classes who are balanced with much more powerful active abilities with limited uses.
3. Overpowered early loot + meta-gaming knowledge. 18 intelligence circlet allows a specific "stupid wizard"-build to profit in a way you might as well have "cheated with rolls".

As for rolls; yes please. BG3 is vastly more a spiritual successor of DOS2 than BG2. Rolling is paying homage to the old series and old-school D&D.

Because I dislike each one of these things, too?
Well, except the third one, really. People are massively overestimating how good that circlet actually is. The necklace that adds 1d4 to each magic missile is arguably twice as valuable.
The "stupid wizard" build is a stupid idea that will most likely stay viable only in EA to begin with.

Once again, two wrongs don't make a right.

We don't even know if rolling makes it into the game, but the two first issues are staple Larian mechanics and isn't likely to change.

The headband is by itself not super powerful, but with meta-gaming it allows for that specific build to in effect gain an advantage around +19 ability points in the point buy system, unless hideously mistaken. That's pretty significant and relevant. Not sure how long you imagine people rolling to beat that, but at that point rolling will likely already have required more work than any of the "Larianisms".

And yes, I agree about the MM necklace. At least when we begin approaching medium-high level gameplay (endgame, DLC or BG4) with level 10 Evocation Wizard (add intelligence in dmg to each die). Then upcast MM. Then add 2 levels Fighter for Action Surge to do it twice every battle (rest to recharge). Add Warlock level for Hex to boost even further. Of course, the wizard being "Swen's fave" benefit from both of these and that OP staff as well. I really dislike Larian's Diabloesque item-focus!

Any mages worth their salt will aim to reach INT 20, which requires to have a NATURAL STAT ("Ability") already high enough.
A mage with 8 INT and a circlet adding two INT point won't reach 20. He will reach 10 and set the stat at 18 again because of the circlet, wasting two points.

More in general an item that sets your basic primary stat at 18 will be obsolete rather quickly, especially when later in the game you will feel the urge to free that equipment slot for more powerful items granting more valuable bonuses (a plain +X t some stat, additional spell slots, more damage for a certain class of spells/abilities, some extremely useful resistance... You name it).
At that point if you built you mage to have 8 INT "because of the circlet" you are pretty much fucked for the late game or stuck with a suboptimal option.

The circlet will maintain some (marginal) value mostly for classes that will use INT as a secondary stat. Which implicitly decreases its overall importance even more.

But we are digressing, anyway,

Also, Larian already confirmed months ago that dice rolling for stats will make into the game at some point. I'm not worrying about a "IF". I know it's coming. It doesn't mean I have to like it.

The +19 ability points are in stats that are less useful (to a wizard) than intelligence. To get that +19 points you have to dump int on your wizard, which means that you suck until you get the circlet. After you get the circlet you are a beefy wizard that will then fall behind all the melee classes when they get double attack at level 5. You will fall behind the other wizards when they take the ASI bump to 20 at level 8.

Even if you go EK you are still gimping yourself relative to a fighter that takes battlemaster and stays stupid. The circlet is a meme.

Furthermore, its not even a Larianism. The circlet is "uncommon loot" in the Dungeom Masters guide, which means that it is appropriate for character levels 1rst or higher.

(Its also supposed to take an attunement, so once they add that feature the circlet will acquire an opportunity cost).

Yeah, this kind of gear exists in regular DnD, and I'm not all too concerned about them. They're really a non-issue.

Solasta has them, but they require attunement there. There's another similar item called the Belt of Dwarvenkind that sets your CON to 19, though you end up with a 50% chance to grow a beard after you take a long rest, which stopped a lot of people from using it in Solasta (and it'll probably do the same thing in BG3).

The utility of such items falls off a cliff as you progress and find better accessories, and building around their existence is basically shooting yourself in the foot.

Itemization, vendors and pick pocketing completely ruined DOS2 for me. Its way too hard to ignore, in a RP sense.
Way too many random magical items with random stats randomly spawning in vendors every 30 minutes. And its also everywhere in the world. After 2 hours of gameplay didn't care for anything. Nothing felt special and 90% of the <<<unique>>> items were junk. The game <hooks> you with that stupid WOW rarity color system; green, blue, purple, red...it gets old VERY fast. Only purple/red items are useful and also are everywhere, especially out of Fort Joy.

That actually is one thing I adore in BG2. I always go back to the game for the items. Some much cool stuff and I love that long history bit that explains where the item came from. Like your reading a D^D items lore manual POE also did that, kind of.

Not necessarily shooting yourself in the foot IF you are trying to build a character who will have a bit MAD of a stat sppread, an Item like that can free stats up and make it easier to make a weird mix. A Barbarian and Wizard mix would be more than a bit MAD with how both classes focus on the other class's dump stat, but with the Circlet, one can easily make a Barbarian/Wizard multiclass without sacrificing effectiveness in both BUT with the tradeoff that they will not be able to use "better" or more interesting head slot items, if it gets removed their Wizardry is instantly reduced, and it takes up an attunement slot. Overall though to me it feels like a fair trade and can be a rewarding thing to build around IF you are aware of what you are giving up to do so.
And givi9ng it to Laezel actually would be good for making her an EK or a Fighter/Wizard multiclass to fit the Githyanki fighting style.

My point is that its not broken good. You can fit it into a few niche builds that aren't bad, but mostly you would do that to fit a role playing concept, not a min-max power build.

I find items like the Circlet are most useful to bump up a character's secondary/tertiary stat (i.e. INT for eldritch knights or arcane tricksters, among others) until they are able to raise it up on their own through ASIs. It doesn't make any sense on a character whose primary stat you want to get to 20 anyway.

I haven't seen a ton of interesting headwear in 5e, not that some doesn't exist and more can't be homebrewed. The real cost of the Circlet is that it eats up a precious attunement slot, and there are so many better things you want to use that slot for down the line. It's a decent first attunement item, but you're generally going to want to replace it before too long.

Well, I happen to agree, but for your own sake take a friendly advice and don't go on Larian's Discord to say any of that.
At least if you don't want to end under some sort of rabid parody of a siege that goes more or less along with the tired tune "HOW DARE YOU!" and "IT'S JUST YOUR OPINION!".

I took a look in there 3 hours after I tried to help define what you meant by itemization.

...You weren't kidding. I legit had not run into ANYONE defending DOS2's itemization until today.

This quote by someone in there really leapt out to me, though.


DOS2 had an illusion of an open world, but it really wasn't. There's a reason why there's a recommended level map for the entire Reaper's Coast. The worst part is, not only did it suffer from stat bloat, but it also had a hidden level-based damage formula. I believe it was something like -20% damage inflicted for every level you were below an enemy target, and +20% damage inflicted for every level you were above them. Could be 25% or 15% instead, but the game doesn't tell you this, yet it's extremely obvious there's something there.

BG3 is honestly far closer to being open world than DOS2 ever was.

That makes two of us.

In the years I’ve discussed these games since they came out, with friends or on communities like RPG Codex, RPG Watch, etc. I struggle to remember people who were even just neutral about the system.

Most thought it was bad, many thought it was downright awful and for few people I know it was downright a deal breaker, enough to put them off from playing the game despise any recommendations that “It does even some things well”.
Sometimes without even enough insight to be able to point what didn’t work exactly. They knew only that dealing with loot in the game was tiring busywork and it didn’t feet right.

People who LIKED the system and would argue with a straight face that it is just as good as BG2?
Basically unicorns.

Oh god yeah.... the Larian itemization system .... -_-

By the way I may be wrong but I absolutely do NOT expect Larian to add attunement mechanics (or item identification) to the game.

It doesn’t seem to fit their current strive to make the game as frictionless (and toothless) as possible.

Pretty sure about that too... ritual casting is probably out aswell. Aswell as proper mechanics for scrolls or what spells wizards can learn. It's all a damn shame, if so....

My experience with DOS2 was exactly this. I had to do very specific content and ONLY that content at certain levels. There might as well been a mmo-like glowing path, leading me to where I could actually go and where I wasn't supposed to go. it was bizarre. I'm sure an expert with the system can bypass it, but for a new player, i felt very constricted.

Not directed against you in particular Saito (do you prefer Saito or Hikari as a short name? Or would you just prefer the whole name?), but I have to be honest - I'm really puzzled by people calling BG3 open world. It's like people have forgotten what that term means in a game, and only use it as part of latching on to popular phrases. BG3 is not, and is not even remotely approaching, open world. It is a series of narrow paths interconnecting fixed diorama events in place, and literally nothing more. It is the furthest thing from open world without being wholly linear. There is no exploration - there is only following the rigidly formed corridors to the next events - and while it may be a network of different fixed corridors that let you run to the events in almost any order you want, it's STILL just corridors leading in fixed ways to fixed events, with nothing else at all in the world. It doesn't feel like a world, open or otherwise - it feels like a stage, upon which we are anchored and locked and restricted by convenient physical walls and waters.

Breath of the Wild is an Open World game. Skyrim is an Open World game. BG3 is very much NOT an open world game in ANY sense of the word.

Well, I wouldn't really argue that BG3 is a true open world, it's just inherently a lot more open than DOS2 ever was. There's already evidence that quite a few events change depending on the order you tackle them too.


Even experts are still constricted by this unless you use very specific alpha strike builds or go super all in on things like barrelmancy or throw heavily weighted chests with the telekinesis skill around, due to the inherent level-based damage formula.

If there are multiple directions for you to comfortably choose where to go in (different areas, pursuing different quest lines), then it's called, I believe, non-linear, not "open world". DOS games are not even non-linear because there are intended levels for each region, and there is one very narrow route intended for players to go. If you wander just a bit far from your current region you're guaranteed to run into only high level encounters that are not intended for your level. Not that it's impossible to beat higher-level regions, but it's much harder in a "not fun" kinda way, because the game was built against you doing this (stat bloat, level-difference modification to damage). This was the main reason why I could never find the motivation to replay either DOS game. There are too few maps in DOS, too few enemy variation, no surprise events. The feeling I had after completing DOS was that I'd probably seen most everything - I didn't feel like there was anything I wanted to know anymore. I was willing to give DOS2DE one complete playthrough, but that was it. The fact that you can get any skill you want and respec your characters anytime you want, one playthrough is about enough for you to try out everything.

I hope you are wrong about Attunement. Attunement is what keeps magic items in balance and prevents you from stacking things too much. thats why Artificers having double the slots is powerful and something unique to them at the 18th level. Being able to attune to 6 magic items at once can make one nigh unkillable.

All I’m hearing is more reasons for Larian to think it’s AWESOME.

on a semi-related note, been playing through BG 1 ee and man, sometimes adhering strictly to d&d rules is AWFUL. Fear? Poison? If you're not prepared ahead of time for those kinds of encounters, they're character/party killing situations. The Fear actually lasts a minute of real time(give or take some amount of seconds). so your character is just running around the map for a solid minute, aggroing everything on that map. I had one encounter where my party collected a conga line of like 20 enemies while they were feared. Also, poison lasts FOREVER, so if you dont have an antidote or a spell, you're done.

Those things work well on the tabletop game, but are awful in video-game form.

I don't think I'd call that "awful in video-game form". The fear effects are fairly easy to handle with a level 1 spell that has a long enough duration to cover you for an entire map. The poison is a bigger issue, especially at low levels, but emphasize the need for preparation.

I definitely struggled with the ettercaps and spiders in the Cloakwood on my first playthrough in 1998... but on subsequent play throughs I brought lots of antidotes and it just wasn't a problem then.

I like a game that rewards careful preparation. It would be a shame to lose that.

The fact that BG was a game where you could get stomped if you went in unprepared and/or with a poor understanding of its systems but you could also curb-stomp the encounter once you understood what was needed to deal with it was one of my favorite things about it, actually.

That said, EXTREMELY low level (1-2) has always been where D&D felt the most "MEH" in general, when it comes to balance (it's another story when it comes to immersion. In that sense it nails the "sense of danger" of "adventuring for the first time" perfectly).
it's just a matter of passing that threshold, really.

the issue for me is there's no middle ground. Either your prepared for it and it's not an issue at all or it's game ending and you're reloading the game. Having the fear last even just 15 seconds would be brutal and poison that lasts say 20 seconds would severely drain your resources but as it is, it's nothing or it's game ending, which doesn't seem like good design to me.

edit: to clarify, my party is level 2, in that nasty "ehhh..." d&d zone that Tuco is referring to.

I certainly agree that level's one and two are frustrating in BG in some cases. Forget poison... kobold commando's are one shot one kill wonders at that level.

This is a problem that still exists in 5e. This is why the first fight on the beach is so rough. IMO a level up immediately after the tutorial before that first fight would be welcome.

I forget where it came from but I think Mike Merles corroborated the concept of the character arc in D&D being broken up into four quartiles, with each one being it's own genre of fantasy. (1-5) grimdark (5-10) heroic (11-15) high fantasy and (16-20) superheroic/demigod heroic

I also think the other Baldur's Gate games had encounters that often were all or nothing, they were the most frustrating and fun parts of the combat in that game.

I personally enjoyed having a game that would grind to a halt as the wizards constantly tried to find the magic combination of debuffs that would allow the grunts to finally do the 10 hp that would kill him. but especially the final fights and ToB it got kind of messy, especially with masses of mobs spawning in.

you make a good point. The puzzle of "hmm, okay, i literally cannot fight against this right now" is making me rethink my strategy with fights. The vampiric wolf i fought couldn't be hurt by non-magical weapons. Turns out i had a wand of magic missile and a +1 long sword however, so i had to basically use one character as bait (good ol' khalid) and have him get chewed on while imoen blasted the wolf with magic missiles and my Kensai tried to get lucky with the longsword.

I do still think that some extremes are a bit too much, there's no real purpose for the fear to last as long as it does. If you're prepared, you're prepared, if not, you're almost certainly going to just get your entire party killed. fights in BG just don't last that long (i dont remember when i first played it years ago, so i might be wrong in later fights).

Very much this. Well, I can't say much about D:OS2, not having played it, but I hate this modern trend of coloured-rarity junk shower loot. Horrible. I'm sad and disappointed every time I start a game and realize it has this shit.

Also...


Varscona! My last Ward had it for most of BG1. Pretty much became this character's iconic weapon. And this is exactly it, you REMEMBER those items from BG1&2; they were special and some of them stay in memory for years, even if they aren't that important or used much.


Several people I know recommended D:OS2 to me, but the more I hear about it, the less I want to play, even though I already have the game. And the itemization is certainly a factor here.

As a side note, I was really surprised CDPR hadn't scrapped the shitty TW3 loot system and put something more reasonable in Cyberpunk... which apparently has a loot system that's even worse? Then again, at this point I'm hardly surprised at anything being bad in Cyberpunk.


Yes! It also rewarded actually scouting ahead instead of face-checking every room. (I may be biased though, I love Fighter/Thieves.)

And something related (depending on whether you mean "prepared" as in just "knowing systems" or also knowing the upcoming encounter by reloading or replaying) - I really liked that I could get into a room, start the fight, get stomped because I didn't know what to expect and wasn't prepared, reload, change approach, rinse and repeat until I find a strategy that works. Kind of feels like a puzzle. I know some people call it bad game design since you need metaknowledge to effectively tackle encounters on the first attempt, but I found it very fun. (And you can greatly reduce the "need" for metaknowledge by scouting and preparing for a variety of situations.)

It’s weird because from an abstract standpoint I’d be tempted to claim that the two DOS are in many ways very high quality games. High production value, loads of unique, non-repeated content, some fun and engaging combat dynamics, high reactivity, high environmental interaction, flexible quest design where multiple approaches work...

But once you start to go into specific mechanics and subsystems almost everything about them breaks down very quickly and turns into a mess. The itemization is downright bottom tier in the genre, the progression curve is terrible, the perk system is incredibly uneven (few very good ones, almost unmissable, while the rest is garbage) balance is a thing of dreams, gimmicks are over-used to the point of suffocating the rest, positioning becomes quickly meaningless because twenty different teleport/warp skills trivialize it, etc, etc.
And don't get me started about the armor system, for Christ's sake.

The problem with the armor system in DOS 2 is that it makes hardly any sense in principle and it creates way more problems that it solves.
Discouraging mixed sources of damage (which it factually does, it doesn't matter if you can work your way around it) is only the tip of the iceberg. There's also the fact that makes a certain amount of utility skills/spells utterly useless (not "unreliable" as much as literally 100% pointless to even attempt) until a certain threshold of damage has been passed, etc.

Basically it's a system of HP bloat (now in three different flavors!) that favors direct damage dealing above any other strategy. And conversely once that threshold of damage is surpassed the exact opposite becomes true, and some of these crowd controls become 100% reliable.

I mean, sure, you can learn to live with that. We all did.
But holy fucking shit if it doesn't go straight in the bottom tier among all the countless attempts at "simulating damage mitigation" I've experienced across the years in different rulesets.

...See? This is what I meant.
Every time I stop to think about it too much, at some point I almost need to stop and ask to myself "Wait, is it ACTUALLY a good game in the end or am I just forgiving too much to it?".



Incidentally I also think CP2077 is right there with DOS 2 and Oblivion as one of the worst itemizations I've ever seen in the entire genre.

What's even more aggravating about Cyberpunk is that they felt the urge to come up with their own Witcher-derivate flavor of bullshit (one aspect that was ALREADY detrimental to their past games, I might add) while adapting a pre-existing tabletop ruleset that was famously level-less and not affected by this sort of bloated garbage.
At least you could argue in Larian's defense that with DOS 2 they were starting from zero and had to come up with something on their own. CDPR can't even appeal to this excuse.

But what's really interesting about CDPR is that this isn't an "inexperience" issue on their part: their system got progressively worse at each game.
For instance in TW3 while most of the random loot was useless trash, you at least had unique and hand-placed Witcher sets marking clear milestones across the progression curve. Not in an ideal way (still too much stat bloat for my taste) but at least with some decent degree of reliable determinism.
In CP on the other hand the predominance of randomized trash becomes quickly almost suffocating.

I'd ultimately recommend DOS2, it is a good experience on its own. And one of the grab bags did a lot to fix itemization to where a unique set of armor or weapon can stay relevant the entire game. However, I think it is very different from what BG3 should be, both are good but wildly different properties with wildly different bases.

I think the weirdest part about the DOS2 armor system is that a fair number of people seem to be in agreement that simply having one combined armor system instead of a physical/magical split would have solved the majority of balancing problems it presented. It would have also removed the need to add armor values to accessories, which would have stamped down the stat bloat by quite a lot.

The devs could still differentiate physical and magical damage in an indirect way by putting a greater emphasis on elemental resistances in regards to magic damage (so more heavily armored enemies would probably have lower across the board elemental resistance or resistance into the negatives), which was very under-utilized outside of a few gimmick enemies with 75+% resistances.

Those are actually very important to me, I hold reactivity/flexible quest design in high regard. Regarding environmental interaction - is it really... well, "true" environmental interaction or just "create puddle, electrify"? I was very excited when I first heard Swen talking about "Larian systemics" because I love systemics, but what I had in mind was something more akin to immersive sims or BotW, yet it seems all that big talk was hyping up Larian cheese... That is, shallow interactions that are glued on top of the game world (surfaces?) and make it feel more gamey rather than more immersive.


Oh yeah, I've heard about the infamous armour system... Yikes. So basically you need all-magical party or all-physical party?


And I'm just wondering that; there's this supposedly interesting world with nice, flexible quests, good production values and all, but... What about the rest? Perhaps this is an impression that's far from reality, just based on random things people said, but there's a whole bunch of stuff in D:OS2 that's... not that great. All those broken systems, as you say; underwhelming story and characters(?), weak writing; underdeveloped, "meh" worldbuilding. And probably some other problems. I'm even pretty sure I personally wouldn't enjoy the "good" parts of combat, as I hate TB, so for me to (begrudgingly) tolerate TB in a game, it has to be very strong in most other aspects.

All in all, I'm kind of afraid it's going to be somewhat like Inquisition. Good production values, some nice ideas, some actually cool stuff that works... But oh gods is the whole game not worth the 150+ hours you waste on it. Many of those hours spent on things that are frustrating and decidedly not fun.


I would say in Oblivion the itemization itself wasn't that bad. It wasn't great by any means, but items, to my memory, were pretty consistent, so an elven sword would have the same stats each time. Well, plus enchantments. But no looter-shooter levels of random junk. I may be misremembering, but I think Skyrim was worse in this regard. I'm still disappointed by "Axe of Whiterun, a cherished relic for our hero and saviour!" which was just some random crap best used as a paperweight.

The problem with Oblivion was the utterly absurd approach to level scaling (which I'm not a fan of in general), where bandits eventually figured leather and iron are passe and dressed exclusively in glass and daedric, wolf populations were mysteriously replaced by bears and minotaurs started frolicking across the countryside (or, you know, main roads) en masse...


That's pretty much why I was surprised. Itemization in TW1 may not have been amazing, but it was made under good design philosophy, only executed as one would expect from a janky first entry. TW2 was... okayish, I guess, though the game as a whole, while I did very much like it, showed a concerning move towards "trending" mechanics/design. (My first impression of TW2 was "Whoa, it looks AAA! ... Urgh, it feels AAA...") And then the crap loot shower of TW3. If it's not green or at least brown, don't bother picking it up. Though maybe that's not the problem, having tons of crap "loot" is okay in the sense that a bandit can drop his low-grade sword, but for the items intended to be treasured by the player to be looter-shooter/MMO/Diablo-style... No. Just no.


Ah, thank you, armour system fix will be great if I do play the game. And yeah, Larian seemed to understand that BG3 should be an entirely different beast, but it appears they either don't care about the feel of the game or lacked proper perspective to see that it's too similar as it it now...

If you go on the highest difficulty levels than yeah, that's the best thing to do. You can still, on your first playthrough get a semi magi/ semi physical party and just have physical characters harass enemies with lower physical armor values and magical characters attack those with lower magical armour.

The thing is from level 14 +/-, if you optimized your party well...2 mages can whipe out everything. 4 mages can do very fucked up stuff too.... Regardless on the number of HP on the other side. Last boss included. But I won't tell you how. And discovering " how to make this work" is actually fun. My first 2 playthroughs were a blast. The 3rd one was pretty much my last vanilla run since I knew the spells combinations too well ^^.

The 4th playthrough I stopped in the midddle. Even 15 mods didn't help ^^.

If forgot the name but isn't there a highly regarded MOD that completely revamps the armor system of DOS2, getting rid of magic/physical defenses? Not sure if it also fixes over saturated items but I might give it a try if its any good...I think back in the days I did not get it because it changed way too many things for my taste. You didn't have the option to pick and choose certain components.

I forgot the name too. It gets rid of armour and is supposed to get rid of the CC meta by changing CC spells into debuffs. It doesn't exactly work as you can stack those debuffs to freeze the enemy anyways(even by accident) + you now do dmg over time with ice.

And to " balance out the lack of CC on fire spells " fire spells got new spells and are completely OP dmg wise. It's still fun to try them out, there's A LOT of new spells with animations and such.
But if you're asking " does it make it more balanced?" it doesn't.

I think they weren't sure of what they wanted to achieve so they balanced out CC, put it back in the game and added insane fire spells on top of it.

The mod was called Divinity Unleashed. It overhauled the armor system and nerfed the hell out of some crowd control options (especially teleport), but also made things like bless actually useful. I had one character running a dual wield/aeroteurge dodge tank build, something that wasn’t possible in regular DOS2. I found myself using special arrows a lot more often too.

It was still wildly unbalanced in different ways, and the game still turned into a rocket tag DPS race towards the middle.

Huh, interesting. Discovering combos/synergies does sound fun.

But wow, you endured the broken systems for 3.5 playthroughs. :P What's your average playtime for one run?

80-ish hours? But I was playing in coop so I was way slower(dialogues, testing staff, reloads if one of us did something stupid we didn't want to endure etc). 311 hours played.
You know it's a " broken system" if you push it to its limits. Then you discover on the long run it really doesn't work. But you can still have at least 2 full playthroughs and enjoy it 100% before you brake the game .

Oh, so not that much time for a single playthrough. I expected like twice that.

By "broken" I mostly meant what Tuco said, frustrating mechanics like bad itemization, the armour system and ridiculous level curves, rather than "OP if you know how to exploit it". Seems like it would get tiring quickly, even within one playthough.

I was pretty disapointed being away from the game for a while, only to come back to their twitter and finding their most recent post being about some Astarion art from the discord *rolls eyes*. Starting to dislike that guy outside of the game as well I do in it lmao

Finished BG2. Clocked around 177 hours. That was a big WTF moment...Thought I went pretty fast with the game. NExt run going at it a bit slower. Playing chill, 200 hours + EASY. Ill add a couple more NPC mods to spice things up. My current playable companions are at 25, all with banters, romances and story driven dialogues lol. Hopefully we will have an update on BG3 by then.

Wait to learn that literally the only time I've seen some of the developers interacting with anyone a single bit, in few weeks I spent lurking and chatting on the official discord, was to jokingly beg Chubblot to make "a 20 minutes video of shirtless Halsin".

Of course you do.

AHAHAAHAH I am dying. X'D Holy crap, I adore your energy and dedication.

Honestly, the common posters have been consistent enough that I think we all have a good idea of what the other likes and doesn't like.

Like how of course Icelyn would be all up for that daddy Halsin shirtless action.

(This is not a jab, no even close, I love that energy. Keep chasing it!)

Don’t encourage her.

I guess Patch 5 will have to answer this one.

Well time have gone forward for me....

Situation is this:
1. I know this game will not be released in year 2021. Earliest possible release date is during 2022, but it is a long year so do not expect release in early 2022.
2. They have soon new panel.
3. Progress seems slow yes. Do other things and not only wait for this game. Example do work, study, sports or dating or go on vacation or play other games and see movies and/or TV series etc. time will go forward.
4. I want to see boobs from women:). I am not specially interested in Halsin shirtless, but whatever...

NOTE: Despite what I said I am about 3. above. I am interested in new panel... and I want to see it.

I suspect I'm more representative of gamers in general, being quite casual and seldom finishing any game (BG-series and ME-series are two of the stand-outs for me having not only finished all, but also having done a second playthrough). The above-mentioned issues made me quit on DOS2 at around the halfway point. This was despite liking the game a *great deal* initially and despite being aware of said issues beforehand and having opted on a close to pure physical damage party - thereby negating much of the "schizoid" armor system, while also using a mod to counteract the level insane level curve and thus improve on the tiresome and alienating itemization issue.

The cycloptic over-focus on Early Access content (Act One), probably contributed to an anti-climactic feel as the game progressed though - eventhough having waited for improvements post launch. This EA over-focus was actually initially my biggest concern for BG3 EA...but the fundamental flaws of the mechanics in the game are too many and too obvious to worry about potential anti-climactic gameplay beyond the act covered by EA.

Playing with OP mod items though I see. Shameful.

This is a situation where Larian really can not do well. I mean what are they supposed to tell us constantly? That today they dabbled around with balance changes of skill X and Y, or that they changed some perimeters of Dialog option 254? These are not content, but quality of life updates, I do not need to hear about this and frankly I do not really care either.
I care about the big stuff, but these updates are rare and far between. Yet beyond maybe additional classes and reworked quests and items nothing is coming there either, it will always be Act 1. So, what are they supposed to deliver on a weekly basis, when there is nothing really to announce? Announcements of announcements? Continuous teasing of stuff that in the end is still marginal? The biggest news so far for me has been the implementation of the Druid class and even this really did not blow my socks off.

They just have little to announce, really. They have nothing revolutionary in their quiver, just busy work to add. Their base idea and mechanics stand and nothing groundbreaking ins going to change. If you find the UI cumbersome, cluttered and inconvenient, beyond QoL chnages nothing is going to happen there, if you find the combat slow, sluggish, one-dimensional and frustrating, nothing is going to change there either. And if you crave more stuff to sink your teeth and time into, they might add or rework a quest or two and add a class, change some dialogue options etc.. If you thought the game was a strange hybrid between Divinity and Baldur's Gate and you do not feel at home there, you will still feel lost.

I have not played since November, but still read here from time to time and follow the rare updates. I have many issues with the game as it was back then, but I did not expect the EA to change that, although I had hoped that there might have been a release this year, which I do not see.

Yes. More the former than the latter, as hopefully such investigated changes would be at least moderately significant: e.g., "dabbled with making Shove a standard action" as opposed to small tweaks like "reduced shove distance by 0.1m." A bi-monthly twitter post about a single thing they've been working on in the past 2 weeks would do a lot to engage fans.

As you say, if Larian is not going to change any of the game's base mechanics, then yes there'd be less for them to talk about each week/month. But even still, there'd be something. For Patch 4, they obviously didn't want to spoil anything about the Druid class. But in the months/weeks leading up to it, they could have posted things such as:
- Investigating Loaded Dice - here's a couple implementations we've thought of
- Added new corpses to speak to - here's a sneak preview of one!
- Because everyone loves mushrooms, we removed the bonus action cost!
- This week we've been working on combat fixes: e.g., You can dash twice now; Devil Sight works in darkness; Various spells can be properly upcasted for additional targets. There were enough mechanics fixes in Patch 4 to last 2-3 of these proposed twitter updates.

For bonus points, Larian could then read the comments made in response to these posts, and thus get feedback on these changes before too much work is put into them.

I too enjoy beating strawmen to a pulp taking advantage of the fact that they are so easy to hit and never strike back.

Well, I see the point, but let me put it into perspective: Right now, in my Steam library, I see six update notes for six different games. All hotfixes and small patches. They include stuff like: "Players can now damage signs with melee weapons.", "The auto recruitment feature on settlements can now be disabled via a checkbox." And these are the actual game changes, the rest are mostly fixes for obscure crashes.

While I do tendencially read some of these, I often do not. I will generally read through the bigger ones. However, even here I am a rare breed. Thing is, if you appear too much, people just stop reading, because they know the additions are just minor and they rarely even affect the average player.
Which brings me to the core, people here are invested in the game, most crave every bit of news, as this is relevant to them. However the average player does not. He will come back and regain interest for bigger things and he has stopped playing for certain reasons, he would want that addressed, be notified about it and then come back.
If that one sees constant small updates he will complain that Larian is spending too much time on unimportant stuff, while issue XY remains unaddressed. Plus players crave content, a new checkbox for recruitment, even if it is a good addition, will not justify another playthrough. Now hundred checkboxes, put into a large patch, this is different, this can alter the game.
Further, as said earlier, they might not have much to announce, yeah they could make a Twitter post every now and then, what they are working on, but they might announce something ever so small that they will have to cut again or delay, the reactions would again be unwilling.

A recent example is BFV, they started with announcing "great" features that never made it into the game, even though it was almost finished or the team worked on a solution for months. Later, when the players craved for content that everybody knew the devs could not deliver, they started to communicate more, but since there was nothing to share they started to tweet something along the lines of: "In two week's time we will announce the date of the reveal of our planned upcoming content." So an announcement of an announcement of revealing content that might make it into the game at some point later. Naturally that did not go down too well.

So Larian seems to like larger patches and small hotfixes and naturally everything takes longer than expected and longer than the players can wait for. So they will receive some flak, but would receive exactly the same flak if they did it in other ways.

No, I said that whatever they do, people will complain. The titles I used for reference are all EA titles themselves, that will pump out hotfixes every month or every two weeks and some other posts irregularly. Now I scrolled through those for BG3 as well, and while there were two posts within a week announcing the new patch and an event, there was a six week gap before that. And before that there was at least one hotfix or patch a month.
So indeed, the how much quantity does one need and of what quality does it need to be? So far there is this one gap in the perceived update or news cycle, for whatever reason. I would also comment that communication can be defined very broadly. What might not be sufficient for you might be so for the rest or the devs itself.

Well at least with the update today Im guessing, yes the game is still being made :P

I agree that players will stop reading if you update your game with too many small irrelevant updates. However, I'm not talking about Larian uploading a small patch every 2 weeks that all owners of the game see, I'm suggesting twitter or other social media posts to mention and discuss possible changes. The people who are paying attention to Larian's twitter or these forums will mostly be the very invested players who "crave every bit of news," while the "average player" can wait until the big patches. It's the best of both worlds.

Maybe, and gamers are notoriously a fickle lot. But (as you mention) people are already disappointed and angry with the months of radio silence; more regular communication would probably have better reception than what it is now. The important thing here that Larian announces what they've currently been working on (not what they plan on working on) and they discuss their reasoning behind investigating any change and follow up in future patch notes/twitter posts.

I agree that announcement of announcement of announcement will not go over well. But Larian is getting close to already doing this. The most recent hotfix was an announcement of an upcoming announcement about telemtry/feedback, which still hasn't actually come to pass. Hopefully this Panel from Hell will include that, but I'm skeptical they can fit that discussion and patch notes and the LARPing and the probably gameplay in the same show.

Yeah, I fully understand the sentiment here. It really can not be fast enough, we all want a good game fast. Maybe Patch 5 will bring quite a bit to the table and it seems to be on it's way, too. I have to say though that I only loosely followed the game since November, yet noticed that small updates trickled in at not an unusual pace. They always seemed rather small though.

I am still confused about the extent of the EA, though, I mean the game released in a pretty functioning state to me. Act 1 seemed done and also received some polish fast. Gameplay was not my cup of tea, but is apparently closely related to Divinity, at least I felt quite at home there, when I started it a couple of days ago. However I do not see much room for big changes (besides classes and such) and extensions to the EA to last 10-18 months. I just feel like I played a demo for a game.

When I compare that to, say the Subnautica EA, I restarted that game 20 times over the course of it's three year cycle yet only finished it once. Every update gave something new, whether a fish, a region, a building a location or story bits. Usually all at once. In BG3 I just play the same thing with slight adjustments. This is my gripe with their EA concept, it releases a certain area pretty finished and nothing more is going to come, just the same if different ways. Bannerlord has a similar issue with it's EA and DayZ had, too in my book.

However I'd still advise a tad more patience. When the game comes, judging by the quality of Larian's games, it will likely be very good and very extensive (even though I am not really a fan of the mechanics). But I can see that way there is pretty stony for the players.

This is suddenly a super packed month for cRPGs.

BG3 Patch 5 next week.
Sorcerer class being released in Solasta on the same day as free DLC.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous beta phase 3 currently scheduled for mid-July (meaning within the next two weeks).

Who cares what gamers think? It's in their nature to complain. Every one of them complaining about communication will be right there on patch day ready to play, and if they haven't purchased yet, they will put their money down at some point- whether now or at release.

They are like addicts complaining the dealer isn't prioritizing them.

I fixed that sentence for you.

He did it last night! A stream where all characters in the game were replaced with shirtless Halsin! It was hilarious!

I can only imagine what a riot.

Some criticize game as is part of the purpose of early access. Others criticize the gamers/testers for basically doing their part of the bargain and even delude themselves their stance is superior while doing so. Who cares about what gamers think indeed? CD Projekt Red certainly laughed all the way to the bank not caring what gamers think with the hot mess called Cyberpunk. Your type of sentiment contribute to the prevalent anti-consumer culture in gaming, so thanks for that.

Fortunately Larian, when all is said and done, has a track record of going above and beyond for their customers...which likely is the reason many of us are even here voicing our concerns over the direction of the game to begin with. It's human nature to be individuals and thus, if all agreed on the direction of basically anything in life - it would be a symptom of unhealthy conformity. But look at the bright side, even the most ardent "complainer" believe "DOS3" will be pretty good, even great, at what it choose to become