This was posted today.
Didn't see any other post about it on here

Video on Youtube

Edit: It was mentioned in a few other posts, but that will be easy to miss with a few hundred pages of replies on different topics

This video has been shared in a few threads.
I guess talking about it in it's own thread would be easier.



Surprise on the beach ? Waking up at night then watching the sun rise in a beautifull D/N cycle !?
Or maybe multiclassing ? What can be this surprise he's talking about ?

A bit more optimistic about combat mechanics, it seems that he's aware that the expectations of "a part of the community" are not met.

According to me shoving and throwing would be absolutely fine if it was toned down a way more strenght dependent.

Almost word for word from the other thread:

I'm 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?

From the other thread:

I'd assume its to be noncommital in case some things really don't work out well or they find it impossible to fix things in the way they want.
Then again, now that you mention it, there is such thing as too vague and perhaps I'd like a few more things mentioned as things they are looking at as feedback from the community.

I imagine Swen is aware that everything he says about things that they are working on will eventually be wrongly or overinterpreted, and taken out of context by some people, which would cause even more frustration. That's not directed at anybody in particular, but I think this is the reason why he is being vague.

i was wondering the same and found a good reddit post about "why gave developers don't talk more" interestingly enough, the main article blamed gamer culture for why devs don't talk, link if you're interested

Here's the comment that was top voted:


tldr; marketing/money

I would not aim so high ...

My money gets either on "us" ... or Minsc, or maybe some change in dialogue with Shadowheart.
Actualy, now when i mentioned Shadowheart ... didnt Swen told us something about the surprise that is awaiting us depend on our choices in prologue? If that is the case, the surprise can aswell be

Realistically speaking: do we think this approach is better?

With a vague and non-committal "We are changing some things the community asked for" they may ironically achieve the opposite effect, now everyone is suddenly hoping "Maybe they are finally listening and fixing MY issues with the game" and then they will be disappointed and even angrier than before when that turns out to be wrong (which will be the case for the vast majority of requests).

That dont sound like so hard question ...

If you tell people that you are actualy working on D/N cycle, people would expect D/N cycle in next patch ... this is how it all works around here (just remember, when they promised Community Update, and people atomaticly expected patch) ...
Then, if you manage to prepare everything ... but D/N cycle, you have to delay futher ...

If you simply tell people that you are working on "things that are changing according to feedback" you ...
You have wide field to use ... you can tweak bazzilion things, but D/N cycle ... and while you keep working at that, people will be happy that "so many" (still bazzilion) other things was adjusted.

He simply dont put his head in lions mouth ...
It seem reasonable to me.

If you look at it with a positive mindset, the core message was still "we are listening, we know there is radio silence and that's because we're working on some big chunks of the game. We ill try to make it the best possible experience for the majority of the players".

Now the end result can still vary, but the interview was an overall positive one.

My main criticism is about what they won't change. I think there are many things in the game that are subject to change, but I'm also certain there are things they already decided will stay the same. I think, for example, that day and night cycle is something that unless they already decided to do, won't be in the game. So why not say it? Same goes for other aspects like reaction system. This silence serves them well, but I don't think it will continue to serve them well for long.

@Abits +1

I really hope that part of Community Update will include list of things that are set in stone.

No, it's not.
That's a massive logical jump.

Agreed that being coy is not helping.

From my reddit post -- which is being karma bombed as usual.

**************8

Sigh.

I stay with this game because: romances, graphics, storyline

And I'm holding out hope that a "DnD mode" will be implemented.

But WOTC made a mistake in giving this to a studio that doesn't like the DnD ruleset. I'm going to email them and tell them that.


"DnD rules don't translate to videogames" except Solasta proved you wrong.

"This isn't a criticism of DnD . . . but the fighter is a tutorial class" Facepalm.

"People came from DOS and wanted . . ." DOS2 was fine. Nowhere near as fun as BG2.

Call me crazy but I came for BG three because I liked BG two. Weird that I would want a sequel to be a sequel, right? I just don't care about DOS2. Those games are Salmon and Chocolate sauce -- both taste great but if you combine them you get something awful.

Tuco > That is also true ...
But one dont exclude the other.

+1

Yeah if they really have employees paid to read this forum and the sub reddit and so on... They should definitely have heard about some things a lot :

- wizard learning cleric spells
- every class being able to cast through scrolls.
- jump/disengage
- free advantage
- dual wield not working properly
- companions that doesn't see each other and don't talk together
- resting system (work in progress or not)
- dipping cheese with candle
- ready action / dodge / ...

What could be the marketing reasons not to give more informations about that ? Who cares about the "known issues" or the "work in progress" at GameSpot or IGN ?

About reaction I guess they cannot say because if they don't succeed at creating something better than now, they'll just leave it like that.
What would be our reactions if they said "we're working on reactions" but then at release de have the same garbage mechanic than now ?

Same about D/N, they could try and keep their decision depending the success or not of their tests.

Bur I think they just don't realize the level of expectations about the game.

Breaking expectations would be better than "we're listening but you won't know what". I'd rather not to care about BG3 anymore because I'd realize that it won't ever met my expectations than keep hoping because there's nothing else to do...

I think it'd be good to stop using the crutch phrase "some things just won't translate well into a videogame".

No matter how many times that is spoken, it won't excuse poor design choices.

Definitely, it doesn't help him at all repeating that all time. .

DnD translate perfectly well in video games. They just don't like it. That's fine, just take responsability of your decisions and stop trying to persuade people that it's someone else's fault.

Good interview. I appreciate Swen taking the time to talk to us for 17 minutes on what they are working on and provide an update. Good information in there. Can't wait to see the actual update!

Sounds like some big changes.

I was sad to hear that they are not committed to DM mode, but its not the end of the world. Also its good to know they are aiming for 2022 which is what we expected.

I am cautiously optimistic. Not expecting any new classes is a bummer, but it can be easily forgiven if reactions and ready actions make it in, since that would provide the framework for the remaining classes to come into this game more easily.

Everything regarding potential story changes is nice, but hard to comment on without seeing it for myself.

It is good to hear that we're going to see feedback related changes in patch 5. And it has been good to get some communication on the game.

WE'RE GETTING A SURPRISE ON THE BEACH! :]

Overall, I am happy and content. Larian did exactly what I (we) asked them to do - just a small update to let us know what's going on. Now I have my answer, and I'll patiently wait for the next step. c:

Not sure I share your newfound optimism.

Swen goes on about "crazy ideas" being a focal point - partly because DOS2 players expect to be able to "do more things" (and allegedly because this is commonplace in D&D by the grace of flexible GMs when it is more like a rare occurrence in my experience). He further says "Larian is a company that focuses on systems", which means cheesy exploits will remain a core game mechanic. It likely means Larian will continue to ignore balancing issues, because these limit "doing more crazy things", and I suspect a day & night cycle (which would provide balance and immersion, but reduce power spam) falls under things Larian is diametrically opposed to. Ignoring the fact D&D is primarily a party-based game where a diverse class composition cover the bases instead of all basically doing the same level of fantastical things - in different colors as in DOS2.

The problem is D&D is FUNDAMENTALLY INCOMPATIBLE with DOS (and faster paced video game to be fair). A middle-road approach might be neither here nor there, and at this point I would be more happy with a radical departure from D&D (ie. cooldown on powers instead of powers based on day & night cycles)...or a stricter adherence to it (including day & night cycle). As a very minimum, Larian should address the glaring LACK of INTERNAL LOGIC/IMMERSION and IMBALANCE of their systems. For instance, the shove and throwing abilities does NOT work well as Swen seems to think. It is an unbalancing boost to melee characters (who are already buffed by jumping also being strength-based). Explain why only the player & companions are able to do it. Pushing creatures like the Phase Spider Matriarch defies realism of an ability that is portrayed as mundane yet fantastical in nature. The original BG-series let the player gain fantastical homebrew powers with time. But these powers were linked to the story and had an internal logic to them that BG3 utterly lacks. They also did not benefit just one type of gameplay like in BG3.

That Swen seemed haplessly unaware of the irony of in one sentence acknowledging the players having problems navigating the plethora of powers, and in the next sentence insisting on showering the player with early-game Larianisms as core mechanics and thereby adding unnecessary cumbersome complexity (all effects are already part of base D&D), should not be lost on anyone. Larian's fix is not to dig themselves out of a hole of their own making; it is to draw a map for the player.

Enough with the Solasta comparisons

Not to belittle Solasta, as it is a fine game, for what it is, but:

Solasta also has, what..6 classes and 4 races?

Feats that are 100% home rule? Same with sub classes?

A very basic plot and simple side quests?

Minimal cut scenes, minimal need to integrate graphics into the plot?

And Solasta has any number of Combat related issues that miss the mark as well - it is by no means perfect.

Sven stated that they are listening to feedback, that they are making major systemic changes, that the current EA is miles away from what will be a final version, that they are still working out the plot.

He also stated the next update will be largely systemic changes rather than content additions. He stated they are not making announcements as they are focusing on design and implementation, that some things work and some don't and they are not committing until they get something working. And as even he acknowledges the game won't be out until next year at the earliest, it is FAR from anything resembling a final version in any respect.

These boards are often like a game of Post Office - Person 1 whispers the message to Person 2, who tells Person 3 and so on down the chain - by the time it reaches Person 50 the message has changed in it's entirety. It's like Emily Litella saying "What's all this I hear about National Racehorses" when the conversation was about Natural Resources. It hardly encourages Larian to give out information before they are prepared to.

Surprise on the beach: Nothing slows our fall and we splat against the ground. Game over. No need to reconcile D&D with DOS. The big update is that everything after that point is removed from the game. During the credits, your ghost gets to shove the scrolling words off the edge of the screen.

I don't think there was any actual information in that interview other than "Yep, pretty much just gonna keep doing what we've been doing."

Larian understaffed and overwhelmed. Hope the teaser for Patch 5 is related to sliders and customizable rules and implementations.

How is any of this shit in ANY MEASURE relevant to the point, which is the adaptation of combat core mechanics in a fully functioning framework?
Not to mention that BG3 has an overall budget that I'm not even exaggerating in estimating that could be anything ranging to 30 to 50 times bigger than Solasta, so the arm-wrestling about production value is intrinsically stupid to attempt.

Also, the only reason Solasta made up its own feats is because they are literally forced to, since they don't own the license to use the official ones.
Not because "The devs know better and they wouldn't work in a videogame".

I don't believe that will happen. Even if devs agree with community regarding bad things that their changes added, I don't believe their solution will be to go back to PnP rules, but to try to solve it their way. BG3 departed too far, to easily implement another ruleset.

I don't think it is a wrong statement. I don't think artificial feel of Solasta is necessarily a horrible thing (even card games can work in digital setting), but they are not intuitively videogamey (and definitely don't look good). Having to dismiss every reaction interaction is awkward. And I did note how little actual choices I made when playing in Solasta - just swing after swing.

On paper what Larian is trying to do, is good. What they have so far, is not there. Reactions aren't good enough to replace what's in the ruleset, and if backstab/highground, bonus actions jump and push are to make melee characters more interesting, then I don't think they achieve this purpose - if anything they devalue skills of other classes.


I am with you, but
1) D:OS2 sold really well
2) D:OS2 audience is the audience that Larian already has. Satisfying them, plus converting new DnD/Baldur's Gate fans, is probably a safer bet, then betting on audience for a 20 years old title, that might/might not still play games.

The question of how reactions feel will certainly vary from person to person. However, I found the system within Solasta to be intuitive and simple to use, and the pop-up windows did not interfere with my immersion. I'd love to see the same system in BG3. YMMV.

EDIT: I would at the very least like to have the OPTION of having a pop-up window to ask whether or not I want to react. This would be particularly welcome for Paladin Smites. They do double damage on crits, so it is nice to be able to "fish for crits" to use for smites. A toggle in the options to turn on/off the pop-up should satisfy people who hate a cluttered UI.

I mean Sven shifted from the " Maybe 2021 -ish release but it's absolutely not a confirmation. " to " No way". So ...yeah, they are probably changing some major things. Things they anticipated would be a problem but just made the " fast version" to see how it's received. And no, breaking expectation in gaming is nowhere close to not promising anything man. Blizzardd was known for a veeeeeery long time as the " when it's ready" studio. Precisely because studios who start to break expectations is the worst PR possible.

Look at bethesda. They made promises , they fucked up at an interdimensional level and there they are. Their next game is a test. They fail, they will forever be seen as the "Fallout 76 studio".

CYBERPUNK and CD Project. They got absolutely demolished, lost insane amount of investors. The console version problem being a legit accusation but based on it an insane amount of bullshit grew on the forums. People talking about staff that CD Project promised and never delivered. Things they never promised in the first place but everyone knows they promised "something " so... maybe they also promised something else?

And BG3 already made a larger public than expected. Yes, there is a different topic about HOW Laria could be managing the community. No, not saying anything isn't the way after me. Especially during EA when players expect some minimum amount of transparency. But they should be VERY careful about it. Why risk their reputation? Worst case scenario they remain the " DOS " studio. Best case everyone will forget everything on this forum if the final version is a blast.

It is EXCELLENT to hear SOMETHING about this game. I wholeheartedly appreciate hearing an update - even though it told us a whole lot of not much, I do appreciate the effort in communication.
And that they are working on things based on feedback and the game's systems. I'm really excited for Patch 5. Hopefully not too long now.

Because comparing Solasta to BG 3 is comparing a 3 course mean to a tomato. That combat tomato may look and taste really nice, but it isn't a dinner. And insisting the meal is going to be awful while the chef is still out shopping for the ingredients is inane. 98% of Solasta is its combat mechanics - the rest is fluff. And the combat mechanics are far form perfect, and certainly NOT 100% 5.0 . It may be closer than BG3, but it's a final version game, and BG 3 is very early access, easily one to two years from completion.

And believe it or not, 5.0 is NOT the be all and end all of all things - I guarantee there will eventually be a 6.0, a 7.0, an 8.0 and so on.

And the core of this is that some people insist that Larian provide updates, answers, feedback, comments and so on on their timetable, twist every comment made by Larian into "evidence" that they are right and nothing will change, and that the meal will now and forever suck. I've mostly walked away from these boards not due to a lack of information from Larian, but because of the incessant negativity, bad-mouthing and bitching about the state of a game in early access.

When you buy a game in early access, you accept the fact that it may turn out how you want it, or it may not. If it does, awesome, if it doesn't, such is life. Larian isn't catering to just MY whims, nor is it catering to the whims of Person A, B, C or D.

I can make all the suggestions and comments I want - but at the end of the day, Larian does not owe me anything other than a finished product.

Comparisons to Solasta are absolutely valid. It is really silly to cry out every time somebody mentions Solasta as though it has nothing to do with BG3. They draw from the same rule set, and Solasta provides an example of how a fairly strict (though not 100%) interpretation of the 5e rules can work in a video game. I don't think that Solasta is a perfect game, but I **DID** enjoy the time that I spent with it, and I think that Larian should pay attention to what they did well.

Regarding what I (or anybody else) has a right to expect from their early access dollars... I agree with your assessment. I am only entitled to receive the final game. However, the game that is delivered in the end will determine how likely I am to ever put up cash for a Larian Early Access again. I assume that this revenue stream is helpful to their design process, and as it stands now I will likely not buy into it next time (though I absolutely reserve the right to change my mind if they surprise me with a release that I love).

Development has been shifted over to porting for consoles and working on other games... they made an amazing amount of money off us and have used it to expand to 7 studios across the globe. Great move for the future of Larian, just sucks that we're not going to see movement on the product we gave them capital for.

Oh come on, that's just silly. Larian is not exactly known for their LACK of passion to their games.

Great to see an interview!

I would be happy to get Us.

They have sold 3-5 million early access copies.....they were just handed $250,000,000 in capital for very little investment. They took their existing DoS2 Engine, added some overlays, built a very good 20-30 hour experience all using existing assets for the most part. I'm not saying what they are doing is bad, but look at the studios they've recently opened and the companies they've acquired. It definitely has solidified them as a AAA dev team for the foreseeable future.

They are not the small time Indy dev company they were a few years ago. They have studios in Dublin, Ghent, Saint Petersburg, Quebec, Kuala Lumpar, Guildford and Barcelona with more employees than Bethesda.

Good for them! Considering how passionate they are about their games, I am certain BG3 will eventually be awesome! =)

(ooh, hold on a minute, I have to add a little more chocolate sauce to my fry pan ... gotta carmelize the salmon a little more ... OK!)

I can understand why developers do not participate on chat boards or other public forums. It is definitely a double-edged sword, and I think the etiquette has changed a lot since the late 90's. John Winski was pretty vocal about the futility of posting on the BioWare boards, but yet many other staff members posted regularly and I believe some threads did actually result in game improvements and new features (and NPC characters!). I really appreciated the ability to correspond directly with the BioWare creators, and to know that they heard my ideas. It was fun, and I definitely felt like a human community member. I think keeping that community spirit alive was a driving motivation for Neverwinter Nights.

As I have said before, there is a difference between a bunch of game developers trying to form a business, versus a business trying to develop a game. Part of the magic of Baldur's Gate was that the community was right there on the ground level with the developers. And that is where I want to be with Larian, too! So if Larian employees cannot post openly, so be it, I will assume they are still lurking in the background, and I will talk about the same things I would have said if they were posting officially. For example, the City of Brass adventure still needs some attention ...

Doesn't the surprise on the beach have to be Us.(The intellect devourer companion)
It's the only surprise that would be dependent on the choices made in the prologue.

Mmmm. I'm feeling lazy tonight so I'm going to stick with my old standby of yogurt and ketchup.

Us sounds like a really good guess to me, but Swen did mention changes to the tutorial, so there could be other choices and other consequences... (I still think Us is a high probability though).

Being able to keep Us around would be quite the disappointing surprise, if that’s actually it.

Also, no way I’m keeping that disgusting little fucker alive out of the ship in any of my playthrougs.

A quick synopsis of the interview for those who don't want to watch a video recording:

This will mostly focus on Sven's responses, but in a few places it will be pertinent to mention the interviewer's questions or comments as well. My own cross comments are spoiler tagged for those who just want the raw 'what was said'.

The opening comments from Sven are that the long radio silence means that they are busy; he later comments to say that if they aren't silent they don't get anything done. It seems to run counter to the concept of the community engagement that was advertised initially.


He tells us that the next update is coming soon(tm), and that they are focusing a lot on the community feedback they've received. He says they're focusing on game features and not new content (presumably for the update, since he talks multiple times later about the fact that they're working away on the rest of the game), and that it addresses a lot of the things they've been reading.


When asked about what they've learned since adding druids back in February (four months since the last update), Sven comments that: “What we learned from bears is that on-boarding is important”.


He briefly explains further by saying that they'll try to explain the rules and game mechanics better; not just through tutorials, he says, but, ehh, really, ah, a whole, erm, bunch of things, really, a lot. He goes on to further explain: “I'm being vague, but it's cool stuff, really, erhm, things that... make.. the game, ehm, better.”


He comments that combat is a big focus for them right now, because they've seen that a lot of players are not getting what they want out of combats. He goes so far as to confirm that they may even be making major changes to some existing systems in the game... he doesn't elucidate on how, but then makes some other comments that make this initially promising statement more troublesome.

He says they'll be trying things out to see what works and what doesn't, before doubling down again on his rhetoric that tabletop doesn't translate well into a video game (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary); he says they're willing to turn things around “if they think it's necessary”. His comments go on to say that melee characters don't have enough to do; that fighter is a tutorial class that leaves players with little to do, that players coming from D:OS/2 want to be able to do more, more quickly, and that while this isn't that sort of game, they need to give them something more, and that they really do love the shove and throw mechanics and systems, and that they are working really well.


The next couple of minutes involve comments to the extent of saying that the game is bigger than anything they've done before (we know this already), that it takes time to make things, and that more will be coming eventually, because they are in fact, going to release a full game, even if the EA is only act one. That there is a lot of work being done, that a lot of stuff is happening, which will, he assures us, make the game a lot better.. again, with no indication of what he means by that and with no actual information. He comments that sometimes people will play and wonder why they decided to do something, or focus on something, but that it will all become clear, he promises.


Something curious happens in the next part of the interview: They talk about release times, and Sven laments the setbacks caused by the Covid crisis, the difficulties with VAs and motion capture - major issues that were reported on last year. The interviewer then asks: “Full release, is 2020 ballpark what you're aiming for?” To which Sven responds: “We would be happy if we can release next year, yes.”


Sven is asked about releasing to next gen consoles, but if firmly making no comment about that question; fair enough.

Next up the interviewer informs us that, apparently, everyone misses seeing Sven in his armour, and this is the thing that he sees most commonly asked about on the BG3 reddit... Yeah, no... Regardless this segues into questions about whether or not there will be a new Panel from Hell, for the next major patch. Sven is pleased to inform that yes, indeed, there will be another one ,and that they are working on it already, and that they have some very, very special plans for it.


When questions about DM mode and DM tools, Sven quite firmly asserts that their main focus is on getting the game done, and that that's where all of their efforts are right now. He doesn't drop the classic developer line of saying “we'd really like to”, he just says they aren't working on it.


Next, er, Sven likes beaches? The beach is getting better and better? Every time he starts up the game, the beach just seems better and better... and apparently there's going to be a big surprise on the beach next patch, that may have long-reaching ramifications, depending on your decisions.


Sven rounds out the interview by also commenting that all of their effort goes into the things you'll never see, and that everything they do is so much work because of the approach that they're taking.

I wish I was as articulate and organized as niara. Why is she always right?

Thankyou, hehe, but I assure you I'm not... I try, but I make plenty of bad calls, I promise ^.^

+1

Sven did stress in the video that they are trying to push the next update to be released soon, but they want it right before they do.

I imagine a lot of the developers are going on a few weeks summer holiday now as well - I know I am 😉. So the question is if we get it before end of August. I doubt it

Good summary and insightful comments as always, @Niara.

2 comments
First of all, Swen says "What we learned from players" not "bears". Not sure if this is a typo or you misheard (or I can't find that specific "bear" dialogue line).
Your comment here seems a bit harsh (I'm assuming because of ^)? As apparent from forum posts, there are many things in BG3 that aren't adequately explained and leave people confused. BG3 definitely needs to have an improved tutorial, especially for teaching what things are D&D and what are Larianisms. This was the aspect of the interview I was ~most happy with.

I think the interviewer was asking "twenty twenty-what?", trailing off and leaving Swen to fill in that final digit. 2021 or 2022 or 202X

If indeed he said 'Players' and not 'Bears' then that's certainly on me for mishearing. "Players" would make more sense....

Edit: Relistened, I'll grant that he is almost certainly saying 'Players' there, my mistake. I sometimes struggle with Sven's accent and mild mumbling, and the screen at the time was specifically showing a druid turning into a bear, and I guess that's where my brain went, so yeah, that's on me.

When I'll have a bit more time, I'll wrote a thread to Swen to explain him WHY melee classes ARE fun and definitely HAVE things to do despite not having to choose a button among 36.

I heard he like wizards and casters. But he definitely don't know why melee characters including fighter are appealing. Clue : control the battlefield !

Old school 90s priorities versus next gen lol (BG3 pic from their own Instagram...) . Larian turning into a AAA studio isn't helping either. This is turning into a PG13-simp game for the masses.

I don't like Us either! I usually squish it, can't stand it.

I'm holding out for a repeat sensation of when I downloaded a mod for Fallout 4 that turned Dogmeat into a leveled companion, and then wondered why I ever bothered with all those humanoid npcs and their nonsense.

Hopefully the surprise on the beach is a neutral-good character stuck in a pod that we can release and have join the party. But that would be content and it sounded like content wasn't the focus of the next patch.

Maybe it will be a big pile of gold (like 20K) so we can buy things from the vendors rather than not having gold but having stuff we want at the vendors and then later having gold but not having the stuff we want at the vendors because they rotated the items out of stock. I'm collecting and selling spoons and cups for Christ's sake!

I'm hoping they've improved pathing so that when we tell the character to move from point A to point B (which is 3 steps and one "climb onto" away) the character doesn't turn around, climb a ladder onto the roof, walk to a higher roof, climb onto the higher roof, walk over to the edge, then throw themself off the building taking damage and going prone.

I'm hoping we can drop a dead party member from the party. I don't want to resurrect them at camp and then remove them from the party. When someone throws themselves from a cliff and dies, or when they walk through fire or acid and die (when the party members ahead of them managed to walk around the hazard, evidently by accident) I want them to stay dead. I'm not interested in paying for their resurrection. I'll just loot the body of anything useful and leave them. Bonus points to Larian if, at the end of the game, we'd get a cutscene that says so-and-so died after jumping off a cliff or while wadding through fire or acid. Put a dunce hat on their graphic and/or have townspeople pointing at their ghost and laughing.

Having more info in the popups about how long spells last and how other things work will be great. I hope that's what he meant when he spoke about on boarding. A lot of us don't memorize the rule books and it wouldn't matter if we did. We need to know how things work as Larian has implemented them for the difficulty level we're playing not what is in the rulebook.

I had to laugh when Swen nailed the fighter as an intro class. Yup.
DM: Hey, there's this new tabletop game we can play. Here are some books to read and a bunch of funny shaped dice.
Group: (long explaination and Q/A session ensues)
DM: Look, just play as fighters until you get used to the rules.

Ah, I don't think I could play "clubs and sticks" as we used to call it nor even Cyberpunk tabletop any more. But I do enjoy cRPGs as long as there's a difficulty setting that doesn't bury me in busywork nor make up for simple enemy AI with mass attacks of regenerating hordes. Which leads to another change I'm hoping for: difficulty settings. That way Larian can stop nerfing things because some people complain the game is too easy. Larian can make the higher difficulty levels closer to the official D&D rules and less gold and more difficult battles. The mid-difficulty level can be the "BG3 for DOS2 audience". Easier levels can start with more stat points, more gold, some starter items, and better loot from battles (and more light battles). And my Ranger wants his d*mn Dire Spider back! (I'm pretty sure that's what it was before it was nerfed).

Us becoming a companion or pet "surprise" would be the exact kind of thing Larian would do and I would hate.

It was a really cool little detail in the tutorial. But if you overdo it, you will ruin it.

If the brain monster will hang out at your camp (like a certain undead character that already turned from creepy and intriguing into ridiculous and mundane) or follow you around in the city of Baldur's Gate, it's just stupid and then the world is expected to react to this weird brain monster. Which will cost a lot of development time which will be wasted on anyone who just chooses to kill such monsters on sight.

There seems to be an uncomfortably large nuber of people coalescing around the idea that the goals of BG3 are wrong. That taking 5E as a base and tuning it to make something that would appeal to fans of Divinity Original Sin and tactical combat is just fundamentally something that shouldn't even be attempted. BG3 needs to be a strict interpretation of 5E and nothing else is acceptablr. Solasta did it and it appealed to a tiny number of existing fans of 5E so that's evidence it's the only possible solution.

If that's true (and honestly I can see the logic) it's still not useful feedback. Larian are all in on BG3 they simply cannot pivot it to being a niche product aimed solely at 5E purists. Nor can they ditch the 5E system at this juncture. BG3 is going to be a game based around giving each player several interesting choices every turn and minimising those turns in which a player rolls a dice, misses and nothing happens. They're not going to change that based on what people on the forum say. It's reasonable to be upset about this, it's not reasonable to expect this to change.

You mean the estimated 14 MILLION people that play D&D currently? And I don't understand the mentality behind thinking you SHOULD deviate from 5e for a video game. The system has been refined for years to be as balanced as they can possible make it. Is it perfect? Of course not. Have other games like Solasta and Pathfinder: KM been able to translate TT rules into fun and well done digital version? ABSOLUTELY. But Larian started this project by telling everyone they want to make BG3 as faithful to 5e as they possibly can. That sets an expectation. Come to find out that they decided 5e isn't popular enough with people (despite the ~14 million active players), and need to gamify almost the entire rule base in order to fit THIER vision of what 5e is, or should be. As a fan of Larian, DOS, BG, and D&D (DMing for over a decade) I can say with confidence that I honestly don't mind them changing a few things here and there as needed. I get it. But they have bastardized the ruleset SO MUCH, that it only vaguely resembles the original system. Its painfully obvious that they simply ported their DOS system into BG3 and then have been trying to fit the DOS engine into 5e. Instead of designing their foundation around the 5e system, which they probably should have done, they are now caught desperately trying to shove elements of 5e into their DOS engine to try to pass it off as a 5e system.

I'm not a purist by any means. Like I said, I get it. But when you start a project with the goal of making as faithful to the ruleset as possible, you set that expectation for people that play the 5e ruleset. And so far, the 'As close as possible' has turned into 'Meh, close enough'. And that's what upsets people.

Whilst your post is very realistic there are some things I want to point out:
1. There are far more D&D players than DOS players. If they had to "choose" a direction to go, at least to me it would make more sense to appeal to D&D fans. D&D nowadays is definitely not niche.
2. Our complaints regarding Solasta is more about catching Larian downright lying about feature implementation than being purists. They were and still are highly dismissive about 5e implementation, however they first stated that "some of tabletop does not translate well into video games" and then that they "initially tried a more faithful implementation but it was NOT FUN".

Well, I think Solasta is very fun, and it shows 5e translates well into video games. Even low score reviews of Solasta praise its mechanics, which is the most criticized part of BG3.

That's a bit of a straw man, isn't it? From what I've seen, majority of the complaints are about it being a DOS game with some ham-fisted DnD elements. There is no 5E base there, just a minimum effort to adapt it to an incompatible system that already existed in the previous games. I would see no issue with the additional Larianism, if they were properly power scaled to the 5E ruleset, and didn't break the fantastical reality.

I'm not really a fan of D&D, I've played it a bit and I enjoy it well enough, but it's far from my favorite game system by any means. I've also blayed Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, I enjoyed the combat in both a lot (though for some reason I really could not get into 2). I have no issue with them changing the combat for BG3, my problem is that I don't think they've done a good job of it so far. The two systems work very differently and have different goals from the outset. Is it possible to merge D&D and Divinity? Probably, anything's possible. But they haven't managed that yet. Instead what we have is something that really feels as though it's fighting against itself. The stuff that's been added goes against what makes D&D fun, and the stuff they've left in drags down what makes Divinity fun. They need to commit more strongly in either direction, and since this is a D&D inspired game, committing more to D&D is the logical choice, but what matters is that the mix they've got now feels off.

It's hilarious when people try to use this direct competition/comparison between BG3 and Solasta as proof that what the latter is doing is unpopular.
I'm not sure if the ENTIRE BUDGET of Solasta matches the cost of the cinematic intro for BG3.
They are not even in the same ballpark when it comes to investments involved. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that the overall budget for BG3 ranges probably between 30X to 50X the one for Solasta (60-100 millions in total, maybe even more, vs 3-4 at most).

So Solasta doing as well as it's doing and gaining so much recognition compared to its low budget is a testament that it's doing something right, not something that should be held as an argument to prove it's trash.

I forgot the forum for a few days and a this interview emerged. I should be abscent more often, maybe we get more updates then.

I'm cautiously optimistic. I would like to see, that they changed some things, as the community wanted, especially concerning combat and the chaining system. And a bit less flash and bang stuff and more focus on the abilities of the the different classes.

And no, I don't want US to become a companion after leaving the ship. I think that wouldn't really make sense, so hopefully, the people speculating about this are wrong.

I'm really glad they finally talked to us, even if it's an interview!

Before I think that game would be released in early 2022, but after Swen's words, I don't think so anymore. He also mentions for the second time that the experience on the release will be completely different, which makes me very happy. About patch "based on player feedback" need to understand that the reviews are different and quite contradictory. Because BG3 community is divided into video game players and DnD players, I think this greatly complicates work for Larian. It's hard to please everyone.

You may not believe me, but there are really a lot of players who think that DnD system is bad/boring for video games, which is why Swen says that "you can't add everything from DnD". Because some of the players actually agree with him.

The question is what kind of reviews they are talking about.

I'm not too worried about the gameplay part, I'm sure they will try to make it as easy as possible for those who have never played DnD, but it is also possible to try to add more "DnD balance".

And if we are talking about sOlAsTa again, many ppl also consider it gameplay boring. It may be more "balanced", but many people still do not like it, even if it follows DnD, I think that's what Swen means.

For me, the story, the quest, and the characters are more important. And I like the way Larian writes, so I'm not worried.

I tried watching the interview a coupe of times but I was multitasking and wasn't paying attention. But I then realized that there wasn't much point of watching it because he was only saying "Wait until the next update. I also can't tell you when the next update will be."

Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it.
As an added bonus there was a bit of "We are listening to some people, but I won'tell you who they are".

Also, the next patch will be focused on systems rather than adding content. Still not clear what it means exactly, since "not focused on content" could range from an optimistic "just one class and/or race rather than all the missing ones!" to a "When we said NOT FOCUSED ON we meant you get FUCKING NOTHING".

"purist"

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people who think the current combat design is fundamentally broken, and their reasoning has nothing to do with adhering to tabletop DnD or 5E. Or is wanting Larian to dial back a massive accuracy bonus or penalty based on a difference of a few pixels worth of positioning a '5E purist' concern? Or the exploitable time bubble stuff where you can send in one party member to initiate combat and then sit on their turn as the rest of the party freely sneaks into the fight as long as they don't wander into enemy sight cones?

If there really is a '5E purist' concern, it'd revolve around the lack of controllable reactions and ready actions, which make up a huge chunk of combat that they claim this game is an adaptation of. And quite frankly, I don't understand why people are hoping this game ends up serving as a template for future DnD games in its current state, when we're missing such fundamental features.

It is hard to believe you on this, simply because there is no evidence. There are like two people here on this forum that constantly say "dnd sucks", you being one of them.
Again, there are more people that like D&D than there are DOS players, and D&D players like video games too.

Fun fact, I never said that! All I said was that I didn't know about DnD too much, that's all.
About "others", try to go beyond this forum. And think about why Larian changed dice. Even in steam community, you could meet a lot of "haters" dice system. But this is the tip of the iceberg. Believe me, many who bought this game, do not even go to this forum. That's why you don't understand why Larian do this and what they are talking about DnD system. Not all players who love RPG games have played DnD. Is that so hard to believe??? Am I saying some unimaginable things?

Sven says that because it's literally impossible to add everything from DnD with the engine they are using. You can't have real flying, proper wish, suggestion, etc. DnD 5e is based on imagination not limited game engine. DnD system is neither bad or boring, it's a very good system for a turn-based game for combat, that is just very hard to implement properly. And everything Larian plan to add actually makes sense for a DnD adaption considering that DM being creative and using rulebook not as a holy scripture but as a foundation to build an adventure on is an integral part of any good DnD campaign.

Well, people think it's just an "excuse" and "the same crutch", that's why I wrote it. You should have written it to them, not to me.

So then we won't be getting a sexy drawing of Us from you. Hopes dashed.



Look at Mr. Fancypants with his expensive store-bought ketchup. :P

I have to break a lance for D&D- it's great system, that allows you to do a lot of stuff. I play D&D (different editions) for over 20 years now and it never gets boring. I don't believe, that it is that hard to get right in a video game (and no, I haven't played Solasta yet, tehre are some lovecraftian games, that need my attention atm).

Another Fun Fact: You dont need to say something to being rosted for it around here.
I bet i know who was the second one.

The only fact is that there are at least two camps of people ... except those who simply dont care, but i dont count them for obvious reasons.
- One would like to have pure DnD experience in video game ...
And its understandable that they are hungry for such thing, since it was (as far as i know) never, or at least almost never delivered. Therefore they kinda idealized BG-3 hoping that would be their holy grail ... bcs it was advertised as "based on DnD, with cooperation of Wizzard of the coast" ... yet, its just another videogame, and they are dissapointed ... wich is understandable, yet kinda irellevant, since the game was never suppose to be pure DnD ... they simply wished it, nothing more.
- Second one is either unexperienced, or not fan of DnD ...
Yet they like to play RPG videogames ... they (or should i say we) do not need pure DnD rules, since either we dont know them, or we dont understand them ... or in my case, both ... all we need is fun videogame with lots and lots of options ... that are all working by stated rules ... and the fact that those rules are different from another source of rules in the same world? Irellevant.

And since you cant make everyone happy ... you simply have to choose.
I believe its obvious wich camp Larian is aiming at.

Thanks Nira, your much more eloquent analysis pretty much sums up my own thoughts.

Unfortunately I think Sven is just a bit too fond of his own ideas and incapable of taking onboard criticism of what he is convinced is 'cool'.

Here's a good mod with some content. All good. All good.
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate2ee/mods/3

I'm hoping the surprise will be just how much has changed at its core so that once we are on the beach, BG3 feels like an entirely different game from before.
I do want the option to keep Us around as a non origin companion, especially since him being made "permanent" would be great for the possibility of other non origin companions, but I also hope he isn't the surprise.

This is of course a straw man version of the argument and one that nobody actually makes.

Rather, those of us who want to see closer adherence to 5e argue that it is a better system than the mess they have in BG3 right now. Nobody is calling 5e a holy grail. Lol.

Precisely! They can even expand upon it, of course, as long as the game is fun and balanced!

Coming from a computer RPG playing background and not a tabletop playing background (except for some Vampire: The Masquerade in high school), I do agree with them focusing on making a good RPG first and foremost... I've never had the opportunity to play tabletop DnD, but I understand the DnD rule set has gone through many revisions, versions and books over the years. It's a rich world, but its rules have adapted and changed over time and will continue to change. I doubt very much that 5e is the "holy grail" of DnD and it will stay frozen forever using those rules. Larian are just being a DM adapting some of the rules to suit their game... Personally, I'm happy to be along for the ride on this particular game with this particular DM and learn what THEIR rules are.



Yes! I agree wholeheartedly. I'm sure they will do a wonderful job, and look forward to more characters/companions/content in future patches.

I am actually hoping the "beach surprise" is a new companion, and not a tentacled creepy brain.

All this shows is that you continue to have no understanding of the actual problem.

It's not about "ANYTHING LESS THAN 100% ADHERENCE TO THE RULES IS BAD". Changes are expected. However, a lot of Larian's changes in the current version are not good, and a big reason why is that they're changing some rules while leaving others the same. Balance does not exist in a vacuum. You can't change a butt-ton of rules which affect the way things work, but leave others in place which were designed to work with the other rules before the changes.

I would list some examples, but it would waste my time since it seems that you are only listening to your own opinion and any explanations will be ignored.

I will say that the "it's fun for me right now" argument is based on the unproveable idea that if anything changes, it will suddenly not be fun for them... but how do they know? Maybe some changes will happen and they'll go, "gosh, this is still actually fun". They're arguing that players who are not having fun right now should be quiet because MAYBE if there are changes made it MIGHT not be as fun for them.

I haven't seen one post saying 5e is the holy grail. Rather a lot that say rules-as-written is better than the homebrew Larian came up with.

All I'm seeing from Larian is, "D&Ders, just let it go. You lose. DOS wins. BG3 will be a DOS game with some D&Dish rules set in a D&D world with D&D characters and D&D story."

Why? "Because there are too many customers screaming for a non-D&D game. They don't want D&D. If they did, they'd also play Solasta. After all, Solasta won the title of "The game that most closely translated D&D into a video game." Not BG3. Solasta.

So, if you want genuine D&D, go play Solasta and quit hounding Larian for an authentic D&D experience. NEVERMIND that BG3 is a D&D world. Nevermind the other BG games use authentic D&D rules. BG3 will not, so shut up."

That's my unofficial Swen translation.

That said, I enjoy BG3 as is now. So... either way... jist finish the game.

I find it fascinating that those who support Larian's implementation to at least a moderate or majority percent all seem to actively define anyone who doesn't as being a 5e purist who wants an exact or literal interpretation of the as-written rules, when there is, as far as I'm aware, quite literally not a single person on this entire forum who has ever asked for that or ever indicated that they want that in any way... and yet, no matter how many times other people point this out to them, they never acknowledge it, never accept it, and always run right back to that exact same rhetoric every time it come sup. Why? I'm really quite genuinely curious as to how a person's mind must work and what their thinking must be to continue to do that... can one of you who frequently paints others as wanting 5e pure rules or as hoping for them, please explain this to me?

I don't think there is any such thing as a 5E purist. The 5th edition of D&D was designed around homebrew and flexibility. Ironically a "purist" would be someone who understands that the game needs to be adjusted as needed.

No, I think we are dealing with a group that wants to stick to RAW, because they feel that will produce the best possible gaming experience for people who appreciate strict rules and a group that is fine with flexibility as long as it results in broad appeal and an overall fun experience.

Really, nobody is wrong, they are both valid points of view. My issue is on ad hominem attacks and aspersions cast on the people working on this project masked behind "I am just giving feedback". Also the endless people who seem to think they know what everyone wants while having no actual data to back that up. There is only one company that does have that information and they are not obligated to share it with anyone.

What this entire exchange proves more than anything is that Larian is 100% right not to say anything until they have a finished patch to present to people.

I mean, as one of the people who keeps yelling for Rules as Written for implementation of stuff, I have been on record saying I like a lot of the homebrew and just want them to be toned back to be in line with 5e. Shove is good, it being a bonus action and flinging people half a mile is not. Surfaces are interesting, every battlefield on fire and it breaking concentration constantly is not. Non Warlock Familiars getting unique abilities is very cool, them attacking thereby invalidating the warlock a little and losing their ability to deliver touch spells is not.Each companion having something special hearkens back to BG1 and 2 and is common for DND tables, the player character having nothing feels eh. Animals being able to o0pen doors and sit in chairs is cute and wacky, them not being able to move their concentration spells is not good though. Highground and Backstab does make sense for giving advantage, but doing so is too strong so instead giving highground a flat bonus and change backstabbing to proper flanking and it will be more in line with 5e and more balanced. Weapons having a special action is reminiscent of asking your DM if you can swipe at the goblin's legs to trip him, them doing so much damage that they become the superior action always is not good though.

Overall, the issue isn't that Larian is using homebrew, it is that the homebrew they have implemented needs to be toned back considerably, or atleast for me. In fact, most of the homebrew in the game I want to remain, just, as I said, toned back.

For example, looking at one of the things I mentioned, Familiars.
I LOVE summoning. It is my thing, it is THE THING I want done right. After next update I am probably going to file many different reports on what conjuration things seem right and wrong to me. And one thing that is wrong to me is Find Familiar.

Spell Description:

To me there is a lot wrong with how the spell was implemented in BG3. First of all, the normal familiar being able to attack frustrates me cause that is meant to be exclusive to warlock, that is why you would spec three levels in Warlock for Pact of the Chain. Their familiars being able to attack and thereby deliver poisons is huge, plus the other things like the familiar being able to scout miles away and be able to fly or swim regardless of previous movement because of tasha's. Wizard familiars immediately being able to attack devalues this unique strength of the Warlock. Furthermore, they lack some other core effects such as the familiar persisting through resting, being able to be ritual cast (in other words not costing a spell slot), and perhaps the core of many familiar builds, they are supposed to be able to deliver the caster's touch spells. Which for a healer like shadowheart could be huge and is worth using a feat to get it as a spell. And then on the more dismal end, a conjuration spell like Mage Hand actively dismisses the familiar when they should have no interaction in the slightest. Overall, I believe find familiar to be implemented poorly EXCEPT for the hombrew abilities. A spider being able to shoot web or the cat being able to distract foes honestly feels like something that could be RPed out and is genuinely nice to use. I wouldn't solve Find Familiar by removing the homebrew, instead I would solve it by adding back in all the 5e so that the spell is complete, making it that the homebrew actually enhances the core.

It's really no different than folks on the other side of the argument who claim that BG3 isn't a D&D game, or call BG3 DOS 3, or call Larian's implementation lazy.
None of those things are true but they get repeated quite often, even in this thread.

Quite often the reason given for not liking a particular feature is that it's not D&D without any accompanying reasoning on why it's worse than the current 5e implementation.

Certainly agree!

This statement, though eloquently written, typifies my frustration with the entire discussion.

When I say "I don't like the way that BG3 works right now" that is NOT the same thing as "casting aspersions" at the people working on the project. I am simply being honest about how I feel about it. Calling this "aspersions" really seems to me like an attempt to shut down half of the conversation.

Likewise, when you say that we feel that it will produce the best possible gaming experience "for people who appreciate strict rules..." you are so close, and then shoot wide of the mark. I do think that it will produce a better gameplay experience than BG3 as it exists right now... but I don't see what this has to do at all with "people who appreciate strict rules".

Now, there is a good long time before release, and it is possible that larian will convince me that their homebrew is better than a fairly strict adherence to 5e. But they are VERY FAR from that right now (IMHO, of course). At the moment I think the best approach would be to implement a rule set much closer to 5e and THEN add in Larianized Homebrew to taste. That would stand a much better chance of creating a balanced and interesting game than the ad hoc approach that they are taking now.

Exactly. They should start with a foundation of RAW, then work with their homebrew from that, incrementally.

What makes you think they didn't. BG3 has been in development for years.
They tested and iterated the game long before it went to EA.

I never said you were casting aspersions. I was pointing out the problem with the discussion so far and why Larian was right not to discuss anything with the community.

The thing I have observed you do is you argue from the assumption that everyone thinks the way you do. Which makes sense if you are having a lot of conversations in your head. :P

trust me, everyone in my head always agrees with me too, but then I have to remind myself that people outside my head may not agree. My brain counters with "you can't prove those people exist" - which I do NOT have a counter for. Ah well.

I try very hard NOT to argue from the assumption that people think like me, both here and every other place that I post. Could you please point out some places where I did that so that I can improve myself in the future?

Sorry, thought you were the person I was actually responding to originally.

Also, you really should clean up your reply/quotes. What a mess.

EDIT: unilateral disarmament

Store-bought ketchup is my new screen name.

people are so weird about quotes on this forum lol. How was that a mess? it was just four nested quotes

I'd be in this field as well. I made no secret of having hardly any direct experience with pen & paper D&D (and none with 5th edition in particular).
I don't even rate D&D that highly among the pen & paper systems I actually had a chance to try with friends over the years (MERP, Cthulhu, Cyberpunk 2019, etc). In fact I put in quite possibly at the bottom.
And my experience with pen & paper was fairly limited in general. I never played them for very long and it has been probably at least two decades since I attempted one session. Most of my experience over 30+ years of gaming has been with computer and (to a far lesser degree) console RPGs.

But you know what? Fuck all of that. I'm done with encouraging this wishy-washy bullshit, anyway.
I'm not sure how we even got to the point that if people here are a straight D&D fans they have to DEFEND THEMSELVES and be shy about it, when wanting something faithful to what they were promised it's a perfectly legitimate opinion to hold.

Then again, that becomes of second relevance over the fact that people who are holding to the specious, vague and baseless claim that "things as they are wouldn't work in a videogame" are defending BAD changes here, that DO have a measurable negative effect on the combat.
Because there's no fucking pocket universe where "Jump to disengage as a bonus action" translates in a better flow of the battle, for instance. And anyone trying to defend that design choice with a straight face should be charged for fraud and other felonies or something.

I'm also more than a bit puzzled by the "Bu-but I care more about the story and the characters" crowd.
Fine. You can care about whatever you want. Who gives a damn? This is meant to be a discussion about core gameplay loops. "TEH STORY" is not going to change for the worse only because any degree of effort is put into making the core mechanics more reasonable or more enjoyable, to begin with.


He never made it an "engine limitation" but a design one.
Also, other games figured out how to make flight work on far tighter budget. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that it's their job to solve the issue on their part rather that putting up excuses.
And the only thing that makes WISH "impossible to implement in a game" can arguably be a lack of creativity on how to work around its limitations. Throne of Bhaal had WISH 20 years ago. Was it as versatile as the real thing? Of course not. Was it a more-than-enjoyable-enough as a compromise? Yes, it was.
Not that it really matters here, since BG3 is not even going to reach levels where casting WISH would be a thing.

Pretty much.

- High Ground/Low Ground should just be turned into a +2/-2 accuracy bonus/penalty thing. This opens up room for Sharpshooter feat to exist.
- I don't have much of a problem with field effects besides how damage from field effects forces a caster to roll for concentration. That should not be a thing.
- Backstab should be a rogue exclusive class feature, *assuming* shove and jump/disengage remain bonus actions. Now Rogues get some of their identity back.
- Implement the option to shove enemies prone to make up for the loss of backstabs on every other class. Now each party member doesn't need to use their bonus action jumping behind enemies for advantage, only one party member needs to use their bonus action to shove if they are successful in their attempt.

(On the note of Sharpshooter feat, it's pretty nuts how Great Weapon Master exists in BG3, but Sharpshooter doesn't. Considering the main downside of using GWM is canceled out by backstab advantage existing. Having one but not the other is eventually going to result in archer damage output for most classes really falling behind the melee and casters later in the game.)

Additional crap:

- When Paladins are implemented, give Paladins the ability to smite using ranged attacks. Archer paladins are typically not a thing in 5E, but it does in Pathfinder (and thus I assume 3E had it too). I have a theoretical archer Paladin/Bard multiclass idea waiting on the wings if this happens, taking advantage of the fact that Bards will get more spell slots to smite with, they don't have very many offensive spells compared to the other full casters to begin with, and that Valor Bards also get extra attack later on.

"since BG3 is not even going to reach levels where casting WISH would be a thing."

What?? Gosh, I sure do wish we could eventually get to those levels. Boy, if there is one thing I could wish for, it would be to try out those pinnacle 9th level spells. Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part, but I think even a limited wish would be worth implementing, but only if Larian wishes to believe so.

The game was originally supposed to cap at level 10 and then at a later date they said it will go higher than that because they were preparing too much content to stop there.

Even in the most optimistic prediction I can't see it going beyond level 14. So no WISH.

There is a small chance it could go to 17. Tbh, I'd love for it to get 1-20 just so it can be a full experience and people can really sink their teeth into things like multiclassing. It'd be nice to hear some things on what level they plan for the game to end at now.

Edit: Since I didn't hear anything like that in the Interview.

This is a thread about the recent interview, so it is not about any specific subject, therefore don't try to shut down others for their discussion points. Just because you don't care, doesn't mean you get to dictate talking-points in priority over others.
Anything relevant to the interview goes, and if others are touching upon other details that doesn't interest you, ignore it.

Well, in that case you won't get WISH anyway because Swen Vincke doesn't like it.
Tough luck, sucker!

Uh, sure?

THIS ONE context about "Being faithful to D&D or not" where the posts were made is *unquestionably* a discussion about mechanics.
And no one said a word about the what can and cannot be posted in the thread, anyway. Nor I'd have the power to put any veto even if I wanted.

This, putting aside that frankly "I care for the story" is not a particularly relevant to the context of the interview in general.

It is a tangential thread by nature, so even suggesting that some specific law-of-the-land decree of what is ok or not to discuss is being rather disingenuous. And it's precisely the point I'm making, it's a broad reactionary thread to an interview as a whole, so there is no particular one topic of focus, however there likely will be a few dominant ones, such as discussions about mechanics. You do not get to say that other comments are irrelevant, or decide how much others care.

People can discuss things in more detail around those tangents, and/or make comments of their own, such as what they enjoy more (eg. story and characters) unrelated to which ever discussion is going on amongst others. Continue discussing your burning passions, but for everyone in general as a blanket observation to several posts, be kind to eachother and patient with different views.

Man. I'm so tired of the negativity out here. I find that the negativity makes me negative.

Let's just be glad Swen said something. At least the deafening silence was ended, even if only briefly. We know they're still working on it and they're at least acknowledging their considering our feedback...

...well, all your feedback anyway... Mine gets shot down every time. EVERY time.

Ah! There I go again, being negative. See? It's infectious.

And the result was a system which uses half the rules from 5e and half the rules from a homebrew, and those two rule sets don't work well together.

What does it matter that Larian tested and iterated the game long before it went to EA? It was not a perfect game then, and it's not one now. That's the reason Larian is doing EA. To get feedback from other people outside their own bubble.

Developers can think something is great which players end up hating (The D:OS 2 armor system). Developers can lose confidence that something is good as is and change things which didn't need changing (Adding a Source point cost to the Bless spell in D:OS 2).

I'm wondering what questions people would have liked to have had asked in the interview. Is it only about how close the game is to 5E RAW mechanics? Doesn't anyone else wish there had been questions about general game play?

Q: Any plans to adjust pathing to prefer non-injurious travel over climbing and throwing yourself off high places?

Q: Any plans to remove the "swarming" where party members buzz around the party leader like stoned idiots? (does this only happen when everyone is sneaking?)

Q: Any plans to separate the action of designating party leader from the action of selecting a party member? When I click on someone to check their quickbar or change their active weapon, etc, I don't want everyone to start swarming around them becuase there's a new leader; has a tendency to set off nearby traps, walk into the vision cone of enemies, etc.

Q; Any plans to add party banter text to that text box with the dice rolls? I'm tired of hearing the tail end of conversations as my companions catch up to me while traveling.

Q: Any plans to improve visibility of hidden objects/traps once you've passed the perception roll? Currently, if a companion makes the perception check it's often easy to miss what they detected because they're lagging behind or buzzing about aimlessly while I'm openning containers, etc. ("Scratch" would make a great companion. He should almost always make his perception rolls and stand next to and "point" at whatever he just found. Maybe growl quitely. More of a Pointer rather than a Flusher.)

Q: Any plans to enlarge (widen/thicken) the scroll bars on the Journal (and anywere else there are scroll bars)? Currently they're a mighty thin target to grab with the mouse.

Q: Any plans to remove useless junk like feathers, inkwells, bones, cups, plates, forks, spoons, knives, cuttings boards, milk bottles, rotten baskets, etc and add more potions, food, gold, weapons, etc where they make sense? Having everyday items/nicknacks can help flesh out a scene but if there's no use for them they don't need to be actual objects that the game would have to track.

Q: Are you working to improve interface responsiveness? There's a perceptable delay between mouse actions and world response. For example, when the pary is stationary and I click somewhere for them to move there's a delay before they start moving. In the inventory screen to move an item there is a delay between left clicking on an item and having the item become movable. It's not a terribly long delay but it is long enough to be annoying and feel like I'm fighting the interface.

Q: When do you expect to have difficulty settings available for players to test? Currently there seems to be some tweaking of difficulty that will need to be undone for less difficult settings. Might also provide useful feedback to see how many people play at which difficulty setting.

Q: And, of course, will the built-in game console use the same commands as in the earlier BG games or are you coming up with new syntax?

Dude, that's so fucking sad. Really. I feel for you.

Go take a cookie asap .

You and me both. It's why interviews or any release of information has no upside. The fanatics will tear everything apart looking for something to criticize and a lot of them have no filter - and the regular players don't care.

It went from "I just...wish...they...would...say...something" to "I HATE all the things they said!" very quickly.

And it's so weird to me to hear these arguments that "Larian doesn't listen to feedback" when they clearly do. I think they listen to pretty much everyone, but I think some people have this idea that because they show up here when they proclaim something that they should be carried around like a conquering hero and savior of Baldur's gate 3.

People be losing they minds.

It's important to remember that Swen has all the Metadata from millions of playthroughs that shows him what people like to do. BG3 will be affected more by that metadata than us crazy people who post on the forums.

God, you people are EXHAUSTING.

Just to add my voice to what so many others have already said very well, I am one of those longtime cRPG fans who has played a lot of D&D over several editions, LOVES the original BG games, but who does NOT like D&D rules generally. So I am all for Larian changing up some of the D&D mechanics to provide a better video game experience in BG3, in much the same way that BG1 and 2 also did not implement 2e rules 100%.

However, I am also firmly in the camp that is NOT happy with the specific things Larian has introduced into the game as their "homebrew" alternatives to D&D mechanics, and find most of these changes to be frustrating, aggravating, and making the video game playing experience worse rather than better. But not liking these Larian/D:OS mechanics in the game does not in any way, shape or form make me a D&D 5e "purist."

Go take a break, Tuco.

It's important to remember that having data is worthless unless you know how to use it, and Larian has demonstrated that they do not.

Personally I find myself somewhere in the middle, love both games and D&D sessions with friends but I'm also fairly easy to please. However I too would love a more conservative approach in starting out with more or less a 5e copy-paste and be rather reserved with any changes to it, particularly for spells in regards to balance and such. But more importantly, I'd love to see more in-depth discussions around design changes and decisions about it, as I believe it's a lot easier for a lot of people to respect a decision if the thoughts behind them are made clear. Without it, the changes easily seem arbitrary and "just because", at least that's how I see it playing out. Even as things aren't set in stone (and maybe is the cause of reluctance of discussing it publically), I'd actually argue on the contrary, and advice discussing it in a community update or interview, because the forementioned reason, and as many have pointed out, it makes it easier for the rest of us to discuss more accurate and relevant things for feedback around it.

At least that'd be enough for my gamer-heart.

Why? I’m not the one having an emotional breakdown every time there’s some “negativity” (aka “any degree of criticism “).

"You guys are exhausting." is negativity and emotional breakdown, you even rely on the full caps-lock. Don't hide behind the criticism card. Let me put it very clear for you then: Be critical but positive. Be constructive, not destructive. If you continue the negative-tirade, I'll provide a break for you.

This is true. For the most part, anyway. There are certain things that telemetry is enough for, such as encounter difficulty balancing. But for design decisions, more nuance and insight is definitely necessary.

Really? How so?

If you had metadata showing that people love to be shoving peeps around would you remove shove?

How have they demonstrated they don't know how to use data?

The metadata could only show you how much people are using the ability, not exactly why and how much they are enjoying it. That's his entire point, and it's a very legitimate one.
If you give me an overpowered ability I'll use it to get the most benefits from it, especially if I'm in a tight spot, but it doesn't mean I like its existence or how predominant it can be over any other strategy.

I'm with you guys, but I can't help being disappointed that I won't get real reasons for a replay until the patch-after-next (at earliest). Time to start stalking the Steam DB page for a glimpse of patch 6.

I hope the beach surprise isn't Us. Not sure what else it could be, though - maybe

Exactly.

Also, an example that has floated around several times (including recently) is that they erroneously concluded, based on the fact that people don't use Bless very much, that people don't like to use buffs. The actual issue causing people to use Bless infrequently is very likely a combination of the following:
-It is difficult to use Bless in BG3. For no apparent reason, the interface makes it hard to select the targets you want to select.
-BG3 doesn't teach players how to play BG3. If people don't understand the mechanics of the game, they won't understand the benefit of buffs. (Whereas damage is easy to understand.) Similarly, when you do use Bless, the effects aren't displayed well.
-Concentration spells in BG3 are devalued because the game adds more ways to break concentration (e.g. unavoidable damage from surfaces as well as Prone being treated as Incapacitated).
-Easy access to Advantage through high ground and backstab makes it much easier to land attacks, obviating the need for Bless.

They broke Bless with their own bad design and then blamed us for not finding it rewarding.

Telemetry can be useful for investigating some things, but it can never tell you why people behave the way they do - for that, you have to talk to people and actually listen.

Hmm, that would be an absolute slam dunk for Larian's "talk to animals" style. I kind of hope that you have guessed correctly.

Funny thing ...
I dont use the overpowered ability, bcs then the game starts to feel "just the same over and over" pretty quick.
I presume its all about attitude. :P

Telemetry wouldn't tell you that, either.

The game play metadata does not represent me at all, since I do not have the game. And even if I did, how would they ever know that I would like to see an adventure into the City of Brass? Hmmm, that gives me an idea for the EA releases - provide a text feedback page where you can write in your opinions ... oh wait, maybe that is what the forums are for in the first place, so we can not only post suggestions but also so that people can interact with the developers and other players to flesh out ideas? But then why does no one from Larian post in the forums anymore? Agh, once again Argyle is lost in the Mysts of the Unknowing.

You'd have to be able to recognize its existence first.
Which can become harder when you are busy 24/7 defending whatever the devs come up with.

Yeah, funny how that works.

And that its why it was funny.

You know ...
Can you remember when people was telling those, who were/are complaining about litteraly every rule they dont like, to "not use it" ? I can.

And that is exactly core of the joke ...
IF they would listen, IF they would actualy play the game to enjoy it instead of being so powerfull as system allows ... Larian would have exactly the data, they wanted, or more likely they needed ...
Now all Larian can see is millions people showing, flanking, shooting from high ground, Wizzards learning Cleric spells, eating pigheads during the fight, and diping weapons in litteraly any liquid (or plasma in case of fire) they find ...
And many some of those people who do all this, is furious about that they do it, since they "dont want to" ... but as you said, that is nothing Larian could know. :P

Isnt that funny?
I find it extremely hilarious ... but i just love when stubborn person hits his own head.

No, none of that is at all funny. Stop blaming players because Larian is making bad assumptions on their behalf.

That was my point ...
So i feel quite correct right now.

This one is true ...
That would mean they would do it ... they would incerase tutorials, and "onboarding" so people know how to use that ability ...

And then their data would tell them that people are still not using the ability.
What conclusion would be next?

Since this is quite vague argument ... i answer in simmilar tone by saing:

And then their data would tell them that people are still not using the ability.
What conclusion would be next?

Come on, even you simply must admit that sooner or later someone in Larian would need to admit that people simply dont like their abilities.

It may seem that way, but since your and mine conslusion are same ... i dare to say that im not.

I could say the same with rewerted roles.
Its allways easier to blame, then to admit misstake isnt it?

Mmmmm... I do like cookies. 😄

No seriously. Do you guys enjoy all the fighting and negativity and bashing one another and their ideas? Does it make you feel better?

I think maybe a few ought to take a few steps back and remember it's just a game. If you aren't having fun, why are you wasting time on it.

Of course I can remember the good old "If you don't like it don't use it". How could I not? It never really went out of style and year after year keeps confirming itself and one of the stupidest, most shortsighted arguments in existence when debating balance in a game.

Oh ok, so it's not just me.

GM4Him > I would say that i dont enjoy bashing good ideas any more than i enjoy supporting bad ideas ...
Answer for both is: Not at all. O_o

Its not allways about negativity. :-/

Yes, "it's not Larian's fault that they might be drawing completely erroneous conclusions from the data. It's yours: you people who dislike some of the gameplay decisions. You should have played the game hundreds of times while willingly not using various systems in order to affect Larian's telemetry. Systems that, because they are so baked into gameplay (e.g., height & prevalence of surfaces causing lost concentration), make playing without them frustrating and unenjoyable because you're playing against the game instead of playing it."

How they handled Bless is a good example.
The data said players were not using Bless much. Their interpretation: "Bless is boring and people want fireworks" <- this was said during an interview.
In the tabletop Bless is one of the best spells in the game, something you can use from level 1 up to level 20 since +2.5 to attack rolls and saves is universally powerfull.

If you would need to play the game hunderts of times, to outweight the other camp ...
Maybe you should simply submit to majority. :P

Or even better, start create mods.

Yes i have read that before ...

Its talking about how strong Advantage is ...
And about how hard (actualy impossible as the post states) would be to get rid of it ...

How exacly is that anyhow relevant to data, wich are only telling us how many people is using the rule? O_o
I mean, i can imagine you using it as counterargument, since the stronger rule is ... the stronger must be your despite of that rule, for not using it ...

You stating that im incorrect, it should be easy for you to tell me in what.

//edit:
I get option to have advantage > i dont want it > i dont use it > data tells Larian that i didnt use it.
Larian thinks i dont know about it > they tell me more obviously > i dont want it > i dont use it > data tells Larian that i didnt use it.
Larian thinks that the bonus is not strong enough for me > they buff it up > i dont want it > i dont use it > data tells Larian that i didnt use it.

It seem like model simple enough. O_o

I simply cant find any other conclusion ...
Either Larian in the end finds out that i dont want it > i dont use it.
Or they find out that im one of thousand players ... and therefore minority and they dont care.

@<Redacted>
Just don't use Height Advantage ez. Always move (no jumping) to be on even ground with enemies before attacking. If you can't move far enough with a single move action to do that, then spend your dash too!
Oh, and if it looks like you'll end your turn in a place where the enemy will attack from low-ground (at disadvantage) then reload an earlier save and do the combat differently! Can't have the game detecting that players are benefitting from enemies on the low ground.

Defending the Druid Grove will be difficult, but if you have a party of all spellcasters AND if you reload until all your characters win initiative, then each character can Misty Step to get on even ground with the goblins and negate height bonus/penalties. The dozen+ goblins and Trolls all get to go before you'll get another turn, but I'm sure you'll survive.

^ will lead Larian to conclude that "Players aren't using Height Advantage and thus BG3 should focus less on it" and certainly not "Players aren't using Height Advantage so we should add more situations with high ground to allow players to benefit from it!"

p.s. Oh and don't forget to use Bless at every opportunity. You'll almost certainly lose concentration within a single turn, but that just gives you the opportunity to cast it again next turn!

It's not that simple. I should point out that telemetry isn't solely used for combat anyway, there are a lot more use-cases, but as far as combat abilities go, at best it can be a conversation-starter. You can see the amount (or lack there of) spells are used, so if you see for example a particular offensive ability rarely be used. Though that's where the usefulness of telemetry goes on its own, from there you need discussions, other forms of feedback or any other means of approach to interpret and process why that is.

So Larian may see that people aren't using a spell very much, but that data won't necessarily be very clear at why. There may be some fringe cases where you could argue it though, say gimmick spells like Speak With Animal. If it's used very little, perhaps the world design and monsters doesn't invite much use for it, perhaps there isn't enough use for it to be worthwhile enough for a slot, or the animals that are worth talking to, aren't that obvious that they can be/should be talked to. Though even that may benefit from some more in-depth discussion.

I thought I might just load the game up and let it run for a few months. Then they'll understand how much players like standing around doing nothing.

Edit: And as a bonus, how much we enjoy not using height advantage, backstab, jumping, shoving, etc!

This is almost literally half of my World of Warcraft playtime haha.

This is incorrect ... also its not what i suggested ...

I say that if people will stop using certain features, then the metadata will tell Larian that people dont use those features ... and (and here the difference between what i say and what you read is created) if people keep "not using" those features, (combined with Reddit, Forum, Discord, and every other source of information, btw) ... in time Larian HAVE TO get to the conclusion that they dont like them.

I even tryed to give you some sort of algoritms in previous post ...
I really dont know how to say it more clearly.

Please tell me some ...
I honestly cannot figure out even single one. O_o

Ofcourse you can ...
You simply do not climb higher > therefore you dont have High Ground > therefore you dont have High Ground advantage. Simple as that.

Is it hard? Yes it is.
Is is ridiculous way to play a game? Certainly.
But its is possible? Yes it totally is!
Would it give Larian data that you dont use High Ground? Yes it would.
Would it combined with every other source of infomation have better chance to actualy showing Larian that you dont like it, compared to complainging on forum with few other people? Yes it would.
Simple as that, once again. O_o

You have all the tools you need ... now you just have learn to use them.

I really have some comunication problems ...
This is second time (and i only count this hour, this forum, and this topic) someone tells me that im wrong ... and then explains me exactly my point.

I dunno if you all get from my post some feeling that you single time dont use advantage, and then sudently Swen appears in your room and personaly recreate whole game ... but that is not what i ever meaned.

We are here complaining about eating pigheads (for example) ...
Yet data tells Larian that several millions of people eated several dozen millions (in total ofcourse) of pigheads during combat ... what feeling should Larian get from that data?
A) People really dont like eating pigheads and this option should be removed to improve our game.
B) Few people really dont like eating pigheads, but few millions people either dont mind, or is totally fine with this option ... so we either satisfy few, or please many ... easy decision if you ask me.

Simmilar with jumping ...
Simmilar with backstab ...
Simmilar with learning cleric spells ...
Simmilar with ffs everything! Yes i admit that detecting high ground likeliness would be harder than others, but its still possible, even more after they start to question all their homebrewed rules, based on that f***ing data!

There is expression in my country: Sometimes even a journey is a goal.
And there is one more expression: Show dont tell. (that is usualy used differently, but it fits when you think about it)

This to me is the perfect feedback, both in content and in how it is presented. It should be a template on how to give feedback and how to make good points with examples.

The only thing I disagree with is that he keeps saying "I don't want to make things harder in the game". I totally want to make things harder in the game for people. Like Dark Souls, Cuphead or Vanilla Naxx level of difficulty. The tears of frustrated gamers is a culinary delicacy.

I realy hope it should not provide any informative value ...
Bcs i dont find any. :-/

It feels just the same as if you simply tell me "you are wrong, dont ask, just thrust me"

It's the same shit we talked about for months in video format.
Also, I think he's wrong about height advantage and I took my time to explain him why.

I am happy someone else noticed the high ground changes from patch 3 to 4. Did he skip talking about low ground disadvantage though?

Why are we wasting time on it? It's simple buddy.

20 YEARS. 20 VERY LONG YEARS. Have we waited.

We knew it wouldn't happen.

BG2 got it's enhanced edition and a DLC few years ago.

It became obvious BG3 will be here sooner or later.

It arrives.

The devs tell us " 5th edition isn't fun in a video game when translated 1:1" . They are correct to some extent. No one denies that. 0 Surprise. Larian is perfect, BG3 will be perfect.

They balance the game around their homebrew and tell us bless isn't fun. When BG2 was all about buffing your party.

We cry.

Some people come here and tell us to shut up cause " just play another game if you don't like it".

The other game is called BG2 and we played it for the last 20 years. Go back to first line. Start over.

Until you understand why Tuco is eating his own keyboard right now.

At this point my hope for height advantage/disadvantage is that they make it modable.

Hard but fair is good. Hard but unfair isn't. Despite enemies and such having large HP pools and Damage in Souls games, I consider the experience fair because most everything is telegraphed visually and with audio cues and the whole game is about timing. Similarly, Cuphead is about learning enemy patterns. Essentially the hcallenge presented IS the challenge presented and enemies do not cheat, they may pull a trick out of their bag but once thats known it is known and can be accounted for. On difficulty though, I want BG3 to avoid RTS levels of difficulty where the AI is cheating and knows all while also just spawning in things for free.

Agreed. No AI cheating is a big one with me. Its a lazy shortcut that some developers take with AI on higher difficulty settings - instead of making it smarter they give it information it should not have.

Then again should it have the same information that we have? We can examine a creature and know its stats which is a huge advantage when selecting spells. Should the AI have that same info? it should know if we are elves, half elves, or drow so it knows not to try sleep spells against us. I'd say yes, if we have the info, they should have it.

I'd say Insight, Arcana, and Nature should become skills that can give that Information and both us and the AI have equal chance at failure and success with that. Perhaps a difficulty mode where the AI is given bigger numbers but that should be presented upfront.

he selected Lithovore when he was creating his race?

Assuming an aluminum mechanical keyboard of course...


It is good advice though. I played a game for a lot longer than I should after I wasn't having any fun anymore. Its funny that my methadone for WoW ended up being BG3.

I played a single incredibly fun multiplayer game with 3 other great people and I flushed WoW out of my computer. Go find another Raid Leader you ungrateful jerks. The funny thing is, I think more than half the people in Raids were in the same place as me - not really enjoying the game anymore - but they didn't want to/couldn't stop playing for some reason so they just made everyone around them miserable*.


*this last sentence is not directed at anyone.

You guys are just lucky ...

17 years of waiting for Bloodlines 2 ... and look how it seems right now.
17 years of waiting for Knights of the Old Republic III ... and its not even anounced.

And you can play Early Acess of game that you were waiting for, yet its not how you imagine it ... totally feeling your pain.

Half.
That sounds quite a bit like hyperbole.
Which half of the rules do you think are homebrewed and why do you think they are worse?

Also in no way tells you anything about the options you don't provide in the game and whether people would prefer them.

The only way of alternating the .EXE file without having access to source code is tedious. Tried it for a game to fix the multiplayer camera for 9 parchments and yeah. Let me just tell you it's nowhere close to easy. Obviously not an expert, maybe @ Composer would tell you more but that would go in the " Modding BG3 thread".

Meanwhile you can check out the cheat engine cause that would be the way to start creating an app that would change it.
Basically you create a cheat, save it and run it every time you run the game with all the changes you made.

I would say not allways.
I dunno how commonly known is this Elvish feature in forgoten realms, especialy between less educated species ... aka goblins.

Drows should know better for sure, aswell as Duegars, since they probably encountered enough Drows to know ...

Certainly they should notice that spell dont do anything to us.
When i fighted goblin camp, one goblin tried 3 turns in a row to put me to sleep. :-/

Bloodlines is never happening. Just make your peace with it now. Sorry buddy, I am just as upset.

There is a Vampire: The Masquerade game coming out soon called Blood Hunt that looks a bit interesting. Apparently the Alpha Keys should be going out soon. Its not a story-based game though. More like PvP arena I think.

Don't troll my pain :| It hurts right in the meow meow :|

Lets use the first case they told us about.

There metadata was showing them that no one was using the spell Bless and they assumed that was because people find buffing spells boring instead of looking deeper as why no one was using Bless.

1. The easy to get advantage on attack rolls, making Bless less attractive.
2. They lowered AC on many mobs because some people complained about missing, making Bless less attractive
3. The numerous surface effects made keeping concentration harder, making Bless less attractive.

The are looking at the data and just using it to support what they want to see, not to accurately see where they are messing up.

It's interesting that you focus on that aspect when height advantage is a rules as written implementation of advantage.


Pg. 173 of the Player's Handbook:


Our DM, Larian, has chosen to grant advantage for positioning, per the rules.

Hmm, if you can change the height tolerance to infinity (or some other suitably large number) then it might effectively turn off the advantage/disadvantage system.

I shall concider that being another +1 to my point.

On one tip of scales we have game we have something where we were, teased ... denied ... and then constantly disapointed for last three years (funny how the time flies, when you are having fun, huh? )

On another tip, we hve game that is being developed, nothing stands in the way to its releasing, except time, and its great in many aspects ... yet, its not "exactly what we hoped for".

Yup, Battle Royale.
I have seen, it seemed interestig enough to buy wen it will be in 70% discount ... but that would be all. :-/

Im more interested in Swansong to be honest.

I'm not sure why you make this comment. If they make it modable then we never have to discuss this again. Or are you hoping that we all have to play it the same way?

Oh absolutely, don't even try the cheat engine if you're unfamilliar with it until they get the definitive edition patch and confirm they're done with patching the game. They will just keep alternating the file you're working on ^^'''

But if you're interested in it definitely check it out on another game you have that is already without official dev's support. It's....easy to learn but hard to master. And it requires patience. A LOT of it ^^

That particular rule can be used to justify almost anything giving advantage or disadvantage - the same could be said if they'd implemented a rule that halflings get advantage all day every Tuesday. So it in no way says anything about whether a particular home brew rule is good or bad, and what a lot of people are arguing is that that particular home brew rule is a bad idea and overpowered.

Hey! Honestly, I was one of the main people preaching we needed more 5e for a long time. This game would REALLY be improved if they did it CLOSER to the 5e ruleset because, as so many have said it a thousand times over now, the game would be WAY more balanced if they just freaking did that. You can't take some of the rules of a game and chuck others and then expect the game to be balanced. Yes, as some have pointed out, homebrew is always necessary, especially with a cRPG because naturally you can't implement everything perfectly.

Take druids for example. Of course they would only have a handful of predetermined animals that you could wild shape into. So, naturally, they can't allow players to pick and choose from a ginormous number of animals. But...WHY THE HECK A POLAR BEAR??? Who in Faerun unless they visited Icewindale would have run into a polar bear?

I'm all for homebrew that makes sense. However, they should have stuck more to the rules. And yeah, as some have pointed out, if they had done the rules and spells and stats right, we'd use some of the spells and strats and so forth built already into the 5e game. Instead, we chuck the good stuff from 5e, like Bless, because it's a waste when height advantage and backstab are way more effective?

So, I'm all for suggesting things. What's starting to wear on me is I've been posting since when...November or something, and nothing I've suggested is even remotely showing up in the game. Also, all I EVER get is about a dozen people slamming my ideas and calling them crap because for whatever reason they all want the game to NOT be anywhere close to true to the 5e ruleset. The WHOLE point of dice rolls is to make the game exciting and replayable. Every time you play the game, the dice rolls provide you with a different experience. Sometimes you're the hero and save Arabella from Kagha and sometimes you fail, like a person with flaws and such. You aren't supposed to be a super hero or a god. You are a person adventuring in a fantasy world. But people out here don't want that. They want boring absolutes where if they pick the "Save Arabella" dialogue option they will automatically succeed.

It's frustrating and at this point I'm afraid the ones who don't want 5e are going to win out because that seems to be what Swen suggests in his interviews. He's trying to cater so much to the DOS people and such that more and more he's chucking the true ruleset. So I'm afraid that what's going to wind up happening is that Larian is going to make the game worse for me and not better. I love the game right now, even with all the non-D&D rules. If they strip more D&D rules from it, I'm afraid I'm going to hate it.

But that's what it seems to me like they're doing. They seem like they're going to give us a D&D 5e-ish game and not a true 5e game. So I'm going to eat my cookies and stop stressing over a dumb video game that I'm afraid is going to wind up sucking before it's over.

Come on, I feel Larian is competent enought to get a "somewhere in the middle "experience. Just a shame it's the best we can count for based on the interview. And yeah, It's just a game, I'm calm 99% of the time when discussing it but every " just don't play it " comment adds one more grain of salt to my body. Just like you. I will eventually become a salt mine sooner or later xD

I don't think its going to suck either way. It will be a "could be better" situation though.

Except it's not a homebrew rule. It's 100% D&D 5e Rules as Written.

Larian, our DM, is choosing to reward tactical positioning.


Although your Halfling on Tuesday suggestion is an interesting implementation of Lucky.

The modding community is pretty clever.
I'm sure someone will figure out a way to make a mod for those wanting to circumvent certain D&D 5e rules.

Technically, that is a rule Allowing homebrew advantage, saying the DM reserves the right to grant it as they see fit, to homebrew it in amongst the already written instances. Regardless, the core issue of that is that allowing any instance of highground or being behind an opponent is proving to be overpowered and unfun for the game, so many players have asked for it to be changed to a more flat bonus with some wanting it removed altogether. Yes, larian is our DM, and Yes that rule says the DM can grant advantage, but that doesn't change that the DM adding something in is considered homebrew. The DMG and PHB are filled with instances of "The DM can change this," and that itself is a repeated confirmation that the DM can homebrew, can make changes, house rules. And this house rule is not working well for the players, so most DMs would change it.

You can call it homebrew as many times as you like. It is 100% Rules as Written.

That you find Rules as Written advantage "overpowered and unfun for the game" doesn't make it so.

You'll find plenty of folks that enjoy using tactical positioning for combat advantage.

with your logic, there is no such thing as homebrew because the DM can run the game however they like.

You can homebrew new classes.
You could homebrew a brand new initiative system.
You could homebrew a new feat system.

Any time you replace an existing game mechanic you are homebrewing.
When you follow rules as written you are not homebrewing.

Anything and everything the DM does is RAW

On a more serious note, there's a difference between explicitly spelled out scenarios in the rules (e.g., how attack rolls work) and things which are explicitly left up to the DM (e.g., giving Advantage for circumstances or setting DCs for traps/to persuade NPCs).

If a DM set all persuasion checks to DC 30, that'd be a bad gameplay decision and frustrating for the players. But it'd still be technically following the rules.
This is equally true for setting all persuasion checks to DC 1.

Homebrew, whether big or small, is when the DM adds something. Throughout the books it says the DM can follow the rule or change it, that is one of those instances. A DM saying you have advantage on hitting a target because you have the highground is a minor instance of homebrew, compared to a major instance like a DM making a custom Monster to attack you with.
However, Homebrew needs to be careful as it can break the balance of the game, as seen with much of the homebrew in BG3. Highground Advantage is just one instance of it going a bit too far and needing toned back. Yes it makes sense for ranged attacks to be easier when one has the highground, but making Advantage granted purely by that invalidates a whole slew of advantage granting abilities such as upcoming Barbarian rage and Find Familiar Help Action. Abilities that 5e was balanced around.

I personally think I'd enjoy whatever BG3 becomes in the end. The question is exactly how much I would.

My REAL worry is that, assuming the current status quo doesn't really change... BG3 takes off enough that most future DnD games attribute its success to how the combat mechanics and encounters are designed, and take many of the same design lessons from it, if not outright borrow the same engine (when everyone praises the cinematics and writing/reactivity, but the combat design straight up splits the community at this point).

Such an outcome would be completely horrifying, as future DnD games should not be based on a template that's outright missing proper reactions for one. The gaming industry is historically awful at really understanding why certain things are popular, and fail in trying to emulate success.

I doubt that the worst case scenario will come to pass. If nothing else, I expect Solasta to get a higher budget sequel.

Advantage with high ground does not bother me so much. Tactical advantages require thinking about positioning, and I think it is fine, personally.

However, being able to sneak once combat starts, ridiculous barrels everywhere, shove as a bonus action, and jump vs disengage are very annoying mechanics to me because they really reduce the challenge. One can use those for ALL classes to win battles, so party management and thoughtful character builds are basically irrelevant. And thinking about builds is one of the funnest parts of DnD based games imho.

Also food + short rest make healing spells and healing builds totally irrelevant.

But even all that would be ok with me…as long as they tone down the damned surfaces in the final game. I despise them in DOS2 (which I am currently playing now for the first time). Everything around me is either on fire, slippery, or oily/wet/poisonous, resulting in a slog. Movement is severely impacted in DOS2…and concentration is totally screwed in BG3 by them. I hate surfaces so much that I rarely use any spells that create them because they are obnoxious to deal with post battle.

DOS2 for me surfaces kinda work cause the game is balanced around it and it feels like part of the game. When i debilitate an enemy or get hit by themit feels like a fun challenge,
BG3, partly cause of me coming from DND and BG1+2, it doesn't feel natural to the game and instead of feeling like a part of the experience I can enjoy, it feels frustrating and antithetical to other aspects of the game. If a non Eldritch Knight fighter can cast spells more often than a wizard, and a rogue can heal more than the cleric, it doesn't feel like dnd or even a game based on dnd.

I guess that's a little bit of a minor concern. It is unlikely.
You are forgetting one important thing and the subsequent D&D games don't even have to be RPGs.
You don't even have to look far. Dark Alliance is the best example of this, the game doesn't even pretend to follow the rules, and this is a game published by WotC (they probably own the studio too, though in this case I'm not 100% sure).

Yeah, what I should have said is 'future DnD cRPGs'. I am not nearly as harshly critical towards the RTwP games or anything in another genre entirely like Dark Alliance, because those games make it fundamentally clear that they're either aiming for a completely different audience, or the combat isn't really the main point of the game over the writing and plot.

But it's hard to know where BG3 lies on that spectrum as a pure turn-based game, made by a studio celebrated for turn-based combat prior and isn't historically known for writing, and if Larian's ambition with this project is big enough to have it affect future projects in the form of an engine that WOTC might lease out to other prospective developers later.


I wasn't all too bothered by surfaces once I figured certain things out. The further you get into the game, the more mobility skills you can pick up that basically minimizes the impact of surfaces. The most important thing to know is that you pretty much never want to move within them at all. Generally, standing there and waiting out the timer (while re-fortifying your defenses or using the AP that you'd spend moving towards attacking the enemy instead) or using a mobility skill is your best option.

This is why I highly recommend everyone pick up Teleport, Nether Swap (both require 2 points in Aeroteurge), and 1-2 of Tactical Retreat (Huntsman 2), Cloak and Dagger (Scoundrel 2), or Phoenix Dive (Warfare 2). Teleport and Nether Swap are especially good at manipulating enemy movement and setting up massive AoE plays - in the case of the latter, it only costs 1 AP and I generally use it to have my casters and archers on low ground swap places with enemy casters or archers on high ground. You can also swap enemies and allies with intact bodies.

Strength characters should additionally invest a minimum of 1 point into Polymorph to pick up Chameleon Cloak (invisibility skill, mostly to take any aggro off of that character for a turn if the enemy doesn't use any AoE skills in the general area) and Tentacle Lash (mid-range physical attack that can disarm enemies). And Blitz Attack (Warfare 2) is also great for warping yourself out of a bad situation while attacking at the same time.

I like height, backstab, etc. and even surfaces as tactical elements of the game, BUT if you are going to use them they shouldn't negate other elements or be so overpowered. Fine, the surface has poison. Unless I'm prone, it shouldn't effect me through my boots. Fore shouldn't set me on fire automatically and deal damage 3 times a round or whatever its doing. Backstab shouldn't provide advantage nor should height. Where is cover bonus to AC?

But yeah. The things that hurt the game most are the ones that make other things obsolete. If everyone can use Disengage as a Bonus, the Rogues getting Cunning Action means nothing. If potions are Bonus, Fast Hands means nothing. If food heals HP, potions mean nothing. If I can do more damage by throwing a 30 pound barrel than a spell, spells are stupid. If I can gain advantage with height or backstab, Bless, Faerie Fire and all those spells are useless.

So, again, the issue isn't that they are being creative with rules to provide more tactics or whatever, the whole reason many want a more strict 5e ruleset is that the homebrews are negating a lot of the most fun and enjoyable elements of d&d and making it so that no classes are truly special. What makes a Rogue awesome is they break a lot of the rules with their special class abilities. Give those same abilities to everyone and the Rogue is no longer valuable. Think about it. If my Fighter can do everything Astarion can, Sneak, Pick Locks, Use Disengage as a Bonus as well as Use Potion, then why do I need Astarion?

"and a rogue can heal more than the cleric"

The versions of D&D each contributed changes which have diluted the individuality of certain classes. By the time we reach 8E, there probably won't be any recognizable "cleric" class anymore. The class's original healing functions have already been overtaken by other game elements, to include the extreme limits of credulity in BG III where eating an onion extends one's life in combat. Even the most iconic divine spells are now available to bards & paladins. To make up for the loss of uniqueness, the cleric gets "domains" which contain ... mage spells. Bards, clerics, and warlocks now cover 100% of the mage portfolio in 5E, so that is another base class in peril. The original Illusionist class is long gone.

This situation results when the game designers are focused more on re-arranging the mechanics of things that were already contained in prior editions. An alternative approach would be a completely skill-based and classless system like Morrowind, but I don't think that appeals as much. Why? Because it's good to have limitations and flaws as well as special abilities, for as much as we complain about them, those aspects help the roleplay connect with our experiences in life and give each class a unique set of challenges to overcome. What can Larian do? Well, there is inspiration for unique content out there if you know where to look ... the FootPrints publication, the archives of Dragon Magazine, etc. I've always thought the Paramander class was a great idea, for example, with its list of unique spells.

I've been playing the Pathfinder cRPGs lately, and the amount of subclasses that exist in there is insane. The sheer amount of them is probably overkill, but I would pray to have something like the Magus Eldritch Archer archetype translated into 5E. I assume DnD 3.5E had something similar, as Pathfinder is basically a spinoff of DnD 3.5 from what I hear.

It's probably why I favor Solasta's homebrew Greenmage archetype for Wizards so much, the current 5E rules and official archetypes that I am aware of do not support viable spellcasting archers of any sort.

Hey Saito, I think there's an arcane archer subtype available out of fighter in current 5e, have you looked at that?

Also, if you're interested in Pathfinder-to-5e conversions and reimaginings, I have a link to a really top notch alchemist class*, derived from pathfinder but designed and balanced for 5e (full class, six subclasses, all supporting documentation), that I think is a much more satisfying alternative to 5e's new artificer ^.^

*Niara has a certain amount of personal bias here.

Anything with 2 attacks and the sharpshooter feet can be a decent archer. EK, valor bard, pact of blade warlock (especially hexblade) can all do that and cast spells. Warlock can do a ranged smite with investment in appropriate feats and invocations.

I'm not sure if any of those will win the best minmaxed damage at the table award, but they all can do the job acceptably well, and they all cast spells.

5e has tried to simplify the previous versions, is all. Instead of a million Prestige classes and feats to choose from and people doing all sorts of cross-classing to try to make a wizard-archer, or Warlord Mage who can wield a two handed sword, they built the archtypes for various mainstream classes.

So, if you want a magic archer, you could choose Fighter with Arcane Archer Archtype or create a Fighter who has high Dex and Eldritch Knight Archtype depending on what type of magic archer you're looking for.

I like 5e a lot. Although it isn't as intricate and complex as 3 or 4, it doesn't give me a headache when I create a character or level one up. The older versions had SO many feats I couldn't remember them all and who had what and so forth. It was a DM's nightmare trying to remember which NPC had what feats and special abilities and skills and weapons and so forth.

5e is so much easier to manage multiple characters and it is so much quicker to create them and level them up. And the Archtypes make cross-classing almost completely unnecessary, which I like, because cross-classing was always kinda messy too. It created even MORE options to choose from, and it was often overwhelming for players. Do I level up as a wizard or fighter or eldritch knight? What bonuses do I get for one over the other? What feats? What spells? What attack bonus or skills or...

It was too much. I like hoe 5e directs you more on different paths and limits your choices more. You can still have an Arcane Archer, but you get there by taking Fighter path then Arcane Archer. Done. Wanna be a cleric mage? Choose cleric and the arcana domain. Boom. Done. Simple. Efficient. Less pouring through manuals trying to figure out what choices you have to make to get you there.

Anyway, I really do hope they meant what they said and implement the game with all the classes and such. I still have high hopes for this game. It doesn't have to be total 5e, but if it was closer it would be so much better with characters having unique abilities that make each important and special.

I looked into the actual Arcane Archer archetype for Fighters but I got the impression that they aren't capable of actual spellcasting, but they did get magical arrows (that people seem to think is far too restricted in terms of uses per day). Actually I think Arcane Archer has a decent shot of making it into BG3 from what I hear. Maybe they could do something really neat with all of the magical arrows in BG3, or be rendered obsolete by them.

Right now I want to run College of Valor Bard with Sharpshooter feat, though it depends on the Sharpshooter feat actually making it into BG3 in the first place. It's pretty much the exact same build my tabletop character runs, and I am already running it in BG3 with the Bard mod (though without Sharpshooter). It is surprisingly frighteningly effective at tanking too, especially since the game currently has shield bonus to AC apply even with the bow pulled out. I have not looked into everything else being suggested though, that's something I'll have to do...

Eldritch Knight option seems neat, actually. I think I'll need the warlock pact of the blade option explained though.

The short explanation for warlock blade pact is that if you take the improved pact weapon invocation you can use ranged weapons as your pact weapons (and hex weapons if you are a hexblade), which then means you can also use your charisma modifier to attack with it, and you can eldritch smite through it as well. Alongside this, as you play the character you would naturally aesthetic your spell delivery as being done through your pact weapon as well, so even though you aren't technically shooting spells, you can aesthetic that scorching ray as being bow shots, perfectly legitimately, etc.

Going higher to have the best bonus in a game in a game that has high positions at every corner = thinking ?

I'd like so much to have to think a bit more than that... even if I agree that being higher should give us various bonus (i.e better range for ranged weapons)

Barrelmancy is one of those things that I keep waiting for them to address in some way because its so obviously a broken thing that doesn't fit into any system.

And the solution to me is so simple it's quite silly. An empty barrel, by the way, doesn't weigh 30 pounds - it weighs 100 pounds.

A barrel full of oil - weighs 300 POUNDS!! The mechanics are already in the game to fix this, it could be done easily. You need a minimum 10 Strength to move a 300 Pound object, and if these items are that heavy you are not going to be able to carry them around in a backpack.

I don't want to stop people from being able to move objects around the room, but there needs to be a hard limit on stuff you can just throw in your pack.

5e may be simpler but something it makes sure to do is give each class an subclass its own feel and playstyle. A Hexblade Warlock, a Bard, and an Arcane Archer can all be magic bowmen but they functionally act very differently, have very different in built flavor, and often can fit different roles in a party.

And I want to make an addendum to my statement, there are non healer classes that have gained healing through subclasses, for example the Celestial Warlock, but often times they still fundamentally play like their parent class and do not invalidate other choices. The issue with BG3 rn is a rogue with a pig's head can heal themselves far far better than a cleric at the current levels ever could, a battlemaster fighter with scrolls can cast way better than a wizard ever could, and barrels can do way more that spells or attacking ever could. The added and ignoring of mechanics are right now sadly invalidating other choices when something I love about 5e is that (other than True Strike) there are no bad Choices. Even a badly rated subbclass has its niche and can perform really well, and a creative player can find a use for a "useless" spell, cause the original system is very balanced. Often times when new stuff is released I hear gripes about how they are very strong, but when I compare it to earlier content, everything to me feels fairly in line with eachother while also maintaining distinct flavor and identity for each class. 4e succeeded at making everyone balanced to eachother, but did degrade a bit of the flavor and feel of classes, so in my eyes 5e successfully struck the balance. BG3 has put things on the scale and lost that balance.

There would be a tradeoff then because of the weight, and even a bag of holding would only be able to hold one full barrel. Weight would be a great weight to balance barrels in addition to reducing their frequency. In that case it wouldn't invalidate other options cause the player is going through a lot of effort and is trading valuable inventory space just to lug around one barrel. And if they become far rarer, there would be a heavy resource cost as they would become a much more limited resource.

Basically, I want them to follow DND weight cause the idea behind the barrels isn't bad, just their effectiveness and frequency.
Its is a first person RPG but I will still use it as an example, Fallout 3 had Mininukes which could melt the healthbar of anything BUT Fat Man launchers and mininukes were rare enough that it didn't go into the overpowered range and that even at a high level, unless you religiously knew where every mininuke was hidden and was determined to use that weapon, you would only have a couple handfuls of shots, making it that you could not solve every hard fight with a mininuke. And even the better version of said weapon had a tradeoff where it used way more of said mininukes and had a greater chance to kill you or even miss. I don't think Fallout 3 is the greatest reference for balance, but it understood to make Big Explosions a very limited thing, which in turn actually made them more rewarding and satisfying.

Mm. And something I love about Tasha's is it codified retheming into the rules. While it would be a tad bit MAD to do, a Celestial Warlock could take pact of the blade and improved pact weapon to take a bow or gun as their pact weapon, and then retheme their healing as if they were shooting their allies with arrows of healing light or something, which I have always had as a funny thought to do. They will never outdo the Paladin or Cleric, but it would be fun to play cause it still would feel effective.
Essentially, with a little creativity nearly any concept can be achieved, including ridiculous ones, and often they are still balanced.

Shoving is definitely something a character should be able to do. So is throwing a barrel. They are just badly implemented because the devs want you to use these mechanics so much.

It never occurred to me but now that I think back, the fact that encumbrance in DOS and DOS2 was never a thing even though carrying capacity does exist, is because the devs wanted you to be able to carry barrels of oil and water, kettles, chairs, tables, in your backpack and throw 'em around. Makes sense.

Why do you think they introduced Deathfog barrels from the beginning on the tutorial ship?

This is the thing with Larian: what they make meta is what they make OBVIOUS. Instead of it being subtle, it is almost like someone yelling in your ear to do whatever path they want. They want YouTube compilations of shoving high-level bosses and barrel cheese because that is so KEWL~*!!*~*!*! to them.

Tactical advantages DON'T actually require advantage mechanics, y'know? I can only assume you've never played D&D 5e, nor care to think how this affects the game beyond your most shallow immediate concern. Advantage is a strong buff and beyond the imbalance it causes on its own being so strong, it also causes a shit ton of imbalances to classes, feats, and spells that will require an avalanche of more homebrew to re-balance. Or just ignore it as seems to be Larian's modus operandi, and accept that many things will be broken.

Height advantage: Bonus to hit if above, penalty if below. I-Win tactic, but not guaranteed. Range itself is an advantage for ranged specialists, but a slight bonus like a +1 or +2 (perhaps even granting half-cover +2 AC/Dex save) would incentivize plenty without primitivizing the tactical combat you fool yourself thinking you promote. You don't actually promote tactical combat with simple "I-Win" tactics that will be the *only* correct first move in 99% of all scenarios. Add to this the peculiar/gamey implementation: Assuming you're slightly above your target; where you aim at the target might give you an overwhelming bonus or not. Aim at the head, you might not get it, aim at the feet and the height difference might be large enough to trigger the mechanic.

Flanking/backstab advantage: Bonus to hit if behind. I-Win tactic. You are free to move at the back of any opponent w/o them reacting. This is a constant, time-consuming reminder that turn-based combat (that I like) is a really crappy approximation of real combat and thus damaging to immersion. It is virtually guaranteed, so having to jump to the back every round just feel like a formality ritual that waste the player's time.

Larian have fallen into a trap of their own making, despite actually having raised early concerns over just this. They expressively stated they wanted to avoid a situation where there would be only one best tactic, yet have done their utmost to ensure this being the case with their lazy advatage homebrew. I'm frankly astounded over the level of obtuseness.

I agree with the other criticisms you raise however.

This is the same exact thing I said about the "barrelmancy problem" since the EA started, for the record.
Give these barrels proper weight and you already solved half of the problem.
Make the ability to move them around more realistically tied to a character strength and you solved the other half.
And unless we are talking about inhuman levels of strength (more than 20, etc) no one should be able to THROW barrels around. At best akwardly lift them from the ground while slowly moving to a different position, as it happens in games like Shadow Tactics when you use the "big samurai".
Also, no barrels in your backpack, period.

Good reading, thanks for that ...
Just one question: Not being subtle is bad thing? O_o

When everything is constantly wacky, crazy, trying to be funny, pushed to the limit then nothing truly is. You need the contrast of the mundane or subtle to accentuate those very things.

More often than not, yes,

And more specifically the lack of subtlety is often pointed as a downright flaw when it comes to writing, regardless of the genre involved (comedy down to complete parody, horror, drama, romance, socio-political commentary, etc).

A total lack of it would mean that a writer assumes the audience has the memory of a goldfish. It might be fine if you're going for comedy, but I don't think that's what BG3 is supposed to veer towards. The best jokes require some thought to begin with regardless.

Again, I like the idea of barrels and surfaces, but when they are better than spells...

In my Afflicted Fan Fic, as I was writing it, I used a keg of gunpowder to make a battle rather interesting. Marli and Barton and crew were facing the PCs, 3 custom and all origin but Wyll. I played it out with TT rules and stats. Good fight, even with a party of 7. I used Bandit stats for all of the group except Marli and Barton. For them, I used Bandit Captain stats.

Barton went down, so I had Marli lose it. The PCs were within 10 feet of the keg, but so was most of her crew. She launched a fire arrow and hit the keg. BOOM! Dex save throws for half damage. 7d6 damage. Fire burned for 1 round. 29 damage, I rolled. Killed Marli's crew, for the most part, but took out several of the PCs. They weren't dead, but they were dying.

I used oil on the ground during the secret tunnels fight at the grove against Gresh and his goblins. I did pretty much the same thing but said it was 4d6 instead for damage. Several PCs were standing in the oil. Took 15 or 7 if made Dex save. 3 goblins and 1 goblin captain suddenly became much harder to beat, even with 8 party members, 3 custom and the 5 origin with Wyll now included.

The point. Well placed traps using barrels and surfaces is fun. I could see someone rolling a barrel towards an enemy and shooting it, but throwing? No. Sorry. Even if you are strong enough to lift a barrel full of anything, throwing it even more than 5 feet/1-ish meter is ridiculous. It might work in a game where you are becoming a god, but it doesn't work in a game like this.

Isn't there a spell that makes a creature grow huge in 5E? Last I played Pathfinder Kingmaker there was a fight where a mage would turn one of his ally thugs into a freaking giant. Never beat this fight. Would you be able to "throw" barrels then?

Enlarge person? It gives a +2 Strength bonus (while making you easier to hit) as far as I remember, it doesn't triple your strength.

But fair enough, an already strong character with additional buffs could probably throw a heavy full barrel FEW meters away.
Should we really take the fringe cases to justify standard scenarios, though?

Yeah, that is all good and clear ...
But i didnt seen them in that article talking about "everything" ...
I believe it could be fine to have some crazy idea, or epic plot ...

I mean, i realize that this is pure matter of personal taste, but quests in this game didnt seem to "all totaly epic". O_o
So i would believe that if they managed to create on one hand fullscale invasion of goblins under rule of new Cult of the Absolute ... and in other hands two farmer boys, that are simply searching their sister, or a little deep gnome that is going to help his friend ... they would be able to manage some middle ground in the future aswell. O_o

I bet it does in a Larian game.
I guess I'm just too used to playing BG2 where it's pretty easy to raise your strength to above 20, with +STR equipment, Draw Upon Divine Might, and potions. What about the Stone/Fire/Storm Giant Strength potions? How rare are these anyway? In BG2 you can get quite a few of them.

The ogres throwing barrels of goblins up onto the walls of the Grove was somewhat believable and fun. I MIGHT accept that. Otherwise, no. Ogres are strong, and IF magically enhanced it might be plausible. So I thought that worked. All other barrel chucking, no.

You are correct that I have never played 5e nor did I realize the potential imbalance issue with height advantage that you describe. Thanks for the clarification and details. I did not consider how important advantage is.

However, I was originally responding to the idea of home brewing. Adding *some* sort of *advantage* (used here generically) for things like sneak attack, backstab, and height are not egregious to me in theory (even tho they may be implemented poorly at the moment in the game).

In contrast, the other things I mentioned (ie, winning every fight with barrels, jump, shove, and eating food) makes classes, builds, and party setup completely irrelevant. To me this goes beyond the nitty gritty of game balance…these things fundamentally destroy what make DnD based games fun in the first place (as well as replay-ability).

And I just hate surfaces, personally. They are hamfisted and immersion breaking 80 percent of the time. There are so many oil slicks in DOS2 that the entire map needs to be evacuated for environmental cleanup. If the devs want big explosions, give us some grenades and wicked spells and devastating AOEs. Not a map that is basically a beach in Texas after an Exxon disaster.

Right. For example, I like that Larian has height bonus. It just shouldn't be so OP. I don't mind backstab giving advantage, but then you need to add another rule that says you can't move around behind an enemy in a melee without provoking attack of opportunity. That's where the problem comes in. It's too easy to get backstab because every round you can maneuver behind them ESPECIALLY with Disengage as a Bonus action.

I mean, I actually think backstab makes sense as an advantage. It should just be WAY harder to achieve. I mean, any homebrew that offers advantage to a roll should be hard to achieve.

And now, I realize that we've been literally having these exact same discussions since EA was released. Sigh. And people wonder why we're so frustrated with how slow Larian has been and with their lack of communication.

If you actually want an answer, there have been dozens of threads since EA started documenting how many rule changes were poorly thought out.

Examples include:
1) Giving enemies an abundance of Alchemists fire which creates surfaces even on a miss, dealing damage with no saving throw, thus making any spell requiring Concentration worse because it increases the chance of failing at Concentration higher than normal.
2) Increasing the enemy HP and decreasing enemy armor is another poor change because they didn't touch enemy saving throws, therefore making spells and attacks which require saving throws to be effective worse, because those deal the same damage as before, but are relatively harder to hit compared to things which target AC, and when they do hit, they feel worse to use because the enemy HP is so much higher.
3) Free advantage from backstabs and height breaks 50+ class spells and features in just the low levels alone. Such as Rogue's Sneak Attack, which you can no longer do when on the low ground. The Barbarian has the Reckless Attack feature, which gives advantage on attacks in exchange for enemies getting the same.
4) Everyone getting free disengage and jump, and everyone getting bonus action hide make the Rogue's cunning action feature pretty much useless.
5) I could go on and on...


But I don't believe you want an answer. Every single one of your posts that I have seen leads me to conclude that you're deliberately arguing in bad faith. If I come back with a list of rules, even if it's 40%, you'll just say "Aha, that's not half of all the rules in the game".

Even if I do spend a lot of time composing that list, you will dismiss or ignore any answer I give with your ridiculous standard reply of "Larian is the DM and Rule 0 of DnD lets the DM change the rules. Therefore any rules changes they make are by definition rules as written."

You take one premise, that "the DM is allowed to do such a thing," and from that posit the false conclusion of "Anything which is allowed to be done is therefore good." Here's why that's a false conclusion:

Let's play a campaign. I'll DM, you'll be a player. As the DM, I am ruling that all your attacks and ability checks are to be done at disadvantage, because I say so. Just yours, not any of the other players. Because I'm the DM, I can do that because of Rule 0, right? Would that be a fun experience for you, as a player? Of course not. I would be singling you out for unfair treatment. That's absolutely something I CAN do as a DM. It would make me a really shitty DM, though.

"Rule 0" is not a valid excuse for everything the developers do. Your position boils down to "Everyone should stop giving feedback because Larian is the DM and they can do what they want." That's not even Larian's position, otherwise they wouldn't bother with EA at all.

Yup. I've been very consistent as a vocal critic from the day the game was revealed. It *is* nice to see so many posters here who were in the "the game is fine/awesome" camp now coming around to one degree or another and agreeing with the critics that the game is not fine and that it does have some serious problems.

But the problems can be fixed. And the game can be fine, even awesome. If only Larian will listen to us for a change.

There are other approaches such as to listen to the "silent majority" or interpret data in their favor, i.e, if data shows that players are shoving, using high ground, jumping, running around enemies for advantage and exploding barrels this must mean that these features are awesome right? Not that balancing the game around those might've anything to do with people using it.

You know, there is a way to make it ...
And it was allready mentioned on this forum, funny how fast we forget about such posts ...

Im not sure if i remember it corectly, so maybe original suggestion was a little different ... if you want source, you have to find it yourself, im too lazy for that. :P

Anyway ...
The suggestion was that enemies, should turn around to face EVERY meele attack, unless:
A) Target have no idea about attack (wich would mean attacking from hiding, invisibility, maybe in same turn as you misty step, maybe inside Darkness, or maybe when Blinded etc.) ... to put it simply when surprised.
B) Target is allready threatened by another PC in meele range, and therefore turning to one would simply mean expose its back to another ...

In shorten version: They would act just like characters in Heroes of Might and Magic do.

I would like to just say that its not my suggestion and reapeat that maybe i remembered it wrong ... but main structure should be (i hope) intact.
Anyway, personaly i would support it imediatly, since i really like the idea.

Congratulations!! This EXACTLY illustrates the problem with Larian's mindset. They are so convinced that their own ideas are better that when something isn't working, they keep trying to hammer on more things to try and fix their self-inflicted problem. We've seen this in happen.

Larian believes missing is not fun. So they reduce enemy AC and add Advantage to backstabs and high ground. This creates new problems: Enemies are dying faster than expected. They now increase enemy HP. This produces new problems: Saving throw spells are now a lot worse because they do the same damage and have the same chance of hitting as they do in the tabletop game. Their chance to hit feels worse than AC-targeting attacks, and their damage is unchanged so each hit feels worse because enemies have higher HP.


Your suggestion is to add in more rules, more code, creating more exploitable edge cases in order to fix a problem they created. The solution is to simply remove any bonus or advantage from being behind the enemy. Adding more and more rules to fix what they broke with their earlier rules is an unending cycle.

Wich part of its not my suggestion you dont understand? O_o
I mean its barely 4 words ... how should i speak simplier?

Hey @Stabbey, we've come a long way from last February to where we are actually in agreement about a lot of things about this game.

Melee characters are ALREADY supposed to guard around themselves at 360°, by the way. Especially if not already engaged by other enemies (which would make them flanked).

The fact that you can jump and/or slowly walk around them to do a backstab is a faulty implementation of the rules wanted by Larian.

Whether it's your suggestion or not is not the problem here... Again, you should try to see what others are really saying, as in "the big picture", instead of trying to pick apart words and phrases that have little meaning when taken out of context, just so you have an excuse to argue.

Yes, it's not your suggestion. You think it's a good suggestion and agree with it, and for discussion purposes, there's not much difference. My point was that the suggestion is not ideal because it is adding more complications for unnecessary reasons.

Sorry. But on the other side you're pretty much moving to the bare-bones approach, which may leave us with "just smack it to death".

Height advantage - dont mind that.
Backstab should only be applicable when the target is flanked.
Disengage / Weapon Swapping should cost an action.
Shove Should cost an action.
Fighters should not be turned into FF14 characters with big flashy abilities if that happens I am going to complain so hard about a refund its not DoS it was not advertised as DoS it was advertised as DND 5E as a game.
Mages do need divine spells removed.
Also less explosives and larger than average hp totals for enemies when your fixing that.

Except the fighters thing the other stuff could all wait to be patched till later in content.

The character creator needs a massive overhaul honestly.
Rolling ability scores option.
Equipment selection options.
More general character options. Height Weight Size ect. Voices.
Multi-classing in character development.
Mercs.

Again this is something can wait for all the classes and races honestly to be corrected.

The comment were not really adding new content in patch 5 really is not an impressive thing to say like I said a while ago 2023 release at this rate. They already made the comment 2022 is a hope currently they are unsure they will make that release date. With news in this patch I would not be shocked even if it got pushed back to 2024 lol. Not to be a negative nelly but its kind of true. Glad I invested in pathfinder wotr with the rate content is coming out for this. Its one of those situations where I would not be shocked if delays are because they were pushing stock up to sell off the company or to drive sales on another divinity game with bg3 really not being there main focus. Just more a publicity stunt.

Fixing long and short rests is an easy fix. Add random encounters based on map location when returning to camp on a random variable. This would encourage more use of short rests and it would honestly add more flexability with the game and less save to avoid results as well as by adding random encounters with some random loot options people want the loot but also they dont want to get caught without having rested. They could even do it as a level tied encounter possibility. Random mini map locations for the encounters could also help resolve height advantage in as many situations as its present currently for people frustrated with this by making more situations where height may not be reliable.

If they were really serious on resolving things classes should be the primary focus on releasing content. Once all the classes exist then at least your resolving all issues at once and giving everyone there options to play what they want to play rather than hey were just fixing a bunch of bugs and mechanical issues as a patch. Fixing issues is important when the game is broken and you physically cannot play the game. Massive Lag, Content crashing, in ability to save serious issues with emergency fix needs not minor bugs like a cinamatic needs to be corrected. A mild pathing issues. Those kind of things that need to be fixed but are not major can be fixed in between patchs.

Its baffling how they have so many people on staff for a single game when you have much larger games with much smaller staff having much smaller issues with content. MMo's I am talking about in this regard as they are massive multiplayer games and the staff for most of those games is around 200 on staff members for the content. Larion has 300 people on staff and they are having trouble managing to add even classes to the game on a regular basis. There are plenty of ways to be more efficient at what they are doing than how they are doing it.

4-5 People sifting code for ways to fix specific issues while the rest of the staff is focused on more extensive content can generally resolve most issues. Honestly it comes off extremely disorganized and like they do not know how to handle content release. They are just really bad at how they are approaching the game while I would not want to see it pushed like cyber punk 2077 the difficulties they have for the amount of content they are releasing is mind boggling.

Don't fix what isn't broken. Larian's rules for advantage are breaking things. If you want advantage, then there are a lot of things which can grant advantage. Those all come with a cost or drawback. Giving it for free for being higher up or moving behind an enemy which does nothing messes with all of those things.

Im glad im not the only one who sees it that way. O_o

Anyway ...
I wonder what happened here ...

It was told here that someone would not mind backstabing being somehow buffed IF that would be harder to achieve, than simply "jump over" or "walk around" ...

I repeated for him the suggestion that was written somewhere around here by someone else, that was making backstab harder to achieve (not much, but at least something), and expressed my support for that idea ...

Even tho Tuco kinda confrimmed (unless i understand this quote incorectly), that the main part (turning around to face the attacking enemy) definietly SHOULD be implemented. O_o


Now im the bad one, since *i* sugested something that "would add more complications"
Well ... i must admit that im confused.

Advantage from height is not that big a deal, being behind a target without flanking the target is a big deal that should be fixed its not an emergency to resolve it but before live release it should be. Standard high Armor class vs standard high end attack roll bonus your talking +3 bonuses your looking at +6 + 3 + 5 to hit which is around +14 to hit +2 additional bonus for barbarians so +14 to +16 vs a standard ac around 25-27 so at beast without magical buffs or other tricks its around 45-55% with best gear to hit in melee range most of the time your looking at around a 65-70% chance but advantages your talking 78% - 85% chance to hit. Early access average to hit should be +2 +4 + 1 so + 7 to hit against ac 17-19 40-50% with advantage its around 70-75%. Since most enemies have around a 15 -16 ac in early access for the harder enemies your talking around 60% / 80% with advantage which is around where the numbers should be. This does not factor in buff bonuses and discluding magical buffs the average numbers.

If you were to talk absolute best possible its 49 ac vs +41 to hit which is 60% those are stars align abilities in dnd. Advantage its 80% chance to hit. So same as the numbers above. Little bit higher on average for the base to hit when your talking absolute best possible min max numbers. You can get a small small differences with min maxing based on class of around a 5%-15% difference. Advantage generally yields a 70-85% chance to hit vs not at advantage generally gives you a 40-60% chance to hit if your on par with the enemies your fighting. Any more or less would be stronger vs weaker situations.

Though they should add some more fights where height cant be as utilized / fights where situationally being higher up may be needed more so that your diversifying options and class needs. Like fighting big brutal melee damage characters where you can be up on a ledge can be impactful on combat same time not being able to be up there can be bad for casters / ranged characters exploiting height advantages. Making a fight harder. The minotaurs in most recient patch felt over tuned vs the prior patch where they felt under tuned. In same situation current more recient patch the spider matriach felt much easier vs the prior patch where it felt more challenging. I also min maxed an entire party using friends to allow me to run a 3 character party and add utility to the party via bringing in an npc as i felt needed. (One of reasons we need mercs quality of life).

Druid/Ranger/Fighter Build with ranger having a dex based build to utilize archery skills as well as being an alternate melee character and fighter being a main melee. Druid being jack of all with support from whatever character I needed to balance the group for the situation. I would cut the ranger as levels go up however as rangers are not good at higher levels currently based on standard dnd rule sets they get weaker the higher the levels go compared vs other classes early game they are on the stronger side.

I agree, but I don't think Larian is incapable of subtlety and I would use Gale as an example. Gale seems like on the surface to be a great guy but if you start peeling back the layers you realize he is a selfish, manipulative, beta-male, power hungry, stalker. There is debate on this, but anyone who does a deep dive on Gale comes to a similar conclusion, that he is at least untrustworthy and despite his virtue-signaling he really only cares about himself.

Every time I have pointed this out to people they have been incredulous *until* I start pointing to stuff he says and showing how this is a form of manipulation and that he starts doing it pretty early on.

Do they take things to 11? Yeah, they create some incredibly wacky situations as well, but for the most part those situations are superficial - they don't really matter. When it comes to the big parts of the story Larian has that shit on lockdown. Another example is the Dead Three connection. It's there, and there is a connection to the Absolute, but you have to look for it.

Shadowheart is another good example of subtlety. Probably the most fan speculation is around her actual story.

I'd like to get some other examples of writing where you guys felt Larian went over the top to the extreme. For science.

I have never used barrelmancy in 2 DOS games. I always thought it was a ridiculous way to handle encounters. In multiplayer I am not shy about letting people know that using barrelmancy is not ok as it cheapens every encounter. You only insult yourself when you use it. You are basically telling everyone how bad you are.

And yeah, the other half of the solution is you shouldn't be able to put large objects into a backpack. No crates, no barrels, no chairs - and I have zero doubt that they could end barrelmancy in 10 minutes by changing the conditions on all barrels, crates etc to DOES NOT FIT IN PACK and making the weights accurate. If you give them ownership as well and any attempt to move them is seen as theft and Barrelmancy is done.

And if not that, at least I would like to hear why they think its a valid system. What does this add to the game to have a player be able to carry 3-4 oil barrels in a backpack and throw them around and explode them? What is the justification?

Eee-yup.

You're missing that this game is ALREADY 'just smack it to death', the argument is over how much positioning should actually play a role in that, and how much these easy advantage mechanics completely change the flow of the game for both the player and enemy encounters. The main thing is that the usual ways to gain advantage are generally not worth using, because they use a limited resource and are so much harder to maintain, and flat rate modifier spells like Bane and Bless are far less impactful as a result as well. (Why use a concentration-based Faerie Fire spell when you can just move to high ground and cast a ranged offensive spell or grease instead?)

The only things that aren't 'smack it to death' involve the use of things like barrelmancy and shove, which can potentially end fights before they even begin and every character at level 1 has access to that. But that's a whole other can of worms that then veers right into the 'you're highly encouraged to use these so that you don't have to deal with the base combat mechanics' argument. Which is another big problem in this game.

I think the biggest reason why people with tabletop experience are especially critical towards BG3's combat design is that in Larian's efforts to combine their DOS style with DnD mechanics, all they've really achieved was to have the DOS-type design completely overshadow the DnD mechanics, to the point where engaging with the DnD mechanics at all feels like a severe RNG-based punishment for failing to utilize the DOS-style mechanics correctly. The biggest example of this being height advantage/disadvantage - one can argue about the value of the advantage, but I see most people in support of the system conveniently ignore any arguments about what kind of valid purpose the disadvantage portion of it is supposed to serve in this type of game, and it's absolutely not something you can just ignore.

That said, I'm not some tabletop purist, but the main crux of these types of arguments is that the changes that were made basically railroad the player towards a set group of strategies (generally completely revolving around some kind of out of combat setup cheese), and simply do not improve the experience in the long term at all.

On the other hand, I also feel a lot of things would be dramatically dampened in severity if we were allowed to control our reactions and have ready actions set up. Some characters would then have the option to react and defend themselves during the enemy turn.

(I never thought barrelmancy was required at all in DOS2, for the record. It wasn't worth the effort to set up in most cases when your base skills were already so strong to begin with. I can see why one feels much more pressured to utilize it in BG3, when they're an unavoidable source of heavy damage placed in a system where misses are to be expected, one could do enough damage to one-shot most enemies while they generally didn't in DOS2, and there are generally less abilities to utilize overall.)

So look at how those guys are struggling to lift barrels and I would guess those strong men have like a 20 strength. how they handle barrels is just silly.

Yep, and we aren't talking about cute little kegs of beer here.
We are talking about barrels that go high up to the to the chest of an adult person. They can go up to QUINTALS of actual weigh depending on the specific caliber and filling.

Also, I'm not seeing anyone in that video making barrels flying several meters away.
They are putting their backs on the line to just lift them from the ground.

Honestly, the situation where it'd be fine to carry a barrel without any problem would be like Bag of Holding or Tenser's Floating Disk (or other conjuration spells), but that would be employing a Magic Item or a spell just to move one barrel, and the Disk likely could be spotted by enemies, which means the player is using a resource and is actually engaging with mechanics and is strategizing with the barrel instead of just picking up 5 and going to town.

Which would make Barrelmancy actually include casters and be a limited strategy instead of something that can be done constantly by anyone like it is now.

This barrel weight talk makes me think back to how they were handled in DOS2. They were actually extremely heavy in DOS2, to the point where most characters could only carry one maximum. Strength based characters could easily carry more.

Which is why I raised my eyebrow when I realized my BG3 characters could carry like 4 at a time, when my preferred party (DEX archer Bard/Shadowheart/Gale/Wyll) is generally lacking in strength to begin with. 10 weight is COMPLETELY absurd. (No, I will never include Lae'zel in my party.)

In 5e RAW, a character with 20+ STR could carry one 300-lb barrel so long as they have nothing else worn or in their inventory. They'd be naked. (Carrying capacity is 15 x STR.)

A character with 10+ STR could drag a 300-lb barrel around, but not lift it. (Pushing/dragging capacity is 30 x STR.) I would argue that this would make it (nearly) impossible to position that barrel stealthily.

I found that in DOS2 it'd eventually spiral to being able to have multiple, also I had Fane ALWAYS carry around a barrel of poison for reasons. 5e Strength is more limited so once you are at 20 Strength, thats it, meaning that Barrelmancy would have less of a chance to spiral out of control, even with Casters who can produce floating disks or pocket spaces it'd still be limited.

Ok so this gets into something specific about barrels, where you wouldn't drag it, you would roll it. Which, theoretically you could do that stealthily - under the right conditions.

However, as DM I would insist - and this is SUPER important - that you play the right Theme Music while doing it.

Otherwise you go at disadvantage. :P

Just to be clear, I don't think there's ANY need here to become particularly pedantic about the EXACT amount kg/lbs a character should be able to carry.

The general point is: incredibly heavy items shouldn't be trivial to throw around on the battlefield. What's even more relevant, sticking to common sense here wouldn't be a case of "realism hampering game design" but actually supporting it, by giving a very legitimate reason to CONTAIN a potential recurring exploit.

Oh yeah, I don't think we need to stick to these exact numbers or anything, but since I saw someone talking about them upthread (with some mistakes), I figured I'd drop the actual RAW in as a starting point for discussion. The point was, unless we are making a large departure from the 5e rules and/or making barrels substantially lighter than they seem like they should be, moving barrels around should be incredibly difficult and doing it without anyone noticing should be even more so.

While you can roll a barrel around, it's still going to be unwieldy and loud. You certainly aren't going to be ducking between shadows with this thing. Are there situations where you could move unnoticed with one? Probably, but I imagine they'd be uncommon.

Also, the appropriate theme music for BG3 is this.

Again, Barrels are actually incredibly easy to move. Its just not feasible to lift them and carry them around. You know they have been around for 2,000 years and nobody has improved on the design?


Has anyone in this thread actually ever seen a barrel?!

My grandfather used to make wine (and olive oil and more). I used to help with the process since I was a kid.
Then again we mostly worked with VERY big barrels, the type you hardly ever move anywhere and when you do involve SEVERAL persons at once. The kind that tend to remain in the cellar, with the tap upfront and al that stuff.

There is an item in the metadata that sets your STR to 27 until the next long rest, but I digress. It is clear what Larian is going for.

I don't know where you are getting your barrels but I think you need to fire your Cooper -- or you are thinking of metal barrels.

Wooden barrels are pretty quiet, on a flat surface anyway, if they have been made right and balanced, sanded, filled and closed correctly.

Good tip is to make sure the floor is clean and swept.

Frankly if they are going with barrelmancy they should just make it into a class.

Barrelmancer- D8 Hit die. Starting equipment is a ramp, broom, metal rings, spare boards, and sandpaper. Create a new class skill called "stealth barrel". You have a set of clips that lets you carry a single barrel on your back. Min strength is 16. You use dex and strength to determine throw accuracy. At Fifth level you get Tensers Floating Disk at will so you can carry a second barrel. Due to the barrel on your back you cannot use any melee weapons, only a special crossbow that is anchored to your chest and can only be fired every other round with a huge arbalest-like bolt that does 3d6 damage.

There is a 10% chance every time you throw a barrel that you suffer 2d6 damage from throwing out your back.

Sounds like an Artificer honestly.

Maybe an empty barrel, but a 300-lb object is never going to be "incredibly easy" to move, even if it is essentially a wheel.

Have you ever tried pushing a barrel up a hill? Even a gentle grade? It's slow. It's loud. It's tiring. Then try rolling it back down that hill and not lose control of it. Now I could be wrong, but what we've seen of BG3 isn't exactly paved smooth and flat.

The notion that we haven't improved on the design of barrels is both untrue and irrelevant. Barrels aren't designed to be rolled around secretly over long distances - they're designed to be easy to construct and seal with simple technology. What constitutes "simple technology" has changed over the years, so we actually have improved on their design over the years. Initially, the hoops they used to bind the staves together were made of wood. In the 19th century, they started replacing them with metal hoops because they are stronger and thinner. Now, in many cases, barrels are made entirely of lighter materials like plastic or aluminum.

Barrels designed to hold liquids tend to be quite heavy, partly because they need to be sealed and such so there is no leak, and partly cause a large amount of liquid (Oil, Water, Whatever) is in fact pretty dang heavy. I am a weakling and actually find it quite hard to roll a barrel, let alone lift it a few inches.

Yeah, but I think you could only carry like 4-5 barrels maximum by DOS2 endgame with a character fully invested into Strength (cap of 40 without gear, 10 pounds per point of strength), because barrels were 70 weight there.

If barrels were the same weight in BG3, a character with 20 strength could probably only carry 3 maximum. But as they currently are, a weight of 10 is laughable and a character could carry a dozen without a problem.


Fun story, I was in a session once where we found an underground brewery deep in the Undermountain near Waterdeep. There was a hallway that eventually led to a storage room for the barrels containing the wine that was being brewed before the area apparently became abandoned. It was obviously trapped with what we thought was a pitfall trap, which made us wonder how anyone could transport the barrels through. One of us said they had a stupid idea and decided to use a piece of equipment that gave them the ability to walk on walls to approach the trap sideways and press their hands against the floor to see if it was indeed a pitfall trap.

The DM instead jokingly insulted us for not coming up with the other stupid plan, which was to put ourselves in empty barrels and roll ourselves down the hallway over the traps.

(And some of the barrels in the storage rooms were trapped with mimics.)

Did you mean ...

I used to be in the "this will be the game of the decade that redefines the genre, and my favourite game ever!" camp until EA hit. Har. Har. Now I'm a... salt mephit, I suppose.

Quite hilariously, about a year ago I looked at this forum and recoiled in horror at the sight of "terrible toxic haters who do nothing but shit on Larian, it's so sad"; I specifically remember you and Tuco. Fast forward to October and, lo and behold, I agree with most of what "the horrible complainers" say. Myself being one of the most critical complainers.


It could be fine. But, honestly, I have exactly 0 hope Larian would go with anything that's a fundamental change in design philosophy. And many such changes would be - in my personal opinion - required for this game to be both a proper main entry in the Baldur's Gate series and an "RPG of the decade". Or just a game I could really like.

(Btw, I love how the topic devolved (evolved?) into a serious, in-depth discussion on the intricacies of historical and technical aspects of barrels.)

Yeah, I too started hyper-super optimistic that this game will be the BEST RPG GAME IN HISTORY! ... now, not so sure. I naively thought that "Larian will understand this is a DnD game, and a successor to Baldur's Gate, so naturally they wont do their silly antics anymore". I still have high hopes for the game, but.... I realise now that my dream game is far off.

Add me as another who was so hyped for this game before EA. This and Cyperpunk 2077 as changed my mind about preordering anything from an AAA studio.

Oh, hi Lester.
Long time not seeing you around here.

I don't remember ever being " a hater" and I'm somewhat hurt by learning you considered me one, frankly. If anything I still remain reasonably positive about the fact that this will be AT WORST a reasonably competent game I will enjoy for many hours.

Of course, I would have preferred if it would turn out to be a timeless classic, but since DOS 1 it really seems Larian just can't help it but put at least a bit of shit on their own plates every time.

I think that the suggestion of increasing the importance of weight is very good. However, enemies should ALSO react to you carrying or rolling or even just interacting with large barrels full of explosives! This should be an instant aggro.

Also, there should be an actual reason for the barrels to be laying around. If there is no good reason for barrels full of explosive materials to be in the room then don't put them in the room!

I'm still hyped for the game!

Of course you are!

I agree totally here. At least I think the amount of shit is steadily decreasing! DOS 1 was essentially comedy central, and DOS 2, while still wacky, was significantly less so. BG3 is ... I feel even less wacky, although there's still way too much of it left in there.

The comedic vibe in DOS didn't particularly bother me. it's their setting, their rules, and I'm not even under the delusion that only super-serious, dramatic or grimdark fantasy stories have any right to be.
If anything I think DOS 1 was at its weakest precisely when it attempted to steer the narrative on an epic/serious vibe.

- What I disliked the most in DOS 1 was the horrendous randomized loot, Diablo-style (something I don't like in genera and an especially terrible mismatch for a game with a finite number of non-repeatable encounters). Oh, and the Larian toilet chain.
- What I disliked the most in DOS 2, despise improvements in many areas, was that IT STILL HAD THE OBSCENE RANDOMIZED LOOT and on top of that a very bad, exceedingly steep power curve that basically forced the player to keep up with equipment across the entire party at a stressful, annoying pace. Plus the unfortunate armor system. Oh and of course the Larian toilet chain.

- What I'm disliking about BG3 is.... Look, I have to sleep and I don't have a couple of hours to spare. We'll go back on this another time.

P.S. But at least we got rid of the randomized loot, so that's progress.
P.P.S. Still, FUCK THE LARIAN TOILET CHAIN.

[quote=dwig]I think that the suggestion of increasing the importance of weight is very good. However, enemies should ALSO react to you carrying or rolling or even just interacting with large barrels full of explosives! This should be an instant aggro.

Also, there should be an actual reason for the barrels to be laying around. If there is no good reason for barrels full of explosive materials to be in the room then don't put them in the room![/quot

Yeah I think giving barrels ownership (red outline) solves the second part. You can still move them but you will need to be sneaky about it or you will get challenged on it. This also prevents barrels from being brought in from some other random place since they cannot be carried in a backpack anymore.

In every case I have seen the existing places where barrels are found makes sense. They have a room full of them at the shattered sanctum for a reason that the vendor can tell you. It makes sense for places to have a single barrel of oil for torches and lamps. Most humanoid (goblins, humans) encampments will have booze.

So the fix is:
1. Make barrels weight 100/300 lbs.
2. Prevent all furniture (crates/barrels) from being placed in a backpack.
3. Give barrels in a location "ownership" tags.

2 of these can be implemented by making minor changes to the tags on the items - and done, no more barrelmancy

Me too!

I mean, I'm not wild about the choices Larian is making with the game, but I still think it will be worth the time to play through.

Also, regarding Tuco's comment on itemization in DoS... that is why I never finished DoS 2. I could not stand the thought of re-gearing with random loot every other level.

BG I & II set the standard usage for barrels, which is a hiding place for anywhere from 5 to 30 gp. That is it.

For setting things on fire or whatever, D&D provided rules for oil flasks. Based on this discussion, it seems to me the issue is really that Larian simply needs reduce the size of their oil containers. According to the old DMG, a single "grenade like missile" flask of oil should be about 1 pint, or 16 ounces. Now, if there were a magic spell to make styrofoam,things could be very different ...

Hello. Crawled out of my lurker-dimension for a moment. Surprised someone remembers me after half a year, haha.

Oh, don't get me wrong; I wasn't saying that you were a hater and changed, rather the opposite(?) - that my perspective flipped dramatically when EA came; it was when I realised BG3 is not the game I had thought it to be and Larian aren't saints who can do no wrong. Before that I had rose-tinted glasses welded into my face and saw a lot of legitimate criticisms as "hating". I greatly appreciate you guys fighting the good fight, although I myself have pretty much lost hope for the game (and hang around because I can't let go). I'm fairly sure BG3 will be generally well-received, but it has a couple of (semi-)deal-breakers for me personally. I just hope at worst it won't damage the genre as a whole by being a very high-profile game with many flawed aspects that future cRPGs might blindly copy.


Well, BG3 certainly is "timeless"... :P

Also yes, random loot (with colour-coded rarities and all that) can go die in a fire. Or at least go back to Diablo-likes and MMOs, where it belongs.

I'd make an addendum to 2 where it can be placed into a bag of holding and it can be carried by a floating disk and placed in magical storage spaces, otherwise not in a basic backpack.

Me three; so far I haven't seen much that I don't like and a lot that I do. I'm not saying it'll be one of my all-time favorite games - I doubt it'll even make the top twenty, there's some fierce competition - but unless Larian really drops the ball at/after full release, I expect to have a lot of fun.

Sven all but confirmed that they are making BG3 for fans of DOS2. Not fans of the original series, not fans of tabletop DnD, but for their fans whom have already purchased their previous games.

The Larian cheese won't be going anywhere, and will eventually be released will be DOS gameplay with a thin veneer of Forgotten Realms, and a few hamfisted throwbacks to the previous two games in order to satisfy the licensing requirements.

This is such a missed opportunity on Wizard's part.

I imagine that after BG3, Larian will probably go back and make a proper DOS3 before tackling a possible BG4.

The major hope is that WotC gives Tactical Adventures an actual license and a hefty budget to go make a second series of DnD cRPGs in the meantime (preferably based in Waterdeep, there's a lot of potential there), to take advantage of the increased interest in the wake of BG3 and to fill in the gaps between other major DnD-focused projects, so that DnD enthusiasts can have some actual stability in terms of cRPG projects for once. TA has recently opened a new studio in France too, and for the time being they're said to be working on more Solasta-related things.

(But seriously, a cRPG series based in Waterdeep would be amazing. The lack of any recent cRPG taking place there is a huge missed opportunity. You can talk to Gale about the Yawning Portal and the Undermountain to get a small idea about what goes on in the mere outskirts of the city. There's a reason why there's a lot of adventures and modules taking place in the general area, basically double or triple the amount that Baldur's Gate has.)

I wouldn't mind a substantial expansion some time later with a campaign in Waterdeep. Since after the EA is done most the mechanics and engine will be completed and fine tuned as well as most generic Assets and Scripts, they could likely use the game as a base to make it.
But I am mainly focused on BG3 itself, it has a huge amount of potential and could become the best cRPG, which is probably why I am so critical.

He also confirmed they are working on improving combat and other mechanics based on feedback. Since we don't yet know which feedback - let's not take one comment out of the context of the entire interview, let them work and see what happens, hmm?

I agree with this. Lets wait and see whats in the update.

On oil flasks, alchemists fire and other surfaces yes D&D does have rules for those and Larian decided to homebrew their own instead and add them generously to a lot of the game encounters.

Niara and others have excellent posts elsewhere detailing Larian's changes to surfaces and how they affect other systems.

Yeah, it was fairly terrible, and just another case where they were warned multiple times since DOS 1 that the system detracted for the game but they decided to not listen to the "vocal minority" and disregard feedback.

At least this time having a game being (loosely) built over D&D is saving us the pain.
There are countless reasons I always preferred the way D&D handles itemization compared to a lot of these loot-focused computer games.
Let's take two examples here with Baldur's Gate 2 (which is pretty close to my golden standard when it comes to itemization) and Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 (but especially the second).

In BG2:
- items have a very narrow range of stat scaling between early game and top tier, meaning you go from basic weapons to +2/3 at most, then you adventure into +4/5 when you go in the insane top levels where you are basically a demigod.
- Consequently you have a limited amount of tiers for weapons. A common sword will always be the same, consistently, wherever you'll find it, a +1 magic weapon or armor will be relatively common but expensive, +2 will be a luxury, +3 a valuable artifact or so, etc. Every time a bandit will drop a iron sword you won't have any need to check it and compare it with the inventory, it will just be the same iron sword. And they are worth so little at one point you can even stop picking them up as vendor trash.
- Most of the difference between magic items in the same tier comes from special skills and properties enchanted on them ("attack twice in a turn", "does double damage against enemies of this group", allow you to self-cast celerity once a day", "negates this sort of debuff", "raise this stat to value X", etc, etc.).
- items are designed one by one, the valuable ones are unique, hand-placed in the game world ad when you find them you can confide on the fact you'll carry them for a long time, if not for the entire adventure.
- Merchants also have a defined set of more or less valuable possessions in their inventory and they can occasionally add few more unique items after some specific circumstances.

Conversely, in D: OS1 and 2:
- items range is insane. You start from weapons doing 3-4 damage to end game shit dealing 600 or so. That's a more than 100X scaling factor.
- You drop them constantly, they are randomly generated and stats are ever-changing. This means every time you kill some shit it will be time for a busywork of comparison in your already crowded inventory.
- The above mentioned item range also implies that every time you are finding something cool, it will INEVITABLY be obsolete barely a couple of levels later. While I'm not a fan of this sort of system even in games like Diablo, it can work there because you pay attention to a single character and loot is the whole point. When you are managing a full party of four characters or more, on the other hand, the frequency at which you'll need to compare items and the one at which you'll be asked to replace them become WAY too much busywork to keep up with in an enjoyable manner.
- The randomized nature of item stats and their random placement works actively to damage the reward system in the game, especially when you have god tier stuff dropping out of a random crate you inspected or popping up casually in a merchant inventory, while bosses drop useless garbage with stats misaligned for your needs.

I could go on, but these are the salient points on why I feel "Diablo-styled" loot has absolutely no place in this subgenre.
And I can't overstate how glad I am we are past it in BG3.

Well, hopefully the difficulty settings will save us so some of us can have all the fun we can handle with gear that keeps us ahead of the enemies and others can have the difficulty that requires constant micromanagement and places combat strategizing over enjoying the story. And an "Ironman" mode. I hope people who want it get an Ironman mode. Just wish they'd stop nerfing the fun out of the game.

This bugged me a lot in DOS2 as well (though less in DOS1 because it had a much more robust crafting system, to the level where IIRC you could upgrade your gear on your own as long as you had enough materials for it).

By late game, you had attacks doing thousands of damage. Your example of 600 damage is actually mid-game numbers. Either way, the stat bloat becomes so insane later on that you start looking for weapons and rings that can increase your critical hit chance in order to keep ahead of the ever increasing enemy armor and HP values, and any gear that didn't boost it was not worthy of consideration by endgame. It was so important that the mods that allowed people to refresh shop vendor inventory instead of waiting one real life hour were generally considered must have by the more hardcore sects of the DOS2 community.

The devs evidently noticed this behavior so much that gear that gave critical hit chance had their bonus halved in the definitive edition.

How did you manage to write two posts without mentioning Halsin? O_o
Or throwing confetti?

Whilst I agree on BG2 loot vs DOS2 Loot, I will add that a degree of randomisation can be fun.

For example, if the World or Act was populated with some random items at game start (and couldn't be changed by re-loading), then I would quite enjoy that. I.e. Location A known to have a Longsword +2 on this play through rolls a Rapier +1 (with added Fire damage) for example. That way re-exploring certain areas on multiple playthroughs has some additional appeal and one looks a little closer at the drops without having the DOS or Diablo feel of changing items every 5 metres.

Obviously not for every item, there need to be specific items that people can count on and build their characters around/ rejoice at finding, but yeah; I am not against randomised loot per say, just within the feel of a BG game.

An egregious oversight on my part!

Luckily you did, so here's some confetti:

I would love it if the feedback they are listening too is there too little D&D in a D&D game and they plan to make it closer to 5e RAW but I expect the feedback they will listen too is there too much D&D in BG3 and will cut out that boring D&D stuff to make it more EXCITING!

We'll see, I do think patch 5 is make or break for this project. What we see in it is the vision of what Larian wants BG3 to be.

That why 5e added bounded accuracy, to stop the bloat. It will be interesting to see if Larian respects that but I expect we'll see overpowered items in later chapters that ignore bounded accuracy.

I still find this bizarre businesswise.
They will appeal mostly to a 2~3 million DOS public instead of the 40 million D&D players. How can such a boring and unfun system have so many players?

I can understand to a certain degree. Not everyone who loves D&D loves cRPGS. So, it isn't truly 40 million they are appealing to. They know if they appeal to the DOS fans, they have a guaranteed 2-3 million buyers. Appealing to D&D fans, they can't be totally sure how many will actually buy their game.

My brother, for example, loves tabletop, but he hates video games. Even the best D&D video game would not appeal to him. His friends are the same. It's like saying that if Larian created a DOS tabletop that all 2-3 million DOS fans would buy it.

This said, I do want them to be more true to D&D especially since WotC is supposed to be working with them on this. I'm just saying I understand where they might be coming from.

The subreddit, Wolfheart's recent video about homebrew, this forum and a lot of other forums...
Everywhere players are talking about the game, they ask for "more DnD for a better balanced game" and "raised issues about the combat system".

I used "" because this is a summary.
Everyone agree that shove is fun but too powerfull, that advantages are too easy to have, that disengage shouldn't be a bonus action, that surface broke the concentration mechanic, that the rest system is really cheap... Everyone agree that the game rely more on meta gaming than anything else and that the balance is broken (easy in solo and hard with a party of 4)...

According to me that's what they listenned to and that's what he's talking about when he said that combats doesn't meet players expectations.
(Something like that, I don't remember exactly).

Ofc they'll try to please DoS fans. It would be stupid not to. And it would be stupid not to please DnD fans.
It's not like if it was not possible. DoS fans are not only players that wants surfaces everywhere and easy exploit as basic mechanics and DnD fans are not against a few homebrew.

BG3's combats only suffer the very bad balance of its mechanics and as a consequence : a ridiculous difficulty.

Patch 5 will solve most mechanical issues we have raised since the beginning. That's what I understood of this interview.

Well, I mean, to bring up Solasta - which apparently did a great job with 5E rules - didn't sell more than 500k copies as far as I can tell. So I don't think that's the secret to bringing in the 40 million d&d fans.

And reviewers generally loved the game and spoke glowingly of the mechanics and how they were implemented. It just has not translated to massive sales. I have no idea if that means they made enough to make a part 2. I hope so.

Currently BG3 has 2-5 Million sold. A lot of that is name-recognition and a lot is DOS fans. So the question is, what will bring in actual D&D fans?

Multiplayer I think is a good start. Good story elements and cinema quality VO work. But outside of that..???

Not saying I don't want the combat reforms we have all agreed the game needs. I just don't think its a magic bullet that will translate to sales.

I think the Bg name-recognition and advertising will have the most effect. People are kind of shallow like that.

I mean in 2 years I expect Mass Effect 4 and the new Dragon Age to have massive sales despite the fact that Bioware seems incapable of making good games anymore since EA bought them. (Mass Effect 3, DA Inquisition, and Andromeda were all lackluster compared to previous titles.)

It’s true. Even though I despised MEA and was meh about DAI, I am still very curious about DA4, because I love the world lore and am hopeful. Or maybe an idiot. Lol

ME Legendary Edition is a shameless cash grab that I refuse to buy on principle.

All to say…its the old adage. Easier to please the customer you have than get a new one. And people like what they know.

But who knows? Perhaps Larian is listening. We will see in next patch.

Exactly this. This partly explains why That Game didn't sell millions of copies; there wasn't the same name recognition OR budget for advertising. If TA had the name recognition as Larian, S*l*s*a had the same name recognition as Baldur's Gate, and TA had the same advertising and development budget, then who knows how many copies it would have sold? I'd wager a comparable number to BG3.

Importantly, for BG3, the name recognition will influence tabletop/BG1&2 fans to buy BG3, but it won't guarantee that they'll love it and play it for coutnless hours.

It also comes from an unknown developer at their first title and it didn't cost, what, 1/30th of what BG3 did? And it shows.
Do I really need to point to you why that's a disingenuous argument to make?

Look, Solasta is a game from a small indie studio with no advertising! I have told a few dozen people about it who never heard about it and when I mentioned, indie studio so art and story is only so so but it plays like tabletop, they bought the game and all those people told me they enjoyed it.

Using the fact that an indie studio with no advertising only sold 500,000 copies means there no market for more faithful D&D 5e games is a bit disingenuous to me. How many copied did Larian sell of their first game?

I expect it will sell but have many BG / D&D fans so disappointed so there will never be a Baldur's Gate 4.

I am not being disingenuous. I say all these things in my argument. And I am being sincere. I have watched tons of streamers cover Solasta in glowing terms and it has not resulted in sales. So either streamers are overrated (they are) or sticking to perfect 5E rules is not a magic bullet (it isn't). And I mention that BG3 has name recognition and Advertising on its side. People ARE shallow!

Btw, I am not offended but do you understand that accursing a person of being disingenuous is an insult? It gets thrown around a lot in this forum (not by me) and it's really a pretty harsh thing to throw at people.

Disingenuous
-not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous

That... Was surprisingly fitting. Bwahahahahahha :'D I LOVE IT!

Combat mechanics is a core part of a game.
It's not everything.
It's close to everything in Solasta because they don't have money to do anything else.

No one ever claim that is was enough to make a legendary games that would sold millions of copies.

Where are you guys getting the sales numbers for Solasta?

https://steamspy.com/app/1096530

https://steamdb.info/app/1096530/graphs/

I like how we went from " Barrelmancy must go ! " to " Ok listen here. So my grandfather is a barrel expert. He told mde not to put too many in a video game ". I just can't xD It's perfect.

"So the question is, what will bring in actual D&D fans? "

Baldur's Gate was originally a gift I received from a fellow D&D player and relative, who had read that it was a pretty good computer simulation of a D&D campaign. Were it not for the good press and a release date in time for Christmas, I probably never would have even seen it. The long term attraction to me was that I finally I got the chance to play out some high level adventures, try some 9th level spells, Drow areas, etc. that I had read so much about but never experienced in a table-top session. And there is still much more to go! If the goal is really to attract a large segment of D&D players, I would suggest one way is to connect with some of the classic D&D modules ... Keep on the Borderlands, Tomb of Horrors, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, visit the City of Brass, Village of Hommlet, Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, and so on. If you've got the D&D franchise, use it, eh?

But I will also say this, EA is just not for me. As much as I would love to help the developers, I really do not enjoy playing unfinished games.

I have no idea of what the hell are you even talking about, frankly.
he asked if anyone ever saw a real barrel and yes I did, plenty of them on a regular basis. Period.

Well out of context of this conversation an in the context of this forum it's hilarious. ^^

Well its not as funny as no-one getting it was an obvious joke from the show Arrested Development and rhetorical...

The barrel convo has been my favorite since I joined the forums. Spent a few hours watching old strongmen competitions with my fella as a result of it. We had many good laughs.

Looking at "Recent Games" in Steamspy Mass Effect Legendary Edition leads the pack with 500k to 1 million sales. Solasta is on the first page though, at 200k to 500k sales. Given the rather stark differences in marketing power behind those two publishers the Solasta result actually looks pretty good!

Only time will tell whether we get a sequel, but 500k sales (give or take) is probably a windfall for a small studio like Tactical Adventures. My confidence in their next project getting traction is very high.

I mean, I am hopeful as well. One thing to keep in mind about ME Legendary edition is that most sales probably went through Origin - EA's games platform - and not through Steam at all. Since the game has to be run through Origin anyway.

500k is not terrible. Its about 20 Million Gross - minus 30% for Steam is about 10-14 million for Tactical Adventures adjusting for sales - on a budget of 250k.

Given that the entire combat model is removed from the action economy of actual 5e, and is instead centered around attack/push/throw/jump, I don't see them reorganizing it in any meaningful way that doesn't maintain the existing combat focus. Not to mention the damage that they have done to class balance with their changes. They aren't scrapping what they have at this point given how far behind they seem to be at the moment.

The majority of gamers will buy in to games with appealing visuals. Solasta went for functioning visuals that are a few generations behind.

Imagine if Solasta had Halsin and other eye-candy characters like Baldur's Gate 3...

Tuco is hinting at return-on-investment and Solasta is probably doing very well with 500k copies sold.

Looks like DoS 2 reached 1 million sales by around 2 months of release. 500k for Solasta is looking better and better.

(I don't think Solasta will reach the same numbers as DoS 2, but even this is not an apples to apples comparison... Larian was well known when it released DoS 2. There is no real apples to apples comparison, but it might be interesting to compare to Divine Divinity lol).

Nice to have you back, @Uncle Lester!

Very sad that even after a year and a half, I am so very disappointed with this game. I am a true BG franchise FANatic, and have been dying for a BG3. I so want to be able to love this game, but just cannot in its current state.

This is how I've been describing this game right from the very beginning. It is being made only for the D:OS fans and no one else. Now, I'm not saying don't try to bring in the D:OS fans. That would be silly to say. But surely it is not too much to expect that a game titled "Baldur's Gate THREE" will be made with an eye to appealing to fans of Baldur's Gate ONE and TWO.

Steamspy "data" is not particularly useful, imo. Firstly, it obviously leaves out a lot of other ways in which people may be buying their games. But even taking it to represent Steam sales data is highly flawed because Steam uses ranges of sales, 200k to 500k, 2m to 5m, etc. And then people conveniently latch on to the high end of the range and claim that is the sales number. So for BG3 EA, for example, if it falls in the 2 - 5 m range, BG3 fans of course want to claim the sales figure is 5 m which is quite ridiculous. At best I would say it is likely sitting right at 2 m.

Divine Divinity: 500,000 - 1,000,000.
Solasta: 200,000 - 500,000.
Not really a useful comparison though. When Divine Divinity was initially released neither steam nor GOG existed. I would guess most of its sales were CDs and none of those sales would be shown in those figures. The total number of people who played games back then was also smaller, so comparing an audience from a game back then to a game now isn't something you can feasibly do. Also, these games aren't even in the same genre, so its like comparing a racing game to a puzzle game. The market was also less diluted though, so people had less to choose between. There are also other variables like the fact that the one was released 20 years ago and the other was only released now which muddies the water and the fact that Divine Divinity had a publisher to advertise for them and Solasta did not. Or how about the fact that Solasta is able to appeal to an audience which is attracted to a specific ruleset (the D&D ruleset) whilst Divine Divinity as an original IP could not. As you can see, trying to make a comparison is a little pointless.

Assuming you were asking non rhetorically however, there are some figures.

Steamspy is very useful. The data from it is used by a lot of publishers as well as developers to make a case for whether or not there is a business sense in making a specific game. Considering that, last I checked, Steam makes up 90% of the sales on PC its very close to a monopoly and using sales data from Steam is probably fairly accurate. Those ranges are there to provide a (from memory) 95% confidence interval and the data is not provided by steam, it is extrapolated via things like achievements data. Its highly unlikely the sales figures exist outside of that range. Trying to make assumptions like, "BG 3 is at 2m and Solasta is at 500,000" is a misunderstanding of the methodology used to extrapolate that data to begin with. Its also misunderstanding the use case of this information.

It's also "lifetime sales since arriving on Steam" vs "one month since launch".

Yeah, I went back and edited that in while you were busy responding. There are a shitton of variables to consider here making the comparison completely useless.

Larian allows access to the BG3 EA through GoG, Steam and Stadia. There is no other way to get it, currently. (Obviously that will change on full release, and additional platforms are likely).

Solasta sells their finished game through Steam, GoG, Gamesplanet, Microsoft Store and Humble Bundle.

The bulk of sales will be from Steam for both.

In terms of how many people signed up for the BG3 EA I think 2 Million is a safe number.

In terms of Solasta I am hoping that the number is 500k but you are right (or according to your logic) it could be as low as 200k. Which would mean 5 Million profit on a 250k investment. Still good but less promising.

There are no absolutes here - its statistical analysis to get a "sense" of where sales may be. Tactical Adventurers is not publishing its sales numbers which is a bad sign as companies do like to brag when they hit certain milestones, which tells me they have not broken a million. As dumb and arbitrary as that may seem it caries a totem-like significance straight from Campbells -The Power of Myth.

Valheim on the other hand sold 2 Million copies in 13 days and was up to 5 million by March and they made sure everyone knew it.

Steamspy 's data reliability took a severe hit when Valve made all user profiles hidden by default and it never completely recovered since then.

It used to have a margin of error of 5% at most, even for a lot of small sellers, as confirmed by several developers regarding their own games over the years, while these days it can swing WAY more wildly.
There have been cases where it was confirmed to be wrong by a factor of ten or more. And it's especially unreliable (I've been told) for anything under the 500K these days.

On a side note, while it was a useful tool to have, I can't even be sad about its downfall, given who's working on it and managing it.

Could there be some pressure from WotC to make BG3 closer to D&D after Solasta proved that 5e RAW does work for video games after all? =)

At this point, making BG3 even less like D&D and more like DOS or "videogame", whatever that even means, has no grounds. Every omission or addition to the 5e system has only made the game worse.

Before EA was released to the public, Swen said that they started with a 100% faithful adaptation of the ruleset. They should have released the version that was closest to RAW for EA instead of the ~50% version we got and worked from there together with the community to see what actually works for a videogame.

I honestly don't think WotC gives a shit as long as BG3 is going to make a lot of money.

Yes, just look at Dark Alliance, D&DINO game or Sword Coast Legends, another D&DINO. Hasbro owns the company that made Dark Alliance and in a recent interview, Hasbro stated that is have like 1/2 dozen more D&DINOs in the works, they just don't care as long as a game sells. To Hasbro, D&D is just name recognition like G.I Joe, Barbie or Transformers. As long as something sells, who care how awful it is.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/06/wotc-says-the-future-of-dd-is-video-games.html

Hasbro just going to mine the idea of D&D since 5e and stuff like Critical Role has made it popular.

I think you are over interpreting. Their "starting point" might have been RAW DnD, but it doesn't mean that they implemented whole system as in PnP and then changed it. As some of the original impomentations (like reactions) would require their own UI and systems, I find it more likely that they made the decision on how to impliment certain mechanics, before they started putting them in game. They are still putting stuff into the game, so certainy at no point was there a comprehensive, pure DnD BG3 build.

And if anything, EA is the perfect opportunity to test their homebrew ideas on the audience. There is no point on giving players raw systems, if you intend to change them.

Community doesn't get to design the game. That never happens. At best we can be guinea pigs for Larian's mid development experiements.

Let's be honest, what that means was, they flipped through the Source books for 10 minutes and said "BORING" and started with DOS2 instead.



also, this. WotC is not quite as bad as Games Workshop, but give them time, they'll get there

No these are not margins of error. They are ranges. And saying a sales figure falls somewhere between 2 million and 5 million is the equivalent of saying nothing at all. It is completely useless information and does not qualify as data. You cannot input a range into a dataset. It makes no sense. In the case of BG3, is it 2 m? Is it 5 m? Is it something else? Who knows. And it makes a HUGE difference whether it is 2 m versus 5 m. And if Steamspy is saying "we don't know if it is 2 m or 5 m," then they are literally saying there is a margin of error of something like 95% to what they're saying, and anything with that huge a margin of error is useless information.

Yes, exactly. My way of interpreting any numerical information provided to me in the form of a range is to use the lowest end of the range as my number. That is what is most honest. So for Solasta, a game I backed and love, that number (per Steamspy) is 200k.

There was no 100% faithful adaptation which was also in end-user-playable form. That much is clear from what HAS been released. There are only a handful of classes and fewer sub-classes, many missing spells and mechanics, missing races, missing features like Expertise, and so on and so forth. Whatever they did have might have been rules-faithful, but it was only a partial amount of the possible game space. Even then, it was pre-alpha and thus unstable and not correctly working properly.


Also, games can't be developed by committee. Larian discovered this when trying to write the D:OS 2 Origin stories. Everyone at Larian could contribute ideas, but too many cooks spoil the broth and it had to be pared down to just writers in order to actually get them finished. Democracy doesn't work for development, a direction must be chosen and that enforced, otherwise it spins its wheels and gets nowhere.

From Steamspy: About.
So its even more accurate than I stated, using a 98% confidence interval rather than a 95% confidence interval. As for how accurate it is exactly, well, here are a few anecdotal testimonies from developers.

Whilst the exact margins of error are not provided to you unless you subscribe to the service, you can be pretty damn absolutely sure the margins of error are within the given ranges they provide there. Ergo, the statistic has some value. How about you actually learn something about Steamspy first before commenting on it?

Hey thanks for the link. The original interview of Chris Cocks in the gamesindustry.biz article, which this article quotes, is even more informative. I for one am thrilled we will be getting so many other D&D games. At least this way, given how bitterly disappointed I am with BG3, I have those other games to look forward to as POSSIBLY being good D&D videogames I will enjoy playing (though definitely NOT Dark Alliance). The game being developed by Hidden Path Entertainment in particular (AAA open-world third-person game) has my strong interest.

That's an article from 2017. BEFORE the change to the default Steam profiles (used to gather Steamspy's data) that I was mentioning in my reply and that severely compromised Steamspy's reliability as a source.

It was also from a time where the "range" used as margin of error was measured in few thousands units at most (as you'll notice if you read the article you linked). Not hundreds of thousands or even millions as it is today.

Yeah, don't be an ass. I'm quite confident my knowledge of statistics is way beyond yours.

All this is saying is that Steamspy has 98% confidence the true sales number falls somewhere between 2 million and 5 million. It is easy as pie to have that kind of confidence when you place your value between such a humongous range (i.e. margin of error). The confidence is not the issue. The range is the issue. In any other walk of life, if you gave someone a margin of error of 3 million and then said, "Don't worry; I have 98% confidence the true number is somewhere within that 3 million margin of error," they would laugh you out of the room.

It didn't compromise the reliability, it should still have a confidence interval of 98%, its just given the fact that you have less useful data to extrapolate from, the size of the range has become much larger. Where as before they could estimate within say ~20,000 on a game with 10,0000,0000 sales, now they need to provide a much larger band (say 1,000,000) for example. Whilst the 2nd figure is less useful, it will still hit the mark just as often as the previous statistic did.

Exactly! Thanks for pointing this out.

Do I need to quote you again?
I was responding to this. We are in agreement now, they are margins of error, correct? If you are going to so confidently state something which is incorrect, be prepared to be smartassed out of the room. Furthermore, Steamspy collects many other analytics which are exceedingly useful. The analysis of user reviews as well as looking at trends like the day 1 concurrent player count followed by the decline in players are both useful points of data which can be used by someone who is new to the industry and potentially looking to make a new game to help them evaluate the market case for their potential game.

The range 200k to 500k may not be as useful as 210k to 220k... but to say that it is "useless" is a stretch. Obviously, the new data is much less precise, but it does allow you to conclude that Solasta outsold the game "My Friend Stalin" (0 to 20k owners) at a very high confidence level. Granted, you would probably guess that correctly too.

We are realistically not going to know the ultimate impact of what effect BG3 and Solasta will have on cRPGs moving forward, let alone the wider gaming industry, for years. It appears to me that we are finally seeing evidence of what impact DOS2's combat design is having on other games, with Project Triangle Strategy and Lost Eidolons incorporating field effect elements into their games that are obviously inspired by DOS2. Zoria: Age of Shattering appears to have adopted the AP system instead, and the devs for that game have been on record saying that they've been inspired by DOS2 (and it plays much closer to DOS1 compared to DOS2 otherwise).

That said, 200,000 minimum sales for Solasta isn't bad, and actually pretty decent given the context. I don't think anyone was expecting earth-shattering numbers, but I also don't think anyone was expecting Pillars of Eternity II levels of bomba either, which was the bigger worry. I don't think POE2 ever made it past 500k despite it having a much higher budget than most other cRPGs. I think Pathfinder: Kingmaker has gone past 1 million at this point, but it had an extremely rocky start due to being an unfinished buggy mess at the time, but the base game was so strong that it flipped its reputation around completely once it got fixed and now enjoys insane word of mouth.

That's very possible, and I think there is a lot of good to learn from D:OSs design, especially when it comes to PC RPG design. Externalizing status effects, buffs and debuffs into visible hazards on the tactical maps is great, and It feels silly that D:OS had to remind people that AP is good.

It is very much modern XCOM situation - I very much like the presentation, but underlying systems need work.

DOS2 has good systems, I just wouldn't try applying them so strongly to DND.

My post had nothing to do with Solasta vs BG 3, just with the assertion that Steamspy is mostly useless now - its not. It is still exceptionally useful to potential developers, even if it is less useful than it was before. There is a reason it still exists and is maintained, because there is a very good business case for it and because the data has an audience that wants it.


Regardless of whether Solasta sold 200,000 or 500,000 I still think it did pretty well. Even if we knew exactly how many copies it sold however, we could not properly estimate its gross revenue, let alone its profit, because the game is sold at different prices in different regions and we don't have access to a breakdown of the sales figures by region. Once the game has been out for longer, discounts will also complicate the matter. For those curious, here is the price of BG 3 and Solasta within different regions.

Solasta.
BG 3.

DOS had plenty of lousy systems even ignoring the comparison with D&D, frankly.
It's a game that I liked despise some of its design choices, rather than because of it.

There's an underlying problem, though: it's a game that thanks to its high production value (nice enough graphics, fully voiced, pretty to look at, reasonably intuitive to approach, etc) popularized a former "niche genre" among people who never paid attention to it before, so these "new fans of the genre" now seem to think everything about its design was pristine and it can't be topped.

People are always afraid of changes. Almost like those despisable BG2 fans

I can't even tell what you are trying to say, frankly.

Nor I'm sure where the "fear of changes" even comes into play here.

If you mean does Steam consider this to be a margin of error? Sure. But I don't, which is my whole point and what I was saying. No respectable statistician would consider claiming a range of 3 million as a margin of error (unless you're dealing with numbers that are astronomical).

But feel free to believe what you will.

Yeah I think 200k in less than a month since release for a game with virtually zero publicity or name recognition is pretty damn good.

FYI, PoE2 has passed 1 million in sales. PoE1 and P:Km are about 2 million. And The Outer Worlds is at 3 million. These are actual numbers, publicly mentioned in some form or another by their respective devs/publishers, not Steamspy b.s.

Play nice. We don't need baiting.

Was just joking, I'm kinda part of them. But yeah, you're right.

PoE2 made it past 1 million? That's news to me. The way most people talked about it, you'd think it failed completely. Well, relative to its budget, it probably did, Obsidian seems to behave like it performed way under expectations. A good chunk of its sales were probably long after release through sales.

It led Obsidian to bankrupcy so I think it solves POE2 sales question ^^"' But yeah, I heard it was past a million. Wasn't enough for the budget invested.

Outer Worlds at 3 millions points to the fact that mediocrity never goes unrewarded in this industry.

Poe 2 sales at launch were somewhere in the 100k ballpark if I remember right.
If it was 1 million from the start Obsidian’s CEO would have danced naked on the company’s rooftop.

Bankruptcy? They did get bought by Microsoft, and had been struggling for years prior to that. But I wouldn't call that outright bankruptcy.

Kingmaker getting 2 million is good news though. Such an unexpectedly good game for me after I was mildly let down by PoE2's haphazard pacing in the end, even with all the bugs. Probably stood out to me more because it had such a fun and aytpical premise instead of trying to be epic with flowery writing. WotR so far is even better for me on so many levels, I've never had such confidence in a game before. I imagine it's going to be a DOS2-style breakout hit.


Yeah, I remember people were trying to extrapolate sales through Fig investment returns about 3 months after the fact. People figured that it probably sold about 200-300k in that time period. But probably the biggest sign of failure to me at the time was just how little chatter there was for each of the game's expansions. I think by the time the last expansion came out, I only saw like 5 threads on Reddit talking about it on release week, which was a clear sign that the project met disaster.

I would hope that taught all future cRPG developers not to plan for expansions, or at least don't announce a season pass before release, because that kind of model may backfire hard. I suspect what most people did was wait until all content was released first, and bought everything through sales, because cRPGs are infamously buggy out the door anyway.

Apparently it picked up after 2019, but a year after release it had sold only around 100K copies. That can answer those who are comparing BG3 and Solasta's sales, a marketing budget goes a long way.
We can say PoE was a known brand when PoE2 came out and it bombed hard due to no advertising.

A modded POE2 plays great. Fixes lots of issues. For myself I love the <layed back> story, do whatever go wherever you want <short stories> attitude of the game. The atmosphere and style in itself is an A+ in my book. Who gives a shit if it didnt sell well (really?? people talk out of their ass when saying their went bankrupt because of the game...) Like thats a measure of quality in modern games lol. What are we doing NOT playing more mobile games, they are the best sellers out there.

Obsidian was not facing bankruptcy because of PoE2. It's part of the really crazy and silly things people have been saying related to PoE2.

In the same interviews where Obsidian people said PoE2 had surpassed 1 million in sales, they also said they broke even on PoE2 financially. So the game may have been a financial disappointment, but by no means was it a financial failure, even though that word--failure--gets thrown around liberally by people in forums like this one. And Obsidian has also said they have not closed the door to a PoE3 in the future, saying they see a potential market for it but their devs are a bit burned out on PoE and need to go work on other projects for a bit before returning to that IP.

As for TOW, whether it is a good or poor game is in the eye of the beholder. It is not a game for me, but that is purely because it is first person and I don't do first person. But clearly many gamers love the game, as evidenced by very strong sales numbers for its two expansions, and it has received strong critical praise and the announcement of a big-budget sequel.

Well, the thing is. I found PoE1 to be extremely boring. It was going for dark and gritty but honestly Tyranny did a better job, had a better story, more actual choices, and the Tyranny combat system made more sense and was more fun.

So when PoE2 came along I was like- meh!

Although now that it has turn based combat I may look at it again.

I guess people expects CRPGS to by like WARZONE and the Wicther nowdays. Combat and action every minute of gameplay. Stuff everywhere to pickup. Loot loot and more loot. I find that MEEEH, boring and repetitive. Point being, that stuff just SELLS. Boardgames is a great example. Shit like monopoly, risk and UNO outsells all the incredible thousands of boardgame that came out the last 20 years...Fast passed brainless luck based games outselling quality stuff.
Also the masses prefer gambling and sex to games. But add those to games...oh man, your selling millions.
So yea, nothing we can do about it but scram to Indie devs...the last bastion of creativity for games and hope they dont become gobbled up by their ego, AAA beast and mobile daemons.

Nah not really. The success of Valheim kinda proves it. I know it's a totally different category of games ( it's more for the survival / rpg crowd) but it's literally about cutting wood in a forest. Like that's what you do. You add to this the popularity of grind games and mobile games....I think it's about simplicity.

You make a system hard to learn and it rejects a lot of people straight away. They either don't have the will or the time for that. It's quite difficult to satisfy both crowds.

-Those who want a complex game, where knowing how each spells counters another, where and when to use it, how to position , what to expect from the enemy, how to manage your ressources .
and
- Those who want spells, a good story , managing their ressources but they want the solution to be fairly straightforward. Not necessarily easy but they won't buy the game if it earns the reputation of " The ghitlyanki patrol slaugthered me, and that's just the start. It gets harder".

Making both of those happy is what's what Larian is asked to do right now. All those who lack "something" in the combat of BG3 and provide previous BG titles as an example are probably in the first group.
Inbetween posts for " combat rebalance", less surfaces caused too op etc etc you have posts of people asking for help, claiming mages are underpowered etc.

I'm generalizing here but you catch my drift. Larian games became so popular partially because they can appease both publics ( to some extent). I just hope they will lean a TINY bit towards those critisizing the game to find just the right spot.

"... monopoly, risk and UNO outsells all the incredible thousands of boardgame that came out the last 20 years...Also the masses prefer gambling and sex to games. But add those to games...oh man, your selling millions"


Hmm, I suppose instead of houses, I could put some strumpets on my St. Charles Place property, since it is right next to the jail anyway.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you already know that they won't go back to the PoE series until they're sure they figured out why PoE2 wildly performed below everyone's expectations. For now they've pivoted over to Avowed, the first person game taking place in the Pillars universe.

Still though, this many cRPGs selling more than 1-2+ million would have been unheard of before PoE and DOS1 entered the picture a little over 5 years ago, after the void that the BG series left in its wake. Unless you count the Dragon Age series.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE! <3 I already knew this, but every time it gets mentioned I feel my heart jumping out of sheer joy!



Correct, that is the official statement as far as I know (and I've done my fair amount of digging on the subject since I absolutely adored PoE1 and felt like PoE2 was pretty well done as well!).

Imma try my absolute best to enjoy Avowed when it comes, but I dread the FPS choice they made (I absolutely *HATE* first person view...). But I'll try it! And I will try my best to like it as well!

I really hope there's a PoE3 - I was a bit disappointed in the second game, but I still love the Watcher and their companions and want to see the rest of their journey. Unfortunately I just can't stand playing in first person so I'll have to skip Avowed.

If anything, I'd like to see a new game in that universe, with a new set of companions maybe, there is a lot of potential in just the world alone, could go forward or even back to some past event.

I loved both PoE games, with Deadfire firmly cemented as my favorite game ever, so it's nice to know that the door to a true sequel isn't entirely shut. I get the sense from all I've read that Deadfire's reception realy hurt the devs and left them pretty disappointed, so I can understand them wanting to step away for a while. Hopefully in a couple of years they'll have their passion reignited and will be ready to dive right back into it. As for Avowed, I'm not a big fan of first person games, but The Outer World was brilliant in my opinion and I love the world of Eora so I am waiting eagerly for Avowed to come out.

I wouldn't expect it anytime soon, though. They have their hands full with Avowed and TOW2, so I'd guess like... maybe 8-10 years if they decide to do PoE3 next?

I don't know exact numbers. It was disappointment as PoE1 did really well, and PoE2 got much bigger budget hoping for a bigger return on the investment. It made it's money back eventually, that I know for sure, so it didn't fail, but wasn't a massive profit either, unless pre-Avowed hype will boost sales.

I seriously doubt that Avowed is a kneejerk reaction to PoE2 not succeeding - I doubt those decisions are made overnight, and Feargus (Obsidian CEO) has been talking about Skyrim-in-Eora, way before PoE2 was out. You are more or less correct about PoE3, though.

Man, I thought all things considered Poe II was a net improvement over the (very mediocre) first, but reading people describing it as their favorite game ever is vaguely bizarre.


That aside, for anyone interested most of these games have very entertaining/informative "post mortem" available on Youtube:

Why? PoE fans from my experience tend to be very well aware games shortcomings - the most passionate fans I interacted with, also tended to be the most critical. PoE1&2 are easily among my favourite games in recent years, though they both could be much better - that’s one of the main reasons I hope that, after a break and rethinking, Obsidian will attempt another one. There is room for improvement, but I like overall direction and underlying goals. I played both games multiple times, and I am itching to do another run. And I must say, I enjoy those games more and more with each playthrough, in spite of their flaws. They are interestingly flawed games, at least to me.

Unfortunately, they seem to land in this awkward niche space that doesn’t satisfy people who actually like DnD systems (aka. Kingmaker) and doesn’t manage to bring newcomers in large numbers

So many things he brought up make me really nervous. No DM mode, which really makes me thing character export/import isn't a priority. No Paladin, because they don't want Smite to pop up..........what??? And they are modeling the Melee characters after OS, which sounds like laziness to me. I have scoured the forums and nowhere is anyone asking about "D:OS melee combat". I see a lot of people asking for this to NOT be D:OS3, but it looks like that's what we are getting. Where do we sign up for refunds?

@Dez, @Tarlonniel, others, don't give up hope on Avowed. I too cannot play a game in first-person, but I remain hopeful that Obsidian will do what Bethesda did with Skyrim, which is to have a third-person option for the game. When TOW came out as only first-person, and many of us complained in the Obsidian forum, one of the devs actually posted a response saying they would've liked to include a third-person option but their budget did not allow it. Now, with MS money, this should not be an issue.

Well said. I also consider both PoE games among my most favorite cRPGs, and games I will replay for years. Yes they have flaws, but that is to be expected when someone is developing an entirely new game mechanics system from scratch. But most importantly for me, the setting and lore of the games is fantastic and really interesting and I cannot wait to play more in that setting.

I love first person RPGs, but I can't get that hyped for Avowed because TOW is so mediocre but sold well, meaning that Obsidian might think they should do the same thing with the next game.

Because while the PoE games are decent (subjectively speaking) there isn't much special about them either, if you have experienced the greatness (also subjectively speaking) of storytelling, world building, combat and character development in other games of the genre. They don't come close to the other games in any aspect. The games may have elements that could make a cRPG great, but none of those elements were pushed to any significant degree. That's how I feel.

Because almost everything about POE II was more or less mediocre, bar some fairly pretty visuals for the genre (especially compared to the predecessor, which at time was downright ugly).

You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but I don't share it. I quite liked PoE 2. I won't claim that it was a perfect game of course, but I found the setting to be interesting, and the itemization was (again, IMO) quite good. I would really like to see more games follow the path of unique and upgradeable items sprinkled throughout rather than have the strongest items gated by the end game.