This is a minima-list summary of the new features that were announced during the Panel From Hell 3 / LarPG show and that will be shipped with Patch 5.
There will probably be an official list in the Community Update, when Larian publishes one. Whether this will come right after the Panel From Hell 3, or to accompany the release of Patch 5, I do not know.
The Patch will be released on Tuesday 13th July 2021.
Upcoming features for Patch 5.
New UI for Ability Checks during cutscenes. - Swen called this the Active Roll System. - It shows the check's Difficulty Class and the various bonuses that apply : Ability Score Bonus, Proficiency, and other sources (such as spells). - It allows to cast spells from within the Ability Check's UI. - For what it's worth, it seems as if the dice will look a bit different and no longer be red.
Background goals. - Larian added specific mini-quests throughout the game, that are related to background. - You will get inspiration points by "playing to background". I guess this means at least completing the background-related quests that you find. - I believe I heard there will be 130 background goals. Not sure if this is intended for EA, or throughout the game. For context, there are 13 official backgrounds in BG3, so that's 10 per background.
Camp setting now matches the place where you sleep. Examples mentioned include Underdark, Crypt, Cave, Forest.
Rest system : new mechanism, resource management. - This puts limits on long rests and start creating a difference between short rest from long rest. - If you eat enough food when resting at camp, you get the benefits of a long rest. If not, you get only the benefits of a short rest. - Thus, managing supplies (both food and class abilities) becomes a thing. And finding food becomes important. - This mechanism is announced as a trial. No guarantee that it will remain in that form in the final version. Swen explicitly said they are seeking feedback on this.
Jump and Disengage. - Jump and Disengage are now separated. - Also, there is now be a hotkey for jump. - Disengage now costs an Action. This was described off-handedly by Swen as an answer to a chat question, and is meant to be a trial in Patch 5.
Concentration can now be stopped.
New gameplay / story content. - While Larian announced that the focus of this Patch was on systems, not content, there will be a couple of new things. - He mentioned new cutscenes in camp. Check out Scratch and the Owlbear. - It is apparently be possible to free Shadowheard in the Nautiloid. Expect her to be the teased surprise on the beach. - I think Swen also mentioned new quest permutations.
Characters now say things when the player issues them orders. - Basically like when you select or give order to units in some RTS games or CRPGs. - What they say depend on the order : Move, Hide, etc. - Swen called this the point-and-click system. I'm sure someone can find / knows of a better name for this.
New combat actions. - Non-lethal attacks. This should apparently be activated via a toggle. - Disarm.
Inspiration point cap. - The cap will apparently be 4 Inspiration Points (for the whole party, I'd assume, not per character). - Gaining Inspiration Points beyond the cap should bring you XP instead.
Visual effects for spells. - The VFX team has been working on theming spells to classes, if they are class-specific. - I don't remember if this was for Patch 5 or later.
Crafting/loot. Apparently more crafting is coming.
Swen also did a sort of live AMA (Ask Me Anything), answering some questions from the Twitch chats. So here is additional information, not necessarily related to Patch 5.
Act 2 in EA : definitely not. - Overall, mechanical content (such as races, classes) and gameplay/story content (new maps, quests, plot progression) is definitely something people should not expect.
Reactions will not change in this patch. But it is a something that Swen actually mentioned. And he said they'll be expanding (?). Basically it sounded like they're working on it.
Inventory management : they are working on a revamp.
Multiclass will come. But much later. Probably.
Difficulty level : will come very late.
The AI is going to start using/knowing the rules of the game. (Not sure I caught that well.)
We also learned that Swen is a save-scumming expert, though that wasn't as part of the AMA and I doubt this was an intended Patch 5 announcement.
They didn't mention anything about any changes to shove, throwing, backstab, or height advantage/disadvantage, but I suspect they want to see how main action disengage affects the encounter balance first. The one potentially negative thing is that main action disengage by itself is basically a straight nerf to the player rather than affecting any existing encounters from an enemy economy standpoint, now it's going to be slightly harder to contest enemies for high ground at the start of a fight, which is still just as important as it has been since the start of this EA. It also means it's significantly harder to get backstab advantage now, especially if your melee is surrounded by multiple enemies.
But still, the rest will most likely come later.
Overall everything mentioned here is definitely for the better, and I definitely agree with disengage being a main action now, I just didn't want to see it happening without all of the other issues being addressed along with it. I now have actual hope for the direction of this game.
I think it's still a bonus action. At least it's in the "bonus action" part of the UI.
Yeah, pretty sure jump is still a bonus action. Which isn't an issue, the real problem was the disengage which they've addressed. A non-bonus action jump would be far too much of a nerf to player economy, especially with how many of the encounters are designed.
They went overboard with the hype, I thought we were getting a new class or at least a new race, subrace. The githzerai name drop at the end was a nice touch, so I'm crossing fingers they add them in the near future. The changes and new implementations are nice and welcome, but I'll have to take your guys word of them since this isn't enough to make me reinstall the game, sadly. See you when the next patch rolls out, stay hopeful.
I'm totally fine with not seeing a lot of new content in EA, I like the idea of having the majority of stuff on the full release be new, I think that's the best option. I will say though that they should probablt introduce if not all then a majority of the classes in EA, because those definitely need testing to make sure they work with Larian's system changes.
Overall though I'm quite excited by this patch. It's got a lot of stuff I'm enthused about and it leaves me hopeful for the direction of the game. In particular I'm hopefull that they'll continue tweaking combat to something better-balanced. At the very least things like separating Jump and Disengage as well as changing how camping works shows they are actually listening and taking feedback under advisement.
I would still really like it if they gave us a list of commonly brought up issues that they acknowledge so we know what they're aware of. I fully support them not announcing stuff until they have something to show but I don't think it would be a bad thing for them to say "hey, this handful of issues you guys keep bringing up? We're looking at them. We're not saying we'll change them or how, but we know you guys care about themso you don't have to keep bringing them up."
So can you still jump to disengage, or will jumping now provoke a counterattack? I am not a fan of spending an action to position myself, since the main point of combat in this game is to outposition masses of enemies and deny their actions. Any action you spend is not spend on the main combat goal, so it is a net loss.
Got to admit I'm pleasantly surprised by this. Particularly the changes to the rest mechanic addressing criticisms of lack of immersion and balance is huge. The disarm "homebrew" (optional) mechanic leaves me both worried and hopeful as it seems to indicate Larian is balancing the action economy. More positive about the direction of the gameplay after this (never worried about Larian not measuring up elsewhere).
[quote=I would still really like it if they gave us a list of commonly brought up issues that they acknowledge so we know what they're aware of. I fully support them not announcing stuff until they have something to show but I don't think it would be a bad thing for them to say "hey, this handful of issues you guys keep bringing up? We're looking at them. We're not saying we'll change them or how, but we know you guys care about themso you don't have to keep bringing them up."[/quote]
Technically, they did just that. They noted U/I changes, Inventory management changes, Reactions, and Crafting would all be receiving further changes/updates. They noted multi-class and difficulty settings will be included, but not until much further along in development. They added mechanics to include relevant spells and abilities in skill checks - an issue that has been raised - I can easily see this ultimately impacting areas as diverse as conversations and pickpocket attempts. They made drastic changes to camping and resting, an area that has received a huge amount of comment, and indicated this is still an area under development. Changes to the use of food, concentration, jump and disengage are clearly in response to complaints and comments about the previous mechanics. They continue to make changes in the way Origin companions act/react - certainly an issue raised over and over. Addition of new systems such as Inspiration mini - quests and the "point and click" and camping systems certainly suggest they are not "wedded" to everything they started out with in EA. They also made it clear certain things would definitely NOT be part of EA - there will be no Act 2 content, they will NOT include every race in EA, they likely will NOT advance characters to lvl 5, and certainly not in the foreseeable future, they will not be adding multi-player mechanics anytime soon, if at all during EA.
To me, that's a pretty broad review of what they are willing to look at, revise, and change, some idea of what to expect short and long term, and what kind of things they are looking at. Is it comprehensive? No. Is it a guarantee? No. Is it going to satisfy those who regularly post here? I highly doubt it. But it IS their definition of responsive, and it is not unreasonable - we have probably a year to a year and a half of development time still ahead.
Wait, so is the camp meant to be a base of operations or does it change every night? that would imply that your entire group (animals/skeleton all) are following you around the whole time? That's..odd.
So can you still jump to disengage, or will jumping now provoke a counterattack? I am not a fan of spending an action to position myself, since the main point of combat in this game is to outposition masses of enemies and deny their actions. Any action you spend is not spend on the main combat goal, so it is a net loss.
Jumping will provoke an attack of opportunity. You'll have to think about your positions not to be engaged. That's how "positionning" works in every good tactical games (>< position doesn't really matter because you can always disengage and teleport and...)
And if you're really engaged you won't HAVE to use your action : - moving and take the AOO to attack - use a bonus action spell to disengage (i.e misty step) - use your rogue cunning action disengage as a bonus action - attack with the threatened status - use your action to disengage and loose your action - use your action to disengage but use metamagic because you're a sorceerer and cast your spell as a bonus action - and so on.
Originally Posted by Boblawblah
Wait, so is the camp meant to be a base of operations or does it change every night? that would imply that your entire group (animals/skeleton all) are following you around the whole time? That's..odd.
We'll have to see. I think that the main camp will stay the "main camp" but that they'll introduce "mini camp" in some locations. I guess the followers will stay at the main camp ?
Personally, I would have been happy if they just released that video and not bothered with these panels from hell, waste of staff resources. I expect they are being done to please / reward Swen.
So, overall I am happy, they are making some progress but I expect once I test patch 5 next week, I'll find issues to be unhappy about.
Personally, I would have been happy if they just released that video and not bothered with these panels from hell, waste of staff resources. I expect they are being done to please / reward Swen.
So, overall I am happy, they are making some progress but I expect once I test patch 5 next week, I'll find issues to be unhappy about.
Folks watching live on Twitch seemed to be enjoying the spectacle - so it likely met whatever PR goal they and WotC were after.
New UI for Ability Checks during cutscenes: Yay! Really looking forward to using spells in conversations!
Background goals: Great to have something connected to backgrounds, but I will have to wait and see what these are.
Camp setting now matches the place where you sleep: The previous camp was fine with me, but I know many disliked it. Hopefully this will be a big improvement for them!
Rest system : new mechanism, resource management: I hate resource management, so I will have to see how annoying this is.
Everything that was announced sounds good. The UI roll stuff looks especially good. Hopefully like in say Solasta the resource stuff will be difficulty-optional, but I like that they have included it.
Really does feel like a lot of issues have been directly addressed (jump hotkey lol), and it makes me positive that other mechanics stuff will be addressed.
I especially like any additional roleplay stuff so the Backgrounds stuff is exciting.
Edit: I should also say that the mention of "nested tooltips" is really good - the tooltips were imo lacking so this is a really welcome thing.
I understand that many people don't like resource management. However, to put it simply, Dungeons & Dragons gameplay is built around resource management.
Ick. The long resting resource management is the only thing I'm not looking forward to. Time to start magicking up cheese wheels from the cheat-o-sphere!
The resource management is PHENOMENAL. Finally people can't just spam long rests all the damn time with impunity! It's almost as if people now have to *gasp* be a bit strategic about their resources! =)
Finally people can't just spam long rests all the damn time with impunity! It's almost as if people now have to *gasp* be a bit strategic about their resources! =)
continues magicking up cheese wheels
Impunity is delicious with ham and a couple slices of bread, it turns out.
I am definitely in favor of the additional resource management. I expect an option to disable that eventually, but I will bet that for the next patch at least we will all have to use it.
FYI Warlock is a good caster choice if you are less of a fan of the resource management, since you get spells back on a short rest. Monk (when implemented) also regains resources on short rest.
Some good changes. AAAR, was really hoping for that mouse selection UI change though (no toilet chains)... People play an hardcore RPG and dont want resource management...give me a break, this defines the genre lol! Go play a tell tale game then. Actually, BG3 should have a telltale mode for these people; Im sure half of the BG3 player base would be ecstatic.
I understand that many people don't like resource management. However, to put it simply, Dungeons & Dragons gameplay is built around resource management.
yes, but not all who will play bg3 are experts in d & d. and not everyone needs this feature. If you think about it, you need resources in d & d and for spells. I played some old games where you had to feed the character. I remember it annoyed.
While I like most of the patch, the new resting mechanics have me curious and worried.
1. OK, so we can technically camp in multiple places. But what about our Camp Chests? We get to send extra stuff to them while traveling, which is fine, but for myself, that's where I store my sellables. Then I have a "Market day" where I swap stuff out to go to the merchant and sell stuff. Will the chests show up in the other camps? If not, then why (save for immersion) would we use them? And will there be some sort of inconvenience incurred if we just choose to always use the 'main camp'?
2. While I understand having a mechanic to help keep people from spamming long rests...the Food mechanic frustrates me. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my solo game (I'm on my first one - don't judge) I am finding very few food items. It was one thing when they were just an extra healing resource...but when they start being the currency for being able to recover, then things get kind of scary. In addition the price is supposed to go up as we level?
And in my multiplayer game, not everybody likes to share. And the food isn't exactly super plentiful in that one either. Making food necessary to recovery might actually cause some players to be less likely to share.
It's one thing to add the mechanic, but I honestly wonder if I'm going to have to have days where my main focus is searching for food. This isn't a survival game. we won't be growing crops... I just hope Larian adjusts the food drop rate in the RNG.
Ah, I just read elsewhere that long resting won't be impossible without resources, it'll just be less effective to some degree. If that's true, I don't mind the change so much, I can roll with it.
Ah, I just read elsewhere that long resting won't be impossible without resources, it'll just be less effective to some degree. If that's true, I don't mind the change so much, I can roll with it.
Right now we don't have a choice of difficulty yet, but I think number of necessary resources on easy difficulty will be significantly reduced. As for food, if you like to collect loot, then there is really a lot of it in the game, another thing is that I eat it more often... instead of potions. :<
As for food, if you like to collect loot, then there is really a lot of it in the game, another thing is that I eat it more often... instead of potions. :<
I decorate my camp with it.
.....
Obviously I'm playing this game completely, totally wrong. Having a blast, though.
I understand that many people don't like resource management. However, to put it simply, Dungeons & Dragons gameplay is built around resource management.
yes, but not all who will play bg3 are experts in d & d. and not everyone needs this feature. If you think about it, you need resources in d & d and for spells. I played some old games where you had to feed the character. I remember it annoyed.
I see three ways to alleviate it. -Tie amount to difficulty-lower difficulties require very little, if any, resources -Add a merchant with unlimited food, to drain cash a little. -Make it a toggle option
We'll see how things go with the patch (it definitely looks significant!) but we'll have to just see how it goes for now.
No matter what it seems in current days video games are not the kingdom of nerds like my self that lost themselves in the manuals of some tabletop role play game (in my case it was the White Wolf rpg, I bought an immense amount of manuals of that game).
With the diffusion of smartphones and tablets videogames use has become widespread to a lot of casual players. So much that almost all games, specially in those platforms, are pay for win, same evolution we have seen in MMORPG when they left the subscription based system to the free to play.
As usual in these days of social media what has passed is not what really is going on with the mass of players but but the loudly mess made by a fraction of players who can create a massive amount of trafic.
Thirteen community updates, five patches and still we are stuck in the first act and there is not even an hypothesis of a probable time of release of the full game, even if the request for new material is one of the arguments, saddly not brought on by the trafic overlords that complain about the cheesy game that allows (but DOESN'T FORCE) long rests after any battle [don't think is right? don't use it], but by people interested not in a set of rules that any player knows in the LARP and Tabletop can be bended, twisted, ignored by the dungeon master (a good example is NPC and DnD by vive la dirt league in wich is obvious how the master, a professional narrator, bend the rules to allow a funny narrative, to mantain in life B.O.B, to avoid bottle necks due to the unruliness of the players).
This way the loud complainers (who are gonna complain, pretty sure the next issue will be the fact that there are too many objects in the world too lot thus people can still use long rest as exploit to make a cheesy game run, and that the inspiration minigames too would be used as exploits to make cheesy game runs) will be sedated on one side while fueled with new material to argument against thus creating traffic and rumor and smoke that will hide the fact that there is no projection of a date of release and that we are still stuck on act one.
Moreover the choices made by Larian show that they're not focused on create a really immersive system that is get rid of the static difficulty system with fixed choices made by the company and to create a flexible one that allows in this case the player to make choices on what kind of "exploits" they want to use. In this case it would mean to allow gamers to choice if they want to use, other than the usual debuff in monsters and doped xp growth, things like barrels, height/backstage vantage, open/restriscted access to long rests, density of lootable objects in the world].
With Divinity II in the long run they were pushed to create a system that let the player choose exploits able to make it easier even the explorer mode (for example the chance to have perpetualy on the source vision, the chance to replenish source points with a rest, and so on).
Obviously thoseoptions have to come with a price that is the inability to get some or all trophies and achievement tags.
Another reason why the "dnd rules stat that" is flawed is because in tabletop rpg there is a sense of the time used by the players, the master can decide that a quest is botched because the players lost time bickering about unrelated issues, the master can also decide ways to force the players to move so that the time table is respected, for example in NPC and DnD the master evoches a dragon everytime the players start loosing too much time in their antics.
In ANY video game time is a farce. Some games are quite open about it (I think the DOS, Outer planets, BG3), while some other are more subtle (Elder Scrolls Online).
To lament about the chance (again is your choice as a player to ignore the rules that to you are, allegedly, so sacred, it's up to you to decide how many times to use the long rest and if to exploit it, if my memory doesn't play games with me there is a thread from a player that went solo, or at max with one companion, and decided not to use long rests, if you decide to ignore the rules it's your fault not a problem of the game) to exploit long rests because they don't follow the tabletop rules, even when the game, tha is supposed to a role playing one, opens a windows that clearly allerts that you're going to the camp to sleep thus ending a day and starting a new one [but evidently for some people the concept of role playing means to blindly apply the rules of the tabletop game and to ignore the things that clearly show that the "two short rests one long rest per die are followed] when the game is crearly cristallized: no matter how many days you spent exploring and completing quests the reptiloid patrol will be at the edge of the map, no matter if you pass all your time looting from the environment the quests will wait your arrive, storytriggering encouters will always happen in the same way.
All the "DnD rules" is just a farce made by "profesional players" and complainers that just want to scratch an itch.
So now resources are compulsive for long rests (and again I bet my money in a follow up of complains on how easy is to find resources) but still time is cristallized. That is "dnd rules" people just f***d up the game for us player that use video games to relax, or approach them in a casual way, without having even really make really immersive the game and with the big issues, that is lack of new content, lack of a timetable for the development of the game, lack of projections on the release data, the inverosimility, obviously ignored by the dnd rules armada, of quests without a time limit.
But hey now we have to use resources to camp so now we now that time is passing.
If this is the way BG3 is going to be developped I'll abbandon it and wait to the moment the company will be pushed to release dlc that allow to exploit that same things that now they are eliminating. All games on the long run had to do that it will be no different for BG3.
Hopefully they will give me a choice in the options to disable the resource management!
It looks from the video like there's an "auto manage" one click button instead of having to choose exactly how many cheese wheels you use each time.
That's strictly for those non-rp amateur's - just imagine the horrid gastronomical combinations that may result in? Chicken and RED wine?! Fish and Fruit?! I could end up eating potatoes and cheese like some sort of back-woods commoner!
No no no! Not only must my rests include the food requirement, they must be properly planned meals including libations, candles, cutlery and plates!
That huge post reads like an oddly emotional rant. I'm not even sure what point you're trying to get across. You're ranting about casuals and rules while lamenting a change made for higher difficulty and consistency? And something about the concept of time management when the actual adjustment doesn't really have anything to do with that, when the plot has already firmly established that time isn't exactly an issue since the tadpoles are very different in some way.
All that aside, it's amusing for once to see the other faction threatening to cancel this game over a perceived slight in design direction. The shoe is the same no matter what foot it's on.
If this is the way BG3 is going to be developped I'll abbandon it and wait to the moment the company will be pushed to release dlc that allow to exploit that same things that now they are eliminating.
If things go the way they did with DOSII, the modding community will provide the exploits long before Larian gets around to including them officially. We'll see.
If this is the way BG3 is going to be developped I'll abbandon it and wait to the moment the company will be pushed to release dlc that allow to exploit that same things that now they are eliminating. All games on the long run had to do that it will be no different for BG3.
I think EA is not for everyone. You have to be ready to test new systems and give critical feedback without getting upset, knowing that the final game may be quite different than what it is now.
However part of that is the willingness to at least explore those systems before threatening to take your ball and go home.
On a different note, long resting requiring resources now opens up the possibility of having narrative decisions based around this in the future, that wouldn't have had anywhere near as much of an impact under the old system.
Find a beggar asking for food on the road? You could give it to them, but you might need it for a long rest later too. Or one of your party members may know a spell that provides that food for them. Or there could be a situation later on where your whole inventory gets temporarily taken, and you'll have to go through a gauntlet of fights while scrounging only enough resources to long rest once or twice before you get everything back. The latter scenario would not be possible at all under the old system, outside of disabling the ability to long rest entirely.
One has always gotta think about how the mechanics interact with each other, instead of examining them in a vacuum.
In actual practicality, I don't think this long rest resource thing will really change things all that much. You can probably still just steal everything you need from merchants. Some people who are really bothered by it should be thankful that they didn't go for the Pathfinder WotR solution, which was to take out rations entirely and replace it with a 'corruption' mechanic that results in stat penalties and an assumed immediate game over for resting too much in non-safe zones (and in actual practice, you'd hit the first stat penalty point for resting 3+ times in a single dungeon, which is pretty lenient).
Not that's it's out of topic here. Every announced feature is on topic. But food for long rest is not the only one. Also, and especially since Larian expressedly asked for feedback on this, we might as well try to not have too many threads about it. It might make things easier for everyone (both Larian who wants to take feedback and players who want to give feedback on this).
I'm honestly really happy about this patch because it's a lot of backend stuff that should make future development and balancing go a lot more smoothly. And I finally have reasons to talk about things other than combat for once.
Very helpful, and I'm tentatively positive about a lot of what I'm reading here. I'm curious as to whether the disentangling of jump and disengage means that also, by proxy, they've given ba disengage back to Rogues like they should have. I've not watched the panel itself yet, and I did promise to do a full synopsis, but for folks who are interested primarily in the game-related mechanical details, this seems like a very direct and to-the-point summary, so I'll make sure to re-direct folks here, for those who are after this specifically, when I get around to doing mine.
Very eager to test out the new rest system and the other various new addition.
I'm seeing some anxiety here about limited resources of rest or food hunting, but from what we saw in the stream, it looks like they've introduced supply packs in for rest purposes. Just speculating, but it's looking very much like the rest equipment in Kingmaker (decently heavy, seems to covers a full rest - likely purchasable at merchants, not very expensive).
With the diffusion of smartphones and tablets videogames As usual in these days of social media
It read less like an emotional rant to me and more like a really bad college freshmen English 101 paper.
I didn’t read all of it (can’t be bothered, too much fluff) but I read that you are apparently annoyed that the EA is still “stuck†in act 1. I got news for you: that isn’t going to change.
On a different note, long resting requiring resources now opens up the possibility of having narrative decisions based around this in the future, that wouldn't have had anywhere near as much of an impact under the old system.
Find a beggar asking for food on the road? You could give it to them, but you might need it for a long rest later too. Or one of your party members may know a spell that provides that food for them. Or there could be a situation later on where your whole inventory gets temporarily taken, and you'll have to go through a gauntlet of fights while scrounging only enough resources to long rest once or twice before you get everything back. The latter scenario would not be possible at all under the old system, outside of disabling the ability to long rest entirely.
One has always gotta think about how the mechanics interact with each other, instead of examining them in a vacuum.
In actual practicality, I don't think this long rest resource thing will really change things all that much. You can probably still just steal everything you need from merchants. Some people who are really bothered by it should be thankful that they didn't go for the Pathfinder WotR solution, which was to take out rations entirely and replace it with a 'corruption' mechanic that results in stat penalties and an assumed immediate game over for resting too much in non-safe zones (and in actual practice, you'd hit the first stat penalty point for resting 3+ times in a single dungeon, which is pretty lenient).
+1 to this.
It also allows them to revise loot values as need be. Silvers and Coppers can be added, merchant prices/values of food can be reduced from golds, all those loot items named "remarkable, magnificent, dazzling, rare, unique" and so on can actually get values greater than a single gold. The addition of creation systems means several smaller food items can be combined to have greater impact when resting. Combining the new die roll system for spell checks with merchants could mean their wares are locked in cabinets and you need to pass high hide/lockpick/disarm/pickpocket checks to actually steal loot - with skill/spell/gear optionally impacting those rolls.
On the rare occasions I tested out stealing from merchants, I found the need to cast a cantrip on rogue, then hide, then move into position, then attempt the pickpocket, then attempt to escape to be unwieldy - now some of those operations can be handled simultaneously with the die system. Honestly, I prefer a game that works of my CHARACTERS skills and abilities - not mine, unlike my character my age and health are NOT that of my chosen character. I have arthritis - my character doesn't.
We already obtain certain "merchant" types at our camp, such as Volo and Skeletor. Why can't our owlbear and pupster handle some hunting chores while we are off adventuring? Maybe one of those thiefling tag-alongs will play hunter-gatherer with the wee beasties as the price for some quest?
Things like improved character stat creation, more body and voice types, additional races - those are things that get added in toward the end of development, as they are far easier to complete when all the back room mechanics are in place. These changes, while not all necessarily ones I would desire, are all on the engine and transmission of the game. The high end stereo, a/c, power windows/doors, blue tooth connections and other flashy extras come later.
On a different note, long resting requiring resources now opens up the possibility of having narrative decisions based around this in the future, that wouldn't have had anywhere near as much of an impact under the old system.
Find a beggar asking for food on the road? You could give it to them, but you might need it for a long rest later too.
I would love to see something like this; narrative opportunities on top of NECESSARY balancing (D&D balance is heavily reliant on the resting mechanic, and lack of balance leads to lack of realistic choices), that also somewhat disincentivize compulsive abuse of exploity unimmersive mechanics. I foresee my tiresome inner OCD munchkin will be less at odds with my principles of fairness over this. Yes please!
I still think much of this disagreement is likely to be solved by implementing difficulty levels - as soon as possible. The people who hates RNG (despite D&D being a game built on RNG and Larian doing so much to redress the issue) or dislike even balanced limitations like resource management (another D&D foundation), really need an easy-mode. Inversely, the people who crave a more authentic, immersive and balanced D&D experience, should have their hardcore-mode. It's hard to please the polar opposites of each camp of thought any other way.
So can you still jump to disengage, or will jumping now provoke a counterattack? I am not a fan of spending an action to position myself, since the main point of combat in this game is to outposition masses of enemies and deny their actions. Any action you spend is not spend on the main combat goal, so it is a net loss.
Jumping will provoke an attack of opportunity. You'll have to think about your positions not to be engaged. That's how "positionning" works in every good tactical games (>< position doesn't really matter because you can always disengage and teleport and...)
And if you're really engaged you won't HAVE to use your action : - moving and take the AOO to attack - use a bonus action spell to disengage (i.e misty step) - use your rogue cunning action disengage as a bonus action - attack with the threatened status - use your action to disengage and loose your action - use your action to disengage but use metamagic because you're a sorceerer and cast your spell as a bonus action - and so on.
Originally Posted by Boblawblah
Wait, so is the camp meant to be a base of operations or does it change every night? that would imply that your entire group (animals/skeleton all) are following you around the whole time? That's..odd.
We'll have to see. I think that the main camp will stay the "main camp" but that they'll introduce "mini camp" in some locations. I guess the followers will stay at the main camp ?
Thx for explaining that further. I have not played since November, but I found the combat experience of BG3 very frustrating. I did not like the meta of constant jumping either, but it did level some of the odd combat quirks. Thing is, actions are a scarce resource for your party. They are not for the enemy, as they usually outnumber you. Secondly, a significant portion of the enemy is ranged, so positioning for them is not as vital either. Battle locations are also often setup as ambushes where enemies come from all sides and when you are not aware of the surroundings the location will likely work to your disadvantage for a certain amount of time. The AI will also slightly focus on your weaker targets or your back line.
Now these are all things that are exploitable, you can always cheese a location, so this is what players will do, but there are other things beyond player control.
The turn order is beyond stupid, as far as I can recall it is random or at least dice are rolled. So, since you are generally outnumbered your mage might not cast, your healer not heal, your tank not block a bottleneck or general positioning is not possible, because everyone moves before you. Say 1 phase spider ports to Gale behind the lines. No worries, Lae'zel can handle that, but Phase spider 2-5 will move before you and will do the same. Additionally spiders might be able to web you, so trying to get there is futile. That's gg and has nothing to do with good positioning. The way turn order is handled in this game is frustrating. Additionally the rules that apply to the player, do not need to apply to the enemies. Some enemies can move further than you, or might have more actions. Others have skills that do everything your skill does but better (I recall the witch's standard ranged bol has 26m range, while my fire bolt has 18). Enemies might teleport, or teleport and multiply. And you can be sure that status effects or regular ways to deny actions do not work on them. So you have to work in the tight boundaries of rules, the AI does not.
Now this all has little to do with jumping, but jumping enabled you to do the same the AI does, that is generate favourable positions with relative ease, leveling the playing field faster. Spending an action to remedy something that might not have been a mistake on my part, is just a net loss.
Overall super happy about the changes! I adored their enthusiasm and energy - even if I realize that it's not for everyone.
Those who complain about "BUT THE RESOURCESSS" reminds me of the DnD meme "The DM may NEVER have fun." ... Like no. Just no - let them enjoy themselves! I for one was just happy to see them having a blast. I sincerely believe that this kind of positive energy is much more important to the game than min-maxing resources. A game should be made with love, dedication and a bit nerdiness from the developers - not with the 110% business attitude that so many "meta" companies run nowdays.
I am very surprised about them going firmly on not adding more races, sub-races or classes though as I would have expected them to want them "stress-tested" as well - but either way, seems like they are taking in a LOT of the critics that they receive, so I am more than satisfied!
I understand that many people don't like resource management. However, to put it simply, Dungeons & Dragons gameplay is built around resource management.
yes, but not all who will play bg3 are experts in d & d. and not everyone needs this feature. If you think about it, you need resources in d & d and for spells. I played some old games where you had to feed the character. I remember it annoyed.
I see three ways to alleviate it. -Tie amount to difficulty-lower difficulties require very little, if any, resources -Add a merchant with unlimited food, to drain cash a little. -Make it a toggle option
We'll see how things go with the patch (it definitely looks significant!) but we'll have to just see how it goes for now.
Everyone wants a toggle option for this and for that...Lets then also have an option to turn off resting to memorize spells. Or a toggle to turn off all game non important dialogues...etc...and soon what you have left is an empty shell of a game that suits everyone and no one at the same time. Im in the <make it HARDCORE> camp. Rated R content. Limited inventory slots. Want to camp everyday? Fine then you get - stats plus enemy spawns. Very little but powerful and meaningful magic items. Limited ammo. Time limits. Things cost 10x. Stealing is EXTREMELY difficult. But in 2021...OOH NOOO its not FuuuN I want to do ThIs whaTever I waaaant ThaatT....lol.
But in 2021...OOH NOOO its not FuuuN I want to do ThIs whaTever I waaaant ThaatT....lol.
Wanting to do "whatever you want" in itself would be perfectly in line with the spirit of a RPG. even inside the limitations of a computer game, when possible.
The issue is that some people aren't even asking just for that. They don't just want to have a range of options, they also want everything to be easy and convenient for them. Anything that implies the need to "git gud" to some extent is mostly perceived as some sort of offensive gatekeeping.
"I want to fast travel from any point to any place at will without any drawback, because fuck any sense of place and scale", "I don't want to worry about resources, EVER", "I like overpowered abilities so I don't want limitation on their use", "I want to be free to choose combat, diplomacy or stealth at will and TO BE GOOD AT ALL OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME" etc, etc.
The problem is that a toggle for everything is never, EVER going to be well designed because a toggle for "everything" is going to be completely impossible to reasonably test. You get a complete mess of imbalance and broken gameplay. Not to mention the long list of bugs which will happen because different sets of toggles end up causing conflicts with each other.
I love how toggles are considered an amazing design decision when Solasta and Pathfinder does it, but when people start suggesting it for BG3, it's suddenly a terrible design sin or something?
I'm a big fan of quality of life stuff. I hated the need to stop and camp in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The camping setup to improve chances of success = fine. Having to manually do it every long trip = adds absolutely nothing. Just add it to the travel time and increase/decrease the chance of being attacked.
Having to rest once in a while is fine while adventuring, while travelling the world map not so much.
On the other hand, I saw comments that people loved the camping feature while travelling the world map. So we're all different, and there's no right or wrong.
I just put up the synopsis for the whole panel, but as mentioned, I suggested in the intro that people should come to this thread and discuss the patch details themselves here, if the patch information is what they're interested in.
For my own thoughts on the actual patch notes, I'll snip that part out and repeat it here:
Community Update video:
The community update video is just a straight talk spot with Swen, in a relaxed setting. It opens with Swen greeting us, and then without too much ado jumping into what he has to talk about. It's refreshing and to the point.
We do get a short game shot of a combat-like cutscene in the druid grove between a tiefling and a druid; curious, it seems like a new cutscene, and a new event.
Swen starts by talking about the “Active Roll Systemâ€: Now the ability check Roll UI shows the actual DC, the die rolled and your bonuses added. Thank you. This is greatly appreciated by me at least. The UI also is interactive and now lets you add relevant buffing abilities and spells in the moment if you want them, casting spells and using abilities that fit. This is another nice feature; it's a little strange, for the way it implies overt spell casting mid conversation.... buuuut, A game won't ever really be able to respond and react to something like that as a live table can, and this cuts down on the tedious out of conversation pre-buffing immersion break, so, I can give this a fair pass, personally. I think it's a good thing, overall.
Rolls in the middle of conversation are still a big cut away that is damaging for conversation immersions, and with this improvement, I think t looks like that won't change... BUT, this change isn't making that any worse, really, and having it made into a little bit more of an actually interactive moment, rather than a non-interactive break away, kind of makes the break a little bit better, honestly. Kinda.
While this is being discussed, we get another little cut away – this time showing Astarion reading the necronomicon; Astarion, you're pretty but dear gods you're dumb...
Next Swen talks about backgrounds: these will be hidden mini-event actions that lean into Rping your background choice, and will award Inspiration or XP for completing them. This is neat, I like it. I'm optimistic about seeing how it plays out. It sounds like they've added ten of these per background in Act I alone, and that's a big number.
We also get more Shadowheart story updates – as hinted at in the last patch, you can now free her from the pod in the intro. We knew this was coming, and this is almost certainly what Swen was debating on sharing in the stream earlier... and also the 'new secret on the beach' that was teased before that. It's still neat though. My earlier concern for the amount of Shadowheart focus compared to others still stands, but we'll see how it looks.
Next up, we'll be hearing more voice barks for characters! This is good, great even. The absolute silence of them outside of actual conversations was brutal on having them feel like present members of the party. Voice barks are a small thing, but they're atmospheric when done right. I hope there's a setting for how frequently they occur, because too much is bad, and everyone's threshold for how much is too much is different.
Briefly, Swen talks about disentangling Jump and Disengage (by popular demand). This is huge and Swen skips past it very quickly... I get the impression he's not fan, at a personal level. Oh well. It is a big thing, and a good thing, and a much desired thing that many people had actually given up hope on seeing. I'm so glad that they're doing this, and it restores a certain amount of my personal faith. In particular, I'm hoping that they remember to give disengage as bonus back to rogues' cunning action.
After that, we learn that we're getting a button to voluntarily end Concentration – finally. This is something that should never have been overlooked in the first place, but I'm glad it's here now. I'm not sure we needed an extra little white 'x' on the concentration icon, since the icon itself looks good and could be taken as a clickable on its own anyway... but I'm just glad they're fixing this.
Another big, positive change next! They're removing the useless 'knock out' button that dealt a single d4, and giving us a toggle switch for simply being in 'non-lethal' mode. Thank you! This is the correct way to do it, and I'm glad to see this is being fixed as well! Thank you very much. Much appreciated! Now, here's hoping that knocking people out will actually have a notable difference of impact in many places, if you choose it over killing.
Moving on, we come to 'Mini-Camps'. Swen is clearly super excited about this one. When you camp, your camp site will reflect the zone your in, as near as it can. We see brown rock caves, like the owlbear cave, we see underdark mushrooms, we see the crypt; it looks like all of your camp supplies, like your stash, come with you as part of this, though we don't see any camp follower npcs, except in the normal rive-side space, so their status is unknown for now. Even so, this is a huge boon to immersion, and I'm really glad they're doing something about it. It seems like this is a pretty good middle ground between Larian's desire for a fixed base camp, and the immersive realism of camping while adventuring. Can't wait to test it.
On that note, he also mentions a bunch of new camp cutscenes... and we see a much fluffier-looking scratch. Who's a good pupper? *ruffle-ruffle*
As a part of this point, Swen also talks about Camp Resources. This is an experiment they're trialling to see if they can make long resting a more impactful and more measured thing that you need to consider. They want feedback on this in particular. Ostensibly, it seems that when you camp, you have to eat food to get the full benefits from your long rest – don't and don't gain the full benefits (perhaps reduced benefits, it wasn't clear). It looks as though various food items will be 'worth' different amounts of camp supply, currently, and there looks also like there will be a standard 'ration' type object that we can obtain as well. It was mentioned that camping requirements will grow as we level up and as out camp following grows.
Currently, I'd say they still need to drastically reduce the amount of food that's lying around to make this actually meaningful – there's enough food filling up Act I that you could still easily rest between each and every combat encounter and still not run out of food... but we'll see. On the face of it, it's a positive change, but not the sole solution to the long rest issue. More will still need to be done. It's also something that should be optional or graded – and I agree with Drath here, not tied to your difficulty setting.
During this conversation, we get a little cutscene of the mark actually glowing when it's mentioned doing so. Nice! Thanks, that's actually helpful because it grounds the text and the visuals together in a way that they weren't before, so as much as it's a small thin,g it's still a very helpful thing.
That's it for the details: after the three hour stream, the actual community patch update took 6:30 or so.
Does this feel like it was worth the long silence between last patch and this? Well, no... but at the same time, they ARE still building the rest of the game as well, and this patch has got a lot of much desired stuff in it, many of which are things that the community has been saying for awhile, and some of which we'd even given up hope on them listening to, so, overall, I'm actually really happy to hear all of this. I'm excited to see it, and I hope that the trend continues!
At the end, Swen says goodbye by sharing a personal story of his... in which he talks about his experience playing the game on this nearest patch, and seemed to, if I'm not mistaken, actually discover for the first time the value of story immersion while playing, and he seemed to really appreciate it. Maybe this will be the start of something positive?
That's it for the PFH3, I regret watching the three hours of the stream itself, and the grossness that it left me feeling. I wish I hadn't, and could just have the very positive feelings that I have about everything that's actually in the patch itself.
If Larian is going to tie literally all companion relationship building to the rest system, then they absolutely cannot add a punishment for resting. Also, they'll have to look at every encounter in the game again if they're going to be encouraging people to rest less. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't want to rest, don't rest.
I love how toggles are considered an amazing design decision when Solasta and Pathfinder does it, but when people start suggesting it for BG3, it's suddenly a terrible design sin or something?
i dont think you're quite understanding, hopefully this will clear things up: when solasta and pathfinder does it its an amazing design decision, but the idea of having it in BG3 is a terrible design sin which will ruin video games forever
The 'bold' approach of "we tested 5 things, and didn't bother to test the rest. It might possibly break your game, we don't know!" is not going to impress customers who pay $60-80 and end up with a save file 10-30 hours in which is not fun or broken.
Usually, no matter how many "toggles" you may throw in as optional, what you do is playtest for certain specific pre-sets. I.e. "Does the 'default D&D experience' flow nicely enough? What about the super-hard mode? Is it still reasonably doable?".
You don't need to test extensively every possible combination, nor to worry if the super-easy mode is "just super easy" or "super-super-easy" because chances are that the people who picked that option are not interested in having anything resembling a decent challenge to begin with.
If you have a "food-as-resource" system, you playtest to learn how well it works and finely it needs to be tuned, there's no need to investigate how much easier the game gets disabling that feature, because clearly whoever will pick that option is not interested in maintaining things challenging anyway. And so on.
Thanks for the summary OP! None of the videos I could find online had closed captioning for me.
As I expected, the patch is underwhelming to me. I readily grant that everything in it is for the better, but in the overall scheme of things relative to the very long list of problems in the game that have been very exhaustively discussed in this forum, this patch only moves the game in a positive direction a tiny little bit. Sure, every little bit helps, but we're still a VERY LONG WAY from this game being good.
This is a minima-list summary of the new features that were announced during the Panel From Hell 3 / LarPG show and that will be shipped with Patch 5.
There will probably be an official list in the Community Update, when Larian publishes one. Whether this will come right after the Panel From Hell 3, or to accompany the release of Patch 5, I do not know.
The Patch will be released on Tuesday 13th July 2021.
Upcoming features for Patch 5.
New UI for Ability Checks during cutscenes. - Swen called this the Active Roll System. - It shows the check's Difficulty Class and the various bonuses that apply : Ability Score Bonus, Proficiency, and other sources (such as spells). - It allows to cast spells from within the Ability Check's UI. - For what it's worth, it seems as if the dice will look a bit different and no longer be red.
Background goals. - Larian added specific mini-quests throughout the game, that are related to background. - You will get inspiration points by "playing to background". I guess this means at least completing the background-related quests that you find. - I believe I heard there will be 130 background goals. Not sure if this is intended for EA, or throughout the game. For context, there are 13 official backgrounds in BG3, so that's 10 per background.
Camp setting now matches the place where you sleep. Examples mentioned include Underdark, Crypt, Cave, Forest.
Rest system : new mechanism, resource management. - This puts limits on long rests and start creating a difference between short rest from long rest. - If you eat enough food when resting at camp, you get the benefits of a long rest. If not, you get only the benefits of a short rest. - Thus, managing supplies (both food and class abilities) becomes a thing. And finding food becomes important. - This mechanism is announced as a trial. No guarantee that it will remain in that form in the final version. Swen explicitly said they are seeking feedback on this.
Jump and Disengage. - Jump and Disengage are now separated. - Also, there is now be a hotkey for jump. - Disengage now costs an Action. This was described off-handedly by Swen as an answer to a chat question, and is meant to be a trial in Patch 5.
Concentration can now be stopped.
New gameplay / story content. - While Larian announced that the focus of this Patch was on systems, not content, there will be a couple of new things. - He mentioned new cutscenes in camp. Check out Scratch and the Owlbear. - It is apparently be possible to free Shadowheard in the Nautiloid. Expect her to be the teased surprise on the beach. - I think Swen also mentioned new quest permutations.
Characters now say things when the player issues them orders. - Basically like when you select or give order to units in some RTS games or CRPGs. - What they say depend on the order : Move, Hide, etc. - Swen called this the point-and-click system. I'm sure someone can find / knows of a better name for this.
New combat actions. - Non-lethal attacks. This should apparently be activated via a toggle. - Disarm.
Inspiration point cap. - The cap will apparently be 4 Inspiration Points (for the whole party, I'd assume, not per character). - Gaining Inspiration Points beyond the cap should bring you XP instead.
Visual effects for spells. - The VFX team has been working on theming spells to classes, if they are class-specific. - I don't remember if this was for Patch 5 or later.
Crafting/loot. Apparently more crafting is coming.
Swen also did a sort of live AMA (Ask Me Anything), answering some questions from the Twitch chats. So here is additional information, not necessarily related to Patch 5.
Act 2 in EA : definitely not. - Overall, mechanical content (such as races, classes) and gameplay/story content (new maps, quests, plot progression) is definitely something people should not expect.
Reactions will not change in this patch. But it is a something that Swen actually mentioned. And he said they'll be expanding (?). Basically it sounded like they're working on it.
Inventory management : they are working on a revamp.
Multiclass will come. But much later. Probably.
Difficulty level : will come very late.
The AI is going to start using/knowing the rules of the game. (Not sure I caught that well.)
We also learned that Swen is a save-scumming expert, though that wasn't as part of the AMA and I doubt this was an intended Patch 5 announcement.
Did I miss the vid? Couldn't find Panel from Hell 3, thought they just posted a community update.
As I expected, the patch is underwhelming to me. I readily grant that everything in it is for the better, but in the overall scheme of things relative to the very long list of problems in the game that have been very exhaustively discussed in this forum, this patch only moves the game in a positive direction a tiny little bit. Sure, every little bit helps, but we're still a VERY LONG WAY from this game being good.
I'll let anyone decide for themselves if they think the game is already "good enough" or not, but on a personal note one thing I can tell is that with such a small amount of novelties introduced I'm not confident at all I will find the drive to do another playthrough. I will at very least make an attempt to toy around a bit with it, but I can easily see myself dropping the alpha entirely until something more substantial (a class or a level cap rise) will come into play.
In particular, I'm hoping that they remember to give disengage as bonus back to rogues' cunning action.
I believe they did ... In that new gameplay that was posted somewhere around here (this one) ... you can see that there is Disengage on Swens hotbar, in right bottom corner.
Since i dont know about any way to add those 8 fix abilities to hotbar, i dare to presume that character is Rogue (also, he does Sneak attacks), and this is bonus action disengage.
Originally Posted by Alodar
If you want to play in Story mode, resting would be easy and cost maybe 10 food points.
If you play at medium difficulty, resting could cost 40 food points.
Hardcore D&D stetting might put resting at 120 food points.
Nightmare mode and you'll need 240 food points for a night's rest.
I agree with others ... this (and many other things) should certainly NOT be defined by general dificiulty settings. :-/
Originally Posted by kanisatha
Sure, every little bit helps, but we're still a VERY LONG WAY from this game being good.
Luckily they still have plenty of time left. And i bet we all can agree, that we will gladly grant them even more (not sure about their funds tho ) to make the game even better. ^_^
I like that they've added something to (maybe) flesh out our background, since my biggest problem with playing a custom character is what a nonentity they are. A Tavula rasa you might say...sorry
The turn order is beyond stupid, as far as I can recall it is random or at least dice are rolled.
Isn't that just the initiative roll?
Quite possibly. I really do not know, how it is calculated, but it appears fairly "random", especially with so many enemies on average. I would much rather have either a set rotation, so I know that my mage moves first, then the tank, so I can get some synergy and tactics going, and/or alternating turns, which would help offset the possible imbalances of fighting against many more or very few enemies.
What I really hate is when an emergency arises, and the character that could help the situation just moved and now 6 enemies make their moves first.
Quite possibly. I really do not know, how it is calculated
Initiative is a dice roll affected by your character's bonus (I think your DEX bonus, by default, but it's quite possible that some specific class ability may play an additional role).
I am not a fan of spending an action to position myself, since the main point of combat in this game is to outposition masses of enemies and deny their actions.
It is hardly a matter of “our positioning†if everyone can more freely, all the time without any hindering. You can still disengage and push I think, which should still be greatly powerful (potentially too powerful, but I am speculating). At least engagement will have some value now.
As to moving around - there are still class abilitites/spells that will allow to disengage as bonus action (trigger engagement more safely). I can’t imagine the game being worse off with this change.
If you want to play in Story mode, resting would be easy and cost maybe 10 food points.
If you play at medium difficulty, resting could cost 40 food points.
Hardcore D&D stetting might put resting at 120 food points.
Nightmare mode and you'll need 240 food points for a night's rest.
I agree with others ... this (and many other things) should certainly NOT be defined by general dificiulty settings. :-/
Absolutely it should.
If you are resting after every battle you want easy mode. I couldn't imagine my spellcasters being able to blast through all their spells for every battle -- it would trivialize combat. (For reference I've never done more than 5 long rests in any play through and went through two with zero long rests.)
If you want more of a challenge you need to manage your resources, but the reality is not everyone enjoys managing their resources.
Tying the number of long rests you can have to difficulty is absolutely the way to go.
Meh, I get that people are happy that the implemented changes are all in a positive direction, but this seems like a very small amount of stuff compared to the tons of complaints regarding mechanics. Not only that, but this seems like a very small amount of content in general for five months worth of work (I get it's not all on just EA stuff).
I'm also incredibly disappointed to read that we shouldn't expect any more new stuff like classes or races in this EA. That pretty much defeats the entire point of a EA. This means there will be no outside critiques regarding any of the other classes or races. It's become very clear that when left to their own insular thinking, these other classes are going to be vastly disappointing and likely unbalanced or gimicky.
As long as they release the inevitable Baldur's Gate 3 2.0 edition (for free of those who bought this edition) with some of the complaints addressed because they decided to not let their community test the other content, then whatever. I've learned my lesson with Larian regarding EA. Then again, I can't think of a studio who hasn't disappointed since around 2015 or so.
I'm also incredibly disappointed to read that we shouldn't expect any more new stuff like classes or races in this EA. That pretty much defeats the entire point of a EA. This means there will be no outside critiques regarding any of the other classes or races. It's become very clear that when left to their own insular thinking, these other classes are going to be vastly disappointing and likely unbalanced or gimicky.
They said no new races in EA, so testers still have new race content to look forward to at launch, but all classes will eventually be coming to EA with Multi-classing coming near the end.
If you want to play in Story mode, resting would be easy and cost maybe 10 food points.
If you play at medium difficulty, resting could cost 40 food points.
Hardcore D&D stetting might put resting at 120 food points.
Nightmare mode and you'll need 240 food points for a night's rest.
I agree with others ... this (and many other things) should certainly NOT be defined by general dificiulty settings. :-/
Absolutely it should.
If you are resting after every battle you want easy mode. I couldn't imagine my spellcasters being able to blast through all their spells for every battle -- it would trivialize combat. (For reference I've never done more than 5 long rests in any play through and went through two with zero long rests.)
If you want more of a challenge you need to manage your resources, but the reality is not everyone enjoys managing their resources.
Tying the number of long rests you can have to difficulty is absolutely the way to go.
Just to be sure, i dont disagree that we should get some kind of settings for limitation of long rests ... I just disagree that it should be set automaticky by choosing dificiulty ... i believe it should be two separate settings.
Lets say that i want challenging fights ... But i hate this specific kind of resource management, bcs it kinda forces me to have HUGE amount of food all the time and i find it ridiculous ... Then, lets say that i am one of those strong willed people who can manage to restrict himself to not resting every five minutes of gameplay ... And finaly, lets say that its for f**k sake my busines how i handle my own gameplay! (no hard feelings, just joking ... but still kinda making a point)
In that case settings of Medium, or even Hardcore would suit me ... Yet if i simply dont want to deal with this s*it ... all i need to do, is set "amount of resources needed for Long Rest" to "0" ... and VOILA! I have EXACTLY the experience i want. :3
You know that is the beauty, of untied settings ... you can gat what you want ... and i also can get what i want ... in fact everyone can set it just the way they want.
I'm also incredibly disappointed to read that we shouldn't expect any more new stuff like classes or races in this EA. That pretty much defeats the entire point of a EA. This means there will be no outside critiques regarding any of the other classes or races. It's become very clear that when left to their own insular thinking, these other classes are going to be vastly disappointing and likely unbalanced or gimicky.
They said no new races in EA, so testers still have new race content to look forward to at launch, but all classes will eventually be coming to EA with Multi-classing coming near the end.
Im sorry, but i heared swen saing "not all races in EA" not "no new races in EA" ... So maybe we still get some ... i believe at least Half-Orcs, and Dragonborn should be included for certain ... for one, their desing should be seen, so people can express themselves about it ... and for two, at least for Dragonborn, breath weapon should have ben tested a little, bcs messing that up would be incredibly dissapointing. :-/
Just to be sure, i dont disagree that we should get some kind of settings for limitation of long rests ... I just disagree that it should be set automaticky by choosing dificiulty ... i believe it should be two separate settings.
Lets say that i want challenging fights ... But i hate this specific kind of resource management, bcs it kinda forces me to have HUGE amount of food all the time and i find it ridiculous ... Then, lets say that i am one of those strong willed people who can manage to restrict himself to not resting every five minutes of gameplay ... And finaly, lets say that its for f**k sake my busines how i handle my own gameplay! (no hard feelings, just joking ... but still kinda making a point)
In that case settings of Medium, or even Hardcore would suit me ... Yet if i simply dont want to deal with this s*it ... all i need to do, is set "amount of resources needed for Long Rest" to "0" ... and VOILA! I have EXACTLY the experience i want. :3
You know that is the beauty, of untied settings ... you can gat what you want ... and i also can get what i want ... in fact everyone can set it just the way they want.
I'm not advocating for any restrictions to resting. The current pre-patch system allows every player to rest as often as they deem necessary. A minority of players, with the current system, only rested when they were out of resources and in places where it made sense to rest.
The majority of folks instead chose easy mode and rested after every combat and then complained that combat was too easy.
By tying any resting restrictions to difficulty you are making players aware that resting after each combat is easy mode and if they are looking for challenge they will need to rest less often.
By tying any resting restrictions to difficulty you are making players aware that resting after each combat is easy mode and if they are looking for challenge they will need to rest less often.
And that is where you are wrong.
Lets imagine once again ... In setting there will be "dificiulty" part ... where you can pick prepared "profiles" Easy / Normal / Hard / Extreme / Custom ... By choosing Hard, your setting will pick "120 food points per Long rest" ... therefore you were made aware that resting after each combat is easy mode. :P But you dont like it ... and you change that settings, wich will keep everything else set for hard ... but your dificiulty will be set for Custom. :P
By tying any resting restrictions to difficulty you are making players aware that resting after each combat is easy mode and if they are looking for challenge they will need to rest less often.
And that is where you are wrong.
Lets imagine once again ... In setting there will be "dificiulty" part ... where you can pick prepared "profiles" Easy / Normal / Hard / Extreme / Custom ... By choosing Hard, your setting will pick "120 food points per Long rest" ... therefore you were made aware that resting after each combat is easy mode. :P But you dont like it ... and you change that settings, wich will keep everything else set for hard ... but your dificiulty will be set for Custom. :P
If you are resting more than 4 or 5 times in EA you are playing Easy mode. You can't divorce how often you rest from difficulty because how often you rest determines difficulty.
By tying any resting restrictions to difficulty you are making players aware that resting after each combat is easy mode and if they are looking for challenge they will need to rest less often.
And that is where you are wrong.
Lets imagine once again ... In setting there will be "dificiulty" part ... where you can pick prepared "profiles" Easy / Normal / Hard / Extreme / Custom ... By choosing Hard, your setting will pick "120 food points per Long rest" ... therefore you were made aware that resting after each combat is easy mode. :P But you dont like it ... and you change that settings, wich will keep everything else set for hard ... but your dificiulty will be set for Custom. :P
You can't divorce how often you rest from difficulty because how often you rest determines difficulty.
That is totally not true. What determines the difficulty is the mechanic you use.
Shove, pig heads, dipping, highground advantage, backstab, disengage as a bonus action before patch 5, OP consummables, hide exploit, eventually stealing merchants, throwing ennemies... This doesn't require any rest.
How often you rest just change a the difficulty a bit and nothing more.
Meh, I get that people are happy that the implemented changes are all in a positive direction, but this seems like a very small amount of stuff compared to the tons of complaints regarding mechanics.
^This. I'm puzzled too. I guess when it comes to this game, many people want to grab at even the tiniest of straws.
Shove, pig heads, dipping, highground advantage, backstab, disengage as a bonus action before patch 5, OP consummables, hide exploit, eventually stealing merchants, throwing ennemies... This doesn't require any rest.
How often you rest just change a the difficulty a bit and nothing more.
Well granted but if you want to do , let's say, the entire goblin camp without resting it might prove a bit difficult. Not impossible, but it will be tedious to deal with certain fights without your spells/abilities. Or rather borderline silly to the point you will realize you're cheesing the game way to much.( For those who didn't watch the LARPG thing, the first thing they do is open a chest with A LOT of cheese ;P ).
Also I'm replaying BG2 :TOB and it's kinda insane how often they made encounters where you can't sleep in between the fights. Announcing explicitely beforehand : Hey, you won't be able to rest. So becareful. And all those " no rest" encounters were borderline easy cause they didn't want you to get stuck forever.
I can't wait to play this patch and see how this plays out. Would be huge to see Larian succeed where bioware failed.
Meh, I get that people are happy that the implemented changes are all in a positive direction, but this seems like a very small amount of stuff compared to the tons of complaints regarding mechanics.
^This. I'm puzzled too. I guess when it comes to this game, many people want to grab at even the tiniest of straws.
It's more like a confirmation that Larian actually is considering the hottest topics and is not dissmising them as " meh, just some forum trolls complaining". So good news We still have more than a year before release so really personally I don't care how much time they take for the updates. I just care about where the " general mechanic idea" is going and it seems they are adressing some of the complaints in a way or another so you know. That's all that matters.
By tying any resting restrictions to difficulty you are making players aware that resting after each combat is easy mode and if they are looking for challenge they will need to rest less often.
And that is where you are wrong.
Lets imagine once again ... In setting there will be "dificiulty" part ... where you can pick prepared "profiles" Easy / Normal / Hard / Extreme / Custom ... By choosing Hard, your setting will pick "120 food points per Long rest" ... therefore you were made aware that resting after each combat is easy mode. :P But you dont like it ... and you change that settings, wich will keep everything else set for hard ... but your dificiulty will be set for Custom. :P
You can't divorce how often you rest from difficulty because how often you rest determines difficulty.
That is totally not true. What determines the difficulty is the mechanic you use.
Shove, pig heads, dipping, highground advantage, backstab, disengage as a bonus action before patch 5, OP consummables, hide exploit, eventually stealing merchants, throwing ennemies... This doesn't require any rest.
How often you rest just change a the difficulty a bit and nothing more.
You are asserting that spellcasters being able to use every spell in every combat only changes the difficulty a bit -- that's funny.
It's possible you aren't familiar with D&D and don't know how to use the character's abilities to full effect, which seems to be the case from your comment.
If that's the case I suggest you try to play a few playthroughs just using your character's abilities and you'll see how powerful they are and how having access to them every battle trivializes combat.
You are asserting that spellcasters being able to use every spell in every combat only changes the difficulty a bit -- that's funny.
It's possible you aren't familiar with D&D and don't know how to use the character's abilities to full effect, which seems to be the case from your comment.
If that's the case I suggest you try to play a few playthroughs just using your character's abilities and you'll see how powerful they are and how having access to them every battle trivializes combat
Once again, it looks like your "roleplaying" self contraints doesn't give you a clear vision of how the game really works.
Of course it's a bit easier with all your spellslot if you play a caster... But the game is not way more easier with spellcaster and long rest based classes than it is with other classes. In exemple fighters don't need to rest at all (eating pig heads is better than second wind), and every classes can use the tons of scrolls like if they were wizards.
I'm glad for you if "you know DnD better than I" but resting is not at all what define the game's difficulty. It's only a small part of it, a tool the player can choose to use often or less often.
Food supply will only define if you can rest more or less, nothing related to the core difficulty elements (ennemy's AC, HP, ennemy's features, abilities, numbers of ennemy's, resistance,... and so on).
They could definitely let us choose how much we want to be restricted by food supply / ressources management or not. But impose to those that want fireworks at every combats to play unchallenging combats is a stupid idea because the resting mechanics alone does not at all determine the difficulty of the game. It's only a small part of the picture.
You are asserting that spellcasters being able to use every spell in every combat only changes the difficulty a bit -- that's funny.
It's possible you aren't familiar with D&D and don't know how to use the character's abilities to full effect, which seems to be the case from your comment.
If that's the case I suggest you try to play a few playthroughs just using your character's abilities and you'll see how powerful they are and how having access to them every battle trivializes combat.[/spoiler]
Once again, it looks like your "roleplaying" self contraints doesn't give you a clear vision of how the game really works.
Of course it's a bit easier with all your spellslot if you play a caster... But the game is not way more easier with spellcaster and long rest based classes than it is with other classes.
In exemple fighters don't need to rest at all (eating pig heads is better than second wind), and every classes can use the tons of scrolls like if they were wizards.
Fighters also get Action Surge and either spells if you choose Eldritch Knight or Superiority Dice if you choose Battlemaster. You should try these features out. They truly affect combat. A Battlemaster's abilities recharge on a short rest and an Eldritch Knight's spells recharge on a long rest.
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I'm glad for you if "you know DnD better than I" but resting is not at all what makes the game's difficulty. It's only a small part of it and the player can choose to rest often or less often. The player can choose to have something a bit more easy or not.
Food supply will only define if you can rest more or less, nothing related to the core difficulty elements (ennemy's AC, HP, ennemy's features, abilities and so on).
And how easy a battle is depends quite a bit on how many resources you have to take down an enemies hit points to zero. If your party has full resources they can even take enemies down before they get to use their features and abilities.
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They could definitely let us choose how much we want to be restricted by food supply / ressources management or not. Impose to those that want fireworks at every combats to play unchallenging combats is a really stupid idea because resting is NOT what makes combats challenging or not.
I'm certain you will get to choose how easy you want combat to be, in most computer games that is tied to difficulty level.
I'm not advocating for any restrictions to resting. The current pre-patch system allows every player to rest as often as they deem necessary. A minority of players, with the current system, only rested when they were out of resources and in places where it made sense to rest.
The majority of folks instead chose easy mode and rested after every combat and then complained that combat was too easy.
By tying any resting restrictions to difficulty you are making players aware that resting after each combat is easy mode and if they are looking for challenge they will need to rest less often.
Y'know this brings up an interesting point. If, as Alodar posits here, the way that EA was configured meant that the majority of players were having an unsatisfying play experience, then that's a clear sign that the design was bad. Just a thought that occured to me. As far as the combination of long rests and difficulty settings, firstly it's worth remembering that this is just a first draft (or second depending on how you want to count) and we're likely gonna see at least one or two more permutations before Larian settles on something final. Secondly, as far as this version of the rest system goes, I think keeping it as its own separate difficulty setting is a better approach. Less because of difficulty itself, more because I can see people not enjoying this sort of resource management, and wanting to play a particular difficulty beyond easy without having to deal with it.
I'm also incredibly disappointed to read that we shouldn't expect any more new stuff like classes or races in this EA. That pretty much defeats the entire point of a EA. This means there will be no outside critiques regarding any of the other classes or races. It's become very clear that when left to their own insular thinking, these other classes are going to be vastly disappointing and likely unbalanced or gimicky.
They said no new races in EA, so testers still have new race content to look forward to at launch, but all classes will eventually be coming to EA with Multi-classing coming near the end.
Maybe I'm misreading it, but doesn't OP say other races and classes are something we should NOT expect in EA?
That "to look forward to at launch" I call bunk on though. I'd rather test any mechanical stuff prior to launch and have all story being fresh. I don't trust them to balance it all well.
Meh, I get that people are happy that the implemented changes are all in a positive direction, but this seems like a very small amount of stuff compared to the tons of complaints regarding mechanics.
^This. I'm puzzled too. I guess when it comes to this game, many people want to grab at even the tiniest of straws.
It's more like a confirmation that Larian actually is considering the hottest topics and is not dissmising them as " meh, just some forum trolls complaining". So good news We still have more than a year before release so really personally I don't care how much time they take for the updates. I just care about where the " general mechanic idea" is going and it seems they are adressing some of the complaints in a way or another so you know. That's all that matters.
Okay. But the flip side of this, and what I fear, is that the forum community's message to Larian will end up being: Hey, all you guys have to do is throw out some very minor tweaks every few months, something that adds up to a tiny fraction of the totality of issues people have raised in this forum, and we forum trolls will be ever so grateful and satisfied.
The changes they've made are not very minor tweaks, and you most likely have no idea how much programming, animation, acting and art resources went into these tweaks or how long they took, allowing for bugs etc. (Honestly neither do I, but wherever programming is concerned, there's always more work than meets the eye.) Also, THEY ARE WORKING ON THE REST OF THE GAME AT THE SAME TIME. What we see in EA is a small portion. It's not like they're JUST working on refining Act 1 over and over again for us, they're also doing the rest of the game that we won't see until release.
If you are resting more than 4 or 5 times in EA you are playing Easy mode. You can't divorce how often you rest from difficulty because how often you rest determines difficulty.
Just to be clear ... DO we both agree that "how easy game is" and "what dificiulty cou picked in settings" are two entirely different topics? O_o
And to be even more clear ... DO we both agree that we are talking here about "dificulty settings" ?
I think tying this resting system to how much food/supplies you have is the easy way out of something that could be more immersive and enjoyable. Forget the food...It would work better is this was tied to creatures spawning during rests:
On story/easy mode just let everyone rest whenever if they have whatever food...even no food for just story mode. For other difficulties, introduce a creature spawning table dependent on level, time of day (day night cycles please ....) and the area you are in, and roll a check. So you get a nice risk/reward strategy for wanting to rest, not just a <<just get supplies>> game-play. So at the first rest 10% chance for creature xxx to showup, 5% lucky roll (bellow). Then another rest soon after, up that to 35%/8% more difficult enemies/interesting rewards etc... The more you rest in that area, the higher the percentage of creature spawning gets (this tied to the difficulty). And maybe during a VERY lucky roll, no creatures but some kind of allie/friendly spawns for items/bonuses or just fun story elements. Like a wandering bard with xxx story leading to a quest line...a hamster with a story to tell...a <magical><cursed> item appearing out of nowhere which is actually a gate to an Inn in planescape's Sigil city of doors...
This is actually kind of close to what BG2 also did (with the SCS tactical encounters and other mods).
I don't like requiring food to rest because it won't matter in the end. I do not believe that they would put a limited amount of food on the act, and if the player consumes everything, start over. This is definitely a bad game design. So there are two options either larian will put absurd amounts of food in the game or they will respawn at the traders. The first option is forcing the player to search all boxes, and the second one makes the system useless after a few hours. Changing the amount of food required is a bad idea due to the difficulty level. Maybe some people enjoy searching every box for food crumbs, but not me. If they increase the cost of a long rest due to the difficulty level, why play as a long rest based character when others can do the same or even better. Then, instead of wasting food for a full rest, you only eat a small portion.
I'm not buying an argument to play at a lower difficulty level. I like difficult fights, but if I wanted to play a game about managing food supplies, I would buy a survival game instead of BG. So, to sum up, it is better that the cost of food is not related to the difficulty level (maybe you can remove the requirements completely on story mode)
I believe "supplies bags" will ... What is wrong about that? Either you will manage to have aproximately the amount of Long rests Larian presumed you will ... or it will cost you.
I see there quite nice consequences for your actions, yet possibilities for less experienced players who need a little more. O_o
Also ... question for PFH3 ... Can anyone please explain me that carpet puzzle they were solving?
I mean, i get that Swen decided to go with trial and error method ... and i would probably too, since i would be totally trapped there. I can udnerstand the skull puzzle ... i can totally undestand the numbers puzzle ... but i have no idea how to figure the last one. Anyone have some thoughts?
Also ... question for PFH3 ... Can anyone please explain me that carpet puzzle they were solving?
I mean, i get that Swen decided to go with trial and error method ... and i would probably too, since i would be totally trapped there. I can udnerstand the skull puzzle ... i can totally undestand the numbers puzzle ... but i have no idea how to figure the last one. Anyone have some thoughts?
The picture on the last wall is the scheme of how you supposed to move trough the whole corridor. Left and right lines are walls, the middle line is the trajectory, the dots on the middle line are the right squares markins.
The changes they've made are not very minor tweaks, and you most likely have no idea how much programming, animation, acting and art resources went into these tweaks or how long they took, allowing for bugs etc. (Honestly neither do I, but wherever programming is concerned, there's always more work than meets the eye.) Also, THEY ARE WORKING ON THE REST OF THE GAME AT THE SAME TIME. What we see in EA is a small portion. It's not like they're JUST working on refining Act 1 over and over again for us, they're also doing the rest of the game that we won't see until release.
Gods, so much negativity on these forums.
Easy there. So should I rant about all the positivity on this forum?
But all kidding aside, I simply happen to be a very hardcore realist (in all aspects of life), and am trying to inject some of my realism into these discussions is all.
If you think these formums are negative, try the average steam forum . Those are probably some of the worst flamewars you can walk in on hehe. I'm pretty positive about the upcoming patch really. Just taking Larian's "patch 6 should follow soon after patch 5" quote with a huge grain of salt haha. At anyrate.. I just adopt the when it gets there stance to most EA games .
If you think these formums are negative, try the average steam forum . Those are probably some of the worst flamewars you can walk in on hehe.
Hahahaha yeah, I've seen those, gave up on the Steam forums pretty quickly, between the flamewars and the constant "why isn't this game out yet?". At least there are intelligent debates to be found here, for the most part. The Reddit BG3 forums are a bit more lighthearted, again for the most part.
I love the steam forums because what you see is what you get. No moderators trying to keep people on topic, no fanart spam (see the subreddit for what i mean), just a bunch of random thoughts from people who are interested in the game. It's great lol. Sure, most of it is nonsense, but that's part of the charm. I can come here for actual discussion (most of the time), but steam is a great snapshot of what people are thinking about currently.
I like to think that as much as the criticism is itself pretty harsh here, most of us try hard to keep the atmosphere polite and as low friction as we can while discussing it.
Steam forums are downright rude. Same here. Try to give a suggestion at all or any feedback and get eaten alive.
That is not true ... There is many good suggestions wich get huge support from various people ... And then there are some, that could be compared to ideas for fanfiction of drunk teen ... And of course, many other somewhere in between.
So to go back to the focus of this thread, what do we think of the background goals? While I'm not sure that they were a good idea to include *now* (I'm willing to bed that they had to include them now in order to accomodate something else they wanted to include either in this patch or a subsequent one) I find it really interesting as an idea. I don't think I've ever encountered a system like it and I'm eager to see what they're actually like in-play.
My main point of concern-and it's a minor point at this moment-is the fact that these goals are apparently hidden to us. If the quests are generic or impersonal, then that's no issue. But if they actually tie into our character's past, then I foresee a problem, since I don't really like the idea of us not having information about our character's pasts.
My main point of concern-and it's a minor point at this moment-is the fact that these goals are apparently hidden to us. If the quests are generic or impersonal, then that's no issue. But if they actually tie into our character's past, then I foresee a problem, since I don't really like the idea of us not having information about our character's pasts.
From the patch video, it seems like these quests are completely generic: "Acquire the Soul Coin," "Recruit the Ogres," "Steal the toe ring," etc. They'll add flavor to the game, but they aren't like background quests present in other games. They're closer to collectibles or achievements than quests with meaning.
It's a videogame. Everything in it has to be pre-placed in advance. It's never going to be able to replicate the nuances of a player-created background in a human-DM-controlled world. We're also running custom characters who don't have any written backgrounds at all. It's never going to know what things are specifically part of your imagined background goals and which are against it. If you're expecting anything approaching that with these generic background goals, then consider your hopes thoroughly and permanently dashed.
As far as what I can tell, the real benefit from those background interactions are Inspiration points for free re-rolls, and the cap of 4 before they get converted to XP encourages you to spend them regularly, and that's a great idea to help smooth occasionally bad/unlucky rolls. I think that's a good enough purpose.
It's a videogame. Everything in it has to be pre-placed in advance. It's never going to be able to replicate the nuances of a player-created background in a human-DM-controlled world. We're also running custom characters who don't have any written backgrounds at all. It's never going to know what things are specifically part of your imagined background goals and which are against it. If you're expecting anything approaching that with these generic background goals, then consider your hopes thoroughly and permanently dashed.
As far as what I can tell, the real benefit from those background interactions are Inspiration points for free re-rolls, and the cap of 4 before they get converted to XP encourages you to spend them regularly, and that's a great idea to help smooth occasionally bad/unlucky rolls. I think that's a good enough purpose.
I agree with you there. I don't expect that and like I said, I'm more in favor of them being generic. And as a concept I think it's a really cool one.
My main point of concern-and it's a minor point at this moment-is the fact that these goals are apparently hidden to us. If the quests are generic or impersonal, then that's no issue. But if they actually tie into our character's past, then I foresee a problem, since I don't really like the idea of us not having information about our character's pasts.
You can put your concerns on this matter aside. Those quests are already confirmed to be generic and briefly demonstareted in the video. So they are nothing like "And in contuniation to your story...", but they are like "You know what a Folks Hero would do in this situation? So... do it!"
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/cEoGE0y.png)
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