Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Shove is a Broken, Dumb Game Mechanic

I gotta say Larian... to have put so much great effort into the artwork, story, voice acting for this game, and then just ruin it with these BASE level gameplay decisions, it's really unbelievable.

I'm sure it's been said here before, but when you get to Grymforge and the fight with Nere, and the battle just turns into a shoving match where whoever pushes the other into the lava first gets to instantly kill them?? Why even use any of the dozens (if not hundreds) of options available to you, which you painstakingly earned and chose over the course of the game, when you can just use one of the base actions available to you from the start of the game to kill the "boss" with one hit?

It really betrays an intellectual laziness that pervades the entire game, all the way down to the CHARACTER SELECTION mechanic (when I click or double click a character, will it select them? zoom to them without selecting them? Do nothing? No way of guessing! Just click a million times and give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome to be sure you can SELECT A GODDAMN CHARACTER!)

It's like the initial decision to not bother trying to make the mechanics of the game anything more than a Divinity clone (turn based, restricted view, et al... I'm guessing, I never actually bothered to play it) ruins all the other great effort by the rest of your team that would almost make this a fantastic, wonderful, and enchanting game otherwise.

Seriously, what the hell??? It's beyond frustrating.

"Clone" is not accurate, but BG3 does inherit a lot of issues that plagued D:OS2 - to lesser extend as armor mechanic pretty much negated running through surfaces or triggering traps, which I suppose was an issue in itself. Considering how ambitious BG3 I wouldn't accuse of lazyness - sloppyness perhaps. I know it's a game in development, but not having basics nailed out, like moving your characters and managing party feeling smooth and responsive is a very bad sign. From the little I understand of game development (and not all companies develop games same way) that stuff should have been figured out long ago - so probably we will get stuck with what we have.

It has been said countless times everywhere since the EA release. Still the same OP bonus action more than 1 year later though...

Well allegedly they tried it the 5E way and decided to make some “improvements”

I think its pretty accurate...

The inventory and items.
The UI, map, cursor, character selection etc etc.
The characters and number of companions.
The silly gameplay gimmicks.
The static environment, zones with no time.

What can you expect then, its a Larian game right? Wrong. This isn't a DOS game, but Baldur's gate! Instead of building an engine from scratch we got recycled DOS2 crap with extra <Baldurs gate tm> code sauce slapped on top of it, and a new motion capture studio for cinematic dialogues...prob the only thing NEW and <innovative>? to the table.

In my mind a new gen. of BG3 game = REMOVE 90% of CINEMATIC DIALOGUES (10% for major story scenes) and ADD=

At VERY LEAST 20 super detailed playable companions. BG2 had 15+(not so detailed for many).
Having so many companion options, opens up for a party of MINIMUM 5.
There were 120ish Spells in BG2. Make it 200+ plus abilities for BG3 all in line with D&D.
Reactive Day/Night cycles, with dynamic quests based on when and where. Amazing next gen weather/atmosphere effects.
A boat load of creatures. There were already HUNDREDS in BG2. Make them super accurate from the D&D world. No level 4 Dragons.
Even more branching LONG and INTERESTING dialogues with a MULTITUDE OF CHOICES and impactful decisions on the world.
EVEN MORE super interesting multi-branched quests.

Unpopular opinion, but shove is a legitimate dnd action. Just because hardly anyone thinks to use it doesn't mean its dumb. The great thing about dnd is that it gives you all these amazing abilities and allows you the freedom to use it however you want. You may not like it, but it doesn't mean its broken. Using a shove action has actually saved my paty's skin a couple of times in a fight where we're outmatched, once someone remembered it existed that is.

Is this a joke post?

It's not a "legitimate dnd action" when a gnome mage can shove a boss halfway across the map to kill it with one hit. But you seem to have completely missed the point of my post-- OF COURSE it saved your "paty's skin" because it's a stupid, broken, overpowered, poorly thought out game mechanic.

All great suggestions, except the FUNDAMENTAL problem with turn-based is that suddenly you can never have a battle with more than ~12 participants without each turn taking half an hour. They either a. didn't take this into account (unforgivable dereliction of duty for a game designer) or b. don't care.

My money is on B, which makes it all the more frustrating that they pushed so hard to be the ones to make a Baldur's Gate sequel when they didn't even bother to try doing it justice once they secured the rights.

It saved my party's skin not in bg3 but in an actual dnd campaign.

No, I actually play dnd and shove is a legit action.

Shove is a legitimate DnD action. Sacrificing an attack to knock someone prone or push them 5 feet away can be very useful. BG3 Shove is ridiculous and broken. It should not make someone go flying off screen and it should not be a bonus action. It is also not something that can just be ignored like many of the other questionable mechanics in this game, because the enemies consistently use it unless they can't get to you.

I haven't yet encountered being shoved halfway across the room, but yes in that case its not that shove itself is broken, but Larians mechanic is faulty, not that there's any surprise there. Also, good point, I didnt even realize that shove is a bonus action instead of an action. That in itself makes it pretty op.

Thank you for taking the time to actually clarify what was meant rather than shouting at me like I'm dumb. People's brains all work differently.

Go to Grymforge and try to fight Nere and his duergars. A pretty sobering experience.

So you are trolling this forum, then. No one said shove isn't in 5E.

I could think of few reasons ...

1) Its aproximately million times more fun.
(Wich alone should be reason enough in my honest opinion)

2) If you shove your enemy into the lava sometimes you loose their loot this way.
(Should be every time in my honest opinion)

3) In SOME cases it can be more effective ... sure, you can "insta kill" with shove, presuming your roll will end well and your enemy will stand close enough to the edge ... but with some of those "other options" you talk about can sometimes kill more than one enemy ... that is something Shove can never do.

4) They dont exclude each other.
(While they probably should ...)
Since Shove is Bonus Action, and all (or at least most) other attacks are Actions, you can easily do both ...
Sure i know this is just another argument for Shove being unballanced mechanic ... but the question was "why not use base actions" ... so, this answer is legit. :P

I really thought i came up with more reasons ...
But it seems like this is it for now.

No one has ever said that shove is not a fun mechanic, especially in BG3 due to the verticality.

But many players everywhere (here, reddit, steam) has always reported that it's way too overpowered and overwhelming, mostly because it's a bonus action and because the distance is too important.
It seems that calculations are also strange... It was 100% chance to hit when you were invisible (even for a 10 strength wizard trying to shove a minotaur). I'm not sure they changed something there since the log doesn't give any informations.

When they'll change shove to a full action it's gonna be another good step forward for the gameplay as patch 5 changes were.

Well, it's fun, provided YOU aren't the one getting shoved into Lava before you can even take a turn - or YOU aren't the one getting shoved off a cliff in the Underdark and sent 300+ feet into Torchstalks WAY down the path from the spectator almost to the Arcane Tower.

So, I have said it's not a fun mechanic, but only because of how ridiculous the distance is. If it was a Bonus Action and only shoved 5 feet, that wouldn't be a big deal to me. Even 10 would be acceptable. The issue I have is mostly with the crazy distance.

Since nobody mentioned the word "fun" before me ...
I take the liberty to presume you both were reacting on me ...

So ... maybe this is once again my poor english, but let me put it into perspective:

Question: Why use any of other options?

Answer: Its more fun.

Meaning: Its more fun to play regulary, compared to shoving every turn.


Hope we understand each other better now.

The distance alone would not prevent ennemies to use it so often (to shove, to disengage, to wake up a friend,...).
And it would not require us to think more about using it or using something else. In other words, it would still be a "default option" for everyone rather than a tactical decision/a choice among other choices.