Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Conversations not taking advantage of party characteristics

Currently, I think there's a competitive aspect of using your own character personality for conversations, one that could easily be cooperative.

In a RPG tabletop perspective, the ideal case scenario would be that for every player that participates in the conversation their race/background/class/etc would be added as a conversation option (if available), instead of relying only on the player's that started the conversation, since everyone is present at the "table" and they could easily intervene.

One example would be if a Druid could help dealing with an NPC but he "didn't act fast enough" to talk to this NPC first or was busy doing another thing (which isn't that hard, with so much stuff to do). So, in this idealized scenario, he could later join and intervene through an additional conversation option (if available).

What are your thoughts on this? Am I too far off or missing something?

There have been a number of discussions of ways to get parties more involved in conversations over the course of early access. I think it’s fair to say that pretty much everyone thinks it would be a good idea, though opinions vary on the best way to implement it.

Personally, I’d like to be able to see the response options for the character currently leading the discussion only, but be able to swap to another party member close enough to pitch in if I want to and have them reply instead (obviously using one of their specialist options if they have them). And to have NPC companions chip in with opinions more often. But not to have all their response options just laid out there, as I feel that suits a game like Solasta where we are effectively playing the party, but would interfere with my primary identification with my main character in BG3.

Something Larian have said about the difficulty of implementing party conversations in multiplayer make me doubt we’ll see much change from EA in the full release, but I guess we’ll see for sure in a few days.

I wouldn't really say there's much room for doubting left.
They came out and straight-up said the current system will be unchanged at release.

I rather like the system as it is.

But, and I seem to be the only one here, I *LIKE* shortcomings in characters. Persistent succes at everything just bores me.

I also like the idea that I'm playing MY character. Everyone else is there, too, but I do not speak for them. There are instances where they interject, and that's great. That's not to say I can't take Gale to talk to an NPC, but at that point; I'll try my best to say what Gale would say, and not me.

I'd just like to be able to set which player speaks for the party in a setting. For instance, if I choose Lae'zel to lead the party because I want her up front in case of combat she will end up leading conversations that are triggered by presence rather that clicking.

They said switching speakers mid-dialogue would lead to too many permutations to be able to do.

That's fine and understandable. No one is expecting a 5+ people conversation that can go anywhere. But not letting party members to use their skills is not ok. Gale could easily interject with a History skill check, which would then give the speaker the knowledge to continue on that branch. There are many situations where everyone in the party should be allowed to roll a skill check, even if only one is doing the talking.

Interstingly, the origin characters will pitch in knowledge at some points when you miss skill checks or even before you roll if it is an important topic to them.

Is it tho? O_o

I mean ...
What permutations are they even talking about?
IM sorry, i dont really want to sound like ultimate sceptic ... but sometimes it feels like when Swen dont know what to say, just just come up with "oh many permutations and stuff you know, not worth it" *nervous laugh*.

Bare with me ...
You have any dialogue that gives you options ... there is few standard generic options, potentialy some ability checks, and class/race specific dialogues ... we dont really know, but since whole game is done trough tags, we can presume that Origin companions will be done in same way.

Now ... how does that look in practice?
I dont really know.
But i imagine it as something like this:

Gale: You are no Wizard are you?

1) I cant say i am.
2) The last thing i care about are some bloody Wizards.
3) [Warlock] I am better than Wizards, im a Warlock!
3) [Sorcerer] I am better than Wizards, im a Sorcerer!
4) [Shadowheart] blah blah blah.
4) [Astarion] blah blah blah.
4) [Lae'zel] blah blah blah.
4) [Wyll] blah blah blah.
4) [Karlach] blah blah blah.

And game is allways just checking what tags apply to your character, and hide those that dont ...
There will probably be some upgraded mechanism for hotkeys aswell, since we can have both Sorcerer and Warlock tags, so the game have to somehow give them proper numbers. But that is not a point here!

My question is ... where are those permutations?

I mean ...
If you are there as Tav, and just swap for Shadowheart for example ... all the game needs to do is simply make another tag-check and hide different ones ...
You are moving trough the dialogue exactly same way all the time, no matter who is the speaker ... the only thing that is changing is wich tags are visible and wich are not.

It wouldn't necessarily lead to any additional permutations though..? Any character *can* be the speaker in a conversation, and thus the lines are already written for them. A "swap speaker" button would only need an additional 10(?) lines in the entire game, one for each character to say "Let me respond to that." Then the new speaker would proceed from that point in the conversation just as if they were always the original speaker.

I suppose there may be oddities for conversations that drastically change depending on the character-specific choices made earlier in the conversation before you swapped, but these are probably a minority of conversations and I can think of a few ways this could be relatively simply dealt with. E.g., have the just game retroactively choose whatever choices would lead to the current conversation, or just continue along the original speaker's conversation path and only allow the new speaker to make generic, skill-based, or class-based dialogue lines.

Yeah that's one of the ways I pictured, but a better option would be to show specific dialog options only to those that have them. Let's say for example Wizard was the first to speak, it'd be shown to him only dialog 1, 2 and 3. But if the Sorcerer joins the conversation and suggests (vote) his 4, only then it'd be shown as suggestion for the Wizard to choose from. So then:

1) I cant say i am.
2) The last thing i care about are some bloody Wizards.
3) [Warlock] I am better than Wizards, im a Warlock!
4) (companion) [Sorcerer] I am better than Wizards, im a Sorcerer!

Anyway, Larian most probably won't do this, but I guess this could come out as a mod in the future, maybe (if someone has the same idea and the know-how)

Joining mid-conversation would actually make it harder to implement ...
But i think that wanting the game to chceck party in close proximity, open all apropriate tags, and simply swap Protagonist in front of camera, as if they were there this whole time ... would be doable.

Problem starts with Multiplayer, bcs in this way ... it would still be the dialogue initiator, who would have full control ... even (and that would be the problem) over OTHER players characters.

And you folks want to add in additional lines for every single conversation to account for the possibility of any combination of Astarion, Gale, Shadowheart, Lae’zel, Wyll, Halsin, Jaheira, Minsc, or Minthara to be able to interject? (All of which would have to be localized into an additional 12 languages)

What year would you like this to release?
2033?

Not at all ...
Since they allready exists, all we want is to merge them into one.

//Edit:
It would obviously help if we would have actual diagram od dialogues used ingame ...
Instead Larian only showed us few yellow boxes with lines on picture of Rafiki.

But as it seems ...
If the game would check for your tags, every time you would swap a speaker, it would be doable.

And i still cant find even single "permutation" added.

The main problems remain tho ... Camera (huge one) and Multiplayer (also huge one)

Except they don't already exist.

You have added in options for 5 of the 9 companions.

That was just an example showing all the possible dialog options of every companion in existence, with those dialogs ALREADY written in the game.

But in reality, there's only 4 in the party, and like the example I gave earlier additional dialog would ONLY appear if the companion that HAS them wants to (IF they have it, because most of the time they don't).

It's apparent that you don't understand the complexity of what your asking.
It doesn't mean that complexity doesn't exist.

Of course they do ...

You can play as Origin character, remember?
> And as such, you will be able to participate in conversations ... so their lines must exist.
Logicaly.

You can also play with a Non-Origin follower in party, and even tho im just guessing, i would dare to presume we will be able to asume controll over them and initiate conversation with NPC, just as with anyone else.
Since that seems like a nobrainer.
> And as such, you will be able to participate in conversations ... so their lines must exist.
Logicaly.

Obviously ...
That was the suggested merging.

---

The way i see it there are two options ...

Either there are separate blocks of conversations for each Origin character, each Race, and each Class.
Wich sounds like a nonsence to me, since amount of repeated text would become *X* times biger ... where X is total count of all potential tags and their mutual permutations.
So ... maybe even over million-times as much.
As i said, nonsence.

Or those special options, wich are the only things that actually differ, are allready there ... just hidden unless you have the Tag.
> This seems most possible, bcs as Chubblot was messing with Tags, he was able to apply all Races and all Classes options on his character ...
True, the game crashed, so it clearly caused some trouble.
But with amount of other changes he applied, im not really so sure about what caused it.

Anyway the idea is quite simple really:

Option A: (Messy one)
Chang checks tags of all members of your party > offers you dialogue choices > if you wish to talk as another party member, you siply pick their option > game swaps you and new speaker, dialogue continues

Option B: (Clear one)
Game checks your tags > offers you dialogue choices > you swap your talker >
> Game checks your tags > offers you dialogue choices > you swap your talker >
> Game checks your tags > offers you dialogue choices > you swap your talker > ...

//Edit:
There is clear problem with messy solution, bcs that would only offer players to pick Origin-specific dialogue options ... no [Persuation - Tav] and [Persuation - Wyll] ...
Since that would blow the whole dialogue window four times ... eleven times, if we also include hidden options.

Thats why i allways voted for clean one ... since speakers ability scores are allways used, it may seem a bit wonky, but it would save lots of work.

There is old saying in Czech:

Enlighten me, or shut the f* up. :P

This is an incredible omission IMO. It can't be hard to do...they have been working on the game for 6 years. Same with rolling for stats...we can't get stuff like this at release but we CAN get pronouns, genitals and vitiligo sliders. Makes sense.

Yup, they focused on the things people wanted Thankfully rolling for stats was trashed.