Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Playing solo: what BG3 does wrong vs BG1&2

Short intro: I'am a BG fan not having played any Larian previous games, I am DM Warhammer and I am French - I give you already three reasons to disagree with me

I enjoyed BG3 Early Access (although I find the term irrelevant - I call that simply a beta), and has in my opinion the good spirit. Larian succeded in capturing the BG atmosphere, that is:
- you are lost, confused and far from home
- a huge power intends to use you and you are tempted to use it
- the world is waiting for you, but there are places you should not got yet (or find a clever way to pass).

But the problem is that this atmosphere was regularly broken by improper mechanisms, when BG1&2 kept alive the immersion. After some thinking and 80 hours of play, I came out with the 2 following core reasons:
1) Party & Inventory management
2) Dice rolls out of combat
Both aspect were far better treated in BG1&2, when you play as a single player to experience the story the way you want it, hence the title of the thread.

Party & Inventory management: right now it's a chore and is illogical by easing up all but what would be useful.
- No group infravision (of course when the proper Party Member is close) ?
- Party Member selection is rigid and you can easily mess up. Why not a single button to group/degroup, or just drag the mouse ?
- Exchange of items between Party Member only when they are close or at the camp.
- No need of bag of holding, but please give specific containers (potions, gems, arrows,...).
- One PM does the barter, while having access to the inventory of everybody close.

All that was already existing in BG1&2, but BG3 could do even more :
- When several PM are together in front of a situation, please let us decide who steps ahead to do the talk.
- Food management, well why not, but please let food be food and not healing potions. Or introduce the "indigestion" status.
- Personal issue in my playthrough - maybe just a bug ? : Wyll, WTF are you doing here in my camp ? I don't remember inviting you. And I don't care if you approve or disapprove my choices, you are not even present !
And of course "You must gather your party before venturing forth" has to be there.

Dice Rolls: Larian I get what you did, and definitely to have fumbles/critical successes is a lot of fun in tabletop, when you play multiplayer and when you are a streamer. But when playing solo, to make "your story", it just dosn't work well.
I spent maybe more time reloading that actually playing. And I don't speak about combat and such. It is just that knowing I could have access to more outcomes by just reloading pushed me. And also to correct what seemed clearly unfair.
Consequently I suggest that the game should have 2 modes. One "tabletop/no reload mode" keeping all the dice rolls, and one "story mode" in the way of BG1&2: no dice roll. Just stats + modifiers vs. target - which means a ugly barbarian will never have the same possible options than a seductive wizard. To see all the options, you will need others characters & playthroughs.
And much easier would be a specific button to go to detection mode (traps, hidden doors & such), also with no dice roll, just stats comparison.

All the rest is secondary. I am not a big fan of the music, graphics are cool, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder (wink wink). I enjoyed combat, found multiple funny ways to progress, story starts well, Party Members look promising, and look forward seeing all these elements in a town, or even a big city.
Larian, you have my support, but please consider that players have no fun struggling with inventory and party positionning, and will not take the result of the dice as firm when you can just reload if it doesn't suit you.

Thanks and sorry for long post

+1 for true tabletop & no-reload mode!

The problem I see is that a stat comparison is always a dice roll, whether we actually see it or not. I'm down with the idea of an active "Search" button, I was surprised it's not in game already. Even that, however, will be a dice roll, your Perception/Investigation vs the DC of whatever it is that could be found. While most games, including this one for passive checks in the current iteration, do the rolls behind the scenes, I'm fine with the rolls that are shown. We have a thread about lock picking where it's pointed out that we should be able to determine the DC of a lock with an Investigation check. This too will involve dice rolls. Thinking about it, there are an awful lot of dice rolls going on for a game that "doesn't feel like DnD" according to a few threads floating around the forums.

There should be, and likely will be, an "iron man" mode, with infrequent saves, and maybe even permadeath. I think it should be tracked too, to see how many players actually use it, and stick with it. As far as reloading saves for dialog choices, there will be players that will do it. I'm not one of them, but they're out here, and their money isn't worth any less than mine. Meaning: They too paid for the game, and they should be able to enjoy it how they see fit. Their save scumming will not adversely affect what I'm doing in SP, and if I were to host a MP game, it wouldn't be allowed, and would be laid out in the first few minutes as a "House Rule". In the end, however, in SP, the only experience they're affecting is their own. Things like food during combat, something I didn't even consider, since I didn't know you could do it until I read about it here, from people that think it shouldn't be a thing, just not doing it will "solve" that "problem". Taking this back to "iron man" mode, maybe eating during combat should count as an action. I'm pretty sure that will outrage some of the people that are currently outraged that it exists though. They found it somehow, right?

At the end of the day, I'm more concerned with things like "I can't take Astarion on a certain quest because it's surrounded by running water". In the current iteration, where we can't play as the Origin characters, I can just leave him in camp, but what happens when he's the main character, since the Origin characters can be the main character? As mentioned, the lack of an active Search/Investigate check puzzles me, since "I'm searching for traps/secret doors" is a pretty common statement around the table. If I spend a lot of time in game, I have to go into Windows Explorer and manually delete Quick/Autosaves, or the game will shoot a corrupted save message, or a "failure to overwrite" error, despite running as Administrator, and having full rights to overwrite the files. Why isn't an option to delete the saves on the Load Game screen? This "feature" is a carry over from DOS 2, where I also experienced it, and I'm not sure I can't attribute it to GoG more than Larian, but it's the only two games, including other games that I've run through GoG where I have this problem. I've only had one actual crash, and I sent in a crash report. But that stuff is way higher on my list of priorities than what some other player may do in their SP campaign.

Yes, I hate the user interface and movement in BG3, playing it in spite of it.

Well you make some nice points but you are french so sadly I cant agree