Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [Suggestion] Replayability

Cheap cost effective and time effective ways to greatly increase replayability of this game could perhaps be even more customizable characters. I think the choices and changes you got to make when you level up are awesome and great ideas, for example ranger can become melee or ranged or both or have more magic or have companion pet etc etc. I would suggest to add even more of that.

Also races could have even little bit more bonus stats or features so that they are even more different from eachothers. This makes you want to try them all. Another cheap and easy way to increase replayability by a lot.


Hopefully story will be long too and because the game is already going to be a game that players play through multiple times i hope that there is a lot of possible outcomes for side quests and mainquests and whole story.

I was bit worried when i read that you had stated max levels to be "over 10" but no idea exactly what its going to be. I think 20 should be minimum max level to make the game long enough. I think you are making new guidelines for future RPGs and i think BG3 will be legendary game that people remember long time in future but that's only if its long enough. Thats why i think cost effective ways to add side stories and extend mainstory and multiple possible routes for these is much more important than cutscenes and cinematics which early acces has quite a lot.

So in simple words, more story, make it cheap and fast to produce story so that you can make more of it. What makes this game success most of all is character development and story. Character development is cheap to make, but story in early access looks like it must have been quite slow to make as its full of cinematics. Think about fallout 1 and 2 for example, were those bad games even their stories werent visually enchanted, just text.

More replayablity there is, more players are still playing the game when expansion packs comes out = bigger sales.

What? How are they supposed to do this?

"Thats why i think cost effective ways to add side stories and extend mainstory and multiple possible routes for these is much more important than cutscenes and cinematics which early acces has quite a lot."

Less cutscenes, more content. That's what he's saying.

I have to say it reminds me of people thinking 9 women will get you a child within a month.

Jokes aside -> Yes more is better. We'll see, they said BG3 is going to be 3 times larger than DOS2 and that makes a lot of content to begin with. Especially if you're a completionist.

I know you're joking, but I'd say I agree with the OP on that. The further away from "text adventure", the more trouble (and expense) it is to make more scenes, more choices, more story, more anything. Also to refine it. It's "change a sentence in the text file" vs "change the sentence, re-record the line, reshoot the animation". It may not be much when you have one change/addition, but it adds up, especially in such a massive game with lots of dialogue.

Now of course the point is moot, since they decided on cinematic approach years ago and BG3 won't suddenly become "text dialogue only with no cinematics".

I don't think more content == more replayable. Too much content may deter some players from re-playing or even finishing the game.

And I would bet that the majority of players will not re-play the game if it is super long. I tend to replay games a lot, hell, I sunk 3 full playthroughs in the EA, but I have been deterred from re-playing a game because of the time commitment.

Yes... im a bit worried because in early access it looks like that this short story in first act has taken a lot of time and money to make.. which might mean that we are about to get short game and low max level.

While at the same time with little bit efford and cost effective ways you can make this game very long and very very replayable. Small tweaks can double the playhours without being expensive to develop. There is potential for that.

Not entirely sure what OP is trying to get across, but if this is a call to heavily tone down on the cinematic style conversations for non-factor NPCs, I'm 100% for it.

I wouldn't be worried about either of these in the slightest.

The game is said to be at least 100 hours or at least as long as D:OS2 to my memory. This in my estimation is an understatement. One person I've seen post here claimed to have done a very thorough playthrough and clocked like 50 hours. EA is less than the first act of what I'm guessing will be a three act game. Of course it won't be long if you speedrun. Max level was said in one interview (to my knowledge the most recent source on the matter) to be more than 10. For me personally this is more than enough - levels in D&D 5e are very impactful. Getting into tier 4 (or even far into tier 3) might be problematic.

As for replayability... I think there'll be more than enough. Maybe more than there should be. They have a lot of things to improve that ties to replayability (some story/dialogue stuff, like the evil path from what I hear, as well as class identity). You'll be able to play as 8 origins or many custom character combos, choose different ways of dealing with things in game etc. Some things will be hidden unless a certain combination of factors is in place. It was once stated that there are 16 endings (more precisely that you'll need to play the game 16 times to see everything) + origin endings (iirc).

And I am 100% against it. IMO its one of the things that sets this game apart from many others and I love it.

I like the cinematic conversations, even with one-line NPCs, and don't want them removed or toned down.

Thats my point, if this EA was 50% of the first act and there is 3-4 acts in total and max level 14.. game will be super short. 100 hours is nothing really compared to hours spent playing other big games. And if this short lenght is because of labor intense and expensive development style of the story, i think most ppl want more playcontent, less movie. Its a game not hollywood film.

What i would like to point out too is that all these cinematics dont really offer much to replayability, playing EA through multiple times shows that after 1-2 times you just spam space bar to get rid of them faster. So gameplay value of cinematics isnt very high especially compared to hours spent making them.


And yes this game will be very much replayable, but because there is potential to increase it even further by alot with small efford and cost i think it should be something to think about.

...what? 100 hours is amazingly long for a single-playthrough of a game. Most games are like 10-40 hours long. And honestly, I don't think I'd want a game with a 200-hour playthrough length, especially a game that I would play with friends.

I mean, I agree with you that some cinematics (one-line NPCs) should be lessened. But these cinematics often still contain dialogue choices that can benefit replayability. In addition to choosing your race/class/companions/who you side with/what routes you take/how you approach combats/etc, the combination of which will be different every playthrough.

100 hours is "super short" game length now. Now I've heard everything.

I think adding in random events that focus on all of the trinity is key to this. SOCIAL, COMBAT, EXPLORATION. Add in random events for each one. Hell skyrim base game had 100 different events that would load in at random. these events could all be adjusted in the creation kit. The quests and choices of the player actually changes these events. So while at the beginning you would see a fox chasing a rabit most of the time leaving the cave. Late game you would see factions that you joined or scorned. It was better than most gave it credit for. Some of these events where quests and social encounters as well.

Game mastering would fix all of these issue. But I fill a completely static world is not the way to go with the base game. I think there is a reason a lot of RPG's even Bg1-2 had these random events. Now with todays tech we couls see all kinds of crazy shit. Some involving the weather and really putting these floor aoe's into effect. Imagine waking up from camp and all of a sudden the the rain has made the entire ground wet in that entire area. Now combat favors frost mages and frost bombs. Just crazy shit like that you could do within the engine and change things dynamically. Imagine going into an are and there are barells every 3 feet cause some goblins transported them or whatever fluff. Now every time you go into the same area there is something new to discover.

Its like when I first played DIV and I got a pair of dirty worn panties... I was like What the Fuck. This studio will add anything... yet they never captured how random they could be. I think they are closer to fable in personaitly than BG personally. But I would love to see them let go every now and then and allow random events to add some wacky every now and again.

Do you remember when 40 hours for FFVIII was a "looong" time?

Replayability as a term that Larian have thrown around is something that I'm a little concerned about...

Mainly because their idea of it seems to heavily involve the false replay value factor of forcibly locking out party members, and inciting you to replay the same content multiple times just to see all of your companions' stories; that is NOT replay value. It's a slog. It was a slog in DOS2, and if they do it again here, it will be an unpleasant slog here too. It's not a good method of creating replay value at all, because players are being required to replay 90% or more of repeat content with little to no variation, just to see that 10% that they arbitrarily weren't permitted to see the first time... and then to do it *again* for other companions (if we have 8 companions total, we'll have to do this a minimum of 3 time,s if they force character lockouts on us).

Some may respond that the game is so variable that it will feel greatly different, enough to feel fresh, regardless of what companions you take - but if that's the case then it would stand on its own anyway, and character lock-outs look and feel even more arbitrary and pointless.

Other games with more party companions than the party limit let you swap in and out and still progress the individual characters' stories as much or as little as you wish to - it lets you play the game the way you want to, without feeling like you're being punished for making a choice that they forced you to make... because that's how DOS2 felt; like large, important chunks the story were *Literally Always* missing, no matter what you did; like the game was punishing you for making a choice that it forced you to make, and then mocked you for making afterwards. I really, really, really do not want them to do the same thing again here.

I know this is a big tangential to the other topics being discussed here, but it is another element in the greater discussion of replayability, replay value, and what we can expect or hope for, so I wanted to bring it up...

My steam:

Company of heroes 2 2445 hours
Civilization 5 2380 hours
Civilization 6 1250 hours
Squad 1060 hours

Those games replayability is higher and my point is baldurs gate 3 has potential for that too with very little efford. But if the budget is being spent on huge amount of movies that player only enjoys watching 1-2 times rather than gameplay content, i think its not something that players are hoping for. How many of you would be ready to sacrifice 200 hours of content for big amount of cinematics that you only enjoy once or twice and after that you want to skip them.

I personally don't want them to cut the cinematic scenes or make less of them, and I already see a huge replay-potential in BG3 compared to DOS2. I mean, I made another character pretty much identical to my first one after realizing I had f*ked up big time with my build (be patient with me, I am learning ) and even though I tried to make all choices the same - a lot of the content was COMPLETELY different for me during the second time. And we're seriously just talking about top 10-20 hours in. I found so many things that I completely missed on my first try even though I am the type of player to explore every inch of an area before leaving.

And... How can you compare games like Civilization to RPGs? O.O Civilization is supposed to be more of a lobby-type game where you play a match trying to best your opponents one way or another - the game has NOTHING in common with RPGs except for the turn-based strategy in BG3. >.< The games are simply not comparable to one another. That's like me saying "Hey! I spent thousands of hours on Warframe, I should be able to do so on BG3 as well"...

Obviously, there are people such as yourself who can spend thousands of hours playing games like Civ. Meanwhile, there are people with equal amounts of time spent in RPGs - I have some friends with absolutely ridiculous amounts of time in games like Skyrim, Witcher, Dragon Age, you name it...

I mean, I personally loved DOS2, but I didn't really feel like replaying it - but my parents, on the other hand, are about 500-700 hours into DOS2 by now, they love replaying it to the point where they never actually finished act 2 xD ... YEAH, YOU READ THAT RIGHT (I can't even imagine what they will be like when they get BG3, they've already ordered a 5e DnD rule book to read through <3 ). It seriously doesn't matter when I call my father (yes, I am the type of person that calls my parents pretty much daily), he is almost always testing out a new and new setup and you can really hear how much thought and planning he has put into it. :'D

This paragraph made me smile.

Replayability is a selling point only among the vocal minority on the forums. The majority of players won't even finish the game once. These are statistical facts.