Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Early access evolution

Could someone post all the MAJOR changes that occurred to the game since the beginning of EA? NOT minor stuff added in, or minor bug fixes, revised rolls/hit points/data stuff, or a few more lines of dialogue/animations etc....
Like fundamentally important fixes/changes that positively changed the gameplay and world.
I think this is needed to get a better idea on how things are moving along.

A class was added.

No .. since anything that will be mentioned you would just say "its not major enough" ...
There are list of changes in every patchnote ... read those.

Surfaces were toned down a bit (fire)
Druid added
Loaded dice
Auto jump (but it bug a lot)

These are the only "meaningfull" changes according to me. Other things are the usual following of game's devellopment (camera, dialogs improvement, more tutorials, less placeholder, bug fixes,...)

The amount of special arrows was drastically reduced, cantrips don’t create surfaces anymore.

I've had the impression playing with patch 4 some of the combat encounters & enemies were redone. But I don't play regularly, so maybe it was added before? For example some enemies are level 5 now.

You can do this Mr. Planescapist if you wanted to, if you don't own the game you can watch lets plays and compare those. They have vids on the demo before EA, I recently watched that and know they changed the UI majorly.

These are the ~most significant things in each patch:
Launch: Oct 6, 2020
Patch 2: Oct 27, 2020 (3 weeks after Patch 1=Launch)
-- Bug fixes & cinematic tweaks, "75% of you stood with Tieflings...Good outweighs evil." Nothing significant in this patch.
Patch 3: Dec 2, 2020 (5 weeks after Patch 2, 8 weeks since launch)
-- Experience for pacifism, adjusted companion behavior to make them "less mean", party auto-jump, 2 short rests instead of 1, rebalanced cantrips to no longer create surfaces.
Patch 4: Feb 25, 2020 (12 weeks after Patch 3, 20 weeks since launch)
--Druid Class, loaded dice, targetable portraits, and various dialogue, story, & combat changes that add up to be significant

Hmm.. yeah... it's not very impressive so far

Ok, so there's a game in Early Access right now called Uboat. (It's amazingly fun, but it's nothing like BG3.) Now if you'll look at the Steam store, there's a game scheduled to come out in 2022 called Uboat Commander, which looks like it copied all the ideas from Uboat and expanded the features. Now, I already invested in the Uboat game. So paying the makers of Uboat commander would spread my interest too thin. It's like Space Engineers and also Dyson Sphere Program. You really have to pick one or the other. No Man's Sky or Astroneer? I'd do Subnautica first. The point is most of the time it's not worth it to buy Early Access because the game can lose and end its development early, like 7 Days to Die, which has been in Alpha for almost a decade and yet still sells copies. Between Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, you should just buy Wing Commander V on Good Old Games.com. The one copied the other into the same development pithole.

Let's not forget the hotfix that biased dice rolls to be more likely to streak on high rolls.

I can't believe you didn't mention that now we can hide the helmet!
This is important :3

My bad, how could I forgot this one !

I didn't notice this... This is what I get for not reading patch notes.

WHAT HOW?

In the equipment screen there's a little toggle on the helmet box that allows you to show / hide for cutscenes / hide completely. Biggest game changer. <3

I think, more important that what is added in EA, is what will be added/changed for 1.0.

There are EA that aim to provide playable, constantly evolving experience. From what I understand BG3 is a testing ground. The fact that improvements aren't ported from live code into EA build doesn't necessary mean that those changes aren't happening. Who knows what is and isn't improving though.

Finally, someone realized it! I am surprised by people who count time to release based on EA update. These are two completely different clients, and as Swen said, our experience on release will be different. I hope that it will be so.

The most important thing they could get feedback on from EA is the actual gameplay. Especially on the rules that they have changed or added from D&D. But gameplay is what hasn't changed AT ALL, save for the cantrip surfaces. Combat is still terrible and cheese tactics rule the day. Classes don't matter and the resting system is completely broken. And no comment from the developer. It really seems like "we don't like D&D, our design is better and this is how you play a video game". And personally I couldn't disagree more.

It's mind boggling that a 5e OGL game, Solasta, is more D&D and plays better than Baldur's Gate 3, which is full on D&D in Forgotten Realms. I would like to get my D&D fix from this "crown jewel" of D&D video games rather than some indie OGL game. Well both, ideally.

Why did Larian even bother with an Early Access and asking for feedback if they don't want to communicate with the community and reflect on that feedback. And address the concerns that are loud and clear.

Yea, Im not exactly blown away on how EA is progressing. Adding classes isn't <progress> to me. Thats just regular content stuff. The WAY THE CLASS PLAYS is for example what Im talking about. THE GAMEPLAY.
Spells, UI, graphics, sound/music, dialogues etc...