First off, as a Baldur's gate 1 & 2 player, a DM, and a Larian fan, hats off to you guys taking on this incredible project. I have put a little over 20 hours into the game and I feel like I have a good handle on what I like and what I would suggest for future patches. For context, I played BG3 on release for a couple days and then put it down until I revisited it this week. (Also, this is my first time ever posting on a forum, so I hope this is the right place to post this). Below are some things that stood out to me (not exhaustive by any means).
ProsThe addition of the weighted dice is a fantastic option for those of us who enjoy diving into all the dialogue choices. It feels good to know that if one conversation goes south just because of the dice, the next conversation will probably go better. Additionally, the ability to add buffs in the middle of conversations gave me some interesting strategic choices. Do I want to burn a 2nd level enhance ability to intimidate the guard, or save the spell for if I fail intimidation and the guard attacks?
The characters are interesting, even in their unfinished state. Like older Baldur's Gate games, I like the feeling of trying to keep a group of very different people together and trying to balance my story choices with how much my allies approve or disapprove of my actions. Knowing that your companions will leave you if you don't invest enough in their goals was always an interesting and unique part of BG1&2.
I LOVE that jumping and shoving (which I think has only come up a couple of times in my real world dnd campaigns) have so much tactical significance. These two features really make me think about my environment unlike BG1 where I largely used the same strategy for most fights.
SuggestionsEven with the added tactical options, I still repeated the same strategy for 75% of my battles. Same spells in the same order, same party distribution. I think this is because, unlike DOS2 where most every individual has unique resistances and vulnerabilities, most of the time the only real thing you have to keep track of for low-level Dnd monsters is AC and HP. For every Hook Horror or Dror Ragzlin which force you to consider other options besides just doing damage, there are 10 goblins or duegar that just require the same weapon attacks/damage spells as the last set. I think the way the BG1 got away with this is because of the real-time combat. There were many monsters in those games I could just left-click, and all the characters would automatically shoot it, the monster would die, and we would mosey on our way. The only times I paused combat were if there was a unique enemy or one of my characters was dying. I think BG3 could benefit from a real time mode. Being able to put our characters on some kind of real-time auto pilot will speed up combat and prevent players from having to repeat the same combat sequence over and over.
This may be controversial, but I think BG3 would benefit from a respec option. It happens all the time in my home Dnd games. Somebody picked a feature that sounded cool on paper, but it didn't work the way they thought in-game and they ask to change it. I had never built a warlock before and so when I was levelling Wyll up, I accidentally neutered him to the point where he was almost completely unplayable. It would have been cool to have the option to undo my mistakes instead of sending him permanently to camp jail. It also takes the pressure off of players to understand how to optimize their build in favor of encouraging experimentation of unique characters and unique party makeups.
Lastly, some minor user-friendly stuff. I apologize if there is already a way to do these things and I was too dumb to figure it out.
1. Add a way to transfer abilities directly from one hotbar to the another.
2. Create a multi-select option for inventories to send multiple items at once to camp or allies.
3. Allow parties to rest using the food stored in the traveller's chest without having to take the food out of the chest and put it into your inventory first.
That's it
I've had a great time with the game and I can't wait to play the finished game.
