Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Larian, beware of the influx of voices so early on

Whoa OP, I bet they were totally oblivious before you came along and cleared things up for them.

It's ok, they know what they are doing. I do hope they will be flexible and open-minded, some things do need adjustments for sure and I am sure they can also find patterns in player feedback too. There will be conflicting messages for sure, but it's clear that some things are more consistent there and it's up to them to decide on those.

5e is for mental lightweights. It is simplistic, simplified, and superficial, and everything in it is about combat and nothing else. The only thing you need to care about during character creation is how many "bams" and pows" you can generate in combat (elemental interactions, anyone?). And that is why it has sold well and is popular: simple and stupid is what sells these days, whether it's books, movies, TV shows, or games.

Your TLDR is as long as the read.

I think Larian understands and they know what they can and can't do and where they are open.

This. So much of this. This statement is Dungeons and Dragons at its very core.

BG3 is Larain's campaign. They are the DM, and we are the players. I'm sure many will disagree with me, but that's the way I see it.

At my table that I DM, I let my PCs drink potions as a bonus action. Guess that makes me a bad DM.

Fun and fairness do come in a large part come from the rules. Saying otherwise shows a lack of experience with TTRPG's. Rules facilitate the framework of the great hobby. Rules facilitate what kind of game it becomes. A Call of Cthulhu game is a completely different experience from a D&D game because of the rules, not the setting (You can have tentacle monsters in both, but the experience of the games vary because of the rulesets).

And yes, it is Larians campaign. But they did advertise that the game used the 5E ruleset. It would be like you inviting players to a game and advertising that you would use no houserules, but when the interested players show up, they get surprised by a whole slew of houserules that vary widely from the game they came to play.

Your example of houseruling potions is a straw man argument.

larian in the past has shown they know how to listen to and know how to listen but not implement opinions. In Dos2 EA there was a quite a large and vocal portion of the community that didn't like the change from gear giving you a single stat of armour from DOS to DOS2 that had gear give you magical armour and physical armour and attack doing either physical or magical damage. Well larian didn't listen to the "outrage" and kept with the new system. Some people like it some people hate it , but the key take away hear is that larian is willing to go with THEIR vision in the face of large support for an opposing view.

Based on this past experience I feel larian will listen when they believe the community is right and go their own way when larian thinks they are right.

This game is d&d and for early access it is excellent - the start of what I hope is a long and wonderful journey,

And there is yet another group of player who would say the following...

"Larian's vision is a big reason for the feedback being so negative - it's not an interpretation of Baldur's Gate, it's an adaptation with a lot of things included that might make a great game but do not make a great Baldur's Gate game."

The amount of "outrage" that the game is too much 5e and not enough BG I & II is on par with the people complaining its not close enough to 5e.

So I ask you who is right how do you solve this problem? If you are like most people you think it should be solved in your favor or the way you want the game to be. You'll never get a consensus. And what if they decided to take the opposite side and made the game less how you want it to be?

Larian is damned if they do and damned if they don't . There are enough D&D 5e "purists" and Baldur's gate I & II "purists" that if either side takes a "hard" stance you are going to do nothing but bitch and complain about how the game isn't X instead of compromising and making the game better by realizing it is NEVER going to be a pure mechanical representation of either 5e rules or represent the pure mechanical style of BG I & II. It is going to be its own thing influenced by both camps.

The harder either camps works at to force the game into their own mutually exclusive positions the more unhappy both camps are going to be. And know this, you will NEVER win, so stop trying. Just try to make the game better and by better I mean be open minded to change. Be willing to express your opinions but also be open to the fact the 5e isn't perfect and "house" rules are part of the D&D experience. Conversely be open to baldur's gate I & II not being perfect and changes to how those games approach thing needs to change as well.

First of all. That's fair. The potions thing was a crazy oversimplification so let me be more concise.

When BG3 was announced, Larian Studios specifically said "BG3 is based on the fifth edition. We started by setting out the rule set very meticulously, and then seeing what worked and what didn't work - because it is a video game and DnD was made to play as a tabletop game. So for the things that didn't work, we came up with solutions."

Your acting and responding to an extreme. BG3 is built on a tweaked version of 5e. Some of the mechanics DO need fixing, so I agree that it is not perfectly executed, however Larian did not advertise that they would be ONLY using 5e rules. We aren't logging into the game to find they threw the rulebook in the trash and just did whatever they wanted.

i get the game..
I expected DND.
i cannot play it irl but for a bit was crazy and delving into it massively.
i also like turn based combat games like Xcom.
so... yeah i like BG3

Meme Cutscene Pending...

He wrote that accepts that certain things need to change, and then he expressed his opinion. Just like you said people should do. And I don't understand your talk about a consensus. People either like or dislike something, and they should express that. Hopefully they can come up with constructive criticism.

I don't think you can put the 5e crowd and the BG2 purist crowd in the same boat either. I am in both camps kind of. BG2 is my all time favorite computer game, and TTRPG has been a hobby of mine for over twenty years. But from early on, Larian made it clear that they would use the 5e ruleset (which varies widely from 2nd edition, which previous BG games are based on), and that they would make it turn based and close to the TTRPG. For me at least, it is easier to understand why the 5e crowd is disappointed. The BG crowd should have been warned by now.

That being said, I think a lot of the feedback is constructive. Take the environmental effects quoted above for example: Burning stone from firebolts and puddles of acid (burning your feet through your boots for some reason), does not make it feel like a TTRPG (which I believe is Larians vision), but more videogamey. And D&D already has environmental spells like Cloudkill, Fireball etc. Adding environmental effects to every little thing will just make it messy.

I think 98% of people understand changes need to be made when adapting 5e to a videogame. And yes, house rules are part of the D&D experience, but currently it does not feel like house rules for d&d, it feels like a different ruleset with D&D flavor. For me at least. If that is what Larian is going for, I think they should have more up front about it. I think it will be a fun game no matter, but I would probably like it more if they edged closer to 5e than it currently is.

I totally get that changes need to be made when adapting 5e to a videogame. I should have made that clear. That was an error on my part.

That being said, I see no real gameplay reason for most of the changes they have done to the 5e ruleset. And I think that is what is confusing many of us.

And the more you hold on to that attitude that this doesn't "feel" like 5e the more you are doing exactly what i said by taking a "hard stance you are going to do nothing but bitch and complain about how the game isn't X." Or doesn't feel like X, it is the same thing.

Stop trying to get the game "feel" the way you want. That is a nebulas concept that means F'all because it doesn't have the same meaning for every person. Accept that there WILL be environmental damage that is part of D&D now, it has been expanded GET USE to it. It is not going to change. If you want Larian to remove environmental damage you are pissing into the wind and all that is going to happen is you are going to get angry and wet. This current version of environmental damage is extremely tame compared to DOS 2. You are not going to get it removed. That is the heart and soul of how Larian approaches combat.

I find the BG purist and the 5e purist to be a bunch of rigid uncompromising fans that simply feel they are right period and refuse to accept that they will have to bend. You will never get what you want so stop the BS. Speak specifically to systems and NOT with the intent to have them remove but how to improve the system. Stop trying to make the game in your image, instead accept the image larian has made but try to improve upon said vision.

It seems you are the one taking a hard stance here regarding fans of 5e or BG. And to use your rhetoric: Stop trying to get people to act the way you want. And asking for systems to be added, changed or removed is not futile in many cases. Look at Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Enough people asked for turn based combat, and they added it.

Regarding environmental effects: You deflected and ignored my points: 5e already has spells for environmental effects. Adding more will make it messy and unbalanced. 5e has balance issues at higher levels, adding lots of DoS elements to them will not make it better.

In the battle between 3.0/3.5 and 5.0, as an old timer I'll pick 2.0 every time. However, I already had my satisfaction from BG1 and 2. 5.0 is the current Soup De Jour, and I would have no right to insist the gamer world accede to my preferences.
That being said, I can certainly manage to play and enjoy a BG 3 built around 5.0

Suggestions on implementation variances to make 5.0 work in a computer game vs real life DM situation are always welcome...griping about a D&D game based on the current version of D & D mechanics is just durn silly.

The overall feedback isn't negative at all though. The game currently has a 84% review rating on Steam. Around half of the negative reviews are due to crashes, not because of gameplay. The "feedback being so negative" that you are refering to is mostly people who write on forums, whereas most people who actualy like the game are currently playing the game instead of writing critiques on forums.

It was the same when DOS2 first launched. Lots of complaints on the forums, yet the game now has a 95% review rating on Steam.

As with most topics in life:
The loudest people are the minority, not the majority.
People who complain will always be louder than people who praise.

Okay, but you are not factoring in those people who don't even buy and play the game in the first place, because they dislike the game, and you have to buy and play the game before Steam will allow you to post a review. So in places like Steam, the reviews are structurally biased towards the favorable side.

Also right now, lots of people who have negative things to say about the game are being banned based on totally BS reasons. So Steam ratings don't mean a damn. They are essentially rigged ratings.