Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Just Finished Playthrough (27h, Good) - Feedback

Hey Larian Studios employee that looks at feedback - I wanna make this really easy for you to just jot down and pass on, so I'll make bullet points of everything I disliked/would like changed of the game. A little bit of background on me - I'm a huuuuuge fan of BG1 and 2. They've been my favorite games since I was 14 (I'm 22 now). I'd say I'm your exact target audience for BG3. I've played a 5E DnD campaign with a friend that's pretty into DnD, I've played through BG1 and 2 probably 4 or 5 times each, and I gave DOS2 a run when I heard you guys were making BG3. I thought DOS2 was a good game, but don't see myself playing through it a second time in a long time. Didn't absolutely love it, but definitely would recommend it to others.

So, first off, I gotta say, I absolutely LOVED BG3. Like... easily at least as good as BG1 and 2. So this is coming from someone that absolutely enjoyed every second of playing BG3. I'm trying to come from the standpoint that I know you're going to refine UIs and balance enemies as you get data from us playing the game. I played through as a wood elf ranger (beast master). Wasn't impressed with the subclass, I'll definitely not choose beast master next time I play a ranger. But that's not your fault! That's DnD's fault. I made a lawful good runthrough of the game. Here are my thoughts on balance, problems, and things that I'd like to see change.

- Melee = underpowered -> Melee classes seem extremely underpowered at the moment - the changes you've made to the DnD rules have really made melee non-viable. From my experience in DnD, fighters are supposed to be mega strong up until later in the game when wizards start getting more powerful spells. To me, it seemed Warlocks, Mages, and Clerics were by faaar the best classes to choose from. Surface effects being undodgable really makes it difficult for high AC to feel like it actually matters. Also, gaining advantage from high ground REALLY makes melee suck. All AI is trying to get to high ground, any melee attacks, you just gotta walk around the person and "backstab" (gives less value to a thief) them. It just seems like some rule changes that get rid of balance integrity. If we could maybe get a +1 or +2 to our roll for high ground or flanking or something, that would be ok. But advantage doubled odds... So once again, a high AC doesn't really matter as much since seemingly everyone gets advantage every roll.

**Addition - since everyone below is saying melee isn't underpowered, it was probably with just how I was playing. When I played with Laezel and Astarion, they didn't stand a chance ever. But it seems I was the only one with this experience. I will make another playthrough with those two in my party the whole way through.

- Disengage and Glass Cannon Build ->The fact that disengaging is a bonus action makes it so glass cannons are viable, which doesn't seem like it matches how DnD should be in my mind. Have your glass cannon walk up to the enemy, hit it, jump away, have your tank get hit on the enemy turn. It was really nice at first, but I found myself abusing it on the more difficult fights in the Underdark. For balance purposes, I think that jump should be changed to an action instead of a bonus action to prevent this.

- Enemy AI and Item Faults -> I know the AI is still going to be refined a million times over, but I have a couple suggestions to throw into the box for you guys to take into account if you're willing to do so. First off, hooooly flip when I fought in that goblin camp, if I weren't an elf, I think I would've been permanently asleep the entire fight. I swear every single goblin in the camp tried to use sleep on my character. I don't think that many goblins would know how to cast sleep. Maybe I'm behind in my DnD lore, but I can't even remember the last time I had a goblin try to cast sleep on me (or any spell for that matter). I swear every goblin with a bow had explosive arrows too. That was unexpected. And there were fights where I was surprised everyone had a bottle of acid (or the likes, you get the point.) I think more unique items across the same fight would make fights more interesting and more natural feeling.

- Goblins Without A Leader -> If you kill a goblin leader, the goblins are supposed to scatter as far as I am aware. They heavily rely on having a boss to tell them what to do and rally them. Would it be possible to either have the goblins clear the camp when you kill their leader, or at least receive a debuff when they lose their leader? I think it would fit in with DnD lore a little better.

- Hit and sneak cheese -> When I had really difficult fights (like the bulette or minotaurs), I found that it was really easy for everyone to be far away on a ledge, use their action to attack the monster, then go into sneak out of the monster's sight. If all your characters were sneaking by the time you ended your turn, the monster would just sit there and do nothing. I didn't have to roll for stealth or anything because I was out of their view. Made the most difficult fights really easy. Enemies should be smart enough to walk in the direction that an arrow is coming from at least. This one might be on the way already.

- Overabundance of consumables early -> not saying this is the only way to play DnD, but I was told that magical items and consumables like potions are quite rare and expensive in DnD. Within the first two hours of playing BG3, I had like 3 speed potions, 15 health potions, and other potions like speak with animal. On top of that, scrolls were very common. The number of magical weapons and armor felt like a very good level, and in the end, I used almost all of the potions and scrolls I was given, but I felt like I gathered them all within the first 5 hours of my playthrough. Spreading out the potions more would make it feel more "DnD-esque" to me.

- Never had to spend my gold -> I think the only thing I bought my entire playthrough from a trader was some thieves tools for lockpicking. I found the best weapons and armor as drops. I made a "good guy" playthrough, so I don't know if there were shops for only evil characters, or if I missed something, but I only saw like 3 or 4 items that I thought would be worth it. There was one that gave a scorching ray cast that I nearly bought, there was a ring that claimed to help the wearer see in the dark (At least that's what the description made it sound like. I bought it, it didn't work on Gale or Wyll, so I just reloaded and played without it), and then I remember having one more thing that I almost bought but decided I should save my gold for later just in case I found something. Now I like that I could scavenge everything I needed for a playthrough, but I really like games that give noticable advantages if you spend 10k gold on one massive item for a character. Maybe we'll see more of this in Act 2 or 3 (whenever we get to Baldur's Gate) but in act 1, I didn't really see a need to spend gold. At least make it so I need to spend my money on potions or something to make the fights doable. Maybe you're saving that for a difficulty up or something once you make different difficulties, I dunno.

- Combat Difficulty Scaling -> I felt like almost every fight in the game was very easy. Even as a beast master ranger that never used their beast companion. I truly feel the game is easy enough that I could beat it with any combination of characters. Which could be a good thing! I know you're still balancing, and gotta make a difficulty suitable for everyone for EA since there's only 1 difficulty. But WOW, I got to the Underdark after doing pretty much everything on the surface. The surface fights were quite easy. Like I said, ranged was really overpowered. Spells and bows were pretty much unbeatable because it was easy to kite everyone. But once I hit the Underdark, and the fights were like 8x as difficult as on the surface! I don't know if that's because of the level 4 cap, or because the Underdark is supposed to be merciless, but holy flip I used all of my items in the Underdark. Never had to use a potion or scroll or anything on the surface (maybe a couple times, but none that I can remember), but the underdark burned all my items. I looove a game where I can't stockpile consumables. If we could make it more spread out so that I had to use consumables on the surface AND in the Underdark, that'd be awesome. It was like a switch being flipped on for difficulty. A more even scaling I think would help with a lot of things I would change in the game.

- Searched too many empty containers -> I don't mind searching an empty container or two, but hooooly macaroni, there were points throughout the game that I just gave up on looking through containers because I would search 15 containers and they'd all be empty (exaggeration). So I'd just move on. Maybe you guys are going for a "exploration" type of thing where if you search all the containers, you get some cool item, but it doesn't really feel good as a player to have to do that. If containers could be marked as empty as we walk past them, or after searching 4 containers, mark all empty containers within 20 feet, that'd save a lot of time and feel better as a player. I don't think you should remove any containers, because they can be used (barrelmancy) but it was tedious to look through them all.

- misty step through walls -> Your QA guys probably already found this one. But for the life of me I could not figure out what I had to do to break the wall in the tower in the Underdark on the bottom floor where the power supply is. Only thing I couldn't figure out in the entire game. I had gotten bombs that I threw at the wall, didn't do anything. I can't even remember where I got the bombs from. Something dropped them. Anyway, didn't explode the wall. Tried hitting it with hammers, maces, the good stuff. A pickaxe even. Pressed all the buttons in the tower I could find (never figured out what the button on one of the upper floors in a corner does - that button is glitched by the way. It made my character run down to the floor below and then press it), nothing. So I took Wyll and misty stepped as close to the wall as I could to hopefully pop up on the other side of the wall. Guess what? It worked. So that let me bypass the wall and explore the final part of Act 1 that I hadn't seen yet. Glad I figured it out, but you shouldn't be able to misty step through walls.

There were glitches everywhere, but I've reported them elsewhere, either on Reddit or on the forums. Definitely didn't catch all the glitches, but I'm gonna do another playthrough as an evil character and write down all the bugs and stuff so I can make one massive post with everything.

Anyway, these were my complaints, overall it was an awesome game. 10/10, definitely already one of my favorites. I will say the first time I felt like I was on a truly epic adventure was when I found the Githyanki group in the north west corner of the map and saw that guy ride in on the red dragon. I loooooved the dialogue sequence with them. I felt like it had all the options I could have hoped for. Seriously outdid yourselves on that one. At that point, I was like "awwww yeah this is gonna be an epic quest." Only to be stopped when I tried going through the mountain pass. Can't wait for act 2!

I hope you'll consider all my points. Probably nothing new here, but just tack my vote onto the list of change if it exists. Thanks a ton, and I seriously loved playing through act 1 of BG3 and am extremely excited to keep playing throughout early access! Keep up the good work!

This was a well written. I'm really tired of reading the same rage threads over and over. So, thank you for putting this in a nice digestible format.

That being said, I've seen a lot of posts saying that magic is underpowered, rogues are underpowered, etc. To be honest, I felt like my Ranger was my only viable character. I've also seen another poster asking that Rogues be nerfed because he felt they were too powerful. I'm not suggesting that I'm right. I just don't think there's an actual balance issue. Instead, I suspect that certain playstyles make better use of certain characters. I probably subconsciously try to use my party in ways that makes the most use of my favorite character.

The only other thing I'll point out is that a couple of these are contradictory. Not trying to be rude, just trying to nail down what the actual problem is.

Melee is not viable, but combat is too easy. Could you elaborate on this a little because I don't see how both can be true. Like if all your melee characters are getting downed in battle... it's not too easy. I also suspect people feel that the combat is too easy/hard because of the unpredictability of the dice rolls. It's not the kind of slow and steady slog like in most RPGs. There's a psychological aspect too, if combat works out for you when it's based on a dice roll you think it's easy. If it doesn't you think it's too hard. Neither is true... it's luck. If you have other information to change my mind I'm all ears.

So there are too many empty containers, but also too many consumables, and too much actual wealth so you don't have to buy anything. Afaik all of the containers are able to be opened. So... to change that would fundamentally change the game. I'm not sure what the fix is here. I wasn't drowning in money and just bought accessories for my party when I had a lot of equipment to sell.

I honestly think the fix is optimizing the inventory interface, as you said. Its very clunky right now and you wouldn't feel like you were wasting time. I know that sorting items from a box is way to clumsy right now. Click to open, right click, send to whichever character needs it for each item, skipping over trash then 'X'ing out of the persistent box is crazy. If you could just walk away from the box and have it closed, you're not wasting time in that menu.

>says game is too easy
>admits exploiting difficult content

cool story

Brilliant points!!!!

These are good to know. Must've just been how I played. Melee can be unviable and combat still be easy. I played with Shadowheart, Gale, and Wyll. I tried Astarion and Lae'zel for a while but just felt like in general melee got wrecked by all the fire, either from enemies or from aoe on my own consumables/spells, so it wasn't worth using. The encounters outside of the Underdark were really easy. Like, I think you could go with pretty much anyone in your party and easily make it through everything not in the Underdark. But once I hit the Underdark, I felt like there was absolutely no way I could fight with melee. It was all from a distance. But like you said, totally could've been how I played. I could be wrong.

As far as empty containers go, maybe I should rephrase it and say that it's not fun to check 15 barrels that are empty. Like after I check 4 empty barrels, I wanna know if all 15 are empty or not. So still be able to open them, but have them all marked as empty instead of having to click through each one.

I might have just not looked close enough at what NPCs had for trading too, I dunno. I'll make another playthrough and pay attention to that.

Haha, I only used exploits in the Underdark, where the game definitely wasn't too easy. It was a difficult game in the Underdark. But on the surface, I didn't even know the exploits existed, because I didn't have to get creative with combat. It was just run in, cast spells, stay away from them so they can't melee me.

I think the surface combat is great - right level of challenge - especially if you don’t kite/exploite constantly - that’s upto the individual, I tend to think people who are blowing through it easily are taking advantage of glitches & exploits - but don’t grandstand about how easy everything is if you can’t stand & fight as intended.

So you basicly exploit game. There is no chance that Gythianki warrior will not get you(they got teleport skill). If enemy was doing nothing after your hide then you exploit it, in my game they follow to the last place where I was and check it, after they see I'm not there they stay aware and watching around(I use this tactic with goblins).

Have you killed hag after dialog withotu preparation? Because any enemy shoud be avaible to kill after dialog before preparation.

I don't get your first point really. In my playthrough, 36 hours in and not finished yet, the best asset in my party is definitely my fighter Lae'zel. She's literally the one killing all the bosses. She strikes hard, really hard, and her survivability is really good compared to the others.