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#711016 21/10/20 06:25 PM
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Individual points of feedback after 26 hours of playing:

Great setting and scenary, and a good selection on monsters.

The plot really does give urgency to player actions without resorting to end of the worlds scenarios (I appreciate that that is liable to change over time, but it's great that we start at a small scale rather than trying to save the kingdom after killing the first few rats).

The camera is frustrating at times, getting stuck behind scenery. One time at the start of the game it got stuck in the room with the fight between the illithid and the cambion even though I was still in the room with three imps.

Not sure on the economy of magic arrows - three hundred coin for a one-shot item that boosts damage a touch seems excessive.

I like the creativity in the magic weapons, but all I seemed to see was a wide selection of two-handed weapons. No magic ranged weapons so far, and the single-handed weapons have been less interesting.

I'm not a fan of the companions. I appreciate the ludo-narrative consonance of being forced to spend an extended period of time with some obnoxious people I'd rather just kill, but unlike my player character I can just turn off the game. I appreciate that there seems to be a general move towards 'let's be evil' in RPGs recently, e.g. Tyranny, but it doesn't make me any more inclined to like judgemental, inflexible, arrogant solipists than I was before. Plus the party needs more options for tanks.

The game could stand to have a glossary, but many concepts are explained well.

The game could stand to have a pause function as well - I don't mind fighting the enemies, but I would prefer to have better equipment to deal with the UI.

Pathing can be weak at times - I've lost count of the number of times when my player character decided that the best route from A to B involved throwing themselves off a cliff. Does a good job at traversing fairly long distances otherwise though.

Sneaking and combat can be a slow and frustrating exercise in micromanagement.

Any chance of an option for how much is highlighted when the 'alt' button is pressed? There's lots of stuff I'm interested in that doesn't highlight (such as food) which leads to long pixel-hunts in some rooms.

I love the number of autosave and quicksave slots - thank you. Would be nicer to have more frequent autosave, but the number of slots is great.

Had an amusing physics bug where a corpse glitched out of existance a couple of times, but that's mostly been fine.

Maybe have things that are spotted glow or shimmer for a bit longer once they've been seen. There have been a few too many times where someone in the party has spotted something and I've had no idea what it was. Sometimes it was a trap (Oh! That's what you saw). Sometimes I still have no idea.

Having an inventory sort button would be really handy. Particularly by something like weight.

Succeeded one level up to loose my stat increase my trying to improve a maxxed out stat. Oops.

Combat seems to consist of wandering the map until I find a fight I stand a chance of winning and then hoping that I get enough exp and loot from it to be able to take on something else. I appreciate that grinding isn't fun, but having some non-essential combats would be nice. Or else be a bit more generous with the non-combat exp. Even the combar rewards are not great - killing those phase spiders took almost all my resources and total reward was a gem for a book I've got no idea why I should be interested in and a robe that might have been mildly handy for the fight if I'd actually brought the wizard along.

Was highly amused by Volo when I first met him. Slaughtering the goblins outside the castle? No problem. Looting the merchant's area? That is just not on! Stealing from the dead is obviously far more serious than actually killing someone.


Either way, good game, but I'm not really inclined to play more. Too much 'let's give evil a chance', too few 'good' options, no decent rewards for quests: save the druid and kill the goblins and you get a staff that can create a puddle of mud once a day and a forgettable pile of junk. Saving the druid and finding that there is no quest exp and my only reward is 'the princess is in another castle' and most of the traders no longer being willing to trade with me, before sending me down to fight minotaurs that can wipe the floor with my party because I can't find any more fights to level up from? That was the final straw.

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Grinding? LV4 is max in EA and you hit it pretty fast. You barely need any special equipment, just some new weapons are nice to have.

Non-essential combat? There's a lot of it. There's hardly any mandatory combat, technically speaking.

Minotaurs are tough. You need a decent party/strategy to handle them. But you can also just get past them.

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Its EA testing and feedback. If you're playing it in lieu of a game that isn't recommended. I have over 200 hours in it because Ill spend forever trying to figure out to see if a frog can be turned back from a curse by biting it with the vampire - a kiss? lol - sussur anti-magic blossom near it to break enchantment, whatever. It can cast mirror image and stuff so obviously isn't "just" a frog. But just running through it like a game, yeah. I wouldn't spend too much on replay for doing that.


What is the problem you are solving? Does your proposed change solve the problem? Is your change feasible? What else will be affected by your change? Will your change impact revenue? Does your change align with the goals and strategies of the organizations (Larian, WotC)?
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The Devs wanted to start with the "evil" characters because they expected people to more preferentially pick the other ones. This is the same reason they wanted people to take the evil route.

Of course the evil route is all about eating babies, and not especially nuanced or tempting at all, so there is that.

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Originally Posted by SomeRandomName
Having an inventory sort button would be really handy. Particularly by something like weight.

If this is not a sarcasm, that is just another proof how frustrating UI is. This button exists. It is on the right of main buttons(that switch between journal, inventory, equipment etc).

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Thanks for the replies guys - I hadn't realised that the cap was at level 4. I usually try to handle tricky combats by levelling up a bit - at least I know that doing so isn't an option here.

Grinding: there were plenty of fights I couldn't manage before levelling up to level 4 (and getting some nicer loot, not that there's too much of that going around).

I was very worried about character options, as I'm not a fan of the current options, and the tiefling the paladins of Tyr sent me after is apparently another one and she doesn't come across as being a saint.

Thanks for the tip regarding inventory sorting - I'll take another look for that button.


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There is an inventory sort button, right at the top of the inventory screen, it offers four different ways to sort your inventory.

As to the "evil" route.... I haven't really had to go out of my way to be good. I haven't felt any sort of encouragement to be evil so much. Actually, I've felt the path of being good is the path of least resistance. I've felt very much heroic.

Regarding our companions. They aren't capital E evil, really. They're D&D evil for the most part. Meaning they're a bit selfish and lean more towards focusing on their enemies and who they hate than other things. But they're for the most part not out to screw with people.

They're far less obnoxious than the BG1&2 evil companion options and leagues less obnoxious than Bishop and Ammon Jerro from NWN2, so if these are the evil companion options...I'm fine with it.

Heck, Shadowheart feels like she's being set up for being on the border of a shift in direction in her life.

Wyll, is just shady, has good intentions if somewhat self-centered, and is probably more neutral than evil.

Gale doesn't seem evil and even seems to lean good given some of the things that annoy him.

Astarion and Lae'zel are definitely evil, but again, they're not being active villains and they aren't pushing me to do so.

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Some good feedback. Nice to see some balanced positives in with your criticisms.

I'll focus on some of the things I hope they really look into "fixing" --

Originally Posted by SomeRandomName

The camera is frustrating at times, getting stuck behind scenery. One time at the start of the game it got stuck in the room with the fight between the illithid and the cambion even though I was still in the room with three imps.

They need more camera options and the engine can accommodate. They just need to make it a priority.

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I appreciate that there seems to be a general move towards 'let's be evil' in RPGs recently, e.g. Tyranny, but it doesn't make me any more inclined to like judgemental, inflexible, arrogant solipists than I was before.

Evil as an option is one thing. But there does seem to be a distinct lack of having a way to walk a "Good" path, too. If they can't figure out how to add some virtuous elements and characters to the story then they should look into hiring Richard Garriott to consult. smile

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Any chance of an option for how much is highlighted when the 'alt' button is pressed? There's lots of stuff I'm interested in that doesn't highlight (such as food) which leads to long pixel-hunts in some rooms.

This was a problem in DOS, too. The Alt key actually ends up being somewhat deceptive in some rooms.

I think they should make the Alt key be a kind of manual Perception Check to help find things that the Alt Key (traditionally) doesn't always show so high perception characters get more use out of it.

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Maybe have things that are spotted glow or shimmer for a bit longer once they've been seen. There have been a few too many times where someone in the party has spotted something and I've had no idea what it was. Sometimes it was a trap (Oh! That's what you saw). Sometimes I still have no idea.

This was also a problem in DOS. I'm sorry to see that they have not fixed this. You should *always* be able to find what you've spotted even if your camera angle wasn't at the right place when it triggered. This could be yet another good place that the Alt Key could be used (to re-highlight things that have be passively spotted.)

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Some really good feedback here.

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Maybe have things that are spotted glow or shimmer for a bit longer once they've been seen. There have been a few too many times where someone in the party has spotted something and I've had no idea what it was. Sometimes it was a trap (Oh! That's what you saw). Sometimes I still have no idea.

Having an inventory sort button would be really handy. Particularly by something like weight.


Yes, and yes. Are you guys sure that there's a sort inventory function and not just filter options? I tried hard to find a good organize inventory functionality and never found anything so at the very least this is a big UI issue.

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Any chance of an option for how much is highlighted when the 'alt' button is pressed? There's lots of stuff I'm interested in that doesn't highlight (such as food) which leads to long pixel-hunts in some rooms.
I think this was intentional, and I am happy with it. Too often I let my game experience boil down to grinding and holding alt to get treasure; what they went with gets us deeper into the beautiful art.

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The game could stand to have a pause function as well
Brilliant; couldn't agree more.

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The camera is frustrating at times, getting stuck behind scenery.
True.

I really like the companions. I think Gale and Wyll are good, no? Shadowheart seems like she still has a heart... sometimes...

Also, I really think this game has 0% grinding. It's all about the interesting encounters and to me it succeeds overwhelmingly in that.

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Sneaking and combat can be a slow and frustrating exercise in micromanagement.
Disagree, I think the sneaking is really cool, in combat or not. Also, to me this feels like the smoothest, best-performing CRPG combat yet. The fact that its turn-based is so good IMO; the 'real-time' with pause spamming in other games just stresses me out and leads to lazy decision making.

Anyway, I think you have some really smart feedback here, thanks for sharing.

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Also yeah, the whole princess in the next castle story-telling did feel a bit drawn out. I think that might just be due to the depth of side-quests which does beg the question: why would I be doing an epic treasure hunt in the underdark when I need to be rushing to Baldur's Gate to find a powerful enough healer?

I love Halsin's character design :googly-heart-eyes:


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