Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback More reason to rest at camp early for story triggers

Time limits encourages you to skip all side content and rushrushrush through a game that they spent a lot of time making.

Adding one to this game would make me stop playing it, personally. You'd basically be skipping most of the game. Charlies, rolls, half the underdark... nej, tack.

Just for clarity for me since I never rest...and I'm running 4 created peeps...am I doing myself a disservice? Or is this purely for the npc interactions that I'm not using?

It's not so much that I haven't played games that have a ticking clock that never really influences the story, it's that we expect it but hope for better. Remember that time in Deus Ex: Human Revolution if you dicked around Serif offices too long the terrorists you're supposed to be dealing with would execute a hostage? That was such a shock to me personally because I've been playing games so long that confuse narrative drive with the $60 dollars you put down to gain access. Sadly even Deus Ex dropped this pretty quickly in that game, but I wish it would happen more often.

To the point of the OP, gating cutscenes to long rests is problematic, but instead of artificially adding more encounters, make what's there more difficult and maybe don't get fully healed after the ship crashes.

Having run many a D&D game, I can tell you that players generally don't like a hard clock. It can be nice to have a stick to drive people forward a bit but overall the trope of a McGuffin is typically more enjoyable.

That might be true in scenarios without time travel but video games are all about a flowchart of events and how you can order and effect them.

Its more that if you have 50 days until your head explodes, and every fight you do makes you rest, youll eventually stop exploring because it means fighting > resting > exploding. People will typically try to clear the clock ASAP and then go back (in a game). In D&D they just ignore stuff because you can only have 1 priority at a time and if one has a stop dead date, you do that. Instead of "Lets go have an adventure and see what is out there in this crazy world" it becomes "HURRYHURRYHURRYHURRYHURRYHURRY". Technically, you can probably get away with it, but if I thought I was going to explode, Id not have done 80% of what I did. Id go to BG / moonrise ASAP and then just assume I can grind out XP later if I am underleveled. Your reputation gets damaged in this with illithid stuff and its just generally a negative weight. Even the "cool" powers are at a price. Having never used the in one playthrough, yeah it can be less stressful, but as soon as you do the clock starts ticking louder.

Rushing is usually not fun, and I am having a hard time thinking of my favorite "ticking clock" games. Youd think Diablo would have had one as hes entering the world through a ritual, but im pretty sure id have enjoyed it less if I had a deadline to get to him.

Maining as a wizard, I had to camp often v_v

with 4 custom characters you wont be missing out on the character interaction too terribly, other than Volo I guess.

Sleeping, Astarion eventually tries to suck your blood. If you let him, he gains the bite ability which is quite legit. If you are NOT using illithid powers I cant really think of aything important. If you ARE, abilities and stuff come with it.

It's honestly terrible and it will feel even more terrible if it turns out we are going back to the same camp even when traveling to different regions.
It will make less and less sense as the game goes, in that case.

At least Dragon Age Inquisition (which I'm FAR from being a fan, in general, so I can't believe I'm praising it for something) did this idea right with a fortress, a place where you were actually meant to go back between missions, rather than an undefined "camp" instanced in the middle of nowhere.


No, they don't.
Especially when the "time limit" is lenient and tied only to specific secondary goals. Just because you have to achieve something inside a certain timeframe every now and then, it doesn't mean you have "to rush and skip content" in between.
Otherwise NO ONE would defend them.

I think we just fundamentally disagree on whether or not "skipping" things is bad, if you're so hot under the collar that you're making poor decisions in the interest of self preservation, that sounds like a compelling story to me.

A lot of people complain about how under-developed the "Evil" path in the grove-tiefling-goblin because there is very little to compel you to turn heel against the refugees apart from being 'evil for evil's sake', if instead, dealing with the cult of the Absolute represented a "quick and easy path" to understanding your tadpole (and going to moonrise); if the longer you took dithering in the EA map came with some kind of negative ramification caused by your lack of impulse, I think the game would greatly benefit. To me the behavior you're describing is people who are playing an RPG instead of people playing a role.

Plus for people planning to maybe play through this game more than once as different characters it becomes fun to see what could be depending on what actions you do and don't take.

Hmm. Well I didn't say skipping things was bad, I just said people tend to do it and they find not feeling comfortable dithering less pleasant than feeling that you have time to fully explore. This is coming from over 1000 sessions of running D&D with groups that definitely RP and play roles as well. Yes, I also play a pornographic amount of video games so I am trying to combine the two into the perspective of "the most fun" one can have in a videogame version of a TTRPG. I wasn't saying its NOT fun the way it is, I was saying there is potential to have MORE fun.

I have over 250 hours in this game already, and I know that I will be playing much more and the full game will be played many many times and I will do the gamut of the options. Just like I had a final save of every combo of major decisions you could make in the Mass Effects in nightmare mode because, if a next one was coming, I wanted to be able to import and see how those carried over. So, there are certain people it will impact less. The single playthrough, then uninstall, folks should also be considered and thats where you try to maximize the fun for everyone without taking things away from the other group.

If you'll notice it was EYEBALLS< BRAINS< FALLING AHH HEALER to - Hey Scooby and the gang, want to go see what old man withers mentioned at the moonrise tower spooktacular? Sounds like a mystery! The clock stopped as soon as you got told "lol nah man, you got yourself a long journey ahead". Which is why I say clocks tend to be kind of a clumsy element by nature as you simply cannot maintain the beat. They peeled it from 5 days til death to, yeah its just whenever you figure out what is causing this, keep your chin up! Which, narratively, works. However, those USING the powers have a different pace than others. Which could also make MP pretty funny haha.

I was primarily just making a commentary to the general regarding Ticking Clocks v MacGuffins and MacGuffins being generally the more enjoyable route for "world" games.

I think this back and forth is more or less the problem people are having. The OP is about how a system of long rests triggering plot cutscenes is at odds with the ticking clock structure of the narrative in the first Act of the game, my problem is with how the ticking clock is sold hard from the start but isn't supported by the way the game is structured, which seems to assume (for you) that the 'ticking clock' of ceremorphosis shouldn't be taken seriously because of course, like you, your characters are well aware that this is the first act of a longer story, so their plot armor is still strong.

Because the transition from ticking clock to mystery is affected by these long rests and from the information you get from the healers you find, it can feel like the drive of the narrative is in conflict with itself.

Pretty much Thread closed lol