Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback A Note on Waypoints

They seem like a necessary contrivance to help players get around early access quicker and that's a good thing, but should they remain in the full release I wonder?

On the one hand they almost eliminate the need for back-tracking, but they also feel a bit too convenient...does the whole world know about these? Why has this not revolutionized travel? Even if only magic users or mystically inclined people can see/use them I'm sure any sensible evil overlord would make sure to either destroy the runes or at the very least put some guards around them or exploit them for their own ends.

They are a gamified player convenience sure...but also objects that exist in the game world that people have knowledge about. Overthinking it I know.

Would a 'return to dungeon entrance' dialog box fit better? Or as I believe was mentioned elsewhere, let people travel to discoverable map markers. Effectively it is the same, but I kind of feel a better connection to the game if I imagine my CHAR walking to where they need to get too even if it's just a '4 hours pass and you reach your destination' kind of thing. Magical portals should be grand events, something that require vast magical energies to open. having them splattered all over kind of cheapens them I feel.

What do you folks think?

Yeah. I wish fast travel was just... walking? There's no need for contrived magical devices that make you question worldbuilding.

So yeah, if you wanted to make them all markers on the map that you could fast travel to so they are not these fantastical netherese gateways, I get that. But what's done is done. I am fine with either. But dont take my fast travel option. IMO I allready spend too much time just watching my party walk. LoL.

I think they are exactly what you called them: a gamified player convenience.
I don't mind them when it's for the sake of saving travel time, such as when you just need to return to a merchant or a location you've previously visited.
However I do think there should be some sort of restrictions to where you can use them, somewhat similar to how there are some soft restrictions on where you can rest.

To use an example from my playthrough:
After I had reached the goblin hideout I ended up sneaking in by smashing a wall on the upper floor outside of the temple. This allowed me to move around inside the temple by sneaking around on the rafters far above the ground where none of the guards would see me. To my surprise there seemed to be a couple of tiny treasure chests stowed away up here, so this is definitely one of the intended ways for you to be able to enter the temple. I used one character to jump around on all the different paths. By following one of them I eventually made it inside one of the treasure rooms where I could plunder some crates full of coins and weapons.
However, there was one problem: I couldn't find a way to jump back out. My character could jump down into the treasure room, but the wall was too tall for him to jump back up. The only way I could leave the room would be through the guarded door, an act that surely would alert the guards standing right outside it.
...or I could just teleport to the waypoint in the Goblin Camp and run back as if nothing had ever happened.

This creates an interesting situation where the player (in this case that'd be me) can choose what to do and how far they're willing to roleplay.
I could have my remaining party members follow the same path I took so all of them would end up in the treasure room and then try to fight my way back out.
Alternatively I could send the three party members on a Saving Private Ryan style rescue mission deep into the enemy territory where they could free the one character trapped inside the room.
Both options would be small self-contained adventures, but when you also have the option of just teleporting the handful of steps outside the dungeon the intense feeling of pulling off this rescue mission gets kind of... diminished. I know I'd feel like I intentionally went out of my way to avoid using resources available to me solely for the sake of not living with the consequences of my actions.

I know it's always up to the player to choose what they want to do during their playthrough and that it most certainly isn't any of my business to dictate how others should play the game. But I still can't help but feel that if the option of teleporting out was unavailable the rescue mission would feel much more real. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who ended up in the exact same situation as me and I think it'd be a shame if they 'wasted' the opportunity for an impromptu quest like this just because they chose to teleport outside.
I think it's a good example of emergent gameplay, but giving the players a way to escape without consequence ends up diminishing the gravity of the moment.

Well no, I don't mean that you'd have to watch your party walk, just that I feel there is ludo-narritive dissonance happening for me with the way points.

You know like you have the menu, your hot bar etc.

Now imagine Astarion says something like 'Press F5 to save! An old drunk wizard taught me that trick." It's a useful thing to know, yes, but it pulls you out of the game.

It is a small thing, and personal preference of course.

The original games also broke the fourth wall eg. some Jaheira's voice lines.

I think the way they implemented it is pretty cool and more entertaining than just, "You found a statue in a market, so now you can fast travel there."

But it's by all means and accounts the exact same thing except instead of a statue it's just a rock with some etchings on it.

I like fast travel ... i only hope they will restrict it to only travel from one waystone to another ... not frome verywhere. :-/

Waypoint to waypoint fast travelling is the best kind of fast travelling in my opinion, yet so many RPGs seem to be adverse to implementing it and just add full fast travelling from all locations.
It's a shame if you ask me

I don't like MOST fast travel mechanics in modern games, in general, with very few notable exceptions (i.e. Ultima VII, Gothic 2 or Dark Souls 1 come to mind) as more often than not they tend to make the fictional worlds feel completely devoid of any sense of scale and tacitly endorse bad pacing and poor content distribution, but it's one of these things I tend to ignore as a lost battle at this point.
There's a portion of of the audience that absolutely loves "immediate convenience no matter what" and developers love to pander to them.

At very least I think games should be DESIGNED pretending no fast travel mechanic was ever going to be a thing, so that when a "hardcore mode" or a mod removes the feature, the game doesn't become an utter pain to experience.
Still, arguing against fast travel systems feels like a battling windmills at this point.

The way how fast travel points are implemented drastically changes the way a person plays and feel during playing so i think by default it should be indeed tuned to gameplay and lore logically (and option can be still given for people like to do it anytime anywhere), personally i like the way morrowind did it: you have this huge world to explore on foot in most cases especialy in the wilderness and there is a default from town to town travel method (that actually gave me a big relief when i was reaching to a town every time) but if you reach certain story points and quests you are rewarded with additional fast travel points (for example being a mage guild member you are able to travel from mage guild to mage guild, at least i think thats not a mod). Also i think certain spells and items eased travelling in the wild which was rewarding

I don't like how the runes actually teleport the characters.

It's kind of a fourth wall thing when what is clearly a player convenience feature is made into an actual thing in the game that makes no sense. Larian devs are great in other ways but they don't understand immersion. And immersion is everything in an RPG that is trying to tell a story for adults.

Who created those runes? Why those exact locations? Why aren't the Drow and Duergar using this amazingly convenient transportation to do hit and runs from the Underdark to capture slaves? A teleportation system between the village and the Underdark? Really? Things need to makes sense. We can't magically teleport for convenience and eat pig's heads in combat just "because video game".

A fast travel system should be just that... fast travel. No actual magical teleportation. Just move the party. Let us imagine they actually traveled that distance by foot. Or better yet, move an icon on a map. Don't invent crazy magical things that make no sense where you don't need them. Or explain the teleportation system in the game. Something like that would be a huge thing. Wizards from all over would flock to examine the powerful Netherese magic that apparently doesn't even require a power source. Rich nobles and nations would try to extract those rocks with the runes and use the teleportation system to cut down trading costs.

The runes could still be waypoints even without the nonsensical teleportation powers. And how is it that they are somehow disabled in combat, being otherwise instantly activated?

In the end - no one is forced to actually use the waypoints.


I am 35 years old by now. Played so many games I can't even remember.
My sensitivity to stuff is fading, sadly.
Even tho the passion remains.

But just walking even longer around because its more realistic?
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Come on. This stuff is not important.


Every game is kinda supposed to be like a Movie right?
How would you feel if you watch LotR for example and Aragorn or Frodo have to "backtrack" a 10 times between each kind of "camp" for selling just because they picked up so much stuff and cannot carry any more?
Please don't.
No one wants to see that in a Movie.


There are certain aspects of any kind of game which are just annoying, but they have to be done so that WE the players know WE are vigiliant, we notice stuff and we are badass.
Even if that one thing is to just crouse through a sh°tload of boxes and whatever containers, for one more magic scroll, or the cool weapon we are gonna using for the next 2 realtime days.

Backtracking. Pffff.
It can be nice, yeah.
But in most games, nothing unexpected happens.
And it can grow tiresome pretty quickly.

The waypoints do not just offer convenience, they also break the game on many counts. Did you steal something? Teleport away instantly before the mobs have a chance to look for you. Started a fight in the goblin camp and now the entire area is hostile, and you are surrounded by enemies? Waypoint away. Priestess gut imprisons you, you manage to break free and now are stuck in a small room with an ogre outside? Naaah, just waypoint away.

Of course for a story mode this is not a problem, players using the lowest difficulty do not care about the game much, mostly the story, so breaking the mechanics of the game like that with another game mechanic is fine. But anything above that? Yeah, waypoints need restrictions, the easiest one is that you need to be at a waypoint to use a waypoint.

A game should not break its own design so blatantly, which is what waypoints in their current state do. That being said the hags lair already restricts waypoints so it is pretty clear to me Larian will not leave the system as is.

Edit: And no, games are not supposed to be like a movie, really far from it, some games and some rpgs do try to look like a movie, but if all games intended to emulate movies they would all ''play'' like Heavy rain, Detroit become human or until dawn.

Would be nice of them to at least tell us which features are unfinished or already planned to change so we wouldn't waste time discussing on pointless matters.

I disagree that RPGs are supposed to emulate films. Especially a D&D based RPG. D&D is, in large part, a simulation, and a simulation requires a certain level of in-world consistency/believability that comes at the expense of convenience. The great thing about D&D is that it can mingle moments of (tedious) realism, such as having to backtrack to a town because you forgot to buy a revivify diamond, with epic high fantasy cinematic moments such as battles, heists and prison-breaks. Obviously there are limits: people don't want to be forced to take a shit, or suffer mechanical penalties for not shitting. Additionally, BG3 is a video game and you can't account for everything like you can in a ttrpg (even if winging it). But the fact is, fast travel like this detracts from the scale and immersion of the world. Not to mention stepping on the toes of high level spells like Teleportation Circle. I think games have the opportunity to pull off a better balance between believability/immersion and action/narrative than a film because you are actually forced to embody the in-between moments that would detract from a film or even book's pacing. Maybe that says more about why I enjoy RPGs: not to play an interactive film but to embody a small element of a fictional world.

I think the best solution that keeps both the immersion-is-king crowd and the backtracking-is-the-devil crowd happy is to only allow fast travel whilst near a waypoint. This maintains a sense of realism and journey, whilst still cutting down on the amount of time spent tabbed whilst you wait for your party to reach it's destination. I also loved the idea someone had (sorry I can't remember your name) of using the world map as our fast-travelling interface to evoke more of the BG1 & 2 feel, whilst also getting rid of the poorly incorporated teleportation runes that do more harm than good to world-building.

I do think it's quite telling that Larian have skimped out on some of the more immersive aspects of the game such as resting, day/night and travel. Or perhaps more telling of my own expectations of a D&D based game.

The thing is, currently BG3's fast travel has both "imagined walking" and teleportation. The game explains that you can only teleport from rune to rune, but fast travel is allowed anywhere. Thus, if you're in the Grove and fast travel to camp for example, your characters are in-game walking to the Grove rune, teleporting to the rune closest to camp, and then walking to camp.

Given ^, why not just get rid of the runes entirely and represent fast travel as just walking from place to place???

I don't know if it really is such a big difference.
Theoretically, you can exchange runes for some other objects, then you would still teleport to them, but it would be treated as if you got there yourself.
Technically it doesn't really matter to the gameplay, but always more people satisfied

I recently suggested fast travel trough the worldmap that has "locations" like in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.

That's totally the same mechanic than now, except that you click locations on the worldmap instead of the name in a list.
With a good "zoom / unzoom" mechanic to create a link between tha act map and the worldmap^, you have a fast travel that is just... walking...
[Suggestion - BG / FR related improvement] - Use the worldmap for fast travel

I don't like either that runes allow us to "Teleport". This is irrelevant.

At least a marker on the map you just click on to TP is better than runes if you consider the reality of the Forgotten Realms.
Walking arround the FR is usual, Teleport through runes is not. Give us the feeling we're walking.