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#738848 25/11/20 12:22 PM
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THis ist my first Post on this Forum.
Although i own Divinity:OS1 and 2 i never felt the need to post something on Larian Forums. But with BG3 i am realy motivated enough to register and write here.

Though i never could motivate mayself to finish those games i have to say that i enjoyed playing them. Even if they were not my cup of tea i must say that they were so detailed and obviously made with love that it was a great experience playing them.

That beeing said i didnt buy BG3 because its a Larian game but just because i am a DND and Baldurs Gate fan. I guess the hours spent with those games went in to many thousands over the years.
So buying a Game called BG3 was a no brainer no matter who produced that game.

The Positiv:

When i startet the game, watching intro and creating character and playing prologue, at first i was blown away by the details and atmosphere.
The dialogues with the closeup kameras and the Dice-roles on checks...... damn..... felt like the holy Grail of Roleplaying.
And the Sound..... guys realy! AWESOME!!! Helps alot creating a epic immersion! I cant remember a game where i was soo impressed during first Hour!
The way downward began when i first hit the Jump button..... or more precisely when i used it in combat.......


The Negativ

..... jumping around on Crates and stuff..... felt so extremely wrong..... abit like super Mario in a tactical combat. At first i didnt realize this immersion breaking ridiulous movement was also a Disengage decided to never ever use it.... until saw it was necessary to get height advantage.
And as further i progressed into game the worse the combat became.
DnD combat was always about tactic within a Team. Since DND is a class based system where EVERY class has advantages but also tons of disadvantages and limitations its tactical core lies in the Teamwork to overcome shortcomings of the individual characters. At no time i could feel this spirit. With a partysize of 4 the DIvinity games where perfectly set as every indiviudal char was a classles powerhouse with tons of Combos. With DND the 4 people are not enough to bring most of the class diversity to the table. In PnP DnD the groups are only smaler cause its more dificult to get enough people together regulary. A Problem that doesnt exist within a Computer.


But it got worse and worse..... i felt that even a Class doesnt realy matter. You play a wizard ----> use cantrips or spells to create Groundhazards. You play a Ranger -----> you use Arrows to create hazards. You play a Rogue or fighter ------> you throw grenadelike items to create Hazards. Or you shoot barrels or use environmental things. In the end Class barely matters. And it seems the game ist designed around the Premise that it doesnt matter how you put your party together you can go with ANY combination as it doesnt realy matter. I never felt that a Healer ist needed for example. Also i cant see the point of a Tanklike character. While from a Game-perspective this is working and working well! From a DND perspective this is the worst DND experience i ever had. With the exception of "Demonstone" maybe.

Even the Character progession seems totaly unimportant and very shallow although thats not realy Larians fault but the streamlined 5e Abomination of WotC.
When i encountered enemys i was shocked that i faced a INTELLEKT-Devourer at lvl 1 and immediatly had the impression i took a wrong turn somewhere. And when i encountered goblins with tons of Hitpoints it became just obvious that DnD was written on cover but was never meant to be the Soul of the game.

My charakters making like 10 yard-Jumps onto ledges and firing arrows on exploding barels felt like a stab into the Heart of Immersion every single time.
The awesome Presentations of Dialogs and Story kept me going and trying to avoid the abysmal Combat whereever possible.
But after jumping down the Well and encountering Phase-spiders i finaly quit the game. Dear Larian.... Phasespiders are DANGEROUS but their Phasing ability is meant to suprise an enemy and appear suddenly behind him and overhelming him...... its NOT meant to phase around Platforms shooting like Guerilla Mutant Ninjas with the Player making mentioned 10 Yardjumps after them. It became very obvious that Larian has a near unmatched skill for story telling and love for details. But has no whatever connection to DND and its Spirit. Belive me Gary Gygax would have taken away the Licence from you if he where still alive and had any saying in it.

He always said that DND was about working together as a Team to overcome Problems greater than the indiviual part of the sum. Never get that feeling in BG3.

If you realy plan on reviving DND and its spirit you have to totaly let go all of your Divinity Mindset and dont listen too much to WoTC as they have almost killed the whole Brand with their 4th edition. You need to watch what made DND so successful in the first place. It was neither accessible nor easy to handle or streamlined. It was a thing created FROM Nerds FOR Nerds. Check the Gamebox from Pools of Radiance and see that fat Handbock with tiny written letters to even make you barely understand the game. I am not saying this ist the way to go but game was successfuly because of complexity and depth (compared to other games at that time).


Finaly i want to thank you fro reading and i honestly expect to be attacked by Larian Fans since i am posting in their Forum and writing critics on their favorite game. But maybe one of the devs at least comes to think only a few seconds about what i said then i am allready happy enough.

Best Regards


Last edited by Baldurs-Gate-Fan; 25/11/20 12:29 PM.
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Welcome to the forums. smile I get what you're saying.

I have to praise Larian for also bringing in truly awesome stuff with all the systems and player agency. Being able to cast an illusion spell to make yourself look like a Drow and actually fooling goblins is already amazing. But BG3 combat doesn't need this much "game" in it.

And by game I mean....explosive barrels and arrows, fire/poison/acid/ice/whatever surfaces, bonus action food, more actions in general, hyper vertical battlefields and ultra mobile creatures and added ranged attacks.. list goes on. Part of it feels like something out of a cartoon or platform game rather than an RPG with serious adult themes. Spiders spitting enough poison to fill a swimming pool, superhero shoves and jumps, explosions everywhere. There's too much of a mismatch between the goofy gameplay and the serious storytelling. Goofy gameplay is not the same as humor. There can be lots of humor in serious storytelling and in D&D.

These gamey elements are taking away from character building and immersion. Combat isn't about building your characters in a certain way and working as a team. Combat is about scrambling to high ground, jumping out of surfaces, shoving enemies off ledges and eating endless magic food supplies regardless of party composition and classes. Those things are overriding D&D currently. While shoving enemies off ledges and hazards are also D&D, here they have been amplified a 1000%.

And death is just a minor inconvenience, even if someone falls into a bottomless pit seemingly lost forever. Their bodies appear back at camp for a cheap res, and the game is constantly reminding you how it's just a game rather than telling a believable story.

It's hard to take any characters in the game seriously when you know you can always blow them up or push them into a hole.

Last edited by 1varangian; 25/11/20 02:06 PM.
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This is a very well written constructive criticism and I should not expect any attacks per se, but you might see some alternative opinions ... that is what the forums are here for! The classic D&D modules and tournament campaigns were usually intended for around 7 - 9 players, with maybe half of them fighter types. To me, the trick is to have a mix of some NPC's under party control, and some that will help you but which are not direct control party members. I hope Larian can build on some of these concepts from prior BG games (Narlen Darkwalk, Gorpel Hind, Drizzt, etc.) Working alongside other characters brings a lot of life into the single-player game.

As far as combat goes, I have not played BG III yet as my computer is just below the minimum spec and I am waiting for an optimized release, but I know enough of the game to see your point about the Mario Brothers style of jumping around as being a little ridiculous sometimes. I don't expect my character to do much jumping, as I'd rather use magic. Firesnakearies has a good thread with an evolving story about a "no kill" approach to the game.

Class homogenization is a good point ... I tried to play Morrowind once, but the class progression system was a big turnoff. The older BG series had a lot of replay value because of the special features offered by each class. I suppose in real life it is possible to be an astronaut/quarterback/surgeon/lawyer/contortionist/safecracker/cowboy/lion-tamer/priest, but for most of us that is not gonna happen.

Last edited by Argyle; 25/11/20 09:27 PM. Reason: spelling correction
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Totally agree with everything you said. I live in hope for future updates, but currently I'm restarting Pathfinder Kingmaker for a much more DnD feel (even though it's not DnD) with turn based combat as it should be done.

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Thank you.... i also want to add that my intention ist not to flame the game. I actualy dont think the gameplay is allready broken beyond repair.
I think it can still be fixed but needs to get fixed NOW before too much content is created/finetuned with this gameplay in mind. Thats what i meant with "let go all the divinity Mindset and focus on DND-Spirit".
Focus should be how can successfull teamwork of different classes overcome Problems/opponents/obstacles. With a few alternative ways for some different Party setups.
Right now the Game focuses on overcoming Problems/opponents/obstacles through variuos ways reagardless of party size or composition. And that will NEVER EVER lead to a DND experience as its quite the contratry to DnD-Spirit.

What worries me the most are the stupid discussions about Real-Time with Pause and Turnbased. To be honest i could live with either way as BOTH can deliver a good DnD experience (bevor Baldurs Gate there where very successful DND games all turnbased, in fact tons of them. Pools of radiance + 3 sqeuels, Temple of elemental Evil, The whole Kryn games of Dragonlance, and so on). Up to the Point of DnD online wich was NEITHER turnbased, nor RTwP.

For a good DnD experience its more important to deliver this Teamwork party based gameplay-Spirit than "how" it is delivered.
For now BG3 fails on this no matter if Turn based or RTwP.

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Good critique. I don't agree with the phase spider bit but I do want underline this because it's spot on. "You can mod 6 party members" is not answer, we need a 6 member party to get past the DOS feel:

Quote
DnD combat was always about tactic within a Team. Since DND is a class based system where EVERY class has advantages but also tons of disadvantages and limitations its tactical core lies in the Teamwork to overcome shortcomings of the individual characters. At no time i could feel this spirit. With a partysize of 4 the DIvinity games where perfectly set as every indiviudal char was a classles powerhouse with tons of Combos. With DND the 4 people are not enough to bring most of the class diversity to the table. In PnP DnD the groups are only smaler cause its more dificult to get enough people together regulary. A Problem that doesnt exist within a Computer.

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+1

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I think the main reason Larian doesn't want to increase the party size is because it would exacerbate 5e's already forgiving challenge curve, encounters would become too easy unless they add more mobs, not ideal in a turn based game, or artificially increase the stats of mobs, creating a very MMO situation where you're battling meat sacs whose only advantage is artificially pumped up HP or hosts of mobs who all rolled in the top 10th percentile for their stats.

If anyone with more experience engineering encounters can comment, I'd love to hear it

Last edited by Sozz; 25/11/20 05:30 PM.
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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Good critique. I don't agree with the phase spider bit but I do want underline this because it's spot on. "You can mod 6 party members" is not answer, we need a 6 member party to get past the DOS feel

I haven't played 5E myself, but I have heard that it was designed with parties of 4 adventurers in mind, and that most campaign modules suggest playing with 3 to 5 adventurers. So I strongly doubt that 6-members parties are in any way needed. Wanted maybe, and hopefully Larian gives this options for those who want (after they have sorted the party controls), but not needed.

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Originally Posted by Baldurs-Gate-Fan

Even the Character progession seems totaly unimportant and very shallow although thats not realy Larians fault but the streamlined 5e Abomination of WotC.



I disagree with almost everything in the original post, but I do agree with this part.

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6 party members would make the game easier. In order to balance that out you would need to add more enemies. At a certain point you are just making the combat encounters drawn out and tedious.

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I think 4 party members is enough for fun D&D tactics if they would just shift the focus from the environment and surface bombs and magic food to the characters and their abilities.

I would welcome the possibility for 6, but I'm content with 4. 5e is pretty flexible with skills so I don't feel like I need any particular class to succeed. I can have a Fighter skilled with disarming traps or rely on Short Rests for healing. And thanks to Larian I can carry chests or strange books back to camp for someone else to deal with if I can't do that on the spot, which is really cool. You can have lock specialists and arcane experts in camp too.

They can still easily nail the D&D spirit for BG3. They just need to tone down the extra stuff they took too far.

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I think they should tone down how many throwable surface grenades there are, but I’m okay with them being part of the game. I like the barrels. In DND you can use your imagination to pull off all sorts of environmental maneuvers. This is more limited in a video game setting, but noticing a barrel you can ignite speaks to the spirit of that part of table top, so I very much approve.

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This reminds me of a discussion from Dragon Age Origins- Next gen RPG
Originally Posted by Sozz
Originally Posted by Sozz
As for combat in any RPG and D&D in particular, the D&D rule set is not very engaging, 5e classes are built to have 2 or 3 tricks with most mobs designed to work around them.
Combat in Dragon Age: Origins was the best of that series but combat became little more than a weird combo system, with little choice on your end as to how you 'solve the puzzle' of an encounter.

So far in the BG:3 EA, I'm pretty satisfied by the combat so far, with the caveat that from first level to fourth you haven't really hit the levels in D&D that turn your characters into superhuman death dealers. There's a reason E6 Rules where a thing.

This I think speaks a lot to the MMO-ification of CRPGs these days, just inflate your characters stats and then make the mob's hp goes up to match it, while the mechanics never really change. This was all I could think about with DA:Inquisition which was just "watching cooldowns the game".

DA:2 clearly was rushed out the door, (in traditional black isle fashion) but they still prioritized the story which is also what I prioritize in these games so I wasn't too bothered by lack luster combat or the reused dungeon assets.


There just wont be any getting around the fact that the classes are mechanically uninteresting in 5e, most at this level have one thing to do in combat, later they'll have two or three things. 3e was criticized for having clearly superior ways to build your character, but in 5e they don't really even give you the chance to not build that superior character, that's why my favorite systems are classless ones personally.

Last edited by Sozz; 25/11/20 06:06 PM.
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Bottomline is: more D&D and less DOS.

This is being said a lot here, I really hope they are reading.

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Originally Posted by Drath Malorn
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Good critique. I don't agree with the phase spider bit but I do want underline this because it's spot on. "You can mod 6 party members" is not answer, we need a 6 member party to get past the DOS feel

I haven't played 5E myself, but I have heard that it was designed with parties of 4 adventurers in mind, and that most campaign modules suggest playing with 3 to 5 adventurers. So I strongly doubt that 6-members parties are in any way needed. Wanted maybe, and hopefully Larian gives this options for those who want (after they have sorted the party controls), but not needed.


Depends on the module. Most say 4-5 all give advice on how to modify to accommodate more. The critical role adventures work just great with 6+ Avernus says 4-6 but most DMs on reddit say that 4 too few for that module. Adventurer's league says 3-7

Curse of Strahd: "...for a party of four to six characters...", Storm King's Thunder: "adventure for four to six player characters"

https://www.enworld.org/threads/heres-the-most-common-d-d-party-composition.666906/

You also need to keep marketing in mind -- why the switch from the 6 - 8 party recommendations of earlier editions? Because it's just not that easy to get that many people together on a weekend. 5th was designed to bring in new players and sometimes marketing is at odds with gameplay.

@warlocke I've never been convinced by the combat too long narrative. I'm not sure where it came from. Truth be told I think existing combat is a bit too short. Buffing is, more often than not, a wasted turn -- it makes much more sense to try and buff the moment before combat begins then to waste a turn on buff. Why blow a turn on bless when guiding bolt is going to either end combat or allow the next character to end combat?

The tactics you use with a six character party are just different. One caster buffs, another strikes, another runs support.

Barrels should weigh enough allow Minsc to carry one on his back. Smokepowder should be 1) be exceedingly rare -- I think we've found all the smokepowder in the Forgotten Realms 2) be cursed, every so often the game should check to see if it explodes while you are lugging it.

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If you increase the party size by 50% then you are goin to need to increase the difficulty of most fights by either adding more combatants or increasing their levels. More combats and more hit points will increase turn length. That isn’t a narrative, it is irrefutably true.

Whether the turns become too long or not is purely subjective.

Having barrels in your inventory explode would be terribly unfun. That will just lead to reloading for most people. I’d be fine with making them much heavier, though.

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But that's not my point. My point is "so what" smile Why is that a bad thing?

That narrative I'm taking issue with is that longer combat sequences = less fun. I'm saying that a longer combat with more options = more fun.

In fact have save where I deliberately avoid the best combat techniques so I can see all the hag fights options -- options you miss if you kill her in 2 rounds.

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I just wish Larian would expand on feats and allow a much larger list of feats and increase the number of feats a character can obtain in total. Devs never break the rules for fun stuff.

Last edited by Aishaddai; 25/11/20 06:46 PM.
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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
But that's not my point. My point is "so what" smile Why is that a bad thing?

That narrative I'm taking issue with is that longer combat sequences = less fun. I'm saying that a longer combat with more options = more fun.

In fact have save where I deliberately avoid the best combat techniques so I can see all the hag fights options -- options you miss if you kill her in 2 rounds.

Always thought that turn based games need a high number of smaller scale encounters. Doesn't matter how good combat is, watching your opponents act is always boring.

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