Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Dealing with this Game Balance Obsession

Given the google, facebook and microsoft have all my damn info I don't care much about spilling some basics. So 31, Accountant .

Regarding difficulty no problem with easy and normal being whatever, but let us have access to the "grognard" experience. If we want to flail ourselves with 5e RAW(or close as possible) experience given the marketing where they said this game would use 5e system, by all means let us flail ourselves with 5e, my fun comes from micro managing every aspect of the party and have the game judge if my decisions were wise or not.
No one is telling that everyone should have the same experience as I mentioned before, make it as optional. Problem is that people want to force their easy difficulty because somehow having the option to pick it up will make then feel lesser if they are not able to complete it?

Good point. Baldurs Gate had 5 or 6 different difficulty.

Just let people pick easy, or '5e standard' or 'insane' or whatever.

+1 for difficulty settings.

I'm playing through Pathfinder: Kingmaker on Unfair difficulty right now, and I'd like a playthrough like that on BG3 someday, but it is definitely not an experience that I care to inflict on somebody who does not want it.

+1 from me as well

I agree on this. It should be as your want. The OP I know she has complained many times that Normal difficulty BG3 is to hard for her. I respect that. Let them make more Easy difficulty BG3 for her then Normal.

I am on other hand look forward to more Hard difficulty then Normal in BG3.
On the regard to have even so many difficulty levels as 5-6 I am ok with that and support it! However even 4 would be much greater then only Normal. Lets see what they make.

Yeah, I'd skip cutscene too, but lets look at the whole list : Extremely hight story to gameplay ratio. Game like the order 1984 or the last of us have a TONS of cut scene and story element, yet there are great for that reason. The witcher 3 had a tons of dialogue. So did planescape torment. Story driven game NEED these elements. Else its not a RPG. The statement of the article is ambiguous and doesn't define what is extremely hight ratio exactly, so you may argue back that these game don't fit this criteria. I may argue that it does. Whatever. Just saying that I know a bunch of these game that have a tons of story element, and they are fans favourites and best sellers.

Also, mass monster sidequest. So, would we remove any area that has tons of killing? Does that include goblin fortress? Or tyr paladin encounter in Throne of Bhaal? Or any encounter that has more than ten enemies? Again, a very ambiguous statement.
Overly long fighting animation : So should we remove spell casting and invocation,G force and chimaera of final fantasy? They are so iconic and and fan favourites, yet summoning Ifrit or shiva usually take anywhere from 20 second to one whole minute each time.

Random drop : So I guess diablo are bad games? I don't agree with that.

Forced level grinding : That basically put off any J-RPG, as most involve grinding at some point, including Grandia,Dark souls FInal fantasy, Star ocean and so on. I don't agree with that.

A lack of fast travel: While I sorta agree that coming back and forth is a bad idea, fast travel can feel out of place in some story. Also, many old game didn't have fast travel such as some Zelda game, or even Baldurs gate 1&2 . You could go from one map to the other, but you had to walk out of the dongeon by your own means, and go back and forth in area. Thus I don't agree with that point.

Extreme difficulty : Yeah, another Dark soul critic I Guess..

Marathon level without checkpoint : Again, Demon soul, dark souls.

Copy and past environment : This has to be done smartly, but you know that each assets are used a billions time in video game right?
Its mandatory to have decent production time.

Missing secret : I don't like it, but there are present in almost every game. Its up to the player to seek them or not.

The wandering you : Many game including final fantasy and resident evil use that.

Reward that are dependent on difficulty level : Again, that on the player. I never cared about 100% completion, and if a small bonus item is enough to make you spend another 50 hours in a game you don't enjoy, thats on you, imo. If you enjoy the game, what's the matter?


Just discussing how relative all of this is, obviously we may add some differents tastes in games .

[Second Edit] Ya know what, screw it. If nobody's gonna edit the OP then the thread is still personal. People shouldn't be judged by their income, but bragging about making under $80k when pushing 40 is cringe, and bragging about having a brainless gov't job like SS claims processing is double cringe. Putting that forward as a qualifier for discussing video games brings it up to an impressive triple cringe. Examine your life choices.

Anyhow, it's a given that tightening balance is a good thing in most game genres, including turn-based RPGs. Save scumming to get a good story experience (including not letting a child get straight murdered on your watch) and having to make multiple checks in a row towards a binary outcome are just frustrating game design problems that can and should be fixed. Likewise, combat should be balanced to the point that it can be done on high difficulties and be satisfyingly difficult while still having multiple approaches. 5E does a better job of that than previous DnD editions, but barrel spam and similar things water it down. Patches for this game have been moving in the right direction but I would still like to see it tuned a bit more.

Keep the personal life and personal attacks out of the thread. Thank you.

So you agree it is a bad thing to overdo it, but game developers might be tempted in order to save development time and pad out the game?

The point is that when a game is said to have "30 hours" of playtime -- how much of that content is actual genuine content?

So would you say that this content is worthy of your time?

You're allowed to enjoy Dark Souls. But does the game really get credit for being "over 44 hours" long if 20 of those hours is you respawning from the same checkpoint? Can you imagine anyone else getting bored of that?

I'm really confused by a lot of your criticisms about that article. Again, you need to pay attention to how they're describing it.

"Random Drops which may result in a player lingering in an area for a long period of time trying to get the drop."

This does not really describe Diablo. The official length of the game Diablo 3 is just over 18 hours. This play time does not include you farming for random loot drops. The random loot farming in Diablo 3 was a metagame that most players didn't participate in.

The game Anthem had a main quest set called "Tombs of the Legionnaires", which you needed to complete in order to make progress in the game, and demonstrates many "fake longevity" examples because Bioware got really really desperate to pad out the game length. One of these was called Trial of Yvenia where you needed to farm for random drops.

"Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequests which consist of hunting for and killing the same type of enemy over and over again."

I really don't know how you struggle to interpret this. Additionally, if you had trouble understanding that one sentence, I don't understand how you justify not clicking on the link to read the full article discussing the mass monster slaughter sidequest. You're just jumping in here with your hot takes instead of taking the time to understand what you're reading first.

Finally some true info about you Dexai that I believe. Oh ok I will tell roughly from where I am from. Southern Finland we do have had winter here quite a while we are slightly north of Stockholm Sweden much north from your southern Skåne area in Sweden.

Please note I do not hate Sweden people. The only temporary dislike is perhaps during a sports event like icehockey game Finland vs Sweden.
Oh and I am dual speaker I speak Swedish and Finnish both as native language and English pretty well. I have also one friend that is born in Sweden and some relatives on Sweden side as well near Stockholm.

There you go everything I have said is truth and I am long time member of Finland landlord club (that every year have a nice, and huge boat trip with high class restaurant catering etc you know those big boats Viking Line and Silja Line they rent one such whole freaking boat for one trip/once year before COVID 19 situation and only members and their direct family like wife are allowed on that trip and pretty fullbooked every member willing can not attend (though most do not want attend) we have more then 20 000 members):
The Finnish Landlord Association


Finally there are lot of people that are millionaires (in Euro currency) both in Sweden and Finland that are more wealthy then me. Finland is more capitalistic then Sweden in that regard we tend to own apartments and houses fully 100% and not like in Sweden where bostadsrätt is more popular kind of system you own maybe maximum 30 % (do not confuse with mortgage debt in this case you can not buy it all even if you would like to do it) of the apartment.

Another less spoken about Capitalism I know that within my club of landlords there is an unofficial Elite they are all millionaires there. I do not belong to that Elite despite I am certainly not newbie or less then most since I rent 3 apartments and most members rent 1 or 2 apartments to other people.

Why do you keep posting this weird shit that's unrelated to the post lol? I blame OP for the "how much do you make" nonsense that started this.

Because OP asked about real life and being landlord does also take time...and is kind of work and then she asked income top on that.

I did choose what to answer. I will not tell my age period.

Anyway I hope we get many difficult like settings like:
Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard , Very Hard, Nightmare difficulty levels in this game.