Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Everyone always dissaproves of Everything

Could we stop with this, add some nuance to these peoples personalities for gods sake... over half the party dissaproves of everything even marginally good.

At the very least add a gift system so we can experience our companions stories without having to go full evil like in Dragon Age origins.

Or... I dont know... some ability to influence their personalities?

Laezel in particular would be nice to help her realize there is some beauty in the universe outside her narrow worldview.

Laezel doesnt evne like it when you pet the dog, how about we show her how great dogs are!

ANYTHING

Well... I mean, they did say that they would add the evil-or-at-least-not-good companion characters first to encourage folks of playing a more evil-alignment playthrough for the first time (as that is what they wanted most feedback on).

Also, I would not be concerned about your options rubbing your companions the wrong way every now and then. Granted, I do not play with Lae (who would probably oppose my character the most) on my playthrough, but even though Astarion or sometimes even Shadowheart disapproves of my generally neutrally good decisions, my relationships with them remain intact. Unlike many other CRPGs, it doesn't seem like an occasional disagreement is as big of a deal as it was in ... Let's say PoE2 - like holy F it took forever to regain the favor lost from "wrong" decisions...

I feel like approval systems in general need to get shot into the sun. Especially ones where there's a visible metric for it.

Companions should have more nuance than liking you slightly more just because you pet a dog, or hating you slightly because you decided to do a selfless act. All this encourages is finding ways to game the system rather than appreciating the writing as it is.

Pathfinder did it right. No approval system at all, companions just interjected with interesting party banter if they approved or disapproved with a situation. Even if you were of opposing alignment, they would still stay with you because practicality > ideals, and they would probably still consider your character a true friend in the end based on how you resolve their personal quests, regardless of any side disagreements that they'd probably consider meaningless in comparison.

In WotR Beta so far, the companions even react to each other as much as they react to you. Makes them feel way more like real characters with their own stories, instead of existing as some kind of foil to mold the main character's development.

well... here is me giving feedback, it sucks and it was done wrong.

Most of the choices will be in favor for a couple while others will not agree with it. What happens when you have different personalities in the party. Get over it.

NO, no, no and no once more ...
Finaly a game where you simply cant be liked by everyone, especialy since some characters like things that others dont ... and you want to ruin it? -_-

One additonal NO to this.

They need to add a rivalry system similar to Dragon Age 2. Otherwise If you want companions all the choices boil down to playing the good path or the psychopath path.

I think that approach works best in games with a greater focus on the passage of time, like Kingmaker. Don't get me wrong, i like those kinda games and that kinda system a whole lot, but i feel like it wouldn't make much sense in something like BG3, where, judging from how little time Act 1 takes and the whole tadpole business, i can imagine the plot won't take months or years.

Having said that, that it's possible to get to Very High opinion after 1 week of meeting those people is just odd, especially considering how in the narrative you basically start at 'very low' with most of them.

Larian stated a while back that the companions might not be the ones you would choose to associate with, but that you are forced together by common circumstances (the tadpole).

I'm not a fan of the influence system as it now stands. It incentivizes gaming the system as opposed to roleplaying. Suddenly conversational choices are being made to appease companions. Not so much because you want to appease them as because you don't want to miss out on unlocking content that might come with a higher approval rating.

I'm happy with a party that doesn't get along well. I think that's great. These are all different people pulled together by necessity. They should disagree and bicker.

But some consideration should be given to the bond that forms from traveling together and fighting together. These companions are standing side by side against enemies, often rushing to one another's aid, healing one another. They see each other in triumph. They see each other in pain. There's a closeness that has to develop from that kind of intimacy.

Consider, if all the influence stuff was behind the curtain and you got to the end of the Act, would you be surprised to learn how the companions felt about you? Would the way they feel about you mirror the way you feel about them? I would be surprised. I would be like, "Hey, I thought we shared something out there on the road? What's this all about?"

Personally, I tend to bond to the companions I travel with more than the ones I leave back at camp. Conversation impacts what I think about them, but so does their performance. (Remember that time you pushed that gnoll off that cliff? Oh, that was a close one. We're lucky to be alive. Or-- remember when I got pushed off that cliff and couldn't stand? I thought I'd broken every bone in body, and then you healed me. That's the kind of thing I could never forget.)

I didn't find companions nearly as negative as some claim. They are not a nice bunch, but as someone pointed out, they are leaning toward evil/neutral. If Larian is to be trusted, we can expect more cheerleders in the future. Even so it felt. Protagonists are in deep s., and when scare people often act aggresively. I did find it hilarious when character communicated to me if they want to bang one after another - L. was especially funny - "we could have boned, but you did things I didn't like too many times!"... Romances need to be purged from RPGs.

How should you play so that absolutely all companions do not agree with you?

If you play as a "hero", then your actions will be approved by Wyll and Gale in 90% of cases. If you play as a "villain", then your actions in 90% will be approved by Astarion or Lae. And Shadow 50% hero and villain way, both. It's normal that you can't please everyone. That's how it should be. And we don't need a rivalry system or gifts, damn it. Just accept fact that all characters are different, everyone has different views.

Wyll, Gale and Shadow really approve a lot of similar options. Lae and Astarion are more difficult because they have different views on tadpole.

Maybe more things could be added to the system to reflect increased bonds, like for every combat you survive with that person in the party or every time you get a nighttime event, the approval goes a bit up on its own for all involved companions. So for you to actually go negative negative you have to be doing what the companion truly hates and not just what they mildly dislike?

Well, if you consider it done wrong - then so be it. Obviously you're as much entitled to an opinion as everybody else. But please, hear me out, and let me address your more specific part of the original post about the characters being "locked off" when you can't reach certain criteria. This is true, 100% true even and it is rather bothersome, especially for those of us who want to enjoy the *entire* story and work of Larian. But in my personal opinion, not being able to please everybody is logical and the correct decision. I feel like it would remove so much from the roleplaying experience if you choose a certain alignment for your character that completely opposes a companion and your decision that directly conflict with your companions alignment didn't matter at all - it would just simply feel like it would dull out any form of diplomatic decision-making since you would be able to recover any lost favor with chocolate and roses.

Of course, this comes at the cost of being "locked out" of certain perspectives. However, these perspectives are not completely out of reach, even if they are (rightfully) out of reach for your particular character. You can read their stories from other players or watch videos covering their stories. Or you could simply run another round with an alignment better matching the companion of interest.

THAT SAID, like JoB said just above here - these are people that we depend on for our very lives. Actually gaining negative relationships/favor/reputation/whatever-you-wanna-call-it that OUTWEIGHTS the positive relationships that you develop just by keeping each other alive should really require a ton of effort (or almost actively pursuing to piss them off) considering these people are in the same boat as our PC is - we are all suffering from the same tadpole and we all need help with it. It is not like the comparable situation in PoE 2:D where we get companions willing to risk their lives for "our" cause and "our" issues (while their personal goals happen to slightly align) - they could have all the reason in the world to just say "No, this aint worth it. I am out, bai" just because they dislike your character's choices (looking at you, Pallegina...).

ALL THAT SAID, this does of course not excuse the fact that pretty much all companions feels like different shades of the same color - none of them really seem to belong to a good alignment, each one of them would imo be classified as neutral or "worse". I would love to see some diversity among the personalities of our companions - however, I am aware of that Larian has promised great character development when it comes to companions and hence I am not gonna say too much regarding them when we've only encountered parts of them from Act 1. They might turn out to be better in the future (or worse, who knows?). I mean, I do not even dislike our current companions - but sometimes I struggle to rationalize the situation for my PC when the companions are on their worst behavior.


I mean, sure. You're not wrong, but I am don't think that answer has much to do with the original author (and many other people who brought up the issue) meant. If their complaint is as simple as "We do not like our current followers" then your reply holds no legitimate answer - we know we're holding up with them out of necessity, otherwise most of us would not see any reason at all to keep these folks (from a pure roleplaying perspective, how many people roleplay a character that would put up with some stuff these guys come up with?).

From their perspective, as I've understood it, the "complete" question would be the following: why would Larian think it enjoyable (from a gameplay perspective) to throw us 5 characters that are all arguably near the same alignment which happens to oppose the majority of the player base's chosen alignment (I can't prove that more people play good alignment, but considering Larian asked people *specifically* to do the evil path and yet the vast majority of players chose to do the good path then... Well, yeah. I'll make guesses from there)? I mean, it is almost like PoE but the opposite - I remember thinking that I couldn't imagine trying an evil playthrough in PoE since all companions would literally hate me. PoE got away with it, I'd assume, cause most players play good aligned characters.

So, as far as I am aware, CRPG games rarely attempt to piss off their player while you play. Throwing in companions that Larian know (should know?) will oppose the majority of player's alignment is a weird move unless there is a specific purpose behind it. They got all the power in the world (since they made the game...) and chose to give us these companions, and it is perfectly legitimate to question the entire idea of this since we don't know what reasons Larian had for making these characters this way. We, as general players, don't know if there are huge redemption arcs coming or if the companions will start leaning towards the PCs alignment as they spend time together or if they are gonna stay this way forever - the people who criticize this are only reacting to the known facts (aka. how our companions treat us at the moment), and rightfully so if they feel like the companions make the game less enjoyable. Time will tell whenever the criticism is valid or not, but until then I'd encourage people to speak their mind regardless so that Larian can't shrug it off and say "we didn't know" if this becomes an issue at launch / endgame. ESPECIALLY considering that it is very uncertain how many companions we're getting in the final product, which further legitimates being concerned about the precious few that we have. I realize this post became a bit longer than I anticipated, and I apologize. Hope I made my point clear, either way.



I absolutely agree. It feels weird that you should have to tip-toe in order to gain favor with a certain companion when you're already risking your lives for each other. Not directly pissing them off should lead to a positive relationship as time goes by, if you ask me. PoE2:D failed at this in a rather funny matter - I found it hilarious that my neutral good character (in terms of choices) could only ger Edèr to rank 1 and Aloth to rank 2 considering the history they have together, both during PoE2 but also during PoE1. It is nothing short of laughable that the fish boy and Xoti liked my character better in the end DESPITE these two being rotated for other characters from time to time, wheres Aloth and Edér were with me from the moment I recruited them, til' the very end. How does this even make any form of sense!? >.<''

We dont have the good companions in game yet. Why? My guess is because they are using EA as a kind if alpha test wnd to do that properly they need to generate data. Most people in these games tend to run "hero" rather than "antihero" characters (not everyone by any stretch, but the majority certainly). Giving us the more evil alignments first forces us to watch every cutscene, every dialogue line, every interaction many times so clipping issues, crashes, wonky outcomes get reported and fixed before release. It also means that down the line when other companions are released we have more interest in a repeat playthrough of Act 1 because so many different and interesting options will be opened up. Companions tend to be a very personal choice, and if evryone just went straight to their favorite party composition I bet the majority of EA players would never see 60% of the options.

A lot of time and energy is spent on creating these companions, and they're one of the major ways replay value is added. Making it so you only get to access their content if you act full on chaotic stupid is a waste of resources.

I can tell you as someone who's played the EA so many times that there are combinations of play that allows for getting high approval with all characters in a single run. You don't always have to be an ass and it is more interesting if you disagree with them from time to time, but you do have to agree with them in some consistent way.

I do wonder why some actions gain approval while other actions the character approves of in dialogue don't gain approval.

I actually like that the game is taking the approach all the characters have their own sense of agency. The idea of the party members changing their view to the protagonist's is a bit of an old hat.

I broadly agree with this; when you get a Racial/class option that yeilds the same results (Tieflings get a "stop this, show him you're better than this" option to defuse the row Zeltan and the adventurer have after the first goblin fight, for example) and it it doesn't get you the approval points. In this case Shadowheart gets a point because you've stopped a fight happening; if you take a 'normal' dialogue option, to be fair, you have to do a diceroll on intimidate or persuade, however I'd argue racial/class bonuses are more a "Oh, you picked X race/Y class? Good for you, here's a 'reward' for it!" and it certainly feels jarring when I'm picking options I know my character probably wouldn't pick.

What I am actually hoping for is that some of these initial companions might end up joining the "opposing" side by the end of part 1, and that you have to face off against them eventually. Larian has already suggested a "choice" will need to be made regarding them by the end of the chapter, and that would certainly be a major "choice". If you go the evil route, your good companions might spend the remainder of the game trying to stop you - if you take the good route, Astarion might, as an example, try and block any attempts to stop him from mastering his tadpole. Neutral companions might be swayable in either direction, depending upon your actions. I can see tons of new side story-lines developing from this. Folks you helped level up and gear up now use their knowledge of you and your group against you.

Bioware did this to a minor degree in BG2 with the vampire subplot regarding your romance partner, but the opportunities that present themselves when it is multiple companions, acting with full control of their decisions, in furtherance of their own goals (rather than against their will), with more deeply developed relationships would be vast. Of course, Larian could utterly disappoint me, and at the end of chapter 2 some start to turn and commit suicide - a real meh moment. Hearing Asterion say "It was fun dahling, but this is my chance to take out my maker and have real power, so you must die" would be awesome.