Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General A world of empty containers

Can larian give us stats on how many total hours players have spent opening their empty containers....please do something about this, my suggestion is to highlight containers that have valuable items, and if the items are rare, then lock the containers, hide them or put a riddle or puzzle towards reaching/opening them. Right now I couldn't be bothered with containers to the point I just go online to see where all the rare items are and that kind of kills the element of discovery

Hi,
We already discussed this a lot here and many definitely agree.

Empty containers are boring and we waste our time too much.

I should add that according to me the general distribution of objects is a problem (not sure this sentence make sense in EN).

Many container (and chests !) contained 3 gold coin, 1 bone and such useless.thing.
I'd rather have more empty chests that I cannot open and better loot in the others.

In exemple the treasure of goblins look ridiculous.

So by that logic, containers should ALWAYS contain useful stuff or magic items? Where do you draw the line?

If containers are a waste of time, why even have them? We could just get a button or auto message saying <<you search the room and fine XXX items...>>
Why even click somewhere to move, its a waste of time. We should just have direct links EVERYWHERE on the map to encounters and interesting places.
Inventories are also a waste of time. Moving items around etc...the game should just auto equip the most appropriate stuff and be done with it...

My point being, when does an RPG stop being an RPG GAME for the sake of convenience?

No. Nobody's saying that.

I don't know what the ratio of containers with contents to empty ones is, but I'd ballpark less than 1 in 10. Now I wouldn't have a problem with that per-se, but it's a huge, unnecessary, unrewarding time sink right now.

I don't think the solution is to put stuff in every chest. I don't know if the container spam is because Larian want to do a repass later, or if they want things for people to throw in combat, or whatever. But I think they'd make a lot of friends by simply making ALT highlight only show containers and corpses with loot still on them (and RELIABLY so my compulsion to double check everything is somewhat mollified) and putting a lock of some form on any container with an uncommon or rarer item in, or behind some other ability check.

That way players can decide for themselves what level of give-a-damn they are comfortable with, without FOMO doubling their playtime...

Every container should contain a wide assortment of whatever random junk the owner was trying to cram away before his mum arrived, so it at least looked like he was keeping his rooms tidy.

We should be able to take this stuff to the mostly pointless workbenches and make improvised weapons or useful stuff, like grappling hooks for climbing onto vantage points we can't jump to, or block and tackle to move big boulders out of our way. Riding harness for the giant spiders etc...

This would be great roleplay for a monk that doesn't carry weapons and violence with her, just improvises a spear by tying a butchers knife to a broom handle.

The items found, and made, should not have a value in gold though. No sense to carry more than you intend to use. And because they are junk weapons, they should only last for one encounter before breaking.

Truthfully I've never had a problem with containers. Some had stuff some didnt big deal, of course every time I see a thread about containers usually reminds me of that room before the hidden base. Probably the only place I really hate, 2-3 boxes high and the walls are covered in boxes.

they are trying to give the game a "real" universe feel. and not just a cartoony video game feel. If this was a real world, every container would not be full of stuff and useful stuff at that. Some would be empty, some full, some may contain useful stuff, some not. etc etc.

I am not Passionate on the container topic, but the fact they are going for a "Real World Feel" is going to make this game something extra special. Let them build their game its one of the best I have seen in a VERY long time.

You cant cherry pick something in a vacuum, you have to look at the total picture.

I don't wanna argue with a newcomer here but... That's a strange argument considering all the cartoony stuff in the game.

I'd love if they improved the "real universe feel" on many other things while offering a huge QoL improvement about containers.

Seriously I don't think at all that they're trying to give any feeling of real universe with all those empty and boring containers. Baldur's Gate 1/2 and many other games feel way more "real" and have less useless containers to open.

I mean, if we want to talk about realism, the fact that so many crates and barrels even exist in a relatively unpopulated area with no sign that there was ever a cooper to make them or anyone manufacturing enough goods to need that kind of storage. That's a lot of materials and labor spent on something that isn't really needed (especially as evidenced by the fact that most of them are empty). It might make sense for the Zhents to have a bunch of crates, but that's about it.

That said, this is a game, not a simulator. We don't need everything to be completely accurate - just reasonably believable. It might be that these "empty" crates are actually full of stuff that we don't need and so the game just doesn't tell us about them. I'm not going to lug around a crate full of coffee grounds or bolts of cloth or anything like that - "empty" just means "empty of things that are useful to me". This is fine, except:
1) It would be more believable if they represented that the containers were full of stuff we didn't need. Having a character make comments like "This whole crate of almonds has gone rancid." instead of saying "empty" would make the world feel a little more lived in.
2) It would be more believable if the world weren't already full of so much junk that we don't need. Abstracting away the contents of crates, but letting us pick up every cutting board and bone and spoon is pretty ridiculous.
3) Who is leaving individual gold pieces in these crates? I can think of reasons why an individual might do that, but it's so widespread as to be ridiculous. Why did none of these people (or whoever killed them) take their gold with them when they left?

Let's separate the problem from the solution(s) here. As I see it, the issue here is that searching through the myriad containers is tedious and breaks verisimilitude and the payoff is disproportionately small. Does that sound about right?

Designing a solution (which we aren't empowered to do, but we all know that we like to try anyway) doesn't really work until we can agree on the problem. This one gets tricky, because it ties into the inventory system, the item/gold economy, and (assuming the implement one) the crafting system.

Personally, I'm all for getting rid of individual containers and adding a "Loot Area" button tied to a group investigation check. Even in games where looting is simple and easy, it feels boring to me, so my preference is to speed it along as much as possible. I know not everyone will agree with me - that's fine. It's more important to agree on the problem than the solution at this point.

I guarantee you that not a single drawer shelf or cupboard in any house, apartment or work office I have ever owned ever had nothing in, it outside of the week before and after moving. So far in BG3 I have found one bookshelf that actually had a book in it. One.

On one hand: it's annoying to go through all the little container, and also annoying to feel like I missed something because I didn't do so. Good 'ol fomo.

On the other hands: there are various dynamics from realism, tabletop roleplaying, and (list of sources I can't be bothered to type) they are trying to have in the game; one of those dynamics is that groups that go looking for stuff to take/steal get things missed by groups that don't. That is to say, part of why there's a zillion random empty containers is for the explicit purpose of putting some things in some of them that some players won't find. Whether it's the players own mannerisms or those of the character being roleplayed, they want players who take extra time to search everything to find extra things normally missed. In DnD it would be a DM who only gives you the gold coins "hidden" on a bookshelf if you specifically say you search that shelf instead of just "I search the room."

I'd prefer that the game hid these items with passive perception checks (where the game doesn't tell you if you fail the check) rather than hundreds of empty containers, of which only a couple have anything useful.
Potentially add an "active investigation/perception" mechanic that the people who really want to search every area can use. Every character would make another check to notice hidden things in a certain radius.

I like this idea!

I like the empty containers. And I like the workbenches and desks full of stuff not useful to adventurers. Not being sarcastic.

For me, it makes the world seem more alive and makes the experience more immersive. And the stuff the devs put in the chests makes sense. Some chests have silver glasses -- looks like the goblins raided some altars. Some chests have wooden cups -- looks like this family didn't have much money. And the useless items play a role in the arcane tower quest where useful items are hidden as useless ones.

A "I search the room" button wouldn't a bad way to minimize the annoyances for those who dislike mundane items and keep them for people who think mundane items make the world seem more alive.

I like mundane items being in the room - cover the table with cutting boards and cups. Make the world look lived in. I just don't want them to be clickable - we can assume that the character is sorting through all of the junk without forcing the player to do it.

There's also locked chests that have garbage/crap. They just don't have a proper loot randomizer and proper fixed items for containers. Nobody is interesting in rolling bones and 1 gold in a container Larian.

I think the empty container situation will change after EA. They already implemented more books with patch 4, so most of the shelves aren't empty anymore.

The empty containers are a waste of time.

I also think that the loot system is going to be tweaked, but all the empty containers do feel like a waste of time.

It's kinda amazing, considering that Larian's very first game solved the "nothing inside" issue. Mousing over a container told you how many items were inside. If the container had nothing in it, it said "Contains Nothing". This simple feature was a big time-saver.