Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian! Please stop punishing good roleplaying

Why do you guys keep getting away from the true point?

I am punished for playing the game the way I want. You keep saying play it the way you want. If I do, I miss out on tons of stuff. I know it's not an action game. It's an RPG, and RPG means role playing and that means you put yourself in the role if the character.

But I can't because the game FORCES you to rest in order to get character development. I HAVE to play for 10 minutes and rest for 24 hours or I am punished by NOT getting what I like most about RPG's. Character development and interaction. I am not only NOT urged to get to the main quest. I am punished UNLESS I take a laid back approach to it.

So I literally can't play it the way I would REALLY like to because I am punished for good gameplay and rewarded for taking an I'll get to the main quest when I feel like it approach.

This said, I sincerely apologize for hurting anyone's feelings with the cancer thing. You are right. I didn't consider how that might be taken.

The game isn't "punishing you", you're just trying to roleplay your own narrative that is in direct conflict with the actual flow of the story.

As others have mentioned, it seems the opposing viewpoints in this thread represent how different people respond to the same set of facts.

On one hand, some see the conversations about the slowed ceremorphosis process as a sign that we have less to worry about. Since it seems to be happening more slowly, perhaps we can also take more time in figuring things out. The more normalized it is to see other infected humanoids staying the same, the more inclined we are to assume that care is more valuable than haste when it comes to solving our ailment. The disease appears to be complex and mysterious, without causing harm to the many hosts we are encountering. We might as well take this gift of an opportunity to solve things carefully, while we have time. If we rush from potential solution to solution, we might miss the hidden details that could actually give us a chance at solving this puzzle. *Spoiler* Considering we come up with three different leads on a cure upon reaching the druid grove (ethel, halsin/nettie, gith at risen road), it is going to take time to thoroughly check all three.

On the other hand, having NPCs tell you that the change isn't happening as quickly, and the process appears to be slowed, doesn't necessarily mean the risk of changing is no longer there. And since we don't know why the process has slowed, we don't know if that could be reversed at any given point in time. *Spoiler* Especially when we saw an infected human get turned into a mindflayer in an instant on the nautiloid, with just the push of a button. Even if we assume the tadpole is altered enough so that we won't progress in the ceremorphosis process naturally, we don't know whether our enemies have a mechanism to turn us at remotely, at-will, and what might cause them to make that decision. So under that logic, it is best to focus on removing the tadpole ASAP, regardless of how quickly the tadpole is developing, because every minute it remains in our head is another moment that we remain vulnerable to the unknown. Under this assumption, we don't have the luxury of time to learn everything we can, but rather we need to choose our best lead, and get there fast.

I don't think either approach is "wrong", I have my preference, but both views are based on logic. Seeing as Larian wants to "be your DM", the game will do best if it can feel responsive to different takes on the story, because different parties are inclined to have different views on the best course of action.

By itself, the concept of missing stuff because of "playing the way you want" isn't inherently bad. It certainly can be, but isn't automatically.
Regardling loot, it could be said that only a character roleplayed as someone who searches everything should find everything, and someone who is roleplayed as not willing to take the time to do that should miss things.
But it would be nice to be able to roleplay the character that slowly searches everything without having to actually do that as the player, if we are so inclined, I grant you that.
When it comes to progressing, though, it really shouldn't feel worse to get things done with urgency than it does to exploit the "This is a videogame with no flow of time" mechanic.

Dude. Grudge. You're killing me. Are you seriously not understanding where Im coming from or are you just missing with me?

I'm not just trying to role play my own narrative and I am certainly not in direct conflict with the story.

Did your character wake up in a blazing mind flayer ship with imps and demons and dragons attacking with the ship on fire? How is it a direct conflict with the story to have imps or demons attack players if they don't move their butts?

Did the Tieflings not say the goblins knew where they were? Did they not say they would be coming soon to wipe them out so the PC needs to hurry before it's too late?

Did the druid's not say they would seal the grove in a matter of just a few days?

Do you think the hag is gonna steal Mayrina down in her lab and just wait 8 hours for your party to rest and then fight her?

If you flee from a Gith fight, rest for 24 hours and come back that the Gith will still be there?

Do you believe everything people tell you? A creepy toothy nasty bug thing CRAWLED INTO YOUR EYE!!! Would that not scare the Hells out of you and make you move your butt to get the cure no matter what the risk, especially because Halsin is captured and every moment you waste could be his last? One of your ONLY chances for a cure could die at any moment.

So you actually think Im being in direct conflict with the story because I want Larian to implement actual, sensible consequences if players casually make their way through the game?

For the sake of being a video game, I can understand your reasoning. Storywise? No. The story sets it up a move your butt or lots of people, including you, are going to die. But then the game DOES punish me if I don't rest every little bit of gameplay. I literally missed out on 90% of the character development in my first playthrough because I thought the game wanted me to push hard to use as few end days as possible only two discover I needed to long rest a LOT to get what I wanted most, to get to know the characters.

It's insanely in conflict with story to NOT hurry up and rescue Halsin and kill the gobbo leaders unless you are evil. In which case, if you don't care about them then great. My suggestions don't hurt you because you don't care if the gobbos kill them all in 6 days or not.

So why are you constantly arguing with me about story? How is what Im asking actually in conflict with the story?

You are comparing apples to oranges in an attempt to justify you anger that you can't roleplay and go against the flow of the narrative. You aren't given information about the waiting too long to saving mayrina. You aren't given information about the waiting too long to seek out the Githyanki. You are given a plethora of information about the tadpole through the narrator, NPCs and context clues.

Man, Grudge. I'm convinced. You and I are on different worlds. I think we're speaking 2 different languages. If anything, you and I are apples and oranges.

Am I insane? Someone else, please tell me if I'm just being crazy.

Grudge. Let me paste a nasty, toothy, tentacled worm under your eyelid. It's okay. I'll drug it first so that it's sleeping. I promise. It's gonna sleep for weeks. Oh. When it wakes up, it'll just turn your flesh inside out. It's okay. I drugged it though. You'll be fine for weeks.

Oh yeah. By the way. The only person who might be able to remove it ever is being held a few miles away in a prison cell by crazy, man eating creatures who might kill him at any moment.

What was that? Oh. You feel something squiggling beneath your eyelid? It's okay. Just sleep. You'll be fine. Promise. What? Oh. A demon visited you and wants that thing too? No worries. It's asleep. You're fine. Why don't you just sleep another 24 hours. You're fine.

You just woke up from sleeping 24 hours? All you did was run through a devastated village? Well, your friend wants to chat with you in private. Why don't you just call it a day and rest another 24 hours. It's okay. It's still asleep. You're fine. By the way, those goblins everyone has been scared of, you don't need to worry about them showing up either because I know everyone is worried and all, but I promise they aren't ever going to show up even if you sleep a thousand times.

And what's that? Some witch just kidnapped a girl and took her down into her underground lair? Well. You look tired. It's okay. Go rest for 24 hours and come back. She'll still be there waiting for your to come rescue the girl. Shes got nothing better to do than to stand in that one spot and wait for you to get there.

Some things don't have to be said specifically in a game. If you tell me everyone in my neighborhood is going to die in just a few days unless I do something, then that creates a sense of urgency. I can't be sleeping my days away without concern unless I really don't care about the people in my neighborhood.

And I don't care what anyone says, put a weird bug up your eye and you are going to want to get that thing out as soon as possible whether it is dormant or not. Geez. Just the actual thought of it makes my skin crawl.

But again, you are still missing my point. If I don't sleep a lot, I miss game content. So, what's Im saying is that while many are afraid on this thread that if they put time limits on things they won't be able to explore everything in time, so they'll miss out on content, Im saying the same thing about the game right now. I miss out on story content unless I explore every little thing and sleep a lot...like I mean sleeping 24 hours for every 30 minutes that Im awake.

So, the point is that instead of rewarding players for sleeping less and playing based on the storyline, the game rewards people for sleeping more and playing in a way that is quite contrary to the real and true storyline.

I should get better gear, more dialogue, and satisfying adventure results from rescuing Halsin quicker, saving Mayina without long resting, defeating the Gith versus running from them, discovering Kahga's treachery in a timely manner, etc. Likewise, I shouldn't be able to save Mayrina if I go nap for 8 or more hours while the hag is escaping with her. The grove should be cut off by druids if I take too much time, etc,

This is a logical conclusion to all of these narratives in the story. What is against the flow of the story is to roam about acting like you don't have a wiggler swimming under your eyelid.

So. Tell me honestly. You like reading my comments. That's why you keep disagreeing with me and accusing me of going against the narrative. Right? Come on. Admit it.

You don't always get what you want.

Imma be Gale for a sec.

Fact 1. The game allows you to casually explore every area even if it is a blazing ship tearing through Hell with imps and demons and dragons attacking it. Does nobody else find that odd but me?

Fact 2. The game encourages you to only explore for a little bit every day before you should rest for the whole rest of the day. Doesn't that also seem strange? Most people, I would think, would be a wee bit in a hurry to get cured and save lives that are depending on you.

Fact 3. Companions will only chat with you if you rest for the whole rest of the day and only if you do so when they tell you they are tired and need to rest. Strange.

Fact 4. Companions and your main character often get tired real fast, sometimes when they've hardly done anything. Really weird.

Fact 5. Food heals you after a sword just slashed you spilling blood everywhere, and you can eat a whole rack of juicy baby back ribs in 3 seconds while a spider queen is trying to eat you. Hmm..

Fact 6. No matter how many days you take, those dreaded goblins never actually attack, and the druids never kick the tieflings out. So why is everyone worried about them? Just leave tieflings. Those gobbos ain't coming unless I decide to betray you all. Trust me.

Fact 7. You have a parasite in your head and the only cure might die soon. Is that not cause for alarm and urgency?

Fact 8. When I play this game, I get better rewards for sucking than I do for playing well. If I can get through the entirety of Act 1 without long rest, without searching every nook, I get less cool items, never trigger Raphael's cutscene, never get to know the characters, etc. By playing well and strategically, I miss out on a lot. This was my first playthrough. I never learned Shadowhearts secrets, or Wyll's or Astarion's and suddenly they all wanted to sleep with me even though I hardly knew them. Why? Because I didn't rest. I pushed on, played well, and trued to waste as little time as possible. Second playthrough, I got tons of cool story items, lots of dialogue, etc. all because I slept a lot and played Hidden Objects like I had no pressing issues at all. Utterly insane.

Lol. Dude. I know that. I even said I love the game. If they change nothing, fine. Im suggesting that if they want a truly epic, exciting game they have to implement some time sensitive gameplay and put fires, real consequences, under players' fannies.

If they just want a nice game that's fun and nice, don't change it. If they want "Holy crap, man! I barely saved those people just in time," you need to do more stuff to push players towards the main objective. Again. Reward good role playing. Punish bad role playing. That will turn BG3 from nice to AWESOME.

Biggest problem is that BG3 is a game with an urgent main quest, but time doesn't exist. Even time and days that are showen in dialog log are seem to be tied to playtime and has nothing to do with story progression or long rests. (Day 2 for me started after I got tadpole powers, wich is 4 or 5 long rest at least)

Larian could do something in the same vein as Pathfinder Kingmaker, by making us wait for main story to progress at some points, and giving players time to explore. They don't even have to tie it to time.
Example:
Go to a druid grove befor resting? No fight, they send you evay saying come back tomorow. When you press rest button show time of day and a notification "You have some time to explore, do you realy whant to skip the day"

Edit:
Another solution could be to use a variant rule in which short rest is 5 minutes, and long rest is an hour. Only send as to camp and end the day when it is necessary for the story. It removes the fear of long rests, whithout actualy affecting anything mechanicaly (comparing to how unrestricted rests are now).

I'm not interested in the game using a carrot and stick approach to control the narrative and turn the game into BG3: Zerg Rush. If you "push the player towards the main objective" all the time, you will end up with a game that tries to take the steering wheel from the player too often. I'd rather the game lets the player drive however they want.

The issue with the current design is that so much content is tied to camping, the narrative starts to break if you don't spam rests often enough. So the narrative is build around a specific playstyle. Changing this design so that npc content would become available as you travel in a party would go a long way, without limiting players too much.

Personally, Once I saw that the tadpoles they were using on us were special in such a way that they could be triggered by a remote psionic key to instantaneously evoke a full and complete transformation in a matter of seconds, that was all the narrative proof I needed to know that urgency was absolute. We see it in the ship, at the start.

It literally does not matter that we aren't turning by the normal clock; we've already seen first hand that we're not playing by those rules. What we DO know is that the thing we have in our brains can be remote triggered at will, and could be at any moment if we come into contact with one of the creatures involved. It might be in functional stasis now, but clearly the ship we were on is NOT the only source of these tadpoles, and so somewhere out there are beings who have the ability to evoke a sudden and instant full transformation on us, with us having zero ways of resisting it or preventing it unless we can get this bug out of our brain before we meet one of them. No amount of "it's not doing anything right now" takes away from that game-given fact, and that game-given fact means that any even marginally sane person would be acting with the utmost urgency and not daring to waste any more time than absolutely necessary to pursue a solution.

The game is strongly in conflict with itself. Its story narrative is one of absolute urgency, while its mechanical requirements are of absolute laziness and procrastination. Regardless of your outlook, this is a major problem. Personally I think it's one that should be fixed at a deign level, rather than a narrative one.

Ah ha ! I'm not the only one who remember what we saw during on the nautiloid ! Which, obviously, is likely to get basically speeded-through these days.

Yes, the characters gather information make them (and us players) realise that our tadpoles are not turning us into Mind Flayers the way they do normally. I can't remember for sure, but I am under the vague impression that Larian has bumped up the in-world clues and sources telling us "actually, it's fine, your tadpole is not behaving normally", in Patch 3 and/or 4.

No, that doesn't mean we have less urgency. Someone has the power to turn us by snapping their fingers. We won't know who, where they are based, what's the range of their remote control, and when they'll want to turn us (and possible dozens or hundreds of other True Souls).



Absolutely. A majority of topics discussed in the forums are related to Larian's vision : what they aim for the game to be. Everyone has their tastes, and may wish that Larian's goal was closer to their preferences. But this is not about the vision. It is a case of the game not being logically consistent with itself, sending mixed messages, and using mechanisms, writing and UI that are not compatible with each other. And it's one of way too many such cases.

I understand that BG3 is not made by 3 people working in the same room. Although I would presume the number of designers and writers is not too high. But it often feels as if there's no central (elder?) brain, and that the game doesn't know what it wants to be and what it wants us to do.


Probably. I mean, I haven't thought much of it (... too many things that are plainly wrong). But I think it's going to be quite harder to change the story (as it is a lot more tied to animation and voice acting) so, by default, working on the mechanisms is quite possibly the only way to fix this issue. Well ... there's always the N+1th way, which is not fixing it at all.

To be fair, this isn't something every character will see. Mine generally listen to Lae'zel and don't go around pushing random buttons. Or is there another insta-transformation moment I'm forgetting?

I think the new dialogue with Nettie goes a long way toward explaining why things aren't so urgent. We also pick up Wyll in the Grove, who takes a much more laid-back attitude toward the search for a cure, but by that point we've listened to the others panicking for so long that we're not likely to go along with his viewpoint.

Exactly. I think this is the misunderstanding a lot are having about my post. I'm not saying let's make BG3 into BG3: Zerg Rush. Maybe I'm saying that for the prologue, but it's a prologue with a burning nautiloid being attacked by dragons and Gith and demons and imps. You are 100% in a hostile environment with NO friends or allies that you can trust. It goes 100% against the story to have your PC roam around the ship like you aren't blazing through the Hells. So yes. For that prologue scene, it should maybe be a bit more like a "get your butt in gear" game.

But even with that, I'm not saying don't give players any ability to roam a little. See. That's where a lot of people are misunderstanding. I'm not saying that Larian should take away people's abilities to explore. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying give exploration a time limit when a time limit is being called for in the narrative. If you are on a blazing nautiloid with dragons and demons, etc. battling with one another all around you, you should not be casually strolling about searching every nook. Even if it is nothing more than a clock in the top corner like in Final Fantasy 7 counting down to let you know that you need to not take too long searching all the crap in every room, at least that's something to get the adrenaline pumping.

Final Fantasy 7 is actually the perfect example of what I'm talking about with creating excitement and tension. I remember the first time I played the prologue of that game and had to determine how much time I'd need to get out of the first reactor before it blew. Man! Every battle was freaking me out. I couldn't get through the battle fast enough because I knew I was on a time limit. It was SO exciting!

Why was Final Fantasy 7 such a good RPG? It did stuff like that. It got your blood racing, when the narrative called for it, tugged at your emotions, etc. If Larian wants BG3 to be the next best RPG, they need to also do stuff like that.

So what I'm suggesting is that in the prologue they get your blood pumping. Keep you moving. It's the prologue, for goodness sake. It's not supposed to be the time when you explore every little area of the map. Prologue's are for teaching the mechanics of the game and to hook you into the story. That's the purpose of them. You should naturally be more limited during the prologue while it is teaching you the basics of the game.

So yes. I was suggesting even limiting item slots so that people would get the hint that you can't pick up much anyway so don't waste too much time in the prologue on searching everything. This is also why I suggested an Auto-Search feature so that you could find the gear you might actually care about easier, so that you can keep the pace of the opening sequence of the game. Searching and exploring everything is not only not realistic but it slows the pace of the opening scenario down tremendously. An Auto-Search would quickly reveal what items are good, you could quickly pick them up, and then you could move on without too much treasure hunting in the opening sequence of the game.

Then, once you crash on the beach, now you should be able to explore, pick up stuff, etc. at your own pace, WITHIN REASON.

WITHIN REASON means that they remove End Day and replace it with 2 Long Rests per Day with still having 2 Short Rests for every Long Rest. This is more in line with D&D 5e anyway. Then I'm suggesting that they absolutely need to make it so that I can still trigger ALL the dialogue and character development whether I Long Rest a lot or not. Then I'm suggesting that for those of us who DO want to pick up the pace, Larian provides an OPTION in the OPTIONS SETTINGS allowing us to enable Auto-Search so that we can just have our characters make a Perception check to allow us to find all the good stuff in a room without having to sift through all the boring, useless junk. Still leave it so that players who want to search everything can do so, but give players who don't like this Hidden Objects style of gaming the ability to quick search. Then, lastly, I'm saying that yes, some events make sense to be triggered after a certain amount of time goes by.

But with this last item, believe me. I'm not trying to strip players from having the ability to explore the entire map and do all the side quests. That's completely contrary to my point. I myself still want to search and explore the whole map and do all the side quests. Certainly don't take that away from the game.

What I mean by time-sensitive events is really putting some sort of realistic limit on how many Long Rests (remember I'm saying 2 Long Rests now per day) you use before things start to happen in the game. Make it 3 days. Make it 6 days. Make it 8 days. Whatever Larian thinks is a reasonable amount of time before something truly bad happens, set some sort of limit on how many DAYS (2 long rests per day) that people can use. Then, add some story elements warning players that their time limit is nearing expiration. They'd better stop using Long Rests so much and start using their healing items and short rests more instead of always long resting to fully recover.

And yes, some events make no sense to allow players to long rest during those events. This is why I brought up Mayrina and the hag. You shouldn't be able to long rest when a hag is kidnapping a girl. The hag is not just going to wait for you to return. There should be some consequence for long resting during this scene. Maybe it isn't shipping Mayrina off to Baldur's Gate. Maybe it's the hag has more minions spawned when you come back because you spent 8 hours sleeping to recover magic and health. Maybe she has more traps laid. SOMETHING should be different when you return to face her because she had 8 hours to prepare for your return.

That is my point. Right now, you can long rest a thousand times and no gobbos attack, no druids kick people out, the hag just waits for you to get to her lair and face her, etc.

So, again, I'm not trying to take anything away from players. I'm trying to enhance the current gameplay. I'm trying to make it so that if I don't long rest all the time I can still enjoy all the elements of the game.

@OP

Jesus Christ man, just relax! This is just a pc game not real life. You should really experience some really hard things in real life so you would understand that there are more important things to worry about than some pc game. Honestly you made me so mad that it's hard to control my anger. Shut down your computer, get some help from professional and when you're better, maybe then you can try to play again, but remember that it's just a silly little game, nothing that has any real meaning.

Whoa! What did I say that made you that mad? I sincerely apologize. Maybe I came across the wrong way. I'm honestly not understanding where certain people are coming from, is all. I'm trying to present my reasoning as to why I think the game would be better if my suggestions were implemented. I also don't understand why people are so against my suggestions.

I also am a bit frustrated, so that could be why I came across the wrong way. I feel like I'm trying to say "ABC" and there are people who are thinking I'm saying, "123".

So again, sorry to upset you. TOTALLY not my intent.