Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 1 of 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Joined: Jun 2018
Jess Offline OP
Larian Alumni
OP Offline
Larian Alumni
Joined: Jun 2018
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Hello once again! We hope you’ve been doing well since Patch 4 released, because it seems a whole lot has happened since then. The ocean burned, the West Coast boiled, UFOs may or may not be a thing, and that was all just this past month. But while the world invents new ways to surprise us, at least there’s one thing we can always count on like a dependable old friend, which is the rise and fall of floods as they lap at our Belgian office servers once again. Through all of that we’ve been hard at work to bring you Patch 5.

So what can you expect from this patch? New game-changing mechanics, tons of combat and AI improvements, a bigger focus on roleplaying, a tantalizing step toward unearthing Shadowheart’s mysteries, and more Owlbear cub content to make your heart burst, just to name a few.

And, well, we’re partial to some of the incoming fixes as well:

· Skeletons are no longer in a celebratory mood when emerging from coffins.
· Fixed being able to eat some buckets.
· Fixed being able to cast Charm Person on yourself.
· Liam will no longer run away while unconscious

This update features a ton of improvements directly inspired by the community, many of them addressing things you’ve raised in your feedback so far. We’ve been listening closely to requests you’ve made throughout Early Access and we hope you’re really going to be excited by these changes - We definitely are. Together they improve the game a lot, and they bring Baldur’s Gate 3 yet another step closer to its 2022 release ambitions.

We’ve got lots up our sleeve this update, so let’s jump right in.

[Linked Image from media.giphy.com]

Active Roll: A new way to die (as in dice, it’s a dice pun)

One of the biggest improvements coming in Patch 5 are Active Rolls, our new dice mechanic. In addition to a full upgrade of the old UI, the biggest change here is in how you can influence dice: While previously, the accepted method for attempting a skill check was to tightly cross your fingers ahead of a roll, now you have the option to apply spells and bonuses to these checks to help increase your odds.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, let's say the chances of you passing a certain check seem pretty slim. Rather than leaving you at the mercy of the RNG gods, you now have more agency in the outcome of those rolls. For example, cast Enhance Ability to add an Advantage bonus to the skill check in order to roll twice, or you can cast Guidance to bump that number up for good measure. You can also cast spells from your other party members, although in multiplayer your teammates will have to decide for themselves whether they'll let you use their spells during these rolls. You’ll be spending a spell slot any time you do this, so use them wisely. That is, unless the skill check relates to recruiting the Owlbear cub, in which case we’d recommend you let your heart guide you.

[Linked Image from media.giphy.com]

Get rewarded for roleplaying

In this patch we also wanted to find new ways to really celebrate roleplaying. Enter, Background Goals.

You know how the character creator includes an option to choose your character's background? Folk Hero, Acolyte, Urchin, and so on. Now every character will have their own series of secret miniquests based on these roles. Finding out how to complete them is part of fun, but for each you complete you’ll receive an Inspiration Point. Players will get a maximum of four Inspiration Points which can be put toward rerolling dice whenever they wish. Or alternatively, if you’ve already reached your IP cap for the moment then any further point becomes XP.

[Linked Image from media.giphy.com]

Camping 2.0

One of the main comments we've received about our resting system has been that it's far too lenient. Before Patch 5, you could initiate a Long Rest and recharge all your spells and HP between every fight without penalty. A lot of players felt this just didn't feel right, and we couldn't agree more. So we've fully revamped how camping works.

Camp Resources are a new feature that will make you think a little more strategically about when to activate a Long Rest. Now in order to make camp, you first need supplies. You know all the food and scraps you find around Baldur's Gate 3? Starting this patch, those can be used to unlock camp for the night. So if you ever wondered to yourself “how much Waterdhavian cheese wheels could one person possibly need?” the answer is as many as you can physically carry, for cheese is now one of the sacred doorways to sleep. Alternatively, you can still initiate a Partial Rest without using any resources but this won't recharge you fully.

Another new addition are Mini Camps. Previously, any time you camped for the night, you would return to your HQ down by the river regardless of how far away it was from the area you were exploring throughout your day. This made us feel sorry for all the characters who were being forced to partake in marathon hikes just to go to bed. So we’ve now introduced smaller localized camps. From the Chapel near the Ravaged Beach to the Underdark, we've recreated every landmark as its own isolated location that can be accessed when you’re ready to hunker down for your Long Rest.

Smarter enemies, revamped spells, and a little something for the pacifists among you

This update comes with a lot of combat improvements, from smaller fixes - we’ve now made sure Mud Mephits are no longer afraid of mud - to more substantial alterations. Let's have a look at some of those below.

Enemy AI:

You’re going to discover a lot of AI improvements in this patch, so expect to see enemies who are a lot smarter and more resourceful in combat. For instance, now if there is a weapon nearby, unarmed enemies will grab it to defend themselves. Not only does this make fights more challenging, you can also use this behaviour to your advantage: if you disarm an enemy, they’ll have to use up an Action Point to go retrieve the weapon, which puts them at a disadvantage.

You can also expect better resource planning from enemies – when it comes to deciding what spells to use in a fight, who to target, whether to use actions like Dash, or to throw a health potion to a character in need, they’re a lot more adept. And all of these actions are new to friendly NPCs too.

Spellcasting Upgrade:

You can also expect to see updated class spell animations, which are looking awesome. Spells that are specific to a class now have an identifiable look, and spells that are usable by multiple classes have had a full revamp to create more cohesion with the class-specific ones. Oh and by the way, you can now cancel a concentration spell. That’s a small quality-of-life change but it’s something a lot of you have been asking for.

[Linked Image from media.giphy.com]

Non-Lethal Combat:

We’ve done some tweaking to the game which should please our pacifist players, too. We have added a new Nonlethal Attack Mode. This means that if you steal something from NPCs and they start attacking you, you can actually just knock them out instead of killing them.

In another widely requested change, we’ve separated the jump and disengage actions! So now players have the ability to either Jump to gain some strategic positioning during combat, or Disengage from melee range with an enemy and move to a safe distance. Finally, we’ve introduced a shortcut key for Jump, so it's much easier to navigate the various intricate levels as you explore the world. This has been a big request from the community too, and if there are other situations you wish you could solve through peaceful means let us know!

Nested Tooltips offer extra clarity to the new and confused

The world is a bewildering wilderness; games should not be. In this patch, we've updated our old tooltip system and created something we feel will make the rules and concepts of BG3 much easier to digest. Nested Tooltips are essentially hyperlinked tooltips. Think Wikipedia. If there's a term in the text that you don't understand, we got you. Just hover over it for more information. And you can now pin tooltips to your screen so there's no fear of losing previous tooltips along the way.

[Linked Image from media.giphy.com]

Shadowheart’s storyline just got a little more mysterious

Shadowheart got extra love in this patch. Not only does this update feature extra dialogue permutations with her, her storyline was also kicked up a notch. Expect to start hearing a little more about the mysterious item she carries with her. Oh, and you can now free her in the tutorial! Or leave her of course.

And now introducing Point and Click dialogue

Speaking of dialogue, let’s take a look at our new Point and Click dialogue system. This is something fans have been asking for from the beginning: Your character will now speak as you click through the world, reacting to the story and environment around them in real-time. A lot of recording power went into making this feature come alive - not only is the dialogue context-sensitive, it also changes depending on which character you're playing. But, of course, if you're of the 'less talk, more game' philosophy then there is an audio option to change the frequency of their barks.

[Linked Image from media.giphy.com]

These are just some of the improvements in this patch. We didn’t even mention the new dog. There are also a ton of visual and audio improvements and tweaks. You'll be able to jump in to experience these changes for yourself when Patch 5 releases Tuesday 13th July! And you can see Swen going over all of these changes in our Community Update video below:


Joined: Oct 2020
addict
Offline
addict
Joined: Oct 2020
Great, thanks you! And the show was wonderful, thank you for such an exciting presentation. It makes everything special.

I'm sure many local critics will be very happy about the changes. I'm surprised that you decided to change the camp locations, this is a really strong and difficult change, but now I see that you are ready to change a lot to improve the game. That's cool.


I don't speak english well, but I try my best. Ty
Joined: Oct 2020
Location: Liberec
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Oct 2020
Location: Liberec
Question ...
Is there any way to STOP those gifs? :-/ Its incredibly hard to read, when your eye is still dragged to something moving next to that text. :-/

//edit: Fixed ... i just readed it in quote. laugh

//edit2:
There is few things i would like to adress ...
Feel free to speculate with me. laugh

Quote
You know all the food and scraps you find around Baldur's Gate 3? Starting this patch, those can be used to unlock camp for the night. So if you ever wondered to yourself “how much Waterdhavian cheese wheels could one person possibly need?” the answer is as many as you can physically carry, for cheese is now one of the sacred doorways to sleep. Alternatively, you can still initiate a Partial Rest without using any resources but this won't recharge you fully.

Another new addition are Mini Camps. Previously, any time you camped for the night, you would return to your HQ down by the river regardless of how far away it was from the area you were exploring throughout your day. This made us feel sorry for all the characters who were being forced to partake in marathon hikes just to go to bed. So we’ve now introduced smaller localized camps. From the Chapel near the Ravaged Beach to the Underdark, we've recreated every landmark as its own isolated location that can be accessed when you’re ready to hunker down for your Long Rest.

We’ve done some tweaking to the game which should please our pacifist players, too. We have added a new Nonlethal Attack Mode. This means that if you steal something from NPCs and they start attacking you, you can actually just knock them out instead of killing them.

But, of course, if you're of the 'less talk, more game' philosophy then there is an audio option to change the frequency of their barks.
1a) Can you still send items (read as food in this case) you find magicaly directly to your camp? O_o
Bcs if you can ... its nice feature, but im affraid we would still be able to easily rest twice between each combat. laugh

1b) I wonder how will goodberry work with this feature ...
I really, REALLY, hope its primary use was not oversighted. laugh

2) Just quick question ... do i understand it corectly that while we will be in surface-wilderness, we will still travel back to our camp to rest ... but while we will be anywhere else, we would use this "smaller" version? O_o
Or will we never travel to our camp again to long rest, unless we pick that specificly in fast travel option?

3) Im really looking forward about how would this work with AoO, or other reactions from Battlemaster for example ...
I guess i presume corectly that spells will remain unaffected by this option?

4) I really wonder if that option will also alterny frequency of other NPCs barks.

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 08/07/21 09:01 PM.

If my comments bother you, there is nothing easier than telling me to stop.
I mean ... I won't ... but it's easy to say. wink
Joined: Oct 2020
Location: Savage North
addict
Offline
addict
Joined: Oct 2020
Location: Savage North
Hi Jess/Larian,

I don't know how extensively I'll be able to play with Patch 5, but the QoL improvements (hotkey for jump, stop concentrating, as well as Active Roll UI for Ability Checks) sound great already.

I do have a pair of questions though.


How does Larian process feedback ?

The Panel From Hell 3 did not really talk about that. I was hoping this would come with Community Update 13, given that the Hotfix 11 notes say "We will be back soon with a larger community update, that goes into some detail about how we process & parse feedback and data we get through talking with you, and the telemetry we have in the game".

The changes implemented certainly echo the feedback communicated by the players, but I feel we still haven't been told much about how feedback is processed (and how we should preferentially give feedback).


Early Access philosophy : what goes in and what doesn't, what is the EA for ?

I'm still a bit confused about what you choose to roll into the EA build and why.

In this Patch 5, we have new systems that you want to test (and that you explicitly flagged as "feedback sought here" in the PFH3). We also have a couple of great QoL improvement. These are always good. And fewer complaints about the generally-poor UI means more airspace for the feedback on mechanisms and systems.

But then ... we also have some pure gameplay content. I'm sure you have heaps of that in stock and continually develop some more. There's also a bit of bug-fixing (e.g. Liam).

I just hope you're not wasting too much time adding code to the EA build that requires extra work (compared to a straight copy-paste), due to the EA build being potentially quite outdated compared to your internal working builds.


Finally, I second the request for a way to pause the gifs. It really makes the reading more difficult.

Last edited by Drath Malorn; 08/07/21 10:36 PM.
Joined: Oct 2020
addict
Offline
addict
Joined: Oct 2020
Quote
Speaking of dialogue, let’s take a look at our new Point and Click dialogue system. This is something fans have been asking for from the beginning: Your character will now speak as you click through the world, reacting to the story and environment around them in real-time. A lot of recording power went into making this feature come alive - not only is the dialogue context-sensitive, it also changes depending on which character you're playing. But, of course, if you're of the 'less talk, more game' philosophy then there is an audio option to change the frequency of their barks.

This is such a good thing.

Joined: Jan 2021
addict
Offline
addict
Joined: Jan 2021
Originally Posted by Jess Larian
Enemy AI:

You’re going to discover a lot of AI improvements in this patch, so expect to see enemies who are a lot smarter and more resourceful in combat. For instance, now if there is a weapon nearby, unarmed enemies will grab it to defend themselves. Not only does this make fights more challenging, you can also use this behaviour to your advantage: if you disarm an enemy, they’ll have to use up an Action Point to go retrieve the weapon, which puts them at a disadvantage.

You can also expect better resource planning from enemies – when it comes to deciding what spells to use in a fight, who to target, whether to use actions like Dash, or to throw a health potion to a character in need, they’re a lot more adept. And all of these actions are new to friendly NPCs too.

So are enemies going to attack their immediate threat instead of Gale? Or will enemies be attacking Gale with even more impunity?

Joined: Oct 2020
B
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
B
Joined: Oct 2020
Oh nice so instead to tell people to take responsability for they choice of exploit things like the longs rest they opted to complicate it for us who had no problems. Obviously to change the fixed menu about difficulty would require too much effort so here it is, let's go with the complains of the more vocal part of players (that exploit the game to ruin it for themselves and then complain loudly on how bad the game was because it let them to purposely exploit the game).

By the way thanks a lot.

So I guess for the difficulty we will have the same soup that is standard this days and thatthey implemented with Dos I e Dos II.

Let us players choose, instead of a fixed menu let us decide, the crucial points are few (barrelmancy, height and backstab vantage/disavantage, long rests), in the difficulty menu what kind of "unfair cheesy methods that kill immersivity" we want to switch on or off.

It's very annoying when people unable to control and use their freedom make a fuss to have stricter rules thus ruining everything for people that knows how to manage freedom.

[I just hope this is not going to become, in the final release, a game as frikingly annoying like the Baldur's Gates of old litterally enojoyable only for a niche of ultra nerds that approach gaming as a second job, because I would be quite annoyed to disinstall the game].

Moving to another point, while Larian decided to listen a certain kinf of issues, the other complaints over the lack of new material, and no the minigames don't count as new material, by the way another system that falls, to a critic eye, in the exploit system that breaks immersion and makes the game cheesy. I get that there was a pandemic, that smart working, with some irony for a job based on the use of computers, slowed things, but there are still no new material, we are still blocked in act one.


The more days pass the more I start having the feeling of Vampires the Masquerade Bloodlines 2.

It's comunity update number THIRTEEN and Larian is still going on and on sharpening and refining the same old part of the game. Thus giving all the time they need to professional exploit searchers.

I gonna wait for another two months after that I'm gonna read the contract to see if I can get a refund, however it comes out if this the path Larian is going on I'll delete the game because I can accept an early acces, but here it seems that Larian has opted not for an early access but to exploit the player not for an early access but for beta testing of the first development phases of an alpha version of the game.

Joined: Dec 2020
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Dec 2020
Normally I would take your thoughts seriously... Except a lot of the post just consists of beating up strawmen and that one of your last few posts basically insulted half the forum and assumed that people asking for all of these changes were a minority, when community polls over the past two months showed that most people were actually in full support of these kinds of things. Even now the discussions over all this on Reddit, which is usually unquestioning Larian fanboy central, are overwhelmingly positive.

I am sure there will be difficulty options to turn off the resting stuff in the final game if it really bothers you that much. If not, merchants will sell everything needed, and you can just steal that crap from them because Larian shows no signs of touching the thievery system. Which is fine by me, because it's such a minor issue at the end of the day compared to things that affect actual encounter design. There was one item in the resting interface that said it had a 40 supply value, which was the amount needed for a complete long rest.

I don't think the devs ever said we'd go past Act 1 in the EA. I think all the clamoring for it mostly revolved around an implied level cap increase to 5 to go along with it, which is what people REALLY wanted. So now that they put the possibility of allowing us to test all the level 5 features on the table, putting content beyond Act 1 is suddenly no longer a high priority compared to things like getting the rest of the classes working, which we all know is coming in EA no matter what. Everything that's in this patch consists of major backend mechanics adjustments that are among the major issues that needed to be addressed first, so that progress on everything else can proceed much more smoothly.

Last edited by Saito Hikari; 09/07/21 01:57 AM.
Joined: Oct 2020
B
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
B
Joined: Oct 2020
Oh please lets stop with the feelings.

It doesn't requires a data analizer that social media traffic is generated but a hard part of posters. Just a quick analysis of the traffic in this forum shows that the core of the traffic is done by the same utents (I'm one that is on the medium level of posting) discussing a item, same goes for reddit and so on.

If people get insulted by a mere analysis and feel hurt because I say that we all better re calibrate the weight we have and to start to understand that we don't represent the full range of player thats not my problem. Because seriously that's something really wrong if to stat that the self perception we have has to be re calibrated and humbled means to be insulting (and being a latino, homosexual, agnostic, adopted man I know two or three things about insults).


To be the loudest doesn't mean to be representative or be the majority, it means being louder.

Said that the "Early Access" argument after months starts to be stale. I can quote the point made in 2019 in an article by screenrant after the cases of DayZ and Anthem early access.

While is true that Larian didn't say a word about move past ACT 1 it's also true that the company wasn't transparent about the time schedule while profiting from the relevance of the name Badur's Gate and of that of Larian itself.

EA can not be an excuse to put out a game that is clearly far from the alpha version itself. If they want funds I prefer the pre order option, at least with that I can get a refund if things go south. There's a feel that I don't like, and is that of being scammed, that is how I am currently starting to feel since Larian, after the two DOS, is far from being a indie developper (so much that accomplished to land a project tied to a big name like Baldur's Gate) thus doesn't have a justification tu use EA to get funds by probably not refundable purchases and place a celarly far from the alpha version game.

For reference on my views on EA (that I'll never again be part off) here it is the screenrant's article:

https://screenrant.com/early-access-broken-fix/

Joined: Feb 2021
S
apprentice
Offline
apprentice
S
Joined: Feb 2021
My grades for the update.

Originally Posted by Jess Larian
And, well, we’re partial to some of the incoming fixes as well:

· Skeletons are no longer in a celebratory mood when emerging from coffins.
· Fixed being able to eat some buckets.
· Fixed being able to cast Charm Person on yourself.
· Liam will no longer run away while unconscious

A- Mostly because I didnt know I could eat buckets, but good for catching bugs. So many games now just leave bugs in unless they are significant to gameplay experience, or if it costs the company money in gatcha games.

Originally Posted by Jess Larian
Active Roll: A new way to die (as in dice, it’s a dice pun)

A+: Reminds me of the assist system.

Originally Posted by Jess Larian
In this patch we also wanted to find new ways to really celebrate roleplaying. Enter, Background Goals.

You know how the character creator includes an option to choose your character's background? Folk Hero, Acolyte, Urchin, and so on. Now every character will have their own series of secret miniquests based on these roles. Finding out how to complete them is part of fun, but for each you complete you’ll receive an Inspiration Point. Players will get a maximum of four Inspiration Points which can be put toward rerolling dice whenever they wish. Or alternatively, if you’ve already reached your IP cap for the moment then any further point becomes XP.

B+: I like this but I think this should have been implemented at a later date, i dont think it will affect much of the EA gameplay. Rewarding roleplay in a significant way and getting XP for roleplay is part of a good DnD campaign, however we are hard capped at level 4 and so a lot of the reward is going to be meaningless until we get a level increase.

Originally Posted by Jess Larian
Camp Resources are a new feature that will make you think a little more strategically about when to activate a Long Rest. Now in order to make camp, you first need supplies. You know all the food and scraps you find around Baldur's Gate 3? Starting this patch, those can be used to unlock camp for the night. So if you ever wondered to yourself “how much Waterdhavian cheese wheels could one person possibly need?” the answer is as many as you can physically carry, for cheese is now one of the sacred doorways to sleep. Alternatively, you can still initiate a Partial Rest without using any resources but this won't recharge you fully.

Another new addition are Mini Camps. Previously, any time you camped for the night, you would return to your HQ down by the river regardless of how far away it was from the area you were exploring throughout your day. This made us feel sorry for all the characters who were being forced to partake in marathon hikes just to go to bed. So we’ve now introduced smaller localized camps. From the Chapel near the Ravaged Beach to the Underdark, we've recreated every landmark as its own isolated location that can be accessed when you’re ready to hunker down for your Long Rest.

B+: Food/rations are a required part of DnD, right now though the issue is economy and down the road Tavern activity (hopefully). The orignal BG games allowed you to buy drinks and talk to the barkeep to get tips, If I buy a bunch of food and drink at the tavern do I need to eat the same amount of rations at camp? If the bar is at an Inn will I be able to use the inn and not have to buy food if I buy a long rest. More pressingly for the moment, I tend to have to use the food I pick up for the stupid pricing I get from vendors. Pick up rotten apples I can still sell for a gold when in DnD table top Id get laughed at by the shop keep or offered a copper or two, not a gold. get the prices in line with tabletop prices (for everything) and it wont feel so bad.

A+: for the camp location change. I always feel like having to leave the dungeon to go to forrest camp would bring about a random encounter on way back, which I know we dont have random encounters in the game yet, and maybe wont ever, but i feel like its not realistic to go back to the forrest on every sleep.

Originally Posted by Jess Larian
You’re going to discover a lot of AI improvements in this patch, so expect to see enemies who are a lot smarter and more resourceful in combat. For instance, now if there is a weapon nearby, unarmed enemies will grab it to defend themselves. Not only does this make fights more challenging, you can also use this behaviour to your advantage: if you disarm an enemy, they’ll have to use up an Action Point to go retrieve the weapon, which puts them at a disadvantage.

You can also expect better resource planning from enemies – when it comes to deciding what spells to use in a fight, who to target, whether to use actions like Dash, or to throw a health potion to a character in need, they’re a lot more adept. And all of these actions are new to friendly NPCs too.

Grade TBD: So this comes down to does it feel like the balance of normal mode feels just as difficult and does it get more or less hard at the same scale rate as you change the difficulty. If the AI improvement makes it feel like the DM is just out to kill Gale because the player tried to sleep with the DM's sister (or brother?) and is doing his best for a TPK that just ends up being a meta against player meta trying to outmeta the computers meta (A dude playing a dude disguised as another dude?)

Spellcasting improvements meh, give me fireball. It can be garbage animation to start

We’ve done some tweaking to the game which should please our pacifist players, too. We have added a new Nonlethal Attack Mode. This means that if you steal something from NPCs and they start attacking you, you can actually just knock them out instead of killing them. [/quote]

Disengage/jump An okay improvement back to closer to DnD mechanics, I think?

Tooltips: I never had an issue with

Originally Posted by Jess Larian
Shadowheart’s storyline just got a little more mysterious

Shadowheart got extra love in this patch. Not only does this update feature extra dialogue permutations with her, her storyline was also kicked up a notch. Expect to start hearing a little more about the mysterious item she carries with her. Oh, and you can now free her in the tutorial! Or leave her of course.

Im glad to know a bit more about her, but I feel how hard it was to get her to open up was justified (you stopped trying in prologue at behest of someone saying leave her) so it should be difficult.

Originally Posted by Jess Larian
Speaking of dialogue, let’s take a look at our new Point and Click dialogue system. This is something fans have been asking for from the beginning: Your character will now speak as you click through the world, reacting to the story and environment around them in real-time. A lot of recording power went into making this feature come alive - not only is the dialogue context-sensitive, it also changes depending on which character you're playing. But, of course, if you're of the 'less talk, more game' philosophy then there is an audio option to change the frequency of their barks.

A-: More backstory and improvements in tutorial, yays. Most interested to see how her interactions with Pinky the Brain and the NPC that makes me want to roll melee classes as an extra excuse not to take her in the main story get along.

A+: This is going to be one of those things that make the game feel more like a Baldur's Gate game, Theres still no butt kicking for goodness, but its a great start.

Overall improvements B+ lots of good things that improve

Currently feeling like a BG game: C+ I still feel like I am missing some of the experience, outside of things lacking due to early access, it still feels like its a game that exploits the name of the original 2/3

Currently feeling like DnD: B-, the gold system (no copper or silver), no taverns, no stat rolls, no face palming due to a stupidly timed/aimed fireball but youve got the basics down and most of the tweeks to the system dont detract from an overall DnD feel.

Also congrats on being the one WotC licensed game that isnt hot garbage since what magic online, maybe Neverwinter?

Joined: Oct 2020
B
member
Offline
member
B
Joined: Oct 2020
Yes Larian, how dare you didn't tell us from the start about an impending global pandemic that would impact the game development schedule? Was that really too much to ask?

Joined: Dec 2020
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Dec 2020
@Bufo:

I think you're the only one that's really feeling hurt here. And if you're really jumping on the feelings train that fast, it may be a good time to step out and clear your head for a bit (and going as far as to bring up your IRL circumstances, I could talk about MINE but it'd only be a sheer escalation and it's hardly relevant to what actually matters here), and come back in a week when the patch is actually out and we see the practical effects of all these adjustments. Like for one, I am particularly happy about the disengage adjustment, but not happy that it was done by itself without addressing the other issues of height advantage and backstab advantage along with it because it's a straight nerf to player action economy while hardly doing anything to enemy action economy in turn, but I can understand that Larian wants to take it step by step first.

Larian has always been clear about how the EA is structured. People like myself don't like it, but at the same time, a lot of this update was precisely aimed at proving that Larian actually is listening and nothing really is set in stone anymore. We've always operated under the assumption that a level cap increase to 5 was out of the question, but not anymore.

I find it amusing though that a couple months before, people such as you were telling us that our complaints amounted to nothing, that this was just Larian's vision for the game, and that we had to suck it up. But now that Larian has decided that something needed to be changed, you've suddenly decided not to respect their vision anymore and making giant posts about how you suddenly want to get off the EA train now? You must be lacking in self awareness if you're not at least realizing that you're now basically doing the same thing as you accused a bunch of other people of doing before, in a slightly different but fundamentally similar way right now. The point being, you're accusing a lot of people on this forum about being a loud minority, but I wonder if you've ever stopped to consider if your views may be in the minority too.

Last edited by Saito Hikari; 09/07/21 01:58 AM.
Joined: Nov 2020
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Nov 2020
Honestly, I am really happy for this mechanics focused patch and can't wait to mess around with it.

Joined: Jan 2021
member
Offline
member
Joined: Jan 2021
My ramblings:

* I really like the implementation of food as a requirement for resting. Not because of exploit limitation, but because it brings an additional roleplay element into play. I'd like to eventually see a hunger and fatigue element added (at some point) so that if you're trying to just power through on nothing but short rests you'll really start to suffer from the lack of eating and sleeping.

* The ability to juice up your dice rolls using spells and abilities from your own character and the rest of the party is nice. I'm still really hoping for a larger party and the ability to create all of my own party members so that I can completely bypass the built in NPCs, but that's a topic for another discussion. In tabletop RP experiences, fellow party members often assist with checks and such, so it is very nice to see it brought in here.

* A new dog is nice, but a few new races is the "new" that I'm really craving.

* How about obliterating that level cap, huh? I mean, we've already got scores of 1st level NPCs with (at least 20th) level backstories. How about we get the ability to level them all the way up to where they actually should have started according to their lives prior to the game... whaddaya say? At least then, I might be able to tolerate having them in my party... doubtful, but it could happen.

* A smarter, more resourceful, and more tactically minded AI sounds devilishly fun. So much more challenging (possibly) that it has me giggling with anticipation.

* It is great that you can roam around knocking people out and all, but they should wake up before too long (or be able to be woken up), and you really should be able to tie them up and interrogate or extort them. Rangers? Or maybe it is Rogues... one of them at least... even have a skill relating to this that I have been unable to find any uses for in any of my playthroughs to date.

* Others have asked, but I will add myself to the list of inquiring minds that want to know. How DOES Larian process & parse feedback and data? ...and what is the best way to give feedback if you're really, really hoping to be heard?

* Things are coming together very nicely so far. It's obvious that you've been going hard at the task of making this game all that you think it can be. Keep up the good work, and please move your servers out of the flood plane at some point.

Last edited by The_BlauerDragon; 09/07/21 02:27 AM.
Joined: Jun 2021
member
Offline
member
Joined: Jun 2021
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
I find it amusing though that a couple months before, people such as you were telling us that our complaints amounted to nothing, that this was just Larian's vision for the game, and that we had to suck it up.

How can people even think this when Larian already made a massive change to dialogues when people complained about past-tense narration. Larian are ready to make changes if people make valid complaints, it just takes time and persuasion.

Joined: Oct 2020
apprentice
Offline
apprentice
Joined: Oct 2020
I like most of what I'm seeing here. We'll see once I play around with it a bit.

I have to ask, why is there so much emphasis on Shadowheart changes every patch? The other characters need love too.

Joined: Mar 2020
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Mar 2020
This is the kind of update I wanted. I honestly couldn't care less about more classes or races. These things are things we know for sure we will get so we just have to be patient.

But what we got this time is much more interesting. The disengagement change is hopefully just the start. Swen also said quite clearly they are thinking of ways to improve reactions which is also awesome.

These kind of gameplay changes are much more important and will impact the quality of the game substantially more than the number of races it has. So I'm a little more optimistic. Good job Larian keep experimenting


Larian's Biggest Oversight, what to do about it, and My personal review of BG3 EA
"74.85% of you stood with the Tieflings, and 25.15% of you sided with Minthara. Good outweighs evil, it seems."
Joined: Jun 2014
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Jun 2014
Interesting how, rather than actually adding a proper day-night cycle, you just decided to overcomplicate rest with the idea of long rest resources.

Joined: Mar 2020
M
member
Offline
member
M
Joined: Mar 2020
For me it sounds from the update that this game just moved to the right direction on the gameplay front. I can just repeat what others already said: i dont care about new races or classes until the core systems are not fun (for me at least) but it seems Larian is listening and willing to turn around things to a certain extent.
Im really happy of all mentioned changes, can wait for the full patch notes and to test the new things.

Joined: Oct 2020
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2020
Thank you Jess and Team Larian! You guys rock! Can't wait for Tuesday!!

Page 1 of 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5