Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Hopefully Modding WIll Be Easier On Full Release...

Understandably with new patches and updates and the attendant necessity to update mods consistently the BG3 modding scene has suffered a fair bit and one consequence has been how unwieldy and difficult mods often are in terms of their implementation, i.e. complex file alteration and clunky piece-meal mod managers exclusive to BG3. DO2 was by way of contrast MUCH easier to mod. What do people think about the future prospects of modding? Will it become easier or will be remain the pain it has become?

Right now, with the game in early access, it is actually detrimental for Larian if people mod the game, as then their metrics won't mean a whole lot. Larian is almost certainly looking for data on how popular certain options are, how difficult certain fights are, what routes we pick, what routes we don't pick, and so on.

And if we're not playing Larian's exact game then what good would such statistics be? Hence they're not exactly going out of their way to make modding feasible at the moment.

Once the game is released, the picture is reversed. Suddenly modding becomes a huge benefit. At that time, I cannot really imagine that Larian wouldn't make modding a lot easier to work with.

The creation & installation of MODS must become very easy.
Last straw that convinced me was this abominable thing that happened with Minthara.
We need to be able to fix this by force if necessary.

I believe i was told around here someday in the past, that Larian can tell easily wich game was moded ...
So i presume (feel free to read as: hope) it should not affect statistic so hard.

what's weird is modding for DOS2 doesn't seem that popular at all, while the game itself is popular. Does anyone know why that is? (maybe it isn't and im talking out of my ass).

It would be shocking if they haven't done something to tell modded games from non-modded games. But if everybody is playing a modded game then they don't get as much data on the base game. And they really need a lot of data on that for any statistical analysis to be particularly reliable, I would think.

Every data is potentialy useable ...
If you get none feedback from raw game, but few millions players will have downloaded 6member party, it should tell you something about their preferences.

A lot of the most popular mods are already officially supported in-game through the gift bag options.

You get shamed if you use any mod by being denied achievements. And some mods are cosmetic only.

Meh. There is mod for that.

A fair point Lord Arvguy; most of the issues I have will be resolved upon release, i.e. being able to play classes that are currently locked.

The game better have very robust modding. The availability of a significant number of mods is the only way I see myself playing this game.

What issues do you have with the game Lord Kanisatha?

As soon as it was available, I added the DoS2 mod allowing larger parties - as far as I was concerned that was the only "must have" mod.

I expect to do the same with BG3 - hold off playing it until a mod allowing for 6 character parties is available, assuming Larian leaves it at 4 person as I anticipate.

that's really cool of you!. how hard is it to mod on battle re-balance? like adding more and different monster to a said encounter?

First off, I'm as far from a "lord" as anyone can be.

The list is long, but just a few of the big ones: six-person party; no NPC companions taken away at the end of Act 1; a normal party movement mechanic; severely toning down or removing Larian's homebrew rules and mechanics; a whole lot more god options available for the religious classes; highly customizable difficulty settings, especially re. combat.

Yeah right it is complicated. However It feel little disappointed with moddings. True nice content? Adventures modules like in Neverwinter MMO I don't care about the hacked classes and I prefer to play classes when Lariaan really release them. The only thing if you can not create adventures I would be interested in a mod that make some nasty mod that make BG3 remind of Witcher 3 that is 18+ agerating content. That said it would be really nice if you could create example a side quest example a Werewolf adventure or whatever monster you prefer as GM or creators. Yes and I understand such sidecquest creating could take long time to create even more then a year. However BG3 I suspect is going to be released in October-December 2022 or during year 2023. You could also release mods after BG3 full release. Well in worst case it is not possible to do side quests or an adventure. Well in that case I only wait for nasty content.

To each his own - my personal and professional life is such that I am lucky to get a handful of hours a week for game play - I don't have time to play a game over and over. I'd prefer to see the added content I can obtain with a larger party during my sole run through. I can always increase and tweak settings to balance out the difficulty as needed. And as I am more interested in the content, plot line, characterization and such than I am at beating the game at the highest difficulty level with a single character in the fastest time possible, that provides me what I seek.

As for how hard it is to mod, I couldn't tell you - I'm no programmer - I let my teenage daughter program my phone, and my wife sets up my PC.