Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Low pool of EA testers worries me

Alot of naysaying happend here rather then reply to it all il reply to 1 seeing as you guys seem to share the same (kind of) complaints..

-Diping: A nice concept. Say you have a torch but need to light it, dipping it in an excisting fire source could be a nice way to go about it. Agree that it shouldnt work for everthing. Weapons yfor example they could change that you need to coat them with grease or something first before you can put your weapon attacks alight. If they manage to change that, dipping is fine. It allows the PC to interact with the enviroment in numerous ways and could be used for RP and exploration problems as well.

-Shove: A 5E DND rule. You can do that by the rules inplace of one of your melee attacks. We can argue whatever or not you feel its implemented in a way thats visually appealing but its not something of their own make.

-Throw: See my point about shove.

-Crates and barrels: lol. Ive had weirder things in my inventory in bg1 and bg2.

-Cow can climb ladders: DnD 5E rules. Everything can climb, every feet that you climb justs costs 2 feet of your movement. Agree that its er.....interesting to see a cow do that. But by the rules every creature can do so, you dont need a climbing speed for that.

-Animations and visual effects: They are imported because theyre tied to their engine. What do you expect? For them to completly rework it so it looks differently? Considering people are already complaining that its taking them to long, asking them to change the visuals would just delay it even further....

-Map design: Thats Larian's design there. Honestly im not for or against the idea of having 1 map vs having 5 smaller ones that combined form the same map. They could break it up but honestly, whats the point? What would you gain?

-Main character beeing an empty box: Is.....Is this your first RPG or something? Thats a thing developers do so players can fill in their own characters backstory.

-Origin characters having their own backstory: welcome to every RPG companion, ever.

-Lack of day/night cycle: design choice I suppose. That said, I dont see its inclusion beeing needed to provide us a good BG title. It was in bg1 and bg2 but only ever came up sparringly. Mostly when you were doing 'naughty' things like stealing. With the vampires in BG2 it was also a thing for...obvious reasons. That said, we dont know whatever or not it will be added later or not. My guess is no, but quite frankly; I give very little about this point myself.

-Control scheme: No clue what you mean here. Can you elaborate?

-Feeling of a frozen world: welcome to gaming where 99.99999999% of the time the worlds is essentially frozen and only anything changes when the PC comes along. That said, in DOS2 things happend in the world if the player dident hurry as well. So considering they did it in previous titles I dont think its unlikely that they wont do so again with BG3.

-Cheesy combat mechanics: Can you elaborate on what you mean with this?

Im not sure what you mean with this bit exactly either. Could you elaborate?

Honestly none of us know what thinking/planning went on before doing bg3. I sincerely doubt they pitchedf the idea to WoTC and only then started to think about how to implement things. Thats obviously not how it went. Assuming that it wont be a great game like DOS1 and DOS2, BG1 and BG2 seems abit melodramatic to me as well. Its still in development after all and each major patch adds and changes alot.

Dipping : grease would be better... but it would also be better if the whole weapon was not on fire (including your hands, your clothes and so on...)
Shove : is an action in DnD, not in BG3. And you don't shove so easily and so far in DnD.
Throw : is not a specific action in DnD. Not sure you tried it but what you can do in BG3 is ridiculous (at least, was... I did not try in patch 5)
Crates : wierd things in BG1/2 certainly... but not crates and barrels. Ofc a bag full of armor is not really "realistic"... a bag full of crates and barrels is even less.
Climbing : Climbing a ladder in the FR has the same prerequisites as in our world : hands and fingers.
Animation and visual effetcs : I expected something that suit better to the setting. Hulk is not a part of the FR. Jumping create an unecessary and unapprorpiate shockwave. Another exemple is how some characters are falling asleep - looks like a cartoon.
Map design : the story sometimes feels inconsistent - the most common exemple being the goblins not finding the grove. The exploration is also very limited even if some things are great (lots of secret). The world is not coherent (a "forest" with 6 trees, a "swamp" that is not bigger than my garden, hostiles harpies living right next to the druid grove,...)
Main character : the main character in BG3 have the same problem, the same introduction, the same goal, the exact same motivations than any companions. That's not at all how it works in other games.
Control scheme : the chain system. Classic control works better both on console and computer.
Feeling of a frozen world : no, I don't have the feeling that everything is waiting for me in other games. In BG3 even the night is just waiting for me to click on a button.
Cheesy combats mechanics : things that create a good way of playing and a bad way of playing, leading to repetitive tactical combats. Highground, hiding to ambush,OP shove, OP diping, OP throw,... You can play without it but it's really balanced arround some of these things (especially highground and hide/ambush all the time)

I mean that Larian include all the good of DoS1/2 but they also include the things that were criticized in these games, didn't include what was already lacking and/or things that were okay in Rivellon but that looks wierd in a universe everyone have read books about for years (and play video games or even watch films...). We all have a pretty clear vision of how things work in the FR and just like on the Middle Earth cow doesn't climb ladders - and any other exemples - on the FR whatever you may say.

I did not wrote "good game" : my first sentence in this message is that BG3 is going to be an awesome game.
I wrote "a game that revolutionized RPGs as DoS and BG did before".

IMO they had the opportunity to combine what was great in those two games to create a perfect 2022/2023 party based RPG but they "just" choose to improve their formula and adapt it to DnD.
BG3 will probably be the best "Larian experience". With such an IP I was waiting for more but ofc, I'll deal with it.

Chubblot’s latest YouTube vid says they’ve moved attacks out of the left hand panel – but he didn’t say what was in there instead. Maybe they are making room for Dodge and Ready… I’d be curious to see what else has changed other than adding the Sorcerer. I’m actually surprised we don’t know more already. They may have fixed a bunch of stuff we’re still complaining about.

The spelling isn't the issue, the gender is.

Space. The final frontier. These are the voy... Wait, sorry, got sidetracked.

Anyway, the point is space. Right now, the gobbo camp is literally just a football field away from the "secret" druid grove and in between them are a dead village that gobbos have taken over. Take the wrong exit and you end up in a swamp that somehow manages to exist in the same climate as the rather dry village or the reasonably vibrant forest right next to the village that somehow hasn't grown into the village despite nobody holding it back for a very long time.

If Larian had used multiple maps then these things could exist independent from one another rather than physically right next to one another. And the respective maps could then have a bit more room in them as well. Imagine if Baldur's Gate 2 had placed Trademeet, Umar Hills, the Shade Temple, De'Arnise Keep, and the Exit from Underdark map in pretty much the same place, right on top of each other. That wouldn't have been all that immersive, would it? Same problem we're seeing in Act 1, really.

Since Larian is the developer, the odds of Baldur's Gate III not turning out well are low, but I doubt that Wizards of the Coast will have much to do with how it turns out.
I mean, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance was probably approved by them as well, right?
If so, I'm not sure how that happened since it seems to be quite awful.

The reviews mention poor AI, unimpressive combat and a lack of enemy variety among other issues, and if Wizards of the Coast has a very hands-on approach with Dungeons & Dragons, I'd think that they'd have done something about the game's development after seeing those problems.

Likewise, Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale also seems to be awful enough that it doesn't make sense for them to have let it release in that state.

Grease is an AOE spell. You cant target it on just a weapon. IIRc some weapon oils excist in the game though that give you temporary buff so I cant see why you could grease up your weapon and set it alight for an ingame hour or so.

PHHB page 195. You can knock an opponent prone or 5 feet away from you. There are feats in the game that allow you to push in other ways but yeah, feats. Dont know how far you can push people in BG3 though but the last time I did it someone only moved a very tiny bit. Granted when EA came out you could toss people off roofs very easily but that hasent been like that for a while now AFAIK.

Throwing something counts as a ranged attack. Also PHB page 195. Dont know what you think is so ridiculous about it though? I havent been throwing stuff around myself, have I been missing out or something?

Consider I have infact, had barrels and crates in my iventory this point is kinda moot.... Yesterday I was carrying 3 bodies around in 1 person in his 'inventory' so id say BG1 and BG2 still have BG3 beat on this one. Specially when you consider the amount of metric tonnes that you can fit inside a bag of holding..... Ive dropped entire armories in there lol. BG3 has got nothing on that!

No infact, it does not. There are no rules for that. Climbing up 1 feet requires 2 feet of movement, unless you have a climbing speed in which case you use that. PHB page 182. Show me where it says you need hands for that. Bears dont got hands either but got a climbing speed for example. Have you ever seen goats on very steep hillsides/mountains? They can more freely there then we can and they dont got hands and fingers either. Is it abit silly to see a cow climb? Well yeah. But mechanicly theres nothing stopping any creature from climbing other then the DM going 'uh. No. Thats stupid' Another fun real life example is a snake. No hands on that bad boy. Heck, it even doesent have feet! Yet they move up vertical surfaces just fine...

Dont see how the hulk favours in this but ok. The shockwave is more to portray the fact that you landed then anything else id say. Its a little exegerrated, I agree on that. But thats the style they went with. About the falling asleep part. Might wanna replay BG1 and BG2 and see how characters fall down. Exactly the same manner.....

With a squashed map thats bound the happen. Not to say that the same dident happen in BG1 or BG2 btw. You often run into people who have a problem thats like 10 feet away from them. Or have to solve 'riddles' that are incredibly easy to solve. Like the murders in the bridge district in bg2. Seriously if you are even half competent you will snooze your way through that quest but the city guard cant? If we start looking for realisme in these games we will find most of them lacking in alot of areas... With this point I often see other people bring in Fallout new vegas as a simular comparison. And my counter argument is: would you want to slog to the real life sized mojave as the map rather then the ingame one? Dont know about you but I dont got in real life days to waste walking from location to location without running into something. These gameworlds ARE compressed, but thats because they need to be. Noone would find any enjoyment out of a real life sized map either. Then wed complain that wed have to travel for hours before finding things. They have to find a middle ground between the 2, and thats what we got at the moment.

They have the same problems, goals and movitations as your companions. Thats right. Because that motivation is survival. Its maybe different from other games because you arent implanted with a tickign time bomb in other games... Aside from that, your character has whatever goals, motivations etc etc that you set for it. We just only got act 1 to play off for the time beeing so we never really reach a point where we can move past the inmediate danger of our situation.

Oh thats what you meant with control scheme? The chain system! Well I agree with that tbh. Although the chain system gives some freedom to move your party and 1 person seperatly, you could also do that with the old system. Unchaining and rechaining is abit clunky which is my biggest complaint about it. But yeah thats indeed a left over from DOS. Dont know if they will keep it but personally hope they dont. But that said, that by itself wouldnt make me move away from the game either xD

I honestly have that feeling in the vast majority of games. Maybe we play different games then? I dont know *shrug*

Having the high ground is a very advantageous thing though. Wars have been won in our history because 1 side got the high ground and used it to their advantage. That said, I agree its abit much atm. Maybe just giving a flat bonus (or your opponent a penalty because the high ground gives you cover) would be enough. Flat out giving advantage is way OP. Hiding to ambush. Im a DM for a pnp group. My players ALWAYS try to get an ambush. Because a round of suprise combat is outright DEVASTATING. The inventive things they try to get it are quite hilarious and if theyre smart about it il reward them with suprise. But holy shit does it make the encounters significantly easier for them... If youre doing the same thing then grats: youre using tactics.

Youre playing semantics. I replied to the quote and in there you stated 'not enter the pantheon of games that revolutionized RPGs as DoS1/2 and BG1/2 did before them' which implies that it wouldnt be a good game. Or at least not of the same ballpark. Which honestly we dont know if it will, or will not be. We dont have the finished product yet and we dont know during what timeframe it will be released exactly. Maybe when it releases it will infact move the industry forward. Or maybe it wont.

Surely you're not going to argue that there's no difference between Edguy and Sepultura. And if someone expected Sepultura but instead got Edguy then that might not be entirely satisfying. Both are music, obviously, but they just don't really sound the same. That doesn't make one better than the other and thinking in those terms is hardly the point. What is the point is that if you expect something on the deathy side of thrash and what you get is happy disco metal, it feels a bit like buying a chocolate bar and getting a banana.

And while it really doesn't matter much if a band is metal or not in terms of whether a band is worth listening to, I reckon that at least vaguely having a feel for the difference between what is typical rock and what is typical metal doesn't hurt. I don't mind Rammstein or AC-DC, but I do get a little miffed if I express a fondness of old heavy metal and someone says "Oh, you like Nickelback too?!?"...

Getting this back on track, you could argue that BG3 does everything BG2 does but better, but that's like arguing that St Anger does everything the old albums did better because the sound quality was better. And it may be, but I still miss guitar solos and drums that don't sound like plastic buckets. Also, I seem to recall a fair bit of repetition in the composition that eventually got a bit frustrating, didn't it? Some of the ideas weren't bad and the songs could have ended up pretty decent, possibly, but what they released just wasn't the Metallica people expected.

So really getting back on track, in order to understand why some of us old people aren't really feeling it, I think we have to look a bit deeper and look at how certain things were used in the old games before deciding that BG3 is actually just BG2 with added awesome. And that then takes us all the way back to the starting point of this topic, there just aren't enough people playing the game at the moment that the pool of old timers willing to provide feedback despite the grief they'll get for it is going to be all that high.

I'm sure Metallica played St Anger for their friends and the record company, and I'm sure they all said "oh yeah, this is awesome, especially the plastic buckets!". That's the risk of not getting a wide enough audience for feedback.

It's mechanically implsausible, it would weaken the metal that the sword is made of and certainly not do great things for your edge, and do you really want brightly burning fire on a blade that isn't that far from your eyes? You're probably only making it harder for yourself to see what's going on. Further, if the blade is aflame than aren't you cauterizing the wounds you're making? Why would you even want to do that?

What he meant is that shove is an action, not a bonus action. And that's what PHP says too.

As for distance, try shoving someone off a ledge from up high. I've seen the Giths take some amazing flights because they seem to keep whatever horizontal movement speed they had when coming off the ledge all the way down and then do a skidmark landing. One of the smugglers went from around the barrel in the back end of their cave to all the way out near the side at the vertical bottom. And survived it too. Mr Hobgobbo did his special attack on Shadow up on the rafters right next to the ladder and she ended up at the far end of the room.

You don't seem to be able to miss with throw potions and some of the surface effect from some of them is a bit much.

Those bags of holding contain a pocket dimension so anything in them isn't really in them. The bag just contains the gate to said dimension, not the actual stuff inside the pocket dimension. And I'm not sure when you get a chance to carry 3 bodies unless you're doing things in a weird order. There's that sick guy you need to give to the harpers, there's the bones of that priestess from the shade temple, and are there more than that?

Obviously the bulk of how much one can carry can feel over the top, but you only have so many slots and the weight limits were standard D&D, as I recall. In BG3 you have infinite slots. And barrels are probably still a bit underweighted. Come to think of it, however, I do not recall quests in BG1 and 2 that involved hauling crates and barrels around.

Climbing a ladder specifically. Not just climbing. Obviously there's a difference between climging regular terrain and climbing up something that is very hard to use without fingers. You would also not expect bears and goats and whatnot to climb up ropes or vines.

Please don't even begin to claim that De'Arnise Keep and Trademeet are located right next to each other, with Umar Hills squeezed into a corner.

What we've got at the moment is the most ridiculously compressed map that Larian could manage to create. It isn't a happy medium, it's an extreme that laughs at any notion of immersion. Here's a forest with a dozen trees!! Here is a druid grove right next to this colony of sirens! Here's an actual swamp that manages to be swampy despite clearly being in the same climate as the previously mentioned forest that isn't swampy at all.

And of course it becomes ridiculous when you get to the grove fight and the mercs are all out of breath from having run the what, 150 meters or so from the village? "What, you led them HERE??!", the tiefling dude asks. Well, couldn't really lead them anywhere else given the layout, could they?

If you're DM then I'm guessing you're not just throwing blind kobols with tinitus after your group of players, though. And one would expect to have to do different things to ambush different enemies. And if the enemies are intelligent, you wouldn't expect them to literally be at their wit's end because you're playing honest to god peek-a-boo with your stealth-capable character.

Ragnarok get out of this body !

Dipping : you said "coating weapons with grease". This is also what I was talking about in my answer.
Shove : is a bonus action in BG3. 5 feets in DnD, not more. With coherent checks.
Throw : just try it, especially with ennemies.
Crates : 3 bodies ? Not sure there are 3 bodies to carry in BG1. Anyway the inventory is limited in the old games AND a body is very very heavy. Carrying common crates and barrels is not in BG3. On top of that, carrying a body or very heavy items on our hands rather than in our inventory was complicated in 1998. In 2022 this is something that exist in most games. To make it a bit more coherent, this is in exemple something they could have done (with eventually consequences on our speed movement, stealth checks and NPCs reactions).
Climbing : I was talking about the FR, not DnD. But even in DnD most DM would probably assume that a cow climbing a ladder is stupid.
Sleep : no, the animation is not the same in BG1/2.
Map design : I don't asked for a full open world but this "half open world" is incoherent as hell from a story / world perspective.
Main character : Larian's design decision. Creating his own "background" doesn't exclude to have a proper role, proper motivations and a proper influence on the story. Same about the companions, like in most other games.
Cheesy combats : tactics is good when you have to do different things against different opponent. If hiding/ambush and going higher always makes you win it's not tacticaly interresting anymore whatever the difficulty level.

And no, not good and not legendary is not the same.
TW3 IMO is a legendary game even if I personnaly don't love it as much as most people. Wasteland 2 is an excelent game I really LOVE but not a legendary one.

Well said, exactly my thoughts on the current state of the game.
Yea people can nit pick this rule and that rule, but doesnt change the fact that you said in the end. They had the opportunity to combine what was great with the prior games to create a perfect modern party based RPG but just choose to improve their Larian formula. Some people will love this, many will dislike it.

You likening criticism as motivated purely by some sense of regressive conservativism is a gross overgeneralization. Nor does MOAR mean BETTA. You use the word PLAYER AGENCY as a mantra for something purely positive when it's clearly not that simple. In fact, player agency can and oftentimes does hurt other aspects of the game. Particularly immersion and balance that many value higher than extra choices that often are redundant.

Maximuus touched on some of this, but allow me to rehash some of these mechanics:

DIP mechanic: A redundant system that promotes objectively poor and repetitive gameplay, is unbalanced and contributes to making an already overly complex game, harder to get into. D&D already has a plethora of balanced and immersive ways to achieve similar effects from cantrips, spells, coating with alchemical fire or poison, etc. But in ALL these cases; are finite resources to be managed and not basically freebie largely benefitting certain melee classes. A dual-wielding fighter with extra attacks, action surge, perhaps hastened benefit infinitely more from this mechanic than a warlock for instance. The player's OCD level/patience is made the biggest balancing factor in dipping, similar to how the now fortunately removed flanking/backstab advantage functioned. The fact this implementation is downright anti-immersive for obvious reasons adds insult to injury. The enemy AI does not exploit this despite it being a universal mundane mechanic, which is another negative. In short; the negatives of this Larianism FAR outweigh the positive. Objectively so. It's TRASH tier game design in my honest opinion.

PICKPOCKET mechanic: A legal exploit mechanic that adds player agency. When you know what to do; pickpocketing is completely risk-free and the quickest way to near infinite loot and money. It completely obliterates the risk vs. reward mechanic of the game besides the economy. It incentivizes anti-roleplaying or roleplaying kleptomaniacs because this again is a near endless resource without balance. It also incentivizes extreme hoarding which is also boring and unimmersive for actual role-players of a roleplaying game, cause looting everything is the only other way to afford buying (some of) the merchants loot. Roleplay a consistently heroic character like the majority tend to prefer, and you lose out.

RESTING mechanic: Rest whenever, wherever adds player agency. And shatters any pretense of balance in a game where the balance is built around strict adherence to said mechanic. Besides causing perhaps the grossest narrative dissonance in any roleplaying game ever; by being under the impression you're in a desperate race against time, but time obviously not mattering to the point of it not existing. The camp supply system that removed the anti-immersive heal food items (that also promoted player agency while ruining class balance and immersion), is a step in the right direction - but it's currently not balanced and largely illusory.

BARRELMANCY mechanic: I think you get the gist of this now. Added player agency seldom come without some hefty negatives in Larian's game design.

I have no doubt BG3 will be truly OUTSTANDING in MANY ways; I believe that is why many ardent critics still linger about. However, Larian has doubled down on many problematic game design choices that made me leave DOS2 uncompleted. A significant majority of players fail to complete their games, and being drowned in options is one issue that contribute towards this end. Excessive loot focus (partially at the cost of player build focus) & inventory micro-management is another biggie. D&D is not really a loot focused game, but BG3 like DOS2 most certainly is.

Well, at least barrelmancy is less prevalent than it was. And with some refinement (e.g. less food in the world) the food requirement could at least limit the amount of reststops you can make. Overall patch five was a good step in the right direction. They definitely should keep the crate stacking stuff to be honest, as it allows you to make alternate routes to higher areas (plus it fits with the roleplaying part imo). I never really bothered spending 3 hours stacking all barrels under the sun to cheese my way through encounters personally. I mean... I usually like to play the game as intended. As long as it makes sense for certain barrels to be in a place, I have no issue with it. I mean.... if the Zhentarim want to stack their storeroom in the goblincamp with gunpowder, I am not responsible if they go boom .

I think the only thing I think highground should apply to is probably archery. I don't really see how someone being on high ground would be harder to miss with something like guiding bolt,myself. Or if they wish to keep it applicable on spells lessen the advantage/disadvantage bonus/malus that applies to it. Patch 5 lessened guiding bolt missing to some degree but still. I think highground is more of a bow thing (being higher up = more range. Maybe they could lessen the advantage to hit a tad also. just boost engagement range or so).

I just kind of want to know what patch 6 will change under the hood. I hope they finally seperate scroll learning for wizard (no more cleric spells please), although I am not counting on that until they have made more of the spellcasting schools. As for the rest.. I am pretty sure within one week of release we will see: Game finished in 20 minutes or something along those lines. As speedrunning is somehow seen as proof of short game by some, lol.

it's funny you bring that up because I use that same argument in the opposite direction. I understand that things change and especially culturally I also want things to change. That being said, if I want to listen to some 80's heavy metal or early 90's black metal, that's just what i''ll do, I don't need today's bands to "re-create" those already existing records. On the other hand, there is only so much a certain genre can be 'stretched' before it is more another (new or different) genre than that which it claims to represent or speak to. And this is not about identities or conservatism towards additions, actually the opposite.

Consider BG2 having a D/N cycle, many interchangeable companions, NPC routines, random encounters, etc. etc. one can rightfully ask why these elements - which for some made up the crux of what they liked in the old BG games- are no longer present anymore. So while I admit that people can become a bit too attached and invested in meaningless sectarian genre arguments, yet if you want to play David Bowie covers on an ukulele and call it metal music you would need to convince me why exactly - besides the self-labeling - you consider your ukulele covers of David Bowie metal. Maybe the ukulele has distortion, maybe the vocals are growled, but in any case if something defines itself as related to something already existing instead of portraying itself as something new or different, people will make the comparison and evaluate that claim based on their own perceptions of what makes something 'metal' or 'baldurs gate'.

That's just how it works and this doesn't necessitate labeling people on either side of the debate as reactionaries of sell-outs, rather it could provide a starting point for an interesting discussion on what constitutes the genre.

For me for instance, the absence of day/night was so surprising that if I had to equate it to metal terms, it would be like someone calling Bob Marley and the Wailers a metal band because they have guitars, drum, and bass.

Heheh now I just want to see Lae'zel in her Slayer T, spitting on the ground at the flea market, when Shadowheart shows up in the parking lot blaring Metallica's Black Album from her Trans Am.

Like damn istik, 11 pages to get there, but I'll take it all the same! Sign of the Devil!

Hehe, I would def buy or download a kind of metal-faerun crossover DLC or mod.

Meanwhile Astarion keeps scrounging the vinyl boxes for those sweet Mayhem and Burzum releases, while Gale - wearing a black sabbath shirt - is having a somehow escalating scholarly dispute with Will about the precise role played by Led zeppelin's song 'communication breakdown' on early metal music because Will can't refrain from randomly - and very loudly - interrupt the discussion with his rendition of Manowar's 'Warriors of the world' .
Meanwhile, the rest of the grove is waiting for that new grindcore band "the Ritual' of which the rumor goes that it is fronted by a druid in animal form, apparently bringing a whole new level of authenticity to the genre's trademark pig-like growls and screams. The goblins - who prefer punk rock - in contrast were having an absolute blast with a few local bands performing, although some of them are starting to wonder why the organizers of Absolute-fest put that Volo dude and his boring spoken word stuff on stage.

That's great, and who knows what's coming in the next two chapters? Maybe we get all of this, maybe we get none of it. It's hard to say what's going to happen from the beginning of Chapt 2 to the end of the game. Personally, and I know I'm not alone in this, I prefer my main character to be a blank slate. That allows me a lot of freedom, within the confines of the game, to do what I want with my backstory, instead of being locked into someone else's idea of what my character is, or should be, before the events that trigger the actual game. I have to admit to a bit of surprise every time I see this argument presented though, because everywhere else I play where "RPG" is part of what the game is, MMO or otherwise, "I don't want to play the developer's character" is a very common position. There was a ton of controversy in AC Odyssey about this very thing, stemming from one of the DLCs, and a situation that comes up near the end. So it confuses me to no end when I read the equivalent of "I need Larian to tell me who my character was before the events of the game". There is a solution for those specifically looking for that, play one of the Origin characters. There's nothing snarky intended there either, it's a good option to have, and adds to replay-ability, as one could choose each Origin character for a specific playthrough, as well as rolling their own. The only reason for an Origin character to be "more deep" is because the player didn't put any thought into the character other than gender and class. Especially now, with the backgrounds mattering, to some extent. At the end of the day, even if there was a "generic" storyline for Tav, it would be exactly the same as it is for every Origin character; one story to rule them all.


Except that that's not what was said? It does provide a better experience overall. As to how "BG" it is, it's really hard to say at this point, since we're plinking around in the Alpha of roughly 1/3 of the game. I say this as someone with thousands of hours in BG and Dragon Age. I mean, as a 10,000 foot generic overview, I could say "Skyrim/Oblivion" clone too. I mean, we roll a character, level them up, gain new skills, and abilities and points, etc. Doesn't that mean that all cRPGs are essentially the same game?

Interesting aside, I tend to go to BG 1 when I think BG, and I've got a lot of completions in both. BG 2 built on to what BG did, after all, meaning that BG laid that groundwork. That's highly subjective though, some will like one over the other, and it's the height of hubris to say that "this is the game everyone thinks about when they hear BG." There's no other real way to interpret your claim here other than that though. Especially when I think about BG, and the music that plays when you first find the Friendly Arm Inn springs immediately to mind.

Thanks for this, I needed some entertaining reading this morning.

The nice thing about player agency is that you, as the player, can choose to ignore all of it. I hope that they add toggles for some aspects, such as resting, etc, for MP sessions, but in a SP player environment, none of this breaks my immersion at all, because if I think it's a "broken mechanic", I can opt out of using it, and what Joe Casual is doing in their game has absolutely no bearing on what I'm doing.

Don't like dipping? Don't dip.

Don't like Pickpocketing? Don't do it.

Don't like barrelmancy? Don't use it.

Don't like the way resting is handled, handle it how you prefer.

What do all of these items have in common? They are examples of player agency. Isn't it a great thing? I mean, seriously, what's next? "Players shouldn't be allowed to side with the Goblins"?

Another interesting thought, when's the last time a non-magical melee focused build hit mobs with Eldritch Blast? "But dipping is imbalanced", until level 5? That's when Wizards, and soon Sorcs will have access to Fire Ball. It's more than a bit ironic that you point to one of the more powerful classes to compare how imbalanced dipping is, isn't it? It's even more ironic when I sit here remembering how SSG totally spit on 7 years of character development in DDO because melee were crying about how OP ranged builds are compared to melee builds. That melee character can dip all they want, it won't really matter, once ranged characters come into their truly powerful spells/abilities, and melee builds are struggling to even hit something before it dies, right?

In real life, yeah. In dnd? Youd do it for additional fire damage :P and flames are hot, but not 'cauterizing at a touch' hot.

Ah. Thats fair enough. Not sure why they made the switch but it sent needed id say.

I did try it and aside from people at ledges I really wasent pushing people that far away. Maybe theyre more suspectible when theyre near an edge or something? Il have to try it again some more I guess but last time I checked it was alreayd toned down alot compared to what it was initially.

Like with shoving, il have to give it another go then. You really shouldnt get the benefit if your attack misses or at the very least the projectile should land somewhere else and put down a surface eeffect there.

I know what a bag of holding is. My point was that in bg1 and bg2 you could also carry some funnky things in your inventory. In 5E theres also a limit to the amount (and the size of) things that you can put in your bag of holding but in bg1 and bg2 that dident seem to be the case. I dont know if thats due to the item changing over editions or if it was a game design choice. Also the fact that your inventory was limited was also....off. Fill your inventory with potions or with sets of armors. To the game it doesent matter, theyre both 'full'. Potions take up a fraction of the weight and dimensions of the armor but to the game that dident matter. Im not to sure if limiting the number of inventory slots does anything other then just add restrictions to what you can, and cannot take along with you. Some items like gems, some bits of food, etc take up very little space in actuallity but the game does not differentiate between how big an item is. Each is locked to 1 inventory slot.

Funny you should mention not hauling crates and barrels..... I know siege of dragonspear wasent OG bg1 but it actually has a quest involving sacks of grain xD not exactly the same as a barrel, but in essence the same. A container that holds other products. They weighed like 20lbs each some of my characters were carrying a dozen or so (yay high STR). At the end of the day, does that matter? In bg1 ive had instances where I was carrying multiple carcasses of Ankhegs around to sell to armour smiths. Sometimes find bodies that you need to pick up and deliver somewhere, etc. If you find the story of a literal son (or daughter) of a dead god lugging around the corpses of fantasy ant-lions is less weird then carrying barrels with varying amounts of things in them then uh....we have very different things of what we think is weird, I suppose.

Considering there are no seperate rules for climbing a ladder. No. There is no difference. The only rules that excist that might be valid to mention that there are rules for surfaces where you have little to no grip. And even then, you could still climb it. You just need to pass a (IIRC) Athetlics check to do so.

That aside. Have you seen bears actually climbing trees? Seriously a tree has nothing to hold onto aside from bark and maybe very tiny branches but they practicly fly through those things. What makes you think a bear would see a ladder and go 'welp I dont have opposable thumbs. Guess il stay down here!' and be unable to go up there?

Same story for a snake. They can climb up the side of trees and they dont even have limbs.

Ladders do not have seperate rules adressing them how you can climb them to my knowledge and if they do id love it for you to point me in that direction. But as it stands you just keep moving the goalpost because animals climbing things is weird to you...

Never did. Im saying its a design choice and thats what you get when you work with a squashed map.

It could be that the grove has magic concealing it, that only breaks if you come to close. It could be a meriad of other things, But yeah compressed map is compressed. I get it.

Ive had my players support eachother. 1 of them cast pass without a trance on all of them while they staked out the encounter. Stealth checks of over 30 are kinda hard to spot if the passive perception doesent go past the 15 mark xD but indeed. Different areas require different forms of stealth. Mechanicly a few things are always true though. If light sources are present, try to avoid them. If possible try to move in areas that make little sound and try not to bump into things, etc etc. Once combat has started though stealth, while possible; doesent stay reliable anymore. Even if enemies only know your general location they would come looking for you. And you cant stealth infront of a person if they had direct line of sight to you. That said, dont think thats possible in bg3 either, is it? Few times I tried instantly failed so always assumed it wasent an option to the players. If you can infinetly restealth (like I assume you mean with peek aboo stealth character) then thats indeed something that they needs to be adress. Thats silly.

-I assumed you meant the grease spell, not grease itself. In that case we agree on that then
-Il try throwing and see whats up. Must admit that other then testing the mechanic abit I havent done much with it.
-Youd be amazed by what kind of things you can lug around as questitems in the original bg's. Im replaying bg1 and 2, just completed bg1. So many weird and quirky quests that I forget about. Good stuff. That said yeah inventory was limited but 5 potions held up the same space that 5 suits of armor did. Doesent really hold up to scrutiny as well im afraid... What would you suggest they do about it though? I personally like using backpacks and sacks to avoid clutter and keep simular items with eachother so my inventory doesent bloat that much. Maybe reward that more or something?
-Like I said above, mechanicly each creature can climb. Would you see an actuall cow do it in real life? No. In a game? I doubt it either, but then again considering we have settings where actual gods walk around, magic is a thing and theres planes like the hells and whatnot, it defenitly wouldnt be the strangest thing one could see....
-Sleep animation is basicly the person falling on his back in a very overly dramatic way. Considering the models are small and details are hard to see anyway the best thing they could have gone about it, considering it conveys very well whats happening.
-Not a huge fan of the design choice either. But can see why its beeing done. Honestly adding a 'travel to swamp' or 'travel to ruined village' area prompt wouldnt mechanicly add anything. Other then that you could more easily say that its not all literally next to each other. That said, what would it add? Immersion I suppose and considering immersion is a big part of playing an rpg id be all for it. But maybe its alot of work or they dont want to do it. Who can say?
-Dont know what you mean with the 'main character' bit. What is your problem exactly with their take on it because I dont understand what you are saying.
-cheesy combat tactics only go so far in most fights. Some enemies that we might eventually see utilize ambush tactics themselves or can completly negate high ground bonuses. (well the normal bonuses. Dont know if they can negate the perpetual advantage...) and thus need completly different tactics to be countered. Heck, some might use our height advantage against us by knocking us down. Causing us both extra damage and maybe knocking us prone. We only see act 1 so far (and I assume the easiest part of the game) so lets not assume that these tactics will work for the entire game. Well I certainly hope not because that indeed would be very boring xD

Map is as compressed as it is in D:OS2, thats true.

Personally I prefer that over having to click x times to move my party from A to B, but thats me - I always hated MMORPGs for their intentionally complicated cities (which serve to increase play time and keep people subscribed longer), but ok, one can of course say that uncompressed would be better.