Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Brief feedback after ~20 hours of gameplay

Not sure if Larian will read this but here goes. First of all, I think the game is coming along amazingly. It's obviously very different from BG1 and 2, but even as someone who has a ton of nostalgia for those games, I think that expecting some sort of continuation of the Infinity Engine after so many years would have been asking for too much. We can dream about it, but some things you just can't recreate, it's better that Larian does what they do well I guess.

Anyhow, here's just 4 major pain points after playing for ~20 hours, and I'm listing these in decreasing order of importance:

1. Save-game loading times. I have a WD Blue SSD, a Ryzen 9 3900X, and an RTX 3080 Ti that I bought just for this game. Still it takes more than 30 seconds to load a save-game. This could be acceptable, if it weren't for the next point.

2. There's no reason whatsoever why in a single-player game I wouldn't be save/load cramming to make sure I pass ability checks. The game outright incentivizes me to do so by offering the quick-save/quick-load functionality... except that it's painful because see point 1. If you're playing with a role-playing purist mentality, I guess you won't save/load much, but if you're going through the game with a 100% completion / power-gamer mentality, then why should I not just load the game whenever I miss an ability check?

Not sure what to do about point 2. Maybe there should be a game mode (perhaps single-player only) where you automatically succeed all ability checks? Or maybe auto-succeed all up to a certain difficulty and auto-fail all after that, taking bonuses into account? The effect of Guidance would also have to be stabilized for that I guess, let's say to +2.

So let's say in this mode, the game auto-succeeds anything where I would have to roll a total 10 (with bonuses) or lower, and auto-fails everything where I need a 11 or higher. And let's say my character has a total of +4 to Insight and a further +2 via Guidance. That would mean that any check with a difficulty class of 16 and lower auto-succeeds (because 10 + 6 = 16), and only 17 and up fails. Maybe it could be tied to the difficulty setting, too. Succeed up to 15 + bonuses on easy mode, but only 5 + bonuses on hard mode?

Anyway, on to the next point.

3. You encounter tons upon tons of camp supplies and it's tedious having to right-click -> send to camp for them all one by one in your inventory. I'm sure many others mentioned this already but I wanted to put it here anyway because it's literally one of my top annoyances. I also have more generic inventory annoyances due to the overall amount of random items you can gather to later sell, but that's just me being a hoarder.

3.5.: OK I said it was going to be 4 points but writing the last paragraph gave me an idea: decrease the value of frequent items (non-magical weapons, shields, etc.) to give the player less of an incentive to gather everything / make it harder to attain tons and tons of gold.

4. With the current combat mode, it's not easy to have everyone surprise-attack an enemy all at once. Or maybe the problem is that it's possible at all, when it's not supposed to be possible? What I do is: line everyone up in the right position, then very quickly cycle through them and Ctrl+Click on the enemy so everyone fires their projectiles in quick succession. This way you can possibly have all 4 party members land a hit before combat mode even begins and initiative rolls happen.

That's all for now. Expect me to come up with other pain-points as time passes, but these feel like the most pressing ones to me, from top to bottom.

EDIT:

Ohhh I actually forgot one. In terms of importance I think this belongs between points 2 and 3 for me:

The camera. In many places I really want to look UP more and it feels painful and frustrating that it's not possible. Like I'm wearing a harness or something, very unpleasant feeling.

Hey Taylan,

Just a little feedback on point 4:
Surprise attack doesn't work like that in D&D/BG3. Basically if you're all hidden and one of your characters attacks an enemy from stealth, you will get a surprise round. Basically you're getting a free round where your full party can make an attack, cast spells etc. and when it's the enemy's turn, they will just skip their turn as they are *surprised*. So you will have two turns before the enemy does anything.

Turn 1: Party stealth attack, full party takes their turn
Turn 2: Enemy is *surprised*
Turn 3: Party gets another round of attacks
Turn 4: Enemy gets their first turn to make actions

On 1: Can agree with you there, but I do think that kind of optimization comes later down the line. There has already been some major improvements in that area. The problem is that they load the whole world you're currently in, which gives you zero loading times while exploring, but long loading times if you're save scumming.

On all the rest I can just agree with you on the tediousness of "send to camp" and micro managing inventory and quick slots. UI is a mess at the moment, as is the camera.

Just a quick post to add some information - For the record, this is not how it works in 5e. 5e does not have 'surprise rounds' at all.

The way it works, formally speaking, is that the moment the DM decides initiative needs to be rolled, it is - usually, in the case of stealth attempts, this is when someone makes an attack - whether by surprise, or after being seen.

1) Initiative is rolled - by everyone.
2) Surprise is determined - this is *individual*; some enemies may be surprised, some may not be. Each individual creature may or may not be surprised, which your DM determines based on the situation (usually by comparing the passive perception of each creature against the stealth checks of the hiding ambushers).
3) Initiative is run as normal. A creature that was determined to be surprised cannot more or take actions on their turn, and cannot take reactions until their first turn ends. They recover from being surprised at the end of their turn.

Yes, this may well mean that some creatures get their turns before you - if they are surprised, they'll skip it, so you'll still get to act before them.

Oh, that's interesting. In that case I guess it's working as intended; it would explain why sometimes the enemies are all surprised and I basically get a freebie round, and sometimes they actually get to attack back immediately.