Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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Hello friends,

My grandmother introduced me to CRPGs about 25 years ago. I’ve been hooked ever since.

I’ve been a devout follower of Larian after beating Divinity 2 around 7 times. I sincerely want BG3 to succeed to the fullest extent.

One thing that I think requires improvement is the general immersion of combat. The underlying system is great, but I think a little innovation could really make BG3 the one CRPG to rule them all.

I think the answer lies in a similar tactics game: Xcom.

That game had some of the most frustrating miss chance numbers in modern gaming, and yet was incredibly fun and cinematic—something facilitated by an action camera feature.

I think it would be incredible if—let’s say—the game registers the sorcerer landing a crit with a fireball. The camera zooms in, and we get an over the shoulder view of a special casting animation. It decimates the enemy in the critical camera feature that’s already implemented.

This spices up the gameplay, because slower moments are enhanced up by the sweet anticipation of these cinematic moments of brilliance. “Will I get to see my favorite animation this time?”

I think the animations and triggered events are where the potential for game dev innovation is located in CRPG combat specifically, because you can’t make everything in combat flashy without messing with the DND rules and game systems.

The potential here for mele characters is amazing too: execution animations, cinematic parry events, counter attacks, etc.

Currently you feel like a 3rd person viewing a chess board. Bring us down to the battlefield more, and let us feel the punch of combat! What’s great about this solution is you don’t have to develop new gameplay systems, only graphical and animation systems—which you guys seem so well equipped to tackle.

Maybe this is all a pipe dream and is out of the realm of possibility. But it’s what I envision when I imagine the most amazing CRPG combat I can imagine.

Thanks for reading!

Last edited by LiturgyofMoose; 15/10/21 05:53 AM.
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Oh gods, please no. :-/


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Just don't.

I mean: NO.


#JusticeForKarlach

Petition to save Karlach: https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-karlach
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As long as it’s disabable, like in XCOM. Those “awesome moments without player input” work well in hands off demo presentation, not so much in gameplay after an hour or so is spent with the game.

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Ive one way to improve the immersion of combat. Combat Start. You pick a Leader. Depending on what Leader you pick, his/her voice feels different. They could even put different music for each Leader. Some big bass pad for Warrior and some hollow one for Undead Leader etc.

We can hope something like XCOM2, but its quite obvious they had spent hours and hours with it and Larian has others things to think too.

Last edited by GreatWarrioX; 02/01/22 05:58 AM.
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I only want special crit animations and camera work if we can get special fumbles, too.

Fumbles, as a mechanic of entertainment, is highly under-rated.

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Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
Oh gods, please no. :-/
Originally Posted by Firesong
Just don't.

I mean: NO.

I’ve no strong feelings either way, but you two apparently do. Why is that? What’s wrong with eye-catching combat?


Larian, please make accessibility a priority for upcoming patches.
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I would prefer more distinct casting gestures to differentiate wizards, sorcerers, and clerics instead of xcom style close-ups. Just my humble opinion!

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Originally Posted by Flooter
Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
Oh gods, please no. :-/
Originally Posted by Firesong
Just don't.

I mean: NO.

I’ve no strong feelings either way, but you two apparently do. Why is that? What’s wrong with eye-catching combat?

This is supposed to be a 5e game and fumbles aren't part of 5e?

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Originally Posted by LiturgyofMoose
I think it would be incredible if—let’s say—the game registers the sorcerer landing a crit with a fireball. The camera zooms in, and we get an over the shoulder view of a special casting animation. It decimates the enemy in the critical camera feature that’s already implemented.
Absolutely not, unless it could be disabled. Don't want nausea because of a stupid zooming camera.
Originally Posted by LiturgyofMoose
This spices up the gameplay, because slower moments are enhanced up by the sweet anticipation of these cinematic moments of brilliance. “Will I get to see my favorite animation this time?”
After seeing something a couple of times, it becomes repetitive, not enjoyable. It also drags out already tedious combat even more because you have to wait for the stupid animation to finish.
Originally Posted by LiturgyofMoose
Currently you feel like a 3rd person viewing a chess board.
For me, this is a fault with turn based combat because you have to micromanage everyone. No amount of cinematic crap will make this feeling go away.

Originally Posted by Full Bleed
Fumbles, as a mechanic of entertainment, is highly under-rated.
I think fumbles are only "fun" in tabletop if your group isn't constantly in life or death situations. Otherwise I rank them as stressful as wild magic and am extremely glad my group doesn't use them.

Originally Posted by WebSpyder
This is supposed to be a 5e game and fumbles aren't part of 5e?
They are thankfully optional in 5e

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Originally Posted by Zarna
Originally Posted by WebSpyder
This is supposed to be a 5e game and fumbles aren't part of 5e?
They are thankfully optional in 5e

It isn't even an optional rule. It's 100% homebrew if it's being used at all.

Last edited by WebSpyder; 12/01/22 01:51 AM.
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Solasta tries to do eye-catching camera close-ups with spells and attacks. They just don't work. They weren't even always working in XCOMs that were all about the eye-candy, what with janky animations and wonky camera angles.

A focused shot for a weapon critical that happens infrequently enough (5%-10% chance, without taking advantage into account) is more than enough. Flashiness doesn't suddenly make a combat system that is perceived as "boring" fun in any way. JRPGs aren't, for the most part, fun at all, and there's hardly any genre out there with greater visual overload in combat.

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Originally Posted by Flooter
I’ve no strong feelings either way, but you two apparently do. Why is that? What’s wrong with eye-catching combat?
Close up animations are anoying and are polonging the combat that allready sometimes take more time then i would like. :-/

And with my luck i bet that in short combat, or situations where it would look cool, like landing a final strike to the Boss ... it would not proc, but in tedious situations, where i would rather continue in gameplay, they would be triggering like Report button on Steam Forums. :-/

Every time any game offers this, i tend to turn it off as fast as possible ...
It pisses me off extremely in Skyrim, especialy with shooting ... i mean watching an Arrow fly this whole time and hit your enemy head sounds cool on paper ... but in game it means that you just loosed few precious seconds to shoot another arrow on his friend, who is allready firing back. -_-
The only game that did cool killing properly was Dragon Age: Origins, where it dont affect your gameplay, your character just make few faster and cool looking swings instead of single slow as usualy.

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 12/01/22 06:47 AM.

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I'm with everyone else in the, "I would turn it off the second it is humanly possible to do so". I've never liked overly long combat animations. I avoid using summons in FF specifically because they take way the heck too long. I want to play games, not watch them. I already use a mod to speed up the base movement speed in Divinity and OS2 because it's painfully slow, and I've always wished for an option to speed up combat animations. I cope with it because I enjoy both games, but making it take even longer would just be smash-head-against-the-wall levels of infuriating.

Also it won't matter as much in a turn-based game, but they especially drive me nuts in DA:O, where I'm literally taking damage while I'm locked in this stupid kill animation. God forbid you take out an Ogre and get the "super-cool leap up and stab it in the chest" animation with ANYTHING still alive: you will watch your super badass nearly die to one dingus archer.

Last edited by Grainofariver; 12/01/22 08:07 AM.
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Originally Posted by Flooter
I’ve no strong feelings either way, but you two apparently do. Why is that? What’s wrong with eye-catching combat?
Because all those will do, will be looking nice in a trailer, and perhaps for the first 1 hour of gametime. Afterwards it will be a frustrating waste of time. It is not an action game, where animation recovery or visual/audio feedback are part of the gameplay. You will never get this satisfying "wham" effect you get from the good shooter or an action game, because gameplay is making tactical decisions, not fighting or shooting. BG3 combat is boring, because tactical decisionmaking is boring, not because it doesn't mascarade as an action game.

Where I think BG3 could use polish is responsiveness - ability animations not locking out player imput, smoother control when switching between characters, better UI etc. Adding more uninteractive fluff won't do much good in a long run.

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Originally Posted by Grainofariver
I'm with everyone else in the, "I would turn it off the second it is humanly possible to do so". I've never liked overly long combat animations. I avoid using summons in FF specifically because they take way the heck too long. I want to play games, not watch them. I already use a mod to speed up the base movement speed in Divinity and OS2 because it's painfully slow, and I've always wished for an option to speed up combat animations. I cope with it because I enjoy both games, but making it take even longer would just be smash-head-against-the-wall levels of infuriating.

Also it won't matter as much in a turn-based game, but they especially drive me nuts in DA:O, where I'm literally taking damage while I'm locked in this stupid kill animation. God forbid you take out an Ogre and get the "super-cool leap up and stab it in the chest" animation with ANYTHING still alive: you will watch your super badass nearly die to one dingus archer.

BG3 is gonna be slow "watching" game. Battle Personalities could spice it up quite much at least when in combat. Piano, especially Piano Arp could greatly boost its energy, while staying classy and calm.

Ive said that Larian's style is "turtle" style, there needs to be ways to push energy into it, and it might be ok. Even RTS are action compared to Larian style, interestingly. Turtle games havent had much success in game industry. Even Death Stranding was very unliked. RTSs are nearly dead if not dead, at least all big companies doesnt bother with RTS anymore.

Last edited by GreatWarrioX; 12/01/22 01:08 PM.

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