Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Level 5 may be needed to attract more testing

Ok i did some own diging (wich means i re-watched last PFH ) ... and this is what i have found:

Time: 2:48:00


exact quote:
"So we reckon we have about a year left of the development so uh it might not make it in 22 as we had originaly thought, it might be 23 uh but its not that far anymore i mean we are litteraly going down in our burn down charts of things that we have to do on the game"

Worth mentioning it was said in February ... so it really seem like early 23, even tho it was not said specificaly.

So around early 2023 release. Less than a year left.
Larian probably scrambling to finish up the story and cinematics right now. EA is basically just sugar coating at this point. Who cares for more content. All the stuff we are complaining about will probably be or not be addressed once the game is out.
I smell a big ol day one patch.

Curent status still shows that :

I HIGHLY doubt we will have more than 8 companions.
Definetly NO day/night/time or bigger party.
This weird Larianised <<D&D?>> system is here to stay.
Incredibly slow passed turn base battle system. NOTHING changed here in two years. Maybe a tiny tiny bit faster?
Immersion dumpster fire.
Cinematic <movie direction> is still god awful cringe fest. Doubt it will change much.
Still pointless Items overload.
The camping debacle.
Hateful companions and blend main character.
My god that UI and toilet chain system...

Otherwise, everything is just peachy and moving along!

I'm all for Day/Night, Party size of 6, more companions, changing movement and chain system, a better interpretation of 5e, better rest system, etc.

But at the end of the day, it's still a really good game, and Larian's likely going to make a buttload on it.

AAAnyway ... presuming BG3 would release in early 23' ...
I wonder what does it mean for us, no matter how hard i think, it seems to me that we can expect 2, maximaly 3 more patches. O_o

So either one will be really juicy ...
Or at least one class will be quite surprising. :-/

On the other hand, its not exactly as "having enough time to properly test and report" would be recipe for perfect outcome, as long as Larian dont change reported things once their classes are marked as "finished and released". :-/

Wasnt this one of advertised features?
I believe i have seen it somewhere ...

We don't have access to dev-build. I am not a programmer, but from what I understand something like Early Access build, is a seperate build of the game - so Larian likely move stuff they want players to have access to over from dev-build and don't work in Early Access build day to day. I remember during Pillars of Eternity2 pre-release beta, there was a feeling that devs didn't respond to some community feedback, while in reality it has been addressed, just not ported over to Early Access build. I don't expect new systems to suddenly appear, but hopefully Larian has stuff to "wow" us with on release.

When it comes to patches to EA, I don't expect for any of those to bring pre-release build to release state - I expect the biggest jump in quality and content to be when 1.0 drops on release date. I also expect that there will be lack of any updates for months leading to release - generally devs tend to take long breaks from updating EA and focus on wrapping up 1.0. Assumptiong that Larian will keep 4months schedule leading up to release is optimistic. I would expect for at least one or two updates long wait before 1.0.

"aiming" does not mean "will release," and it's fairly common for big games to be delayed a few months past their expected release date. I'm still expecting late 2023. This way I'll be pleasantly surprised if it releases early 2023, and not disappointed if it releases late 2023.

But yes, IF it's released in early 2023 then there should be ~2-3 more patches. One will probably focus on mechanics/UI reworks; we still need 3 classes; possibly we'll get a new area but that's probably unlikely.

Larian is theoretically working on:
- crafting
- camping/food system
- reactions
- remaining 3 classes
- additional companions (at this point, they're likely reserved for Full Release)
- UI (character sheets, inventory management, hotbar)
- speeding up combat
- last Act 1 Areas (Moonrise is probably reserved for Full Release. Maybe we'll get the Creche or the 3rd path?)

I think they would have to add more content and increase the difficulty of some of the encounters to properly introduce level 5 in the game. The current content is easy enough at level 4 that just adding it would make the game feel more easy than what it is currently.

In my view, the goal of the current EA build is not to test for balance, but to test systems.


Balance can be adjusted at the very end of the game's development. (The playtime-to-level progression could basically be adjusted in an afternoon of light work. Obviously this is merely one of many, many aspects of balancing the game.)

But some systems can't be corrected in a fingers' snap. If Larian's implementation of Extra Attack, which the full martial classes get at Level 5, is highly problematic, they should want to know asap, so they have time to rework it before the game is released. (Possible problems : inability to swap an Attack for a a Shove, ability to use an extra Action instead of just an extra Attack, inability to move between two attacks ... )

Likewise, Level 5 gives us access to Level-3 spells, and again, there is a lot potential for things to go wrong there.

So, there are good reasons to want to test Level 5 now. Balance is not the top one. (Although it is one, since it would allow Larian to see how powerful Level 5 is.)

Wich makes me wonder why they decided to keep surface effects with Chromatic Orb. o_O