Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Perception Checks

Please can you change this to passive without an indicator, this way a secret remains a secret. For this to work I suggest having an insvestigate toggle, like hide works now.

I have not played recently, but if there were no changes in the last patches I agree

- Do not show failed perception checks.
The point of a failed check is that you do NOT realize that you have missed something.

- Better showing of what you have found.
Sometimes you win a check and you have no idea what has been detected.

If i remember corectly, Swen said in one of interviews that this is supposed to feel just as if you are wandering in DnD ... and DM sudently ask you to roll perception check ...
And it does pretty well ...

You also dont forget that you just rolled your dices, just bcs your character didnt noticed anything.

There is just some weird urge in our heads to find out what was that roll for ... but honestly, that is just bad roleplaying. :-/
I would agree with toggle ... some people just cant controll themselves and this could help them ... but i want to see all my rolls.

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I wonder ...
How would you feel if Larian would add there some trick perception rolls? Stuff that would be completely irellevant, almost even stupid to check ... to discourage us from trying hard find out what just happened?
Like i dunno ... noticing a rare bird, or nice flower, or find half of a copper coin that would have no value at all, stuff like that?

I mean ... part of this problem is that even if we fail, we know that there is something important around.
This way we wouldnt know.

I agree that the game could do better at showing what we’ve found. It’s often easy to miss whatever has started shimmering. At the very least, it should carry on shimmering until we’ve interacted with it, but there may be a better way.

As to showing failed checks, I actually like that. It can be frustrating to know that you’ve missed something, but I think it would often be more frustrating in another way to not see the checks. Eg if there’s some statue and you think you can’t try to work out who it is, when actually you have in the background but you’ve failed, or similarly it looks as though there might be a secret door or as though someone might be lying, but it feels like you’re not even trying to find out. Okay, the game could give us the ability to manually actively roll checks when we as players decide to instead, but that’s making a big change.

Obviously there’s stuff around the world where you might not even have thought to roll if the game didn’t do it for us, but I just imagine that this is the game as DM describing the surroundings in such a way as to pique our interest enough that we’d decide to roll.

(EDIT and from the post Ragnarok published while I was drafting this, Larian have clarified that we should indeed interpret these rolls as active checks that the DM suggests/hints we make, in which case it definitely makes sense we know we’ve tried to find something interesting and failed.)

I know some folk might save scum to pass the checks, but it that’s what they want to do that’s fine and it seems mean to deprive them of the ability to find everything by just not letting them know it’s there to be found. Personally, in addition to what I’ve already said above, I like the D&D flavour of ongoing rolls, the mini-tragedy of failing, and the anticipation I get of finding something different in other runs when I might pass instead.

Of course, a toggle to turn off displaying failed rolls would do me no harm, but there’s no way I’d use it if it were there.

I def agree that perception checks need to be hidden. The urge to save scum is overwhelming as I fear missing out on some cool item that activates when I have 1 hit point left….

But if there were a toggle to show/hide failed perception checks, would you also find the urge to show them overwhelming for the same FOMO reason? If so, then a toggle wouldn’t help you, only making it impossible for all players to see failed checks. And that feels a little unfair on those of us who like to see them for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post .

No a toggle is fine as during game play I wouldn’t immediately get the notification. I alway like toggles for as much option as possible. We agree on this one…

Heck I am the Oprah of Toggles

BTW what is FOMO?

Edit: I see toggles like negotiating with the DM prior to a campaign. Once set I don’t go back unless there are issues with design, etc.

Fear Of Missing Out

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fomo

Thanks! And yes. Plus I like the dopamine hit of finding stuff

Edit again: Seeing a red missed perception check does just the opposite. No dopamine hit and probably a bit of cortisol hit instead lol. Then the FOMO kicks in.

Of course, we’re all totally entitled to our preferences, but I do wonder whether folk would really feel comfortable not having confirmation that checks were taking place, even if they fail. Imagine … you spot on screen what looks like a disturbed bit of dirt or a blank bit of wall where there’s some unaccounted for space but absolutely nothing pops up. You’re not sure if any of your party have checked for secrets, or whether all of them have. All you can do if you think there might be something interesting is walk up each of your party manually and hope that, if there is something to check for, they’ve all got close enough to check, without any visual confirmation back to you as the player unless one of them succeeds. I would find that SO MUCH more frustrating, but perhaps that’s just me.

The only way I personally would find a toggle at all tempting is if I were instead given the ability to manually roll for insight, perception, etc whenever I chose, but that would be a much bigger change than simply making it possible to turn off visual feedback of failed checks that the game-as-DM was asking us to make. And frustrating in its own way as I’d possibly end up rolling lots only to be told there’s nothing to discover.

Still, as long as Larian don’t turn off visual feedback of failed checks for all players without any option to toggle it on, I’ll remain happy!

Hmm.
When i was DM i always rolled passive skills like perception in secret behind my little DM screen.

So i guess a toggle would be appropriate.

These rolls also stand in for active perception, insight, etc rolls that the party might want to make, I think, given we don’t have any other way to make such rolls except in dialogue. Not that that’s a reason not to make it a toggle, just something to bear in mind when considering what impact not showing that these rolls have happened unless they succeed might have on player experience.

I was never DM myself ...
(im brewing something for few months now, but it still feels too rough to release it on my group. )

But anyway, i would dare to say that this is different ...
Passive perception as i understand it (or as our DM uses it, feel free to use wichever you like) is something you really dont want your players to know about.
Theese rolls we have in this game, are in situations where DM asks you to roll perception ... that means, those are situations where our group is actively searching their suroundings.

And i think it was good decision from Larian, bcs if we would have button, skill, or ... hells, any way you can imagine to "actively search our surroundings" we would (judging by my own Dragon Age: Inquisition experience) spam that button like hyperactive labrats that just drank 3 bottles of redbull with coffee.
And that wouldnt be exactly the best game experience. :-/

If you would want to imagine situation at tabletop ... i see it like this:
DM *rolls behind his little DM screen*
DM: Tav have a feeling that something is a miss here, anybody wants to roll perception?
Tav: Yep.
Shadowheart: Sure!
Gale: You bet!
Karlach: F**k yes! (to stay on character )
*everyone rolls*
Okey so ... Tav noticed disturbed dirt next to the road.

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Still, im all in for toggle, since that wouldnt harm anyone and if it really bothers someone (then i think he didnt understand the point here, but thats not relevant) they should have option to hide it.
As i keep repeating here ... we all should have option to ruin our own game the way we want to.

+1 to failed checks should be hidden
+1 to an investigation/searching toggle

Might as well remove Perception checks entirely if you're going to reveal secrets on a failed check and just promote metagaming/cheating and save scumming.

Also, finding new stuff on subsequent playthroughs that you missed the first time would be really exciting and add immensely to replayability.

Very bad choice here on Larian's part. There's something about cheating, exploiting and metagaming that they just don't get. It doesn't belong in a story driven RPG. How you gonna narrate that? "I couldn't find anything, but I always sense if there are hidden things near me and I asked everyone to look around, one by one, with Guidance."

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With all the dialogue they're already recording, would it be too much to ask for the characters to say things like, "What's that on the wall?" or "Is that a lever?" so we know what the heck the perception check is referring to when it succeeds?

Whatever it is that gets revealed actually gets a shimmering effect and glow to it for a short period for you to see it.

Yes but it’s easy to miss especially if you had the camera somewhere else when it occurred.