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Originally Posted by Tuco
Well, “forbid manual reactions in online sections” would be a great way to make sure I’d never bother with one.

And personally I feel that making the system automated by default (forcing the player to look for the option and manually activate it) is precisely the thing that Larian got the most wrong in this partial implementation.
There's arguably no worse way to get feedback on a large scale for a feature than burying it and telling your players "Yeah, you'll have to go looking for it".

Doing the opposite would have worked wonders, on the other hand: everyone comes in contact with the new feature and gets a chance to try it and get the pulse of the system, while anyone who doesn't like it can disable it with few clicks.

Originally Posted by fallenj
If not, then personally I'll have to try and convince a player that takes a hour per turn to not use pop ups for his reactions so our group doesn't have to wait another 30 for him to figure that out also.
Sounds one of these fringe cases that never actually happen. A reaction is a "yes/no" binary choice. It would take a special kind of mental impairment to drag it past two or three additional seconds and it's going to be even less typically.
One may as well ignore a turn-based game entirely with this mindset, because "What if the other guy goes to the bathroom or takes phone calls between turns".

Which incidentally applies also to real-time games where you can hit pause (DOTA 2, most RTS, etc).

Hello Tuco

Seconds add up, that was one of my main complaints about adding a pop up during a combat encounter that has a good handful of enemies. You'll be clicking on it for each enemy that the feature pops for along with reaction time, it'll drag out combat way longer. seconds turn to minutes and so on. If you are saying that it's a made up example, it wasn't I only played one run when beta first started with two friends one is really slow on choice making. Not everyone is equally the same.

Bathroom example is another good one, say someone taking a bathroom break after there turn, pop up hits mid enemy turn and everyone has to wait for that person to come back so npcs can finish there own turns so other players can start theres and true for the last part.

Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Originally Posted by fallenj
I posted on the mega thread that was linked from here, but its a dead thread from the looks of it. Sooo, I skimmed through the new feature and looks like it defaults to auto. If it stays that way, that would be fantastic. If not, then personally I'll have to try and convince a player that takes a hour per turn to not use pop ups for his reactions so our group doesn't have to wait another 30 for him to figure that out also.

Outside of that small scenario, I really don't care, I'll test it later to see if I'll actually use pop ups personally solo.


I have this whole thing we go through before we start multiplayer where I simply ask people to try to keep their turn to under 20 seconds out of consideration for other people and to think about what they want to do before their turn comes up. I have never had anyone disagree with that because it really makes the game go faster. Complex situations are always excepted and it doesn't apply to New Player Runs that we host.

A lot of the cultivating I have done is to find people who are - not just good at the game - but good at multiplayer in general, which means good inter-personal skills and teamwork/consideration for others. It's just selfish to take 2-3 minutes to run a turn because you have to narrate EVERY single one of your options to everyone in discord and then proceed to fail to accomplish anything anyway.

What I am saying is that if you have a player taking too long per turn then you should talk to them or not play with them. The system itself isn't the problem.

Doesn't work that way, some people are just naturally going to be slower, nice advice though.

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Originally Posted by Wormerine
Originally Posted by fallenj
I posted on the mega thread that was linked from here, but its a dead thread from the looks of it. Sooo, I skimmed through the new feature and looks like it defaults to auto. If it stays that way, that would be fantastic. If not, then personally I'll have to try and convince a player that takes a hour per turn to not use pop ups for his reactions so our group doesn't have to wait another 30 for him to figure that out also.
Could be something to consider for online session settings (for example allow or forbit manual reactions, set per turn timer etc.).

OH! this is really good, missed this post, I do like this idea.

Last edited by fallenj; 01/03/23 06:33 PM.
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Originally Posted by fallenj
Hello Tuco

Seconds add up
Not enough to justify giving up on mechanical depth and control.

Ideally a turn-based game has to be quick, snappy and responsive in giving the player control and in executing orders, not dull just because someone can't be bothered to pay attention to how it works.

Last edited by Tuco; 01/03/23 09:10 PM.

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Originally Posted by Tuco
It's been few months since its (very partial) first implementation in the game, with Patch 9 in early December.

Weirdly enough I expected a lot of discussion about how much people liked or disliked it, but the topic vanished from this forum (and other public spaces where the game is discussed) almost entirely.
I've read almost ZERO feedback about it.

I guess a starting point would be: does anyone here think its addition to the game was *detrimental* to the quality of the combat?
I remember a certain number of people at the time being fairly vocal about the fact that they did NOT wanted a Solasta-like system with confirmation prompts, but in the end that's exactly the solution Larian chose to implement.

Do these people still think the game was better just with automated reactions and before this current implementation? And on the opposite side, is there anyone here who wanted a reaction system but over time came to regret asking for it because they don't like how it works now?

____

Personally I'm still of the opinion that its inclusion was a NET Improvement to the combat system and if anything what worries me is that:

- It's an incomplete implementation with a lot of possible uses of a reaction not implemented yet (starting with the basic AoO)
- it was buried in the game's options so it's not clear how many people in a more "casual" audience even realized the system exists to begin with
- the UI felt a lot like a "first draft" and with no more patches coming until release I'm a bit concerned about how (or IF) Larian will reiterate on the system to make it look or feel better.

It is in every way far, FAR better than before imo, but they are oddly enough yet to implement it consistently on all things applicable, like AoO and shield master feat reactions and such.

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*** Surge corpus putridum! **** (thunder rolls in the distance)

sorry for necro, been away since Dec last year. I am playing a paladin with patch 9. I am not sure when 'protection' kicks in? I see nearby player shown as covered by it, but never seen clear evidence that it does anything Also, seems not to have a prompt under the 'reactions' menu? Perhaps it's being treated as some kind of paladin aura?
Also - I see that smite *is* listed as a reaction, where as far as I know it is not (you simply choose to smite or not with each attack). I don't care too much since it can be triggered to prompt, but I wonder how representative patch 9 is of the final reaction system?

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Originally Posted by booboo
*** Surge corpus putridum! **** (thunder rolls in the distance)

sorry for necro, been away since Dec last year. I am playing a paladin with patch 9. I am not sure when 'protection' kicks in? I see nearby player shown as covered by it, but never seen clear evidence that it does anything Also, seems not to have a prompt under the 'reactions' menu? Perhaps it's being treated as some kind of paladin aura?
Also - I see that smite *is* listed as a reaction, where as far as I know it is not (you simply choose to smite or not with each attack). I don't care too much since it can be triggered to prompt, but I wonder how representative patch 9 is of the final reaction system?


Just to be clear "reactions" are ingame called Interrupts. Interrupts gives the popup options when certain conditions are met. They may, or may not use a reaction. They may use no resource, a reaction, a spellslot, or any other ActionResource. The name reaction is unclear as it may not use your reaction resource at all. Whats in patch9 (i think) represents whats in the final game, but Larian will (likely) add support for different conditions/functions.

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Originally Posted by booboo
but I wonder how representative patch 9 is of the final reaction system?

We don't know. What we have in patch 9 feels very much to me like a proof-of-concept of a fundamental change to the reaction/interrupt system. The new system is certainly not implemented consistently for all the things you'd expect. If I had to guess, I'd say Larian - who we know were initially sceptical that a more detailed and complex reaction system was desirable - implemented what we have in patch 9 to test the waters.

As far as I know, the response to this change in direction has been overwhelmingly positive, so chances are we will see something very like the patch 9 system in the full game but hopefully taken more advantage of for other reactions and things (like sneak attack) which could be handled as interrupts in the same way.


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I do hope that what we got in patch9 was an early iteration. The UI needed some work and more skills would benefit of this new system.

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Originally Posted by Wormerine
I do hope that what we got in patch9 was an early iteration. The UI needed some work and more skills would benefit of this new system.

I can't help but wonder how many people who do not follow the "PFH" and forum discussions about the game even noticed the feature being there to begin with, frankly.

I already said this months ago, but I think that Larian's idea of "testing" this by making it a buried option disabled by default has been rather unfortunate.

Guess we''ll have to wait and see what conclusions they took from the experience, anyway.

Last edited by Tuco; 05/07/23 03:32 PM.

Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN
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