Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Party Size Discussion

You misunderstand me. Call it trigger, script, mechanic, whatever you like - it doesn't matter. Some part of code responsible for doing something in the game and what's important is how it interacts with everything else. You are adding code with expectation that it will do something specific, surely - and the next step is to CHECK if it's all working properly and if it's not - locate the source of the issue. Basic bugfixing, really. Now imagine how many moving parts (of various complexity) there will be in a game like BG3 and how hard it can be to locate the source of an issue - because it might not even be some mistake in the particular code you've integrated but rather unintended interaction with another part of the code (that you might've never worked on even). There's also a possibility that it cannot be reasonably fixed at all so you'll need to rework your code, which might lead to similar problem with others parts down the line, etc. There can be engine limitations - even if BG3 is developed on a new version of Divinity engine we don't know what limitations might carry over. It's probably not all so doom and gloom as I make it sound like but that's the rough idea.

And Larian expanded their ranks (for BG3, I presume) so there is ought to be some mismanagement and miscommunication (not out of ignorance and disconnect CDPR-style but out of lack of experience) betweeen teams because they are not accustomed to having that many people working simultaneously. Like the recent video about The Box - they clearly underestimated potential issues with it but it's also probably too late to rework it from zero even with hidnsight. You cannot add some code and expect it to be perfectly working alongside eveything the moment it's added - if it were, games and sotfware would probably take much less time and people to develop. That's why in the "option this, option that" thread you are being explained to that you cannot just throw an option in - all that is work and testing to be done to ensure it works properly and, most importantly, doesn't break anything already functioning somewhere.

So Act 1 cannot be a true playground for testing every change because there's not full access to everything.
My bad here. I meant to say that BG3 would lock the party composition similar to DOS2, and I would assume it would lock in both 4 and 6-ppl party. The question is... how will the game proccess it, similary enough to the boat issue? While it may let you proceed further with party members 5 and 6 it may also consider them not belongning to your party for some later interactions because it was not taught to recongnize past party member #4 in this event. So you might end up with some Origin character in your party... but you also encounter them as NPC or an enemy, and Hells know how that might impact Origin storyline progress (assuming you even still have the related quest and it was not disabled earlier) and how many script intercations and flags it would break because of it. And that's exactly why if Larian decides to implement 6-party mode it need to be thourough and not a lazily slapped solution, as you yourself say. The question is - can they fully dedicate to it before release? My assumption is "unlikely" (although, as you point it out, they keep it in mind) as we're still yet to see more basics like reaction rework, for example.
That would be true if BG3 was a single player game. It is fundamentally not. So it can break parties that were expecting to play together because not everyone may be willing to play a potentially unstable multiplayer mode. That again only stresses that official 6-ppl party mode cannot be made haphazard no matter how many warnings you make.
And I will repeat myself too that unless EA would include full game - there's no way for players to test the full extent of the mode. Act 1 will be tested to death while everything past it will be not.
Balance and difficulty have nothing to do with it (well... in my opinion they do but that's not a primary concern in this case). Again, it's stability and functionality (so every in-game interaction works as intended), especially past Act 1.
Yep. Yet pretty much nobody wants Larian to decide what's a priority and what should be worked on; a lot of suggestions are less suggestions and more like demands on "why X is not in game, give", "no Y - bad game", "give option A, and option B, and option C, and Z too". And, to be fair, if Larian were more clear on what they are planning to do and what they are not planning to do or give some sort of roadmap it would be much easier to understand their priorites; although I also understand why they do not do this - as not to give false hope if they fail to implement something they planned.
Solving "boat killing" would only give a solution to a set of similar issues. While it still should be solved, it will not give any insight on solving different issues that, as I like to stress, are more likely to appear past EA content.
Sorry to point it out, but now you're deciding what's a priority for Larian and how they should do their work Contradicting yourself here, no?
Yes, I would say that it's probably not that much of a work, although I would say it's probably a litle more than just "drop two spawning points and call it a day". And that could simply be not a priority for them for many reasons.