Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Hobo Elf]

I have the impression that 1/3 of NPCs are tieflings. They ain't supposed to be rare, or Larian is 2edgy4me

Well... the game starts in a tiefling refugees camp. Wouldn't it be even more strange to find no tiefling in a tiefling refugees camp?

I'd call that an improvement to the growing tiefling problem.

 

[Zer0wing]

I think you should get penalties for staying awake - slight loss of dexterity/co-ordination and perception, and eventually you start mildly hallucinating if you've stayed awake over 2 days and nights, which lowers perception and dexterity even more. (I've never stayed awake for longer than 2 days and nights, so I don't know what happens after that, I should imagine the degradation accelerates.)

Faery Tale Adventure prevented the player-character from walking straight if enough time was spent without sleep, and it also included a day/night cycle with realistic darkness, but that was a game made in 1986 by a single person in seven months on a new computer system, and we can't possibly expect Larian to implement a day/night cycle or tiredness penalties in a AAA game made in the 2020s.

Spoiler

Faery Tale Adventure also penalized the player for going too long without eating:

I take it has something to do with their engine and reliance on lightmaps that prevents them from implementing day/night cycle, lighting should be completely dynamic for this (for the programmers' conveniece only really). Most of the above average programmers are bought out by Activision and Ubisoft anyway and great software engineers have abandoned gamedev due to its shittiness as a job.

 

[BarbequeMasta]

I mean I doubt anyone who expects Larian to change any major systems before release was there for DOS2 EA, people been bitching about the stupid armor system since what feels like day 1 there but they didn't listen.

Here's what's gonna happen at full release based on DOS 1 and 2:
1/Some bugs will be fixed, the occasional crash will still be there.
2/ 3 or 4 more theme park areas will be added, with the overall quality progressively getting worse and worse the further into the game you get. Their starting area is ALLWAYS the peak of their games.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I mean I doubt anyone who expects Larian to change any major systems before release was there for DOS2 EA, people been bitching about the stupid armor system since what feels like day 1 there but they didn't listen. .

Not like we didn't talk about this multiple times already, but that's exactly part of the problem, isn't it?
They stubbornly decided to stick with their stupid armor system no matter what, assuming that people "just didn't get what was good about it", only to admit defeat months later and conceding that the system was a mistake...
Only to repeat the same exact attitude here, about another feature that fans criticized since DOS 2 and they only grew to hate more over the years of "getting used to it".

 

[BarbequeMasta]

Yeah I guess my point is to either get used to the systems or give up on the game, it's very unlikely anything major will change.

 

[Harthwain]

I have the impression that 1/3 of NPCs are tieflings. They ain't supposed to be rare, or Larian is 2edgy4me

Well... the game starts in a tiefling refugees camp. Wouldn't it be even more strange to find no tiefling in a tiefling refugees camp?

I'd call that an improvement to the growing tiefling problem.

Do you have a more final solution in mind?

Spoiler

 

[Storyfag]

I have the impression that 1/3 of NPCs are tieflings. They ain't supposed to be rare, or Larian is 2edgy4me

Well... the game starts in a tiefling refugees camp. Wouldn't it be even more strange to find no tiefling in a tiefling refugees camp?

I'd call that an improvement to the growing tiefling problem.

Do you have a more final solution in mind?

Spoiler

Fortunately these particular tieflings are already concentrated in a camp.

 

[underground nymph]

the system was a mistake

Is this like a fact? I mean the DOS2 was a huge success, so I dunnou maybe they're instead quite sure they know better.

 

[BarbequeMasta]

the system was a mistake

Is this like a fact? I mean the DOS2 was a huge success, so I dunnou maybe they're instead quite sure they know better.

Swen himself admited the system was a failure.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

the system was a mistake

Is this like a fact? I mean the DOS2 was a huge success, so I dunnou maybe they're instead quite sure they know better.

Yeah, already pointed it several times in the past (the last barely few pages back), but long story short: they basically admitted it themselves.

Swen Vincke during a DOS 2 post-mortem straight up said that a lot of people hated it, that they were stubborn to ship with it and that it in the end it was probably a mistake because the system introduced way more problems that it solved: https://youtu.be/uKwi_5nePZg?t=2400

 

[underground nymph]

ok, so the really important question then: what is their way to collect the feedback?
i doubt it's reading forum threads.
they gather some in-game analytics afaik, but how can you understand the majority doesn't like some of the mechanics? "they wouldn't use them" someone would've supposed, but I will use backstabbing mechanic even if it's retarded because it gives me an advantage. maybe i am going to use it less since it's retarded, but i will, should the circumstances occur.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's EA don't worry they will fix it....

Not sure why you guys keep posting this, the DOS2 final game was way different from the EA.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I don't really care about how they "gather" feedback. I'm more interested to what extent they intend to act on it.
And they DO read forum threads. They just don't give a shit about what they have to say, nor they bother to have a back and forth with the user base.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I don't really care about how they "gather" feedback. I'm more interested to what extent they intend to act on it.
And they DO read forum threads. They just don't give a shit about what they have to say, nor they bother to have a back and forth with the user base.

It's the typical behavior of a dev who thinks he knows better what his playerbase wants than the playerbase itself. Beyond bug fixing, asking for feedback is just a PR move for the company.

 

[underground nymph]

Fortunately these particular tieflings are already concentrated in a camp.

i think i remember something resembling a gas chamber inside the druid grove (right behind the room with dead mindflayer)

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

It's EA don't worry they will fix it....

Not sure why you guys keep posting this, the DOS2 final game was way different from the EA.

You need to take off your pink tinted Larian goggles, because that is not true at all.

The EA and release versions were the exact same game, the latter just had more polishing (The >>Barrelmancy! Holy crap, the entire battlefield is burning!<< was slightly toned down), bug fixing, more assets (completely cosmetic), and obviously had more than one chapter to derp around in.

 

[Gargaune]

Admittedly an even better solution would be to give people a chance to try the alternative method and see what's more popular, but that would require for them to do the work on a new control scheme to begin with.

Everything I've described earlier to add multiple selection on top of the Toilet Chain would take one programmer for a day, two at the very worst, and that's allowing time for testing and reading Facebook the Codex.

But if you just wanna test the concept with the minimum amount of work, all you need is to add Shift+Click listeners on the portraits to loop companions in and out of the current leader's chain, and a new button and keybind to toggle Chain All on and off. It's like two hours' work, and even that would be a massive improvement over the current trainwreck.

Oh, and the camera fixes - screen-edge turning, disable auto-lock, manual pitch - another couple of hours. Seriously, Larian, what's the hourly rate for a programmer in Belgium, €30? €120 and I stop calling your opus "worse than NWN2", think about it.

Same would go for any argument in favor or against the six men party, incidentally. "Oh no, we think most people would be happier with four! Six is too much to deal with!". Well, why don't give it a try and look at what people ACTUALLY choose to do, then?

This one I think they've got some cover on, even if there are mods showing the game can handle it. Balance aside, there might be knock-on effects with party dynamics at the narrative level, if they're planning anything in that respect.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Same would go for any argument in favor or against the six men party, incidentally. "Oh no, we think most people would be happier with four! Six is too much to deal with!". Well, why don't give it a try and look at what people ACTUALLY choose to do, then?

This one I think they've got some cover on, even if there are mods showing the game can handle it. Balance aside, there might be knock-on effects with party dynamics at the narrative level, if they're planning anything in that respect.

I mean, yeah. Maybe. To some extent.
But frankly I'd hold that as another argument against them, not in their favor.
To begin with, balance is a fake concern at the current state of development where not a single encounter is set in stone. Also, I don't want to hear any bullshit about "how much work it would require to rebalance everything" when they are used to do extensive work for multiple difficulty levels to begin with.

On top of that, you also have the usual bunch of questionable objection that any internet tosser with a subscription to Errant Signals or GAmemaker's Toolkit loves to throw around knowingly to pretend he "knows about game design". You know, shit like "With more characters the action would become slower" (no, it wouldn't. Not necessarily and not in a system with individual initiative queue where having more characters just means more chances to actually act instead of watching NPCs move and where it would also mean solving encounters in less turns in general).
Not to mention it would kill two birds with a stone: on one hand more control over more variables; on the other one no need to come up with some stupid bullshit and make everything into a free or bonus action just to make these turns feel less dull in terms of tactical options available.

 

[Lacrymas]

4 is a good size for tabletop. A rebalance is not so much an issue of work hours as much as an issue of game mechanics. 5E characters are very, very different power-wise from each other, especially on low levels. Moon Druid for example is obscenely overpowered and can take on a couple CR higher monster all on his own, while a Wizard won't have a chance. The more characters in a party you have, the harder it is to balance due to this. Do you balance for the weakest party imaginable or the strongest? The extremes aren't so extreme the less characters you have.

 

[Gargaune]

I mean, yeah. Maybe. To some extent.
But frankly I'd hold that as another argument against them, not in their favor.

Generally, so would I, and I was a bit surprised to see the rest of your party stay awkwardly silent during certain cinematic interactions. Then again, it sort of makes sense to me that companion plots would feature late in development, so maybe they're still in the making. Either way, though, it's not something that concerns me as much as party controls, though you do bring up a good point on action economy.

 

[Cael]

4 is a good size for tabletop. A rebalance is not so much an issue of work hours as much as an issue of game mechanics. 5E characters are very, very different power-wise from each other, especially on low levels. Moon Druid for example is obscenely overpowered and can take on a couple CR higher monster all on his own, while a Wizard won't have a chance. The more characters in a party you have, the harder it is to balance due to this. Do you balance for the weakest party imaginable or the strongest? The extremes aren't so extreme the less characters you have.

The solution is not to have grossly overpowered classes that you have to rebalance. But then you run into the whole woketards of the cunts crap of every class having the same ability except under another name if that is taken to extremes.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

4 is a good size for tabletop.

Yeah, but a tabletop session and a CRPG are two vastly different beasts.
For one, in the first 4 is the "suggested" default number of players because realistically speaking gathering more on an regular basis becomes a pain in the ass.. Still, most big and well structured campaigns allow and support for more (it's not a coincidence that Critical Role, arguably a big part of what popularized D&D to the masses these days, is played by a party of 6+ actors).

That aside, in a CRPG you won't have the luxury of having every single character created, curated and acted by a human player, so offering a large cast and the possibility to carry many of them around simply opens to more dialogues and sidequest options, interactions beween characters, banters, etc.
The idea that having just four and (even worse, if they stick to what initially suggest) force the players to "commit to their choice" at some point sounds incredibly limiting.

But frankly my main issue with this on a personal level is that I just find the party compositions offered by larger group WAY more compelling than sticking to have a "perfectly functional" 4-men party that leaves no room for significant variety.
Also, bonus argument for loot: having a larger party with more differentiated roles leave you a lot more chances to put a large variety of unique loot to good use.

 

[Larianshill]

(it's not a coincidence that Critical Role, arguably a big part of what popularized D&D to the masses these days, is played by a party of 6+ actors).

And it's a mess. It also wrongfully teaches people that big parties work - and while I'm not big on this "Mercer effect" thing, I think it's one negative impact CR does have.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

It was a side note. Let me make perfectly clear upfront that I absolutely don't give a shit of discussing Critical Role.
I also don't think I've ever personally watched it for more than a couple minutes straight.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

3 is the ideal party size according to Tolkien.
Aragorn + Legolas + Gimli
Frodo + Samwise + Gollum
Merry + Pippin + various others coming/going(Treebeard, Théoden, ...)