Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Pre-Release Thread [EARLY ACCESS RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Ontopoly]

You're overthinking it. It's because they are lazy, you should buy BG 3 Alpha and write a feedback.

If you're talking to me I will not be buying this game under any circumstances. I urge everyone else to do the same. Replay the original Baldur's Gate if you have an itch. Or never winter nights which is what I'm currently doing.

 

[Thonius]

You should buy it and write angry review. That will stick to em! Fight the corporate greed!

 

[Ontopoly]

You should buy it and write angry review. That will stick to em! Fight the corporate greed!

They won't care because they'll be too busy jerking themselves off with their sell out money that their fanboys gave them. The only way is to just not buy the game. I'm not going to pretend it will make the game fail or even cause a noticeable effect in their sales but my power is limited to that.

 

[Efe]

of all the possible problems, codex lands on fucking day/night cycles.
you deserve this bg3

 

[rusty_shackleford]

of all the possible problems, codex lands on fucking day/night cycles.
you deserve this bg3

This is truly the best timeline, I agree

 

[Grotesque]

verisimilitude

a very nice powerful word but so very unappreciated

It would be possible that, while the fight in TB is during the day, a character in RT sees time pass and then joins the fight while his worldstate is at night.

There are two ways:

1. Make the time stop also for the party characters that are not engaged in combat. So the players out of combat would get a glimpse and "appreciate" the original Larian game design and sigh with relief that it didn't come to that...

2. Make the time pass for both players in and out of combat at the same pace (without the ability to accelerate time) and scrap the out of combat turns mechanic. It's not like Swen made it very appealing during the presentation, on the contrary.

So the question they have to ask themselves, are the benefits of implementing a day-night cycle worth the negatives

The only question they ask themselves is how this will affect revenue.
And because at Larian "verisimilitude" is just a concept written only on a special type of paper, I think I know their decision.

Spoiler

If it were available as merchandise, Larian fanboys would buy that shit in an instant

Can you imagine the outrage when a casual player #2341 reaches a point where the infection progresses to a point of no return with 'game over' screen staring in his face?

As long as said player was warned by the game several times about the impending doom, fuck that player and I think such retard would not find compassion anywhere but resetera.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Does 5e supports mage duels?

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

BG1-2 did NOT benefit from their day-night cycles noticeably

Mm different monsters spawning at night, thief quests at night, at least some shops afaik locked at night, night merchants and npcs, night dialogue in BG2, vampires... did night affect Stealth? afaik it did; but Infravision was, sadly, broken. And really, immersion and ambiance - some people would laf it away, only then to remember how frightening it was to go somewhere at dark night in their favorite game X with mod Y.
Frankly just players ability to observe natural passage of time (or even seasons/weather) adds greatly to the feeling of adventure.

Then there's resting and restoring spells... does that mean that no matter how much you rest, it is always day, and level is always static? That wouldn't look right.

yes you camp in the day, then you sleep all day and then its day time. If you are attacked while asleep, its day time. Honestly, this is decline, simplifying from what has already existed in the genre. I expect them to leave resting, camping out because of this or just really gloss over it, Meanwhile Owlcat expands on the concept and even has seasons and it snows and shit.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Does 5e supports mage duels?

no, but they do have clothes throwing duels.

You throw a boot, and you can counter by throwing your underroos and snagging the boots midair. If you roll a 20 you have then turned the contraption into a flail mid-flight which you can then wield for 10 rounds as a magical weapon before it becomes unbound.

If you have eaten an dwarven meals in the last 24 hours you get a +2 damage modifier on your hit rolls with your underoo flail. So they do have this in the game.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Every time a dialogue cutscene happens the characters look like they have Parkinson's disease.

Michael J. Fox did not die for this mockery.

is he died?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

is he died?

No, I'm just talking shit. I miss Spin City.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

A game that has no day/night cycle feels static, frozen in time.
When I played Divinity 2, I got some sort of visual fatigue because of that always fuckin bright sun and the same shadows falling at the same angle.
Reaching Bloodmoon Island was like a breath of fresh air because of finally some fraking variation.


A day-night cycle would change the scenery of a 3D environment greatly.
You would have another color palette entirely for the same area, where artists can play with specific dusk, dawn, twilight visual effects.
Adding weather effects would exponential increase the variation of the area.
One of the most immersive moments while playing BG1 I had was exploring wilderness while it rained and lightning flashed from time to time and thunder roared in the distance.

Sometimes I think games today are made only by soulless pricks that attended mobile game design "school".

I would much prefer these studios to perfect and exhaust the limits of the old engines before moving on to new ones. Thats part of the issue. They are constantly just advancing the character and sprite graphics and it limits their ability to add detail into anything else to the point games like IWD, Falllout, and BG actually feel more alive and real and full of life. At least to me.

 

[Roguey]

yes you camp in the day, then you sleep all day and then its day time. If you are attacked while asleep, its day time. Honestly, this is decline, simplifying from what has already existed in the genre. I expect them to leave resting, camping out because of this or just really gloss over it, Meanwhile Owlcat expands on the concept and even has seasons and it snows and shit.

In BG3, a rest will probably take a few seconds which is probably why they didn't bother with short rests.

 

[The_Mask]

baroque: the game world has three suns

Trigun is baroque?

 

[DalekFlay]

yes you camp in the day, then you sleep all day and then its day time. If you are attacked while asleep, its day time. Honestly, this is decline, simplifying from what has already existed in the genre. I expect them to leave resting, camping out because of this or just really gloss over it, Meanwhile Owlcat expands on the concept and even has seasons and it snows and shit.

I think Kingmaker could have gotten away with requiring supplies that are heavy, rather than the time limit obsession, but either way it is nice to have resting be something you put off for once. I haven't replayed BG 1 or 2 in a long time, but my memory is fight, rest, fight, rest, fight... just feels silly. Either restrict it in some serious way or get rid of it and make spells limited by X number of hours or whatever.

 

[fantadomat]

You're overthinking it. It's because they are lazy, you should buy BG 3 Alpha and write a feedback.

If you're talking to me I will not be buying this game under any circumstances. I urge everyone else to do the same. Replay the original Baldur's Gate if you have an itch. Or never winter nights which is what I'm currently doing.

That is what i am doing brother,replaying BG games and having a blast.

 

[fantadomat]

If they follow the lore, you don't have 7 days. You have a maximum of 20 hours if most of your stats are at 20 (which they won't be) unless someone spams restoration on you. Then you become a vegetable/dead. Your lifeless body then transforms into an illithid after a week.

Ahh lets put it at 3 days with some mcguffin magic stun mutant shit. By your time line they should have been dead by the time they hit that "persuade yourself that you are not a fag" dice roll. It too am annoyed by how much they raped the lore of the most interesting part of D&D lore.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

If you're talking to me I will not be buying this game under any circumstances. I urge everyone else to do the same. Replay the original Baldur's Gate if you have an itch. Or never winter nights which is what I'm currently doing.

Surely you are playing the original Neverwinter Nights that used the Gold Box engine, not a different game which stole the name while adopting substantially different mechanics.

 

[passerby]

They are already spending orders of magnitude more man hours on various production values, with way less impact on atmosphere of the game than day and night, or wheather cycles would have.
In terms of return for manhours invested, even cosmetics alone would be worth it, but they were talking NPCs and monsters shedules and wheather interacting with environmental spells during DO:S kickstarter.

Most likely they've dropped them because of coop, where one player can spend half an hour in turnbased encounter while the other explore in real time somwhere else. I havent played D:OS yet, but I guess they don't have time sensitive quests for the same reason.
Time/wheather cycles are not essential to the core gameplay loop, but arguing that the single player experience is better, or no worse for it, is dumb.

 

[Ontopoly]

If you're talking to me I will not be buying this game under any circumstances. I urge everyone else to do the same. Replay the original Baldur's Gate if you have an itch. Or never winter nights which is what I'm currently doing.

Surely you are playing the original Neverwinter Nights that used the Gold Box engine, not a different game which stole the name while adopting substantially different mechanics.

No, I'm playing the game that happened to have the same name but didn't try to advertise itself as a sequel based off of nothing but a want for brand recognition. Neverwinter nights, the game that came out in 2002, didn't call itself never winter nights 2, it's sequel wasn't called never winter nights 3, the developers didn't shit talk the other never winter nights, it was honest about what it was and what it's goal was. Feels good to play a game who's creators had integrity.

 

[Dwarvophile]

One of the main reasons why a day-night cycle is a problem to implement is the possibility of splitting the party, like I've said before.

In DOS1-2, and in BG3, it is possible for some characters to be in TB while others are not in combat but in RT exploration mode. Technically, time would be paused in TB, passing at 6 seconds per round. But at the same time many things can happen for other characters in RT, they can even travel the whole map and join in the fight, all in technically 6 seconds combat time. Time is highly abstracted there.

That's actually just Larian shooting themselves in the foot with a thermonuclear weapon.
I can see why they have done it like this and what they tried to achieve, but there is literally nothing good about this solution - inconsistent time, ability to do arbitrary amount of shit or movement in between turns if you are not participating (so escape combat, heal up, gather supplies, travel to advantageous position, reenter combat), etc.
What they should have done is making switch to turn-based mode global. One PC enters combat? It's TB time.
Party is split? Tough shit, maybe try to support your bros next time instead of derping around.

It's part of the great co-op innovation plan, but in the end, it's detrimental to the single player experience.Or when you can pickpocket a NPC with one character while he is in dialogues with your other char. On one hand, it's supposed to evoke the reactivity/improvisation you have in a PnP session, on the other hand, with the loss of day&night cycle and the feeling of progression on a map (and the waypoints system accentuates this) there's a loss of the feeling of exploration.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

If you're talking to me I will not be buying this game under any circumstances. I urge everyone else to do the same. Replay the original Baldur's Gate if you have an itch. Or never winter nights which is what I'm currently doing.

Surely you are playing the original Neverwinter Nights that used the Gold Box engine, not a different game which stole the name while adopting substantially different mechanics.

I miss old D&D art.

 

[Ismaul]

One of the main reasons why a day-night cycle is a problem to implement is the possibility of splitting the party, like I've said before.

In DOS1-2, and in BG3, it is possible for some characters to be in TB while others are not in combat but in RT exploration mode. Technically, time would be paused in TB, passing at 6 seconds per round. But at the same time many things can happen for other characters in RT, they can even travel the whole map and join in the fight, all in technically 6 seconds combat time. Time is highly abstracted there.

This becomes even more jarring and problematic with a day-night cycle. Technically, there should be no cycling in TB, since most fights last around a minute. But obviously time would need to pass in RT. So it would be possible that, while in TB time is fixed, a character in RT would spend like 2 full cycles (2 days). It would be possible that, while the fight in TB is during the day, a character in RT sees time pass and then joins the fight while his worldstate is at night. That would just be a mess, especially if mechanics are tied to the day-night cycle.

For example, say a character in RT where it is nightime joins a TB fight happening during the day. What happens? Does it suddenly become the day for all characters? If not, which visibility and sneak rules do you apply? Night guy attacks others as if it was night and day guy has day modifiers for visibility? Night guy is able to sneak better than day guy?

So given how time flows in Larian's games, because of the possibility of having characters both in TB and RT at the same time, adding a day-night cycle creates non-negligible problems. They'd have to redesign their systems entirely to take into account the cycle and time passing, and likely scrap the possibility of having characters both in TB and RT at the same time. So the question they have to ask themselves, are the benefits of implementing a day-night cycle worth the negatives and what has to be scrapped for it to work? It's a huge trade-off, not just a simple thing to add with little consequence like many here are saying.

Maybe i get it wrong, but wouldn't be a solution to just stop the time all togheter while there is any combat?

This is actually Larian's solution. They stopped the time. There are no cycles, changes in time if any are hand-placed by the devs.

Now you might think this is obnoxious an answer. But notice what you want is stopping time while there is any combat. What you mean is while turn-based is enabled by one character. And this might happen much more than you think, so much that it might make cycles very irregular and unpredictable, especially when 2 players are playing.

Not just combat happens in TB now. You can enable TB at anytime. So any action where you need precision might use TB. Stealthing past people, pickpocketing, setting up a strike before combat, buffing, and a bunch of other stuff might be done in TB. All of this would disable cycles. And when 2+ players are playing together, it might even happen that TB is always enabled by one or the other.

In any case, would it be worth it to have day-night cycles if they're going to be highly irregular because they're dependant on player action, and therefore might even be prevented from happening at all?

 

[Ismaul]

One of the main reasons why a day-night cycle is a problem to implement is the possibility of splitting the party, like I've said before.

In DOS1-2, and in BG3, it is possible for some characters to be in TB while others are not in combat but in RT exploration mode. Technically, time would be paused in TB, passing at 6 seconds per round. But at the same time many things can happen for other characters in RT, they can even travel the whole map and join in the fight, all in technically 6 seconds combat time. Time is highly abstracted there.

That's actually just Larian shooting themselves in the foot with a thermonuclear weapon.
I can see why they have done it like this and what they tried to achieve, but there is literally nothing good about this solution - inconsistent time, ability to do arbitrary amount of shit or movement in between turns if you are not participating (so escape combat, heal up, gather supplies, travel to advantageous position, reenter combat), etc.
What they should have done is making switch to turn-based mode global. One PC enters combat? It's TB time.
Party is split? Tough shit, maybe try to support your bros next time instead of derping around.

It's part of the great co-op innovation plan, but in the end, it's detrimental to the single player experience.Or when you can pickpocket a NPC with one character while he is in dialogues with your other char. On one hand, it's supposed to evoke the reactivity/improvisation you have in a PnP session, on the other hand, with the loss of day&night cycle and the feeling of progression on a map (and the waypoints system accentuates this) there's a loss of the feeling of exploration.

Yes, exactly.

There's a trade-off there. It seems they can't have good day-night cycles AND good splitting the party mechanics. One or the other. Which is why I said before that implementing day-night cycles is not a tiny thing, it would have a huge impact on the game design, some negative. There's the same exact problem with RTwP, which is why you had to gather your party before venturing forth I guess.

 

[Nortar]

useless gothic with its dark nights and torches and wolves; useless ja with its vision mechanics
rite

Haha, ok nice catch, you got me there. )
It shows that nothing good comes from blind generalization.
Still, a few good examples where night mechanics actually add something meaningful just emphasize it's decorative pointlessness in the majority of other cases.