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

[Reinhardt]

Yeah but if you lurk in the safety of cities, you won't gain any levels at all. You would stay a level zero npc so to say. There must be opportunity for low level adventure in the Underdark, else there would be no low level adventure groups. You could say of course that the evolutionary pressure on those groups is extraordinarily high, but the chance of survival must be higher than zero in order for this logic to function at all.

Point is, in the Underdark there should be areas that are more dangerous than others and also areas that are more "safe". We dont know where Larian will take us, how long we will be down there and so on. I know we have not that much else to do than talk about the few infos we got, but i for one will save my judgement on this design decision for when i know more.

Yeah, the safe areas are the Duergar and Drow cities, like Menzoberranzan and Gracklstugh. Here's the thing, though, the levels don't exist lore-wise, they are for our benefit, so the Drow and Duergar have adapted to the inhospitable environment due to having lived there their entire life. That means they can get a free pass due to experience, other assorted races and adventurers don't. Out of the Abyss features 8 (!!) NPCs who can escape with you and help you out too.

Drizzt went to school to level up before he went and did anything too dangerous. Just got to go to school

Not just any school, BLACK school. Dis shit changes people!

 

[Lacrymas]

Larian has truly become the new Bioware when it comes to the heat they're getting from here.

Oh, no, it's only ever like 2-3 people that hurl shit at Larian. Bioware are far more deserving of ridicule. Don't get me wrong, Larian has a lot of shit design that begs for harsh words. Something I hope will be rectified by the 5E adaptation.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

I think Larian can do it well, but im affraid it will be so much Dragon Age: Inquisition like that i will be unable to play it more than i want.

 

[Morgoth]

I think Larian can do it well, but im affraid it will be so much Dragon Age: Inquisition like that i will be unable to play it more than i want.

I can already see from the little tidbits we got that BG3 won't be anything like Dragon Woke: Cisquisition. The characters are diverse, but not retarded. Bioware is just irredeemable.

 

[Cryomancer]

LArian making BG3 is not bad. Low level underdark is the most BS that can happen. Imagine if was modern BioWare... Life service wow clone with lootboxes.

 

[Robber Baron]

Inquisition wasn't that bad, even if you consider that a lot of it was MMO tier content - I had way more fun with it than any of the Original Sin games. Partially because I always wanted a high fantasy game with AAA graphics. Please note I don't consider Inquisition a better RPG, I consider it a game that's more fun to play. The story and narrative in Inquisition also made me much more invested than any of the DoS games since I can easily avoid all the woke stuff.

 

[Efe]

drow start out as lv1 too..
it makes more sense if there is a breadth of challenges rather than just high level

 

[Cryomancer]

Inquisition wasn't that bad, even if you consider that a lot of it was MMO tier content

Not that bad? While BG2 had over 300 spells and Origins about 90, inquisition had only 20. The game mechanics contradicts the game lore every single time. One of the starting dialog options is "i don't need a staff to be deadly" if you are a mage but all of your spells scale with your weapon. You can't distribuite attributes, there are zero skill checks, the enemies are hit sponges, everything is so repetitive, they took alway blood magic, one of the coolest things ever to put the worst iteration of necromancy ever which is just the spiritualist spells from origins without anything good, had dialog wheels and i can continue listing forever.

Baldur's Gate 3 by the gameplay don't seem to be good as BG2, but is certainly far better than any post DA:O BioWare game and arguably better than DA:O. In fact, BG3 is my thir most wanted game of the year, losing only to PAthfinder Wrath of the righteous and Cyberpunk 2077;

Only by not having cooldowns, stat stickie itemization, zimbabwe number inflation and dialog wheels, is enough to put BG3 among the most anticipated games of 2020.

 

[Harthwain]

Inquisition wasn't that bad, even if you consider that a lot of it was MMO tier content

The MMO content was horrible. Never again. They managed to ruin combat - AoE spells in particular - by forcing you to stick to 3rd person and turning camera into some sort of console lock. This made controlling the battlefield in a comfortable fashion pretty much impossible. Characters didn't seem too retarded to me, but I got tired of the game due to the MMO content so maybe I just didn't reach that point? The rest was ranging between OK and meh.

 

[nikolokolus]

LArian making BG3 is not bad. Low level underdark is the most BS that can happen. Imagine if was modern BioWare... Life service wow clone with lootboxes.

For gentlemen of distinction and high taste, I present Operation Unfathomable; the best underdark adventure you will ever read or run . . . and it's designed as a campaign kickoff for 1st level OD&D and similar retroclones. So does that mean Larian will be able to pull it off? I kind of doubt it, but it is possible to make a great low-level underworld/underdark adventure.

 

[NJClaw]

Most of the people in this thread have never played PnP D&D, let alone 4E. That's why there are some brain gems like "5E is the shittiest of them all".

[...] on 5e everything takes so much time to die that it destroyed some modules like Tomb of Horrors. [...]

You keep talking about things that you know nothing of and, as a result, you continuously come up with stuff that doesn't make any sense. 5E is extremely deadly and encounters rarely last more than 2 or 3 rounds: if the party doesn't eliminate the threat within 3 rounds, someone is probably going to die. The difference with the previous editions which you have experience with is that 5E has coherent tools to assess the difficulty of an encounter for any given party, so it's easy for the master to know if a certain encounter will represent a challenge for the players (or even if it will be beatable at all).

In 5E everything doesn't take much time to die and you would know it if you had any experience with the edition.

5E ruined Tomb of Horrors because it's an adventure designed with a very particular mindset and it can't be easily translated.

 

[Delterius]

underdark is just a big ass dungeon and the metaphysical laws of big ass dungeons is that the first floor is not as bad as the dark elf rape floor

 

[Robber Baron]

Inquisition was a bad RPG, the combat was repetitive and lacked any depth. I'm not defending it. I liked it for the high fantasy adventure and good graphics, good fantasy scenery/locations and a straightforward but intriguing plot with a nice twist. I love a good high fantasy more than I love a good RPG mechanics and we just don't have enough of that AAA fantasy product around. That's why I have high hopes for BG3 - the next AAA fantasy game with actual production values.
Don't get me wrong. By production values I don't solely mean graphics (although that's important) - it's the package - amount and quality of the end product. I really really want Larian to deliver.

 

[Cryomancer]

5E is extremely deadly and encounters rarely last more than 2 or 3 rounds: if the party doesn't eliminate the threat within 3 rounds, someone is probably going to die. The difference with the previous editions which you have experience with is that 5E has coherent tools to assess the difficulty of an encounter for any given party, so it's easy for the master to know if a certain encounter will represent a challenge for the players (or even if it will be beatable at all).

In 5E everything doesn't take much time to die and you would know it if you had any experience with the edition.

A high level barbarian can easily hit 200+ hit points at high level. If he fails a fortitude save, a single finger of death can kill him on previous editions. On 5e, he needs to take 3 maximized finger of death and fail all saves to die. Flesh to Stone is a concentration spell which takes a very long time to petrify someone. I an not saying that is a bad thing. 2e was designed to be played with a completely different mindset. Nor an criticizing 5e magic. 5e spells works well for his propose.

5e also has a lot of amazing things. The attenument rule for eg, makes more about characters and less about gear. Low level gameplay (mainly as casters) is also far more interesting on 5e. 5e is far more friendly to DMing. Rental DM's generaly asks for more money to DM 3.5e than 5e. I get that for me, being insta petrified by a basilisk on BG1 is not a bad thing, but for most modern games is a "unbalanced encounter"...

 

[Elex]

Trying to kil a barbarian using damage is not a smart move.

Like the zealot barbarian simply is too angry to die
“you don't die until your rage ends”

 

[Cryomancer]

Trying to kil a barbarian using damage is not a smart move.

Or FORT save, but you got my point, a high level on 5e probably has like 3x more survivability than a high level on 3.5e which has 2x more survivability than on 2e

 

[Elex]

 

[Robber Baron]

Swen is such a nice guy when he's not putting the funny act on camera. Shame about that fog/haze in every game area shown that makes everything so claustrophobic.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Irresistable

 

[TemplarGR]

Inquisition was a bad RPG, the combat was repetitive and lacked any depth. I'm not defending it. I liked it for the high fantasy adventure and good graphics, good fantasy scenery/locations and a straightforward but intriguing plot with a nice twist. I love a good high fantasy more than I love a good RPG mechanics and we just don't have enough of that AAA fantasy product around. That's why I have high hopes for BG3 - the next AAA fantasy game with actual production values.
Don't get me wrong. By production values I don't solely mean graphics (although that's important) - it's the package - amount and quality of the end product. I really really want Larian to deliver.

I agree with the sentiment that we need more AAA RPGs, but in case you didn't notice, Larian is NOT AAA. DOS II is NOT an AAA game, and neither will be BG3.

Also, what is happening with all the Larian shills lately? I suppose the marketing budget for this summer includes RPGCodex accounts to hype that shit up and vote it for GOTY 2020, and then those accounts will dissappear, as per usual with shills?

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm pretty sure BG3 has AAA production values. It looks like DA:I and DA:I is definitely AAA.

 

[AwesomeButton]

As the picture above shows, that motion capture budget was well spent.

I can already picture the socially awkward pubescent boys who will practice this expression in front of the mirror.

 

[Robber Baron]

I can already picture the socially awkward pubescent boys who will practice this expression in front of the mirror.

Are they really the target audience of BG3? Are drow even considered cool among the kids nowadays? I'm asking because I really don't know.

 

[vortex]

Are drow even considered cool among the kids nowadays? <--- Are drows in the Fortnite?

 

[Robber Baron]

Well if a kid wants to imitate a character it's probably a visually pleasing and a strong archetype/character, kids are honest about that stuff, you can't make a kid love some tranny or feminine hero instead of Phantom or Batman.