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

[Elex]

Not sure what area design has to do with stat bloat.

D&D doesn't have set in stone rules about how many characters can be in a party, but consoles have a set in stone limit of concurrently connected controllers.

Pen and paper rpg have a limit on how much time people want to wait for their turn.
With 6 people a round of combat can easily be one hour.
It means you have to wait an hour before you can make your action.
Less people at the table means faaaster turns.

6 people slow down combat also because the DM have to put more monsters (or buffing them) for the same encounter balance. And that slow down the DM and overload the DM.

it’s doable, i’ve done it it’s not hard, but it’s indeed slow, people at the table get bored fast.

 

[Elex]

Meanwhile on larian discord:

 

[AwesomeButton]

In the stream Swen says that he needs to sleep before going into the spider cave, because he used too many spell slots. So casting is per rest?

 

[NJClaw]

With 6 people a round of combat can easily be one hour.

I've played with groups of 12 players and a single round never came close to that kind of duration. With 6 people I can see that happening only if everyone is VERY drunk, there's only a single set of dice and everyone keeps throwing the d20 out of the window.

 

[Lacrymas]

Next month I'll be DM'ing technically my first 5E D&D game (I have "DM'd" a 5E game once before but it very unusual, the entire party were commoners trying to pay their feudal lords for the month) with at least 3 other people, so I'll report how that goes then and compare that to BG3. But yeah, from my limited experience as a player, a round of combat doesn't take an hour lolol. We'll be running Dragon of Icespire Peak if anyone is interested.

 

[NJClaw]

In the stream Swen says that he needs to sleep before going into the spider cave, because he used too many spell slots. So casting is per rest?

Yes, the spell slots system seems very similar to how PnP works. The biggest difference I noticed so far is that you can change readied spells on the fly.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, the spell slots system seems very similar to how PnP works. The biggest difference I noticed so far is that you can change readied spells on the fly.

I thought that was only for the UI? Not all spells can fit in there, so you change out your already-prepared spells. Consolitis rears its ugly head again.

 

[NJClaw]

Yes, the spell slots system seems very similar to how PnP works. The biggest difference I noticed so far is that you can change readied spells on the fly.

I thought that was only for the UI? Not all spells can fit in there, so you change out your already-prepared spells. Consolitis rears its ugly head again.

That doesn't sound right to me. The scrolling panel on the right side of the UI is big enough to contain shortcuts for all his known spells (well, it's a scrolling panel, it can contain all the spells you want).

Also, when Swen shows all the spells he can choose from, his wizards have a very large number of spells and there's no way he can prepare all of them at his level.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's pretty decline if it's true.

 

[Saravan]

Writing is still shit

Please elaborate. A phrase or a dialog that you especially disliked would suffice.

Well, I can't be bothered to watch it again, so this will have to do:

Joined: Monday.

Writing is still shit.

Provide an example.

Well you joined on Monday!

Robber Baron you would serve well in my court.

(Did I just dox myself?)

 

[guestposting]

It can't be worse than Baldur's Gate 1

If it lacks the freedom of Baldur's Gate I and II and replaces it with D:OS linearity of "look we have yuuge open areas.... which you will have to traverse exactly in the order we want", for the sake of some shitty "improved narrative experience" I will personally radicalize myself with ISIS and blow up Larian.

Spoiler

The last was exaggerated for improved narrative exeprience.

This seems wrong. The Original Sin games are gated by level/leveled equipment. Much harder to do that in a D&D game that only goes up to level 10 and has no leveled loot.

edit: ninjaed by lacrymas

 

[Delterius]

the freedom of baldurs gate 1:

do you want the larry larry and darryl reference before or after chapter 3

 

[jackofshadows]

What's your stance on the onscreen dice roll? While I appreciate that they try to evoke the feeling of a pnp RPG, I think the adventage of computer RPGs is that you don't have to wait for dice rolls. Having to wait 5 seconds for every dicerolling sequence will be annoying on the long run. I would just keep that in the combat log, in the background.

Yeah, it's an idea straight from Disco but for some bizarre reason they've decided to execute it much worse by adding requirement of extra-click on virtual dice and making the whole process way longer. As someone said much earlier ITT, thanks fuck at least they didn't add animated Swen in the screen's corner who does the rolling for you after clicking. Thouse who gonna buy EA (myself included... probably) should definitely point this out excplicitly and demand making the whole thing at least optional. The fact that Larian did actually rolled back idea of narrator-past-tense-responces brings hope that they may cut this as well despite amount of invested time.

In any case, I don't appreciate their obsession with PnP-theme (where belong two examples above) in general. Yes, it's a game based on a motherfucking D&D. But it's still a game, right? I thought it's natural to expect to be spared from a) such inconvenience b) constant reminder that you're actually playing a fucking game which apparentely offers you to LARP in your chair these moments which is silly. I wonder how it suppose to look from co-op perspective: probably the dice can/must have observed by every participant so before that extra-click one announcing "look, guys, I'm gonna make this insolent midged kiss my feet!!" so everyone put aside whatever they're doing and watch? If that's the case, another reason to make it optional for SP mode.

 

[NJClaw]

That's pretty decline if it's true.

I'm going to ask him on Twitter, but he never answer me.

 

[fantadomat]

Did anything interesting came from all those videos?

 

[MRY]

As someone said much earlier ITT, thanks fuck at least they didn't add animated Swen in the screen's corner who does the rolling for you after clicking.

It would be fantastic if he popped up Mortal Kombat style with a "toasty!"* if you rolled a 1.

(* Incidentally, I always thought it was "whoopsie" but apparently not.)

 

[Serious_Business]

I'm sure Swen is just so friendly and fun when he tells you you're fired. I mean who doesn't love the guy

Hate the guy. Fuck him

 

[NJClaw]

Did anything interesting came from all those videos?

They dropped the party-wide initiative and adopted a system more faithful to D&D 5 where everyone rolls his initiative and acts accordingly. They also abandoned that awkward first-person dialogue style in favor of a more orthodox one where you are presented with a set of lines you can choose from.

The gith companion looks hotter and Shadowlove is more similar to the first iteration than to what we saw recently.

Throwing boots and shits is now an action (no longer a bonus action) and you can't just throw stuff every single round in addition to your standard attack.

There's a scene where you can force a goblin to lick the gith chick's feet. The goblin is visibly drunk, so he can't give express consent and that's basically rape.

There were only a couple of barrels in more than 20 minutes of gameplay, so that's at least 75% less than what we could reasonably expect from Larian.

Bows dipped in fire during the entire gameplay showcase: 0 (he dipped a torch, but that doesn't count).

 

[Lacrymas]

Why animated Swen? I'd have inserted myself FMV-style rolling the dice and I would be particularly smug about it when you rolled a 1.

 

[Thonius]

Someone quick! Start working on mod to fix that shitty camera...

 

[Elex]

With 6 people a round of combat can easily be one hour.

I've played with groups of 12 players and a single round never came close to that kind of duration. With 6 people I can see that happening only if everyone is VERY drunk, there's only a single set of dice and everyone keeps throwing the d20 out of the window.

drunk spellcasters, "what my spell is doing dungeon master?" "nooo this is not how insibility work" "hey guyz check this gif!!!", "i found this bottle of vodka!" "next session i lock the phones away"

 

[Elex]

Yes, the spell slots system seems very similar to how PnP works. The biggest difference I noticed so far is that you can change readied spells on the fly.

I thought that was only for the UI? Not all spells can fit in there, so you change out your already-prepared spells. Consolitis rears its ugly head again.

That doesn't sound right to me. The scrolling panel on the right side of the UI is big enough to contain shortcuts for all his known spells (well, it's a scrolling panel, it can contain all the spells you want).

Also, when Swen shows all the spells he can choose from, his wizards have a very large number of spells and there's no way he can prepare all of them at his level.

i'm sure that swen play with debug mode on and stuff like "scribe spell" are not implemented for now.

 

[Incendax]

The animations and dice rolls are just slow. This continues to be a really annoying concern of mine. Working through turns in combat is going to be a slog. I hope they at least give the option to double animation speeds, and either way I'm modding out the super saiyan dash animation.

 

[Elex]

The animations and dice rolls are just slow. This continues to be a really annoying concern of mine. Working through turns in combat is going to be a slog. I hope they at least give the option to double animation speeds, and either way I'm modding out the super saiyan dash animation.

i'm sure that dev will answer stuff like "WE MADE THAT ANIMATION FOR VISIBILITY BECAUSE OUR FEEDBACK TELL US THAT PEOPLE NEED STUFF TO HAPPEN WHEN THEY PRESS A BUTTON SO THE BUTTON FOR RUN NEED TO DO SOMETING THE BUTTON FOR JUMP TOO"

 

[Gargaune]

"For people who saw the first live gaming stream, err, something has changed here... This is not in the past tense anymore, it is written now in present tense and it's not from the perspective of a singular character anymore, it is literally you making those decisions."

INFLUENCE GAINED WITH GARGAUNE: +6 (TOTAL INFLUENCE: -2)