Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[processdaemon]

Because let's be real, if the hot elf chick would keep thirsting after you, no one would give a shit, but when it's the flamboyant mary sue wizard, it's outcry worthy. Double standards are for pussies.

If the hot elf chick thirsted repeatedly after people who had rejected her multiple times though the people who did that would probably be annoyed since they've demonstrated a lack of interest in hot elves. The thirst bug selects for people who don't want anything to do with those characters by progressing the relationship when you ignore them and for people who want romanceless runs since it seems to mostly affect those who don't have a romance locked in. It's an excellent game regardless (and if anyone is reading this and is on the fence about getting it don't let it put you off) but the nature of the bug is such that it's happening mostly to the people who want to see it the least, so it doesn't surprise me that there are complaints.

 

[Saark]

And I have no idea which character it was with. Gosh, it's almost like it's not spammed at the player repeatedly or something.

PS: TOEE isn't 'beloved' for its romances. By most of us, anyway.

Gosh, it's almost as if the quality of a game isn't defined by its romances. By most of us, anyway.

Not spending money on something I don't like is retarded, huh?

Not enjoying a 50+ hr game over something as minor as a minute or two of gay romances is.

 

[Zeltak]

My root belief is that combat should reinforce roleplaying the characters

I agree. And this is why I don't like so much of 3E and 5E's incentivized minmaxing with feats etc.

So play on story mode. If the game includes different difficulty settings then obviously the hardest one is aiming to cater to those that are not going to purposely gimp themselves or refuse to use certain abilities in the name of roleplaying your character. Wtf even is this argument. How does this justify a badly designed difficulty setting?

Btw if we also account for Larian specifically and put this in a historical context then "tactician" was presented and marketed in previous games as much harder than what you get in BG3.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Gosh, it's almost as if the quality of a game isn't defined by its romances. By most of us, anyway.

And I said that it wasn't just companion romances that are a problem in BG3, but the writing of many NPCs as well. Even a certain monster wants gay sex with the player.

 

[AwesomeButton]

That's where you are wrong buddy. I'm not boasting how easy the game is, I'm genuinely despairing over it because the underlying combat, exploration and general feel of the fights are fantastic in this game but ruined by not feeling challenged. I'm sitting here waiting for the super autist that makes a good difficulty mod. Maybe by then even Patch 1 is out as well to fix some bugginess.

Mods will definetly come that increase difficulty, the question is what kind of difficulty you are satisfied with?

One where encounters require you to use different strategies to solve. There is no 'perfect' difficulty because at the end of the day the game has to give you a way to win but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to just use basic strategies to faceroll the content. My build choices don't really matter because almost everything works without struggle.

I'm convinced that just fine-tuning the stats a little bit more to make enemies survive initial alpha strikes and perhaps looking at the long rest supply curve can go a long way.

Nothing new. This is a conversation we've had over and over through the years. When I registered it was the same conversation about Pillars of Eternity. Before that, it was about some other game...

Fine-tuning stats, inserting time limits, limiting resources through limiting resting, these are all different approaches that come down to the same ultimate effect once combat begins.

From the position of a game designer, you want to allow more choices to players. One requirement is "have as many combinatons of class, race, stats, build, party composition, all viable". Another requirement conflicts with it - "challenging combat". The more combinations you have to provide for, the lower the difficulty bar has to be, because you are trying to account for more and more combinations.

Therefore you either have to limit playable builds, or allow all builds, but knowingly limit the viable builds - let the players discover how far they can take a bad build and if they can pass the game with it. That in itself is part of the game for some.

You mention tuning encounters but imagine you're the guy who has to tune one encounter, let's make it one from the main quest path, so that a maximum number of party compositions and builds has to be able to go through it. How much would it take you to balance it perfectly for everyone? One, two human lifespans? That's why designers shower you with tools and win buttons, and then it's up to you to police yourself.

If you're drowning in "easy", or "negative difficulty", remember the maxim "The rescue of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves".

 

[AwesomeButton]

But this game, like BG2's rescuing of Imoen, does the thing of implying great urgency where none exists. And, ironically, this sabotages the timed quests because it gets the player used to the idea that they can just ignore that sort of messaging and spam rest.

Mixed signals.

Exactly. I wrote of this just a little while ago. They train you to approach quests in any order, but then suddenly insert a quest, and a companion quest at that, which if finished will fail other secondary quests.

 

[Zeltak]

That's where you are wrong buddy. I'm not boasting how easy the game is, I'm genuinely despairing over it because the underlying combat, exploration and general feel of the fights are fantastic in this game but ruined by not feeling challenged. I'm sitting here waiting for the super autist that makes a good difficulty mod. Maybe by then even Patch 1 is out as well to fix some bugginess.

Mods will definetly come that increase difficulty, the question is what kind of difficulty you are satisfied with?

One where encounters require you to use different strategies to solve. There is no 'perfect' difficulty because at the end of the day the game has to give you a way to win but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to just use basic strategies to faceroll the content. My build choices don't really matter because almost everything works without struggle.

I'm convinced that just fine-tuning the stats a little bit more to make enemies survive initial alpha strikes and perhaps looking at the long rest supply curve can go a long way.

Nothing new. This is a conversation we've had over and over through the years. When I registered it was the same conversation about Pillars of Eternity. Before that, it was about some other game...

Fine-tuning stats, inserting time limits, limiting resources through limiting resting, these are all different approaches that come down to the same ultimate effect once combat begins.

From the position of a game designer, you want to allow more choices to players. One requirement is "have as many combinatons of class, race, stats, build, party composition, all viable". Another requirement conflicts with it - "challenging combat". The more combinations you have to provide for, the lower the difficulty bar has to be, because you are trying to account for more and more combinations.

Therefore you either have to limit playable builds, or allow all builds, but knowingly limit the viable builds - let the players discover how far they can take a bad build and if they can pass the game with it. That in itself is part of the game for some.

You mention tuning encounters but imagine you're the guy who has to tune one encounter, let's make it one from the main quest path, so that a maximum number of party compositions and builds has to be able to go through it. How much would it take you to balance it perfectly for everyone? One, two human livespans? That's why designers shower you with tools and win buttons, and then it's up to you to police yourself.

If you're drowning in "easy", or "negative difficulty", remember the maxim "The rescue of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves".

If the game provides difficulty options, and you as a player decides to play on a higher difficulties - then both the dev and the player should expect to narrow the amount of viable builds the further up you go on that scale. The narrowing occurs through increasing requirements of optimisation and for some players, like myself, combat is enjoyable when finding those solutions. This in combination with an encounter design that will force the player to try different spells, abilities, party compositions, item synergies etc. to beat the encounter is combat at its best. Idk what the fuck you are talking about but it's quite ironic that you try to paint me as babbys first RPG when you seem to have no clue about basic concepts on difficulty.

The problem with this game is that none of this shit is even on the radar when they have a game with three scales of difficulties. You would have a point if there was only one difficulty setting to choose from.

 

[Pizzashoes]

Tactician if I recall correctly was marketed as brutal. I may be wrong here but I would not interpret a light difficulty as if it were set in stone. In fact, I hesitate to even play the game for awhile. I don't want to disturb the balance here.

 

[Zeltak]

Tactician if I recall correctly was marketed as brutal. I may be wrong here but I would not interpret a light difficulty as if it were set in stone. In fact, I hesitate to even play the game for awhile. I don't want to disturb the balance here.

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gat...a-dm-thats-trying-to-push-you-to-your-limits/

 

[Saark]

If the hot elf chick thirsted repeatedly after people who had rejected her multiple times though the people who did that would probably be annoyed since they've demonstrated a lack of interest in hot elves. The thirst bug selects for people who don't want anything to do with those characters by progressing the relationship when you ignore them and for people who want romanceless runs since it seems to mostly affect those who don't have a romance locked in. It's an excellent game regardless (and if anyone is reading this and is on the fence about getting it don't let it put you off) but the nature of the bug is such that it's happening mostly to the people who want to see it the least, so it doesn't surprise me that there are complaints.

People here typically aren't complaining about repeatedly having to rebuff characters, though. They are whining about the existence of gay characters, or other representations of any given cultural dilemma. Which is retarded in a game that actively encourages you to take your own path once you're presented with that specific dilemma. It's not the presence of these situations that's a problem, it's when the game actively encourages you to pick one choice over the other or judges you for picking one path over the other. But BG3 doesn't do that, and as a result the "it's pushing woke agendas" argument simply falls flat, and shouldn't be used to dissuade people from enjoying an otherwise enjoyable game.

The game has many issues, from its pacing, to most of the companions being very trope~y and badly written, to some of the homebrew mechanics being utterly op. The game also lacks a higher difficulty than tactician, and is way too easy when you have a decent understanding of the underlying ruleset. It's still one of the best examples of giving the player a lot of choice in carving out their own path within the game world, and allowing a different approach to almost every single quest in the game. It also has one of the best incorporations of non-combat skills and spells that I've seen so far.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So play on story mode. If the game includes different difficulty settings then obviously the hardest one is aiming to cater to those that are not going to purposely gimp themselves or refuse to use certain abilities in the name of roleplaying your character. Wtf even is this argument. How does this justify a badly designed difficulty setting?

Btw if we also account for Larian specifically and put this in a historical context then "tactician" was presented and marketed in previous games as much harder than what you get in BG3.

The concept of game difficlulty is a videogame concept. There is no difficulty in PnP. Unsurprisingly, having "difficulty" in a game that strives to emulate PnP leads to conflicts with the core intention of the game.

The dice will always have the sides it does, and always give a number between 1 and the number of sides it has. So mechanical "difficulty" isn't what RPGs are about. The more they are about difficulty, the less RPG they are. On the other hand, if as a designer you provide the player with means to play as his character, then you've advanced the genre. C&C > random chance games.

 

[Zeltak]

So play on story mode. If the game includes different difficulty settings then obviously the hardest one is aiming to cater to those that are not going to purposely gimp themselves or refuse to use certain abilities in the name of roleplaying your character. Wtf even is this argument. How does this justify a badly designed difficulty setting?

Btw if we also account for Larian specifically and put this in a historical context then "tactician" was presented and marketed in previous games as much harder than what you get in BG3.

The concept of game difficlulty is a videogame concept. There is no difficulty in PnP. Unsurprisingly, having "difficulty" in a game that strives to emulate PnP leads to conflicts with the core intention of the game.

The dice will always have the sides it does, and always give a number between 1 and the number of sides it has. So mechanical "difficulty" isn't what RPGs are about. The more they are about difficulty, the less RPG they are. On the other hand, if as a designer you provide the player with means to play as his character, then you've advanced the genre. C&C > random chance games.

Again, this is invalidated if a game provides difficulty options.

If it's all about 'roleplaying your character' in cRPG:s when it comes to combat then you only need one difficulty option because the dev should expect the player to purposefully restrict themselves based on whatever character they design. If you have difficulty options, you as a dev are saying: here is a challenge for those looking to try build the most optimized party for combat (or a select options of optimised parties). And especially so in BG3, where the fucking lead designers are marketing Tactician as 'DM trying to push your limits' with 'brutal AI'. Now stop the bullshitting already.

 

[Sunri]

Reached Act III, and Swen pulled a Sawyer on me, where he moved the party into a position I didn't enter the scene from, because "muh cutscene". So I took a break a few days.

Act III breaks down not just in writing, but in combat as well.

HEY SWEN... why on earth would you put an entry to the scene behind the villain, if not to have it pay off for those that find it? It's so stupid... man...

If you kill Isobel in act 2 your party gets teleported outside of inn and surrounded from every side and you need to beat all NPCs except they are zombies now overall If someone wants harder fights he should play evil guy they are multiple options to make things harder if you spare drider he will attack your party from behind at the top.of the tower and shit like that

 

[Lyric Suite]

Which is retarded in a game that actively encourages you to take your own path once you're presented with that specific dilemma.

Lmao, bullshit.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The narrowing occurs through increasing requirements of optimisation and for some players, like myself, combat is enjoyable when finding those solutions

Yeah, I fully get that, but on a scale from Battle Brothers to Disco Elysium, Baldur's Gate 3 will never be on that part of the scale where you seem to want it.

Policing yourself, "gimping" yourself, aka house rules is not ideal, but it's a functioning method of increasing difficulty. And since they are house rules, you can break them and adjust them as you decide. You have to feel out the ground for yourself and find the right amount of self limitation.

As I hinted earlier - it's all a dice game with modifiers, i.e. an equation. On one side of the equation is the computer, on the other the human. Which one is better at adjusting difficulty? Obviously the human.

From a designer's perspective and from a player's perspective, house rules are a better means to adjust difficulty. Because buffing enemies is done mechanically, but debuffing the human party is done by a human, and the human will always do it better. "Better" meaning "cheaper" and "more accurate" from a designer's perspective.

The big drawback is that this playing part-DM part-player pulls you out of roleplaying if you have to do it too much. Then the game is too broken (it's always "broken" to some extent) for you to squint your eyes to.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Tactician if I recall correctly was marketed as brutal. I may be wrong here but I would not interpret a light difficulty as if it were set in stone. In fact, I hesitate to even play the game for awhile. I don't want to disturb the balance here.

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gat...a-dm-thats-trying-to-push-you-to-your-limits/

Did you take these claims seriously?

 

[Zeltak]

The narrowing occurs through increasing requirements of optimisation and for some players, like myself, combat is enjoyable when finding those solutions

Yeah, I fully get that, but on a scale from Battle Brothers to Disco Elysium, Baldur's Gate 3 will never be on that part of the scale where you seem to want it.

Policing yourself, "gimping" yourself, aka house rules is not ideal, but it's a functioning method of increasing difficulty. And since they are house rules, you can break them and adjust them as you decide. You have to feel out the ground for yourself and find the right amount of self limitation.

As I hinted earlier - it's all a dice game with modifiers, i.e. an equation. On one side of the equation is the computer, on the other the human. Which one is better at adjusting difficulty? Obviously the human.

From a designer's perspective and from a player's perspective, house rules are a better means to adjust difficulty. Because buffing enemies is done mechanically, but debuffing the human party is done by a human, and the human will always do it better. "Better" meaning "cheaper" and "more accurate" from a designer's perspective.

The big drawback is that this playing part-DM part-player pulls you out of roleplaying if you have to do it too much. Then the game is too broken (it's always "broken" to some extent) for you to squint your eyes to.

It won't be perfect no, but what game is. There are, however, big room for improvement with simple fixes to hinder the player from long rest spam through reduction of camping supplies. That alone will force optimisation to be more 'economical' with long rest abilities. And fine tuning enemies will also have a big impact because they already designed a bunch of unique encounters (

Spoiler

e.g. beholder in underdark

. But they die in two seconds so none of them get a chance to actually do something.

Really don't get your obsession with defending the difficulty, there is so much room for improvement by changing basic numbers. If the issue was AI then that's insurmountable but that's not the case here.

Tactician if I recall correctly was marketed as brutal. I may be wrong here but I would not interpret a light difficulty as if it were set in stone. In fact, I hesitate to even play the game for awhile. I don't want to disturb the balance here.

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gat...a-dm-thats-trying-to-push-you-to-your-limits/

Did you take these claims seriously?

Oh please, you seem to be a master at twisting shit the moment you get pushed into a corner. First it was complaining about an easily solvable fight, but it's important to never lose face, right, so "of cooourse it was hard for me I had all these hidden rules I didn't tell you about". And now this. Embarassing shit.

 

[Zed]

If you kill Isobel in act 2 your party gets teleported outside of inn and surrounded from every side and you need to beat all NPCs except they are zombies now overall If someone wants harder fights he should play evil guy they are multiple options to make things harder if you spare drider he will attack your party from behind at the top.of the tower and shit like that

Playing evil generally felt like going a more difficult route, aside from perhaps

....

Shadowheart and the encounter with Viconia

which I imagine would be harder on a good route.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It won't be perfect no, but what game is. There are, however, big room for improvement with simple fixes to hinder the player from long rest spam through reduction of camping supplies. That alone will force optimisation to be more 'economical' with long rest abilities. And fine tuning enemies will also have a big impact because they already designed a bunch of unique encounters (

Spoiler

e.g. beholder in underdark

. But they die in two seconds so none of them get a chance to actually do something.

Really don't get your obsession with defending the difficulty, there is so much room for improvement by changing basic numbers. If the issue was AI then that's insurmountable but that's not the case here.

Ok, let's take rest spam. I've said this numerous times here and in other threads, but here it goes again:

No one came into your room and pressed the rest button for you. You did. You could have refrained from doing it. But you pressed it.

See where I'm going?

I've been playing 75 hours now, and I've rested 5-6 times. One rest was kind of mandatory, to progress the Act 1 tieflings quest.

I don't dispute that numbers can always be tweaked, I'm just saying that no matter what tweaking is done, the result will never be as good as you can make it if you adjust the equation on your side, the human-governed side.

 

[Zed]

I'm not sure how much Larian improved DOS2 in terms of content (ie not just bug fixes) but I imagine the sure-to-come GOTY/Complete edition, whatever, will warrant a re-playthrough. Personally I'm holding off until then.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

it's when the game actively encourages you to pick one choice over the other or judges you for picking one path over the other. But BG3 doesn't do that, and as a result the "it's pushing woke agendas"

Yeah, you can have every other character in the game, including non-party NPCs and a freaking mind flayer, be some kind of a pervert, advertise that fact to the media, advertise the trannies and drag queens doing voice acting, advertise the genital selection menu on character creation, advertise that one homosexual met their latest of many sex partners while doing voice acting for the game, all for a game where the devs openly scolded players for picking a white male character on average...

...but no, this isn't woke. Woke would be if the game judged you for not saving the refugees...oh wait it does. It does judge you. It just lets you do it.

I mean, just what is your line for "woke" here? Should the entire party leave you if you don't fuck the bear? Should a paladin lose his class for not letting Astarion suck him off? Should your non-existent alignment shift to evil for not having saucy man on formerly-male tentacle monster action with The Emperor?

You're just setting an impossible standard because you know it's woke. Heck, even the proud "7-man cuck squad" writing the game (according to that dev's twitter post) would probably admit that it's woke.

Why do you want to die on this hill anyway?

 

[Zeltak]

It won't be perfect no, but what game is. There are, however, big room for improvement with simple fixes to hinder the player from long rest spam through reduction of camping supplies. That alone will force optimisation to be more 'economical' with long rest abilities. And fine tuning enemies will also have a big impact because they already designed a bunch of unique encounters (

Spoiler

e.g. beholder in underdark

. But they die in two seconds so none of them get a chance to actually do something.

Really don't get your obsession with defending the difficulty, there is so much room for improvement by changing basic numbers. If the issue was AI then that's insurmountable but that's not the case here.

Ok, let's take rest spam. I've said this numerous times here and in other threads, but here it goes again:

No one came into your room and pressed the rest button for you. You did. You could have refrained from doing it. But you pressed it.

See where I'm going?

I've been playing 75 hours now, and I've rested 5-6 times. One rest was kind of mandatory, to progress the Act 1 tieflings quest.

Ah yes, and now we are back to the smug smiley replies. You are like a little child.

No, nobody forced that but the satisfaction comes from 'solving' the game as it is presented. Arbitrarily putting up rules with the options available is an entirely different experience. You can make any game 'hard' but including a bunch of self imposed rules but that's not the issue here. We are criticizing a difficulty option that the devs put into the game.

Another issue with long rest spam is that a lot of the shit story you seem to be infatuated with is tied to you actually resting at camp. Idk how modders will work around that shit but I guess you can just skip it anyways by going dark urge and play with hirelings.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Oh please, you seem to be a master at twisting shit the moment you get pushed into a corner. First it was complaining about an easily solvable fight, but it's important to never lose face, right, so "of cooourse it was hard for me I had all these hidden rules I didn't tell you about". And now this. Embarassing shit

TBH I didn't believe you are interested in the particulars, that's why I didn't start with a full description of the situation. You didn't assume I might be doing something different it the fight, just assumed I don't know how to use buffs or something. Ok, fine, maybe that's the kind of people you deal with regularly. You've got to learn to assume that not everyone does things the way you do them.

And if you did buy into that Tactician hype, well, I don't know if that's quite "embarassing" but, you are obviously inexperienced. No biggie. Everyone was once.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Ok, let's take rest spam. I've said this numerous times here and in other threads, but here it goes again:

No one came into your room and pressed the rest button for you. You did. You could have refrained from doing it. But you pressed it.

See where I'm going?

I've been playing 75 hours now, and I've rested 5-6 times. One rest was kind of mandatory, to progress the Act 1 tieflings quest.

I don't dispute that numbers can always be tweaked, I'm just saying that no matter what tweaking is done, the result will never be as good as you can make it if you adjust the equation on your side, the human-governed side.

The problem is that by NOT resting, you're missing out on content.

The game tells you that time is important and you could turn into a monster any minute, but a lot of content is triggered on rest.

 

[Pizzashoes]

I took the claims against me seriously, and I have responded in a serious manner. I've posted sufficiently respectable YouTube links exclusively to the Codex. I have exclusively given my first takes to the Codex. I have been loyal and there is no doubt.