Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[dukeofwoodberry]

Yeah, pretty much; every cRPG is an exercise in accepting the existence of limitations, but I can't really think of any other game that has BG3's ambition in really trying to let the player do as much as possible. When you do find a limitation or hit a wall - which is easy to do, obviously, on account of the sheer level of freedom you're given to experiment - I didn't have trouble accepting that the game can't do everything since I was so wowed by the amount of trust the game puts in you, and I'd say about 75% of my ideas did actually work, even the fairly absurd ones (like skipping the entire boss fight in the Astral Plane in Act 2 by casting Hideous Laughter on the guy to prevent him from starting his speech and then just throwing him off the platform).

What's most exciting about BG3 is that you can see the DNA of future cRPGs in it. In the same way that Fallout was a revelation in 1997 and still today feels like a blueprint for how to make the cRPGs of the future, even though as a game itself it's very limited and basic in most of its systems and quests. Same for other games that seemed to offer a glimpse into a future that never materialised, like Daggerfall and Deus Ex - I can accept their own countless limitations because they still feel like they're trailblazing new models of what it's possible to do in a cRPG. BG3 similarly feels like it's saying "here's a rough outline of what RPGs might look like ten years from now", obviously we'll have to see if any of that comes to fruition in works from other devs in the coming years.

Dues ex already did this long ago and it wasn't adopted. Think companies are more likely to try and mimic the slick presentation and romance simulator degeneracy

 

[The Bishop]

You don't have to reload until you find the most "satisfactory path", you can/should keep playing when things go badly wrong for the party.

It's not the "most" satisfactory path that I'm looking for, just a satisfactory path. Something not completely stupid. Like for example I spent whole bunch of attempts on spider queen in the first act. Not because my plan was failing per se, but because my character would stop hiding at critical moments for no apparent reason. It turned out that when you throw alchemist's fire at things your character stops hiding twice - first right after the throw, and then after the bottle hit something. And sure I could continue on instead, but man would this feel miserable. Ultimately if I'm going to accept and play on with a failure, I'd rather it not come from inconsistent interactions or glitchy controls. Or opaque quest conditions, triggers, etc.

If your character starts to do stupid shit that you can't anticipate

When did this happen to you? Other than trying to take the party up ladders, which the game seems to completely shit itself on every time.

I'm mostly referring to scripted stuff and dialogue. When all the options are terrible and you can't back out. Like when if you try to talk to Nere and save the gnomes the only thing you can say is "oh gawd no, please don't hurt them, hurting is bad". I can think of million ways to try to deceive my way through this. Instead you get what you get. How do you know this is going to be the case? You don't. You save, you test, you load.

 

[The Bishop]

I mean the hardest difficulty explicitly discourages this

Well, yes. Which is why if somebody were crazy enough to try playing Honour mode without extensive knowledge of all the content ahead, they would be best served always avoiding or attacking anybody even remotely suspicious. And miss out on most dialogue and cutscenes.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Ambition is great and accepting limitations is fine too. The issue is really that exploring BG3 is so dependent on saving/loading. Whenever you encounter another bunch of content you save and you test. If your character starts to do stupid shit that you can't anticipate, when you hit the wall because an option that you were certain should be there is missing, or when a script just doesn't trigger, you load. Eventually you find a satisfactory path and you proceed to the next bunch of content, where you save, test, rinse repeat. Don't know about others, but to me this does not feel like adventuring. It feels like maintenance. You can't really play organically, or rather you can, but then you do only the most obvious thing, which in most cases just attack. And miss out on most of the content.

That wasn't my experience of the game, I only really remember having to reload due to dead-ending myself once (can't remember the context, somewhere in Act 2 iirc). Otherwise I only ever occasionally reloaded because I was dissatisfied with the outcome of a plan - which was often my own fault - and not because the game was actually forcing me to reload through some glitch or irreversible sequence break. Other than the Act 2 softlock the worst I ever came up against was a couple of quests where they didn't anticipate you moving ahead in a certain way, like the aforementioned Ethel quest.

I also tried to limit reloading as much as possible because it's always more interesting to try and deal with the aftermath of a failed plan (which, again, I think BG3 does better than any other cRPG I can think of). Having the team accidentally split up, having party members trapped or arrested, having people stranded without the spells to get back, stuff like that is all part of the fun. You don't have to reload until you find the most "satisfactory path", you can/should keep playing when things go badly wrong for the party.

If your character starts to do stupid shit that you can't anticipate

When did this happen to you? Other than trying to take the party up ladders, which the game seems to completely shit itself on every time.

Excuse me, but this is not true in BG3.
The system could be cool if the outcome had been depending on the player's actions, like the previous decisions. But your decisions don't matter too much in this game. In most cases, I was failing because the dice decided I should fail. I did everything ideally, but suddenly - BOOM! - I rolled a 1 when I needed a 20. It completely devalues all the actions the player has been doing.

 

[Barbarian]

Ambition is great and accepting limitations is fine too. The issue is really that exploring BG3 is so dependent on saving/loading. Whenever you encounter another bunch of content you save and you test. If your character starts to do stupid shit that you can't anticipate, when you hit the wall because an option that you were certain should be there is missing, or when a script just doesn't trigger, you load. Eventually you find a satisfactory path and you proceed to the next bunch of content, where you save, test, rinse repeat. Don't know about others, but to me this does not feel like adventuring. It feels like maintenance. You can't really play organically, or rather you can, but then you do only the most obvious thing, which in most cases just attack. And miss out on most of the content.

That wasn't my experience of the game, I only really remember having to reload due to dead-ending myself once (can't remember the context, somewhere in Act 2 iirc). Otherwise I only ever occasionally reloaded because I was dissatisfied with the outcome of a plan - which was often my own fault - and not because the game was actually forcing me to reload through some glitch or irreversible sequence break. Other than the Act 2 softlock the worst I ever came up against was a couple of quests where they didn't anticipate you moving ahead in a certain way, like the aforementioned Ethel quest.

I also tried to limit reloading as much as possible because it's always more interesting to try and deal with the aftermath of a failed plan (which, again, I think BG3 does better than any other cRPG I can think of). Having the team accidentally split up, having party members trapped or arrested, having people stranded without the spells to get back, stuff like that is all part of the fun. You don't have to reload until you find the most "satisfactory path", you can/should keep playing when things go badly wrong for the party.

If your character starts to do stupid shit that you can't anticipate

When did this happen to you? Other than trying to take the party up ladders, which the game seems to completely shit itself on every time.

Excuse me, but this is not true in BG3.
The system could be cool if the outcome had been depending on the player's actions, like the previous decisions. But your decisions don't matter too much in this game. In most cases, I was failing because the dice decided I should fail. I did everything ideally, but suddenly - BOOM! - I rolled a 1 when I needed a 20. It completely devalues all the actions the player has been doing.

There is inspiration points and you can do rerolls up to 4 times. Not to mention it is easy to get advantage in dialogue checks with spells and etc(rolling 1 with advantage is highly unlikely, statistically). Also so many ways to add value to your rolls(guidance, bard inspiration, items...).

Your argument is false unless you are playing the game under some self imposed limitation.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Ambition is great and accepting limitations is fine too. The issue is really that exploring BG3 is so dependent on saving/loading. Whenever you encounter another bunch of content you save and you test. If your character starts to do stupid shit that you can't anticipate, when you hit the wall because an option that you were certain should be there is missing, or when a script just doesn't trigger, you load. Eventually you find a satisfactory path and you proceed to the next bunch of content, where you save, test, rinse repeat. Don't know about others, but to me this does not feel like adventuring. It feels like maintenance. You can't really play organically, or rather you can, but then you do only the most obvious thing, which in most cases just attack. And miss out on most of the content.

That wasn't my experience of the game, I only really remember having to reload due to dead-ending myself once (can't remember the context, somewhere in Act 2 iirc). Otherwise I only ever occasionally reloaded because I was dissatisfied with the outcome of a plan - which was often my own fault - and not because the game was actually forcing me to reload through some glitch or irreversible sequence break. Other than the Act 2 softlock the worst I ever came up against was a couple of quests where they didn't anticipate you moving ahead in a certain way, like the aforementioned Ethel quest.

I also tried to limit reloading as much as possible because it's always more interesting to try and deal with the aftermath of a failed plan (which, again, I think BG3 does better than any other cRPG I can think of). Having the team accidentally split up, having party members trapped or arrested, having people stranded without the spells to get back, stuff like that is all part of the fun. You don't have to reload until you find the most "satisfactory path", you can/should keep playing when things go badly wrong for the party.

If your character starts to do stupid shit that you can't anticipate

When did this happen to you? Other than trying to take the party up ladders, which the game seems to completely shit itself on every time.

Excuse me, but this is not true in BG3.
The system could be cool if the outcome had been depending on the player's actions, like the previous decisions. But your decisions don't matter too much in this game. In most cases, I was failing because the dice decided I should fail. I did everything ideally, but suddenly - BOOM! - I rolled a 1 when I needed a 20. It completely devalues all the actions the player has been doing.

There is inspiration points and you can do rerolls up to 4 times. Not to mention it is easy to get advantage in dialogue checks with spells and etc(rolling 1 with advantage is highly unlikely, statistically). Also so many ways to add value to your rolls(guidance, bard inspiration, items...).

Your argument is false unless you are playing the game under some self imposed limitation.

Great! So, the developers created a bunch of ways to bypass the failed system. But it doesn't make it less of a failure. And do you really think it's interesting to use guidances, bard inspirations and items before any interaction in the game>

 

[Barbarian]

I'm just stating the fact that if there is some critical and difficult roll that you need to succeed for some reason, the game offers several ways to increase your chance of succeeding or even guarantee success.

Now if this is about "The game doesn't allow me to succeeed 100% of the time!" than maybe you should just fuck yourself, because that is actually incline and faithful to every single D&D edition. Rolling dice and depending on chance sometimes has always been a feature of the game.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Now if this is about "The game doesn't allow me to succeeed 100%" than maybe you should just fuck yourself, because that is actually incline and faithful to every single D&D edition. Rolling dice and depending on chance sometimes has always been a feature of the game.

Yeah, this is one of many reasons D&D sucks. And if you like this approach, hm... maybe you have a really bad taste.

 

[Barbarian]

What? Erm if you don't like D&D I suppose you shouldn't play games based on the ruleset?

Specially this one, where a great effort was made to be faithful to tabletop.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

What? Erm if you don't like D&D I suppose you shouldn't play games based on the ruleset?

Specially this one, where a great effort was made to be faithful to tabletop.

I'm really trying to understand, do you really like when in the game you did everything right, but still failed because the dices decided you have to? And in order to overcome this randomness, you must buff this specific character using all the other characters in your party, before every roll of the dices?
Do you really think it's somehow interesting? And I don't want to offend you. I'm trying to understand you.

 

[Barbarian]

What? Erm if you don't like D&D I suppose you shouldn't play games based on the ruleset?

Specially this one, where a great effort was made to be faithful to tabletop.

I'm really trying to understand, do you really like when in the game you did everything right, but still failed because the dices decided you have to? And in order to overcome this randomness, you must buff this specific character using all the other characters in your party, before every roll of the dices?
Do you really think it's somehow interesting? And I don't want to offend you. I'm trying to understand you.

I think Gygax and the other people who designed the original system intended the dice rolls to somewhat replicate what we call "luck" or "chance" in real life. For instance a very skilled sword fighter(high THACO) trying to strike a very weak and unskilled character(very weak AC) will sometimes miss because of randomness or another interference, just as in real life. Likewise the weak character attacking the strong character might get a stroke of luck and critically hit him.

This isn't perfect but replicates real life somewhat. E.g: A phenomenal boxer like Mike Tyson will sometimes get knocked out by a mediocre fighter because of taking one lucky punch right to the chin. Someone who never fired a gun before might hit the bullseye sometimes if he shoots a pistol at a range.

I do like the system and having mathematical odds being a part of gameplay. Most good rpgs feature it somewhat, as a recent example I would name Battle Brothers(one of the best tactical tb combat games ever designed probably). I understand if you don't. To each their own.

 

[Lemming42]

I'm really trying to understand, do you really like when in the game you did everything right, but still failed because the dices decided you have to? And in order to overcome this randomness, you must buff this specific character using all the other characters in your party, before every roll of the dices?

It's fun to be able to unexpectedly succeed or fail at things, especially when the consequences for failure are a new gameplay scenario rather than a game over, which is typically the case in BG3. The whole point of RPGs to me is for the characters' skills to be represented in this way, and for those skills to tell a story in which the character interacts with the world. Crits are a big part of that because, as Barbarian said, sometimes people get incredibly lucky or unlucky, which can lead to really interesting gameplay and story situations.

But yeah obviously you're not going to enjoy a D&D game if you don't like D&D. You might as well have bought the videogame version of Monopoly and expressed dismay at the fact that your movement is tied to die rolls and that you can just be sent to jail through bad luck.

 

[Harthwain]

Excuse me, but this is not true in BG3.
The system could be cool if the outcome had been depending on the player's actions, like the previous decisions. But your decisions don't matter too much in this game. In most cases, I was failing because the dice decided I should fail. I did everything ideally, but suddenly - BOOM! - I rolled a 1 when I needed a 20. It completely devalues all the actions the player has been doing.

Welcome to a dice-rolling game. And, yes, DnD is also that kind of game. At this point your problem is not with BG3, it is with the entire RPG genre (and any game that involves dice-rolling, which means many tactical games). Maybe except action-RPGs, because there manual skills of the player are way more important than anything else.

I think Gygax and the other people who designed the original system intended the dice rolls to somewhat replicate what we call "luck" or "chance" in real life. For instance a very skilled sword fighter(high THACO) trying to strike a very weak and unskilled character(very low AC) will sometimes miss because of randomness or another interference, just as in real life. Likewise the weak character attacking the strong character might get a stroke of luck and critically hit him.

This isn't perfect but replicates real life somewhat. E.g: A phenomenal boxer like Mike Tyson will sometimes get knocked out by a mediocre fighter because of one lucky punch.

One argument that could be had is that changing the range of the dice (bell curve) could help getting better results on average (by using 3d6 instead of d20, for example) and adding other elements to boost the chances (such as the ones already mentioned in this thread), but even then people would still complain about the RNG not being in their favour/the game being rigged/unfair/pointless/whatever.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

What? Erm if you don't like D&D I suppose you shouldn't play games based on the ruleset?

Specially this one, where a great effort was made to be faithful to tabletop.

I'm really trying to understand, do you really like when in the game you did everything right, but still failed because the dices decided you have to? And in order to overcome this randomness, you must buff this specific character using all the other characters in your party, before every roll of the dices?
Do you really think it's somehow interesting? And I don't want to offend you. I'm trying to understand you.

I think Gygax and the other people who designed the original system intended the dice rolls to somewhat replicate what we call "luck" or "chance" in real life. For instance a very skilled sword fighter(high THACO) trying to strike a very weak and unskilled character(very low AC) will sometimes miss because of randomness or another interference, just as in real life. Likewise the weak character attacking the strong character might get a stroke of luck and critically hit him.

This isn't perfect but replicates real life somewhat. E.g: A phenomenal boxer like Mike Tyson will sometimes get knocked out by a mediocre fighter because of one lucky punch.

I do like the system and having mathematical odds being a part of gameplay. Most good rpgs feature it somewhat, as a recent example I would name Battle Brothers(one of the best tactical tb combat games ever designed probably). I understand if you don't. To each their own.

I agree that it's good in terms of a battle system.
I just don't like how it affects other actions. Like, for example, dialogue choices. I don't feel like it's realistic when my orc warrior with huge axe can't scare a weak goblin, because the dices decided that I can't do it this time.

 

[Harthwain]

I don't feel like it's realistic when my orc warrior with huge axe can't scare a weak goblin, because the dices decided that I can't do it this time.

OK, at this point you must be trolling, Mr 1-Month-Old Account.

 

[Barbarian]

Gygax was influenced by heroic fantasy, so obviously the game rules need to feature the unlikely happening by chance.

Like when you were reading the Lord of the Rings you likely weren't pissed off when a hobbit refused to be intimidated and run away from the Witch King of Angmar atop a monstrous flying steed, or how Frodo resisted the ring's influence despite said artifact managing to corrupt powerful kings and sorcerers.

You are just pissed off now because your goblin enemy resisted being intimidated by your orc warrior due to a bad dice roll.

 

[Lemming42]

I just don't like how it affects other actions. Like, for example, dialogue choices. I don't feel like it's realistic when my orc warrior with huge axe can't scare a weak goblin, because the dices decided that I can't do it this time.

The point of D&D (and RPGs as a whole) isn't usually to be realistic. In tabletop you'd work that failed roll into the story - maybe that goblin is unusually courageous, maybe they're just having a worse day than you are and aren't in the mood to be pushed around, maybe you stuttered and misspoke while trying to be scary and you're just too funny to take seriously at this point, etc.

If you want your dialogue skills to just let you succeed in all circumstances then I don't get the point of the game; you're just walking around clicking the "win" button in the assurance that everything will always go the way you want and your character will never face an unexpected obstacle or slip-up or hardship. The die rolls are there to make sure that doesn't happen and that the story remains interesting because you're not He-Man and you don't always get what you want.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

I just don't like how it affects other actions. Like, for example, dialogue choices. I don't feel like it's realistic when my orc warrior with huge axe can't scare a weak goblin, because the dices decided that I can't do it this time.

If you want your dialogue skills to just let you succeed in all circumstances then I don't get the point of the game; you're just walking around clicking the "win" button in the assurance that everything will always go the way you want and your character will never face an unexpected obstacle or slip-up or hardship. The die rolls are there to make sure that doesn't happen and that the story remains interesting because you're not He-Man and you don't always get what you want.

It worked really well in Fallout: New Vegas, for example. If you have a necessary skill level for this specific interaction, your skill checks success every time for this specific interaction.

 

[Lemming42]

It worked really well in Fallout: New Vegas, for example. If you have a necessary skill level for this specific interaction, your skill checks success every time for this specific interaction.

IMO that's a worse system than a roll, especially because you can end up in very arbitrary situations where you have one point less than whatever the devs decided the necessary check is, which is surely more annoying than failing a die roll. Failing a roll means your character failed the challenge, failing to meet the exact skill amount means that Josh Sawyer decides you failed/won this one based on whatever you did last time you were forcibly levelled up.

Worth noting that New Vegas was the only Fallout game to do that, all the others used percentage checks afaik, albeit with ceilings that ensured 100% success if you had a particularly high skill.

But yeah, when you fail a skill check you're not meant to be annoyed, you're meant to be interested that the plot is taking a new direction. If you fail to intimidate a goblin then it's meant to be exciting because your party is now in peril, same as a movie hero getting caught by guards or whatever. Don't even view it as a failure; your character failed in the story, but you yourself are just experiencing a new branch of gameplay.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

It worked really well in Fallout: New Vegas, for example. If you have a necessary skill level for this specific interaction, your skill checks success every time for this specific interaction.

IMO that's a worse system than a roll, especially because you can end up in very arbitrary situations where you have one point less than whatever the devs decided the necessary check is, which is surely more annoying than failing a die roll. Failing a roll means your character failed the challenge, failing to meet the exact skill amount means that Josh Sawyer decides you failed/won this one based on whatever you did last time you were forcibly levelled up.

Worth noting that New Vegas was the only Fallout game to do that, all the others used percentage checks afaik, albeit with ceilings that ensured 100% success if you had a particularly high skill.

But yeah, when you fail a skill check you're not meant to be annoyed, you're meant to be interested that the plot is taking a new direction. If you fail to intimidate a goblin then it's meant to be exciting because your party is now in peril.

It also worked great in Arcanum: you could only use specific dialogue choices if you had specific amount of ranks in Persuasion skill.
I would agree with your argument about failed skill checks making the game more interesting and unpredictable if it was made like this in BG3, like in Disco Elysium, for example. But in Baldur's Gate 3 failed skill checks don't lead to a "different way of the development of the events", it just make things worse and less interesting. For example, you fail to pass the skillcheck because of the dices -> you don't get the quest line, and you have to kill this NPC instead, removing all his story from the game world.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

I don't feel like it's realistic when my orc warrior with huge axe can't scare a weak goblin, because the dices decided that I can't do it this time.

OK, at this point you must be trolling, Mr 1-Month-Old Account.

Sorry if my words made you think like this. This is not trolling, I swear. But there are aspects of this game that I don't like. And I don't think I should be silent about them. I spent quite a lot of time in this game, so I think I have the right to say what I think about it.

 

[Hydro]

where a great effort was made to be faithful to tabletop

Yup, that great that people had to make thousands of threads so that Larian reverted their homebrew retardation. And even that didn’t help much (say hi to shove as a bonus action)

 

[Barbarian]

where a great effort was made to be faithful to tabletop

Yup, that great that people had to make thousands of threads so that Larian reverted their homebrew retardation. And even that didn’t help much (say hi to shove as a bonus action)

Most changes were decent. Like making some shitty classes actually hold their own(i.e: Monk). The shove change is probably due to their love of verticality and ample use in game. If it were an action the player would be inclined to rarely ever use it.

It is still by far the most "hardcore" adaptation. Reminder that the original series was "TB with pause" and bothered very little with actual roleplay and choice and consequence. Outside for the choice "class stronghold" questline in BG2 it didn't even acknowledge your chosen class in dialogs - not even for flavor.

 

[Harthwain]

Sorry if my words made you think like this. This is not trolling, I swear. But there are aspects of this game that I don't like. And I don't think I should be silent about them. I spent quite a lot of time in this game, so I think I have the right to say what I think about it.

It is not about being silent. It is about you saying "it is not realistic" when realism isn't really playing the part here. Actions have difficulty level and in order to succeed at them you need to roll high enough. That's it. Having a fully deterministic system would be boring, especially on repeated playthrough. It's not like the system doesn't have ways to mitigate the skill checks' difficulty (as Barbarian mentioned already).

And yet you dare to judge others of "having a really bad taste" when talking about the classic RPG system? On a forum dedicated to RPGs (I will remind you, it is called "rpgcodex")? How is this not trolling? Add to that the fact that your account is barely 1-month-old and it should be no wonder it smells really fishy reading your posts.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Sorry if my words made you think like this. This is not trolling, I swear. But there are aspects of this game that I don't like. And I don't think I should be silent about them. I spent quite a lot of time in this game, so I think I have the right to say what I think about it.

It is not about being silent. It is about you saying "it is not realistic" when realism isn't really playing the part here. Actions have difficulty level and in order to succeed at them you need to roll high enough. That's it. Having a fully deterministic system would be boring, especially on repeated playthrough. It's not like the system doesn't have ways to mitigate the skill checks' difficulty (as Barbarian mentioned already).

And yet you dare to judge others of "having a really bad taste" when talking about the classic RPG system? On a forum dedicated to RPGs (I will remind you, it is called "rpgcodex")? How is this not trolling? Add to that the fact that your account is barely 1-month-old and it should be no wonder it smells really fishy reading your posts.

You say that it's not about realism, but in the last 3 pages there were tons of arguments that thee D&D system is realistic:

This isn't perfect but replicates real life somewhat.

for example.
And about me saying that another user is having a bad taste - could you please check the post I was responding to? This guy literally told me that I have to, I quote:

maybe you should just fuck yourself

What you want me to respond to this? Give him a bouquet of flowers?