What has Larian been doing the last few years? BG3 is half baked

[MfA]

I think no programmer/designer at Larian has ever played any infinity engine games or any of its successors ... they bashed everything into D:OS mold as much as possible, mostly in a way which makes no fucking sense.

The way entry into turn based works, lack of autopause on detection, the way formation doesn't work, the insanely bad ability GUI ... there's so many little conventions and QoL which are standard to the genre which they couldn't be bothered to implement in all these years of EA, while everyone threw AAA money at them for what's really a AA game, which I'd rate below WotR in technical accomplishment and content as far as single player is concerned. The fact it can work in multiplayer is a ton of work of course, but it's irrelevant to me and no excuse to short change the single player experience.

Lazy gamedevs strike again.

 

[pcchen]

Personally I prefer BG3 to BG2. I didn't play BG2 too much because the whole thing is too complex to make combat an enjoyable experience, but I like BG3's combat. Of course that's just me, but I think it's a design choice (which I prefer), not because they are lazy.

 

[Daozang]

I have BG2 and the Shadows of Amn expansion in their original boxes.
If I wanted to play those, I'd just do that...
What I honestly miss from back then, is the boxes, the manuals and the maps.
The games were amazing for their time, but very hard to play in this day and age...

 

[Seanspeed]

"I can see perfectly well there's an existing and active Baldur's Gate 3 thread right there, but I am a very important person and my opinion on the game deserves its own topic".

 

[Bludd]

i totally prefer turn based to real-time with pause

pro-tip enter turnbased mode and prepare your attack to get surprise

 

[Subtlesnake]

The game enters turn based mode whenever you are detected by the enemy, so I don't understand what "autopause" is supposed to do. Unless you want to trigger turn based mode beforehand and find it too much work to click a button on screen or use a keyboard shortcut.

Also calling something "bad" without providing more information is practically useless as feedback.

 

[MfA]

It doesn't pause on trap detection, turning it into a quick time event minigame inside a turn based game. It also doesn't pause on finding hidden objects, which is fun when it happens in cluttered environments and the glow is long gone by the time you have a good camera view. Half the time it doesn't show up on alt highlighting either. so now you can go pixel hunting.

Reading back through the EA, this has been complained about from the start. They broke with convention of the genre ... why?

 

[pcchen]

It pauses when there's a significant trap (e.g. something spewing fire), so I think it's again a design choice. Making it a toggable option is better, of course, if one happens to prefer being paused all the time.

 

[Bludd]

yeah it automatically turns on turn-based in at least one trap, but it may be considered a tutorial. there are some other traps and events in act1 where that does not happen

maybe there will be a mod for mfa or it will be added in a patch

 

[MfA]

It pauses when there's a significant trap (e.g. something spewing fire), so I think it's again a design choice. Making it a toggable option is better, of course, if one happens to prefer being paused all the time.

You have to pause any way. If you try to use a quick move command with a controlled party, clumped up with no formation, they will gleefully walk through the trap.

 

[pcchen]

You have to pause any way. If you try to use a quick move command with a controlled party, clumped up with no formation, they will gleefully walk through the trap.

I think there are other solutions. For example, it can be made when one found a trap, he or she tells others to stop walking, so the game does not have to be paused.

 

[Subtlesnake]

You have to pause any way. If you try to use a quick move command with a controlled party, clumped up with no formation, they will gleefully walk through the trap.

Maybe it depends on the trap type? I just completed a dungeon filled with mines on the floor, and my party members always walked around them once spotted.

But you can right click to cancel the movement and hit shift + space to enter turn based mode. Personally I find using turn based mode to move characters around traps even more of a pain, so normally I just stop and disarm the trap.

 

[MfA]

Another bloody annoying thing, camp supplies. I read that way back in ye olden days of the first couple patches you could eat them, okay so it makes sense to keep them in inventory. Except they removed that, so why not just make it the default to send them straight to camp? That's all they are ever useful for. I guess roleplayers would object to the automagic aspect, but most people would appreciate it. (Most people would probably appreciate the PF shared stash too.)
Minimap is annoying with rotation, you can lock it but it has no vision cone to show facing direction, so useless. I'd rather just have the PF clickable map (which was missing a minimap, but at least the map was fully functional). Of course ideally you have both. Clicking on the map moves your viewcone there, minimap with locked north and vision cone visible ... they should syncretize the best of the rich history of isometric RPGs, with so much money to spend why not?
I still can't get over how bad the hot bar is. Abilities and items dumped willy nilly in a big poorly sorted pile. You can man handle it into something usable, but it's a ton of fiddly work ... how does that work on consoles? There's so many games to borrow ideas from and this is where they end up? I just can't imagine the designers played games in the genre ... otherwise how do you end up with something this shit?

How the hell does Larian get away with so little criticism of this game? So much people, so much money, so little effort at the UI, so much single player conventions completely thrown away because they would be useless in multiplayer even though single player is still the main mode of play.

BG3 is good and original ...

 

[Subtlesnake]

How the hell does Larian get away with so little criticism of this game? So much people, so much money, so little effort at the UI, so much single player conventions completely thrown away because they would be useless in multiplayer even though single player is still the main mode of play.

Probably because people care much more about the gameplay, world and story than the UI being perfect. Like, the camp supplies issue you mention costs a couple of clicks, and after a few encounters you figure out where everything is on the hotbar. But I agree it would be nice to have a QoL patch to sort out some of these issues, especially not being able to manage the inventory of non-party members.

 

[Bludd]

i tried to play with minimap not rotating but it was more confusing for some reason

 

[MfA]

They need to show the camera direction on a non rotating minimap, otherwise it's almost useless.