Baldur's Gate 3: On the Highway to the Nine Hells

[Poobah]

Details on Patch 2, no date but "soon" and "just around the corner" - promising big performance improvements.

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

I guess my restartitis has protected my from endgame problems. 

Edit:

I played me first 2 poper starts very melee heavy and now that I'm playing a Sorcerer I realized that I did not rest enough for things to happen in camp. Even with a Sorcerer I did multiple rests in a row at one point which triggered multiple events.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Luzifer's right hand

[Werthead]

Analysis of BG3's Act III problems suggests a major memory leak issue inherent in the game. That's usually easily identifiable and fixable in the game, so Larian should be able to get on top of that. In the meantime, performance in Act III can be temporarily fixed by quitting out of the whole game and then reloading. The problem is cumulative over time. I'm not sure if there was a microfix or something in the last few days, but it now seems to take about 2 hours from loading before the problem becomes insurmountable, which is much better than before, and going to other areas can help delay it.

The problem also seems to be inverted depending on the power of the graphics card (i.e. Captain Muggins over here with a 4090 seems to be faceplanting into the problem more than someone getting by on a 1080), which has been a consistent problem for multiple new releases over the last couple of years. Sigh.

Just reached Level 11. 74 hours into the game.

Spoiler

Just killed the Hag - again! - and have gained access to the House of Grief, aka the Temple of Shar. Also just carried out the aquatic storming of the undersea base called the Iron Throne and rescued Wyll's dad, despite Wyll breaking his contract earlier on. Mizora is amusingly just stewing at our camp.

On my to-do list right now:

• Raid Raphael's castle in Avernus to destroy the contract I ill-advisedly signed with him.
• Help Shadowheart find her parents in the Temple of Shar.
• Shut down the robot production line.
• Kill Jason Isaacs' character.
• Kill the Bhaal-person Orin, who has taken Lae'zel prisoner.
• Find Minsc (I should probably do this next, actually, otherwise I'll hardly have him in the game).
• Meet up with a second Harper stronghold (the first turned out to be shapeshifters).
• Kill Gale's vampire patron, or resolve that issue another way.

 

[Poobah]

Wow it really was right around the corner. Patch 2 has arrived.

Let's see how those performance enhancements feel. Savegames getting smaller and easier deletion of old saves sounds good too, my saves folder is definitely starting to bloat.

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Wow it really was right around the corner. Patch 2 has arrived.

Let's see how those performance enhancements feel. Savegames getting smaller and easier deletion of old saves sounds good too, my saves folder is definitely starting to bloat.

The patching speed for this game is great. I've gotten so used to waiting a quarter of a year for bugs to be fixed in previous patches from playing Warhammer 3 that this is blowing my mind.

[Relic]

16 hours ago, Poobah said:

Wow it really was right around the corner. Patch 2 has arrived.

Let's see how those performance enhancements feel. Savegames getting smaller and easier deletion of old saves sounds good too, my saves folder is definitely starting to bloat.

So it seems like some of the performance issues in Act 3 have been fixed, while others were not. Can anyone confirm?

[Werthead]

I did a large chunk of Act III last night

Spoiler

including meeting Boo! And Minsc, I guess.

And the memory leak problems do seem fixed. Performance still dips, but now it makes sense, like if there's tons of people on screen and you decide to zoom in and start spinning the camera like a madman. If you're not doing that, things seem more stable.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Werthead

[Relic]

46 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I did a large chunk of Act III last night

  Reveal hidden contents

including meeting Boo! And Minsc, I guess.

And the memory leak problems do seem fixed. Performance still dips, but now it makes sense, like if there's tons of people on screen and you decide to zoom in and start spinning the camera like a madman. If you're not doing that, things seem more stable.

I read that there's a setting to remove dynamic crowds or something. Will probs have to make use of that if I ever get to act 3 so that my laptop doesn't self combust 

[Arakasi]

Still runs hot on my deck but will have to see. Just haven’t had much time to play lately.

[Fez]

I got back in my new playthrough to where I was in Act II at the last light inn. And, despite 2 patches (one of which seemed to claim to fix this), I'm having the exact same issue as before: In the initial conversation with Jaheria I pass a DC 21 CHA check to hide the existence of the artifact; but then in the follow-up conversation she talks all about how the artifact will protect.

I don't usually get this hung up on relatively small stuff, but this completely breaks my immersion in the game and really puts me off playing any further. If my dialog choices are ignored this easily, what's the point of any of it?

[Luzifer's right hand]

Expectation: I'm a mighty sorcerer and I will kill everyone with spells!

Reality: I cast twinned haste on Karlach and Lae'zel. Everyone is dead at the end turn.

This is how my sorcerer playtrough is going after getting level 3 spells.

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Expectation: I'm a mighty sorcerer and I will kill everyone with spells!

Reality: I cast twinned haste on Karlach and Lae'zel. Everyone is dead at the end turn.

This is how my sorcerer playtrough is going after getting level 3 spells.

 

Lol, that's been my actual tabletop experience as a sorcerer too.

[Arakasi]

That’s been a problem with all forms of D&D. Give someone a hammer and everything looks like a nail. There have been attempts to push more versatility in options but they consistently fail to players desires to optimize the one best thing.

[Luzifer's right hand]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

Lol, that's been my actual tabletop experience as a sorcerer too.

With the concentration mechanic I can't even debuff effectively while buffing party members. If I get a 2nd turn I do deal decent damage but that mainly happend in boss fights. I stack haste and Elixir of Bloodlust(gives an extra action after a kill) on the martial characters.

Quite often any survivors of turn 1 die to Shadowheart walking near them after casting Spirit Guardians which is just amusing.

Edited September 3, 2023 by Luzifer's right hand

[Fez]

5 hours ago, Arakasi said:

That’s been a problem with all forms of D&D. Give someone a hammer and everything looks like a nail. There have been attempts to push more versatility in options but they consistently fail to players desires to optimize the one best thing.

It's just too easy to optimize in 5e though. I don't seek out perfect optimization in Pathfinder 1e because there's no need and because there's so many ways to do it. But in 5e, it's so obvious usually.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

It's just too easy to optimize in 5e though. I don't seek out perfect optimization in Pathfinder 1e because there's no need and because there's so many ways to do it. But in 5e, it's so obvious usually.

What's the difference there between those two systems? 

[Werthead]

4 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

What's the difference there between those two systems? 

Pathfinder is derived from D&D 3rd Edition, so it's similar to 5th Edition in broad strokes. The six abilities are the same, the ability modifiers are the same or similar, the base classes are similar, the species are mostly the same (apart from D&D-specific species like githyanki, mind flayers, dragonborn and beholders), the spells are mostly the same although some had to be renamed etc.

PF is different in that it has vastly more options than 5E. 5E is often called streamlined and 3E/PF is basically what it is streamlined from. 5E has a narrow-ish set of parameters for levelling up, but enough to differentiate things, but PF goes completely wild with multiclassing options, prestige classes, many more subclass options than D&D. It's pretty overwhelming. High optimised - if not outrageously broken - builds are the order of the day. PF does continue 3E's philosophy of having non-combat options, with a completely functional proper skill system (which 5E largely lacks, or under-emphasises considerably) to focus on non-combat solutions, although in practice murdering everything in sight is still the default.

(there is a PF 1st and 2nd Edition - PF1 and PF2 - but although there are some sizeable differences between them, in general philosophical approach they are similar)

[Arakasi]

15 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

What's the difference there between those two systems? 

What Fez was getting is that in PF1 while there is a bunch of broken stuff there is also like a bazillion different ways to get it. So there is lots of ways to get very strong builds and the toolbox is so big there is a lot of flexibility and creativity in how you throw it together. Ofc you can just go more vanilla and that works fine depending on the class. (It’s not like 5e doesn’t have sucky classes like Ranger or druid or monk either) 

Thing is with 5e the toolkit is much more limited and the ways of exploiting it are both more narrow and way more known. It generally boils down to exploiting ways of getting advantage or using bonus actions. As such every powerful 5e build looks much the same as it generally involves some mix of paladin, sorcerer and warlock. (With a dash of fighter thrown in for action surge)

As such 5e groups often feel very samey because everyone knows what is good and what is bad and the gap between them is just as huge as PF1. PF1 has ridiculously broken crap but every class has access to it so it feels more welcome to me. PF2 is an entirely different animal as they have nerfed power creep extremely. Think more like 4e where the difference between different classes is much smaller.

[IlyaP]

50 minutes ago, Werthead said:

High optimised - if not outrageously broken - builds are the order of the day. PF does continue 3E's philosophy of having non-combat options, with a completely functional proper skill system (which 5E largely lacks, or under-emphasises considerably) to focus on non-combat solutions, although in practice murdering everything in sight is still the default.

Was this an attempt at eliminating min-maxing, so that basically any build was a viable build? 

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

What Fez was getting is that in PF1 while there is a bunch of broken stuff there is also like a bazillion different ways to get it. So there is lots of ways to get very strong builds and the toolbox is so big there is a lot of flexibility and creativity in how you throw it together. Ofc you can just go more vanilla and that works fine depending on the class. (It’s not like 5e doesn’t have sucky classes like Ranger or druid or monk either) 

Yeah, exactly. And also, because all of the broken things can be great fun there's no need to try to find the exact perfect, optimized build. I'm not even sure if there is one (though I assume it involves vivisectionist levels somehow).

The weak character building aspect of 5e is the one big complaint I have about BG3. Some of the best fun I had in the Owlcat pathfinder games was simply figuring out what I wanted to do on the level-up screens.