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

[Relic]

1 minute ago, Arakasi said:

I hope that isn’t a thing throughout this game. You give restoration points like that and it really throws away a lot of the tension that drives low level d&d play. Having to balance spells slots, short rests, potion/scroll use is a big part of driving play.

its not. i reckon its just Illithid tutorial stuff

[Werthead]

The restoration points are on the illithid ship only so far. There's one area where you can drink from a fountain to get a temporary "refreshed" buff. That's it so far (bearing in mind I'm still on the first map - after the illithid ship introduction after 10 hours).

I bailed on 

Spoiler

the hag boss fight. The door that allows you to go outside to camp also just allows you to leave altogether. Returned to the druid's camp, did some stuff around there, and now heading over to the goblin camp to rescue the druid and see if I can negotiate peace between the goblins and druids, and solve the tiefling refugee crisis. And find the githyanki camp. Lots of moving pieces in the game at the moment.

The githyanki being so prominent in the game is quite amusing considering this board and their naming history (the name was created by GRRM for Dying of the Light in 1977, then stolen by future SF author Charles Stross when he contributed to the D&D 1E Fiend Folio the following year, and he didn't tell George until like five years ago because he was mildly embarrassed by it).

[IlyaP]

40 minutes ago, Relic said:

that's how 5e works. You lvl up and you get shit. Sometimes you pick what it is, most often you dont. Spell casters have more options. At third level you can pick a subclass, and you can multi class at any level. Not sure how else you'd like the game to tell you that you gained new abilities. 

No complaints with that - that's totally fine. It's more a question of how Larian chose to implement that visually, with the text ZIPPING over your character, FULL OF SPARKLES! It's very In Your Face in execution, and reminded me a lot of some mobile ARPG games I've played, like Blade Bound, which stands in stark contrast to the level alert system used in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. 

[Werthead]

Yeah, the game is a bit IN YOUR FACE at times.

I'm wondering if the DRAMATIC DICE ROLLs calm the fuck down at some point, as they're starting to get a bit obnoxious.

I'm also starting to wonder if I'm cursed. I've had to do three Advantage rolls so far (roll 2d20, take the better result) and so far I've massively failed every one, which seems statistically improbable in the extreme.

I also found a great mod to increase the party size to 6 (as god and BG1/2 intended), but apparently it can make the the game very easy (since it only increases party size, it doesn't rebalance encounters). Also, it disables achievements which I prefer not to do for a first playthrough.

[IlyaP]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, the game is a bit IN YOUR FACE at times.

I'm wondering if the DRAMATIC DICE ROLLs calm the fuck down at some point, as they're starting to get a bit obnoxious.

I'm also starting to wonder if I'm cursed. I've had to do three Advantage rolls so far (roll 2d20, take the better result) and so far I've massively failed every one, which seems statistically improbable in the extreme.

I also found a great mod to increase the party size to 6 (as god and BG1/2 intended), but apparently it can make the the game very easy (since it only increases party size, it doesn't rebalance encounters). Also, it disables achievements which I prefer not to do for a first playthrough.

I really like how chill Solasta: Crown of the Magister was about dice rolls and its levelling up scheme. It's implemented in a very charming but unobtrusive manner, with small dice rolls for certain actions appearing above player characters' heads briefly, rather than taking up the whole screen space. It's far less dramatic. 

[IlyaP]

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I also found a great mod to increase the party size to 6 (as god and BG1/2 intended), but apparently it can make the the game very easy (since it only increases party size, it doesn't rebalance encounters). Also, it disables achievements which I prefer not to do for a first playthrough.

As in, Steam achievements? People don't still care about that...do they?

[Fez]

 

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

This doesn't entirely feed into the turn based/realtime argument. The two Pathfinder CRPGs allow you to switch between RTWP and turn-based and they managed it extremely well. In fact, once you get over the prettiness of BG3 and the extreme granularity of detail, I'm not hugely sure that BG3 is a better game than Kingmaker, aside from not having the very-badly-explained kingdom management side-game in it.

The issue is that real-time fights go a lot faster. So games designed for real-time at first (like Pathfinder, or PoE) have a lot of filler fights so that players get plenty of combat time. But those quick fights become extremely tedious when you're doing them in turn-based mode. Whereas in games designed for turn-based combat it generally means (at least for Larian) that there are no filler fights. Every fight is custom designed and more involved, and there's a lot fewer of them. I'm about 8 hours into the game (I restarted once already) and I think I've had fewer total fights than just the Market Square map in Act 1 of WoTR. But each fight has so much more going on.

5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I'm also starting to wonder if I'm cursed. I've had to do three Advantage rolls so far (roll 2d20, take the better result) and so far I've massively failed every one, which seems statistically improbable in the extreme.

Not relevant to this specific issue, but, speaking of dice rolls, I strongly recommend everyone go into the setting and turn off 'Karmic Dice', which is on by default. Karmic Dice mean that the dice rolls aren't really random (for both you or the enemies). Instead, there's increased odds of successful rolls if enough failures happen. Not only does this go against all laws and spirits of DnD, it has some practical negative effects. For instance it means AC becomes less valuable because dice will start getting weighted to roll high enough to hit. 

 

Anyway, the game's incredible and pretty much everything I'd want from a DnD game. The amount of reactivity seems insane too. I feel like I've avoided several big fights simply because of my character's race and right now I'm freely wandering an area that it seems like most races would need to fight their way through.

[Relic]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

I'm wondering if the DRAMATIC DICE ROLLs calm the fuck down at some point, as they're starting to get a bit obnoxious.

 

Would be cool if the d20 rolls were sped up a bit, but i like them in theory. Nice to add guidance and stuff like that to a roll before it happens. 

[Durckad]

19 minutes ago, Relic said:

Would be cool if the d20 rolls were sped up a bit, but i like them in theory. Nice to add guidance and stuff like that to a roll before it happens. 

Yeah, I don't mind the visual style of the rolls, but speeding them up would be very nice.

[Arakasi]

It sounds Ilya that you would really like Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. It’s PF1 instead of 5e but I consider that an improvement. It has real time with pause, it has a great story (not sure if better than what we have here since Ive heard great things about the bf3 story) and even better character options and mechanics that change your story and how you play the game.

 

Anyway I hope to be able to sit down tonight and get some time in with BG3. Just hard with kids and life and all.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

It sounds Ilya that you would really like Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. It’s PF1 instead of 5e but I consider that an improvement. It has real time with pause, it has a great story (not sure if better than what we have here since Ive heard great things about the bf3 story) and even better character options and mechanics that change your story and how you play the game.

I did actually pick up Wrath of the Righteous, and I really enjoyed the music, art, design, but then it threw in a quasi-RTS fort/town management system that I found frustrating to navigate, and kinda halted the game in the tracks for me. 

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

Anyway I hope to be able to sit down tonight and get some time in with BG3. Just hard with kids and life and all.

I can only imagine. That was one of the things that really put me off the game - 75 hours? Really? How are the folks with kids going to ever finish this game? (I don't have any kids, and am inbetween jobs at the moment, and even to me, it just fills me with anxiety, to contemplate a game that long with so many personally frustrating features.)

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

Anyway I hope to be able to sit down tonight and get some time in with BG3. Just hard with kids and life and all.

Adding to this: my older brother has 2 kids and he and his wife both have pretty mentally demanding jobs, so he's doing like, 1-2 hours a day, if he can. I suspect I'm going to be hearing about this game and his progress for many a moon!  Are your kids still in the pre-teen phase of life, where they're in bed early enough to allow you game time? 

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

The issue is that real-time fights go a lot faster. So games designed for real-time at first (like Pathfinder, or PoE) have a lot of filler fights so that players get plenty of combat time.

I think Josh Sawyer called them "trash mob fights"? Is that the correct term? I honestly didn't mind them, as it was all pretty speedy, and I only ever play on storyteller mode, as I'm there for the story, the lore, character banter, and the world they created (which is an inverted Dalelands, if memory serves). 

Your perspective here is interesting, in that at no point ever, in the hundreds of hours I put into PoE 1 and 2, did I ever think about fights as being filler, as they ofter occurred in locations that to me felt logical and reasonable. Road-side bandits, alleyway muggers, grave robbers with hired mercs, etc. 

But I did appreciate that most fights were over pretty quickly, and let me get on with exploring, and replaying the game with different characters, to get the most out of the game. (As a side note: PoE 1 got me through a period of several clinical depression, and was a lifeline when I'd gotten whammied by my recurring depression, so it will forever hold a really important spot in my life - and it means so much to me that I even got a PoE tattoo.)

4 hours ago, Fez said:

But those quick fights become extremely tedious when you're doing them in turn-based mode. Whereas in games designed for turn-based combat it generally means (at least for Larian) that there are no filler fights. Every fight is custom designed and more involved, and there's a lot fewer of them.

Oh do those quick fights ever become tedious in turn-based mode. But how do you, as a player, determine whether or not a fight is filler?  

[Arakasi]

My kids are 8 and 3 and the 8 year olds bedtime is like 10pm so no not a lot of time.

[IlyaP]

12 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

My kids are 8 and 3 and the 8 year olds bedtime is like 10pm so no not a lot of time.

Oof. So this is gonna be a long-haul game for you, isn't it?

[Heartofice]

4 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Adding to this: my older brother has 2 kids and he and his wife both have pretty mentally demanding jobs, so he's doing like, 1-2 hours a day, if he can. I suspect I'm going to be hearing about this game and his progress for many a moon!  Are your kids still in the pre-teen phase of life, where they're in bed early enough to allow you game time? 

Same for me really, I get like an hour a night max if I'm lucky, so it's slow going. On this I understand the slight frustration with the time wasting elements like the rolling dice animation, plus even in the prologue bit I had to do that same dialogue bit to try and get Shadowheart out of her box a few times till I figured out just how far I needed to go to get the key. That sort of thing is potentially going to get annoying.

[IlyaP]

11 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Same for me really, I get like an hour a night max if I'm lucky, so it's slow going. On this I understand the slight frustration with the time wasting elements like the rolling dice animation, plus even in the prologue bit I had to do that same dialogue bit to try and get Shadowheart out of her box a few times till I figured out just how far I needed to go to get the key. That sort of thing is potentially going to get annoying.

Oh gods, an hour a night? Also a parent, I'm guessing? (Most of our friends are parents - we're not quite ready for that yet.)

It makes me wonder: you know how articles online suggest the game is anywhere between 75-100 hours? How much of that length is due to things like the rolling dice animation padding out the game's length? I suspect it's probably too early to really know for certain, but I can't help but wonder, y'know? Like, 10 extra seconds here, 6 extra seconds there, multiplied by, what, 100 instances? Maybe more...

[Poobah]

Didn't get to play much yesterday but pretty sure I remember that if you click on the rolling dice dice it resolves instantly.

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Didn't get to play much yesterday but pretty sure I remember that if you click on the rolling dice dice it resolves instantly.

Yeah this is true, I worked that out, I do like the animation though, it's satisfying. 

My first dilemma of the game was whether to take on a custom character or do one of the origin characters, suspected I might miss something juicy if I went custom, but apparently the recommendation is to go with custom for your first play through to truly get to grips with the game. 

Funnily enough my experience with D&D is pretty limited so I've always had a more Tolkienesque view of how these games should play out, I remember my BG2 playthorough playing as 4 Halflings. But I'm a massive fan of Vox Machina on Prime and that has very much expanded my view of the world. I did consider starting as Scanlan Shortholt as my first character in fact.

 

[Corvinus85]

Does the game remove one of the potential game companions if your custom character has the same class as theirs? I went with Fighter, and after the ship crash I've yet to encounter the gith? chick that is a fighter, too.

Also didn't realize that you can only have 4  characters in your party, others have to wait at the camp. The camp mechanic is a bit weird and slightly breaks immersion.