Baldur's Gate 3

Man of Honour
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We are in a good position to have both games available let's face it. Spoilt for choice.
Yup, now we as gamers need to keep this momentum. Gaming has been around for over 40 years now, its really overdue time that gamers stopped accepting poor implementations or not expecting games to move forward. Its ludicrous to me how often gamers will accept games and game engines which have the exact same issues as 20 years ago. We should be holding games to a higher level of account and be taking a stand of no, no its not alright that my character has fallen through the terrain again, or that there are clipping issues with my clothing or weapons, or that my inventory just disappeared or I have to make 4 mouse clicks to do something which should have been hotkeyable. Half the reason (probably more than half really) why games have issues is because gamers keep accepting the issues. Starfield is the latest of these, I've seen so many people say things like "oh you have to accept X because its Bethesda" ...no, we darned well shouldnt be accepting it just because. We should be raising our expectations of whats acceptable, especially 40 years into an industry.
 
Man of Honour
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It was the mechanics. I hated D:OS mechanics. Played a few hours and binned it.
Ah yeah, in that case you might have the same issues with BG3 as its the same engine, the story, depth, skills, spells and animations, cutscenes, VA etc are all vastly improved but in terms of engine mechanics its still the same DOS engine underneath.
 
Soldato
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Yup, now we as gamers need to keep this momentum. Gaming has been around for over 40 years now, its really overdue time that gamers stopped accepting poor implementations or not expecting games to move forward. Its ludicrous to me how often gamers will accept games and game engines which have the exact same issues as 20 years ago. We should be holding games to a higher level of account and be taking a stand of no, no its not alright that my character has fallen through the terrain again, or that there are clipping issues with my clothing or weapons, or that my inventory just disappeared or I have to make 4 mouse clicks to do something which should have been hotkeyable. Half the reason (probably more than half really) why games have issues is because gamers keep accepting the issues. Starfield is the latest of these, I've seen so many people say things like "oh you have to accept X because its Bethesda" ...no, we darned well shouldnt be accepting it just because. We should be raising our expectations of whats acceptable, especially 40 years into an industry.

I do not disagree but lets face it, gamers are the most fickle people in existence :D I include myself in that!
 
Man of Honour
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Did anyone play the ones like Icewind Dale? I recall not liking it as much because you had to make the whole party yourself.
I pretty much exclusively play co-op on any game which allows it, so bit less of an issue for me that one when it comes to Icewind Dale. Having said that, I just never really gelled with the story of ID , wasnt really a setting that clicked with me
 
Caporegime
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Did anyone play the ones like Icewind Dale? I recall not liking it as much because you had to make the whole party yourself.
Played IWD2. Memorable for using 3e instead of 2.5e like BG, iirc.

It was all about min maxing. You made your whole party and unless you had a *lot* of damage potential in your party, you were going to have a bad time. Never completed it, always got bored. The story was just not all that compelling.

IWD2 was a series of encounters/fights loosely connected by a story I didn't really care about. It was all about building a party to do max damage to a lot of enemies quickly.
 
Soldato
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Yeah I never actually finished it and I'm pretty sure the story was the issue. It was more of just a dungeon crawler.
I recall I wanted to play one called The temple of elemental evil but I never managed to get it when I was younger.
I'm currently in a mausoleum allegedly doing Astarion's personal quest but I think shadow heart has some thing to do with it as well.
One of the many unknowns that bugs me is I never did get the full potential out of a certain book I found. I wonder if I can do so later on in the game or if I have missed something. It's that kind of thing I don't want to look up. I'd rather it just remains a mystery.
 
Soldato
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I was hooked with the game up until the CITY and I think it's because unlike the first two acts, it's mainly all still the city. Going through lush landscapes and shadow realms was very interesting, but it then ends up a trek through street after street, sewer after sewer for most of the game.

Was saying this to my friend, I think Act 3 isn't as interesting because it's too city-centric.

What I think could have worked well was a bit of a village/countryside tour before hitting a smaller city, I think the game had to end in the city area but it's a fairly large city zone currently.

For what it's worth, on my 2nd play through, I skipped some of the city events I'd played before. Instead I focused on some of the main missions. Does feel like you could catch different bits of the city on repeat runs instead of trying to do it all in one.

212 hours played time so far.

I'm doing a hardcore 4 man co-op game with some friends on Tactician, by hardcore we mean no re-loading, if we wipe, we end the run. Some other rules we added as well such as not allowing long rests too often without penalty (having to pay more food for LR) and not allowing respec.

At some point I will come back and do a new one of this with a focus on taking the good actions and mixing up my party, but will chill for a bit and play other stuff outside of my co-op game.
 
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Soldato
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Was doing a trial of Shar and an epic crossbow I had has vanished, it has not been dropped it has simply vanished completely, a bit annoying.

edit: I'm not alone, another known bug.
 
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Soldato
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Was saying this to my friend, I think Act 3 isn't as interesting because it's too city-centric.

What I think could have worked well was a bit of a village/countryside tour before hitting a smaller city, I think the game had to end in the city area but it's a fairly large city zone currently.

Totally agree. After the wonderfully varied environments and generally structured progression (albeit with lots of choices) you get used to in Acts 1 and 2, getting thrown into the bustle and bright lights (literally) of a big city in Act 3 feels jarring. The main story loses some coherence and too many side quests hit you at once. It's easily to feel rudderless and overwhelmed. It gets better when once find your bearings and I get that some of this is probably intentional from a story development point of view. But for me it's made Act 3 less enjoyable than the other acts.

I'm doing a hardcore 4 man co-op game with some friends on Tactician, by hardcore we mean no re-loading, if we wipe, we end the run. Some other rules we added as well such as not allowing long rests too often without penalty (having to pay more food for LR) and not allowing respec.

Very brave indeed. I've nearly completed the game on tactician now and I will freely admit to having needed to save scum / reload at certain points to be able to progress. The dice rolls are rigged against you in tactician mode. It's intentional, Larion have confirmed there's always a +2 / -2 advantage / disadvantage to rolls. That doesn't sound too bad, but because of the way the mechanics of D&D work it actually feels far worse than that in gameplay terms, the amount of misses and roll failures player characters get compared to enemies is huge.

I've not enjoyed tactician as much as balanced mode because of this, it makes the combat more frustrating than genuinely difficult. It's a very crude and artificial method to make the game more challenging. I'd suggest there's a good chance your party may get wiped by pure RNG cheese, rather than making the wrong decisions or being unlucky with initiative rolls etc. Good luck!
 
Soldato
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Thanks for beta testing :D

Thought you needed a hand, only so much testing someone can do before they lose all hope.

The bugs are numerous and frustrating though, I've been locked out of quests, and events because of them and they've hindered my enjoyment considerably. Game needs a lot of big fixes.
 
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Caporegime
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Anyone else felt it outstays it's welcome somewhat in Act 3?

I know it's strange to complain about too much content, and side quests are optional etc, but i've played it for 126 hours and it's still going.
 
Caporegime
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Read above........

The City part was mentioned many times! :cry:
I thought people were complaining about performance and bugs though, and the complaint I read was that a lot of the stuff compared to Act 1 and 2 was a bit half-baked.

If anything I was expecting it to be shorter.

Edit - Ah yeah, just read the posts above mine, lol
 
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Caporegime
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If anything I was expecting it to be shorter.

Act 3 is HUGE! But the problem is it's very constrained in one area, lots of back and forth in the City. Plus there's far more fighting and difficult bosses chucked at you again and again. Not to say Act 3 was bad far from it, but it lost the charm the first 2 acts did.

The Devil's house was awesome though!
 

TNA

TNA

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Thought you needed a hand, only so much testing someone can do before they lose all hope.

The bugs are numerous and frustrating though, I've been locked out of quests, and events because of them and they've hindered my enjoyment considerably. Game needs a lot of big fixes.

Your hard work and contribution are appreciated. Hopefully you will be done with your beta testing by Christmas sales on steam :D
 
Man of Honour
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Anyone else felt it outstays it's welcome somewhat in Act 3?

I know it's strange to complain about too much content, and side quests are optional etc, but i've played it for 126 hours and it's still going.
Not for me but then again, it took me 274 hours to complete Pathfinder 1 and 240ish hours to complete Pathfinder 2, so I'm used to crpgs taking me a loooong time to finish. No doubt Rogue Trader will take me 250 or so hours too :)
 
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