D&D 5E Baldur's Gate 3 will allow us to explore the whole city of Baldur's Gate Seamlessly

[Paul Farquhar]

Larian is known for density of interesting things to do in its towns and cities.

Which is extremely unrealistic. I live on the edge of London, and whilst London has lots of interesting stuff to see and do, it is separated by mile after mile of boring housing. So they invented the underground railway so you could travel between the interesting stuff without having to encounter all the boring stuff.

 

[Oofta]

Which is extremely unrealistic. I live on the edge of London, and whilst London has lots of interesting stuff to see and do, it is separated by mile after mile of boring housing. So they invented the underground railway so you could travel between the interesting stuff without having to encounter all the boring stuff.

To be fair, modern society and the ease of rapid transportation has contributed dramatically to urban sprawl. London isn't as bad as some U.S. cities (lawns! acres of grass for no reason everywhere!) but in pre-modern times population density was several times higher in cities than it is now.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To be fair, modern society and the ease of rapid transportation has contributed dramatically to urban sprawl. London isn't as bad as some U.S. cities (lawns! acres of grass for no reason everywhere!) but in pre-modern times population density was several times higher in cities than it is now.

Grassy lawns are good for the environment. One of the reasons London has been plagued by flooding recently is so many lawns have been covered over for parking that there is nowhere for the rain to soak away.

 

[Oofta]

Grassy lawns are good for the environment. One of the reasons London has been plagued by flooding recently is so many lawns have been covered over for parking that there is nowhere for the rain to soak away.

Gah! No! Grass lawns are terrible for the environment, terrible for pollinators, terrible for other critters all while increasing greenhouse gases. They shouldn't be covered over but there are so many options to over-fertilized, over-watered acre after acre of the equivalent of a green desert. Grass has it's place, but so do native plants. Better than concrete I suppose, just not by much.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled D&D discussion before Oofta starts ranting conspiracy theories about how grass actually has a linked hive mind and is psychically influencing people to plant and care for ever more grass.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Granted its been some time.

1. The chain of movement in terms of party control was comically bad for any kind of modern or even old (BG1 did it better) game.
2. Rests were free, no opportunity cost and you could get out of any location with it and dropped back into your 'camp'.
3. There was no sense of time/scale. The map was just this small area yet packed with set piece encounters to demonstrate how great either blowing up barrels or pushing people off of edges was.
4. Pushing people was essentially what Larian thought was the greatest mechanic of all time, closely followed by blowing up barrels.
5. Eating the leg of a dwarf, in combat, negating any kind of thought process around healing in combat. "Almost dead, eat this dwarf thigh!"

Maybe this was all addressed, I dont know. I wasnt able to get a refund so I'll be installing it to try it regardless.

I haven't played it -- I've never really cared for the BG series -- but #2, #3, and #4 just scream "I'm playing an early access game!" or "I'm playing a tech demo!" They need testing on certain elements and want players to give feedback on certain elements, so, yes, they feature those elements. I'm not sure why that would upset you. I don't mean to be rude, but I genuinely don't understand what you were expecting from an early access game, because this sort of experience is exactly what I would assume would be there.

#5 seems... eh. I mean, if you rename the item "healing potion" then it's literally how D&D has worked for 50 years. If the item being a joint of meat breaks your verisimilitude then sure, okay. But isn't that at least a little quibbling? It almost sounds to me like it's an inside joke for Castlevania wall meat.

I'm not sure what you mean by #1. I assume you mean the pathfinding when moving the party across the map? That is actually one of the most complicated things to tune, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's working poorly in an early version of the game. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they never fix it because game development is always rushed, but tuning the pathfinding is deceptively complicated. That's why so many games screw it up.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

so do native plants.

Grass is a native species in London.

 

[Oofta]

Grass is a native species in London.

As are many other bushes, shrubs and flowers. It's the monoculture of grass (typically Kentucky Bluegrass in the US) that has tons of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and water applied to keep that lush green golf-course level grass growing at just the right height that I take issue with.

But also? You're taking my rant against grass way too seriously.

EDIT: my only real point was that population density in large cities was extremely high, something I've been looking into when developing details for a new city-centric campaign.

 

[MarkB]

Which is extremely unrealistic.

Less so than having a similar density of points of interest in a wilderness map.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But also? You're taking my rant against grass way too seriously.

No, it's a valid point. My own lawn has a diverse mix of native species: daisies, dandelions, clover, moss, buttercups...

 

[Scribe]

I haven't played it -- I've never really cared for the BG series -- but #2, #3, and #4 just scream "I'm playing an early access game!" or "I'm playing a tech demo!" They need testing on certain elements and want players to give feedback on certain elements, so, yes, they feature those elements. I'm not sure why that would upset you. I don't mean to be rude, but I genuinely don't understand what you were expecting from an early access game, because this sort of experience is exactly what I would assume would be there.

#5 seems... eh. I mean, if you rename the item "healing potion" then it's literally how D&D has worked for 50 years. If the item being a joint of meat breaks your verisimilitude then sure, okay. But isn't that at least a little quibbling? It almost sounds to me like it's an inside joke for Castlevania wall meat.

I'm not sure what you mean by #1. I assume you mean the pathfinding when moving the party across the map? That is actually one of the most complicated things to tune, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's working poorly in an early version of the game. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they never fix it because game development is always rushed, but tuning the pathfinding is deceptively complicated. That's why so many games screw it up.

At this point if some of these things have been fixed/addressed as noted by a few posts in the thread, its not worth the time for me to go over it all.

I will say however that Larian's forums had multiple threads on these items, and Larian never (at the time I was still following development) commented on any of these being slated to be addressed, and in fact leaned into some of them as 'features' when clearly it was just residual code from their other game.

If stuff has been changed by now? Great. I still own it already, so I'll give it a shot.