Race to the bottom-corporate disagrees with Larian. The reasons are even more hilarious 'they have a team of 400'... Meanwhile said companies have over ten times the employees
That's a good question, the same could be said of inventory management as well. It's baffling given that divinity original sin 2 is so much better is both regards and is an earlier Larian title.
Also, for anyone in act 3
do not enter the haunted house, at least as of the current patch. It is the most frustrating encounter in the game, perhaps in any game I've played. Even with see invisibility it takes 5-6 turns to reveal each ghost so you will spend an hour and 30 minutes either waiting for them to be revealed or guessing where the ghost teleported to.
.
Which brings me to another point, act 3 has a ton of bugs for me. Just in a single fight alone I encountered 13. Enemies shooting and reacting through walls, getting a saving concentration throw but the spell still being canceled, enemies able to pickup 2 handed weapons with one hand (steelwatcher's blade) after dropping their weapons, player character turns being skipped when new enemies join the fight. spells and attacks disappearing, enemies not in the battle getting infinite reactions (counterspell for example countering my entire party's move), enemies taking 5 minutes per character to move, and much much more. Also in general invisibility in the game heavily favors the AI (at least on tactician difficulty, although given it's a base mechanic I doubt it's changes on lower levels). The AI has an ability called sense presence which doesn't use an action that has a higher chance of detecting invisible characters than if your full party has see invisibility. For the player, see invisibility is mostly worthless throughout the whole game. Given that it only grants you a chance to see invisible characters it is always better to have spent that time doing something else with your character.
Other mechanics need tweaking as well, like concentration. At least on the highest difficulty. Even with the war caster perk concentration is almost always broken for player characters. Compared to divinity original sin 2, BG 3 is pretty easy on the highest difficulty and the mechanics need quite a bit more polish.
Lets face it party management has always been clunky.
This is why i am waiting to play it still as the other acts people have not seen until release so more bugs and issue's will pop up and hopfully they be mostly fixed soon. Most likely will end up waiting a few months before i bother and i have own it from day one of the pre order.
Lets face it party management has always been clunky.
This is why i am waiting to play it still as the other acts people have not seen until release so more bugs and issue's will pop up and hopfully they be mostly fixed soon. Most likely will end up waiting a few months before i bother and i have own it from day one of the pre order.
More so than the bugs some of the mechanics need tuning as well. A lot of little things add up. The way the game applies cloud surfaces for example isn't consistent. The cloud produced by darkness (LVL II spell) overwrites the cloud produced by cloudkill (LVL 5 spell) when cast after cloudkill and over it by an enemy but cloudkill cannot overwrite darkness when cast by the player over an enemy's darkness. Both require concentration. If you ask me the higher level cloud should always take precedence much like it did in divinity original sin 2 where blessed or cursed clouds / surfaces could not be removed by non-blessed / non-cursed clouds / surfaces. Darkness also has a much higher collision box than the physical model shows. They should tweak the appearance to either better reflect the full collision boundaries or reduce the collision boundaries. There's been numerous occasions where I've had clear line of sight from high ground but the game prevents ranged attacks as darkness collides with LOS several feet above it. They should definitely tune the way invisibility works as well, unless they are sneaking the chance to see an invisible enemy with see invisibility should be near 100% as the spell allows your character to see invisible things the same as their regular vision and you don't roll with a chance for a saving throw just to see your enemies, that's silly.
Larian like to do big patches so I except you can just wait for a few of those to drop first. The enhanced edition they always release is going to take awhile given how large this game is. Given the sales numbers I sort of hope we see expansion packs.
Okay... Yeah I haven't had that but then I'm still replaying act 1 ad infinitum right now. Its how I do these games. First I roll everything and then I settle on something to play the thing for real Still enjoying > 80-90 FPS everywhere pretty much
In my experience, videogames are not evenly optimized throughout the entire title. Performance varies from scene to scene and some are better optimized than others. So when someone says a videogame stutters or lags, it's probably not every single microsecond of gameplay. It's usually occasional. It might actually happen consistently in certain areas or moments because -- surprise! -- that part of the software code is bad (or at least poorly optimized).
The Internet is full of BD3 anecdotes that some of the game's Acts are better tuned than others. That's unsurprisingly since humans (you know, game developers) have to optimize games. Also, the dev released the PC port a month early which makes one month less of software QA. I don't know what planet you live on but here on Planet Earth, less software QA usually isn't a desirable thing.
In my experience, videogames are not evenly optimized throughout the entire title. Performance varies from scene to scene and some are better optimized than others. So when someone says a videogame stutters or lags, it's probably not every single microsecond of gameplay. It's usually occasional. It might actually happen consistently in certain areas or moments because -- surprise! -- that part of the software code is bad (or at least poorly optimized).
The Internet is full of BD3 anecdotes that some of the game's Acts are better tuned than others. That's unsurprisingly since humans (you know, game developers) have to optimize games. Also, the dev released the PC port a month early which makes one month less of software QA. I don't know what planet you live on but here on Planet Earth, less software QA usually isn't a desirable thing.
Sometimes it's just an engine thing. Remember the jungle planet in Jedi Outcast? Terrible performance no matter what you ran it on.
Anyway refunded the game for now. I liked it, despite the rolls and narrator voice, but I felt it wasn't time for it. Will buy when it's on a sale. Or maybe even at full price, but in a few months... It pretty much feels like an Infinity engine DnD game, but good. Despite all my praise for Planescape: Torment, those old style DnD games never quite felt quite right. They were too clunky, too reliant on me being familiar with the universes in which they were set, somehow, and they never quite managed to grasp me, unless they were exceptional, like PS: T. It's honestly the same with Pillars of Eternity: it's a game that I want to love and play but for some reason there is a struggle to it. BG3 feels different, more inviting. Dunno.
It's very rare for a game developer to change a game title's engine during its lifetime.
However we are talking about BD3 here and the game runs better on Vulkan than DX11 right now on PC (the only platform it is available on). So it's less of an engine issue than poor DX11 optimization by the dev. I will point out that BD3 is an Unreal Engine 5 title. UE5 runs Fortnite quite well (on multiple platforms for that matter) so even more evidence that this is not strictly a "bad engine".
Anyhow, there's a lot more to video game quality than the number of polygons that can be painted in a second.
When you are an early adopter of a videogame, you definitely put yourself at the mercy of the developer's whims and interest in shipping a quality product at launch.
These days, very few publishers seem to care about putting out a quality title on Day 1.
Pity.
Game publishers realize that their audience has really, Really, REALLY low standards. Like incredibly low. That's typical of the modern videogame industry. There's no way a top tier Broadway musical could debut with a third of their primary cast forgetting dialogue, wearing incomplete costumes, singing off key, whatever. But videogamers as a whole aren't particular. Nothing new about this. It's even more commonplace now that the Internet is ubiquitous and publishers know they can push out a patch later (which they couldn't 25 years ago). Game publishers now count that teens and people in their twenties will happily shovel in whatever swill is put in front of their faces.
That said, I've watched quite a few hours of BD3 gameplay by multiple streamers. They seem to be enjoying themselves so the occasional stuttering doesn't seem to be a showstopper for everyone. If performance issues are a major concern of yours, it's usually better to wait for the dev to clean up their mess. Cyberpunk 2077 is a good example of this. So is No Man's Sky. No one is holding a gun to your head saying you need to play the game on the first day.
I have no idea where you got that from, but that's simply not true. The engine game uses is Divinity Engine 4.0. That's Larian's own engine. Both the DX11 and Vulkan versions run fine for me, the only difference is that the Vulkan version tends to crash (Vulkan device lost) while the DX11 version has never crashed for me yet. No stutter so far.
So sorry, I stand corrected. BD3 is not an Unreal Engine 5 title. I'm confusing it with something else. Too many new recent releases.
Anyhow, it costs nothing to switch between Vulkan and DX11, it's just toggling an in-game setting. Try it and see if it works. I brought it up since DSOG mentioned it. They have a pretty good track record with this sort of commentary since John (the editor) bases it on his own experiences and testing.
There is a lot of that in the game. I reckon you could play the game doing just a handful of real combat encounters. Not easy though and very RNG, but still
Certain locations have great funnel spots that you can use to limit numbers advantage. The use of minor illusion to lure enemies away, explosive barrels (you can pick these up and place them later), and obstacles like throwing down boxes can make a hard fight trivial. Haste is extremely OP as well. Depending on your party composition, it may make sense to use darkness / smoke to limit enemy visibility. That way ranged enemies are forced to reposition if used correctly.
Going spoiler free and PG is so difficult with this game.
I'll stick to some random screenshots of the dumb things i've done
You can cheese your way through any fight, abuse the game mechanics. The more you learn the more you get away with - a stealth character out of the fight can have infinite non-combat turns throwing things in like jars of water to be electrified - high strength characters with empty inventory space can throw LOTS of weight around so you can literally use enemies as weapons. It's amazing.
*Send everything heavy to camp. You can collect it when you end up at a trader*
Shadowheart aka Shart the clown assasin.
Wyll, as in "Wyll you PLEASE find me some clothes"
I found clown makeup okay, i'm making a new band. They're into death metal (As in, stabbing things and raising the dead)
He does look fancier in the armour
Frog-girl however, looks a little weird.
The odd texture doesnt look great, but they spent a lot of effort on the unique/legendary items and characters including a few you may only meet once or briefly
Being a shapeshifting druid is amazing.
Doing that as Dark Urge is even better. Theres gear in act 3 that boosts your skills when shapeshifted, and the two have an overlap there.
More so than the bugs some of the mechanics need tuning as well. A lot of little things add up. The way the game applies cloud surfaces for example isn't consistent. The cloud produced by darkness (LVL II spell) overwrites the cloud produced by cloudkill (LVL 5 spell) when cast after cloudkill and over it by an enemy but cloudkill cannot overwrite darkness when cast by the player over an enemy's darkness. Both require concentration. If you ask me the higher level cloud should always take precedence much like it did in divinity original sin 2 where blessed or cursed clouds / surfaces could not be removed by non-blessed / non-cursed clouds / surfaces. Darkness also has a much higher collision box than the physical model shows. They should tweak the appearance to either better reflect the full collision boundaries or reduce the collision boundaries. There's been numerous occasions where I've had clear line of sight from high ground but the game prevents ranged attacks as darkness collides with LOS several feet above it. They should definitely tune the way invisibility works as well, unless they are sneaking the chance to see an invisible enemy with see invisibility should be near 100% as the spell allows your character to see invisible things the same as their regular vision and you don't roll with a chance for a saving throw just to see your enemies, that's silly.
Larian like to do big patches so I except you can just wait for a few of those to drop first. The enhanced edition they always release is going to take awhile given how large this game is. Given the sales numbers I sort of hope we see expansion packs.
Expansions please and at least give us level 15-16 or something... 20 would be even better, but they've said not to go that far. OTOH, BG1 didn't have a top level cap either but sequels did...
Act 3 is a bit buggy, but patch 1 fixed a lot of it. There was issues with missing voice lines/dialogue for some companions and that obviously threw people right out into sadtown.
I wouldn't even care, act 1+2 have been so much fun on their own. (I'm wrapping up three now, but didn't do all the optional side stuff - murder was more fun)
The Experience Cap of every game is different. Levels beyond 8,000,000 XP in the main campaign can't be reached. In The Black Pits II: Gladiators of Thay a total of 8,950,000 XP would theoretically be possible, as the rule defining files exist for such levels, but it's also an experience cap...
The Experience Cap of every game is different. Levels beyond 8,000,000 XP in the main campaign can't be reached. In The Black Pits II: Gladiators of Thay a total of 8,950,000 XP would theoretically be possible, as the rule defining files exist for such levels, but it's also an experience cap...
Yeah, wording fail on my end, I meant, capping at level 20. Those old XP tables are a mess though lol. Differences per class... it was/is so abusable its unreal.
i think they've picked those out of D&D rules and wizards made it this way for balancing.
there were legends that Elminster was the only lvl 13 mage in Faerun when BG1 was out
I think the negatives spoken about the end of the game are pretty accurate. Pretty cliche plot twist and not enough time was spent on the outro. Act 3 was probably my favorite story wise if I exclude the ending and bugs.
4. so, when this game will add musketeer class/firearms weapon ??
5. are there is kingdom management in this rpg pc ?
6. can we build homebase/personnel fortress ??
7. is the MC can have more than 1 lover ??
8. if the MC is a woman, can she has sex with all her lovers ??
I think the negatives spoken about the end of the game are pretty accurate. Pretty cliche plot twist and not enough time was spent on the outro. Act 3 was probably my favorite story wise if I exclude the ending and bugs.
Yep, definitely stands to improve things. I think I'll wait to the game is more patched for my second playthrough, Larian always add a lot with their enhanced edition.
Yep, definitely stands to improve things. I think I'll wait to the game is more patched for my second playthrough, Larian always add a lot with their enhanced edition.
it already has been, patch 2 is out and theres been hundreds of fixes
theres only a few bugs i've ran into, usually caused by doing something like knocking people unconscious rather than killing them and forgetting to long rest to wake them up to talk to em again
I don't want to put spoilers in, but this was a person related to fireworks and donations - and because i'd done that, going near other people related to that quest had them in forced repeating dialogue loops (i had to use invisibility potions/scrolls from other party members to stop it to leave the area) resulting in a big performance stutter
act III has so many quests going on at once, it's more likely you glitch one out like that and suffer the whole time you're there until you realise you have that quest unfinished and now you've long-rested it suddenly works and clears it up
it already has been, patch 2 is out and theres been hundreds of fixes
theres only a few bugs i've ran into, usually caused by doing something like knocking people unconscious rather than killing them and forgetting to long rest to wake them up to talk to em again
I don't want to put spoilers in, but this was a person related to fireworks and donations - and because i'd done that, going near other people related to that quest had them in forced repeating dialogue loops (i had to use invisibility potions/scrolls from other party members to stop it to leave the area) resulting in a big performance stutter
act III has so many quests going on at once, it's more likely you glitch one out like that and suffer the whole time you're there until you realise you have that quest unfinished and now you've long-rested it suddenly works and clears it up
Or you long rest and you find that your timer has run out for a bunch of stuff and all of a sudden you've got exclamation marks in your log saying conclusive stuff
I kinda like how the game works. The amount of freedom it offers in resolution of ANYTHING kinda makes it impossible to completely avoid some buggy behaviour. It also puts a form of mystery over the game; there are inner workings you just can't really get a grasp of unless you're reading guides. That's nice, you can't look in everyone's heads IRL either.
I just killed Ketheric yesterday (yeah I'm slow af), and then figured out it was actually possible to remove the shadow over the shadow cursed lands. I was completely caught up in other side quests... and missed a bunch of companion hooks just the same lol.
Still enjoying > 80-90 FPS everywhere pretty much
