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I found it worthy of investigation, so created account on Larian's forum and made a thread about it. I received an interesting response from one of the users:

Greetings employees of Halcyon, We have been hard at work developing fixes and implementing features you all have shared with us, and we are excited to share that we plan to release Patch 1.3 later this week for all platforms. A lot is going in with this patch, but we wanted to share with you a few of the exciting changes you can expect to see when this patch goes live: Top Community Requests: UI Changes Font Scaling (added a setting to adjust the size of text throughout most UI) Ultrawide Support (loading screens & cinematics) Improved Font Visibility (coloring) Multi Quest Map Tracking (can see inactive quests on the map and select them) New Reticle HUD Setting Option "Aiming Only" (ADS or Scoped) Fixed the Chromatic Aberration Setting not Saving Gameplay Changes New Invert "X-Axis" Setting Added Toggle for Sprinting Improved the quality of item drops when killing Manti-Queens Fixed the effects of Encumbrance not working correctly with the Confidence Perk We want to thank you all for the continued feedback and patience while we continue to work to improve your gaming experience. To continue to report issues you come across and to share suggestions for the game, please visit the Technical Support forums for The Outer Worlds and search to see if a fellow player has already made a thread about it to help reduce duplicate threads. If you find a thread that matches your issue or suggestion, then please feel free to leave a comment and include any details you would like to share. If you are not able to find a similar thread, then please share it with us on our forums and then visit our publishing partner, Private Division, and share this issue with them through their support website. This will help ensure that your specific issue or suggestion is in their queue and will allow us to prioritize requests to provide the fastest possible turnaround time. Thank you all again, spacers. You are a fantastic community, and we are so excited to have you here with us helping to share your feedback, suggestions, and reports.

I'm not going to bother trying to predict anything anymore. I tried to explain how the delegate system works to my students today and I think I just made it worse. They now know less than they did at the start of the day.

Rule of Acquisition #16: a deal is a deal!

Obviously it's into absurdism, since the cigarette must be burning underwater.

I checked the convo files and it turns out that it's decided by global variables (n_Watcher_Ability_X_Aggressive, n_Watcher_Ability_X_Sassy and n_Watcher_Ability_X_Diplomatic) and won't necessarily correspond with Disposition icons! (Though they can be good indicators.) tl;dr is that you need at least 3/2/4 responses of your flavor of choice after Port Maje/Hasongo/Magran's Teeth, respectively. You then get the ability based on which flavor count is highest. If two flavors share the same count, Diplomatic takes precedence, then Sassy and last Aggressive. So you have to look out for other flavors as well. Post Port Maje Ire of Death's Herald (Might) : At least 3 Aggressive responses, more than Sassy and Diplomatic ones. Wit of Death's Herald (Intellect) : At least 3 Sassy responses, more than Diplomatic and not fewer than Aggressive. Mien of Death's Herald (Perception) : At least 3 Diplomatic responses and not fewer than Aggressive and Sassy. Post Hasongo + Might : At least 2 Agressive responses, more than Sassy and Diplomatic ones. + Intellect : At least 2 Sassy responses, more than Diplomatic and not fewer than Aggressive. + Perception : At least 2 Diplomatic responses and not fewer than Aggressive and Sassy. Post Magran's Teeth + Might : At least 4 Agressive responsesand more than both Sassy and Diplomatic ones. + Intellect : At least 4 Sassy responses, more than Diplomatic and not fewer than Aggressive. + Perception : At least 4 Diplomatic responses and not fewer than Aggressive and Sassy.

Too bad she was not undead stripper as a bonus point for him

I'm sure Bruce was very appreciative.

Yes exactly. And the main benefit is supposedly exactly for multiplayer. But for me as a strictly single player, it still works out so much better than traditional TB. As I've said in other contexts on various forums, this is exactly how my PnP group used to play D&D back in the day.

The state having control over $thing indirectly gives it, if not control, at least a degree of influence over people who rely on $thing. Apparatchiks can use $thing as leverage. So the reasoning goes, and to be fair this isn't completely baseless -- it's how things largely worked in, you guessed it, ye olde Sovetskij Sojuz. Since they couldn't directly buy people with money, they did with favors, privileges, sinecures, etc. when they couldn't or didn't want to resort to outright blackmail or intimidation. And since the state controlled just about everything, they had a lot of leverage. Conversely, if you are John Galt and don't rely on the state for anything, it's supposed to be not quite powerless but much less able to **** you over. This is the part of the reasoning that doesn't hold water if you look at things like civil forfeiture, the surveillance state or quantitative easing. The thing is people keep conflating collective whatever with Soviet agrarian collectivization policies, 1930 vintage. Sadly, authoritarianism is not an exclusive feature of the left.

Probably the perfect game would be a cross between The Witcher 3 and The Outer Worlds. The Witcher 3 leveling and scope combined with the atmosphere and plot elements of TOW. Also what TOW suffers from is lack of meaningful endings, there's clearly a "right option" in every scenario (get rid of Reed Tobson and replace him with Adelaide McDevitt etc etc etc), this "perfect game" would have to vastly diversify the options.

Yet another ceasefire in Syria. Looks like it's basically a Turkish surrender, Syria gets to keep every bit of reclaimed territory and the rebels effectively hand over everything south of the M4 too. Turkey gets literally none of the stuff they were demanding beforehand- no return to original Sochi lines, no M5, observation points still surrounded. Looks like another 6 month delay to the rebel loss rather than anything permanent. Pretty much everything is being done the same way as last time. Absolutely no lessons learnt whatsoever. Anyone with any enthusiasm is a BernieBro, who couldn't be bothered voting so don't matter, what are they going to do if Hillary Joe is picked vote Trump?, everything has been done perfectly above board, [candidate] is electable Bernie isn't, Bernie isn't even a proper Democrat and will run as an independent if he loses, and, of course, there is absolutely no anti Bern bias. I've seen two different D talking heads on BBC and AlJ run through exactly that set of talking points with barely concealed glee, which also happened last time too. At least Biden isn't actively disliked as much as Hillary was, but then he also wouldn't have the draw of being the first woman candidate. I find the emphasis on being 'electable' particularly stupid since electable for the Democrats always seems to mean run of the mill and inoffensive to party sensibilities. Every single candidate picked primarily for 'electability' has lost, because if you're labeling your candidate as 'electable' it's pretty much saying that there isn't anything better to say about them than that they can win. The successful D candidates of my lifetime- BClinton and Obama- were not the safe options, far from it, they were the ones with some ability to actively enthuse those who aren't apparatchniks. Every time they've gone for the safe candidate they've lost, and lost to extraordinarily flawed candidates like GWBush and Trump who at least had some ability to enthuse.

Yeah, I am starting to see that. I am just not used to this, that's all. Since I have never played a game by Larian. But I see what you are saying. I will have the freedom to fill in the concrete, specific words of my character and even his voice by myself. Maybe that's a thought I can even learn to appreciate. I will try to stay open minded. But in the end I may not be able to get into it, and that would be okay, too. Different tastes for different folks. I imagine it would be easier for me in a 2D game rather than a 3D game with close-up conversations.

Imagine if she smoked weed aswell? Dream waifu, right there!

To be fair to Owlcat they dedicated some dialogue options to exploring the sexuality of the undead. Or, well, Jaethal in particular.

That picture made me sit and think for a minute or two. People solved that a while ago though. Just google Goldfish in a Hookah.

Enslaved nations with necromancy

I also have been so looking forward to a new adventure in the Realms. But for me, what I've seen so far of BG3 is not good enough for me to give it a try. But I remain hopeful that as more information becomes available my impression will change enough for me to be willing to try it. However, there is one thing that I want to note about the TB combat system in BG3. It is not a traditional TB system, with individual initiative rolls and each character, party members and enemies alike, taking their turns in strict sequence. Rather, here it is party initiative, with just a single roll for the party and for the enemy side. Then, during the party's turn, the player can move and take actions for all their party members in any order they want including taking a partial action for one character, moving on to another character, then returning to complete the action for the previous character. So effectively it is simultaneous TB combat. In both the Larian and Beamdog forums (can't recall if I did it here), in response to questions about how a TB system might be changed to be more palatable to me, I offered exactly this idea as a way to make TB combat "better" for me. So I will say that this change is significant to me, and I hope Larian won't end up changing it back due to whining from TB/PnP D&D purists.

It's because all the Poles will be there. Don't mention the war.

An RPG set in Star Trek's setting. Make it so.

Where do you draw the line between "taking influence from" or "bearing similarities to" and "being derivative of", though? Yes, I do think the Eoran setting is partly designed to bring memories of Faerun, but it's doing a lot that is different and unique and not really moved by (and often deliberately subversive of) the high fantasy standard set by Tolkien. If I'm not mistaken, Josh deliberately avoids Tolkien as a source as well, having expressed exhaustion at his pervasiveness in high fantasy and so on.

You seem to have made the mistake of spelling "Planescape" as "Starjammer, or Darksun". Seriously, only masochists play Dark Sun.

I grew up with Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine games. And I love them so much. I have never played a game from Larian, not even heard of them before. Now, after watching the gameplay video from Larian of Baldur's Gate 3 I can't help but feel... I feel excited, actually. More than anything I am so looking forward to the opportunity to go back to the Forgotten Realms, and have another adventure at the Sword Coast and in Baldur's Gate. I feel that I am supposed to hate Baldur's Gate 3 and Larian. But I can't based on that gameplay demo alone. It's far too early to tell for me. There are some things I am sceptical about, yes. 1.) I have never played an RPG with TB. But for that very reason I cannot condemn that. I do not know what it will feel like. I only know turn based from the Heroes of Might and Magic games which is an entirely different genre altogether. So it's something new for me. And I will stay open minded about it and try it out in BG3. 2.) The dialogue system. That is my biggest concern at the moment. That is so unusual for me. The dialogue is held in 1st person, indirect speech, past tense. I Imagine I might eventually adapt and get used to it. But I fear that this may be a huge immersion breaker for me. Also I do not like silent protagonists (although I understand that voicing all possible combinations of lines for the protagonist is too expensive). I am not fond of the "3" in the title either. But I put much less importance on it. No matter how you call this game, it will let me revisit Baldur's Gate! And so far I have no reason to believe that Baldur's Gate 3 will spoil my fond memories of BG1 and 2 in any way or take them away from me. I'm already looking forward to play as Astarion, the vampire spawn.

I do think there's more going on with the Eora setting to separate it from the Tolkien tradition, between what you already mention as well as the more Renaissance-based setting and so on. The narrative is also distinctly different from his work. But back to DnD, there's plenty of settings in it that are pretty different to the Tolkien tradition, be they the more Lovecraftian Ravenloft, the post-apocalyptic Dark Sun, the stranger and more surreal/far-out Planescape, or the more space opera-like Spalljammer to give some examples.

Someone's never played Divorce Court: Enchanced Edition with the Homewrecker dlc.

The Forgotten Realms should be torched tbh. Ravenloft, Starjammer, or Darksun would make objectively better settings.

I was told that 1) Wizard of the Coast wanted it to be called that, and since they are the ''Power That be'' they can do whatever they want. And 2) that the City of Baldur's exist in the trailer or something? hence the name. *Shrug* Baldur's Gate: Divinity Old Sin! How hard is that ?

guys, this isn't the thread for "TB vs RTWP" posts. both are flawed and should never be used for anything other than nostalgia-driven projects. but the real issue is, BG was RTWP no matter how you spin it. this new game has no business being titled "Baldur's Gate" if it's not RTWP. secondly, the Bhaal spawn saga is over, this game shouldn't have a "3" in its title. shoulda called it "Pool of Radiance" and be done with it.

This is remarkably similar to my experience, except that I had it with D:OS2 and that I didn't hate TB combat, I just found it totally uninteresting and a waste of time. To such an extent that it's unlikely I'll go for BG3.

I'd be interested in your take. I always preferred RTwP but was not opposed to TB combat systems. And then I played D:OS1. The ONLY thing I got out of playing D:OS1 was an abiding hatred for TB combat. So it is precisely D:OS that killed TB combat for me.

As a Sage it's maybe the totally legit Flagellant's Path.

@Skarpen: Criticized by whom for combat? Whose opinion is it that they're "Good games but poor combat"? Yours? If so, would you care to back that up? I am genuinely interested. In my view, the combat in all those games is a lot better than anything I've ever seen in any TB game. If you disagree, would you care to name a few TB games whose combat you think is better. Again, I'm genuinely interested.

BG2? PoE? Deadfire? Those three spring to mind immediately.

Conan Exiles is getting an expansion, sounds like there might be a new map, so that's exciting news since, well, I kinda know the current one by now Maybe we'll get some technical improvements too (server software is not particularly high quality, it leaks memory as if it were a sieve) https://twinfinite.net/2020/03/conan-exiles-expansion-dune/ Oh yes, also Conan Exiles-style Dune survival game, but we already knew that one was in the works.

My point is that the adaption is made necessary because the DnD system *doesn't* work well turn-based when translated as is to the videogame medium. It might be my subjective preference but that's what this is all based on at the end of the day.

Pathfinder Kingmaker still, and no real feeling of slowing down at all. Definitely a worthy successor to the Baldur's Gates in terms of boss fights, you either get your party wiped or wipe the floor with them. Fought some dudette that spammed destruction spells and I'm sure the AI scripting told her to target the PC preferentially just because a failed saving throw instantly meant she 'won' the fight via game over. So you hide the main character and she gets chunked in about twenty seconds after a couple of lucky criticals instead...

Eh, being able to stop time and mind control people who are one offhand comment from leaving the party isn't any more believable to me than everybody pausing (except for reactions) while a skinny nerd waves his hands around to hit them with a ball of fire. I prefer turn-based because I prefer slower paced combat and dislike the micro in late game rtwp games that inevitably gets ****ed up by any ai.

I'd argue the opposite myself. Maybe weapon speed allowed for such a tactic that wasn't an issue with TB mode but in that case rules of engagement for the videogame adaptation ought to be revised, instead of reverting to an even more literal translation of the system into a new medium. The way I see it, the TT system as is doesn't work in a CRPG so I'd look how to tweak and adapt it so as to provide an experience that better uses the medium it's in from a systems, narrative and mimetic degree whilst also evoking the feel or idea of the source material at the same time. In this sense I think Pillars does a very good job at polishing and improving the IE systems and at evoking some of the D&D feel, but could also do more to make combat even more flexible so as to open to more roleplay or strategy options within it and so on. It's a contrivance or artifice, I agree, but I do think it's less jarring with the diegesis than TB is because it's much easier to abstract the "pause" plane from the "real" plane as it's a literal pause in action or time, where all characters interact with one another simultaneously, opposite to seeing every character acting individually at a time whilst everyone else stands in place in what seems like a continuous, linear timeline. It also doesn't help from a narrative perspective to see what should allegedly be a battle, i.e. a moment that normally should be frantic and chaotic, be chopped up to fine bits of individual actions in what seems like a vacuum of idleness - yes, you would be chopping up a sequence using the pause button in RTwP, but I do think that a lot of the chaotic or frantic effect remains in seeing all characters act simultaneously and so on. To make a comparison, if you pause a battle sequence in a film, the image will be a still one but in the frame you'll still see a dynamism or tension that even in that still image captures a sense of chaos or disarray. I do think immersion, feel and storytelling is affected differently in both cases, though again I also feel pacing is the biggest concern for me.

Disagree. RTwP is objectively faster and feels more "realistic". Also, you don't have to pause all the time. Melee characters don't need much micromanagement so you can focus on the spell casters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition Again, you're ignoring the context. A game like chess or like table football do not have the same objectives or intentions to an RPG, let alone a *videogame* form of RPG. They do not operate remotely alike. Likewise we're giving arguments regarding the application of TB in videogames as a direct and oft incorrect translation of the PnP experience - which is turn-based by default. Tradition or "fidelity" on its own isn't a very compelling argument in favour of any decision, let alone one about adapting a particular experience or genre to an entirely different medium. You're relying on far-fetched comparisons and strawmans and not actually addressing the specific criticisms we brought up.

There are many reasons why it's not a one-on-one comparison, though. Videogames are by definition an audiovisual medium as much as they are an interactive one, and the mimetic quality in videogames is far different to that of board games. Also as Xzar and Zoraptor point out, there's a narrative and immersive intention to RPGs that chess doesn't possess at all, and the pieces on a chess board aren't characters in any fashion beyond distinguishing some basic mechanical difference between it and other pieces. Furthermore, you're basing your qualms over something no one actually said or implied either: no one said TB was stupid or lazy, just that it's tedious and clunky in the context of a CRPG - to use another example you gave, a horse might act as a replacement for a car in certain contexts or even be advised in a rural environment for example, but in an urban one or in long distance travel a car would be far more advantageous, because again, context matters. You can argue that you'd love to ride a horse in town because you find it more fun than driving a car, but the disadvantages and inconveniences it'd bring would be pretty undeniable, and a perfectly understandable reason why the majority would probably prefer not doing that.

But surely the fact of mindless filler combat is a feature of encounter design, not a question of TB vs. RTwP. For instance, PoE and the White March in particular was full of mindless filler combat, but that was due to poor design, it had nothing to do with RTwP. In Deadfire, an awful lot of filler combat was cut out. Less encounters, a much better gaming design. It's also possible that I misunderstood what you meant, in which case, please correct.

This is naturally a matter of opinion, but my (rather limited) experience with D:OS2 suggests that the turn-based combat system used in that game is in every way inferior to the RTwP systems used in the Infinity Engine games (BG) or PoE/Deadfire. It's not immersive, it looks stilted and unnatural, and it just doesn't flow. Its most obvious drawback is its blatant artificiality. First, you have a group of characters wandering around the map. Then you encounter some other beings that may or may not turn out to be enemies. If it's the former and combat begins, suddenly everyone starts moving around according to a strange and funny-looking choreography, the most striking feature of which is that everybody spends most of their time just waiting around for others to do something on their turn. For me, nothing in this system works.

The other massive difference between TTRPGs and CRPGs I feel is also that TB in the former isn't just fulfilling a strategic or comprehensive role, it's also aiding the game's performative component. If a player fails a roll, that fail can still act as a catalyst for a scene or situation or change - typical example is how often a failed roll can so often produce a humorous outcome and so on. I think this sort of performative value in CRPGs is lost because for the most part a game - which in some level is an automated DM - can't improvise or account for such events the way a human DM can. In a way, failing in TTRPGs is part of the fun - far less so in most CRPGs. Disco Elysium is the odd one out as a game that actually tapped into the performative side of CRPGs really well, but its approach to "combat" - if you can call it that - is completely different to what more traditional DnD-based/inspired CRPGs do. In most CRPGs a fail is a fail, and in TB mode especially the end result is frustration and a lot of wasted time before you can attempt an action again. RTwP doesn't add the performative element at all but it at least mitigates these frustrations a lot more.

I'll be playing the DOS games shortly so I might have to change my tune here in the future, but as it stands right now, I do feel that turn-based is something of an appendage in the CRPG sphere left from the TT days for the above reason you mention. Since DnD and derivatives are usually verbally communicated and are hugely dependent on dialogue between the players, there's no way players can interact with one another simultaneously without turning a combat sequence into sheer incomprehensible cacophony. TB needed to exist back then because every player controlled a separate unique piece and they all had to communicate with one another what they were doing or wanted to do, and back to the DM who ran the scenario and so on - but a lot of those things are simply automated and happen either in the background or as part of an audiovisual experience instead, and are allowed to happen simultaneously whereas before it would've broken a scene. Worse yet, in single player RPGs the case is often that a player has to play the role of four to six different characters at once, meaning cycling through that many turns themselves whilst also having to wait on the X turns X amount of enemies take when themselves acting. Maybe some of this can be automated or juxtaposed, i.e. all enemies acting in simultaneous fashion or having turns being assigned to parties/players opposite to characters, but I do still feel that is one degree of artifice more than is really necessary. I think an issue that RTwP runs into often, and which is often replicated in the way the community criticized the system and speaks in favour of TB instead, is that very often RTwP doesn't convey the flexibility that either TTRPGs have, or DOS managed with its implementation of the TB system, and in turn assume flexibility and RTwP combat to be mutually exclusive. I think the issue here is that a lot of RTwP games treat pause as a literal pause, a moment you can stop time to assign any actions you otherwise could in real time if you had the speed or time to do so. I think that the pause system could be taken further, as demonstrated to an extent by games like Transistor or even The Outer Worlds with its TTD-specific mechanics and so on: basically start treating pause as a strategic interface opposite to a mere time stop, opening for many more options such as terrain interactions, specific actions with enemies like dialogue or the likes, or bodypart targets, that could otherwise be concealed in real time mode for example. I don't see why you'd need to divide and dilate combat sequences by having one character act at a time when you could literally have them all act simultaneously whilst allowing the player to set or take a turn as they need them to manage their party and actions - you'd be saving time, you'd be creating a more immersive or natural flow in the combat in turn and so on. Again I hear DOS handles TB exceptionally well so maybe they also find ways to make TB flow better and not become the bloated, stilted experience I usually find it to be, but at least in the BG3 presentation it feels exactly like TB usually feels for me.

Personally, I find TB utterly baffling in CRPGs. RTwP is obviously impossible in tabletop RPGs, which is why turn-based combat exists in the first place. But as actual combat is never turn-based, I can't for the life of me understand why developers want to implement that system in computer games.

That was a mistake I thought PoE1 already made, and that wasn't even turn-based. If you're going to slow down combat and make each fight more meaningful through increased difficulty and required strategic consideration (which are fine goals in of themselves), you have to reduce the amount of fighting in order not to bog down the game with random trash fights that take way too much time and effort to get through. I can only imagine the problem will be amplified manyfold with turn-based combat.

No. Though every class has specializations that you choose at level 2 or 3. Unlike Kits in 2nd ED and the BG games, they don't take stuff away from you, just slightly change what you get.