Wormerine

If I saved using hotfix4 yesterday, that solves my question whenever I should buy Shadow Gambit, or not

I actually quite like the plot - but the set up isn’t very obvious (good!) but it will be revealed in time what is really going on. It does come together eventually. DLCs are solid. If you are enjoying the base game that much, they are definitely worth picking up. They are in-campaign expansions, so you want to play them before you wrap up current play through.

I backtracked to Mountian Pass area and enjoyed it quite a bit. Managed to recruit the first non origin companion, but I have some questions about whoever designed stat destributions:

Do they though? I can't speak for 1.0, but I replayed early access with every patch, and I never noticed much difference (again, aside from big good/bad path, which it seems you can switch back and forth throughout the playthrough, at least for now). Between team help inspiration point skill checks are mostly passable by any character regardless of their skill set, and I haven't really seen class/race options leading to unique outcomes. At best you might not have to take a roll for a skill check, but I dont' find those particularly valuable. There are some good bits - the quest to kill goblin leaders is fantastic, and there are some nice sidequests with neat follow ups like rescuing Z. from gnolls. Unless I am just not very perceptive, most quest, though are not very sprawling. There is plenty of ways to break quest progression and for the game to march forward - like pickpocketing item before a characters hands it to you. But while cute, those tend to be too meta to make them interesting to me.

I finally ventured outside Early Access are, met one of the legacy characters. Nothing to blow my socks off. I feel like Larian is struggling to write compelling characters, who aren't over the top like Astarion. Karlach, who seems to be the only semi normal in the party, is also a total bore. It's probably due to characters being as deep as a puddle. They still didn't evolve beyond a one minute intro that game gives you during the character creation. So far, even Minsc in BG2 had more going for him than any of this lot (not in terms of content, but in terms of narrative potential). I have been cooling off on the game. In my time with early access I generally enjoyed opening=>grove=>goblin camp, and after that my attention have been waning. Same is happening in this playthrough - I hoped things will picks up once I reach act2 but it still hasn't happened yet. I think lack of narrative drive is to blame. I am pursuing the same objective for about 20h. Narratively, nothing of note has happened in quite a while. I was wondering if writing got better in BG3 or I got desensitized to it- I think a little bit of both. I was getting along with act1 just fine, but act2 really feels off to me so far - like as if Larian have done act1 for Early Access, and now they are just making stuff up as they go along. It feels like the game is not going anywhere - just another chunk of content to go through. I am running into more and more issues with reactivity. Mostly small stuff, but some really odd ones, considering I feel like I am good boy and following paths set out by devs. The most recent example, is Gale crit. NPCs (oh gosh, Gales story somehow became even more idiotic) whom we met on a road, and sent him out to camp to chat with him later. Instead of being there, he appeared a new after I woke up, and the encounter played out as if we never met before, covering the same lines as before. Just... very weird, as in the first conversation "go to the camp and we will chat there" is an option, that the game gives you. People harp on how much choice the game gives you - and I am just not feeling it. I can't recall when was the last choice I made - outside the big good/bad path. Sure, I get a choice to murder everyone I meet, but that's not a real choice, is it. I also don't like that the game lacks guts to restrict content. I already traded off "speaking with animals" from my PC. It's a worthless skill to own, considering how easily it is acquired from other sources. It' a real shame, speak with dead/animals etc. could provide nice spins to individual playthroughts, but the game is incapable of rewarding those choices - instead it's choose to make everything available to everyone, making everything feel rather bland.

Yes, having full VO is nice, but unfortunately in Deadfire the quality of VO suffered. PoE1 had some outstanding voice content, PoE2 not so much, with some weak bits everyonce in a while. Understandable, considering how it got jammed into the production schedule, but unfortunate nonetheless. There are also some conversation trees that don't work terribly well with VO.

Still not feeling it, but at least looks more promising than the awful demo they released a while back. Oh, a Bad Rats sequel?

I did find Laez intro to be a bit over the top, but I do like Wylls. The swashbuckling feel of it fits the image he tries to craft for himself. Where's I can't imagine Laez timing her jump with a dragon just to make an impression on a thrall she wants to kill.

You mean Starfield? Skyfall? Sure. Just trying to guess how the game have sold, based on data they provided. The numbers they shared, just seem much lower than I expected considering the assumed success. Based on those @kanisatha might have been right.

Hmmm, the numbers here don’t seem very impressive. We don’t get an exact player count but we now how many origins were created and that sum is 7% of all characters created. Unless my estimate is off around 1,645,386 characters were created in total. Even if we assume no one created two characters (like I did), that would mean max of 1,6m players at most. That’s, significantly less than 2,5m of early access players.

Eh, you don’t. BG3 is more or less that but better. For the combat system I still would recommend D:OS1 over D:OS2.

Phew. Finally finished surface area of act1. Throwing is still as broken as it was in EA. Since I found returning spike, the game has been laughably easy. On top of doing full attack damage to begin with, if you attack from heigh enough they also stack crush damage (comes from items falling on creatures) on top - it seems to sometimes apply twice. She melts Ogres in one go. I consider abandoning the weapons, and frankly it's been making the encounters rather dull.

Well, yes. That would be entirely different system. Apparently those changable faces are pretty hard to pull off. Personally, I am happy with what Larian did. There is enough variation there for me to find something I like.

It's been posted in other parts of the forum, but Obsidian explained a little bit about Avowed development troubles. Rumors that the game was originally multiplayer focused and Obsidian ended up piviting away from it were true

Hmm, I am starting to see instances of game’s reactivity not catching up. So far minor stuff:

I had a lot of doubts about the camp system, but I think I ended up liking it. In the EA it felt like mandatory evil to facilitate companion story cutscenes, but so far it works so much better in 1.0. First of all, I like how companion’s story progress now both in and outside of the camp (the wasn’t the case in EA). It makes the companions feel more alive - less like you get story story bits gated behind rests. I also can’t stress, how big of an impact made the daylight camp - especially after you rested. It reinforces the idea of going to sleep in waking up before adventuring further, rather that a weird pocket dimension, where all your companions are stored. I am afraid there is no party management UI. Feels like there simply should be one when leaving the camp, and all inventories of all companions should be available while you are in camp. I think it is just something one needs to accept. Not a terrible thing, in my opinion, with original games being nicely wrapped up, but I would prefer if it was Baldur’s Gate: xxxxxxx, rather than a titled entry.

it is a bit weird, isn't it. I had my first encounter with it, and it more or less it is that. Overall, a massive improvement over EA aparition.

yes, and no. I think BG3 lacks tools to make it smoother (you can't access inventory of characters not in your current party, nor level them up, and adding/removing characters is tedious). I think there is also a dissonance between narrative (group of independed individuals with their own agendas) and gameplay experience in singleplayers - main character, and mindless drones with story content at your disposal. I think that if there was a narrative reason for us to be in charge (like in traiditional Bioware RPGs) it would go down smoother. I see it as a side effect of coop design - as players we are not really designed to babysit the party and the game doesn't quite work if you play it like that. That said, I do like micromanaging my party! I am glad that Larian decided not to kill off spare party members like they did in D:OS2. I still might kill off Astarion. Everything he says just enforces me in belief that he is a danger to himself and everyone around him. Actually, so his Gale. And Laez. And maybe Shadowheart.

I am still in EA area with a lot of stuff ahead of me, before I can even consider moving toward new content.

We will see. I am sure they will not - I think it should be already clear that all companion's archs will culminate once we reach Baldur's Gate. As to how much content they will have per act - we will see. I do agree that companions feel a bit formulaic. Even more so, if one played D:OS2. So far, they are still better than I expected. In EA I found them really grating.

I have been picking a subclass for Astarion, so I was wondering about it. According to discription it should trigger for character who haven't taken their turn or are surprised. I wonder if the issue is that if you attack from stealth, you technically attack before the combat started - therefore they are neither surprised, nor turns haven't started counting yet. Seems like it needs getting loocked at. If it works the same as in EA it should work as follows: There are three light states: bright/medium/dark. In full brightness you will always be spotted outright. In medium you roll stealth check. In dark you don't roll for stealth. If enemy has infravision those get shifted by one. So both bright/medium are instant detection, in dark you roll stealth check. I didn't play with stealth much in 1.0, but yes, in EA I found that stealth skill was useless for the most part. Controls are way to clunky to manouver stealth in real time (though you can manually trigger turn based mode (shift+pause) and succeeding in stealth mostly comes down to player skill, not character stealth skill. I think in 1.0, there is also some kind of circular detection range, that is meant to prevent players from walking behind enemies and triggering stealth to confuse AI. I don't quite know how it works. The point is that you detect or not detect trap, you click behind your character to stop him from moving, than all your followers line up behind your PC (because chain system is garbage) and step on the trap that they just spotted. Snarkying aside, traps in BG3 are 50/50. I like those more elaborate set ups, with defined triggers - where you can block vents, jump over triggers, put items on pressure plates etc. on top of the simple spot/disarm routine. A more traditional, spottable mines are tedious, that's true.

I don't think so. Baldur's Gate3 is the top selling game, and (at this moment) is 3rd most played game on Steam - beating Apex L. and Pub G.. BG3 player count is around real gangbuster releases (hogwards legacy - 880k , Elden Ring - 950k), so I assume sales must be somewhere around those titles as well. Sven knew how many EA players they had and he still expect 1/8 of the player count that they got. It's not like they didn't expect players to return - they moved the release for a reason. I am curious to hear official numbers, of course - if it's going as well as it seems to be, I am sure Larian will be making victory laps not far in the future. Steam spy estimated 10-20m owners, but unfortunately it tends to not be a reliable source anymore. For comparison D:OS2 player peak was 93k. Deadfire: 22,5k WotR: 46,5k

It’s DA:O with D:OS2 adapting D&D5e. Now when I write it down, it sounds awful, but fortunately they picked the good bits from each.