Hopefully they’ll spend some extra effort to de-DOS the game prior to launch.
Maybe DOS mode will be the default and then you gotta switch to Core Rules like you do with Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2.
Gotta run it in DOSBox.
Hahahaha. Didn’t I just say I hadn’t heard anything that makes me think they wouldn’t release in October and they had to go and ruin it. Oh well. Leaves room to try out that Solasta game everyone’s talking about, and play Humankind or AoEIV, perhaps. Time is a gift.
TLDW:
Lots of changes behind the scenes.
Jump hotkey for jumping stuff.
Disengage now an action and not linked to Jump in combat.
Long Rests require resources so there is a reason to not just Long Rest every combat and make your Warlock wonder why they bothered with their class. Also area dependent camp site so you don’t wander from the dungeon to a forest to rest every time (optional from what I gather).
No classes this patch, next patch will have classes and whatnot and be sooner than expected, which probably means not 5-6 months from now, but still probably not soon.
Speaking of other systems, one that had a few games behind it, but I always bounced off of was The Dark Eye, with the Drakensang, and the River of Time PC games.
I bounced off these because I’d spend a confused 2 hours creating characters and finally start playing and take three steps and instantly have someone die of gangrene or something.
I think in earlier days Realms of Arkania was from that ruleset too.
I will never forget the time I first played Realms of Arcadia. Made my party, and some company arrived immediately thereafter to go out to lunch. I did not pause the game when I left. When I came back my entire party had starved to death.
Yeah, my party in Realms of Arkania- Star Trail starved to death too. But the process was a little more drawn out in my case. My party was wandering along aimlessly and got captured and imprisoned. Somehow they managed to escape, scrounging what gear they could along the way. Eventually they limped along to the nearest town, diseased and half starved. They sang songs in the local tavern to earn some coin and eventually healed up. However by that time the town was under siege and there was no escape. Once the food ran out, that was it. I still don’t know what the hell was going on in that game, but over 25 years later, the fate of that party still sticks with me.
I… completely forgot about this game, somehow. Wow, that’s really blowing my mind.
Me too, pleasant to re-hear about it :).
I avoid EA games as a matter of principle (I’m not paying to test, and I have a lot of patience), but BG3 should have been so high-level hyped that I was chomping at the bit to get into it. As it stands, EA has dragged on and the lack of info, chatter, and big news has me kinda ho-hum about it all. Prior to EA, BG3 would have been at the top of my most anticipated games list. Not so sure now.
Very odd.
I agree. Seems like it will be a few more years before this thing is ready to release and I’ve lost most of my enthusiasm. We won’t know for a few years after it’s released if their little experiment with EA was a good idea or not, but so far it’s not looking good.
Why would anyone want to play a story heavy RPG in EA? You’re ruining the game for yourself. Makes no sense.
Yep, like I posted in June:
Sticking the game into EA for what looks to me a minimum of 2 years definitely dampened my interest in it. Objectively I guess I’m doing them a disservice, since if I’d never heard of an EA release and one day it drops in a ready form, I would probably be excited about it. However this way it feels like they are just fumbling around in the dark and letting random people playtest it until its in a semi acceptable shape and then dump it on the market…
The fact that adding a new class that mechanically has literally nothing crazy is locked behind some event is what makes me care less and less about BG3 as time goes on.
“We still aren’t even remotely close, but we’re going to restrict information to you!”
Yeah, that doesn’t leave me with a positive impression. It’s going to be a patch that adds something that’s basically already in the game and maybe some other stuff, but also no new levels probably so we’re still at level 4 and holy fuck I stopped caring halfway through typing this.
Probably telling that they had their big event a few hours ago for the upcoming Patch 6 and no one (not even me) seemed to have watched it and/or found its contents worthy of bumping this thread.
I’ll see if I can find a summary and post it here.
New Class - Sorcerer
New Area - Grymforge
Another biggie is something called Weapon Actions, which gives non-magic users new moves in combat, assuming you’re proficient with the weapon performing them. There are 12, and they allow you to do things like Brace, to spend your movement speed to reroll your damage dice; Heartstopper, to smash an enemy in the chest and potentially reduce their actions by one; and Mobile Shot, to make a ranged attack after you dash or disengage. They all sound useful and you can have up to three of these.
Having no other context than this block of text, I’m annoyed by this. It’s another example of Laurian just doing whatever they want instead of using their engine and expertise to create a proper 5th edition D&D game. I’ll retract this annoyance if I find out later this is actually in 5th edition of course, but I have
doubts that will end up being the case, so I’m not going to even do research on that score.
EDIT: This is from the news letter, wrt Weapon Actions:
The aim here is to ensure players will experience melee actions closer in line to those dreamt up during a tabletop D&D game.
From this perspective I can agree it’s not a bad idea to give melee players something more interesting to do than hop behind a target and swing, so I’ll try to keep an open mind. Maybe I’ll really like this system who knows?
There’s also been a serious graphics overhaul, particularly to the lighting and cinematics, and you should now notice lots of fancy fog about the place. A smaller thing connected to this, and one that delighted me when I saw it, was that characters also now get dirty, sweaty, bloodied and bruised during their adventures. They accumulate these things depending on what you’ve been doing. Having low hit-points will result in bruising, for example. You wash these off or recover from them when you camp.
A solid addition to the game, I think. It already looks great - making it look even better will only be a good thing!
Otherwise, some bug fixes and other changes. This is a good change, imo:
We have also made numerous improvements with combat and character balancing. For instance, we’ve updated the high ground rule, making it so you’ll now receive a bonus on attack rather than an advantage/disadvantage. We’ve also tweaked Shadowheart’s Ability score, reducing her CHA and increasing her STR. Issues with Mobile feat have also been solved, and Concentration throws are now displayed via the overhead roll UI.
Bolding mine.
All Weapon Actions:
The patch notes include a TON of improvements, fixes, changes, and other misc content that all looks really good and smart to implement, so that’s really cool. It’s too much to copy paste here and I suspect most of everyone in this thread got the same email, but if not here is a link to the blog post that should be identical:
I’m really looking forward to playing this, but I’m purposefully avoiding it until it’s done. I have the EA version, tried the intro area and thought “awesome! can’t wait to play it in 2 years.” So now it sits. Early Access for this big of a title was a strange decision.