Dareitus

bigsocrates: oh I didn't realize you were a dev and could guarantee how things are going to go in the future. My bad, it's clearly pay to win /s

@bigsocrates:

Super Earth Defense Force or not, I can't help but push back again.

You say it doesn't matter that I don't need the other passes but that just doesn't make sense. They all use the same currency. I only have so much. Opening a second pass so I have two places to spend one currency does not help me. I'll open it when I'm done earning things of value from the other passes (by complete I mean I have all the guns not the capes and helmets)

Also your assertion that you gotta by cosmetics is a bit over the top too. Armors have passives and stats that change gameplay. Only helmets and capes are cosmetic and if you are buying the Guns, Credits, Armors and Boosters (all the things that effect gameplay) you won't need to buy more than a couple of cosmetic only items if that.

You also earn currency from Major Orders (community events) wether you are online or not. Log in after a month off and you'll have 200+ medals from all the objectives we completed.

Finally, pay to win is definitely an inexperienced player talking. NOTHING in any of the battle passes beyond the starter free one is better than the starting weapons. Most of them are straight up bad. They're alternate options not better weapons, almost always niche to the point of not being ideal. The best weapon in the game is arguably the one you start of if not the one off the second page of the free pass.

Just a few things of note:

Super credits can be found in bundles larger than 10, up to 100 per bundle. The larger ones are quite rare, and you'll still need to find quite a few to get a free battle pass on field credits alone but then on top of that the free battle pass has 1000 credits in it and the paid passes have a few hundred (I want to say 500 but it might be less, can't recall for sure) I have 50 hours in the game (which I really don't think is crazy for a game as service) and I still haven't completed the free battle pass, but I have unlocked 2/3 of the paid battle passes with earned currency. I did not buy the special edition or invest a dime. There is no real reason for me to buy the other pass, I still have stuff to unlock in the passes I do have and by the time I am out of meaningful unlocks I'll probably have enough for another one.

Not to say you have to like it but its not nearly as bad as the needing 100 pickups to earn one you implied.

Liking the changes or not in one thing but I always think its strange when people claim it was a rug pull. They never said it was shot-for-shot and in-fact said it very much wasn't from the get go, starting with the change in combat system and continuing on to the expansion of various plot and gameplay elements. Did they specifically say they were gonna go full Kingdom Hearts batshit with it and make the fans literal manifestations in the game? Well no, of course not, but anyone who expected shot-for-shot or even faithful to the plot remakes wasn't paying attention.

@brian_: touche

@ben_h: Teammate approval does not mean anything. My romantic partner has the lowest approval out of all my teammates because I do things she doesn't like but all you have to do is click the "Yes I like you" button for any character and they want to fuck you.

Approval rating -literally- only does one thing: very slightly alters the difficulty of Persuasion/Intimidation/Deception rolls against that character. It is somewhat difficult for me to convince my lover to do things because they don't approve of my choices, but the guy I have turned down 3 times now loves what I do and will do literally anything I say.

My romance partner shouldn't even like me I do so much shit she disapproves of but nope, game is way to horny to take a romance option away. She'll simultaneously tell me I'm disgusting and then ask me what I would do to her if we were alone right now. Its so stupid

I'm working on a second playthrough now because of things I missed my first run through and the bugs are getting even more annoying. Some of them don't even make sense:

Told a guy I would help him kill someone. Killed said person, questlog pops up failed because we "Can't retrieve the head" even though the corpse is sitting next to me perfectly in tact ready for head removal.

Told a guy I would help him kill someone. He told me I had to destroy a "Scrying Eye" first. Destroyed the eye. Guy comes running in "We can't help you while that eye is still peeping about!" but the eye is long dead. Guy attacks me for some reason and I have to kill him.

Quest log says Halsin has abandoned me, then right below it says Halsin swears his loyalty to me. Neither of these is correct (won't say what cuz spoilers)

Knocking out enemies doesn't do ANYTHING. Knocked out an enemy, told someone "Hey I had to knock out the person cuz they attacked me" she responds "They're dead! OMG They're dead you killed them!" No, bitch I literally just said I didn't kill them. Doesn't matter, game treats them as dead.

Playing as an origin character makes them stupider. Wyll doesn't even comment on a certain kidnapping from the burning inn. Apparently, that character only matters to him if he's supporting cast not if he's the player character.

The framerate is absolute dogshit after mid-Act2 and all the way through Act3. Gets worse the longer you play, clearly an undiagnosed memory leak. I've got a 3090 based system its not me.

Scripting only gets worse and worse as the game goes on, I can't give examples without late game spoilers.

If I see one more video about how "BG3 sets the standard for videogames moving forward" I'm going to fucking scream - this shit isn't that special.
They didn't have to do any world building
They didn't have to come up with a combat system or races or spells or feats or any of that.
They didn't have to build a new game engine (uses DOS2 engine, and it very much shows)
80% of the budget (joking, but not) went to dialogue and writing. Game is basic AF
The writing isn't even that good, the romances especially are juvenile as hell
BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS - But no one will make it past Act 1 to see them

@sombre: You put a lot of faith in the developers with that. They intend for you to have it, it's a safety net for them too. They don't have to think about the consequences of their AI (nonsensically, IMO) attacking the Gith you just freed instead of the aggressive person who just lied to them and freed their captive against their wish. You have to live with a decision the (bad) AI made because the developers didn't have to worry about permanently saddling you with a dead teammate, they figured you probably have a save to load, hell they give you an auto-save before that dialogue bit.

You are counting on the developers not putting in bad/dumb/pointless checks in the game. Let me tell you, they absolutely do. You can fail a check to read a dogs name tag. Seriously. You can fumble looking at something well enough to read it. Is that fun or good design? Would a "real" dungeon master ask you to roll a check for reading a pet's name tag? No. That's bad. But hey, if you fail at their bad design now you have to live with it!

Not to mention the more obvious struggle you WILL run into. What's a save scum if you die? Let's say you walked up to those Tieflings, failed the skill checks, then they went fast and murdered the shit out of you instead of the Gith. Do you have to load your save and intentionally fail the checks? What if you accidentally pass a check and they let the Gith go do you have to save scum until they're mean again? Or is your game actually over because you died? In which case why aren't you playing on hardcore?

Damn near EVERY major fight in this game starts with a dice roll or two during conversation. If you ever lose a fight how are you going to reconcile those dice rolls changing on a redo?

Sounds like you're a save scummer.

Oh! And Gale's Ending! WTF was that? His ending is essentially off camera! He just asks which ending you want him to have (Give Crown to Mystra, use Crown himself, leave Crown in the ocean) and whatever you pick he's just like "Yeah, I'll go do that" and I guess it's just implied that he probably does? I don't know if I'm missing some way to see him become a God, maybe only if you play as him yourself or something but... yeaaaahhh that felt pretty weak. Wyl was glitched for me and just didn't have an ending, Karlach glitched and did her death ending and the rest seemed fine.

Something I discussed with a friend and forgot to mention here, because the game is D&D inspired and you can think of the narrator/gameworld as DM controlled there is a little bit of forgiveness to be given to the way everything funnels you to the same ending (No matter what you do, no matter who you ally with, who you betray, who you are, it always ends with the same screen with two options - Dominate the Brain, Release the Brain, with some minor variants on Dominate) because a real world DM works largely in the same way.

When I have friends over for a session I just wrote and the Barkeep is supposed to give them the quest and my players roll up and one says "I'm actually a recovering alcoholic can we have our first adventurer meetup at the park?" and everyone loves that idea and goes with it, I adapt, I change the story so a frantic passerby grabs their attention because they're the only ones around..... and then I give them the exact same quest I was gonna have the barkeep give them....

So on that note, BG3 emulates D&D perfect with its.... fake choices. I just wish it kept better track of them all in the final act and was a bit more elegant in how it does the funnel. A few too many times the game has characters do kinda silly things to justify the plot going forward