While I appreciate that Larian are trying to emulate the feeling of real dice rolls here, the animations for rolls, adding modifiers and showing the continue button are a masterclass in poor UI design. It somehow manages to be god awfully slow AND inconsistent in how I can skip it.

Currently this is how it works:

  • I select my option in dialogue, without any idea of the DC of the check or how having multiple modifiers effects the DC
  • I get booted to a whole new full screen view, with it’s own unskippable entrance animation.
  • I select my modifiers, which are hidden behind a button click for no discernible reason, then roll by clicking another tiny button.
  • I need to wait for a lengthy roll animation, UNLESS I get lucky by clicking at the right time to skip. Performing this skip seems neither consistent nor clear: I just need to hammer my mouse in the general vicinity of the rolling area and hope.
  • If I am UNLUCKY I’m forced to sit through an incredible floaty dice roll animation that apparently takes place in Mars gravity. I have played TTRPGs, I know how long it takes to roll and read dice: half a second, unless you fling your dice across the table like a barbarian.
  • I then have to sit through MORE animations as bonuses are applied, penalizing me for being good at the game and stacking them. I groan as they float towards the dice like they are taking a Sunday stroll through a park.
  • Then I sit through MORE animations as the final tally clobbers the DC dice at the pace of a large glacier, before the continue button finally fades in at what seems to be a totally random time frame.
  • And we get MORE animations as the full screen fades away

The result is a tedious process that takes me out of the game totally: we have these beautifully rendered characters, with emotion and voice acted dialogue, and stunning backgrounds: and Larian choose to hide all that with a full screen animation for dice rolling.

All this in contrast to how classic CRPGs used to do things: you click the dialogue button and instantly get a success or failure. You can barrel through heaps of them, limited only by your reading speed. AND they don’t take up the whole screen while doing so.

Instead with BG3 I have to sit through a minimum five second animation that’s the same every damn time. It could end up ten or fifteen seconds if you fail to skip animations. You might perform four or five of these within a single conversation: at the end you could have spent more time waiting for UI animations than reading and thinking about dialogue choices.

Larian, please please reconsider the dice rolling experience, it’s one of the only blemishes on an otherwise perfect game.

  • @thedrivingcrooner
    link
    271 year ago

    While we’re on this topic can we also please not have to walk to people in camp to talk to them? I just want to replace my party member quickly.

    • @bustrpoindextr
      link
      131 year ago

      Yeah, Kotor party switch is how it should work, just pull up a menu and select.

      Why do I have to tell someone to leave and then walk over to someone else and tell them to join up, such a pain in the ass.

      • Poggervania
        link
        fedilink
        161 year ago

        Especially since they have that confirmation dialogue where they try to guilt-trip you every single time.

        • Coelacanth
          link
          fedilink
          41 year ago

          The only thing I can think of there is that it suggests losing approval with someone if you bench them or something, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. But maybe it did on an earlier build and the confirmation dialogue was left in?

          • Poggervania
            link
            fedilink
            41 year ago

            Nah, it’s actually because they were originally going to have you stick with only 3 other party members iirc. So being able to swap was more or less tacked on.

            • Coelacanth
              link
              fedilink
              41 year ago

              Ah, that would have sucked, I’m glad they went away from it. I would never have guessed with how well developed the camp seems to be.

    • Coelacanth
      link
      fedilink
      61 year ago

      That’s what I thought the “Party View” or whatever it’s called was for (TAB, I think?). Imagine my surprise when it’s just to see multiple inventories at once.