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.
You can skip the rolling animation. Once you set your modifiers and click the die (or dice), just move the cursor out of the dice window and left click again. It finishes instantly.
If you’re on controller, I haven’t played that way, so I couldn’t tell you.
Ah that’s it, thanks.
That being said my other complaints still stand: the whole thing is incredibly tedious for an animation you are going to see hundreds, possibly thousands of times over a standard playthrough.
I feel like this is an example of singular testing: they designed an experience that looks great when you look at it once, but forgot that it’s going to be seen hundreds of times
I agree too dude, you’re getting too many downvotes for this. The dice rolls should be toggleable. I mean, I really like the game but the qol and ui overall has a lot of issues.
I haven’t found a way that it’s skippable on controller (though I haven’t looked hard because I actually like the dice rolls).
Just press A. Or X in the case of a PlayStation controller. B for Nintendo.
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.
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.
Especially since they have that confirmation dialogue where they try to guilt-trip you every single time.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Oh i feel this so much. I wish it was easier.
And here I am, wishing we could roll the dice manually by actually moving the mouse
This should be a game option. Dice animations enable disable. Leave it on by default let people turn it off if they get tired of them.
I for one would completely remove the animations in any sort of delayed gratification screen. These aren’t freaking loot boxes. We’re already invested in the game. We don’t need drama added to an event we’re trying to resolve. The event is the drama.
Speed setting but keep the rolls. I like em.
Or just add wiimote support so I can shake em up shake em up shake em.
Your basic gripe has been answered (and I’m really sorry if you’re still struggling to skip the animation, it IS long), but just want to throw out here that “without any idea of the DC of the check” is an intended gameplay element.
You are supposed to look at the situation and try to guess how hard you think a thing would be. This is a hotly debated subject in tabletop, but Larian’s position is clear - you don’t get to know the DC until you’re committed. Figuring out that intimidating the cave troll is a high DC is on you to infer from the situation. Some DMs don’t tell players the DC at all, even after the roll. Some DMs don’t even tell players whether or not they succeeded (which I think is really fun for things like Insight checks)
You actually can just Examine an NPC and get a good idea of how hard a check will be, even if it’s not the exact DC. Like if you’re using speech against someone, knowing they have a higher Charisma and Wisdom bonus means it will be harder to persuade or deceive them (and strength for intimidation).
fair point, but in some cases i can add bonuses after knowing the difficulty?
agree about the last point, esp when there’s not a hard line to success/ fail.
but its nice for the player to know they did “their best” or “screwed it up” i.e. know the dice roll. just not be sure if it was good enough
Insight, investigation and perception should generally be treated as thresholds of information to disclose rather than fixed DCs, with shades of failure and success.
Having been save scumming quite hard, the Critical Failure and Critical Success means fuck all. It changes nothing so I’m not sure why they included them outside of combat. Unless it changes in the harder difficulty. I’m on the medium, default one.
Having been save scumming quite hard, the Critical Failure and Critical Success means fuck all. It changes nothing so I’m not sure why they included them outside of combat.
Wait. I thought the Crit Fail and Crit Success were automatic, even when you otherwise would have passed or failed?
Like for example, if I have a +5 total modifier and it’s a DC 3 check, I shouldn’t be able to fail it (my smallest modded roll is a 6). But I can still fail… with a Crit Fail by rolling a one. Same the other way around, where my largest possible modded roll can’t beat the DC… I can still roll a 20 to pass it.
Or did I misunderstand this mechanic?
Critical Failure is when you roll a 1. 1 always fails, even if your modifiers would be higher than the DC.
Critical success is just a natural 20, or a 20 with just the die alone and no modifiers and is always a success.
However generally in the PnP game or other CRPGs that use it, critical fail and critical success not only just fail or succeed the thing, they fail it worse or succeed it better. It might come with extra rewards or just more flavor text to make it different than a regular success or failure.
Critically failing at picking a lock, for example, might break the lock preventing another attempt at picking or even using a key.
Critically succeeding an intimidation check to extort money from an NPC might get you a little more gold or items.
BG3 doesn’t do this. Critical fail is a regular fail, but it’s telling you that you rolled a 1 on the die. Critical success is just success but you rolled a nat 20. They don’t make the rarity of the die roll special in any way other than telling you it was critically good or bad during the roll.
Same the other way around, where my largest possible modded roll can’t beat the DC… I can still roll a 20 to pass it.
While you’re right about the fail and in PnP, this isn’t how it works in BG3. If your modifiers aren’t high enough to succeed, it doesn’t even let you make the attempt. It straight up says “impossible.”
You understood it right.
It’d be nice if they gave the option to skip the virtual rolling altogether and just show the result straight away. That said I’ve never had an issue skipping the animations and it’s usually pretty quick if you do that. Sounds like maybe you’ve run into a bug if it’s not working consistently for you.
unless you fling your dice across the table like a barbarian.
Stop barbarian shaming!
Yeah giving a toggle or something to let people who don’t care for the dice rolls skip/fast forward them would be a worthy addition. I agree, the current experience is really clunky if you’re trying to move through a given roll quickly.
Also, a tip: hovering your cursor over the skill tag on a given dialogue option will show you your modifiers for that particular skill, but I can understand wanting that to be designed differently to make it more obvious. I don’t dislike how it’s done now, because it evokes some of the “I know what I’m good at” from tabletop which would guide my choices anyways, but I also understand that just because something doesn’t bother me doesn’t necessarily mean it’s designed well.
As far as not knowing the DC ahead of time, that is the entirety of tabletop dnd (and a decent number of other systems I’m sure). I’ve never played in a game where we were told that, and I don’t tell my players when I DM. I do understand the sentiment, because unlike a tabletop game with really open-ended options for dialogue and approaches to problems, we’re doing the more basic video game RPG dialogue options and actions, and some of the sense for how difficult something should be doesn’t translate over. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with an option to show the DC ahead of time, but IMO that gets far enough into personal preference territory that I don’t think it’s really a knock against their design in a way that some of the other points are.
In all I think the answer is just toggles/options (maybe tweaks) rather than a redesign; I enjoy the rolling experience myself and don’t really share your complaints, but my enjoyment isn’t any more valid than your agony hahaha.
I would like to just not have the animation play, but I also like seeing the DC to know if I want to add bonuses that I only have limited uses of. I also like seeing the numerical result of the rolls somewhere. I got quite accustomed to that back with Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights. Put them in the “combat log” (which logs everything not just combat for those who don’t know) and Id be happy.
I like the idea of just removing the animation even. It is nice to have custom dice sets is the only reason I would want to still see it. I feel compelled to collect dice.
- Nothing affects the DC, and not knowing the DC until you have to make the check is a standard part of D&D.
- I have no idea how slow the animations are on your PC but I have never had an issue with them. Yeah maybe it’d be nice to be able to turn them off if you hate them for some reason. Sounds like a mod idea at least.
- Your modifiers are shown immediately. Maybe you mean your optional modifiers, which are optional for a reason; eg presumably you don’t want Shadowheart breaking Shield of Faith 1st level concentration to Guidance cantrip you trying to lock pick a door, and don’t want to use Laezels limited bonus the first time you try to pet the cat.
- The actual rolling takes like 3 seconds, but I can click them to skip easily. I know this because too often I do so myself accidentally.
Press the Esc key whilst it’s rolling, and it will just skip to the results.
That doesn’t solve the rest of the problems though
Hot take: I want to see ALL dice rolls (especially for attack rolls and damage rolls too)
Do agree that the animation could be faster though.
Larian making an almost perfect game crippled by a tedious, immersion breaking minigame. Name a more iconic duo (looking at you DOS Rock Paper Scissors).
