Borderline unplayable on steam deck

[Bodge_It]

Inconsistent frame rate when capped at 30, running on low settings, everything looks like hot garbage and still this game cannot be played in a satisfying way.

[perhab]

Although the game is 'Verified' by Valve for Steam Deck, it runs really bad and is IMO unplayable. You can get stable 40 FPS in some locations, but it's usually 20-30 FPS on minimal settings with FSR. And there are FPS dips from 20 to 0 on certain actions (spells and something else I don't remember now).

Stable 30 FPS would be fine since this is basically a turn based game, but in its current technical state it can't offer this on Steam Deck. Shame on Larian and Valve for lying that BG3 is supported on Steam Deck. No, it's not.

[doomshadow612]

Your mistake is buying steam deck to begin with

[Chaosolous]

That's a shame.

[zpc]

Steam Deck is a nice thing, nothing wrong with it. What's confusing for people is that verification. The criterias checked by Valve here (and it is only Valve doing that, not the game dev or anyone else) aren't matching those "guessed" by the customers. Example: nowhere in the criteria there is a measure about fps.

Here are the criterias a game has to meet:

Originally posted by Valve:

Games that check these four boxes are Deck Verified.

Input
The title should have full controller support, use appropriate controller input icons, and automatically bring up the on-screen keyboard when needed.

Display
The game should support the default resolution of Steam Deck (1280x800 or 1280x720), have good default settings, and text should be legible.

Seamlessness
The title shouldn’t display any compatibility warnings, and if there’s a launcher it should be navigable with a controller.

System Support
If running through Proton, the game and all its middleware should be supported by Proton. This includes anti-cheat support.

@source: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified

Those criterias are also not formally defined. E.g. wether a "text is legible" is subjective.

[Goblin]

Ahh good to know, I got several friends considering getting the steam deck just because they think they'll be able to mobile play the game. They really should remove the Verified tag

[Deleted *******]

its unplayable in act 2/3 for me on a RTX card, i dont think Steamdeck can carry this one.

[Traekin]

i must be an outlier because mine plays perfectly fine with the default settings

[Pieshaman]

you buy steamdeck only when you want to get frustrated, sore eyes and neck problems.

[perhab]

Originally posted by zpc:

Steam Deck is a nice thing, nothing wrong with it. What's confusing for people is that verification. The criterias checked by Valve here (and it is only Valve doing that, not the game dev or anyone else) aren't matching those "guessed" by the customers. Example: nowhere in the criteria there is a measure about fps.

This isn't true. AFAIK, there are more than just those 4 criteria, and you can check them on the device itself if you open the game's Steam Deck "supported" status. There is a criteria about running well with some graphics preset. And 20-25 FPS with dips is reasonably "not well".

If you take the device itself and check the 'Verified' badge of each title, each has a criteria that the game runs well on Steam Deck with the default or some certain graphics settings. For quite some time, 'Verified' meant great out-of-the-box experience. BG3 has this 'criteria' checked, but fails to actually provide playable experience.

Valve has to change BG3 to Playable and Larian has to make a statement that in its current state it's hard to impossible to complete the game on Steam Deck.

[perhab]

https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamdeck/images/ver2/verified_EldenRingModal_english.jpg (it's from steamdeck.com for Elden Ring, but all Verified games have it too)

And just FYI. Here is a screenshot of four criteria one of which explicitly states:
[[[
* This game's default graphics configuration performs well on Steam Deck.
]]]

But - NO - Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't perform well on Steam Deck. The game - in its current technical statue - should be moved into 'Playable' tier. And once it can be played at stable 30 FPS on low settings, moved back into 'Verified'.

[SolaoBajiuik TTV]

I've been playing a consistent 200+ hours solely on my steamdeck with no problems.

[panthera uncia]

Don't use Valve's Deck Verified badge, use ProtonDB instead. There's so many games that work fine or better than fine on the Deck but are listed as "Unsupported". ProtonDB lets you glean far more useful info about things like performance, battery life estimates and so on.

That being said, the Deck doesn't have a fast CPU, it's only about on par with the PS4 or Xbone power-wise, and Baldur's Gate 3 is a very CPU-heavy game. It's to the point where it doesn't work well on PCs with more powerful CPUs in later chapters. I'm really hoping Patch #2 helps in that regard. Set your expectations accordingly tho.

[Verde]

Yup, they released an unoptimized mess of a game hoping they'd be able to patch it out post-release without people making too much of a fuss about it, and the crazy part is, they are in fact going to get away with it because every piece of valid criticism launched against this game is drowned by the sea of clueless fanboys overpraising it.

[xnamxoutlawx]

Originally posted by Traekin:

i must be an outlier because mine plays perfectly fine with the default settings

Perfectly fine is not quantifiable... Perfectly fine can mean alot of different things to alot of people some might think 360p low settings @ 20fps is perfectly fine... To most people it is not.

[s_greyjoy]

if your internet is good...

BG3 using geforce now (the 10usd a month option) on the steam deck is absolutely perfect imo. constant 60 fps on act 2, max settings, and higher res than playing natively on the steam deck.

and yeah i've played exclusively on the deck. first 70 or so hours on act 1 and the beginning of act2. act1 was a fine 30 fps experience, but once i hit act 2, i was getting sub30 fps everywhere. thats when i decided to try out geforce now and i should have played the game this way from the beginning, game changer