Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Would you participate in an EA release again?

This sums up my feelings much better than I did in my OP. I got DOS2 long after it was released and I really enjoyed it. I signed up for EA because I thought the idea was good and that Larian would produce a good product. I think I would enjoy have enjoyed BG3 more if I had just waited . Kind of similar to the old adage of "seeing how the sausage is made" lol.

So what has the experience of reading forum discussions without having seen or played the items being discussed been like?

I guess so, yes. If the right title comes around, I would absolutely do an EA again.

Certainly, if I had confidence in the developer and interest in the title. One thing I would do differently would be to pace my playtime better. I played probably too much early on in EA, and have avoided play almost entirely the last couple years in order to avoid pre-release burnout.

Yeah, when EA first came out (late 2020) the forums were booming with so many opinions. It was pretty great but, when people realized Larian wasn't answering or posting anything, it gradually died, which was the saddest part. Looking at my old posts, guess I stopped mid 2022 and came back the following year.

Looks like I posted the most in Reactions like Solasta!, Focus Feedback: Halflings, Does anyone like the Origin system? There were others but those looked like the most.

Some pretty good reads were: FR Chronology by BladeDancer, anything alice_ashpool posted, it was always pretty funny, & Firesnakearies game Lists

Does it feel like I did ANYTHING related to helping the game? No, not at all, fun convos though.

On a side note when browsing old posts guess the people that got banned all there posts gets deleted, found @redacted several times.

To be honest, probably not.

On initial release, there were still a lot of game breaking bugs and issues. It was frustrating for me.

A lot of issues that people noted during early access were either never fixed or took a very long time to fix. EA got some support, but Larian seemingly resented having to pull developers away from the full game to support EA. Larian also never (except maybe for the reaction system?) mentioned how they handled EA feedback and what was changed as a result of our feedback.

So, to me, EA was primarily a cash grab to fund development of a game that they didn’t have the cash flow to cover. Despite Larian’s claims that they wanted additional feedback to improve the game, I never really got the impression that it it was a high priority for them.

I will join another, but just out of support for the idea of players and the studios working together to make a product. I really enjoy, as Zerubbabel mentioned, "feeling seen and heard" by the devs.

I wouldn't say the BG3 EA was a perfect experience. But I do think problems and letdowns are inevitable, given the size of the community. But for other games on the way, I still feel passionate and excited.

With that being said, I have to admit that I did little, if anything, for BG3 beyond playing it!

I'm really excited to see if the years of telemetry and feedback have guided this to be a product that will be loved by people who aren't the kind of rabid fans who do an EA or converse on forums. They have literally millions of hours of play testing from EA, and seeing if that's reflected in the final product will be exciting.

I would only to financially support a franchise that I love.

After playing BG3 EA a few times and seen that the game didn't fundamentally change on 1.0, I think it only serves to burn out the experience.

It depends on the game and developer. One thing I do like about EA is that if I come into a windfall then, I can grab the game early and not worry about buying it later. It's what works for me.

It was my first and probably only EA. I had several very good reasons for the EA, which are exhausted in now and hardly given in any other game:

- Baldur's Gate is my favorite game / setting
- I only knew AD&D in iso-perspective and wanted to get to know 5e in modern videogame style
- I wanted to get a short overview about the quality of the German translations (I am 85 % satisfied with them)
- for me there are no good games on the market (with long term play factor) --> in other words it's all so boring that I had time for an EA

EDIT: I forgot to mention that in this EA I made many reports on inconsistencies and translations, which are often also intertwined. When I realize later that there was not much change. I do not make any more reports or EA, because it also costs me time, which should then at least be appreciated with improvements / corrections. I currently assume that as soon as the game is released, I will be less in the forum anyway and prefer to play instead. Only during working hours I will then be in the forum haha.

If something as epic as BG3 is getting an EA, I would participate. But such releases are quite rare.

Depends on game ofc ...
But i have no bad experience with this Early Acess.

It could be better tho, im not going to lie ... if comunication here would be more opened, as it was suggested many times ... but still, it was fun and im glad i got here.

"Would you participate in an EA release again?"

Yes

Without a question. This time around I would do it from the start, to see the changes made along the way myself and support the devs with their data gathering. In the end it all benefits the end product.

Personally I'm getting to the point were I'm too burned out on video games and I don't have the time playing as much as previously. Larian picked up a couple of the feedback given, but there was no communication about what they were doing making the EA feel quite pointless and one-sided for a very long time. Just thinking about how long it took for them to add reactions. Or how hard it was to dial back Larianisms from the game breaking the balance of 5e...

So while I think EA is quite important for Larian because a lot of their instincts are way off - to be honest same can be said of every studio with a game in development - but I won't bother ever again pre-ordering or joining EA for Larian games. To be frank as long as BG3 doesn't surprise me at lunch, I most likely won't be ever again amongst those who buy Larian games before its out and we can see the game because I seriously doubt I'm their target audience in the first place based on game/encounter design, story telling and focus on origin characters.

Ultimately yes, but let's just say I learned to take what devs say with a pinch of salt.

No. Ultimately the community was a bunch of ants in a jar.

Bug testers that had absolutely no sway on the development of the game.

They had their vision of the game from the start and could care less what former fans of the game thought.

I asked for the removal of cantrip surfaces, high ground advantage and no voiced protagonist, they all got addressed. What were your requests?

You have a point in that as an individual ant, you probably felt like you had very little input.

However, once threads got to a large enough size, or were repeated over and over, the community did have sway on decisions. Food healing and Camping supplies gameplay was directly affected by our comments. Creating a character that begins the game with a reason to be evil is possibly due to our feedback (but that may have been in the works from before we started asking for it). Having different camps that are responsive to your current location was based on our feedback. IIRC the limit to two short rest was based on our playtesting data at a minimum, not necessarily our feedback.