Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Perhaps Larian is the wrong studio

Didn't notice this post before...
You know, "another year" is not such a large timeframe in game development terms; especially not when the game is still "under construction" and you can't even dedicate the whole time window just to "polish and improvement".

In fact, it's tight enough that there are things that either we will see addressed in the next 3-4 months or chances are they will never be.

Oh for sure, I didn't download it with an agenda. I'm 40 years old, some of my favorite video games were far before BG1 era of gaming. I still play older games to this day, but I also continue to play new games as they release. I feel I have a good breadth of history and experience from various game geners and platforms. So trying to put myself back in 1998 I was trying to think of the game I was playing at the time and how that compared to them (not fair at all to compare it to a game released today).

I have been loving BG3 so much I wanted to share in the experience that some of the die hard fans on here have been talking about. I was honestly disappointed. Yet I can go back to play a game like champions of krynn and still enjoy it, or ultima 6, or nwn. Those were all great and still enjoyable to me. At the time those games set a precedence and broke barriers and advanced technology.

I didn't get that perception with BG1. So I tried to compare it to games of the time and it was a very conservative choice in development. I understand it is supposed to be a tabletop experience and what the dm/narrator is doing. I have played plenty of rpgs and crpg adaptations of ad&d or other similar games.

My last hope is that the story is extremely compelling, but I need time to get used to the UI before I can accept the story at this point. Again, bg2 will probably be the superior of the two as they gained success and streamlined how they want the game to play with trial and error from first.

I think what I need to do is try PoE which I hear is the spiritual successor, after I play bg1&2 to understand what people feel is missing from bg3.

Well, most games are in development for a couple years on average, as opposed to Doom which was pumped out in a couple months. Comparing the original Baldur's Gate with other concurrent titles of that year is a little unfair, you sort of have to compare it what was released previously. For its time it was pretty remarkable, especially compared to previous DnD efforts like The Temple of Elemental Evil (all of which were way before my time, I am not even 40 yet) because of how well and how often it reacted to the player. I mean, first real mission with the kobold mines, when you get into the second area a miner runs out and gets shot. The action is scripted, but not the results. Its not an auto kill. The kobolds can miss or if the party manages to get ahead of him and gets targeted or takes out the kobolds, he will live and thank you for saving him and give you like a dagger or something. There are a lot of little unnamed NPCs you can save who will show up further a long in the game, and those moments were incredibly meaningful at the time. The sheer possibility those things inspired in the player left you with a sense of wonder through the whole game -when it came out. You simply never knew what was possible but always had hope that things could be -and often were rewarded for that hope. As a video game it wasn't an impressive title, as a role playing game that responded to player action it did a lot of things few games had even attempted previously and which few games have attempted since.

As opposed to BG 3 where so much is scripted. I have NPCs I have saved showing up as corpses the next time I see them because they don't need to be killed, they just have a triggered state. Eventually the bugs will iron out and it will be less obvious but it still won't be quite the same.

The simple answer, the kind of DnD games more similar to BG2 or Pillars of eternity we would like just plainly DONT SELL massively.
That LARIAN TOUCH on this top down RPG genre gets very wide appeal and easily stretches to consoles; A couple of focused companions story (all of which are easily 2020 relatable...), cinematics, fun silly gameplay, green/blue/red/yellow items everywhere........all of this sells more than DnD mechanics, numbers, day/night cycles etc...sadly.
I mean if BG3 had only 4 classes, Rogue, wizard, warrior and cleric, the majority of people wouldn't really mind nowadays. Even Cleric and wizard spells have kind of merged together now. BG2 had 118 unique cleric spells. 185 wizard spells...Thats no typo. The total game had nearly 300 spells.
Yea you dont use all of them, but it just add so much lore and flavor to the game.

Get a dozen Larian and Obsidian guys to work on a side project. Thats how we could get an incredible BG2 flavor game And ABSOLUTELY LEAVE WOTC/Hasbro OUT OF IT.

ToEE came after BG2 , by the way.


EDIT: And with all its merits BG2 was never a remarkedly "reactive" RPG experience, anyway. Not even by its time' standards.
Games like Fallout 2 or Arcanum leave it in the dust in this sense.

BG3 has probably already more instances where you can affect the outcome in EA than the entire BG2, which was a massive game.

True, good point. i did go back to 1997 to see what I was playing, but maybe a bit earlier. Again I was playing games of that time frame so comparing the games that were released "with" it should be a fair wag at how it chalks up to other games, but I do understand your point.

To my point, and I run into this a lot. I have been playing a lot of video games over the years. I have seen these mechanics that people find amazing in earlier games and they do not have the same wow factor on me as they do on other players. I remember when oblivion was being released my co-worker was going off on how the npcs have day/night schedules and are "smart" AI that can go get items and interact with the world....Ultima 6 from 1990 did all of that and npcs would pick up items and eat food or what have you. Oblivion was released in 2006. Way better graphics (oblivion graphics were horrible but better than 1990 game and 3d vs isometric pixel graphics) but the idea was not new to me so I just shrugged it off as something to be expected.

The only game in recent history that wow'ed me with how they told a narrative was the first witcher. I bought it while I was on a month long business trip just because I saw a big shiny red box in best buy and figured, why not I'm bored in the hotel, I'll pick this up. At the time all the rpg games let you play as a good guy or you could try to do the evil path and be a big mean bad guy. Like KOTR was renown for that....the problem was the good and evil choices were SOOOOO transparent and obvious it was just weak in my opinion. Now comes me playing The Witcher with no knowledge of the game (I think this was after I played NWN because I ...THINK? it used the aurora engine?).

Good and evil were not clear cut, it was very mature in it's story telling and just a gritty world. I was amazed and inspired. I think that is how you felt about the miner escaping the mines and you were wow'ed by that. I always have played games to see if a death is scripted or if I can same the npc, so while I wouldn't be wow'ed by that, I give any developer credit for letting me affect the story.

In bg3 in the goblin camp, I made it a point to try to save the hostage that gets knocked into the spider pit and dies. Very ineffective scripting, but the npc does thank you and then disappears. Don't think that impacts anything else later on, but cool they let me do that and acknowledge that action.

You're right, I was thinking of Eye of the Beholder.

Yeah no, there used to be a lot of experimentation in older titles which you don't see in newer games. There is little in the genre over last twenty years which hadn't been done first in the Ultima series or Arx Fatalis. There was a brief Renaissance where people were really excited about the potential of what they could do and really tried to push the boundaries. I think finances have a lot to do with why it isn't done as much any more, experimentation is wildly profitable when it pays off - but that isn't often. There is also the fact that mediocrity is pragmatic. I loved Arcanum, I think it was superior to anything BG or NwN ever did, which isn't to say it was anywhere near perfect (hell it was all but unplayable on release) but it wasn't popular simply because it was so unique. Steampunk and fantasy blends are common now, but when it came many people didn't really knowing what was going on with it.

I have only played the Witcher 3, but I was also impressed with how much it did right. I especially like that the game allowed you to satisfy quests with wrong answers and reacted accordingly. Pin a crime on the wrong guy, you still get the reward but the atrocities continue. That for me was exciting.

Seriously guys ?

Rhobar said
"And it significantly extends the waiting time for the next turn.
Remember that this is a turn-based game, in the old games you could have thrown armies of goblins on the player and the fight was fast anyway.
In the case of a turn-based game, you are unable to do it."

So you know with what you can do it ? RTwP. It's a fact, not my opinion.
I'm done with the dabete RTwP/TB. But when somebody said something so obvious I can't stop myself to point it out.
Wasn't trying to hard, just wanna underline a clever, unconscious and at the same time funny statement.

And then Rhobar said
"That RTwP works is a fact, however, the RTwP games are still dead (maybe except DA but it's more of an action game than an RPG)"
For a second, I thought it was a taunt. But I guess it's geniune assertion... Sadly completely wrong. PoE and PKM are RTwP (and TB, I'm not denying) and they are not "dead"... pretty the opposite... Owlca are preparing the next PKM and it have a big hype cause it was a really good game. (and there is others games in RTwP...)
But again, no need to argue more.

CMF must be joking... His comment came from... well he just arrived to the first inn... it would be like judging BG3 after arriving to the druid's grove. :-|

Won't say a word about his view of RTwP... Well, actually, I will.
"it feels very UN-engaging and just watching things auto attack is boring to me"
I wonder what the difference here with TB except in TB it would take longer to be "just watching things auto attack".
I am really not looking for an argument about RTwP but I can't stand this kind of fallacious argument.

And when he said "portrait from BG1 and 2 looks like cartoon" or maybe I misunderstood "cartoon"... But it seems a little bad faith for me to state it (well, all the comment feels a lot like bad faith.).

Artisticaly speaking, I think Obsidian did a good job on PoE 2. It was colorfull and nice. I loved it.
Pathfinder did a good job too with color but at the same time a darker atmosphere. A really good job.
DoS feels is colorfull but feels less... meticulous(?) but it's the problem of the 3D (from my point of view) it's harder to have a perfect... rendering(?). Still it's a nice game.

So BG3 is 3D and I have nothing against it but it never occured to me that 3D was necessary an enhancement, more with cRPG. So it's beautiful, etc. But one thing is sure. A portrait draw as a painting is far more beautifull than a translation of a 3D model (except maybe if the model comes from a quantic dream game)


I'm close to Abits's point of view with a little less faith sadly.

Really ? Don't sell ?
Maybe we should all calm our horses. stop with this kind of argument.

I would like to have the comments of Orbax about the sales.
I would like people to think twice of the reason of a success in selles (like DOS2 take advantage from the success of the 1 when, on the contrary, PoE 2 was penalize by its first)
I would like to disagree with this statement a little to out of nowhere for me, especially knowing the success of the BG3's EA is massively due to... a "kind of DnD games more similar to BG2", which was actually BG2.

I would love CDPR's vision of art, writing and immersion brought to this game.

Larian's art, humor and writing are still not quite there.

RtWP is far from dead. Final fantasy switched to RtWP, Fallout has pause elements (VATS), DAO, etc.... All of which sold more than DOS2.

100% BG3 would sell more if it was RtWP.

Good lord I hope you’re not programming something important. There is a bias modifier that needs to be adjusted. I have given you ONE example and you still harken back to it in all your arguments. A +8 (with archery, I double checked my numbers) on a 75% hit chance should hit 3/4 times. When I’m having this issue is almost every single battle, there is a problem. I don’t hate the game, just elements that make it lame. But back to the math point. Goblins in this game have 12AC, I have a +8 to hit. That means I need to roll a 4 or greater to hit on a D20, I hit maybe 1 out of 10 times . There is a problem with random generator. I play DnD enough to know missing is part of it, but missing as much as I have seems really weird. Again this isn’t one battle, it almost all of them. STOP DEFENDING SHIT YOU DONT INDERSTAND!

No, it wouldn’t.

Prove that it wouldn't.

Sorry, I just wanted to keep making invalid arguments and then when they are questioned transfer the burden of proof to disproving a negative.

The simplest proof is selling RTwP games vs selling Divinity 2.
According to steamspy, divinity sold at least as well as PoE1, PoE2 and Pathfinder combined.
DoS2: between 2-5 million
Pathfinder: between 500-1mln
PoE2: between 500-1 million
PoE1: between 1-2 million

Sales of PoE2 were so bad that to save the game, they had to implement turn-based mode.
So the turns sell much better.

Don't understand the logic of choosing indie games to prove sales.

Final Fantasy, DAO, Mass Effect, Fallout all of them have either RtWP or Real time with pause elements.

No doubt at all that BG3 would have sold twice by now. It is not even a question.

6 Pages in, did anyone think to reply to the provocative title with "Hey OP, maybe you're the wrong player for the game!" ??

I can't find highly accurate sales figures for each, but most stats seem to imply that DOS 2 far outsold POE 2 and Kingmaker.

Steam chart shows a roughly 5x player base of DOS 2 compared to Kingmaker

Moving away from RTwP might anger some of the BG1/2 fanbase, but I think Larian correctly assessed that it's too big of a risk to move away from Turn-based given DOS 2's popularity.

It's not definite proof, but it is very telling that both Deadfire and Kingmaker added in turn-base modes to their games post-launch, likely due to consumer demand. We don't see the inverse for Larian.


EDITED:



Out of the above listed game, only DAO is really comparable - and that is a decade old game. The market has changed too much to reliably use it as an example for demand. There is a reason why isometric CRPGs basically experienced a "dead" period in the early 2010's.

Fallout and Mass Effect are shooters that play completely differently. Can you imagine if Larian had decided to make BG3 an ARPG with some sort of pause elements? You think BG1/2 enthusiasts are mad now?

I'm not familiar with all versions of Final Fantasy, but each one tends to have a different combat system and I do not ever recall playing an isometric CRPG version of that.

It's kind of funny to compare DA, Mass Effect and Fallout games (it's not even RTwP) to DoS.
Both DoS2 and the other games I mentioned belong to the same category.

Dragon Age is RTwP and i think its fair to assume that that game sold more than Divinity (although i could be wrong here) so by your logic BG3 would have sold more as RTwP bc DA:O, a RTwP game, sold more than Divinity, a TB game.