Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides The Turn-Based/Real Time with Pause topic

You're delusional if you really believe that a game that plays exactly like Baldurs Gate 2 would be more successful than a coop friendly. I am honestly shocked that there are still CRPG devs around that to not include Coop at all in their games after the resounding success of DOS 2. Even a bad coop mod is better than having none at all. And I say this as someone who rarely plays Coop.
I really would like to know if Swen actually believes that Stadia will be a success or if he just likes getting money from Google? (who doesn't?)

We know almost nothing about BG3, but they already stated that it will have co-op multiplayer, and stadia no less so it is a fact.



The problem is that CRPG are usually made by small indie studios, so they have budget constraints. At least that is what devs like the french studio of Solasta or the ones of Realms beyond said. They would like to, but they do not have the cash

Seems Larian does not have those restraints anymore.

I'm delusional...?

Where did I say it has to have no co-op mode at all?



Again, I never stated it wouldn't, or that it shouldn't have a co-op mode.

In point of fact I always fully expected it to.

I think @Hawke pointed out that the cash invested in creating an MP is never going to waste because after the success of DoS2 (and MP coop games in general), having a game with Coop-MP guarantees a steady amount of buyers. So they will never lose money as you said if they allocate resources to create a good MP mode, even if it costs some features due to the need to adapt the game to MP.

That I agree but do not know if that is desirable, tho.

Way to miss my entire point. Not that im exactly surprised.
Yes you dont need to pause, but you can.


Im not getting into the argument of how Turn bsaed i different from RTWP, ive done this to no end already.

Point is: RTWP is in no ways more complicated than Turn based is, if you want to get int o complicated frantic management, play RTS games.
RTWP is in no ways more complicated, its just more annoying.

And i dont care about the multiplayer boogeyman.
Multiplayer is a great feature and i like playing my RPGs that way, nobody forces you to do it, and saying that complexity is going to get sacrificed for the sake of multiplayer..... please, you can say a lot about OS, even i you hate it, but not that its somehow dumbed down for multiplayer.

The best part of RTWP is the sense of immediacy you don't get in a turn-based game. the issue is always the micromanaging but that is the challenge in RTWP it's why people like it. Since you feel like a leader who has to manage formations in real-time and make sure everyone is doing what he should do. Personally, I have never seemed that as tedious but then again I grew up with RTS games in the nineties and early 2000s

@Hawke, once again you're exactly right. Managing my party, setting up fighting formations, making sure everyone is doing their part, and all of that in RT w/ minimal pausing, this is exactly what makes combat interesting and exciting and immersive and challenging for me. It is about as far from tedious as anything can possibly be, and, by contrast, what makes TB so utterly boring and tedious and stupid for me. In TB, combat becomes a pain-in-the-ass chore part of the game, something to get through as quickly as possible because it is the sucky crappy part of the game.

Yup, and depending on the difficulty and complexity of the combat system, getting your party to the point where they can survive combat without the micro-managing can often be a long process, one that takes you most of the game to accomplish.

Obviously, party make-up has alot to do with all of this, which is why I always liked creating my own characters so I can set that bar as high or low as possible.

Of course, some set the difficulty to easy and don't want to bother with any of it. Which is perfectly fine.

Everyone that's saying you can play the BG games in real time, if you have skill, gotta upload a vid of them beating Melissan on insane without cheesing rests or pausing. Once you've done that, think about how many times you reloaded and tell me it wasn't tedious with a straight face. And after that, realize you're an unstoppable god behind a keyboard and us filthy casuals want something we can enjoy too.

I have quite a few hours on both BG and D:OS series. Every fight in the BG series is either mind-numbingly easy or equally mind-numbingly tedious - with rare few exceptions. Every fight in D:OS makes me think about what I want to do - without me wanting to bash my face off the keyboard in frustration... which is desirable. I don't know if you can attribute that to the combat system or the development or the fact that the BG series is simply 16 years more dated. But, hey, that's just my experience.

No one claims that Bg2 is perfect there are other RTWP games with much better combat like Pathfinder Kingmaker, Deadfire or even Dragon Age Origins. If you just improve the interface you get a much better experience like in PKM.
Anyway, I never understand how anyone can say that BG 2 is one of the greatest RPG a when it has no skill system and basically all quest involve killing something, thus providing too little role-playing. Those are the areas where Larian has to improve a lot more than in the combat.

i still fail to see how tedium is skill, if you have infinite ammount of time to do the managing, its not hard

Right on. It is roleplaying that has become so much better in other RPGs since the release of BG2, and appropriately so given the 'R' built right into 'RPG'. And because for me the D:OS games were a gigantic step backwards in this regard, Larian has a whole heck of a lot to prove to me.

Yes, combat was terrible in BG2. But sorry, combat was equally if not more terrible in the D:OS games. They didn't make me want to think about what I wanted to do. All I needed to do was to spam the same combination of spells from all my characters again and again, and maybe blow up an oil barrel or two. So I learned that the best way to handle combat encounters in D:OS was to just lower the difficulty setting all the way down to facilitate very quick bashing of the enemies with simple melee, and move on. I did this NOT because combat was challenging but rather because it was mind-numbingly boring.

Agreed. Which is why I didn't say BG was mind-numbingly difficult. Every big fight boils down to two things. Do you have the correct party composition, and do you have the required sanity to pause every few seconds to make sure everyone is doing what they should be doing.

Melissan Fight No Pause

This, is to settle the question "Can it be done or not?". Just so there won't be any doubt about it. Not Insane difficulty because the game is meant to be played at CORE RULES. Besides, not that it would have mattered, as the party took almost no damage.

Now that that's out of the way, let me say a few things.

- No, I definitely don't expect the majority of players would try to do something like this.

- This is without pausing at all. If you just pause a few times, it would be more forgiving and easier to pull off. Unless you're going to tell me, "No, pausing 5 times already makes it boring." I have nothing to say to that.

- How many times did I reload? You have no idea how many times I reload on all the big fights throughout the game, and NOT because it takes a lot of retries to win, but simply because it's fun. For this video, I didn't keep count, but I assure you, it was *nothing*. Maybe even fewer times than some players need when playing normally.

- This video is to demonstrate what careful planning, good execution, and good understanding of the game, can achieve. To answer your question, "Was it tedious?" No, it wasn't. Learning your enemies, knowing that you can do better, trying to come up with the best plan, refining your execution, then seeing it all comes together - if you can't find fun in this while playing a combat-heavy game, well, that is a shame.

- Now if you say, "yeah ok, cool, most players are not as hardcore as you." Seriously, what does it take, really? Read ingame descriptions. Keep in mind the important details. Experiment and play around with your toolbox. Pay attention to how things work. It's not like it takes days and nights studying and doing research.

- Now let me ask you something. Have you ever *try* to play the game without pausing? In vanilla BG, there is an engine bug in which if you pause the game while an enemy is casting a spell, they will be interrupted. This is why sometimes I play through vanilla BG without pausing if there are enemy casters. To me, this makes the game fun in a different way. Chances are you'd need an entirely different approach to the same fight, as well as more careful planning and very good execution to pull it off. It forces you to execute fast and precisely, and this unusually hectic gameplay makes the game exciting to me.

- So the bottom line is, I get that there are different types of players. Some really only play for the story. But honestly, sometimes people complain a game is boring or whatever, yet they can't be bothered to try and find out if there is a way to make the game more fun for them and also can't be bothered to try and get better at the game they're playing, either.

If a game design require you to play in a certain way that is both harder and not what is intended gameplay, to be more fun. Do you really expect people, who already find it boring, to bother to get so familiar with the game that they can play it in such a manner? Thats ridiculous.

You know your own personal feelings are just that. Just because you hate RTWP does not mean you have a right to declare that it's a bad system even there are people who enjoy it. Seems to be common among the turn-based fraction while most RTWP fans can enjoy turn-based combat, the TB fans will stop at nothing to make RTWP seems like a bad system when it was used in so many great beloved games that by their definition are all crap, just because they use a system that you don't like.
Is it really so hard to admit that RTWP can be fun but it's just not for you?

lol

rofl

Imagine spending 5 minutes on setting up in a 5 minute 45 second boss fight and saying it wasn't tedious with a straight face.
gz tho, you for sure did something not a lot of people can do.

In Final Fantasy 8, you can draw magic to power up your team, but this is incredibly slow, so a lot of people hate it. But you can develop special abilities that lets you transform items into magic wich is quick and effective, but how does this help? People who dosen't like the game aren't gonna be bothered to find out about that. And I like that game, but i certenly understand those who dosen't. The magic system is really bad, since the most intuitive approach to obtain magic in it is boring. So saying "people should play the game in a certain way that make it more fun" dosen't make much sense. It's not a good game design if people need to "play it right".
Try2Handing seem to think it's the players job to figure out how to make the game fun, wich i dissagre with.

What's the point of asking the question "Was it tedious?" if you were not willing to believe the answer? I'd "rofl" here too were I not busy facepalming.

If you watch that video and believe that cranking up the difficulty to Insane would have made a difference, it only proves how bad and ignorant you are at the game. I suspected as much, to be honest, judging by the fact that you thought it impossible without "rest cheesing". I can make another video on Insane just for the sake of clearing this up, but I don't see much point in proving something to someone who is not willing to believe or open their eyes.

You notice I killed Melissan instantly every time, right? You notice the fight drags on more because of its design, with all the cutscenes and whatnot, right? How long would it take *you* for this fight, normally? And how many times would *you *need to reload?

Did you actually *watch* the video, or did you simply look at how long it is?

Making fun of "preparation", when that is exactly what this game is about. I didn't know you wanted a "speedkill". Could've just said so. I made this with the intent to show that it actually doesn't take "god-tier" maneuver and also doesn't have to be super cheesy. But of course, if I had made a speedkill video chances are you'd try to find something else to make fun of.

You're clearly one who has no idea what this game is about, and how to play it. But what's disappointing here is when someone proves just how bad you are at the game, all you can say is "lol".

It's been a cool argument.

PS: this is even worse than arguing with Sordak. Dude at least always argues back with his perspective and *some* reasoning.

...

Read the very first bullet point I said in that post.

The point of the video, like I said, is simply to answer the question "can it be done or not?", and also to eventually prove that, this game is simply *not* for some people. There is no point for these people to come here whining the game is "boring" and whatnot with their stupid reasoning, because this game is simply NOT FOR THEM. So they really should just shut the fuck up.

"What is intended gameplay." Exactly. The intended gameplay is to pause. The video was an answer to those who can't enjoy the INTENDED gameplay. Like I pointed out, you can't enjoy the "normal" gameplay, you also can't be bothered to try and play it in a "not normal" way to see if it's more fun, you also can't be bothered to get better at the game.