Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please call this game what it is, DOS III

And you just proved how unreasonable you are. You ignored all the FACTS I pointed to and stomped your feet, in a tantrum. The very classic you are defending did the very thing you are against. They took an existing IP, AD&D to get easy nostalgia headstart with name recognition then radically change the mechanics of the IP so they didn't have to deal with the "baggage" of the AD&D rule set. now you are complaining that Larian is being faithful to the IP? Do you not see your own hypocrisy?

All the other examples you gave DO NOT APPLY here. Why? because all those examples are NARRATIVE changes. You can't point to narrative failings with Larian's BG III, so are sticking to mechanical. And the very RULES of the IP of the game are not mechanically similar to the first games. The current IP rules are not even close to the original games anymore. To be 100% accurate the original games are not and were not faithful to the source material at all. The fact you point to Larian shows you don't even understand the history of the BG series at all.

Obsidian and inXile Entertainment both FAILED to be granted the license for over a decade!!!! because they wanted to make a game mechanically similar to the original games. Larian makes very different games from either company. So why give them the IP? Because the games Larian makes, at least their last 2 games, are closer mechanically to D&D than anything being made today. So you got a FAITHFUL representation of D&D but you don't want a faithful representation to D&D you want an unfaithful representation. So ironically you wanted the very thing you complained about with star wars star trek and ghostbusters. You wanted a "Its not like the original property of old you remember..." You can't even be consistent and rational about your dislike of the current game.

You remind me of people complaining a movie based on a book is faithful to the book and not previous movie adaptations that made wild changes to the source material. You'd be the kind of guy that would complain the up coming Dune film doesn't include weirding modules from David lynch's film and then rage how yet another franchise remake isn't being faithful. lol The irony and hypocrisy is strong with this one. lol

Hey, nothing wrong with weirding modules, they where a cool addition! Seriously, though. My statement was a rather broad one, true, but hypocritical? Sorry, that's your own interpretation running wild.. all I was trying to say, was: If you take up the "name" of something with history and meaning to others, and use it for your own creation, you should be careful what people might expect. Whether you go on and make narrative changes, or systemic changes, whatever you do, there will be people critiquing you for it... especially when the changes you make have a very clear origin in something you did before.

Also: Of course, movies are not games, obviously... but the, often forceful dismissal of "old school fan's" concerns that tends to happen these days it usually all the same, no matter the medium, and - honestly - it comes of as... pouty responsibility dodging, to me... if that makes sense?

You nailed it. If Wizards of the cost didn't want Larians take on RPG game play they would have not given them the IP to work with.

When it was announced that BG3 is going to be a turn-based game, if you followed any news at all you would know that the game was going to be very similar to DOS2 in terms of combat and generally how it plays out. I don't understand why you would think pre-ordering BG3 would be a good idea if you never really liked DOS games to begin with. If you want a nostalgic experience there are already similar games to BG1-2 out there, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder etc...

Thinly veiled "educate yourself" argument incoming... Kinda true, of course... if there wasn't Larian's marketing up to this point, promising players a genuine D&D5/Baldur's Gate experience, not a Divinity "reskin".

...which the game isn't, mind you. It just has enough Divinity in it right now, to be somewhat off putting to many "classical" CRPG fans.

As for the: WotC whanted the game to be BG3 D:OS eidtion... I doubt it. Then again, who really knows what Wizards wants for it's IPs these days? ...but that's a wholly different discussion.

Going to expand on that point :

I'm more than okay with a turn based combat. Doesn't make me okay though with how Baldurs Gate 3 feels right now. It borrows so many things straight out of Divinity rather than D&D (surfaces, environment design and layering, mobility in combat, classes all able to use spell scrolls and getting same actions) that you can't just say people call it DOS:3 just because combat is turn based. This is as a shallow argument as CRPG fans trying to flame down BG3 just because it isn't active combat.

Right now, the game doesn't feel like a D&D game at all. I blame the overall design, lack of class flavor, and absence of strong lore exposure, far more than the turn based combat.
For example to me, instead of making a 3mn CGI intro which doesn't tell you anything beside showing you bad guys fighting in some generic fashion, they should have sticked to intros like in BG / IWD : 3mns of context for you to get involved with the story while showcasing beautiful music and artworks. This hurts the game far more than it being turn based.

DOS2 was itself inspired by and based upon DnD so i don't see the problem. DOS2 was even acknowledged and loved by Wotc.

True... to a point. As much as I loved, for instance, the story book openings of the IWD series (I still get chills when listening to Maralie's recollections in IWD2 opening cinematic) I'm willing to accept "the modern times" may demand some changes in presentation. Still, there should be a happy middle ground between old an new somewhere...

You can't make this argument about forceful dismissal of "old school fan's" with regards to Baldur's gate 3 without being a hypocrite because the exact thing you are criticizing Larian for is what Bioware and Black Isle did in BG I & II. This argument has no leg to stand on.

Fact: Baldur's gate I & II are not faithful games to their source material
Fact: Baldur's gate III is a more faithful game to it's source material.
Fact: The source material for BG III is NOT BG I & II
Fact: "Old school fans" when BG I & II were released already existed and they were players of D&D, a game over 20 years old when BG I was released. The parallels are striking.

Doesn't this make BG I & II guilty of the very thing you are accusing Larian? Doesn't this mean that fans wanting BG III to be more like BG II just be "pouty" self-entitled jerks, holding a position of Rules for thee, but not for me?

How is your argument not hypocritical?

Still it is the take on a DnD game what disturbs me. If you Implement turn based fights in a looter shooter you would easily think wtf, as for the first moments. It never was about, only focusing on surviving ecnounters and balance. That's not what DnD is buit for, I cannot imagine the ruleset leans towards this.

What ppl actually complain about is, missing depth to it I guess. Same as for the character creation.

Because sometimes you can divorce previous adoptions from their source material, and sometimes you can't. It mostly comes down to how well an individual adoption can stand on it's own legs... but aside from that, my argument isn't how "faithful" to the source material BG3 (or even BG1-2) is, that's not what this tread is about, my argument is: Larian claimed to create a faithful continuation of an existing property: the Baldur's Gate games - using their take on the D&D 5e rules as a baseline... not Divinity: Original Sin, Dungeons & Dragons... and for now, it seams like they, at least failed on the second part.

Well I can tell you didn't read my original post.

We do know the WotC don't want games made similar to how obsidian make their games aka similar to how BG I & II are made. how because I told you already with sources that two companies that came from interplay/black isle both tried to get the license for baldur's gate 3 for over a decade and they were always rejected Larian tried first in 2014 and got it a few years later. Why? what is the fundamental difference? In every other metric Obsidian has more experience. More experience in game design, more experience with D&D games specifically, has more successful games under its belt and has a bigger purse than larian. So how did Larian get the license? Obsidian make RTWP games and Larian makes TB games (at least their last two). RTWP is a huge mechanical departure from D&D.

Do we know for sure why WotC chose Larian? No, but it is pretty obvious from the clues to see the why behind their choices.

[Source] https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/0...t-the-rights-to-baldurs-gate-3-a-e3-2019

I think it goes too far to say it is just the turn based combat mechanics that are the reason why Larian got the job. That is part of it, sure, but it is also their open quest design. Anyway, in an interview one of the big shots at WotC said that everybody there pretty much unanimously loves DOS1/2, and they felt that these games spoke to what they felt Baldur’s Gate was and should be more than any other games on the market. I concur. I’m having a blast with Early Access.

That's a bit what I mean i am not much into 5e... but as I played the game I came across one moment, with many random overhead voicings... and for 1 second I thought I really was playing DOS not BG3 (I even put up a forum thread, that's how it started). Maybe it just was the to be fair very DOS characteristic overhead dialogue volume part, but it was the tip of the Iceberg (to be fair i wasn't aware of the 5e system, and very frustrated about missing skills and what not), and I couldn't get past thinking of it that day... it ruined everything rpg for me it was Fort Joy and not Baldurs Gate that day... See DOS is fun BG3 is more the serious (darker) approach, I couldn't get along at all. The uplifting voices in the background tho, don't fit the theme as well i think. It's veeeery much DOS in BG3...

I know the fanbase comes from 2 camps... but in they need to make a game everyone is ok with. As for now i am VERY confused.

You contradict yourself in your own argument. 'My argument isn't how "faithful" to the source material BG 3 is', I am just complaining larian claimed to make a faithful continuation and failed to make the game faithful to D&D. WTF? lol Larian is guilty because their more faithful representation of the rules isn't good enough but BG I & II's less faithful representation is good enough, but again its not about being faithful to the source material its about larian not making the game faithful to D&D? wut???

Okay that is the most asinine, contradictory and hypocritical position I have seen in a long time. There is no logic, rigor, nor any intellectual honesty in your position. It is obvious you are just doing a larian is bad argument. You make one excuse for this position when shown it doesn't hold water you claim something else, when that doesn't hold water you claim is really a different reason. You keep changing your position and reasons so often that you finally claimed two exact opposite positions in the same post. Its not about being faithful its about larian claiming to be faithful and failing to do so?

~golf clap~ that truly ended the argument because you can't converse with the irrational.

A big problem is that the game suffers in almost every single area that DnD mechanics were stripped out or replaced.

- Challenge Rating and the other means that DnD uses to balance encounters have been stripped out, and now you have wild difficulty spikes with first-level goblins using action surge and similar nonsense. Save-scumming was fine in BG1&2 when fights and load times were short, but if you're switching to a turn-based system where everything takes 10x as long, you should probably give some consideration to the balance mechanics of the system you're supposedly using.

- Overlaying the 'surfaces' mechanic with 5e imbalances combat across the board. Cantrips are now stronger than level 1 and 2 spells now that Fire Bolt can create a 6+ damage a turn DoT with no saving throws (even if it misses!), and Ray of Frost can create massive ice surfaces that trivialize encounters. "You slip in all the blood you've spilled and fall" is a fun GM goof to pull once, but is obnoxious 20+ encounters in. The strength and spammability of surfaces greatly detracts from the number of strategic choices available to players in 5e. It's obvious why encounters are poorly tuned, then: spells are outrageously strong and it's implausible to balance the game around them while even pretending to stick to the d20 system.

- Class balance has been obliterated, and not just due to missing mechanics. Now that cantrips are so overtuned, fighters and rogues get absolutely nothing to compete - except for the fact that everyone can spam spells now that scrolls are open to everyone.

- The bonus action system hasn't been thought through at all. Every single character in the game has essentially been given cunning action - one of the rogue's most valuable low-level mechanics - which means that protecting your archers and mages is now trivially easy. Get cornered? Whatever, jump to safety! Again, it's a straight detraction loss on the strategic level.

In every case, replacing DnD mechanics with DIVOS ones hurts the strategic aspect of the game. Also in every case, it seems so much less likely that Larian replaced DnD systems with DIVOS ones because they thought it would make a more interesting game and more likely that they didn't add the DnD systems in because they already had 'something close enough' in the DIVOS engine and didn't bother to consider the balance issues.

What's getting lost in this debate is that many people are unfavorably comparing BG3 to DnD or BG2 not because they're sticklers for the rules, but because this game is hideously imbalanced and 5th ed - the supposed source material - is not.

Either respect the source material or replace it with something of comparable quality. What we have right now is a miserably considered hybrid, and it's not just for early access reasons.

Couldn't agree more with everything you've said. Exactly how I feel too. What baffles me is that you take away mechanics that are perfectly balanced from D&D to actually throw in other mechanics even more complicated (surfaces and effects). I could get why some of the changes are being made for the sake of simplification, but not why they're being made just for replacing it with imbalanced and untested systems which don't belong to the very ruleset you advertise your game to be based on.

I don't think this conversation has a common at all, you gotta differentiate the Forgottem Realms and RIvellon. It's a very emotional issue, not so much logical. But this again is a main difference, of the Rivellon and Forgotten Realms setting. It's like drinking tea with monk Drider Bruce Lee in the Underdark it would work in RIvellon but not in Baldurs Gate 3 (i think there is nothing like it, if it comes to the not implemented alignment system).

Okay, so I'm sure what they're going for is: that they want you to feel like you can do anything, and have a lot of control over the world around you and access to clever solutions.

Unfortunately, the surface system doesn't actually do that. It's just another way of handling combat and introducing simple puzzles, and it's a poorly tuned one at that. It would be fine if surfaces were an optional playstyle thing - plenty of DnD spells create 'no-go' or damage zones on the grid. What they have in the game right now is not that. And once you've figured out how to work with surfaces - and how to plug vents, and so forth - it quickly becomes exploitable and rote. And in BG3 so far it is *everywhere*, just completely unavoidable, and the only playstyle worth considering. Just absolutely godawful.

Okay my bad i need to explain what i meant better...

I'm not saying TB period is the reason you get a BG license. I am saying TB is the reason larian got it vs obsidian. Obsidian and Larian both showed they can create RPG gameplay with complicated quests offering multiple resolutions. Both can handle the scope of the title, both could make interacting systems needed for a modern RPG. both can make varied environments. So why larian over Obsidian? What does larian do that Obsidian doesn't do? Larian had to do all of the above, but i do maintain that if Larian did all of the above in a real time game they would not have gotten the license. I remember when Larian made games similar to Bethesda's games for their earlier divinity series. That would not have convinced WotC to grant the license. So what did? I submit that the difference is TB. You can build great games like Obsidian but WotC isn't going to give you the license for BG III, we know this because they refuse to give obsidian the license for over a decade. But if you can make great games like Obsidian AND do so in a TB environment you can get the license. So TB doesn't automatically get you the golden ticket but with out TB you fail.

Is that a better explanation?