Originally Posted by Stabbey
Originally Posted by CrestOfArtorias

I am not familiar with the processes at Larian

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The fact that no community manager has entered this conversation between our factions yet also indicates that they are unsure how to handle this, if they expected this, their representatives would have a couple of statements prepared.


By your own admission, you are unfamiliar with the processes at Larian, therefore you have no basis for knowing their community management style, and no basis for jumping to conclusions based on your lack of information.

They do not have moderators and developers jumping into every thread which goes "Larian, answer this:", so a lack of immediate response is not damning.


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From what I can see as a 5e purist, the changes required for the game to resemble what I would consider a proper 5e implementation are simply unrealistic in the timeframe they have given and that just takes into account a rework of the core mechanics, that doesn't even take into account additional systems or finishing the product.


I don't know what basis you have to say that either, given that Larian has freely admitted to doing many different internal changes before even getting to the point of EA. We've already seen two of them based on the feedback from the first gameplay demo: The dialogues were changed from third-person distant to direct, and the team initiative system was changed to a more standard one with adjacent allies being able to share turns.

See this interview (skip to 26:15), and it discusses that the've been doing lots of varations on the systems already.

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/ax...-on-baldurs-gate-3s-early-access-release


EDIT: And there was no chance at all that this game was ever going to be a pure, 1:1 following of the 5e rules, because those rules are written for interpretation by a human DM who has complete control and is able to adjust things on the fly to adapt to the current situation. A videogame does not have that amount of flexibility possibly, so some changes are necessary.

You are correct I am NOT familar with their processes, I am however, very well aware of what is realistically achievable for a team that works full time on a title and that one year is nothing in games development, whether you have a team of 800+ people or 20+.

So while you are correct, I am missing some pieces, I have enough experience to tell you the core mechanics will not change in a year when they still have a game to ship. Will there be adjustments? Yes, will there be a big rework of already existing mechancis? Simple anwser; no. Why? Because 1 year is not enough time.

The examples you gave are very likely about 2-7 lines of code, depending on how complicated their direction engine is. As for the initiative, while that would be more involved, its not a big change, certainly nowhere near the level of change required to even get close to other PC adaptions of 5e.


I can give you the reasoning behind my interpretation of the CM situation. I have worked at two very big companies with extensive CM departments (dev studios of 400+ people + support personal). If a company predicts there is going to be backlash, they have prepared statements. If not, they tend to react within a week because usually everything longer than that affects public relations and thus the bottomline. So either, their team is not sure how to answer yet, or they lack resources. Or and I admit that freely, I could be wrong about this. However, in regards to the time needed to overhaul the core mechanics, I will maintain my position.

Last edited by CrestOfArtorias; 15/10/20 03:34 PM.