Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Any DDO Players playing yet? OLD School GAMERS!?

The loyal Dungeons & Dragons Online community has begun to try out the game (our D&D community been together since 2006). Many DDO players started playing D&D games when the SSI Gold Box games were a thing on the Commodore 64, 128 and AMIGA back in the 1980s!! Pool of Radiance, Dark Queen of Krynn and Curse of Asure Bonds.

Where are the OLD SCHOOL GAMERS and how DO YOU LIKE the potential of Baldur's Gate 3?

We are definitely looking for feedback from the gamers who played the turn based D&D products of years ago.

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I played DDO and still have characters that are probably sat under a pile of dust somewhere.

The graphics and richness of BG3 is light years ahead of DDO, as you'd expect given the years that have passed. I'm also not sorry that I won't be continually bumping into PvP groups intent of killing anything in front of them, or strolling down the street as a character dressed in what appears to be a neon lilac jumpsuit bounces past.

I played, a lot, until the recent changes to archery drove me off.

I played the Gold Box games years ago, and NWN 1 and 2, and I still play DDO once in a while.

DDO is imo the pinnacle of computer DnD. Yes it has aged, has a shit ton of content, very complex, but it really is a marvel. These two are in different styles so they have plenty of room to stand on their own without needing to bring the other down. Somewhere I dream of a DDO 2 that can just do everything right, but it is but a dream. With BG3 it is just continued refinement of Larian's cRPG's and it's good to see and play each iteration. We have one working in a realtime version of what DnD would be like that way and one trying to recreate the table top.

I agree 100% Horrorscope!

I never played the original Pool of Radiance games, but I played the Dark Sun DOS games and the Al-Qadim one. The D&D digital game I've played the most of is NWN, though.

I'm pretty excited for this one. Lots of potential!

I was already using DDO as a reference to compare a lot of the stuff in this game and theorycraft with prior to the EA release.

Any research predicated on the older rules isn’t very applicable. Most of the basic rules for 5E are available for free on the official website dndbeyond.com. That is a great source for planning out your builds.

Oldschool gamer here. I have very fond memories of Pools of Radiance, Curse of Azure Bonds et al. Don't forget Eyes of the Beholder series!! I used to really enjoy DDO, but quit, actually fairly recently all things considered, due to design changes. I am also really enjoying BG3. They are both very different games, and each enjoyable in their own way.

I would love a new DDO, although I suspect any attempt to do so would result in a more modern design version heavily leaning toward the changes that caused me to drift away from the game. I am looking forward to seeing BG3 develop.

Indeed. The biggest shock was the absolute lack of feats in BG3 compared to DDO. And also you have to choose between a feat or ability increases.

It’s a pretty dramatic shift, but I like it. The exorbitant number of feats was something I didn’t like about 3rd edition. Some disagree, but I find the more restrictive system in 5E makes for more interesting and meaningful choices.

I love DDO though it has been shifting further away from DND. Still a great game in its own right.

BG3 is the first worthy replacement I've seen!

In it's current state BG3 is not worthy of the Baldur's Gate name and is wearing a D&D skinsuit. There are many changes that need to be made even to the content present in the game at the current moment and a lot of considerations that need to be made regarding the quality of the writing and several other design choices. If it continues down the path it is currently on I don't see that initial assessment as changing and I will have wasted my money.

When you say that DDO is shifting away from D&D, do you mean that the 3e ruleset is less relevant, or that DDO themselves have changed the game away from the 3e rules?

Yes, I'm enjoying BG3 as well. D&D is not my first choice for an RPG but I've been playing it for over 40 years and it feels comfortable. I also like Pathfinder:Kingmaker, having been burned in the debacle that was Pathfinder Online and resigning myself to never seeing a proper PF CRPG.

Well enemies with hundreds of thousands of hit points isn't a D&D mechanic but an MMO raid mechanic. The nature of the game became full grind and level up as fast as possible to the point that every group is speed running everything, so if you don't know how to get to every quest you're screwed because no one will wait for you.

The D&D features were heavily hampered by the typical MMO grindfest and player base. I've given up on the MMO / forced multiplayer genre as a whole now.

But if you can somehow find a small group of friends to just play the content as-is, no rush... there's a lot of memorable content.

They are trailing new paths as they are in character levels higher than in the books because of online continuation over years. So yeah you'll see higher level #'s and the like.

My problem with DDO is that they keep doing revamps and system additions that create huge hurdles for new players. If you haven't been playing forever and done the reincarnation train, a lot of the game is pretty close to inaccessible unless you find a group of experienced players willing to let you piggyback. And that just isn't fun. Spellcasting DCs in the heroics are so high for example, that casters aren't very functional at all if you don't have TR bonuses. Good luck in reaper mode after the rebalancing if you don't have a million reaper points already. They are also changing looting so that quests will permanently ransack until you true reincarnate. Once again, screwing over new/newer players who won't have had years of collecting loot.

They continue to rebalance against the playing habits of old players. But the problem with this in a game like DDO is that the entire game is about reincarnating and replaying content. So any rebalancing for older many times reincarnated characters kicks new players in the teeth. I love the game, but ended up quitting because everyone I ever tried to introduce to the game ended up leaving because the new player experience is that awful, and it only gets worse every time they rebalance.

I remember playing all those old Gold Box games and pretty much every D&D computer game ever since. BG3 looks great visually, the character models, cutscenes, environments, companions, and story will likely be epic but ... I would highly recommend checking out Solasta which releases in Early Access October 20th on Steam. It is not set in Forgotten Realms but is a D&D game in a new original setting. It stays very true to the 5e rule set and looks like it will be excellent.

Those Gold Box games were awesome for the time. I still remember claiming the well in Pool of Radiance as my own lair, kicking Zhentarim ass, and an underground goblinoid lair that featured waves of ranged attacks blasting my group of intrepid adventurers Plus those games allowed for a group of EIGHT!!!