Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Early access for over a year?

Why reward us? They have been upfront about it, and said why they are doing it.
Early access for any game is like this: Pay in early, support the developer, partake in development, play early.

If you don't want to play an unpolished game, then you should wait for the official release.

I bought in to Early Access because the game looked promising, and 100+ hours proves that, and I wanted to support Larian make a better game. I don't need their thanks or be treated differently. I just want to play DnD.

My point here is that Early access doesn't have to have so many bugs, you don't need a whole year to re-balance combat or change surface effects on cantrips, make jump an action and all the crap we've been asking, you can do that in an update in a couple of months. But what this game has is mostly glitches, parts without cinematics or broken graphics, all that shouldn't be in the Early Access because we aren't here to report bugs, we are just here to talk about GAMEPLAY!!

Exclusive pubic hair. Maybe long and braided

I expected to play a solid game and comment on gameplay issues, re balancing and so on. But most of what I see are bugs and glitches, lots of broken mechanics. If a QA team played this before us, did no one said all the things we are saying? I am really wondering if a whole team has played this game before us or we are the first real playtest

Your Dwarven ancestors would be proud!

It's probably going to be longer than a year, since I'm sure Covid set them back abit.

What I mean is that a whole QA team should have played this game before EA. I used to work doing that, and if they did, why did no one report all the gameplay issues that we are reporting? Party movement? Combat balance, Inventory management, all those things we all complain about wouldn't have made it out if they were reviewed first in playtest. In this situation seems like we are the first testers and we have to report all sort of basic bugs and clunky mechanics that could have been easily spotted in QA

I don't know the exact details, but I'm confident that Larian got more data in the first day of EA than in ALL OF THEIR QA. Probably even the first hours.

Yes, they could have spent another year testing things and making sure all permutations were tested, removing all the bugs and broken graphics and adding all the cutscenes.
Or they could do what they did, allowing us to play the game earlier and find all the bugs in a fraction of the time.

If that were true, why would they need over 365 days of that amazing productivity in QA?
Most of what needed to be said and reported has already been posted multiple times, it is very clear what is the general view of the consumers... is it going to take a whole year to implement those changes? Or maybe they went ahead in releasing the EA because they didn't have all the classes finished and cinematics pending etc?

What is the need behind releasing the EA when you don't have most of the content finished? I mean the content you KNOW it is going to go in the game like the missing basic classes, customization options, cinematics that you know are going to be there etc?

It is better to get feedback and fix bugs early on in the process. If you get feedback after developing and releasing the whole game, then you have to change the whole game if something is clearly broken throughout it.
If you get feedback after releasing 1/4 of the game, then you can incorporate changes WHILE you develop the remaining 3/4, saving so much time.

So, they don't actually need 365 days of EA. They need our first ~2 weeks, which they will use to develop the game over the remaining 334 days. I assume they'll release a super big patch in like 6 months, which we will again test for about 2 weeks and provide them with the info they need to develop the remaining parts of the game.

I don't mind if takes a year or more as long as they will be keeping it alive with big, meaningful content updates atleast once a month and most importantly listening to player feedback, not just collecting some in-game data while counting the money.

They do have more meaningful resources than we do with the heat maps and other analytics so that on top of our feedback i feel like this will work out just fine. development takes time and i wish more people would understand that. luckily most people here seem to

I think it would be make more sense to release several smaller patches with overhauls for different systems, so each major change can be assessed on its own in terms of game impact. If you make a huge patch with many changes, it will be harder to track what is responsible for what problem. If you release one thing at a time, you can clearly see how the whole system reacts to it, how the gameplay changes. And if a patch has one exciting shiny new thing, all the players will rush to test it out.

For example, we know we'll be getting more classes and races during EA. I expect a new class to drop every 2 months or so.

Oh yeah, fair and I hope this is the case. I was exaggerating to keep my hopes down so I could be pleasantly surprised when they drop a beefy patch.

Haha, I get it. I'm not even an EA player and I'm still super impatient for anything more than bugfixes and minor tweaks.

Already bored with it. Wish I never bought it

That is another thing that might happen, one year is a long time to play an unfinished game and if it is too unpolished you are bound to get bored before they even release it.

People keep saying there is a lot of content in the EA but to me is very limited, you can only create one custom character at a time so if you want to try different classes you need to do many playthroughs, I am getting sick of watching the same clunky cinematics over and over again, and the boring combat mechanics.

This argument of "we pay to find bugs in a game" is really strange. You talk as if you getting nothing out of this. Maybe you feel like that but I don't think it's true

You dont have too get it now you know, but i've already put in enough hours to make $60 worth it.

And you base this assessment on your expansive background as a computer game developer? Your vast expertise in creating and programming RPG's? Your long involvement with Q and A of EA/Beta games? Oh, I know !! Your renown writing skills as portrayed by the numerous best selling fantasy novels, game products and artistic renditions of fantasy art.

Always amazes me how much knowledge of game development folks seem to think they have.