It's obviously a marketing cash grab on so many levels.

The reason it resembles DOS2 more than 5e is because executives managing a multimillion dollar investment are extremely risk averse; they want a guaranteed return on investment, and they've seen this style of game make money before.

"We have this recipe and engine for a game we know for a fact has sold over 2 million copies, not only does deviating from that and developing this engine cost us money in development hours but risks us not capitalizing on our previous recipe we know for a fact works."

Failing of course, to realize that 1) D&D 5e sales dwarf DOS 2 sales, (trust that system and play to that target market) and 2) this is not what the game is being marketed as: It's not called DOS 3; it's called Baldur's Gate 3 and the mechanics that are meant to draw in their target audience is the 5e ruleset that they are lazily trying to adapt to the DOS engine by keeping ground effects and weapon dip (holy fuck the changes to firebolt and ray of frost absolutely reek of lazyness and offset the balance significantly).

Their interviews and posturing "we're fans of the original Baldur's Gate series! Omg we're such fanboys like you! We're just like you!" However true it might feel, it very likely is just soulless corporate schlock meant to win you over; a marketing strategy to get brownie points with consumers.

"We're so passionate about this series and franchise! Honest!"

Is that why your dev team proceeded to openly shit on RTwP as 'messy' and 'chaotic.'

(I'm fully aware of the unpopularity of RTwP vs Turn based but...)

How are you fans of the original when you openly detest the revolutionary system (at the time) that allowed the game to flourish?

Did you consider that half the fights in the origjnal and 90% of the fights in BG 2 and ToB are literally unplayable in turn based because it's just so dense with combatants? It's also easier to start with RTwP and implement turn based ala Pathfinder: Kingmaker. It allows the player to manage certain fights however they want. By being obligate turn based you must literally downgrade your fights to being limited compared to its predecessor as the idea of fighting 1 boss and his 10 vampires with your party of 6 in turn based is already making me bored just thinking about it. So now, they have to chop off 2 party members and turn the 1 boss and his 10 vampires into 1 boss with 4 suped up vampires with an entirely reworked stat block. Casters and their AoE suffer and the strategy of eliminating combatants early to turn the tide gets downgraded to something far more basic.

My big piece of advice is to stick to the 5e system as much as possible.
Altering ranges of spells and abilities? Uhhh why? Ranged is meant to be strong in 5e. If you bothered implementing prone and cover mechanics (and AI smart enough to use them) you'd be able to keep ranged combat what it is, but once again you've tried rebalancing the game around your system to save development time and money; lazy.

Enough with the barrels and ground effects. You can make objects flammable or freezable or what have you but every basic cantrip and spell shouldn't be making a ground effect.

Stop bloating HP and dumping AC; casters aren't balanced around these HP levels. And for godsakes limit long resting to once every 24 hours.

We can all get on board with rebalancing the less popular classes that ranked lower in player satisfaction (Rangers) but stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Look at why Baldur's Gate is a classic and why D&D 5e is so big and stop trying to mold them around DOS, instead mold DOS around them.

Last edited by CinderV; 01/11/20 09:21 AM.