But do you have expertise though? There is a big difference between studying a topic and being an enthusiast of it. You could play BG 3 for 1,000 hours and never think much about it, you could also play it for 10 hours with a notepad and pen and write down lots of minutiae, noticing things 99.99% of players don't and be an expert on it. My point being, usually if someone is an "expert" on something, they have some body of work they can show which proves their expertise. Do you have a body of work to show this expertise to me?
Well, you are being a little disingenuous here, aren't you?
If what you want is a list of games I've worked on, no I can't show that "body of work" to you.
If what you want is proof that I have intimate familiarity with most of the mechanics and features I'm discussing, well, I've 20+ years of forum dwelling across dozen of communities,. With especial focus on this very genre, too.
Do you want to start some extensive stalking to get the pulse of my credential, though?
Well, creepiness of that thought aside, you could start with my post history on this very forum. Point me posts where I make unreasonable suggestions without an eye to their feasibility or arguments about why they would be for the better and we can talk about something specific, rather than this vague "Can you leverage the Appeal at authority fallacy in some way?".
My point was and it more or less seems you agree, despite initially trying to argue otherwise, being an "expert," does not automatically make you right and that constructive discussion is what matters more. I am not actually at all interested in your personal life, my point was only that, your knowledge of games is likely no more specialized than many of the posters here, which means that if you are going to appeal to your, "expertise," then why shouldn't those other posters do the same? Or is it that maybe, just maybe, its not who says something, but the quality of what they are saying that is important.
Wasn't the attempted argument precisely that people who post opinions on forum don't matter, because they are just a niche and the casual audience doesn't give a shit?
These two takes seem to be at odd with each other.
At no point have I said that niche opinions should be ignored, at no point at all. I said that if a particular piece of feedback goes against the core design pillars the developers have for the game, it will probably be ignored. The hardcore fans of the game, the "experts," are still a very important part of the community and its vital that you keep them playing, because if you lose these people, you lose everyone else. But unless you are trying to make a very niche game (which Larian is not trying to do), you cannot make a game which only appeals to these people. This means that in some cases, you need to deviate from what those core fans want. There is the saying, you can please a few people, all of the time, some of the people, most of the time and all of the people, only some of the time. If you are choosing to appeal to a wider group, that means that most people are going to be dissatisfied with something about the game.
I'd say anyone who takes the time to actually read what was written before here, and take the time to be civil to another poster here, is helping already. We actually need people who can use this discourse not for the showoff, but for a common cause we all share - we'd like to see a great game made and are ready to contribute some thought to that.
I agree here.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd say BG 1 and 2 actually were good enough to instill the desire in the player. To become experts, to understand "how it all works".
I think it worked because back then, there were not so many game mechanic systems around. And people's capability to learn new stuff wasn't overstressed.
While right now we have so gaming mechanics around, all these editions, versions, half-cooked patchwork (sometimes, no doubt, hitting the vein).
So right now I'm just waiting for the poll system to get implemented on this forum, and would really glad for a coherent, thoroughly thought out set of questions to the auditory.
First of all, we need to set apart what can be modded (Larian would count on us making the specific mod to everyone's tastes, as they (S. Vincke) say);
And prepare the set of questions for what actually can be changed at this time in the development of the game (they probably wouldn't be happy getting new voiced dialogs/quests rewritten/whathaveyou).
Would be nice to concentrate the efforts knowing they won't be wasted. And it works both ways - for the developers and the players here.
I would argue that it had more to do with the time, than it had to do with the games themselves. At the time, for the most part, the only people playing video games were the hardcore enthusiasts. Gaming was not mainstream yet and was nowhere near the 4th largest entertainment market in the world. As a result of this, the audience was very different. Player expectations were different as well, players would not expect every character to be voice acted (I personally would rather only have important dialogue voice acted) and were fine with reading longer dialogues. Fans were also more accommodating to mechanics which today would cause a lot of mainstream disapproval. I am sure if Pathfinder: Kingmaker was released back then for example, people wouldn't have complained nearly as much about timers, but time has marched on and expectations have changed.
But yes, the most important thing to learn right now is what they will not budge on.
