Sharp is a smart guy and is pretty good at rhetoric. I'd guess he's even had classes on rhetoric -- he is alternating between an appeal to the people and an appeal to authority. The trap he is laying -- and one you seem to believe I walked into -- is get you to declared an expert and then be tarred with unpleasant aspects of expertise. Snobbishness, elitist attitudes and the like.
Google snob appeal / mob appeal / Ad Populum
I haven't actually and I am not sure whether to take this as a compliment or an insult - my field of expertise is statistical modelling, not public relations in any way. This is why I made comments about biases. I am also not a fan of Ad Populum, just because something is more popular, doesn't mean its the right thing to do.
The flaw in the argument is inherent denigration of the opinions of the forum: that if devs listened to our proposed solutions then we would produce a game that only appealed to a small niche. In this vision we become the Homer Simpson who tells the car maker how to make something that only Homer would want to drive. (if anyone remembers that ancient episode)
But the argument is counterfactual -- BG was a D&D nerds game. It adhered to 2nd ed ruleset closer than any other video game. In BG2 they dove even deeper into the rules implementing optional rules like class "kits" (always hated that term). So BG2 was actually a Homer car that was wildly successful.
And @Elenhard nailed it --
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".
BG 1 and 2 were made in a different era, when the market was much smaller, much less saturated and the expectations of the player were different. At the time when BG 1 and 2 were released, most people playing PC games were us nerds. You could reasonably expect the people who are playing the game, to have some understanding of the ruleset. This is different to today, where I would argue that the average person playing PC games is not us nerds, it is far more of a mainstream hobby. There is another aspect of this as well, D&D itself has changed. Back when D&D was originally conceived, its roots were in war gaming. At the time of 2e, this was still present to some extent, with some of the rules like for example the different armor types being good against different damage types being present because of this. As a result of this, the audience for D&D itself was a more tactics driven audience. This has, for the most part changed. D&D now is marketed far more as a theater of the mind, with flashy effects taking center stage, with the main marketing of the brand being things like critical role. You can bet that the audience which enjoyed D&D in the 90s, is not the same audience as D&D today.
My point being, time goes on, things change. Forums are still largely visited by the same groups of people however, the newer communities in gaming prefer different mediums of communication.
Exactly. I really think BG3 will become a better a game if our solutions are listened to -- the forums have the relevant expertise and the devs can and should learn from us. As Bioware did when it was good company.
As I said in my very first post in response to you, better is subjective and it depends on the person giving feedback. Better for you does not necessarily mean better for someone else.
