Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Getting with the times.

Looks like this topic is born on missunderstandings on BG3's mechanics and now it follow on a pretty bad knowledge of how things was.

How the hell can you compare the number of game sold in 1998 and another in 2011 ?

In 1998 probably 1 house out of 50 had a computer.
In 2011 40/50 had one...
(That's not the real value, but you get the idea).

+ Don't forget that DoS2 is also a good MP game. That's probably a big part its success.

Different times - different standards of "good sales". What was successful then will now be a failure. It makes sense.

Again, the problem is not the rest system. Just like in DnD you can not rest in a battle, and you have two short rests and one long rest per die as stated by the phrase "do you want to go to camp an end the day" that show whenever you click the long rest button.

The problem is that there are no clear indicators of the passing of time. The sun is always at the same height, you can explore all the map avoiding battles and the sun will be always at the same height, corpses found in the area don't rot, quests don't have a time limit, and so on, this creates the feeling that there are infinite rests.

Recently I started Immortal Fenys rising, when you rest the time you awake is based on the moment you started to rest thus you feel that time is flowing.

In daggerfall you could wake up in the middle of night.

The flow of time is the big issue of many games. I'm playing Outer worlds that has a cooldown and regeneration of stamina and health system, again the fact that quests don't have a time cap, makes the experience weird.

Even in the MMORPGS that I play (Elder Scrolls online, Neverwinter, Star Trek, Star Wars Knight of the old republic) the lack of time flow makes the experience (to me) weird.

I understand that something like Daggerfall that had time capped side quests in these days, in wich players want to be able to finish all the quest and to have characters that can practically do everything, is out of the plate.

Still the developpers could find ways to have different outcomes based on how long a player takes to end a quest (specialy the main ones that usually rely on the fact that the main character has a main role in a world changing event), or find a way to push the quests of the various chapters to completion before the depleting of all quests (from a narrative point of view it means to create "interludes" that justify the fact that the player can spend time in completing side quests) or made the side quest influence the main one.

Alas from what I see specially with the growing appeal of open world or open world like games with huge areas to explore filled with quests the issues of a "realistic" way to manage the time flow has been pushed aside.

[When I see how games manage time and quest I think what would happened in the Lord of the rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, if the characters instead of focusing on their main objectives have take their time adventuring here and there ]

Neverwinter?

Please no timed quests. Those are the worst.

I'm with Icelyn. No timers of any kind. I loathe anything that interfere's with my choice in gaming pace.

I definitely don't want wide scale timed quests to be implemented, certainly not at this stage. For timed quests to be fun there needs to be a lot of thought put into them else they just become an unfun stressor. To give an example, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which I overall found to be a very enjoyable game, used timers frequently and they felt like unpleasant pressures. Typically beating the timer didn't feel like an extra triumph, instead it just felt like you managed to avoid dealing with something unpleasant and that you'd likely be not too interested in repeating. The one big exception I encountered was one particular quest that involved you having to track down a ruin before an antagonist. Not only is it fun because you get to call up various resources to help you narrow down the search and it really makes you feel the the leader of a place, using every means at your disposal in a race against your oponent, but even if the antagonist makes it to the ruin, you don't fail the quest. Instead you just get a different outcome and a harder combat. So failing to beat the timer doesn't feel bad, since it doesn't mean you instantly lose, it just means the situation has changed. That's an example of when timers are used really well.

Regarding time and timed-quests - again no need to look further than BG2. There were VERY few timed quests and the time budget was usually very benevolent. What we get now is basically no indication of time passing and at the same time MISSING/LOSING STUFF & NPCS WE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT because of rest.

Getting a quest with clear indication that it is time-sensitive and very benevolent time-budget SOMETIMES is fine. Finding e.g. Nadira's or Mirkon's dead body before ever meeting them because you decided to have a rest after entering a certain location REALLY sucks. You can't even argue it's realistic because the timer is usually triggered by you entering some location for the first time, though the events leading to those NPCs' death have nothing to do with you.

I never played Icewind Dale, so I had to go off of a list of release dates, it only listed the enhanced addition, I didn't hear about it until after Neverwinter Nights 2, so from my nescient perspective on that one, it looked like a legit timeline.

However, there's still a story to be told.

Baldur's Gate comes out, gets some sales. Baldurs gate 2 comes out, and gets some sales as well, some go back and play BG I cuz they found it after BG2, increasing the sales for BG1. Neverwinter nights comes out, and it lands well with the community, NWN 2 comes out with mixed approval. If I remember correctly you are not playing the same character, you are just in the same part of the world. Also was NWN2 the switch to 3E or was that NWN? I personally felt 3E was much kewler, harder to balance for sure, but definitely kewler.

So that's 4 game titles, very widely proclaimed to be great games, by peeps that played them even if they complained about them at the time they were actually playing them, but I digress. The population of players stays about even. Bioware then drops the D&D ruleset, and creates Dragon Age, ends up with a blockbuster hit, receives 50% more sales then any previous title. Inquisition comes out, and boom the sales double.

Oh and lets be real honest here, the plot in Dragon Age is inferior to NWN(Opinion I know, but in my eyes isnt questionable). Where did this new population come from suddenly interested in playing these types of games? They had to be already there, a game they heard about or wanted to play hadn't come out yet from Bioware, obviously there was something holding them back.

The time in which they come out does play a factor, but there's a clear point of population growth in the genre where it spikes for Bioware, and its when that lead company making these games, drops the D&D ruleset entirely. Sorry for the kerfuffle with Icewind Dale.

So I ask, is the D&D Ruleset just that niche? Do people just not like it, or is there some mechanics that hold it back in a game setting from being widely accepted, and thus letting us get more of these games, that can be 80-90% true to life? The PnP seems to be surging, so obviously they have gotten that part right. Let us just remember that this is 5th, meaning 4 previous versions, and even those had revisions in and of themselves. 3E and 3.5 for example. It's not like some of us nerds haven't been trying to get people interested this whole time, I know I have.

Why had no-one made a game in the D&D ruleset for so long? Seven years is a long time in the gaming industry. Oh, and lets not forget that Pathfinder was released in 2018, and sold 200-300k, so the whole different times argument doesn't even really work.

I have to ask myself, why is a game/ruleset I like still seem to not be getting the audience it should be? I then ask myself what don't I like about the game, and enough to not want to play it? The only answer I can think of is this spellslot rest reset mechanic, that really is just annoying, ruins immersion cuz of having to use it all the time, and how much I appreciated games that didn't have that mechanic after playing with that mechanic. Everything else in the game that I don't care for is a hiccup, no game is perfect. For me the mechanic "that does not give me joy" is that one. It also seems to be the common denominator to all the other games out there.


As far as the comment about "You can stay immersed with magic, etc. in it, but cant for resting constantly?" yes I can because its about believing in the physics and reality of the world you are playing in. Sleeping every 0.5-2hrs is a bridge too far. It's like being immersed in a movie, and one of the characters breaks the 4th wall, when its not a 4th wall movie. Deadpool's universe includes our universe, in his reality, so that one is very interesting. Bad 4th wall breaks can be very jarring, even make you jump out of your skin, and then ruin the movie for you, or at least make you have to sink back into it. I've had this with books as well. This is the main reason Moby Dick is such a terrible book. Tell me the story Herman, and stop trying to tell me your very bad interpretation of marine biology. 1 page of story 20 pages on why "WHALES ARE FISH".

Also, Elder Scrolls was like the Yankees to Baldur's Gate/NWN Red Sox. Oblivion actually sold 9.5m, I double checked it. the sales reported was a "in the first year" one. I was a little tired when grabbing up the stats. The point about Oblivion being obsure was that even with their obscurity they had more success(much more than I originally thought). I played it sure, but when I'd bring it up to most people, no-one knew wtf I was talking about. Skyrim/ES Online are what really made it mainstream. Looking back on these numbers, it kills the "in the time these games were made" argument even more.

NWN made the step to 3rd edition (IWD2 did as well)

NWN2 went for 3.5 edition. But that is basically still 3rd edition all in all.

@Seiryu Suta

In the late 90s and early 2000s the gaming community was just starting to explode. Most games didn’t have the hundreds of millions of dollars in their budget like today. It was a smaller base of developers with smaller budgets.

So back then, you didn’t need a million is sales to make it big. Now you do because the costs of producing a game has gone up exponentially.

BG1, BG2 and NWN1 were all big successes for the era. You have to put in context of the time. NWN2 was a modest success because the gameplay and story just wasn’t as good as NWN1. BioWare was the big fish at that time so gamers were a bit disappointed when they didn’t make NWN2.

Gamers also tend to have brand loyalty. Look at all the Larian fans here. So obviously when BioWare came out with Dragon Age, it became a massive hit because it had all the hallmarks of a good BioWare game, namely a good story with interesting characters.

Oblivion wasn’t obscure. At that point Elder Scrolls was a major franchise in computer RPGs. Morrowind was a success that continued on to Oblivion. And to their credit, Bethesda to me started the “living world” trend we see today in open RPGs. They set the trend (along with Rockstar and GTA). And by 2011, gaming was mainstream so now games garnered millions of followers.

You have to look at the history of gaming to put it all under perspective.

So why no D&D games for like a decade? Answer 4th edition. 4E was specifically designed with computer gaming in mind. Problem was, it sucked as PnP so it had no audience. The irony is, it’s because it had a system similar to cooldowns.

Yes you have to take times into account but DA was 2009, NWN2 was 2007. Also I'm trying to compare apples to apples, but lets look at something like Diablo 2 at 30m sold, this is more action cRPG. The point here is Oblivion was 1% of the population, if we add European Canadian, and US population, because they would be the primary group playing at the time. about 1B people. That is still obscure. You can find 1 in 100 people to talk to about it. With Diablo I could find 1 out of 33.

Also 4th Ed was a jumbled mess of Action points and battle powers which acted like a mana pool for some classes, and changing the timeframe of usage limits. Lets not get that confused with cooldowns. Also Cooldowns are not a good option for PnP, that's way too much to keep track of. The abilities were still limited use, but instead of so many per day, some were able to be used infinitely, some were 1-X/encounter, and some were 1-X/day. Then they divided things into types of actions, etc. Yes 4E was absolute garbage, but if it hadn't been for that attempt we might not have gotten 5E, which I'm actually impressed with.

I am aware it was their attempt to make an all encompassing rule set. That is the root of the problem. You cant just expect a ruleset to work on 2 different mediums. If you do want something that works on both mediums, then you are sacrificing on both sides of the equation. Now instead of making a square peg for one medium, and a round one for the other, keep in mind the peg is still made out of iron, so same material just a slightly different shape, I now need to make a triangle shaped peg, that will fit in both the square hole and the round one. Its just a bad approach. I'm left wanting on both sides of the equation, there are gaps between the sides of the peg and the holes.

You also have to keep in mind, it is not JUST rulesets or how specific mechanics work that sell a game. If a game is bad, it will not sell well regardless of the ruleset. If a game is good, it will sell well. DA:O sold well (Asdie from brand recognition) because it was just a good game. It played well, was written well and it had good reviews. NWN2 was kind of.. uh.. bad. Not greatly written, it looked worse than nwn1 (and much worse than DA:O imo) and had poor controls. It was a huge dissapointment after nwn1.`Looking at Dragonage2, same idea. It was not received well and considered a bad game compared to DA:O.

Diablo2 was a very solid game, it was fun playing it and good reviews too. That all does help with sales, too. And Blizzard had the brand recognition to help too. This all goes beyond just rulesets.

I get it, but why hasn't the ruleset had a breakout game? Inquisition sold well. Even tho DA2 did somewhat flop it still held onto the numbers DAO had, I cant seem to get solid numbers, but it looks like 2.5m. So it went 3.2m, 2.5m, then 6m. I still liked NWN2, but it fell short when compared to NWN for sure. I believe I said it in a previous post but I think NWN is the best of all time. The storyline was great, and I loved Deekin. It was so good, it switched my fascination from Minotaurs to Kobolds, for monster races. NWN2 and sorry if I am misremembering was a different story, and not a continuation, which disappointed me from the start. Then you meet Deekin in the game, but hes a merchant now, and he isnt available as a companion. This might be a Mandella effect or false memories but that's how I remember it. NWN2 did bring the concept of playing D&D on the PC platform to life, I think, again I'm going off of human memory here, so I might be assigning false values. The problem was it still took too long to setup things, and so it was easier to stay at the table, for that sort of thing.

3E/3.5 also gets a lot of crap too, but it fleshed out a lot of the lore for D&D that 2E just never did. I might be biased because that's more of what I personally grew up with, AD&D/2E was on the way out as I came into it. It did however, expand the universe a lot, even though the mechanics may have still left something to be desired, and it brought an ability to customize your character more. I don't think Multi-classing was really a thing in 2E either, or if you did it wasn't all that great cuz things didn't synergize well.

Sales numbers are in some cases also associated with the before mentioned brand recognition/loyalty. I myself bought games like NWN2, DA2, Diabloe 3 and likely more due to the games that came before. Even if it was a dissapointment and I had them uninstalled, I did buy them and added to the numbers, no matter how good or bad the game was.

I think the DND experience came a lot sooner than NWN2, NWN2 was trying to ride the popularity train. Neverwinter Nights 1 was supposed to be the sequel to the BG series (I think there were old tooltips in the originals that talked about exporting your character to NWN before stuff was established to not work like that. In the BG games, especially 1, there is even foreshadowing that Amn and Neverwinter would be settings).

As to why there has not been a big breakout game for the DND ruleset? Likely because no game studio made an actual good game for it. It is like many other things in the world too, a possibly great premise for something but lousy execution. Some of the sony Spiderman films are considered this, with reboots/different attempts. The DC cinematic universe is like this according to some. The Fantastic Four movies. Many videogame to movie adaptations and other way around. Avatar the Last Airbender movie (I apologize for ATLA fans for bringing this up).

DnD for a while was also not as popular as videogames itself I figure, with the era of 4th edition being considered a flop according to many DND players not helping. So many factors why there was not a breakout game for it, but it is definatly more complicated than just looking at sales numbers in a vaccuum without context. Especially with DnD being on the rise and becoming more and more popular as a tabletop RPG. (In part likely also due to DnD streams popping up more and more)

We will have to agree to disagree at this point. There were games that were made along side D&D ones, that were better received than them, that were terrible writing. Oblivions story, tbh felt like it was put together by an 8yr old. NWN was executed well. BG was also executed well, especially for its time. BG2 wasn't bad, wasn't great but was enjoyable.

As far as DC goes, DC sucks tbh. They don't have very many good heroes, and their alter egos aren't great at being relatable. That's why Marvel is so much more appealing. Stan Lee made the alter Egos more relatable. How many of us nerds were Peter Parker? That is also why Spiderman specifically did well, a lot the villains were relatable too. People that werent so bad, just took a wrong turn or made a bad decision somewhere. Doc Conner, Harry Osborne, Felicia Hardy, Eddy Brock, all of them aren't that bad.

DC is great at making villains relatable, but its heroes, not so much. Superman is terrible. Some Jesus figure, that none of us can relate to. Smallville is the only Clark Kent that was really relatable, and well Dean Kane did a decent job in Lois in Clark. The opposite Captain America was someone we wanted to be, we could never be Superman tho. Batman and Catwoman are our anger at the system and our frustrations turned vigilante. Wonder Woman is also not relatable at all. The CW made DC have relatable alter egos, and that's where DC hit a stride. This is all my feelings on it, but a lot of people agree. Marvel has better heroes, DC has better villains. Spiderman is what happens if DC and Marvel have a baby. Hence why its prolly the most popular solo franchise of the comic book industry.

Again, I think you are missing the full picture. Oblivion was a success because of its fanbase from Morrowind but also because it set the trend of a "living breathing world". Bethesda tried to make the NPCs more alive (with some hilarious outcomes) but Oblivion was the start of trying to change a static world. It was fresh and different from the same ole same ole. And never underestimate the power of mods. Diablo series hit lightning in a bottle by essentially creating a rogue-lite game with graphics which now is commonplace. But Blizzard is great at taking existing systems and polishing it up; just look at Warcraft/Starcraft and WoW both of whom were copies of older games.

Marvel has Fantastic Four and all the movies sucked. The original Superman with Christopher Reeves did great. It's not necessarily about the characters. It's how it is implemented and executed. A lot of D&D computer games of recent years have not met expectations because they weren't executed well.

Imagine it's 2010. For the first time in almost a decade, you hear news that there's a new XCOM game being developed.

This is the XCOM you're told you're going to get.

Imagine it's 2018, and you've been waiting 6 years for a sequel to Diablo III.

The XCOM we were promised in 2010 eventually became The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. Despite modeling itself on the popular FPS genre, it was not a success story. However, the negative reaction to its announcement triggered the development of a more traditional XCOM sequel/remake, in the form of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which was so successful that it revitalised an entire genre.

It became the "popular game" that everyone else copies. Now we have Gears of War tactics games and Mario tactics games, etc.

In 2010, you could have argued that XCOM style tactics games were dead. Nobody likes them and they're just bad game design. And yet, fans demanded that XCOM be the best it can be while staying true to its brand/niche, instead of just playing it safe by becoming a different game entirely.

Imagine jumping onto a Diablo forum in 2017 and asking for the next Diablo game to be a mobile phone game, and then trying to hide your subjective preference for mobile games by saying "it's objectively true that mobile games are more popular than PC games".

In fact, don't imagine.

I really find it odd that there's any need for a discussion around the popularity or financial success of the original Baldur's Gate games. Those games are why we're all here.

Well I was young indeed when Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 was released. Both me and my brother lived then at my parents home (kids or teenagers usually do that) and we used LAN connection multiplayer. Personally my favorite are of those was the Werewolf Island expansion in BG1.


My nickname Terminator? Comes actually from gaming FPS games example Unreal Tournament 2004, Battlefield 3 etc. From Terminator movies I liked most Terminator 1 and Terminator 2. The rest are less good as I feel also that Starwars movies are not great anymore.

Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2... Despite Nevewinter Nights 1 original campaign did not have great graphics the editor tool was great I played also on a persistent server with better graphics multiplayer and some player released modules (adventures).

MMO era:
Age of Conan when it was released year 2008.
It was fairly good but a bit unpolished and all the features developers had promised was not available during release. Anyway my brother suggested the lets try World of Warcraft it is very polished now.
It had also subfee/month.

World of Warcraft (I started playing when Wrath of Lich King expansion had been released) MMO.
It was good indeed fell instantly in love with it and hooked to it.
Main issues were though that to much TIME SINK in the long run.
It had also subfee/month. Anyway stopped playing roughly after 3 years playing.

Neverwinter MMO (Action MMO but more or less based on DD 4th edition).
It was good.
DD4th edtion is however the worst version of DD rules ever released. DD5th at lest did listen to community feedback and corrected many mistakes with DD4th edtion.
I quit due to much TIME SINK and this point more or less fed up with TIME SINK MMO:S.
Free to play but pay real money to win system a bit despite that a totally free player can enjoy it.

Pillars of Eternity 1... I did play through the whole campaign... though annoying since not DD rules.
Pathfinder? While the rules that are close to DD3.5 are great felt to much sandbox kind of game and I never played through it.
DOS2? Bought it, but felt average and never played through it and it was not DD rules.

I do not like sandbox games and yes I tried Skyrim did not like it at all best thing was community made mod that made all women nude lol.

BG3. I get it that some hardcore players want it more according to the DD rules...
I get it and can support it. However for me this is not so game breaking I could not play through BG3 with this system.
I you would ask me how do I rate BG3 on a scale of 1-5 stars..
+ I like the graphics.
+ I like the music and sound effects.
+ Max settings run well on my old Nvidia 1070 Titanium 8GB DDR5.
+ I like the main story and sidequests are generally good.
Neutral: DD5th editon if fairly good and much better then DD4th but perhaps not my all favorite DD system of all times.
Neutral: An easy improvement here would be to add some good aligned companions in Act 2 for a change lol good thank you.
Neutral: Yes the game could be more close to DD rules. This does not however stop me from playing through the game I think but I can support idea more according to DD rules.
General score BG3 4.25/5 stars.
Negative:
Camera control is clumsy and not great one in this game... it sucks compared to example WOW MMO. Camera controls I give separately score 3/5 stars which mean it could be a lot better indeed. I know how to use it and I do know about tactical camera mode press O button in battles, but that is either not very well done likes some other kind of games.


I have played Pen and Paper roleplaying including Dungeons Dragons different versions.

....Literally stating 1 mechanic should change. Not anywhere close to your exaggeration.

You're making an assumption we're all here because of BG 1&2. I'd be willing to wager most of the people getting the game are here for the Larian Brand.

Haven't the slightest idea what XCom is, sounds like a shooter game, closest I come to playing a shooter game is Fallout.