You know, there is a really simple reason that WOTC decided to diminish the importance of Alignment in D&D 4/5E compared to previous editions: Money
At the end of the day they are a business and businesses rely on growth in order to stay profitable. Wizards realized they needed a game that had broader appeal and that the do that required flexibility and streamlining. It needed a simpler set of rules that allowed for Homebrewing but also was much easier for new players to pick up and jump into.
Wizards also had an eye for wanting to license this game into the CRPG market. So part of the changes had to do with making it easier to build a CRPG around the rules, which is one of the core reasons alignment was minimized. It was a huge gamble but it paid off. D&D has seen a huge resurgence as new players have flooded in. It has made inroads into pop culture (Community, Stranger Things) and found new, more diverse, audience. Wizards are the ones NOT insisting on companies they provide licenses to follow strict sets of rules.
From what I have observed Alignment works great at in person D&D sessions. It adds some flavor and interesting philosophical discussions. Alignment is a nightmare in computer games, or at least when it is applied to the players actions. Unless we invent an 'Alignment AI' you will end up with systems that are really quite arbitrary and dull. Droata and I have provided examples of this. I am not saying its impossible to have Alignment work in a CRPG (It was fine in Plancescape: Torment - although in the end it didn't make a difference in regards to your ultimate fate, it only allowed you to minimize or maximize the collateral damage potentially). However in those cases it worked because it was not heavy handed.
But we digress from the point here- which was BG3 could be a platform IF...
BG3 WILL be a - and already is a platform. There are many of us that are super excited about playing this amazing game for years to come. There are many of us who have 800+ hours in already. How close we end up to D&D Raw is NOT just up to Larian. We have MOD tools, and an active community. There will also be difficulty settings, and "Core Rules" has always been an option. Who here honestly thinks they won't get a D&D Raw option one way or another? Why do you think that?
There are reasons that Larian has gone with EASY mode for the EA. Its because BG3 is about 10 times more complicated than the previous two games (and I am NOT knocking those games - they were great for the time and limits of technology). I have watched enough new players playthroughs to realize how easy it is to make mistakes with this game and have them compound into real failure and TPKs.
Asmongold and Felicia Day got their butts handed to them. They both ended up removing the BG3 streams from their Twitch sites because it showcased how bad they are at complex games. Or maybe BG3 is hostile to the streaming meta - streaming relies more on games being consumed as 'interactive content' that doesn't challenge the player at all so that audiences can experience an easy win. And that is MOST players right there. Most games out there are pure garbage that is designed to be consumed instead of providing the player with a real challenge that forces them to improve to move forward.
The last non-larian game I played that forced me to improve as a player and a person was Vanilla WoW in 2004. That's how bad things are right now. So for me Larian is the only game in town.
My apologies for the dissertation, but it showcases why I am so defensive of Larian. In my eyes they are getting the important stuff right. This game will straight murder you if you walk into it with a light heart and take stuff for granted, and that is fantastic. That it doesn't follow exact D&D Raw is largely irrelevant - at this point.
Last edited by Blackheifer; 25/05/21 01:45 AM.
