Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Early Access - A Mistake?

This is one of the biggest ones for me, because I wasn't around for D:OS2 Early Access.

But didn't they like... completely add voice acting to the whole game, have significantly more polish and alter Beast's entire story arc while also adding more quests and content or something?

That seems quite far fetched ...
But w/e, i dare to presume Larian have more exact numbers.

I hope not ...

I can’t think how it could hurt it - especially as Larian doesn’t seem to give in to too many community requests (and I don’t think I have seen anyone complaining that any of the changes that Larian made, made the game worse.

Every game should go through rigorous testing - that means developing playable builds like those in EA, be it for showcases or in-house test sessions. Did EA consume more Larian’s resources then such closed testing sessions? Possible - at the same time testers paid full price to participate. Reception to BG3 has been mostly positive. I can imagine it impacting sales negatively when the game is released.

I expect for it to be noticeable. Larian said they will keep things to themselves for 1.0 release, and by Larian’s reputation I expect it won’t feel like playing another EA build. In general though, I don’t expect for any underlying issues that I have with BG3 to disappear.


Considering how little we have in EA, I think 1.0 will be an attractive proposition - we have seen relatively little of both story and gameplay. Even if someone got burned out on EA, I don’t see why they wouldn’t return to it.


Why would it make a difference if the game is in EA for a year or two? Sure, waiting can be agonising, but it hardly matters once the game is complete. It’s better for the game to be half-baked now, so it can dazzle reviewers and audience once it is ready. “BG3 was great 2 years ago, but look at it now!” Is a far better headline then: “the game that is well documented to be good has released.” If BG3 EA was poorly released, then sure, but that was never the case.

I'm not sure if the Early Access wasn't poorly released. From what I recall when it first released there were a ton of Steam and GOG reviews ripping the game for the state it was in... and the responses to them were largely "Should have read that the game was Early Access" or "These people don't understand what an Early Access game is".

I know when I first played BG3 I only got about 3-4 hours in and then hung it up. I wanted to wait for patches and fixes until I got back into it - then I did and so far I have loved it.

But I think one of the dangers is burn out or a negative connotation with the game being established for people. As a completely anecdotal example I have two friends who played the game that have lost all interest in it. One of them lost all interest because it was a "buggy mess" when it first came out. The other thought it was ridiculous the cut scenes weren't done/polished and that the story/characters weren't fleshed out and now thinks it is just a flop.

Obviously this isn't everyone or perhaps even a wide range of people. Maybe this forum isn't a good sample since the people here at obviously interested in the game. But it seems like exposing people (the general public of most people - who casually play games) to a half-done game for an extended period of time (2+ years) may have negative consequences. I imagine that is why most games haven't been in Early Access for 2+ years.

I'm also not saying it is a good or a bad thing to do so. I'm just curious about the general perception.

That's literally the number of unique forum accounts that participated to the dedicated "mega thread".
In fact, that's not even up-to-date, since the user who bothered counting at the time (Maximuuus) didn't update the count since march 2021.

Yeah ...
Well, dont take it harsh, but you just changed the claim from "I think" to "Maximuuus thinks".
Aka ... basicaly not at all. :-/

He didn't say Maximuus thinks, but Maximuus counts - so... not at all guesswork.

You are lacking reading comprehension. Which is hardly surprising at this point, but at the same time it never stops being annoying when you are even smug about it.

No one is guessing. I'm telling you someone took the time to COUNT the number of unique posters in the thread.

Personally I've enjoyed it. I play lots of other games so I leave BG3 for a while and tend to return after a patch or two. I know I'll enjoy full release more because EA has made it easier for me to explore different class and race options for my characters that I might have ignored if confronted with the entire story play out. I've also been able to develop a few characters personality and back stories and one in particular I have really enjoyed playing. She'll be fully fleshed out and ready to experience Full release from the start when it eventually arrives.

I have done early access and beta testing for several games, usually it has been a good thing. This is the only one I have found to be frustrating and this is due to lack of communication. Sure they might "be listening to feedback" but no one knows what they are listening to and what they are ignoring.

1. Player feedback in many cases does lead to a lot of changes (not always good ones depending on who you ask) but it usually will affect things.

2. I am hoping they surprise us with some things in the final release but the gameplay itself unfortunately will probably remain the same.

3. This is all on player self control (and the lack of.) Early Access means things may change and things are still being worked on. If someone gets burned out, that is because they decided to play too much. Play through what you want of the game, leave feedback if you want, then move on to something else until an update comes out. In one game I play, there are a handful of people who complain that the game is awful when they do wipes or make other drastic changes, but they are quickly reminded that early access means things like this will happen.

4. Some games stay in early access for years, this is nothing new. The one I mainly play has been in this state for almost 4 years. You can do a lot of stuff already but they are constantly improving and adding things and taking player feedback into account. They actually interact with players and give monthly reports of what the different departments are working on. The hype for full release may be a bit different for that game since it is an entirely different genre to this one (survival) but I expect it to draw in a lot of people simply because it will be unique in its mechanics.

As for this game, I feel like they got more sales than expected already and probably aren't worried about full release. Besides, they will probably take the lazy way out like many games unfortunately do and rely on streamers to draw in all their brainwashed followers. Once they all buy it then Larian won't care if they move on to the next popular thing because they get their money no matter what.

Early Acces was probably the best thing that could have happened to us if one looks at the state the game was in when it first got released.

If we get a good game once it enters full release in 12 to 15 months, even after so long in Early Access, is a question we can only try to find an answer to by examining the road we have taken to get to this here point in time.

Yeah ... he said ... that is source of my disbelief ... that someone else said ... wich is another one.
And i simply dont believe either, there was not even a single word about any guessing.

I mean ... if i would claim that i just went to that topic and counted them aswell ... and i counted only 74 accounts ...
Tuco would probably believe me aproximately as much as much i believe that there was so nice round number ... 200.
And that would be not at all.

And that is natural ... humans often (some even allways) tend to things that are aligned with their own opinions.
And just for the record ... since im quite sure someone would nitpick that ... no it doesnt mean that i say Maximuuus lies ... there are other options you know ... he could exaggerate, made a misstake, round the results up, etc.

But ieven IF (and that allone if quite big if) they were right ... and there would indeed be "around 200 peolle" ...
Hells even if there would be 2000 people ...
Its still quite insignificant amount of players to call it "majority".

is exactly what I said.

There will always be one , I swear to god. "1 (less than 1%) seems to like it."

You know, sometimes you could just shut up and spare to make a fool of yourself with some embarrassing, far-fetched mirror climbing, only because you feel compelled to have the last word no matter what.

P.S. Also, let's face it... It's not even as if you like the system yourself. You just took to heart your role as the petty, petulant devil's advocate for Larian and feel compelled to have a "witty answer" against any criticism people make on this forum.

It's also worth noting that Maximuuus' breakdown was already fairly charitable toward the feature, since that last portion was counted as "neutral" because "they didn't clearly state if they liked it or not", but as the summary points out even these people expressed several reasons of discontent with the system and suggested several necessary changes.
And once again: these were the numbers from more than a year ago. It didn't exactly improve a lot since then.

The feeling is mutual, as you surely guessed ...
I mean, i just stated my opinion ... any time you could simply say w/e and move on ... and yet, to use your own words ... you feel compelled to have the last word no matter what.

Quite honestly?
I dont have strong feelings one way or another ...

Its not perfect, true, but not many things is ... and some suggestions around here was certainly interesting, even tho i would need to try them to make opinion about wich i like more ... but curent system is certainly acceptable for me, i have no struggles playing with it and im quite fine with any and every function it provide to us, i also dont have any feeling that something cruicial is missing for me ... especialy now, when we get ungroup all button.

In other words there are things that bothers me much, much, much and much more.
But most of them is tied to hotbar.

Why dismiss the results out of hand when you could check the math? It's all there in Maximuuus' post. He's very diligent in explaining how he computes the figures.

If you paste the whole thread in Excel and start sifting through the data, you may find some slight mistakes in the post. That's not an enditement of Maximuuus's work, on the contrary. It's thorough and honest enough to let anyone see exactly what he did and how. Saying you flat out don't believe it kinda blows my mind.

For the record, here's what I found by checking the math. Feel free to check mine, so we may collectively approach the truth.

There's a typo in the number of accounts expressing dislike of the movement system (it's 127, not 147) which means only 181 seperate accounts had commented on that thread by the time of Max's post. By my count, this is correct. However, this is a little lucky because the post only lists 172 unique accounts. Notably, some accounts are listed twice while others are missing.

For some reason, the errors cancel each other out. This means that the category totals are correct, typo notwithstanding. Because of that typo, the total number of accounts used to compute the percentages is off by 20. Here are the updated percentages:

RESULTS (out of 181 accounts)

- 127 (70%) of them give a feedback that you can't missunderstood : they don't like this system
- 6 (3.3%) said that they're pretty ok to deal with the system but they have issues with it
- 1 (0.6%) seems to like it, but honnestly it looks like a troll ("get good")
- 47 (26%) disccussed issues related to this system or give related feedbacks, suggestions etc...

For good measure, here are the updated lists I used to come to this result.

This doesn't take into account pages 30 to 42 of the thread, so let's look at those right now. Here's a list of all users who posted in that thread for the first time after Maximuuus had done his analysis, along with the category under which I place them.
This comes out to 47 accounts, who break down as follows : 37 dislike, 2 like, 4 more or less fine, 4 no opinion.

This brings us to updated percentages:

RESULTS (Out of 181 + 47 = 228 accounts)

- 164 (72%) of them give a feedback that you can't missunderstood : they don't like this system
- 10 (4.4%) said that they're pretty ok to deal with the system but they have issues with it
- 3 (1.3%) seem to like it
- 51 (22%) disccussed issues related to this system or give related feedbacks, suggestions etc...

You can have issues with the methodology, or how I classified accounts, or anything else. If you do, please point to specifics.

Do you mean in original topic? I simply didnt want to search for it ...
Or do you mean in this one? That showed an hour later after what you quoted ... i am man of many talents, but readint the future isnt one of them.

Anyway, feel free to blame my lazyness ... but i simply didnt have any reason to do that.

As i stated abowe, even if that guess made by Tuco (200) were 100% corect ...
(Wich we now know it was not, since there is no way you can round 147 to 200, maybe except when you are rouding up to whole hunderts, but in that case even 101 is 200, so using that method would be ridiculous by itself.
... in other words, yes now im absolutely certain that Tuco exaggerated, just as i suspected ...)

But even IF he would be corect, it would be meaningless bcs my argument was about his words "OVERWHELMING majority of users" ... and 200 people out of millions of players (i dunno how many coppies were sold, blame my lazyness again if it was announced) simply cannot ever be described by those words.

I dont ave Excel ... and im certainly not installing any software for single use in forum argument about game.

Which it WAS, as the sample was in fact of 201 users. In fact according to the updated numbers it was even an underestimation, since the new total is at 228 according to Flooter''s recount.


If ONE user out of 201 speaking favorably about the mechanic (or let's say 3 out of 228 now) and 75% of them being OPENLY AGAINST it doesn't point to the *overwhelming majority of users* not liking it, then I don't know what it is.

Also, clearly you have no fucking clue of how a sample works.
There are even nation-wide polls made with samples of 1000 people at most. But according to you we would need a million votes to know for sure how the majority feels about something.

As I said, you made a hobby of being the petulant little devil's advocate of every lost cause on this forum.