Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General So what now?

Sorry to say, but data on steamdb appeared monthes before release for previous patches.
But with the Tweet I doubt we'll have to wait monthes. Who knows...

Crud.

The timeframe seems about right, though, doesn’t it? P7 dropped on feb. 7, P6 on oct. 14, P5 on jul. 15. Earlier patches were closer together, but the recent cadence seems to be around three to four months.

Maybe it’s all just wishful thinking. In my defence, wishful thinking is amazing! It turns reality into dreams.

Don't they usually do an announcement about branching to give people time to prepare for the new patch? At least a week or so before the PFH.

when is the next PFH?

It wasn't announced yet.
many are basically assuming it will be by the second half of June since one of the devs started to tease its preparation just a week ago.

New interview with Swen. Nothing major but he talks about Shadowheart’s artifact and the challenge of having choices in the game.

Is that meant to put the game in a positive light? Commitment is admirable, but it sounds to me like they are putting a lot of resourced to make up for a bad decision, rather then making impressive reactivity. Many games gate their progress unless specific requirements are meant - if PC needs to get the box, then so be it, there is no need to overthink/overproduce it. Giving a story critical item to a companion, does sound like a very shortsighted idea - single character runs (which Larian itself supported in D:OS2) come to mind as an immediate conflict.

Edit: Don’t want to unnecessary criticise Sven and Co. - some of my favourite developers made really bad calls in a hindsight. “To err is human” and all. Just expressing my confusion to see that content before release - the content of the video gives me GDC post-mortem vibe of “we will tell you of bad, expensive mistakes we made, so you can learn from it”, but the vibe seems… celebratory? Yay for us for creating a problem and sinking resources into it.

"fucking amateur" came to mind.

Mistake number one: hiring someone from the JJ Abrams school of plotting.

Patch 8 - New class? More subclasses? Karlach able to join the party and be a full companion? More poorly-designed items? Shove made to a full action?

Its odd to hear them both talking about how the team have to think about any possible choice we can make ...
Compared to gameplay, where we are on the contrary loosing choices as the game progress rather then gaining another. O_o

Basic reactions are:
- Kind acceptance
- Kind denial
- Mocking
- Avoiding the answer
- Rude denial
- and roll intiative

I believe every dialogue should provide "at least" those ... but it dont.

Here is "short" list of choices im missing.
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=741085#Post741085

On one hand you have to appreciate the dedication to the craft.
On the other one, I found myself wondering "What if you just made very clear that the box was important and you were supposed to keep it, and then reserve yourselves the right to FUCK THE PLAYERS hard if they simply didn't listed to the advice?"

Why is a "fail state" for things (and especially one purposefully caused by the players ignoring any advice, not related to a random chance) so much of a tabu in modern design?

it seems to me they are emphasizing that the box caused alot of unnecessary issues that may have potentially disrupted the development of the game. not sure if people playing bg3 really is for the permutations. it's great to have branching choices but i rather like a simple campaign as long as it's fun and the focus should be heavily towards combat. i played solasta and greatly enjoyed it. i don't care much about the characters or the stories. i like the combat, the classes and the builds.

All I hear is, "We bit off more than we could chew."

That said, I get it. I totally understand and actually have been expecting something like this for some time. With every conversation having to be a cutscene dialogue even with the most minute characters, ANY story branching is going to be costly and difficult.

I'm just hoping the game doesn't suck in the end as a result. It starts strong, but I'm afraid it'll finish poorly.

And all I also hear is, "All your suggestions, players, are pretty much going to be ignored forever. We've got bigger fish to fry. At this point, take it or leave it."

This was my reaction too. So much resources spent on a screw-up? Why? Why not just remove the box from SH, place it in a very prominent place, and give players a strong "vibe" that they need to take the box. I don't think there is a DM alive anywhere who would go to this length to give players thousands of permutations for an event. They would just tell the player: "You need to take this f___ing box!!"

Imagine all the other things about this game that all those person-hours of work could have been applied to?!

It’s disconcerting to discover the cost of such a small decision. The interview shows just how ambitious it is to both cover every permutation and animate every scene.

My takeaway is that the likelyhood of any change made to EA is inversely proportional to the permutations it requires adding. This makes me hopeful for the removal of bonus action shove/hide, but worried about the addition of any kind of time tracking system.

Seems like the issue is less that we need the box and more that it is tied to Shadowheart’s story. So you really need to interact with her in some way to gain access to the box. You’d think they could’ve done a scripted encounter like the first time we meet Laezel to solve for that.

If you're tying yourselves into knots because the pc is going off-script, you shouldn't be throwing it back at them repeatedly and in more and more obtuse ways. You should just write what happens when Arthur doesn't extract Excalibur or Luke doesn't shut off the targeting computer.

If the box is important, then write what happens when the bad guys get it, we'll be meeting up with them by the end of the act anyway. And punish us for being thick too.

Lots of assumptions there...

Yeah. I'm just saying. My expectations for this game just went WAY down.

At this point, forget all the suggestions we've made. I'll take what I can get. Finish the game and be done with it.

If the BOX was that much trouble...

The iPad port isn't done by Larian. googling it comes up with Elverils Studio