Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Request for a BG3 content mod kit

Honestly, from a VERY realistic standpoint, I would be very surprised if this game even ends up with a content creator kit anymore. Larian has been avoiding the topic for a reason, the same way they've avoided talking about reactions. The overall scope of the game has evolved so much over the past year to the level where I'm not sure it's even in the game's best interests to allow for such a thing to even exist anymore.

Consider this: With the graphical/cinematic focus of the game being the main priority now, how would the community react to these tools, knowing that nothing they can create has any chance of even touching the same quality as the main campaign? No voiced cutscenes, and map/event design would likely end up greatly limited compared to what we see within the main campaign. Having such tools sounds good on paper, until you think about it further and realize that perhaps very few people will even care enough to engage with anything created through these tools, given the wildly differing priorities of the fanbase that seem to clash with the very concept of user generated content. We already see part of this from DOS:2 - a wildly popular game, but hardly anyone has ever done anything with the content creation tools there. The overall community's treatment of it has never really gone beyond a feature they can add to their checklist of things they can say makes the game great.

The way people in the DOS2 community speak of these tools is largely limited to knowing that they just exist, and because it exists there, it somehow means that BG3 should have it too. That's about it. No meaningful emphasis on what was actually made with those tools. Even looking at the Steam workshop discussions, NO ONE is talking about custom campaigns, they are all always talking about modding in changes to the core gameplay itself, like new races and classes and rebalancing adjustments. The few inquiries I saw for custom content like quest scripting go completely unanswered.

At that point, would it even be worth it to develop and release such tools for BG3 anymore?

It works for Solasta because the fanbase there is far more willing to handwave shortcomings away, the fanbase there prioritizes gameplay over literally everything else to an almost fanatical degree, and there isn't very much difference between the official campaigns and the user generated campaigns in terms of presentation. You literally can't step into the Solasta circles without tripping over discussion of some of the more prolific campaign maker designers that have created close to a dozen campaigns already, with people seriously arguing that many of the user campaigns are close to or above the main campaigns in quality.

But here in regards to what is already observed within the DOS2 community and now BG3? The difference is now guaranteed to be as wide as the main campaign and the user generated campaigns essentially being viewed as entirely separate games. For the most part, the interest in user generated content seems to begin and end at new character customization options, which can be done with or without toolset support. And I wouldn't hold it against Larian at all if they were to suddenly announce that they weren't going to pursue this any longer.