Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Predictions for EA's 2nd anniversary

My issue with the statement that “things will come when they are ready” is that Larian are trying to have their cake and eat it.

On the surface, it’s a statement about Larian’s commitment to polish, but many systems and assets were released fairly rough. So “ready” doesn’t mean “done”, it means “Larian are ok with its state”.

The statement really means “things will come when we say so” which boils down to a request that the players stop expecting information, under the guise of quality assurance.

Dunno ...
Seems like quite standard attitude from studio to people. :-/

Which is ok, since it's EA, it could simply mean they want it polish enough but still want, at some point, to make it available to players for feedbacks.
I don't see anything wrong here.


Or maybe just..."be patient" instead of "stop expecting information" ?

I can respect them not oversharing as well.
There could be several legit reasons behind that. For instance, avoiding putting unnecessary pressure on themselves and/or avoiding spoiling everything before patches/full release.

It could also be to avoid having every word of every statement scrutinized, in which case my attitude isn’t helping.

Still, Larian could have avoided the pressure and spoilers by not doing early access. In my mind, they owe the EA community more than a finished product somewhere down the line.

For comparison, Introversion Software (creators of Prison Architect) launched an early access game in July. Since then, they’ve revealed more about their game (design goals, early player numbers, useful feedback etc…) than Larian have in nearly 2 years. What we know about BG3 is that it will be done when it’s finished and that it will release on launch day.

Maybe I’m overly wary of PR speak. In the back of my mind, I hoped in creating the thread that community managers might respond. They did! So I thank them for that, and I’m looking forward to further communication. (J’aurais dû commencer par là. Déso, Nicou)

That hardly seems like compareable game.

And even if ... its still one of thousands and thousands.

But since you picked this one ... and maybe you expected me to say this ... that game as far as i know is produced by Paradox Interactive ...
Wanna see how really bad communication looks like? Check their other project, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2.

It's published, ie funded, by Paradox , the developer is Introversion. But yes, VtMBL2 is really bleeding them dry (pun intended) when it comes to PR.

As for you Nicou, even though I understand the reason behind Larian's EA and that you've had several setbacks that wasn't accounted for when you released it, and that you want to keep everything else under cover until release as to not give any spoilers, there's one thing I hope Larian, Sven and your Community Team learns from this EA and all the critique against it. That is to improve your communication and engagement with the community.

Although I understand that the developer team are open to new ideas and that, during a project, changes might happen the very last moment, you(Larian) did safeguard yourself in the beginning with letting us know you already had a "strong vision" for BG3 so...more engagement with the community and openness about the progress plus firmly showing where you stand in several controversial topics ie *this and that will/won't be in the game for certain/most certainly because of these reasons*, would had really made the EA a smoother experience, in my opinion. But, that is for you all to take with you for your next project. As for BG3...just get it done already :P

I think of it as “it is ready to show general audience and get the feedback we are looking for”, and not “it’s ready to ship as a 1.0 mechanic”. I think it is a far assume that amount of development and polish they put into a feature they put into EA is far greater then what they use for prototyping and internal testing. But that is still just (hopefully!) a stepping stone toward 1.0, not an end goal.

Larian isn’t as “manoeuvrable” and responsive as let’s say Introversion, but I think it comes with a production budget and a sheer amount of people involved. It just not an “intimate” project and with that communication will understandably be more difficult.

I was reading previous news on Steam and found this heat map of deaths :



It would be very cool if we could get more of that for the next patch note, statistics are very interesting to look at!

Thats why i picked it ...
They also publish Bloodlines 2, but dont "develop" it themselves ... at least as far as i know, they arent developers ...

Aka same situation.

Yeah. would be really interesting to see if all the changes has made people dying less in those areas, for example. Problem with that is that this particular data would be skewed as players now has more experience with the game and therefor probably dies less because of that.

Btw, lol. All those deaths to sweet little Shadowheart :P

I agree about Introversion not being comparable to Larian but rest of your reasoning is rather flawed.

First things first: let’s get the fact straight.

Introversion Software is an independent company that achieved great success with their Early Access release of Prison Architect. It’s one of shining examples of Early Access done right.

They sold the game to Paradox, which now owns Prison Architect and develops it further, but I haven’t been keeping tabs on it.

Introversion now prepares for Early Access launch of The Last Starship which is to be their new game. There is already some testing happening with limited audience, but one cannot buy the game as far as I know.

Bloodlines2 is not a game that’s in early access, it’s previous developer has been fired and allegedly another studio pitched their idea to Paradox and the game has been to some extend rebooted under they guidance - we don’t know who is that developer, or when we will hear more about the game. I don’t know what Bloodlines2 has to do with Larian, Prison Architect or Early Access. It’s situation seems completely irrelevant to the topic.

What I think is important is that Introversion from what I can tell has a bit over 10 employees. What that means for that size of the studio is that people who has been hosting monthly streams for Prison Architect Chris and Mark are pretty knowledgable and responsible for how the game is shaping. I doubt there is someone like that in Larian - so what they do makes sense. Wait until features are really to show off, and then talk about them and have relevant people at a studio present them. Higher production value of BG3 unfortunately means that things will take much longer to be implemented, then in case of more budget titles. Another aspect is that Introversion titles are mostly systemic, so they can share with most that they develop - BG3 as an RPG relies heavily on handcrafted content so progress won't be as visible until more of the content is shipped. Our feedback may have influenced later maps and how quests are structured/designed but that won't be apparent until the game is complete.

At the same time early access has established cadence and expectations - frequent updates, visible impact of community feedback, communication. Criticism is fair, even if I think it is a bit a different situation for AAA production. Perhaps, AAA should be in early access. But that’s for future devs to decide. Personally I am glad it is throughout the process I gained faith that Larian listens to our complaining, even if I wish for quicker and clearer feedback back (from Larian to us, if that makes sense).

I thought i was quite clear about that ...

Flooter complained about bad comunication ...
So i give him example of ACTUALY bad comunication. O_o

VtMBL2 is an example of no communication, and even if that's worse than the way Larian has handled BG3 doesn't make Larian's way good. But you're free to disagree.

Rag, you've been increasingly stingy the last couple of days, everything alright?

Thats another way to put it, yes ...
But no comunication, is bad one in my eyes ... especialy concidering everything around that project. :-/

I never said it make Larian's way "good" ... just "not as bad" as it seemed to me when i read that post ...

Sure, there are better examples ... as it seems even much better examples ...
But there are also worse ... and certainly MUCH worse examples ...

It just seemed obvious to me. :-/ Should i said that whole?
(i feel like there should be "have" in this sentence, to make it past time, but have no idea where)

Heeey, patch 9 just popped up on SteamDB! https://steamdb.info/app/1086940/history/?changeid=16138453

Alright, late November/early December it is then, if the usual patterns hold up. If not, I don't think Larian's going to want to patch so close to the holidays (as in late December), so if we don't get teasing by late November, chances are high we aren't seeing the next patch until mid-late January at the very earliest.

Pattern isn't that clear, here are the days between patches release :

5-6 : 91 days
6-7 : 124 days
7-8 : 142 days

So it could be in two weeks like it could be in november...

Yay!

Don't want to get my hopes up too much. Do we know how long it takes between them uploading the files and actually releasing the patch?