Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General 2 year EA ANNIVERSARY event? (OCTOBER 6)

Didn’t say it would be – it’s phrased as speculation, if you read back over it.

Even if you insist there’s no chance of an anniversary patch, the current trend of patches being every 4 months or so indicates a patch at the end of October – or let’s say end of November. So that’s one class down, one to go. Let’s add another 4 months to that and we’re at the end of March. Last class down.

Beyond this point, you really think people won’t feel they’re milking this? Ok.

The full game is complete and has been play-tested for who knows how long now. Yes, I’d definitely say a Q1 release is the aim, with Q2 being the absolute max. Feb is still 5 months away – that’s not enough time to polish off something they’ve already completed? Again, ok.

I feel Sven is fairly clued in to the unrest and doesn’t want to keep adding fuel to the fire. You talk mainly of Larian fanatics – reddit, in particular, is a well-known Larian cheer-leading forum, where you’ll be outright banned or down-voted into oblivion for even hinting you don’t like some minor feature. It’s heavily policed to be a Larian-positive place.

Likewise, the Larian youtube channel is more of the same. You have to look elsewhere to get a less starry-eyed opinion.


They’re not aimed at the mainstream population either, IMO, as again I haven’t seen anyone outside the typical Larian fanbase who enjoy the campiness of it. There’s plenty of distaste out there for Larian’s overall brand strategy – that doesn’t mean people don’t still enjoy the game systems. How many people enjoyed the DOS series, but hated the Larianisms?

Clearly you’re not going to convince me with any of the evidence you quoted – and vice versa, I assume.


I copy and pasted the quote tags and forgot to change the name, but I assume it’s clear who I was addressing.

Precisely what i said ...
I doubt those money "could be better spent".

In this particular example, first of all i certainly doubt that even happened as you describe it ...

I mean even if you concider what they rented ... as far as i know, all they actualy needed was yard, two medium sized rooms and one really short corridor ... i dont know what are prices in Belgium, but i dont feel like that would cost a fortune.
As for turning it into theme park ... well, again, as far as i remember, all that was interacted with were mostly small proprietes, that can be bringed in or out in matter of minutes top. :-/

As if we are concidering that particular PFH ... we should take under concideration that castle certainly gained some additional publicity out of that event, and that is never bad thing ... i wouldnt go so far to claim it was borrowed to Larian for free, that would be absurd, but i can see there some discount happening in that case.
After all, that stream was watched by millions around the globe ... that is no small feat.

Feel free to corect me, but as far as i know (and i believe even Wolfheart confrimmed this) PFH are live streamed ... so, what editing are you even talking about?

Costumes can be done in matter of few bucks, or several dozen thousands ...
As (im sure) every Larper, or Swordsman can confirm ... question here would be who pays them ... bcs (and i totally get it may sound like absurd idea, but lets say) IF Swens armor is actualy his armor, that he had somewhere at home, (prehaps as reminder of younger wilder times, dont really matter tho) ... then, its cost would be ofcourse 0.
Same goes for rest of that equipment obviously.

Yes.
And sure, feel free to disagree ... it would be a little more helpfull if you would tell me why you disagree, but if you wont thats also fine.

I cant talk for Larian employees ...
But i personaly know person who worked for CDPR ... and she told me that when they were working on Witcher III. several people stayed in work loooong after their shift ended, including weekends and hollydays ... willingly, i should probably add ... and sooner or later they all burned out.
No money could help them ...
But if they would once per few weeks create some silly stuff around their game, it could help to blow some steam and maybe even get some fresh ideas.

What can i say ... i believe her, it makes sense to me.

I think this isnt really true ...
When company where i worked did "paintball weekend teambuilding" ... i was also not exactly happy about it ... and yet it was teambuilding, not exactly best one, at least not for me (except it eventualy was bcs i luckily get Cold, so "sadly" i had to stay home ), but it doesnt change its purpose.

Now when i think about it, im not even sure if it even is possible to make teambuilding so everyone is totally happy and exited about it. :-/
But im not fan of the idea anyway ... i think people should be allowed to decide what they wish to do in their free time or not. :-/

True ...
Never said it does tho.

There is some saying: Heaters goona heat.
Or something like that ... :P

Nobody can please everyone, not even Swen.

Gonna ignore the rest for reasons that should be obvious ... let me know if i missed something important.

From a marketing standpoint it seems dumb to bring attention to the fact that your game has been in Early Access for two years.

Right or wrong to a lot of people that isn't going to be seen as some great milestone or achievement - it is going to be seen as a failure that only serves to upset some of the customers.

I predict they, for the most part, let that date go by without any kind of major celebration or mention of it. The only way I see them using that date is if they have a release date to announce.

Why?
Concidering most of that time was Covid ...

Honestly it seems to me like people cant really agree on what they want.
They pressed on Cyberpunk to be "finaly released no matter the state" and when that happened, they were complaining that it should stay in development longer ...
Now there are people complaining that 2y of EA is too much ... but i bet if Larian would simply release it tomorow, the same people would be complaining its not good enough. :-/

I think it is rather simple, people just want a good game to play. Since the BG3 early access is already so entertaining, people are trusting that the final product will achieve expectations and want it as soon as possible. An unreleased game like Cyberpunk can stay in development for years since it is just a vague idea in everyone minds.

Yeah ...
I understand that ... and i also cant wait to explore rest of the story.

I gues i wish to see something like "hey early acess is allready so entertaining > so Larian obviously know what they are doing ... and if they say that they need another year, its probably for good reason".

Sebastian said it well:

Cyberpunk's problems started because they announced a release date when the game wasn't finished, then delayed it. CDPR did that to themselves by setting the expectation that the game was going to come out and put the pressure on themselves. If they just would have remained mostly quiet about the game until it was mostly complete - they would have been fine.

I'm saying that it doesn't seem like a huge milestone or something to celebrate being in Early Access for two years. I'm saying for Larian it could backfire because fans may start to say things like "LOL U R CELEBRATE 2 YRS IN EARLY ACCESS? Y GAME NO OUT YET?!?!?!"

I don't think you want to remind people the game has been playable for two years, but unfinished... is what I am saying. That doesn't seem like a smart move - especially to celebrate it.

I personally could care less if the game release early or late 2023. Or even if it gets delayed until 2024. I just want it to be good when it comes out.

Blocking a user obviously doesn’t block them when you’re not logged in – to get around this, install the greasemonkey extension and then add the below simple script to remove whatever users are trying to menace you. It looks up the Larian forum markup, loops over the user names, targets the problematic user and searches back up the DOM tree to their container ‘t_outer’ and then erases all instances of those containers, loading an aliased version of this forum’s ancient jQuery to get the job done.

So all perfectly harmless – to everyone except the person who’s trying to drive you up the wall.

Greasemonkey can be configured to just run the script on the Larian site by clicking the script from Greasemonkey, selecting options, then adding the current site to the ‘matches’ section.

TLDR: Bye bye Ragnorak – you’ve just been permanently erased for me, logged in or otherwise.

The below script will specifically erase this individual’s posts so that he can no longer badger you. Why he’s not perma-banned, I have no idea – but here’s a ‘workaround’ to keep your sanity.

Thank me later.

EDIT: I’ve just updated the script to erase all instances of the problematic user being quoted by other users. Even Steam forums don’t take care of this when you block someone – so you’ll always end up having to suffer the nonsense if someone else happens to quote the person you blocked. Well worry no more – that, too, has been taken care of. At least on Larian forums.

EDIT 2: Updated the script to replace the problematic user’s name outside the threads with ‘bye bye’, so you don’t even have to see if they’ve replied to any topics either.

EDIT 3: Made the script more concise and more powerful – now you can simply add the unwanted users to the BLACK_LIST constant array as a comma-separated list, and the rest is automated. You can also optionally define your own ‘removed user’ text in USER_REMOVED_TEXT for any areas outside the thread.

Just as countless other studios, especialy in past few years.
After all, even start of BG-3 Early Acess was delayed a little bit ...

Well, yes and no ...
This is the hard part, their PR was done well, too well to their own good ... totally agree on that one (my friend often says the same) ...
On the other hand they were (as far as i know) forced to release it as it was, and that is something you can hardly prepare for. :-/

And honestly i dont do "if"s ... there is countless things we dont see that could go, well at very least different, if not straight wrong in that scenario.

Oh certainly they will ... some of them allready do ... some of them allready do right here.

And many of them would no matter if there will be some celebration event or not.
On the other hand tho, there are people appreciating such events ...

So ... in my eyes (and ofcourse feel free to disagree) Larian can either please some fans, or dont ... but those who are pissed and complaining will remain the same.

I gues this is matter of presentation / perception ...
You know, half full / empty glass thing ...

Some could argue that they are working intensively for last two years to make this game as close to our liking as possible, instead just release it as it was in patch one.
Wich would certainly be much faster ... there is not even single doubt in my mind.

100% agreed. ^_^
+ I really hope that Larian will NEVER EVER go complete radio silence. :-/

Wasn’t there so employee harassment going on because the release date for God of War2 wasn’t revealed?

People are impatient, selfish, and in general dumb (I include myself almost “people” unfortunately). They will be upset that something takes longer then they wish, they will be upset if the game that releases will have issues. There is no win-win, except when the game finally releases and it’s good, then people forget about the wait, while releasing bad, in most cases sinks years of work that you already put into the title. Some recover, but most don’t.

RE: the script – they should add blocked users to browser localStorage and then just add that script I wrote to this site and it would be a shining example of how to implement block, since doing it purely on the BE is flimsy, doesn’t target every scenario and breaks as soon as you log out.

To get back on topic, I played Cyperpunk back when it first released – expensive rig – and had no issues. I thought the game was fantastic – it was the first game, apart from TW3, that I’d finished in years. Was it rough around the edges? Sure. But good writing and characterisation will always shine through – and in that respect, it’s leagues ahead of BG3. Its recent resurgence is No Man’s Sky-esque.

Indeed, if you want to really judge the interest in EA, just look at the Steam BG3 forums – currently ‘6 hours ago’ the last thread topic was updated on page 1. When there’s actually interest, it looks like the Cyberpunk Steam forum: posts nearly every minute. It genuinely can’t afford to go on another year with this level of jadedness.

BG3’s best attribute IMO is the gameplay – and it was also, before patch 8, the artwork and graphics.

There’s always a definitive edition for the extras that will delay release to no-end – ie, day/night cycle. They try this now under pressure and it’ll be half-baked and create uproar on release. There are other ideas such a 6-person party that also belong in a definitive edition. It could be brilliant if they have a breather and the time to rejig encounters around an increase in party size.

What they have now is fine. Change the reactions system, because it’s not some immense task – tweak shove, remove some common exploits around scrolls and consumables that people have mentioned… All doable without going insane from the workload.

The game can also be too long. TW3 devs realised most people never finished the game because it was too huge. Quality over quantity and all that.

Feb/Mar release all the way, folks.

PS: this forum is so extremely peaceful with that script…

It’s worth noting how reactive the communications team has been with the news of Stadia shutdown. With a tweet and several posts in the forum, the message was clear and swift. (I’m assuming messages have popped up on Steam and Reddit as well).

It’s nice to have non-verbal confirmation of the communication team’s commitment. It bodes well for october 6th.

Also -

Four months from the last patch I believe puts us in early November. My guess would be we do not get a patch until mid to late November or maybe even early December. I think Larian will use a big patch and a release date announcement to drive up holiday sales.

Why would they want to drive up the sales when they've throughout all this time clearly have stated that they do not want people buying into the EA as a pre-order?

IF they reveal the release date to be early next year I can accept your prediction but if they reveal it to be mid/late 2023 there's no need. Personally I have no doubt whatsover that BG3 will cover its own cost through sales by name recognition alone.

You got me there. I don't know why a company who is in the business of selling video games would want to sell more video games.

I'll think on it for a while and if I can come up with a reasonable answer I'll get back to you.

.

You don't actually buy that do you? Of course they want people buying EA lol, that's just PR to cover their asses if it's awful.

Cheeky bastard :P

What I meant, and I do apologize if that didn't come through, is that I don't see the point of making a big thing of a patch for the EA in hopes to get more sales(during the EA) when Larian has actively discouraged people from buying the EA so far, unless those costumers where interested in providing feedback. And, those potential customers you would gain through such a move can just as easily wait until full release when they finally will know its date. Sure, money in the bank today is always better than the same potential money tomorrow but I feel that Larian will lose some goodwill if they suddenly will try to drive up sales when the game is still not done. That said, we live in a material world and I'm not head of either Larians PR department or their financials so I may very well be in the wrong here

Nah. For all issues I do have with Larian, so far they didn’t show themselves to be cynical, pure profit lead company. They want to do stuff, big, ambitious stuff. Nothing they did so far indicates to me they bank on selling as much as they can before the game is ready to sell. There is no incentive to buy into EA outside wanting to participate in EA. No lower price, no time limited exclusive content. They are successful, because there is nothing like what they do on the market, and single purchase sprawling RPG makes for an unusually good deal, even in its unfinished state.

Larian is a cool company. I'm not trying to accuse of them of doing anything shady. If the game is going to come out in the second half of 2023 I am probably wrong. But if they had a release date in the first half of the year that they know they can hit - I see no problem with them doing a Panel From Hell, announcing a class, showing the game off and dropping a release date before the holiday to help drive sales when people spend the most. I don't think that is greedy, misleading or anything like that. It's just smart.