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

There is certainly a mercenary element to the way they are handling this attempt at a Baldur's Gate game; that's fine when they're doing their own thing, but sucky when we're talking about something that predates them...something arguably seminal.


^ Jump to 3:30.


I am really not interested in a new(er) studio trying to push their identity through a beloved established series. Sadly, this only confirms my initial suspicions of BG3. The game could still be decent on its own merits, sure, but it won't be Baldur's Gate.

I'll take a masterpiece like BG3 which doesn't stay 100% true to the previous episodes to a travesty like Diablo 3. Plus it doesn't cut out any possibility of a "true" sequel in the future.

Wich basicaly only means that you are not their target group ...

But this is inevidable ... every and any studio that would do BG-3/4/5/7951,5 ... will do it "their way" ...
Hells, even studio that is the same but simply changed people meanwhile will do it "their way" ... look at differences between Diablo, Diablo II., Diablo III., and Diablo Imortal ... or take any two Fallouts ...
To push it even bit futher ... even the same person few years later can easily do things differently, bcs he learned something meanwhile ... sadly the only example i think about here is VtM:Bloodlines and VtM:Bloodlines 2, where we know on both Brian Mitsoda was working, but 30min demo isnt exaclty perfect comparsion material. :-/

No matter what they would do there would allways be people complaining that "this dont feel enough like Baldur's Gate" ... and i mean ALLWAYS ...
Luckily, it seems like Swen isnt trying to please everyone.

My guess is sometime in Oct for patch 9.🎃🎃🎃

BG3 being a "masterpiece" is your personal opinion. To @Ragitsu's point about faithfulness to the previous games, where does BG3 leave us hardcore fans of the old games who don't share your opinion of the game?

But to the point of this thread, my entire take on us coming up on the 2nd anniversary of BG3's EA is in the context of very strongly believing that Steam should have a hard policy of not allowing any game to be on EA for more than one year (maybe with some allowance for small indie devs).

Of course it is a subjective point of view, one that is shared with a lot of people on the internet I know but still subjective regardless.

Also, limiting early access to only one year would be devastating to a lot of companies and you would just have unfinished products marketed as final as a result. I actually like that so I can tell the game is in its early phase of development. I have the mental capability of not FOMOing and buying a product on impulse.

Your emoji game is on point 😜

I’m adding that to the predictions list 🤓

Lets say they would ...

What would be your expectations from that?

I mean ... lets play a scenario.
Swen thinked that a year would be fine ... so the game come to Early Acess on steam ... them global pandemic come, wich may seem like really old excuse but whether we like it or not, it existed and certainly affected this process.
So year passed and end of EA is still not in sight ... what now?

Well the game is in early access for 2 years. That's a long time. And yes, it is true that it was maybe inevitable. The pandemic slowed development down, and the scope of BG3 seems large, much larger than DOS2 for example.

However, there are some things i'd like to point out.

Although the game is in early access for 2 years, we don't even have the whole list of PHB classes and races yet, we don't even have access to heavy armor(plate) yet, and the biggest part of the game is not accessible. For all those things, we cannot offer feedback or see what bugs we might encounter. For a lot of things, we are at the same point, or almost at the same point. What kind of feedback can i offer more now? I can't test all builds, i don't know even if favorites like Hexblade will make it to the game, i haven't seen multiclass yet, i can't even properly test heavy armor str builds. Paladin, who could maybe fix that, is nowhere to be found for 2 years, although to be fair, putting divine smite maybe is more complicated than it seems without it functioning in a weird way. Still, it's not there.

So the whole argument of going into early access to provide feedback and help, still stands but, we can't give feedback on a lot of things. Things that when you see, the game will probably be feature complete.

Anyway, what i would like is, at least a patch that puts the 2 remaining classes and multiclass in, or at least a narrowing of the release window. Logic(?) says around March-April-May, but who knows.

A little more communication about what races and subclasses we will see in the final game would be appreciated. They have us in the dark, hoping our favorite subclass will make it, you can't convince me that they haven't decided yet what will be in the game and what won't at this point in development.

Well. They most certainly have wrapped up the decisions of what will be in the game by now. Most probably what will be revealed before full release as well. Remember, Sven stated early that they do want to save some things for full release besides the continuation of the story. And the EA has from the very start been about what Larian wants feedback on, not what we want to test. Sadly

And not everything need to be tested beforehand either. They do have QA testers and use a smaller test group for act 2 and 3, and the bugs that will slip through that will be dealt with after release, as usual these days.

Multiclassing does not need that much testing if the separate classes has been thoroughly checked. Balance wise maybe but there will soon be "the best builds guides" all over the web no matter how hard they try to balance.
And, considering Larians take on metamagic, rest system, itemisation and shove etc, balance is not something they seem to hold in high regard anyway.
What is important though is a good tutorial, explaining how Multiclass works for the uninitiated and a clearly arranged level up UI so you easily can see how a new class will affect your character for now, and in the future. I really like what Owlcat did with Pathfinder in this regard.

Do monks have anything mechanic wise that other classes so far hasn't emulated (ie Ki points should work similar to sorcery points etc), besides a proper reaction system? If not, that class can wait until full release.

Besides pure aesthetics, races don't need testing, and, we seem to be stuck with how Larian envision them. So those missing can wait till full release.

Does Heavy armor work differently than Medium armor? If not, it can wait. But I guess Armor is more efficient in 5e than pathfinder because of bounded accuracy.

So, what I hope to see in next patch is, in order of priority:

1. Improved reaction system

2. Major changes based on community feedback a la patch 5. I don't care if it goes against your vision Larian, the people have spoken! (Well, the few ones interested enough to raise their voices )

3. Revert of lighting system and graphics to patch 7 standards. Why did you have to fiddle with something that wasn't broken?!

4. Paladins

5. Hmm, bugfixing I guess.

Oh, and to anchor my post to the topic...with only 4 days left to go, I don't see Patch 9 happening just yet.

Don't get me wrong, i agree, not everything needs testing. It's just that after 2 years my instincts tell me they will have an announcement at 6 October. Not the patch, but the announcement is probably coming. Maybe they will notify of a panel coming at a specific date.

About heavy armor, i think that it does alter the build, not needing dexterity for your build alters the character significantly, and since you lose quite a bit-dex is more stats into one compared to str-, you need to be compensated with a higher AC. Not always the case, but ok. Thus, it should be in, but again, more builds are around dex, and since paladin did not come immediately, heavy armor was not a priority, at least to be in EA. Still, Larian has a past in DOS2 in armor progression and armor availability for players, that makes me worry a bit, although i hope they won't repeat the same mistakes. Can't comment on it though, can't see it, can't offer feedback or point it out if it's there. ( like community feedback on patches )

Other than that, i agree.

Dont you dare!

I will have to strongly disagree with that. Games take years to develop - if you genuinely care about feedback from the player base it is in every company’s best interest to start this relationship as soon as possible. Would you really want for companies to progress further into the development before assessing what the player base likes and dislikes?

I am thinking to early access games I enjoyed and two years plus is not out of ordinary. Really, if you have less then a year of development left, what more can EA serve then pre-release cash flow and some player base to balance the final build?

Sorry Rag, but you know it's true. I did forget one thing that might be worthy a check of the community's opinion though and that is the monk's combat animations. Those ought to be special to the monk considering they are THE martial arts class.
But at the same time...didn't you get a patch for your birthday this year? Stop being greedy :P

No i dont actualy ...

If this was supposed to be the way why we even god Fighter?
We should get Barbarian from the start ... there are same things to test minus Rage ... or other way around ... Larian had to invent their own skills for each totem warrior to make them more different ... wich os cool for Barbarians ... but sucks for Fighters who gets nothing.

Why we got Wizards?
Mechanically they are Sorcerers minus Metamagic ... i mean the only thing that is there to test is their spell learning ... but that is something people are complaining about since patch 1 ... and here we are two years later with no change.
So calue of THAT testing and feedback is at best questionable.

Not even mention that moders who are just sticking together bits and pieces leftover by Larian. And even so they managed a year ago to create both Monk and Paladin ... aswell as many (if not all) missing subclasses ... including some that arent even in PHB.
So call me naive but it seems to me that the only thing that is holding Larian back from releasing something is that they simply dont want to ... certainly not that some feedback wouldnt be so needed for them or that they dont have it ready ... i dont believe that.

As for benefits from Monk testing:
As you mentioned animations ...
It would certainly bring some life back ...
It would show Larian how well would Monks survive this world ...
They would finaly force Larian to make staves Versatile (that alone should be argument enough) ...
And last but certainly not least ... i for one am very interested in how would Monk work with catching and sending back arrows ... and maybe other throwable objects?

And BTW i like being Greedy dont you underestimate my greedyness! :P

Going off-topic here but calling something a masterpiece before it is even finished is highly preemptive and strikes me as pure hyperbole.

If they do decide to mark 2 years of development with some sort of anniversary then that would be the pinnacle of self-congratulatory nonsense. If Larian were preparing a meal, then all we have tasted is the appetiser or first course.

Even as an early access game I already poured more hours into it than most released games. The quality of the game is to me already miles ahead of the competition. I can safely assume this is and will be a masterpiece. And yes, this is still subjective.

I initially enjoyed my time with BG3, but there are still many things that are half-baked, poorly thought out etc and detract from it being a masterpiece - if those don't change then it will simply be 'good'. I have no idea what they will announce , but at this point I'm fairly disinterested and will wait for the final release to see what pops out of the oven.

An unexpected event is exactly that: unexpected. And in any such situation everyone makes adjustents, not just in this situation but in all situations everywhere.

Sure. We have very different ideas of how a studio should develop a game, so we're going to disagree on this. I personally don't place much stock in the supposed iterative process developers get from EA and consider EA games to simply be unfinished games being dumped on me, the player. As such I will never ever play an EA game. Which then means I won't ever be providing feedback to the developer through their EA process. And I don't think very highly of the "player" feedback devs get from people playing their unfinished games. Ergo my opposition to EA. Btw, I also believe the model and process by which games are crowdfunded is also broken, and not a good way for a developer to create a game. But unfortunately on that issue, small indie developers often have no choice but to go with crowdfunding.