Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What was purpose of Early Acess?

I realize this may be trigger for some people ...
Lets at least try to keep things civil here shal we?

Now with that said ...
I realize this may seem like a bad joke, since in the past i certainly defended Larian and their creative vision over Raw DnD rules.

But lately ... especialy in last few days i feel like when Swen said that they want people who participated in EA to feel like they started completely new game ... maybe it was meaned more litterally then i would like.

To me ... and im sure many people will claim it started much earlier ... it started with Racial Stat Bonuses removal ...
Then there are Warlock changes for pact of the Blade ... i realize it needed a boost, but it feels like Larian pushed that boost unnecesarily far ...
Now we are learning that Loading wil be remover from Crossbows ...

And i have to ask ...
Why?
What exactly was the purpose of letting us learning for more than two years systems and rules that will never apply? O_o
Many people around here spend lots of effort and energy into feedback in order to shape this so called system we got into something that will be at least "kind of" ballanced and working ... result, is not ideal, but certainly a lot better than what we started with ... now when we are right before finish line, Larian just take it all ... and thow it away? :-/

It just feels really odd. :-/
And i dont like it ... i dont like this attitude at all.

It feels like "hey good thing you were training driving a car for last two years ... here is your plane".

Yes, it does feel like the rug is being pulled from under one's feet.

It isn't exactly a secret that I hate virtually all of the recent changes and feel the game was in a far better state during EA than it is now.
To be blunt had I expected this ... mess (sorry, that's the way I see it), I most likely wouldn't have gotten the game at all.

It seems for all their inclusivity they forgot to include a good chunk of people who supported them over the 3 years.

Yes, I'm bitter. I'm bitter because I was looking forward to play BG 3, to play a (mostly) 5E D&D game and now I get to play... what exactly? D:OS 2.5? At last to me it feels that way.

EA, as I see it, is first and foremost, a way of gathering user data.

What classes we choose, what NPCs we interact with, how we interact with, where we die, where we go off script, what build we make, when we use skills etc.

If we decide to give additional feedback it's because we care. Expecting the devs to follow that instead of data gathered is setting yourself up for disapointment I think. I'm sure all of them were considered at some point at least.

Why the last-minute changes? I doubt they were last-minute. There was a long time since the last EA patch, and even then we don't know what was cooking behind the scenes. I guess Larian just decided to announce them only just now, before launch. I think it's still better than seeing those changes at launch for ourselves.

Nobody but Larian can answer WHY though.

You make good points, but I have not played the game yet and until I do I cannot make any judgements.

I cannot believe that Larian would be so unilateral as to make major non-optional changes like the +2/+1 thing, lack of variant human or changes to Warlock without showing that to the community first to get feedback, and I hope I am right.

Or at least saying "Here is why we want to do this..."

But it's 2 weeks until game releases, and I am moving to Pittsburgh next week so thankfully I will have other things to focus on.

I think the obvious one is money, they even said it themselves, they made a ton of money with the EA and they game is much bigger because of it.

Regarding other changes, specially the ''last minute ones'' seem to me like the thing they have in common is the fact that they ''dumb down'' probably in favor of new players and people that doesn't have experience with these games and might feel overwhelmed with systems or aspects Larian doesn't deem as important.

Feedback like the reaction system took a lot of effort and time for them to finally bend the knee because Sven was adamant against it (said by himself) because it would slow down the pace of the game (again, his words). But it also happened to be simpler (because it was almost non-existent) and less ''intimidating'' for new people compared to the new one.

Some other feedback they just get through analysis and statistics passively from the people playing early access and we don't know much about that since last time they mentioned that stuff on PFH 1 or 2 (don't remember exactly but one of the firsts PFH)

And now just at the end they streamlined the races, possibly denied the possibility to choose cantrips and other class traits like the one from bard to take expertise on skills, not adding more basic actions like, hold action and dodge, loading removed from crossbows, etc. All making the game ''easier/simpler'' to get into and if that's not the reason, at the very least they all have that in common. And after seeing ''complete noobs'' trying to get into the game for the first time I can see why they might think mechanical complexity and information overload might pose a problem.

To that I'll add that we don't exactly know what's on the release build but based on the information we have and assuming the final build won't be too different from the one people reviewed at Ghent those are my thoughts.

those of us that played os1 and 2 know Larian does this... EA is feedback on basic ideas; which characters do peoplr like, are we blowing up too much shit, is a crude joke funny?

some things changed, mostly we kept BG3 in the news for them

Exactly, and you can't expect for Larian to provide a public and detailed justification for every details. There has been plenty of proofs that Larian gather data and react to feedback. I really don't think they are changing things at random just to annoy players. There are most likely good reasons for those changes, reasons we can't fully grasp without all the global feedback telemetry data collected over the years. This forum is only a small and polarized part of this feedback after all.

While some of the changes do not bother me as much as others, I do hope they kept most of the stuff we learned to play around with during EA, the same.

Buffing some classes is very homebrew and I hope they did not mess up things too badly. By the way, didnt gith have heavy armour proficiency as a racial bonus? That got downgraded to medium I thinkk

Just hope I can still play the game and recognise the core 5e rules that were there during the EA phase. But I will try to wait and see, already own the game regardless. But if the current streams of news drive peeps like Niara away, It does make me a lot more sceptical than I was at first.

I highly doubt the last two years was for us to learn the game. It was to gather feedback, which Larian did, and incorporate it. Even the feedback of those players, that wanted the game more casual, which it now seems to be. They are entitled to their opinion as well.

Basically what we now get isn't D&D 5e BG3, but the same thing with homebrew rules.
While I don't do tabletop/pen&paper D&D but play other RPGs like that, I homebrew a lot to make it more enjoyable too. I think that's a good thing that Larian did there.

There is a bit of anxiety that EA was just a kickstarter with a demo. Constructive feedback flooded Larian’s various forum tools, and it seems the majority was ignored.

Not to say it’s looking like a bad game lacking in ambition, but that the ambition may have inadequately leveraged player feedback and concerns.

Edit to Add:

For me, I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness at Niara’s saying she is bitter. While I may not have agreed with everything she posted, the sheer amount of effort, passion, and care she put into her contributions was sometimes overwhelming. For a longtime forum contributor like that to walk away in sadness… well, it fills me with a sense of dread concerning player feedback and its perceived utility.

Not to say the forum is entitled to being heard, or that the playerbase ought to be obeyed, but I look around and I think, “What was all of this for?”

I might be wrong, but I never saw the EA advertised as anything like a beta program. Any changes made as a result of feedback or data collection is largely incidental; the purpose of the EA was to generate cash flow and bulk data. The truth is; unless you are an employee of the developer, getting too invested is a route to disappointment and that almost always manifests itself in negative emotion. Sadly this has also been evident in Niara's recent forum post as well. These programs offer a lot to a developer, but for those who partake they should be very much taken at face value. That said; I understand from prior experience how easy it is to fall down that rabbit hole, and I can only hope participating in the EA hasn't soured the game for too many people.

Aren't EA a form of beta testing?

Both of these changes are in the current 5e(2024) material.
Larian isn't pushing anything far, they are just following D&D source material.




I'm not exactly sure what you think you are entitled to for participating in Early Access. Was Larian supposed to contact you before they made any changes after patch 9 to get your opinion?


You weren't training on anything. You were choosing to participate in a system that gave Larian feedback on certain systems and play styles. They took that feedback and used as they saw fit to make their game.

I haven't been part of the early access, so I don't really know how much my opinion is worth, but I think this is pretty standard. As someone said DOS early access made the same thing, D&Dnext made the same thing then it transitioned to 5e and I guess oneD&D will do the same thing when it will transition to 5e (2024). The early access is there to test the most controversial ideas, or maybe those that puts doubts on the developers themselves, but other than that there is an amount of stuff that they already know they want and how they will implement them.

Larian early access is not like others early access where you have a demo (or a full game) to test, that is increased bit by bit until you have the full game in your hands. You are testing ideas that can be scrapped or changed in any moment.

Like Blackheifer I reserve my judgement for the finished game. I don't like some changes, like lifting the ability restriction of multiclassing or the change of racial stats. I actually like the change of Pact of the Blade which basically gives me Hexblade through the backdoor.
But I have to see, if the changes will bother me much in the actual game.
I'm sad to see Long contributors like Niara going away in sadness. Of course, Larian doesn't have to listen to all our feedback, but there were valid points to be made by Niara and many others ( just look at the megathreads) and while some of them made it into the game, a whole lot did not.

The stat changes and Warlock changes weren't made unilaterally, they were made in consultation with their partners at Wizards of the Coast.

These changes were introduced in the D&D 5e(2024) play-test and both received very positive feedback on their feedback surveys(Over 80%) .

The purpose has been well defined above.

What is truly detrimental to any project, is too many cooks in the kitchen. They cannot possibly adhere to every player's taste and decisions need to be made - what one finds awesome, the another might hate. Going down the middle will oftentimes please no one, so you end up displeasing some on certain issues. Yeah, that happens. What I saw happening over the past few years is that people got a little entitled. You have to understand that your opinion and your money in advance has value, it isn't the deciding factor.

Keep in mind, there is the scope of the project. It became the monster that it is largely thanks to the participation and funding that EA delivered, but the scope of the project cannot increase indefinitely. At some point, they have to declare what the final project will have, and what it will not. If not, and you just keep adding things - you end up in production Limbo, like Star Citizen, which might not even get published at all before backers and money run out.


Then there is perception.
Whereas EA players had only the frame of the Early Access, the studio had to deal with the scope of the entire project, and adjust to that. So, there was always going to be a discrepancy in perception. They changed things according to what they read here, but also what they see in the full game - Technical, balance, monetary and creative issues that we just don't see.

They iterated for three years post-EA, surely you expected things to change, no? At the end of the day, you're one of millions of players and not the Creative Director.

Wait, the Pact of the Tome - we select three cantrips for you thing - was part of the 5e 2024 changes and were playtested?

To be honest I think its pointless to speculate about it. There are so many reasons they probably done it and its far beyond what we see from the outside. It's definitely not something as simple as just 'Moneygrab!!!!!!!!' or 'Exposure!!!!' - for the EA also comes with negatives for a company. The reason for Larian to do it the way they did will be more complicated. Also the game is not just for 'us' that paid EA and played it.


I never expected EA to be a way to massively affect the game, but at the same time just going through some of Niara's old posts today - honestly, you don't get clearer and better feedback than that. This is the level of discussion you should have within the company and take it seriously. How the hell Larian's action economy with 'Throw' and 'Shove' and 'Jump' made it through EA is an utter mystery to me - because as Niara demonstrated its not about personal taste if you like these options its about a level of unbalancing that two level 1 characters without using equipment or abilities killed of cambions, mindflayers and named devil characters plus imps in a combat. When you let issues like that slip through EA despite having people giving you feedback for 3 years than I come to the point where I have to say you wasted the players' time and thus a huge possibility to fix your game.


By the way I don't buy the argument about 'dumbing down' - 5e is not complicated for an RPG, Larian's changes for multiclasses are such a minor thing that you actually also find in the PHB, while most of the other changes are lateral - they didn't simplify the game they just re(/un)balanced the game. Larian is doing whatever they think its the best version of what they can do with 5e. Personally I feel like they are not good at homebrewing 5e, but that is a personal opinion based on personal taste.

Different companies use it in different ways. For some it's just an excuse to keep the game in development hell or perpetual beta while still profiting as if it's the final product. For others it's to get feedback while developing the game and use that feedback constructively. And then there's cases where they run out of funds or never had enough in the first place and shove it out the door to get the required funding while finishing the game. In my experience there's 3 bad early access projects for every 1 good.