Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Sven on FPSpodcast

If anything is probably the other way around. They probably had demographics and player data, and playtesting telling them to go with Tasha's as well as wotc themselves and the lore

Say hypothetically they see 95% of people are playing human with 4% playing teifling, gith, and elf, and 1% playing short races. Keeping human in their former gimped state just isn't a smart Idea, they need to be able to get that +2 so new players don't feel discouraged that a gnome is a more meta character for their wizard.

I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but if you’re talking about giving options for making our characters exactly as we want them, then that’s something that’s important to lots of players, myself included. And as demonstrated by the popularity of appearance mods.

If that’s what you mean, then it seems rather strong and confrontational to dismiss something that lots of players value as “BS”. In fact, it seems rather strong and confrontational to describe anything that way, given that we encourage positive, constructive discussion on these forums!

Truth be told the thing I value about these forums is that it's possible make critical comments. There are some outlets where it's impossible to bring up critical comments and have allowed themselves to devolve into de facto extensions of the Larian marketing department.

I don't want to this become the troll's paradise that is the steam forums but I also don't want to see this become the reddit sub either.

So I, Killerrabbit , encourage strong and confrontational comments that are offered in good fun, in good faith and that keep in mind that a real human with real feeling is on the other side of the screen.

Great interview; thanks for sharing!

Oh, yes! I didn’t mean that critical comments were discouraged. We are certainly free to criticise any elements of the game. It’s only getting overheated or being dismissive of other folks’ preferences that I encourage folk to avoid.

Swen is clearly so passionate about the game, I love to see Larian's excitement for their own work. I love to see a developer say that they're making the game that they want to play, because that kind of love is evident in the final product and it's the way that the medium truly gets pushed forward.

So I watched it and Swen did say "she" about the haircut bit

I smell stat rolling! xD

Let see how many people "lucky" roll 3 18s...

its telling that he has not actual played the game but as an overall boss thats fine

I would bet more on QA uncovering something nasty, or they discovered a new way of dealing with things that break something.

I could see that, too.

The things that jump to mind are:

1. dice rolling,
2. racial feature tweaks for half-elves and humans,
3. the way spells work for multiclassed characters.

Those seem like the big three community feedback items at the moment.

*

Or it could be something completely unrelated to feedback.


If we're hoping, I'm going with my theory.

If we're betting, I'm going with yours.

Yes, it's interesting that Swen linked the "crisis" to being a company that makes changes even up to the last minute. Which obviously can lead to unanticipated knock-on effects and bugs found in regression testing that can lead to last minute panics, which of course is why developers usually try to avoid it!

It's probably fruitless but nevertheless also interesting to speculate whether the last minute change that it sounds like caused the delay issuing review codes was a change that was already on Larian's backlog that they inadvisably tried to squeeze in, or whether it's something new they tried to do as a result of feedback after the PFH and info shared by people who've had chance to play the later version of the game.

It does seem plausible that it's the latter, though I imagine whatever it is surely wouldn't involve a significant rework of anything we saw. Surely???

No matter what it actually is, its fun to speculate ... or dream.
Strike out what doesnt apply. xD

I can't imagine Larian trying to squeeze in a new feature, or change a key design a week before the release, and while review copies are out. I am also pretty sure that Sven said the game went "Gold" during the previous podcast (the one on which they revealed Naaber). If they want to add a feature, like stat rolling, they can easily do it post release. They must be in testing and polshing phase for the PC release. All they can be working now are hotfixes for the reviewers and day 1 patch.

This late in developmet with release just 3-4 weeks away at the time of the PFH I doubt they'd leap at a major change. What's more likely imo, is that some new bug/s were discovered by people who played just before or since the PFH and they're still trying to deal with the fallout from that. It also seemed odd they moved the PC release back by four weeks...my guess is they did that to avoid having to compete with Starfield so that may have added further pressure to clean up bugs on a shorter notice than initially planned. I pray they they game the game at least mostly clean without too many serious bugs.

a crisis could be anything from "what do mean it wont boot" to "perhaps we need to add Sorcerer character" ... i wish them luck with it

I would pay to see the state of their Atlassian issue tracker, I sure hope there isn't any "blocker" issue left there. :P

They relised they don't have a short race representation and are cobbling together a dwarf, a halfling and a gnome companions

I do wonder how that will look. The body of a halfling, the head of a gnome and the beard of a dwarf, maybe?