Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Differences between BG3 Communities?

Aloha! And mahalo for the Q!

It's a very big tent, especially now, and definitely runs the gamut. I've seen both the best and the worst of humanity on display here, and it tends to come in waves. The periods of highest activity come right after the major patches drop, with an uptick after hotfixes are delivered or if something is buzzing around in the news. Most of the forums sections are for feedback or feedback discussion, some more specific than others. 
"Feedback and Suggestions" and "General" are the main sections, everything else is pretty much an overflow to take pressure off those sections. So for example, feedback regarding the narrative or characterization will find its way to the Story section up at the top of the tree, which I suppose doubles as the RP or story speculation arena. Stuff that is more mechanical nuts and bolts might end up in the Builds section, MP, Mods, Walkthroughs,Tips and Tricks etc - organized a bit like that. The section at the very bottom is like an EA archive of past conversations, aggregated into Mega threads, usually for the hot button stuff. For the most part Feedback catches the specific feedback angle, General catches the general feedback angle, and everything else is an outgrowth of those two, with some significant overlap.

Aside from the obvious, the most golden rule would just be that kindness and understanding is pretty reciprocal here, as it is elsewhere, so you tend to get back what you put out. There is no passive engagement (so no likes or whatever boosting threads to the top) it comes down to comment/reply for that. Maybe, if it's like a total mic drop, you'll get some of those +1s in reply, which is a real nod here, but for the most part it's a little bit quieter than some other spots that lean into that a bit more, which has its benefits and drawbacks. The whole internet is awash in dunk culture at present, but it's exhausting, and I'd guess many of us will have found our way here from other spots, precisely to get away from all that - so it's a pretty interesting crowd. For the broader community, it's a grab bag of hardcore D&D fans, hardcore Baldur's Gate fans returning from the old games, hardcore fans of Larian's previous titles etc. then also enthusiasts who are perhaps somewhat less hardcore but still enthusiastic lol, and the boards have to service everyone at once. These are also the unofficially official boards, which means that unlike a few other spots, if you ever see a Larian employee engaging here, it means that they're at work. I feel like that is also something easily forgotten, which I try to remember when I'm feeling cranky or particularly gripey on any given day, or just feeling impatient. For more immediacy the discord is pretty cool. It is also like unofficially official though, and again, somewhere between a hangout lounge and an actual place of work, depending on the section. I'd say it's more shortform shortwave at discord, whereas here it's more longform longwave, and the time signature probably matches in terms of replies/activity in each case. To make a long story longer on it, I only mention that, because this place can either feel like a ghost town or a madhouse or a cozy tavern at any given point, with a lot of crossbanter hehe.

I'm a person who likes images and finds images a useful way to communicate, so for me the biggest thing would probably be a question like "hey how do you attach an image to display here?" cause it's probably less intuitive than some other places. The way to do it is to first get the images hosted somewhere that will allow sharing and then put that into bbcode. Spots like imgbb or imgur or whatever. Those spots all generate their revenue from adds, so they're not optimal for click through, but for getting an image to show a visual or thumbnail it works well enough. The boards will display an embedded image or a thumbnail provided it's already formatted into bbcode, but otherwise you'll just see a link or perhaps a link in brackets, but that isn't actually embedding. 
Video from youtube will embed automatically (though regional stuff could get in the way of that) but this will upscale automatically, meaning that it looks pretty decent on mobile, but on desktop may take up the entire screen. For this sort of stuff, as well as for images, using the spoiler feature can help to make a post more readable and easy on the load, since these boards are pretty high traffic, and prone to timeouts, users probably appreciate the extra effort there. Here's a quickie example...with a story about sharing that I enjoy heheh



It took me a while to figure out how that was all done, like maybe a whole year in EA just fumbling around - probably by just quoting someone else's post initially to see what was done in the encoding/formatting and then copying that method. If it's not showing up for you try using the option "full editor" which should bring up the spoiler type stuff.

Anyhow, hope that helps a slight bit. Have fun! +1

Aloha!

ps. oh and the edit mode. If you struggle with typing like me, you can usually edit posts for grammar or clarity or whatnot, I think for like 7 days? I can't quite recall, but that's also pretty handy. You can enter a field for it if you want, or if like me you might find yourself continuously editing something until it catches a reply or a quote.