Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General annoyed by lazy negative critics

- bg3: wins most awards in 2023 and continues to win awards in 2024
- lazy critic: this game is so bad, every aspect is bad, except for (some aspect) that’s kind of decent

(not all critics are lazy, but the ones who are are annoying me)

If you write a criticism claiming that a game is bad and that game won a huge number of awards for many different aspects of it, you have to explain the awesome success of that game.

Otherwise your criticism lacks substance.

I’ve read many criticisms in these forums now, some of them just destructive negativism, and I’m annoyed by how many of those didn’t take this most basic step to make their criticism plausible. Reading them just wasted my time.

If you don’t like a game and you think your dislike can be generalized, it’s on you to explain why that game is still one of the most revered games of its time. If you successfully do that, then reading your criticism is a good use of the time of people interested in criticism. It might then actually make this game or the next game better. Which is the constructive value in criticism.

Just stopping by to let you know that - contrary to popular believes - awards doesn't necessarily mean something has to be good or perfect or whatever word you want to use. Especially not if votes can easily be influenced or bought.
Like do you really think this is something that's not happening in the gaming industry?
Then why do developers exclude specific gaming news pages or YouTube channels from sending codes to review the game if they have negatively criticized a game of said developer before?
Why are there people being ignorant to any obvious mistakes and refrain from writing about the flaws others talk about just to come up with a perfect score?
Or in this case, as an example: Why do I see some of the faces I know are writing ONLY positive things about this game being invited to the last PFH sitting in the front rows? Applauding everything that happens there?

Yeah, all of this is just their own opinion and I bet they never have been influenced by anything. Just like any winner of a casting show was purely picked based on the viewers votes and not because of marketing reasons.
Let's be honest: If you have a game that got hyped (deserved or not), you want to keep the hype up to write hundreds of small news and articles about said game to attract people to read it as that leads to ad revenue.

And beside that:
If there are so many bad critics like you claim, how come many people still debate and talk and reply? Or is it just everyone is lazy but you?

What tends to annoy me about internet criticism in general is that there always seems to be this binary; everything is either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever, with nothing allowed inbetween. I think part of that is essentially down to clickbait - expressing an extreme opinion just tends to trend better than being 'yeah, this is mostly fine. Maybe some stuff could be better'.

I think some of those awards might have gone elsewhere had the game been released earlier.

I actually like the game a lot but I seriously wonder how many of those casting votes played through Act 3.


BG3 has some amazingly good stuff as well as some bad. I do believe there has been a bit of a bandwagon effect in some of the reviews.

Just speaking in regards to the comments here on the forums over the past years, I tend to agree much of the negativity is patently overblown. Going back to early access there were people essentially cheerleading for the game to fail.

In general, if there are things someone doesn't like about the game, that's fair. But it's absolutely disingenuous to pretend like all the great things that captured the minds and imaginations of innumerable people don't exist.

"The beard clips!" "What is this toilet chain?!?!" "The plot is atrocious! The writers are awful!!!" <--I find a lot of that commentary hard to take seriously.

1) Imagine caring about the opinions of others to the point of being annoyed they don't share your opinion.

2) Game awards are largely just popularity contests. Since anyone can vote on anything, it's mostly just people voting for the game they have played. Meanwhile an actually tangible award would be voted by people who've actually played every nominated game to an extent to be able to judge the product fairly.

3) Lazy feedback is not limited to just critics. Many positive reviews don't offer much depth either and are just "Game is awesome" or "I like the game" which provides as little tangible feedback as those that say "Game is bad" or "I don't like the game". In general, most people won't provide constructive feedback. Anyone actually wanting to learn from feedback needs to ignore all these non-constructive comments and look for the ones that are actually providing constructive comments about what parts of a game are good/bad.

So you say its disingenuous for people to not call things great or rate them at that level that others consider great? So as long as your opinion is on line with "innumerable people", its fine?

Sometimes I'm annoyed by my own laziness TBH

BG3 is a complex beast. I enjoy playing it and some of the stories - Shadowheart, Astarian - are among the best I've seen in a video game. And anyone who critiques the visuals and voice acting is either trolling or needs to adjust their expectations to reality.

But there are 10s of thousands of people saying how great BG is and yet another "I love it" voice won't correct the flaws of Chapter 3. I offered my critiques in the hope that chapter 3 would revised. That's now a moot point exactly because they have won so many awards. It's difficult to convince a person with a literal armful of awards to drop those and start the revision process.

Like the OP I sometimes roll my eyes but, truth be told, I prefer a touch of eyeroll-worthy negativity to smarm:

https://www.gawkerarchives.com/on-smarm-1476594977

There's a difference between saying, "These are some of the things I don't like about the game," and "This game is trash."

When criticisms are put forward as objectively stating that the game is terrible, it amounts to an overblown niche position. In fact, I would argue that the game is not objectively trash on the basis of the millions of people who enjoy it.

All it comes down to is a failure to see what's being enjoyed. A failure to feel the pulse of what audiences enjoy. And frankly, if I were Larian, I'd pay *a lot* more attention to the people who know a good thing when they see it.

Again, it's totally fair to say, "I don't like this aspect of the game," or "This part of the game didn't work for me because..." But the negativity goes way further than that and often tends to fail at seeing a larger picture.

imo

Maybe to point out the glaring errors in the criticism?

Like "if enough votes can be bought to win, how come Larian won when other studios can access to much deeper pockets?"

This point has already been addressed by others so I'll leave it.

Which lazy critic is this?
Says you who fails to give any reasons why the game is good.

There are several well-written and detailed posts in this thread:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=940435&gonew=1#UNREAD
Certainly more detailed than your repetitive eight-line OP.

Again, there are many detailed criticisms in the thread I linked and there are many more in other threads on the forum.
People posting on this forum have no obligation to ensure that they don't waste your time.

Once more you repeat yourself saying the onus is on the critics to explain there reasoning while ignoring the fact they they largely do and that you do not.

============

And there were many people offering intelligent feedback and suggestions which were subsequently ignored.

So says you without giving one example of something which makes this game "great".
That something captures "the minds and imaginations of innumerable people" doesn't necessarily make it great, e.g. National Socialism or paedophilia.

Why? Clipping is relatively simple to avoid and the toilet chain is a very poor implementation of a game mechanic. Plot and writing are related and the standard of both has been covered extensively on this forum.

I find these types of comments hard to take seriously:
Bad implementation of 5e? That's the fault of WotC.
Delays in the Xbox release? That's Microsoft's fault.
Problems with the Mac version? That's down to the third-party doing the port.
Larian moving away from DnD? That's because of Hasbro.
All of these have featured on this forum and all of them lacked any evidence to support them.

BG3 is not a bad game - it's just nowhere near as good as the hype said it was and the fan girls and boys still say it is.

That’s what I tried to express. Thank you for putting it more succinctly!

Agreed. The difference is that lazy positive feedback is positive: it reinforces having fun playing the game (or developing the game). Which is inherently valuable. Lazy negative criticism spreads negativity without providing value.

Either criticism or praise of the game is absolutely fine here.

But threads attacking or criticising other fans (or non-fans as it might be) are unlikely to lead anywhere productive or fun.

I am extremely tempted to lock this thread, but try to avoid doing that as a knee-jerk response. Instead, for now I will simply remind folks that everyone participating here is expected to be constructive and respectful of others’ opinions, and avoid attacking, mocking or abusing other individuals or groups.

So to get you guys right: If I want to criticize something, then I have to point out all the things they did great, even if there is barely anything they did "great" for me personally? They did some things good and some above average, but beside the voice acting (which is not even really Larian's work if we are precisely) there is nothing 85-100 rating worthy. Doesn't mean there isn't lot of stuff thats somewhere in the mid and upper 70s range or maybe even lower 80s.


I guess someone already pointed it out, but Larian had the best timing for the game, it had been on top of it's hype when the award votes opened and many, many people claimed they haven't even seen act 3 (sometimes not even act 2) at that point but they gladly voted for BG3. As you know, act 3 is where Larian's lack of passion and willingness to deliver a very good (read: 85+ rating for me) is way more obvious.

Beside that, I read several articles how people hope for the "underdog" Larian to win while competing against more established developers like SQEX, CDPR or Nintendo. Its the old David vs Goliath thing people tend to feel part of the underdog.

I read half of the article and when it said more and more of the same I skipped to the end to get the summary. And I don’t think that expecting negativity not to be lazy — to at least explain why it is plausible — leads so smarm. It rather leads to making it more likely that criticism is noticed that can help improve the status quo. Because that’s the non-lazy criticism, and it will then stand out.

If that non-lazy criticism is embedded in a sea of lazy criticism, it is far more likely to be missed, because those who could learn from it have already started to dismiss anything negative ten (20/100/1000/…) comments earlier; that’s how they could keep going in such an environment.

I already said why I consider this game good in other threads, and this thread is not about the game. It is about how lazy criticism here has started to just become annoying to me.

If your criticism is not lazy, you’re not doing what I’m talking about.

But I will not name names. This is about a pattern, not about a person.

The difference between pattern and person is: people can change how they act (the pattern), but they cannot easily change who they are (and usually that wouldn’t be a good idea).

And now I’ll refrain from answering for a while. Others here have made my point better than I have. Also the mods have the right of the land here, not me.

Except one more: @Filia: that’s exactly the kind of "make it plausible" that I meant. ? definitely not lazy,

Neither provide any value.

"Game is good" doesn't provide any actual feedback. Maybe it makes the developers feel warm and fuzzy inside. But it provides absolutely nothing in regards to how to make their next game also good (Unless you go the Ubisoft/CoD route and just copy/paste the same game again and hope people still like the same game next year...)

Just because it's positive, doesn't mean it's constructive.

Actual constructed feedback is the stuff that details the exact parts and how they are experienced. Whether this feedback is positive or negative it matters not, both are equally valuable when presented in a constructive way.

"Lazy" feedback is entirely useless, with exception of maybe adding to an overall review score (Like say having the Steam review score become "Overwhelmingly Positive" due to many "Reviews" of "Game is good") which can be useful for the average consumer to get an overall impression of user experience (Keep in mind, this goes both ways. Positive and negative feedback both affect the overall score in the same manner).

So lazy criticism is acceptable if it agrees with you?


Link?
You posted in the BG3 General section of the official Larian forum - how is it not about the game?