Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Question to Consider When Developing Your Own Games

I really love your game series. I’ve replayed each one multiple times. As a developer myself, it’s very hard for me to wait so long for a new game. Inspired by your studio’s story, the journey you’ve taken, and the challenges you’ve faced, I’ve started developing a game with a focus on content and mods, that is, to create all possible convenient tools for quickly and scalably adding content. A key feature will be the continuous updating of the existing game. new full-scale acts are planned to be added once every 1–2 years, while the game itself will constantly receive minor updates, and the entire code will be continuously updated, ensuring the game essentially never becomes obsolete.

With this approach, I wanted to address the problem of long game release cycles and maintaining an outdated codebase.

I don’t have a game concept of my own. I focus specifically on developing and improving the processes for game development and content delivery. Therefore, the game’s story is secondary to me, and I place all my emphasis on making the development of all aspects of the system as convenient as possible.

I’d like to express my immense gratitude to you for improving the community and sharing important information about your successes and failures—open solutions from which we can learn and draw on your experience.

I have just one question for you: why did you choose a strategy of releasing full-fledged game installments rather than updating an existing one?

I gathered a lot of information on existing games and realized that DOS2 and BG3 are far from ideal and suffer greatly in terms of balance, although DOS2 is actually better—it offers a more responsive and varied combat experience, while BG3 is very user-friendly and intuitive; however, the two games operate on different levels.

That’s exactly why I decided I had to create a hybrid that would solve the problems of long battles, offer a robust and engaging progression system, and provide a steady stream of content to players—all while releasing a new version of the game every 6–7 years.

The conditions I arrived at:
1. The world must grow alongside the player’s progress; this makes logical sense—the world doesn’t stand still while we develop.
2. The combination of possibilities increases with level; enemy difficulty is determined by composition, roles, abilities, and behavior—but never by their number.
3. Every battle must be automatically tested to ensure it stays within balance parameters; the turn-based RPG genre fully meets this requirement.
4. Continuous game updates instead of creating separate parts; older parts—including the storyline—don’t become obsolete; the entire game is constantly being developed and optimized, while its core remains unchanged; developing a new game is always more expensive than refining an existing one.