Larian Studios Forums Active Threads Since Yesterday

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With this approach, I wanted to address the problem of long game release cycles and maintaining an outdated codebase.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 also want to add that receiving unwanted attention or being icked out isn't the most horrible experience you can ever be subjected to. We are talking about video game NPCs, you can reject them, ignore them or even completely avoid them and kill them if you are so inclined.

I may have a real adverse attitude towards Halsin, on a personal level he gives me the worst ick and I never liked his inclusion as a companion. Annoying as it may be that I can't even reject him from joining the party and that he then inevitably comes on to my character because I spoke to him once, I just reject him and send him back to his corner in camp to whittle his ducks in peace. It is less than 1 minute of dialogue out of a 50+ hour long game.

And I also need to recognize that someone might have the same feelings towards Lae'zel, Karlach, Minthara or Astarion (though in the case of Minthara, if you don't like her, why did you go through all that trouble to recruit her?) who will also come on to the player character on their own initiative without the player making the first move. And in those cases, I like that, as it creates a realistic variety of how different relationship starts and fits the different personalities of the companions. And I'd rather suffer through a few lines of unwanted attention from Halsin than having all those unique and interesting interactions replaced with a simple romance button that the player has to push first which takes me right out of the immersion and makes it into a simple and obvious game mechanic.

Whether on tabletop or in video games, for every event a player can trigger in the game, there has to be somebody preparing it - imagining it, writing it, programming it, animating it. That often means that after they've already written several versions of the story, they have to look at the same map with fresh eyes and go: "Hey, somebody may want to murder the puppies and blow up the loos." That's my guess why niche runs are often underdeveloped and may feel badly written when compared with going down Vanilla Road. The murder hobo is also often rage quitting with extra steps, so it at least gets some developer attention, while a smart villain PC may be seen as a monster by some, as a necessary evil by others and as the actual hero by supporters. The game, whether its paper or video, has to be able to reflect such a complex character into the most remote corners of the gaming world. But of course you're right that tabletop is less static than a programmed game. There's no technical aspect, no budget concerns and no legal issues. I can skip the entire step of motion capturing and voice-overs for new scenes and won't get bugged romances when introducing new monsters. On tabletop I also now have the luxury of knowing my players well and having learned what disruptive actions I should expect, that I can rely on a quick and vivid imagination and having long experience with bringing derailed campaigns back on track thanks to numerous train wrecks. Unless I've missed the memo, the video game keeps developing itself with graphics and new NPCs based on player actions has yet to be created.

Chat bots seem to have huge issues keeping the different editions and systems of D&D apart. My players often use AI assistance to get clarity on rules, but both Gemini and ChatGPT often try sell them a 4e house rule or a bard spell from a video game as official 2nd edition. One chat bot even invented a fictional reference from an existing book that I however had as a PDF and could fact check.

There's 1e D&D from 1977, but there's also Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with two editions (1977 & 1989) which are generally referred to as first and second edition. In a way, Wizards of the Coast dropped AD&D and instead continued D&D with their more simplified rules. I was referring to second edition AD&D, where low intelligence makes it more likely for your spells to fail and also lowers the number of spells you can learn in total. If you would fall below the prerequisite intelligence of 9 for the Wizard class, you would lose your ability to cast spells. You can find the table here.

Thanks for clarifying.

Their privacy policy are not very reassuring; they can use that information for a lot of different purposes, some of them involving 3rd parties (advertising, and so on).

I'm sorry, but there are other ways to deal with spam, like honeypots—I assume you mean bot spam, since regular users can simply be banned. It's the only server in my list that requires a phone number.

I've left the server, since I don't like the idea of giving away private information. I was expecting more from a European company.

Why yes Arcane Trickster is the way to go if you want a pure thief. Pure Swashbuckler might also be good.

For example on AT you can place your invisible Mage Hand next to any mob and always get Sneak Attack.

Assassin(3) is for Gloomstalker, Thief(3) is for all kinds of builds that want an extra bonus action. Both classes are very frontloaded, with little afterwards.