Larian's vision of combat or deep gameplay ? One doesn't exclude the other. - 17/02/21 07:20 PM
Larian has their vision for how combat-and-adventuring should feel like, I have mine, you have yours. That's just tastes, nobody's more right. And Larian is the one making the game, so they'll make the game according to their vision. I've not only said that this is how it should be (and they should not make the game by popular demand), but I'm also happy to help the best version of this vision see the light of day.
So what's the point of this post ? As as I was saying there, it occurred to me that one can discuss some things about Larian's vision.
But first, let me make preferences and visions explicit.
My preferences can be summarised as : a deep, meaty/crunchy combat experience. A bit more precisely :
- Planning long term (strategy), knowing the rules, sharpening your character sheet and having the law of large numbers work for you is fine. Tactical thinking is just as great.
- Attack action and End Turn is fine. That's what martial/melee classes are meant to do a lot of the time.
The way I understand Larian's vision :
- "Ka-boom". Fireworks and damage.
- Out-of-the-box thinking. Creativity. "Omg this worked, lol, epic", and "ok, so in that world you can do that, cool".
What I've come to realise lately (and if this was obvious to you ages ago, please be kind to my slowness) is this simple thing : these are not mutually exclusive.
a) For there to be a meaningful out-of-the-box gameplay, there needs to be a meaningful inside-the-box gameplay.
Without a satisfying inside-the-box, basic, core gameplay, the out-of-the-box gameplay becomes the default. And it loses its "aha" value.
b) Out-of-the-box grows stale faster than a deep, core gameplay does.
The first 10h-20h are full-of-wonders, but once you've gotten used to the universe, the mechanisms, the gameplay, etc, combat currently becomes a bit stale. When a clever, funny, outside-the-box idea is designed as the expected way to play, it becomes a repetitive gimmick. And when a basic, core strat has a big "Use me" label on it that over-incentivises its use, it doesn't encourage the use of other strats.
Deep and meaty games, like Chess (but also Hive, Terraforming Mars, etc) are massively replayable and replayed. I understand that Larian wants to please the people who'll play the game once (and maybe not even in full), but there are people who will probably play through BG3 at least 3-5 times. So the combat should probably be good and interesting at this time-scale as well.
Seeing as making the outside-the-box combat thrilling isn't incompatible with making the inside-the-box satisfying, Larian, can you please make the basic combat un-broken, deep and balanced ?
Fundamentally, I think it should probably be equally interesting to play exclusively with the Larian-strats as it should be to play fully along a basic, inside-the-box strat.
Note : I'm by no means saying that it's possible to cater to all audiences all the time. Just that, on this particular point (combat), the game can cater to two styles simultaneously.
So what's the point of this post ? As as I was saying there, it occurred to me that one can discuss some things about Larian's vision.
But first, let me make preferences and visions explicit.
My preferences can be summarised as : a deep, meaty/crunchy combat experience. A bit more precisely :
- Planning long term (strategy), knowing the rules, sharpening your character sheet and having the law of large numbers work for you is fine. Tactical thinking is just as great.
- Attack action and End Turn is fine. That's what martial/melee classes are meant to do a lot of the time.
The way I understand Larian's vision :
- "Ka-boom". Fireworks and damage.
- Out-of-the-box thinking. Creativity. "Omg this worked, lol, epic", and "ok, so in that world you can do that, cool".
What I've come to realise lately (and if this was obvious to you ages ago, please be kind to my slowness) is this simple thing : these are not mutually exclusive.
a) For there to be a meaningful out-of-the-box gameplay, there needs to be a meaningful inside-the-box gameplay.
Without a satisfying inside-the-box, basic, core gameplay, the out-of-the-box gameplay becomes the default. And it loses its "aha" value.
b) Out-of-the-box grows stale faster than a deep, core gameplay does.
The first 10h-20h are full-of-wonders, but once you've gotten used to the universe, the mechanisms, the gameplay, etc, combat currently becomes a bit stale. When a clever, funny, outside-the-box idea is designed as the expected way to play, it becomes a repetitive gimmick. And when a basic, core strat has a big "Use me" label on it that over-incentivises its use, it doesn't encourage the use of other strats.
Deep and meaty games, like Chess (but also Hive, Terraforming Mars, etc) are massively replayable and replayed. I understand that Larian wants to please the people who'll play the game once (and maybe not even in full), but there are people who will probably play through BG3 at least 3-5 times. So the combat should probably be good and interesting at this time-scale as well.
Seeing as making the outside-the-box combat thrilling isn't incompatible with making the inside-the-box satisfying, Larian, can you please make the basic combat un-broken, deep and balanced ?
Fundamentally, I think it should probably be equally interesting to play exclusively with the Larian-strats as it should be to play fully along a basic, inside-the-box strat.
Note : I'm by no means saying that it's possible to cater to all audiences all the time. Just that, on this particular point (combat), the game can cater to two styles simultaneously.