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yeah, bunch of limp wristed game journalists calling someting good doesnt make something into a cult classic.
Because thats not what PoE is.

maybe you think that on RPG codex, but thats just another echo chamber

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The number of large western party based RPGs is so small that I guess most players who have played one of them have also played some of the other games.
Lets see, there are the IE games (original and EE), NWN1+2, Dragon age origins ( I have not played later parts so I cannot talk about them) PoE1+2 and Pathfinder Kingmaker.
Lets add Numenera ( much worse than PST) and KotoR1+2 (part 1 was quite standart, I really liked part 2 with Kreia being one of the best characters ever).
There was also Drakensang1+2, does anybody outside of germany know them?

I think that D:OS1+2 are a bit different than the ones above. The character system is rather simple, they are based on cooldowns, they have random items with levels and they focus a lot on interaction between elements themselves (water+fire=steam) and on interactions with the environment (teleport, barrels, . . .).

Personally I like the games from the list above more, so I am happy with the direction BG3 is going.
I also like JRPGs (Trails series is fantastic as example for great games as good ans large as the ones above) and some Pixel Art, RPG Maker or SNES style games. Its impressive what a single person or a small team can do. Undertale was great (OK the game mechanics were far from perfect for me, but it had more great ideas than most other games together)

My point is: I think it makes no sense trying to divide people in BG fans, PoE fans and D:OS fans as completely different groups.
There are so few games in this market that most people who liked one of them also played some of the others.
In every forum when talking about one game almost all members are always comparing it with stuff from one or more of the other games which makes me think this member has played them.

So when a dev creates a game, they will try to attract players from All of the games above plus some others, because it makes no sense to make a small market even smaller.
So yes, BG3 will have stuff that reminds of BG1+2 (because its part of the series, no matter if the name is just chosen for marketing or if wotc forced them or whatever reason), it will have stuff that reminds of D:OS1+2 (because Larian wants to keep the players they already have) and it will have stuff that reminds of some others things, plus several new things hopefully.
Larian says they make games because they love gaming, but its still a company and they need to make money to pay their employees. Its only natural that a company looks what products were popular so far and tries to include stuff that made them so popular.
BG3 will not feel exactly like BG1+2 with new graphics, because it makes no sense to ignore everything that happened the last 20 years.


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Originally Posted by Madscientist
My point is: I think it makes no sense trying to divide people in BG fans, PoE fans and D:OS fans as completely different groups.
There are so few games in this market that most people who liked one of them also played some of the others.

And I say you are completely and totally wrong about this. This may be true for the people on this forum, who make up a tiny fraction of 1% of the total number of people who've bought and played those games. The people on this forum, and all such forums, are not even close to being representative of the overall fanbases of these games.

For a long time now the broad, general population of gamers have been complaining about RPGs as being unplayable for them. D:OS came along and said to those gamers, here's an RPG that fixes all your complaints but is still and RPG: no deep story, don't have to read a lot, silly dialog and characters, cartoony writing and characters, glitzy shiny graphics, full VO, co-op play, lots of gimmicks like blowing up oil barrels, and most important of all - a very simple, superficial, easy to understand and use set of game rules and mechanics combined with the ease of TB combat. And all of THIS is what brought in hundreds of thousands of new gamers, people who normally DON'T play cRPGs, into the D:OS flock, because D:OS was specifically made to appeal to gamers beyond the traditional, classic, hardcore cRPG fanbase which accounts for only about half a million to one million gamers. This is how D:OS was able to bring in better sales than its contemporaries such as PoE, because games like PoE (and P:Km) continued to cater only to that hardcore cRPG fanbase.

But now Larian is making a D&D game. And the D&D ruleset and mechanics, even in its much simplified 5e form, is much, much, much more complex, deep, sophisticated, and convoluted than anything one will find in a D:OS game. Many of the casual D:OS fans - to be very clear, these are the vast majority of D:OS players who are NOT on this forum - will take one look at BG3 and run away because even 5e D&D mechanics are very far from the simple, silly, gimmicky mechanics of D:OS. And this is why Larian is going out of its way to try and reassure those D:OS fans, not the tiny fraction of hardcore fans who are on this forum but the hundreds of thousands of casual fans out there, that BG3 will be "just like D:OS." They need to do this to hold on to the whole of the D:OS fanbase. But the more they do this, the more they alienate the hardcore D&D/BG/cRPG fanbases. It's a catch-22. Strictly speaking of cRPGs, either you can create a deep, complex, sophisticated, story-focused rather than combat-focused game that sells at best about 500,000 to 1 million, or, you can create a superficial, glitzy, shallow, gimmicky game heavy on blow everything up "cool" combat that will sell several million. But you cannot have both. So contemporary developers of cRPGs have to make a decision on which path they want to take. Larian has clearly opted for the second path, because big sales numbers are what they want/need. A studio like Owlcat has decided on the former - making hardcore games for the hardcore gamer fanbase and accepting that their sales numbers will never get very high. Studios like Obsidian and inXile are in the process right now of figuring out what direction they will take.

This is my personal take on things.

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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Madscientist
My point is: I think it makes no sense trying to divide people in BG fans, PoE fans and D:OS fans as completely different groups.
There are so few games in this market that most people who liked one of them also played some of the others.

And I say you are completely and totally wrong about this. This may be true for the people on this forum, who make up a tiny fraction of 1% of the total number of people who've bought and played those games. The people on this forum, and all such forums, are not even close to being representative of the overall fanbases of these games.

For a long time now the broad, general population of gamers have been complaining about RPGs as being unplayable for them. D:OS came along and said to those gamers, here's an RPG that fixes all your complaints but is still and RPG: no deep story, don't have to read a lot, silly dialog and characters, cartoony writing and characters, glitzy shiny graphics, full VO, co-op play, lots of gimmicks like blowing up oil barrels, and most important of all - a very simple, superficial, easy to understand and use set of game rules and mechanics combined with the ease of TB combat. And all of THIS is what brought in hundreds of thousands of new gamers, people who normally DON'T play cRPGs, into the D:OS flock, because D:OS was specifically made to appeal to gamers beyond the traditional, classic, hardcore cRPG fanbase which accounts for only about half a million to one million gamers. This is how D:OS was able to bring in better sales than its contemporaries such as PoE, because games like PoE (and P:Km) continued to cater only to that hardcore cRPG fanbase.

But now Larian is making a D&D game. And the D&D ruleset and mechanics, even in its much simplified 5e form, is much, much, much more complex, deep, sophisticated, and convoluted than anything one will find in a D:OS game. Many of the casual D:OS fans - to be very clear, these are the vast majority of D:OS players who are NOT on this forum - will take one look at BG3 and run away because even 5e D&D mechanics are very far from the simple, silly, gimmicky mechanics of D:OS. And this is why Larian is going out of its way to try and reassure those D:OS fans, not the tiny fraction of hardcore fans who are on this forum but the hundreds of thousands of casual fans out there, that BG3 will be "just like D:OS." They need to do this to hold on to the whole of the D:OS fanbase. But the more they do this, the more they alienate the hardcore D&D/BG/cRPG fanbases. It's a catch-22. Strictly speaking of cRPGs, either you can create a deep, complex, sophisticated, story-focused rather than combat-focused game that sells at best about 500,000 to 1 million, or, you can create a superficial, glitzy, shallow, gimmicky game heavy on blow everything up "cool" combat that will sell several million. But you cannot have both. So contemporary developers of cRPGs have to make a decision on which path they want to take. Larian has clearly opted for the second path, because big sales numbers are what they want/need. A studio like Owlcat has decided on the former - making hardcore games for the hardcore gamer fanbase and accepting that their sales numbers will never get very high. Studios like Obsidian and inXile are in the process right now of figuring out what direction they will take.

This is my personal take on things.

If "most people who liked one of them also played some of the others" is "totally wrong," that seems to imply you believe that "most people who liked one of them played few to none of the others," or "a few people who liked one of them also played some of the others," or "most people who liked one of them also played none of the others," or any such nonsense. What he said is not totally wrong. It is mostly correct. A lot of people have not only played but actually enjoyed one or all of not just those three games, but many others as well.

And drop the whole "hardcore gamer/fanbase"stuff. Just because you and some other like games to be a certain way doesn't make you any more or less "hardcore" than anyone else. You're not better, or special, or pure, or true, or skilled, or any such crap.

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As far as I know, the world of the CRPG developers is a small one. The guys and gals of DCRed Project, Owlcat games, Larian, Inxile, obsidian, Tactical adventures know each other.
You can see them posting photos together in media. They publicly congratulate each other on Twitter. Larian is one of the usual crowdfunders in kickstarter CRPG games like the ones of Tactical adventures 5e game "Solasta" The Beamdog studio, that initially made a request to do BG3, congratulates them when they got to make the game,

You can see David Gaider, Josh sawyer, Tim Cain, Avellone, joking in twitter about each others games. They congratulate the others when they finally get to made games because they know how hard it is. When they asked the Owlcat studio devs about BG3 they give then their regards because they were also flamed due to their decision to include a TB option in their RPWP game PF: WoTR and they simply stated "Let Larian do BG3 whatever they want"


All this controversy always come from a (usually) toxic portion of (self-)called fans that only made a somewhat niche game types, the CRPG, even more niche. The devs get along with each other end doesn´t really care about those artificially-made wars between fans of games, never supported it, never gave their opinion about them besides to try to calm things down, never cared. They just made the best games they can and support the effort of the others that try to made CRPG games in the era of Call of Duty, FIFA's and the like.


Personally I played BG games, DoS games, PoE games, ToEE games, Divinity games, Pathfinder games, and also Fallout games, Last of us, Mass effect games, etc... and I liked them for different reasons and I always find pointless to try to convice other people that you should dislike another game because you play one of the "others" that you like. You can like both, or neither, who cares?


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Originally Posted by kanisatha


But now Larian is making a D&D game. And the D&D ruleset and mechanics, even in its much simplified 5e form, is much, much, much more complex, deep, sophisticated, and convoluted than anything one will find in a D:OS game. Many of the casual D:OS fans - to be very clear, these are the vast majority of D:OS players who are NOT on this forum - will take one look at BG3 and run away because even 5e D&D mechanics are very far from the simple, silly, gimmicky mechanics of D:OS. And this is why Larian is going out of its way to try and reassure those D:OS fans, not the tiny fraction of hardcore fans who are on this forum but the hundreds of thousands of casual fans out there, that BG3 will be "just like D:OS." They need to do this to hold on to the whole of the D:OS fanbase. But the more they do this, the more they alienate the hardcore D&D/BG/cRPG fanbases. It's a catch-22. Strictly speaking of cRPGs, either you can create a deep, complex, sophisticated, story-focused rather than combat-focused game that sells at best about 500,000 to 1 million, or, you can create a superficial, glitzy, shallow, gimmicky game heavy on blow everything up "cool" combat that will sell several million. But you cannot have both. So contemporary developers of cRPGs have to make a decision on which path they want to take. Larian has clearly opted for the second path, because big sales numbers are what they want/need. A studio like Owlcat has decided on the former - making hardcore games for the hardcore gamer fanbase and accepting that their sales numbers will never get very high. Studios like Obsidian and inXile are in the process right now of figuring out what direction they will take.

This is my personal take on things.


I think the key is to let the player customize the game as they see fit. Give them options, options and more options. If you're aiming for a six-figure sales target you obviously have to gear the core of the game towards casual players. However, exploration should be rewarded as well as mastery of the game's mechanical underpinnings. Although, I can't help but think of the Souls series which has sold several million copies worldwide despite being pretty hardcore. Maybe we're heavily underestimating the D&D/BG/cRPG fanbase and much of the genre's current plight is simply attributable to a decline in quality since BG's heyday compared to its competitors.

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i dont even know how to respond to kanisatha without mockery.
yeah sure buddy, youre the hardcore people out there.
Baldurs gate is the dark souls of crpgs

meanwhile tons of grogs whining on the divinity steam forums because they are getting filtered by by the scarecrow

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Originally Posted by Sordak
i dont even know how to respond to kanisatha without mockery.
yeah sure buddy, youre the hardcore people out there.
Baldurs gate is the dark souls of crpgs

meanwhile tons of grogs whining on the divinity steam forums because they are getting filtered by by the scarecrow


From what I've seen, I don't think you know how to respond without mockery. Period. laugh


Regarding the topic of mainstream vs niche, I myself play Call of Duty & Fifa and I play Baldur's Gate & Original Sin. I get that it's tricky for developers to appeal to a broader audience and keep their company thriving and the workplace secure, but at the same time avoiding becoming too casual and loosing old fans because of it. Larian seem to be able to balance this pretty well.

As for crossover within the crpg bubble itself, I dunno. The few people I know RL that play these type of games, have to my knowledge played (or at least purchased and tried) most of DoS, PoE, etc etc.

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i dont think anyone is trying to make CRPGs for a broader audience.
the only ones that tried were Bioware with dragon age.

Realy, CRPGs are a niche genre and i think Larian, Obsidian and Owlcat all know this.
The fanbase is small and dedicated, but they also like experimentation.

Hence why the next owlcat game is gonna have a HoMM like mode in it.

Bioware got name recognition, but at the end of the day, CRPGs just dont have tripple A appeal

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Originally Posted by CPT_SLOW
From what I've seen, I don't think you know how to respond without mockery. Period. laugh


Not to mention he never even gets people's points. So best to ignore him. Same thing with a few others, who deliberately ignore your point and throw out straw men to attack.

Originally Posted by CPT_SLOW
Regarding the topic of mainstream vs niche, I myself play Call of Duty & Fifa and I play Baldur's Gate & Original Sin. I get that it's tricky for developers to appeal to a broader audience and keep their company thriving and the workplace secure, but at the same time avoiding becoming too casual and loosing old fans because of it. Larian seem to be able to balance this pretty well.


Yes this is part of the point I was making. Larian was able to pull off some semblance of a balance with the D:OS games. But D&D is quite a different animal. I don't see them being able to do the same with a D&D game. Either it will appeal to D:OS fans or to D&D/BG fans. But not both. [In general terms, obviously, as of course it is understood there will be exceptions.]

Originally Posted by CPT_SLOW
As for crossover within the crpg bubble itself, I dunno. The few people I know RL that play these type of games, have to my knowledge played (or at least purchased and tried) most of DoS, PoE, etc etc.


That's the non-representative forum bubble. As Larian's data showed, and Obsidian came up with similar data, this is not true of most gamers.

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Originally Posted by Sordak
i dont think anyone is trying to make CRPGs for a broader audience.
the only ones that tried were Bioware with dragon age.

Realy, CRPGs are a niche genre and i think Larian, Obsidian and Owlcat all know this.
The fanbase is small and dedicated, but they also like experimentation.

Hence why the next owlcat game is gonna have a HoMM like mode in it.

Bioware got name recognition, but at the end of the day, CRPGs just dont have tripple A appeal




Maybe they should try then, if Bioware's attempt with DA: Origins is anything to go by. It's one of my favorite games. What came after, not so much. frown

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im more talking about 2 and Inqusition.
Id say DAO was still a bit niche.
It didnt try to compete with the Open World RPGs of its time like Oblivion

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That's because DAO was the next gen cRPG as a direct spiritual followup to BG. It wasn't trying to be an open world sandbox like Elder Scrolls. It was a party based narrative cRPG with RTwP combat.

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my point.
it started going downhill when they tried beeing something else.
CRPGs will never have mainstream appeal. not even the populartiy of dnd can change that

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Baldur's Gate literally made cRPGs main stream. Baldur's Gate was the best selling computer game of all time when it game out, and still rivals most game launches today. The entire purpose of making the game RTwP was to make a game that would appeal to computer gamers who'd never played D&D before.

The entire legacy of Baldur's Gate was making RPGs mainstream.

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CRPGs were never main stream and baldurs gate didnt make em maisntream.

the most mainstream CRPG would be Fallout.

Baldurs Game sold massiveley.... for a computer game at ts time.
computer games werent mainstream in the late 90s.

And that was the golden age of CRPGs, after that, this kind of RPG was always outsold by more broadly appealing single character RPGs.
Which is why Dragon Age Inqusiiton couldnt compete iwth the Skyrims and the Witchers out there. Despite playing a lot more like those games than it did like an infnity engine game

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I think you misremember your history because you were probably as obstinate back then as you are now.

Baldur's Gate is one of the most famous and renowned games of all time.

It literally set the standard for both RPGs and for video game distribution and marketing models for decades to come.

It propelled Bioware to become one of the most renowned and favoured developers of all time, and allowed them to further innovate RTwP and introduce what became the foundations for the weapon wheel, with the model used in DAO.

lol, you are grasping at straws, my man. lol

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i think you dont understand what consittues a niche game or genre.
all of what you said is also true for everquest, yet MMORPGs wouldnt truly hit mainstream appeal till wow came along.

but sure, if what you say is correct then baldurs Gate 3 would propel larian to tripple A status by name recognition alone :^)

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Originally Posted by Sordak

Which is why Dragon Age Inqusiiton couldnt compete iwth the Skyrims and the Witchers out there.


Dungeon Hack sold well on earlier 90s and was a single character RPG. Ultima Underworld and Daggerfall too.

The reason that inquisition can't compete with skyrim and witcher is not that inquisition is party based. If Skyrim had tactical pause and command to companions, it would't had any impact on their sales. The problem with inquisition is that felt like a single player wow clone. Skyrim has shallow rpg elements, you can kill the emperor and join imperial legion, but skyrim doesn't have cooldowns(except on shouts), nor bullet sponge repetitive enemies.

Other thing that skyrim has that other games doesn't has is modding support. I din't liked their implementation of """necromancy""", but i can in less than a minute, find a lot of necromancer mods that makes necromancy far more interesting. Din't liked that dragons are too easy. Deadly dragons.

Inquisition in other hands, i an forced to play with the worst iteration of necromancy ever. They just picked everything from spirit tree from origins, removed animate dead, increased the cooldowns and made it scale 100% with your weapon(despite one of initial dialog awnsers being that i don't need a staff to be deadly) and even took away blood magic to put the worst iteration of necromancy ever.

Be single or party focused doesn't impact much the game. More action oriented RPG's sells more. This is truth today and even on 90s. Diablo 1 sold far more than Ultima.

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