Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Just Curious About Feedback Retention

So.

I've been reminded by the forum here and on Steam that the based on a big enough population, and given a standard curve, once you calculate the standard deviations... 90% of people on the internet or stupid trash monsters.

As a consequence stupid flame threads, threads that aren't suggestions at all, and things that have been addressed 50x already immediately wash out any useful feedback.

We're not actually giving feedback are we?

I will see a review posted by an adult, it's concise, has a few valid suggestions, and it's always gone in 10 seconds. Which makes sense because if everyone agrees with the post there's no reason to comment. Yet, it is replaced by some people arguing about totally intangible things, like the 'soul' of the game.

I just cant imagine anyone is actually reviewing the real feedback hidden under 100's of threads about Elves having the wrong accent or whatever.

I look at videogames mostly from psychological perspectives, satisfying gameplay loops, intuitive interface, completeness and utility of systems implemented. Are the people who do being heard? Or are these feedback forums just something to let people who bought the game in early access blow off steam?

Honestly I don't use the forums to give honest reviews that I want to reach the developers, because I feel like it would just be buried under other posts. I use the feedback button on the launcher because I know it's going directly to the developers. I don't know how big their team is nor how many of them sift through these posts to read anything helpful or constructive so I don't chance it. And after hearing that Steam forums are worse, I don't even bother going there. If I truly have something, like a bug reporting for example, to send off, I use the launcher.

You forgot the manipulation done by the dev´s trying to push there "idea" and hide it as the demand of the majority and the marketing cretains pushing for there version to manipulate and force ideas and ratings.

I don't know how they to do it, but they certainly need to be picky, and it's difficult finding an abstract feedback inside a wall of text, that is part of a long thread, where the main argument switched to some real world political issue (which is more important than any game, but still, this shouldn't be the place to post those)

Also they can't promise that one or the other issue will be fixed. I can understand that.

Still, some way of marking/sign/logo would be useful, that they noticed one problem or the other. Even a stickied raw internal list would do.

What we have now is just words like these (search for "feedback" on that page) http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=694537&an=82#Post694537

Without a stickied list, without a marking next to something they noticed, it's just an 1d20 chance that they noticed it (usually it's just a miss or a critical miss)

I don't think the forums are a great venue for providing useful feedback to the devs, for the reasons you list. Even the stickied threads aren't great - they seem to be the result of a loud contingent of forums users, but personally I agree with very little of what's there. The majority of active posters (at least from what I've seen) seem to care more about making a 5E game, or a true BG3 or whatever, and don't think about games from the psychological viewpoint described in the OP.

There's a feedback form on the launcher, and I imagine that would be a more productive way to get feedback to the devs.

The answer to your last question is "Yes". The forum is a place for feedback, and a place to blow off steam, which is also a form of feedback.

I want very much to love this game. It's not because it's Larian, don't get me wrong Larian folks, if you see this, you do make very good games, but you're not specifically why I'm here. I'm here for that intangible "soul" of the game. I'm here because prior to BG, I played things like Doom and Mortal Kombat almost exclusively. On PC anyway. I have something like 110+ completions on the original BG. It's way up there on BG 2 as well, so I am here looking for that soul to be here. In so far as it being EA, I'm not a stranger to this type of situation, so I'm not going to be unforgiving about the bugs I encounter, on the contrary, I'm going to expect them, and provide feedback on them as I encounter them.

I'm not expecting it to be a direct sequel to the originals either. I thought they wrapped up their arc rather well. But I am looking to get drawn in. I'm looking to find that experience that pulls me in so deeply that I look up and realize that the sun's come up, and I should have been in bed hours ago. I'm looking to find out if the cast of characters I'm going to be interacting with for what I hope will be thousands of hours over time are going to not only keep me interested, but make me miss them when I'm not playing. Some of what I'm looking for is also intangible. Is it something that I feel will have me inviting some friends in to play sessions in MP. NWN did that very well, to the point where I played it for 5 years, but the last three were tied directly to the MP aspects, either through playing player produced modules, or contributing storylines and scripts or simply building my own. We had a running "joke" that playing NWN online was like having a table top session w/out the need to clean up afterwards.

These are the things that it is important, to me, that this game brings to the table. While I haven't found all of this so far, there are aspects of it that I'm willing to ignore, so long as some of the criteria towards what's going to make this a spiritual successor to BG/BG 2 are met. These are the things that I would be looking for in gameplay videos/reviews even if I hadn't decided to go ahead and find out for myself, and reading through these forums isn't just providing potential for Larian to see it, but potential for me to see it, and find things that I may have missed in the game, and that may tilt those scales one way or the other. Some players may find this kind of feedback a waste of bandwidth, but for me, this kind of feedback is invaluable, and has already at least tipped the scales enough that I decided to buy in now, instead of waiting for later.

The steam forums on new popular games are usually trash. After the trolls find a shiny new toy, the feedback will likely get better. I also suspect that the Hurr Durr threads (DIS GAME NOT BG3 DIS GAME DoS 3 or DIS GAME SUKZORS! or DIS GAME TO PENSIVE! and the like) get disregarded. There is some good feedback over there, but most of it gets lots in the trolling bait threads and HURR DURR threads.

They have somebody that collects feedback, I am pretty sure. I knew a dev from WOW guild (didn't work for Blizz) that joked that the intern that pissed of the lead dev got to collect feedback for the day. I sure hope that isn't the fate of the intern at Larian... Poor bastard if it is.

Collecting feedback for a job is still far better than working in a warehouse or scrubbing toilets.