Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General So...is this game still being made, or what?...

Well, I see the point, but let me put it into perspective: Right now, in my Steam library, I see six update notes for six different games. All hotfixes and small patches. They include stuff like: "Players can now damage signs with melee weapons.", "The auto recruitment feature on settlements can now be disabled via a checkbox." And these are the actual game changes, the rest are mostly fixes for obscure crashes.

While I do tendencially read some of these, I often do not. I will generally read through the bigger ones. However, even here I am a rare breed. Thing is, if you appear too much, people just stop reading, because they know the additions are just minor and they rarely even affect the average player.
Which brings me to the core, people here are invested in the game, most crave every bit of news, as this is relevant to them. However the average player does not. He will come back and regain interest for bigger things and he has stopped playing for certain reasons, he would want that addressed, be notified about it and then come back.
If that one sees constant small updates he will complain that Larian is spending too much time on unimportant stuff, while issue XY remains unaddressed. Plus players crave content, a new checkbox for recruitment, even if it is a good addition, will not justify another playthrough. Now hundred checkboxes, put into a large patch, this is different, this can alter the game.
Further, as said earlier, they might not have much to announce, yeah they could make a Twitter post every now and then, what they are working on, but they might announce something ever so small that they will have to cut again or delay, the reactions would again be unwilling.

A recent example is BFV, they started with announcing "great" features that never made it into the game, even though it was almost finished or the team worked on a solution for months. Later, when the players craved for content that everybody knew the devs could not deliver, they started to communicate more, but since there was nothing to share they started to tweet something along the lines of: "In two week's time we will announce the date of the reveal of our planned upcoming content." So an announcement of an announcement of revealing content that might make it into the game at some point later. Naturally that did not go down too well.

So Larian seems to like larger patches and small hotfixes and naturally everything takes longer than expected and longer than the players can wait for. So they will receive some flak, but would receive exactly the same flak if they did it in other ways.

No, I said that whatever they do, people will complain. The titles I used for reference are all EA titles themselves, that will pump out hotfixes every month or every two weeks and some other posts irregularly. Now I scrolled through those for BG3 as well, and while there were two posts within a week announcing the new patch and an event, there was a six week gap before that. And before that there was at least one hotfix or patch a month.
So indeed, the how much quantity does one need and of what quality does it need to be? So far there is this one gap in the perceived update or news cycle, for whatever reason. I would also comment that communication can be defined very broadly. What might not be sufficient for you might be so for the rest or the devs itself.

Well at least with the update today Im guessing, yes the game is still being made :P

I agree that players will stop reading if you update your game with too many small irrelevant updates. However, I'm not talking about Larian uploading a small patch every 2 weeks that all owners of the game see, I'm suggesting twitter or other social media posts to mention and discuss possible changes. The people who are paying attention to Larian's twitter or these forums will mostly be the very invested players who "crave every bit of news," while the "average player" can wait until the big patches. It's the best of both worlds.

Maybe, and gamers are notoriously a fickle lot. But (as you mention) people are already disappointed and angry with the months of radio silence; more regular communication would probably have better reception than what it is now. The important thing here that Larian announces what they've currently been working on (not what they plan on working on) and they discuss their reasoning behind investigating any change and follow up in future patch notes/twitter posts.

I agree that announcement of announcement of announcement will not go over well. But Larian is getting close to already doing this. The most recent hotfix was an announcement of an upcoming announcement about telemtry/feedback, which still hasn't actually come to pass. Hopefully this Panel from Hell will include that, but I'm skeptical they can fit that discussion and patch notes and the LARPing and the probably gameplay in the same show.

Yeah, I fully understand the sentiment here. It really can not be fast enough, we all want a good game fast. Maybe Patch 5 will bring quite a bit to the table and it seems to be on it's way, too. I have to say though that I only loosely followed the game since November, yet noticed that small updates trickled in at not an unusual pace. They always seemed rather small though.

I am still confused about the extent of the EA, though, I mean the game released in a pretty functioning state to me. Act 1 seemed done and also received some polish fast. Gameplay was not my cup of tea, but is apparently closely related to Divinity, at least I felt quite at home there, when I started it a couple of days ago. However I do not see much room for big changes (besides classes and such) and extensions to the EA to last 10-18 months. I just feel like I played a demo for a game.

When I compare that to, say the Subnautica EA, I restarted that game 20 times over the course of it's three year cycle yet only finished it once. Every update gave something new, whether a fish, a region, a building a location or story bits. Usually all at once. In BG3 I just play the same thing with slight adjustments. This is my gripe with their EA concept, it releases a certain area pretty finished and nothing more is going to come, just the same if different ways. Bannerlord has a similar issue with it's EA and DayZ had, too in my book.

However I'd still advise a tad more patience. When the game comes, judging by the quality of Larian's games, it will likely be very good and very extensive (even though I am not really a fan of the mechanics). But I can see that way there is pretty stony for the players.

This is suddenly a super packed month for cRPGs.

BG3 Patch 5 next week.
Sorcerer class being released in Solasta on the same day as free DLC.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous beta phase 3 currently scheduled for mid-July (meaning within the next two weeks).

Who cares what gamers think? It's in their nature to complain. Every one of them complaining about communication will be right there on patch day ready to play, and if they haven't purchased yet, they will put their money down at some point- whether now or at release.

They are like addicts complaining the dealer isn't prioritizing them.

I fixed that sentence for you.

He did it last night! A stream where all characters in the game were replaced with shirtless Halsin! It was hilarious!

I can only imagine what a riot.

Some criticize game as is part of the purpose of early access. Others criticize the gamers/testers for basically doing their part of the bargain and even delude themselves their stance is superior while doing so. Who cares about what gamers think indeed? CD Projekt Red certainly laughed all the way to the bank not caring what gamers think with the hot mess called Cyberpunk. Your type of sentiment contribute to the prevalent anti-consumer culture in gaming, so thanks for that.

Fortunately Larian, when all is said and done, has a track record of going above and beyond for their customers...which likely is the reason many of us are even here voicing our concerns over the direction of the game to begin with. It's human nature to be individuals and thus, if all agreed on the direction of basically anything in life - it would be a symptom of unhealthy conformity. But look at the bright side, even the most ardent "complainer" believe "DOS3" will be pretty good, even great, at what it choose to become