Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Mods and larian’s need for data

Quick question to Larian Studios about mods.

I have been playing a modded character, an oath breaker Paladin.

What I am wondering is how does this effect or bias the telemetry, data, you get out of my gaming. I purchased the EA to get my hands on some gameplay while hoping I help in developing this game in my own small way.

Do mods make the data useless to you guys?

Are these mods effecting the data in a good or deleterious sort of way?

Thanks

It's worrying enough that they tell us the telemetry they're using and then follow it up with the incredibly long-bow non-sequitur that they say that that data means in order to confirm what they want it to say anyway... No amount of data will ever help if they are making a habit of willfully misrepresenting and misinterpreting it to mean what they want... which, in every community report that has mentioned said data so far, seems to be exactly what they're doing.

There are practical limits to the accuracy and value of any feedback. Telemetry only measures *what* players do, not why they do it. So, yes, you can place multiple ( possibly conflicting ) interpretations on the data, but at least it is universally collected.

Conversely, forum and other player interactions give you exact interpretations, but only for tiny subsets of players, and almost always with completely conflicting views being expressed.

And, of course, such player subsets like to suggest their views are universally supported, despite there being no evidence for this; which is roughly equivalent to what you see Larian doing with their data.

I did not ( and still do not ) expect wholesale changes to the BG3 design ideas. Ironically, the success of EA, in terms of sales numbers, will probably bolster Larian's view that they have the correct formula for a successful game, and reduce the likelihood that they will see the need for changes.

The main difference is that posters on a forum do so with the knowledge that their voice is never going to be wholly representative; Larian's comments on their data make bold statements that have no real grounding in the evidence they're using to make them, while they claim the opinion they're espousing is representative of the majority. There's a difference between misreading data and saying something akin to:

"We saw that 96% of players picked up the book of shanties, so we can tell that everyone is keen to see more singing dwarves going forward!"

Larian's public comments about their telemetry gathering have come to appear almost willfully disingenuous - drawing long conclusions that even primary school children can see do not at all follow from the data they're referencing.

Your data is probably flagged as "modded". Most likely they disregard your data. But that shouldn't discourage you from using mods if you like them, I am sure they have enough data already.

Larian is likely noting which Mods are being used, as that data is useful.

Once you install a mod however you are not playing Larian's version of Early Access which would make the data from your game less useful.

Larian has and will continue to make changes based on player data, and they will do so throughout early access.

Since all I've heard about data is "wooo, look at all the horny generic white guy character gamers lul" I'll stick to using a few mods to make the experience more pleasant

Feel free to corect me if im wrong ...
But for example Blizzard is using data of "amount of people using addon *XY* for WoW" ... to determine if that is desired by enough people to implement in base game.

I would like to believe Larian can (and will) do the same.

That's assuming Larian has a way to identify (and so track) which modifications are in use.
Then again I stopped caring about the "risk of contaminating the purity of data win my save files" when I realized that Larian is taking whatever conclusions they feel like from it, anyway.
So my last playthrough was with tweaked save files and a party of six.

The best experience I had with the EA so far, for the record. Despise the game's controls putting their best effort into antagonizing the player.

I hope they do ...
Or "at least", even if that is not so representative number ... they can allways simply track the nexus for amount of downloads.