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Originally Posted by Bukke
I think one point you're overlooking is that Larian's two previous games also had a party size of four.

We aren't overlooking it at all. We simply aren't happy about it.


Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN
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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit

I know this is another thread but I want to underline this. The BG3 engine is better set up to use 6 party members than is PoE RtwP engine.

I hoping they will change but my suspicion at this point is that the resistance to 6 party members is based in:

* 6 exposes the weaknesses of the party control system
* 6 makes it clear that there are far few companions than BG2 had

Otherwise, I can't see a decent argument for 4 other than a desire to maintain the status quo.


Swen already answered the question related to 6-men party (I think one or two months before EA release?)
it was one of the interviews with Dropped Frames
I do not exactly remember the answer but it was about the design and how they can handle a 4-men party better than 6(I think)
I am sure you can find it on the youtube

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Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by Bukke
I think one point you're overlooking is that Larian's two previous games also had a party size of four.

We aren't overlooking it at all. We simply aren't happy about it.

Eh, I guess overlooking isn't the right term to use. I wasn't really referring to the players' response to Larian's decision, but rather the decision itself.
What I mean is just that I'm fairly certain the reason I listed was one of the reasons Larian decided to go with a 4 party size for BG3.

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I'm aware of the interview. We're just telling Vinke he's wrong. That and if EA is really is a time to get feedback from fans and not just a way to quash bugs and generate hype they should accept that, sometimes, the devs are mistaken.

Like the Solasta devs did with light. We thought we were right, you told us we weren't so we are changing. Hoping to see the same attitude from Larian soon.

It's not an engine limitation -- indeed the 'mod' really only requires that you change one variable. Running with that variable changed does highlight some problems that need to be fixed anyway.

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Five would be doable from any angle. And it would provide a better feel of a group with just enough diversity to cover most needs.

Six always felt like too much to me.

The interview, whatever, standard marketing talking points.

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Originally Posted by Bukke
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Originally Posted by Tuco

Fun side note: the main reason they went for five characters rather than six was because REAL-TIME COMBAT made it messy.


I know this is another thread but I want to underline this. The BG3 engine is better set up to use 6 party members than is PoE RtwP engine.

I hoping they will change but my suspicion at this point is that the resistance to 6 party members is based in:

* 6 exposes the weaknesses of the party control system
* 6 makes it clear that there are far few companions than BG2 had

Otherwise, I can't see a decent argument for 4 other than a desire to maintain the status quo.

I think one point you're overlooking is that Larian's two previous games also had a party size of four.
A sense of familiarity for the decision makers, developers and the demographic they deem to be their core user base also definitely plays a role.


On the contrary, it is precisely the fact that BG3 resembles Larian's old games and not previous BG titles that is the problem.

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Why is such a big deal that a game of 2020 look less like a game of the 2000s made by another studio (no matter how good it is) than a modern game of the same studio?
If they have more resemblance with a game of 20 years ago that would be weird. The game industry advanced a lot in two decades.

Last edited by _Vic_; 12/11/20 12:38 AM.
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Come on smile That's a straw man. No one is complaining about graphics.

It's a problem if it offers less than the original. And in terms of party size and NPC selection it is less. Sometimes, Less is Less.

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Originally Posted by Tuco

Streamers and youtubers these days can be a HUGE part of the popularity of a release and the thing is: they absolutely hate to read dialogues aloud when playing for their audience.
I never tried to stream anything myself, but to be honest, I can't really blame them. I would hate doing it, too.



I definitely agree that the vast majority of streamers do NOT want to read a ton of text aloud on their streams. I watch a lot of streams, and this is a given. It annoys me a lot, actually. I love it when a streamer actually puts in the extra effort to read everything out. Even better if they do voices for the characters. Which is super rare.

I'm a very small-time streamer myself, and I actually DO specialize in playing these very text-heavy RPGs and reading every. single. word. out loud. All the dialogue, all the books, all the journal entries and lore codexes and what have you. And I voice act all the characters. I'm not a professional voice actor, so my voices range from semi-decent to terrible, but I put a lot of effort into it.

Some games I've completed on stream in this style include:

- Pillars of Eternity
- Sunless Sea
- Tyranny
- Torment: Tides of Numenera (holy shit the amount of reading!)
- Masquerada: Songs and Shadows
- Disco Elysium

And a bunch of partial playthroughs of pretty much every other game in this subgenre.

I find it really fun to do, if draining. Can be hard on the throat, need to keep well-hydrated. I wish more streamers would do this, but honestly the audience for it is pretty small and niche. EVEN when you have someone reading it all to you, most people don't want to watch games that are based on a ton of text.

But I really hope that SOMEONE keeps making those text-heavy RPGs, because they're my favorite kind of game.

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My comment might warrant a separate topic, but for now, I'll put it here.

Honesty, Larian, and the Future of Baldur's Gate 3

I feel like any allegations against Larian of being dishonest is unfair. Granted, I wasn't a part of any of their EAs before, so my knowledge of the subject is limited to Baldur's Gate 3 development, but I feel like they provided a lot to me to work with to show my point. Time will tell, but from what Larian did so far with their updates (ever since the game's first presentation) was (somewhat) painfully honest. It would have been so much easier to release a trailer with only the best bits of the game, but instead, Larian CEO just decided to have a playthrough and risk the game bugging on him live (which it did, several times, with the last bug completely breaking the game). I don't know if Larian has any PR people (I assume they do), but I feel like every time Sven talks to someone they're probably banging their heads against the wall.

And this interview is not so different. Even the first response from Sven in the interview (“They're all horny, I can tell you that... So anybody who tells you the opposite, I can tell you that's not true.”) which I found funny and cute, made some people in this forum angry. But I guess that's not the issue most people here are so furious about...

The issue people here seem to be very mad about (and correct me if I'm wrong) is this line:
“I can imagine that we will never manage to find the balance that will please everyone,” says Vincke. But, there is a (sort of) solution: “The game will be moddable eventually, so people will be able to make their mods. I expect multiple flavors of Baldur’s Gate 3 to come out of that. Over time there will be probably a flavor that will appeal hopefully to everybody.”

Now again, if I was a Larian PR guy, I would be very angry with this answer. this is the kind of honesty that makes people angry. It would have been much more easier to pull some " we are looking into all possibilities and will change things to suit as many players as possible" crap, but Sven said what he really thinks - It's impossible (yes, impossible) to please everyone and to only thing to do is to make the game you would want to play. And I'm sorry guys, but some of the things you hang on to here (six members party? really? this is the difference between legend and meh game? wow if it is that easy I wonder how come Baldur's Gate never had any successors) are not even remotely in a consensus as you think they are. It's not the topic of this thread, but a shortlist of things people think are a must and I disagree with completely (and sure I'm not the only one): 6 members party, day-night circle, more faithful D&D rule adaptation, removing camp, hp bloat (didn't even know it was a thing, pretty sure most players are on my camp on this), action\bonus action things I really don't understand much about (and lo and behold, I still enjoyed the gameplay, strange world).

Other than that, people seem to comment on the fact Sven addressed the issue with the RNG but not much else, which is not true as well. He did address the evil path and the companion choice, which are also a big point of criticism toward the game. Of particular interest is what he said on the evil path:
Quote
"The writers have a tendency of being good and not putting in the evil options,” Vincke says. “We had to actually force them to go through everything and put in more contrasting options so that they could put the evil ones in there.” It’s all about offering the players “real” choices, he explains - a variety of options falling all across the spectrum of morality, rather than just slight variations on ‘the good one’. “For choice to be there, you need to have the ability to do good and evil and things in between, and edge cases, and stuff like that. That is a modus operandi for the remainder of the game.”
There is nothing specific here about whether there would be changes to the evil path, but keeping the honesty title in mind, I simply think he doesn't want to commit to anything yet, probably because they are still debating about the nature of changes they are gonna make.

In the end, I am still very happy with this interview. My feeling is that there is still an internal debate in Larian about how to proceed with several issues that we raised during the last month and that Larian is not willing to commit to changing anything that there was no decision about yet.

a word about solasta - it's much easier to take feedback from 10 people than from 1000 people I think. And I honestly think solasta can be as faithful to D&D is it wants, but a short playthrough proved that you need much more than this to create a good game and many many games before proved it.


Larian's Biggest Oversight, what to do about it, and My personal review of BG3 EA
"74.85% of you stood with the Tieflings, and 25.15% of you sided with Minthara. Good outweighs evil, it seems."
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It's an interesting issue. Who gets to define what is a major criticism? What metric do we use to measure interest in an issue? I tend to see the evil path criticism as a niche one, you see it as central.

I think Vinke has been stressing evil from day one -- repeatedly asking EA players play evil, showcasing his ability to play evil, commenting on how many people play the evil path time and time again. And I think he is doing so because he knows without such encouragement most people will ignore the evil path. So where you see him addressing an issue that has come from the forums I see the continuation of a narrative that started before EA launched and the use of a forum topic as a pretext.

I truly think there are many more D&D ruleset threads, surface discontent threads and party size threads than 'evil playthrough' threads here, on reddit and on the beamdog and obsidian forums. I'd guesstimate the 'surface dissatisfaction' to 'evil path dissatisfaction' at a factor of 5 to 1?

Last edited by KillerRabbit; 12/11/20 06:38 AM.
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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
It's an interesting issue. Who gets to define what is a major criticism? What metric do we use to measure interest in an issue? I tend to see the evil path criticism as a niche one, you see it as central.

I think Vinke has been stressing evil from day one -- repeatedly asking EA players play evil, show casing his ability to play evil, commenting on how many people play the evil path time and time again. And I think he is doing so because he knows without such encouragement most people will ignore the evil path. So where you see addressing an issue that has come from the forums I see the continuation of a narrative that started before EA launched and the use of a forum topic as pretext.

I truly think there are many more D&D ruleset threads, surface discontent threads and party size threads than 'evil playthrough' threads here, on reddit and on the beamdog and obsidian forums. I guesstimate the 'surface dissatisfaction' to 'evil path dissatisfaction' at factor of 5 to 1?

I think you're ignoring or forgetting who comes to these forums. If everything I knew about the world was based on the post on the Bg3 section of these forums, I would say Solasta is probably the greatest RPG ever made and has millions of sales. I would also think Crpgs are the most popular genre of video games and that most players only care about D&D mechanics. I don't have time to give you a more detailed comment at the moment so I hope for now this will do.


Larian's Biggest Oversight, what to do about it, and My personal review of BG3 EA
"74.85% of you stood with the Tieflings, and 25.15% of you sided with Minthara. Good outweighs evil, it seems."
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i prefer an honest answer to PR speak

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Originally Posted by Abits
I don't have time to give you a more detailed comment at the moment so I hope for now this will do.


No worries mate. We're not on the clock here, respond or don't smile

But I will say that I think most forum members want the two blended. Good lord Solasta is ugly. And I really think I could find a glee club that could do better voice acting. And it's a dungeon crawl. And the setting isn't anywhere as interesting as the Forgotten Realms.

But the combat is good and the devs are super responsive. Competition between devs is good.

Don't get me wrong. I like the BG3 story, the NPCs and it's a lovely world. I just want Solasta combat please smile

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Originally Posted by Abits
My comment might warrant a separate topic, but for now, I'll put it here.

Honesty, Larian, and the Future of Baldur's Gate 3

I feel like any allegations against Larian of being dishonest is unfair. Granted, I wasn't a part of any of their EAs before, so my knowledge of the subject is limited to Baldur's Gate 3 development, but I feel like they provided a lot to me to work with to show my point. Time will tell, but from what Larian did so far with their updates (ever since the game's first presentation) was (somewhat) painfully honest. It would have been so much easier to release a trailer with only the best bits of the game, but instead, Larian CEO just decided to have a playthrough and risk the game bugging on him live (which it did, several times, with the last bug completely breaking the game). I don't know if Larian has any PR people (I assume they do), but I feel like every time Sven talks to someone they're probably banging their heads against the wall.

And this interview is not so different. Even the first response from Sven in the interview (“They're all horny, I can tell you that... So anybody who tells you the opposite, I can tell you that's not true.”) which I found funny and cute, made some people in this forum angry. But I guess that's not the issue most people here are so furious about...

The issue people here seem to be very mad about (and correct me if I'm wrong) is this line:
“I can imagine that we will never manage to find the balance that will please everyone,” says Vincke. But, there is a (sort of) solution: “The game will be moddable eventually, so people will be able to make their mods. I expect multiple flavors of Baldur’s Gate 3 to come out of that. Over time there will be probably a flavor that will appeal hopefully to everybody.”

Now again, if I was a Larian PR guy, I would be very angry with this answer. this is the kind of honesty that makes people angry. It would have been much more easier to pull some " we are looking into all possibilities and will change things to suit as many players as possible" crap, but Sven said what he really thinks - It's impossible (yes, impossible) to please everyone and to only thing to do is to make the game you would want to play. And I'm sorry guys, but some of the things you hang on to here (six members party? really? this is the difference between legend and meh game? wow if it is that easy I wonder how come Baldur's Gate never had any successors) are not even remotely in a consensus as you think they are. It's not the topic of this thread, but a shortlist of things people think are a must and I disagree with completely (and sure I'm not the only one): 6 members party, day-night circle, more faithful D&D rule adaptation, removing camp, hp bloat (didn't even know it was a thing, pretty sure most players are on my camp on this), action\bonus action things I really don't understand much about (and lo and behold, I still enjoyed the gameplay, strange world).

Other than that, people seem to comment on the fact Sven addressed the issue with the RNG but not much else, which is not true as well. He did address the evil path and the companion choice, which are also a big point of criticism toward the game. Of particular interest is what he said on the evil path:
Quote
"The writers have a tendency of being good and not putting in the evil options,” Vincke says. “We had to actually force them to go through everything and put in more contrasting options so that they could put the evil ones in there.” It’s all about offering the players “real” choices, he explains - a variety of options falling all across the spectrum of morality, rather than just slight variations on ‘the good one’. “For choice to be there, you need to have the ability to do good and evil and things in between, and edge cases, and stuff like that. That is a modus operandi for the remainder of the game.”
There is nothing specific here about whether there would be changes to the evil path, but keeping the honesty title in mind, I simply think he doesn't want to commit to anything yet, probably because they are still debating about the nature of changes they are gonna make.

In the end, I am still very happy with this interview. My feeling is that there is still an internal debate in Larian about how to proceed with several issues that we raised during the last month and that Larian is not willing to commit to changing anything that there was no decision about yet.

a word about solasta - it's much easier to take feedback from 10 people than from 1000 people I think. And I honestly think solasta can be as faithful to D&D is it wants, but a short playthrough proved that you need much more than this to create a good game and many many games before proved it.



This is a good post.

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Originally Posted by Sordak
i prefer an honest answer to PR speak

I seriously find Sven (Or is it Swen?) a refreshing developer after watching years of Todd Howard spin tales of much ado about nothing for years while riding on the coattails of his predecessors. Sven is a self made dev and knows when he has something good and when something is weak in his game. He knows the evil path needs work and that's why he has encouraged so many people to play it. Also I believe they have left the protagonists VA undone to leave room to alter the story as the game develops. And Just because they create new paths to doing evil things doesn't mean they have to nuke what they have and start over. It's a decent narrative that just needs some fleshing out.

Also, there is a mod page up on Nexus mods that explains how to increase party capacity to 6 for those interested. https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/16

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Originally Posted by Bleeblegum

Also, there is a mod page up on Nexus mods that explains how to increase party capacity to 6 for those interested.


Sure. And it shows that the game is better with 6 party members. But the point that is that 'a mod will fix' it is not addressing the concern of those of us who believe that the game should come with native support.

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I think you're forgetting how flat many of the characters are in BG 2 with maybe 2 -5 lines of voiced dialogue each and how much work Larian has left to do. BG 2 could only rope you in to caring about a companion if they had their own quest or lots of backstory(all delivered through text.) Now every companion has to be like that and it means we get less companions but more complex backstories for them. I believe less is more and wanting to have support for a larger party is fine but it is not a priority for them right now and that is reasonable.

BTW Dragon Age Origins set the precedent of modern 3d RPGs using 4 party members (devs called it a spiritual successor to BG) and it was quite effective and fun.

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Originally Posted by Bleeblegum
I think you're forgetting how flat many of the characters are in BG 2 with maybe 2 -5 lines of voiced dialogue each and how much work Larian has left to do. BG 2 could only rope you in to caring about a companion if they had their own quest or lots of backstory(all delivered through text.) Now every companion has to be like that and it means we get less companions but more complex backstories for them. I believe less is more and wanting to have support for a larger party is fine but it is not a priority for them right now and that is reasonable.

BTW Dragon Age Origins set the precedent of modern 3d RPGs using 4 party members (devs called it a spiritual successor to BG) and it was quite effective and fun.


Don't forget impregoing their eggo

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Originally Posted by Bleeblegum
I think you're forgetting how flat many of the characters are in BG 2 with maybe 2 -5 lines of voiced dialogue each and how much work Larian has left to do. BG 2 could only rope you in to caring about a companion if they had their own quest or lots of backstory(all delivered through text.) Now every companion has to be like that and it means we get less companions but more complex backstories for them. I believe less is more and wanting to have support for a larger party is fine but it is not a priority for them right now and that is reasonable.

BTW Dragon Age Origins set the precedent of modern 3d RPGs using 4 party members (devs called it a spiritual successor to BG) and it was quite effective and fun.


I disagree with the depth of the BG2 characters -- some were a deep as saucer and some were complex. Minsc was a great, shallow character and Jaheria was deep. I rarely got to the end of Jaheria romance there were so many interactions. And BG2 was loooong. I would take me 80 -- 100 hours to finish a completionist run of BG2 / TOB.

Personally I don't think it is "reasonable"* I think they took up the mantle of the most replayed game in RPG history and need to be held to that standard. I'd be interested in a comparison of lines of text for Astarian and Jaheria to see if the BG3 characters are in fact deeper.

This is just what happens when you take up a beloved franchise -- you get many, many more sales but you are held to a higher standard. Rogue one is a entirely decent sci flick -- but that's not the standard to which it was held. Again, such pressures come with the territory.




*reasonable wouldn't have been my choice of word, only using because it you did smile

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