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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Probably will be. But "open to mods" doesn't really mean anything to me.

If you need to mod to get the experience you want something is wrong with the core game.
+1 this. the whole 'modders will fix it' mentality can get wicked frustrating imho - now i love the modding community and the value that modders provide across various game genres, and obvs this doesnt apply in all scenarios, but to generally say 'modders will fix it' to deflect or ignore criticism of gaming mechanics while in an early access build doesnt do bg3 or the studio (allegedly) any favors

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Originally Posted by nation
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Probably will be. But "open to mods" doesn't really mean anything to me.

If you need to mod to get the experience you want something is wrong with the core game.
+1 this. the whole 'modders will fix it' mentality can get wicked frustrating imho - now i love the modding community and the value that modders provide across various game genres, and obvs this doesnt apply in all scenarios, but to generally say 'modders will fix it' to deflect or ignore criticism of gaming mechanics while in an early access build doesnt do bg3 or the studio (allegedly) any favors

Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all accepting this state of the game.

I simply doubt the Devs will fix it.

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While we're on the topic of mods, how moddable is DOS2? Are we talking Never Winter Nights level or Skyrim? Will BG3 be as moddable as those games?

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Originally Posted by Topgoon
Originally Posted by daMichi
Originally Posted by Lunar Dante
Originally Posted by Sharp
Can the argument, "but this is fun" please die in a fire somewhere and never come back. In case people are not aware, fun is entirely subjective. I hate MOBAs and FPS. Last I checked those are both very popular game genres. I would bet most of the people playing them, are having a lot of fun, despite my hatred of the genre. Some people enjoy stabbing themselves. I am sure that the majority of us do not. "Fun," is not an argument for anything, so please lets leave it out of the thread since its not something which is objectively measurable and nor does it move the discussion anywhere.

smile
I am so happy to read that. Because, you know, it is Larian's argument. They said they do not follow d&d rules because it is more fun.
Funny, isn't it ?

I wanted to say the same thing 😁

Ehh, I'm not sure framing this like it's a formal debate between us and Larian - where both sides are required to present sound arguments - is really the correct way to look at this.

100% agree that Larian's vision for BG3 is based on their subjective definition of "more fun"

The difference is, between us and Larian, only Larian is actually making the game. If both parties are just offering subjective opinions, why the heck would Larian follow our subjective opinion over their own? Especially when we do not represent the majority of consumers.
I wouldn't be so sure. There are probably reasons they made these changes not related to, "it is fun," but I remember a comment from Chris Wilson (the lead developer of Path of Exile) about technical feedback given on Path of Exile. Keeping in mind, that is one of the games with the most interactive dev teams out there. He stated that whenever players are really upset about a lack of substantive reasoning given for a specific change or mechanical implementation, most of the time, the person responsible for that specific rule change is someone whose dev time is really important and getting them to explain why the change was made adequately to the player base, takes away an hour or two of their time which could be used better elsewhere, to actually improve the game. Furthermore, he stated that in those scenarios, most of the time, having that explanation is not going to mollify the player base even if they then know the reasons why those changes were made.

I imagine with changes to 5e, the situation is similar. There are probably reasons not related to "fun" for why those changes were made, in fact, I could even make some. I dislike the dipping mechanic for example and think that its silly and takes away from the verisimilitude of the world. A reason they may have implemented it is because martial classes have very few actions to perform in combat and so it gives them more actions to do and thereby opens them to becoming more tactical to play. I still don't think its a good change, but that is besides the point.

Anyone could write those IGN promotional articles, they don't need a high level of knowledge of the game's systemics to do so. An article which actually explained the reasoning for changes made would firstly take dev time away from those specific people responsible for those decisions and secondly, for the vast majority of the general public make for dry reading. Keep in mind, those articles are written as advertisement, they aren't written to explain decisions to the player base.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Originally Posted by dwig
Also, Solasta is fun, so claiming pure 5e isn't fun is flatly false.

+ 10,000

Right now I'm hoping that Solasta becomes such a success that its engine becomes the basis for new modules.
Keep in mind, Solasta and BG 3 have different target audiences. What is fun for one audience may not be fun for the other. Both games are in EA, but let us for a moment consider the size and scope of the 2 markets. Here are some numbers from steamspy (keeping in mind that steamspy's numbers are not 100% accurate, but we can still be somewhat confident in them).

• Solasta 20,000 - 50,000.
• Baldur's Gate 3 1,000,000 - 2,000,000.

Its blatantly obvious that the crowd of people buying the one game, is not the same as the crowd of people buying the other.

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Originally Posted by Sharp
I dislike the dipping mechanic for example and think that its silly and takes away from the verisimilitude of the world. A reason they may have implemented it is because martial classes have very few actions to perform in combat and so it gives them more actions to do and thereby opens them to becoming more tactical to play. I still don't think its a good change, but that is besides the point.

I agree that dipping is ridiculous and that you’ve probably correctly guessed their rationale. I think they’re trying to fix problems that don’t exist though because the game is incomplete or they’re not used to thinking in 5E terms. Warriors may have ‘less to do’ but some people prefer simpler characters to run. And, particularly when you get to higher levels, items can definitely give players more options. We’re constantly joking about the fighter in our Avernus campaign being the best spellcaster in the party because we’ve given him all the items with charges that he can cast from. Warriors at low levels can also get clever using items… alchemists fire, smoke grenades, oils, poisons etc. We don’t need to turn every fighter into Beric Dondarrion to make them viable.

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Keep in mind, Solasta and BG 3 have different target audiences. What is fun for one audience may not be fun for the other. Both games are in EA, but let us for a moment consider the size and scope of the 2 markets. Here are some numbers from steamspy (keeping in mind that steamspy's numbers are not 100% accurate, but we can still be somewhat confident in them).

• Solasta 20,000 - 50,000.
• Baldur's Gate 3 1,000,000 - 2,000,000.

Its blatantly obvious that the crowd of people buying the one game, is not the same as the crowd of people buying the other.

Mmmm. I attribute the high numbers to a) the Baldur's Gate name b) the D&D label c) Larian's reputation. In that order.

Tactical Adventures is unknown company making a low budget, combat-oriented, SRD game with next to zero hype around it. What's kind of amazing that is that producing such a good game with all the marks against it. Were they to get the Baldurs Gate 4 contract I think the numbers would be comparable.

Don't get me wrong -- BG3 is better in some respects like story and roleplay but Solasta excels in term combat. Best fight in BG3 is the hag fight because it's creative (illusions, alignment-related dialogues, advances a quest) *and* because it doesn't take any homebrew rules to win. No barrels, king of the hill, surfaces or dipping required to finish this one. That quest makes the game imo.

Compare that to the mud mephit fight which is another surface / king of the hill fight. The ancient tree quest feels like a toned down version of DOS2 battle. Not as good as DOS2 and not D&D either.

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Originally Posted by LukasPrism
Originally Posted by Sharp
I dislike the dipping mechanic for example and think that its silly and takes away from the verisimilitude of the world. A reason they may have implemented it is because martial classes have very few actions to perform in combat and so it gives them more actions to do and thereby opens them to becoming more tactical to play. I still don't think its a good change, but that is besides the point.

I agree that dipping is ridiculous and that you’ve probably correctly guessed their rationale. I think they’re trying to fix problems that don’t exist though because the game is incomplete or they’re not used to thinking in 5E terms. Warriors may have ‘less to do’ but some people prefer simpler characters to run. And, particularly when you get to higher levels, items can definitely give players more options. We’re constantly joking about the fighter in our Avernus campaign being the best spellcaster in the party because we’ve given him all the items with charges that he can cast from. Warriors at low levels can also get clever using items… alchemists fire, smoke grenades, oils, poisons etc. We don’t need to turn every fighter into Beric Dondarrion to make them viable.

Agreed. It also replaces the martial cantrips like green flame blade -- candles shouldn't compete with class features. What's the point of having a Beric Dondarrian like class if anyone with a candle can replicate the effect?

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Keeping in mind, this is speculation on both of our parts since neither of us have the market data available to companies like Larian or Bioware.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Mmmm. I attribute the high numbers to a) the Baldur's Gate name
Most gamers today likely do not even know what Baldur's Gate even is, in terms of name recognition, I would say it ranks fairly low. Still one of my all time favorite games, but if I asked someone on the street what is Baldur's Gate they would probably think its a geographic location vs if I asked them what is Diablo, there is a chance they would correctly state that it is a game. Even if you polled people exclusively who play games, you probably won't see much in the way of name recognition. Baldur's Gate does have a cult following, but its important to recognize it is just that... A cult following. It isn't a high level of brand awareness.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
b) the D&D label
The market for D&D products is at most (taking the most positive number I have seen posted anywhere) 30m, more realistically 10m and pessimistically something like 2m for currently released products. Of this market, there will be some overlap (but not 100% overlap) with people who buy video games as opposed to buying tabletop products. In contrast, the market for video games is something like 300m+ people who are actively purchasing games. Video games is one of the top 5 largest markets for entertainment in the world and its fast climbing that list. Skyrim sold over 30m copies. There is a larger market for Elder Scrolls Games than for D&D as a whole.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
c) Larian's reputation.
Probably does come into play to some extent. I wouldn't say that its as known as EA or Bethesda, but it is definitely more well known than Tactical Adventures.

I would attribute the sales to the following.

1. Marketing. Larian has heavily marketed the game pretty much everywhere. It was the front page of steam for a while. It was a demo game in new apple tech demonstrations. Its been at large conventions. You get the idea.
2. Larian's Reputation.
3. D&D Product.

This misses the point however. The point is that, as you have correctly stated.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Tactical Adventures is unknown company making a low budget, combat-oriented, SRD game with next to zero hype around it.
As opposed to Larian, which is not an unknown company and is not making a low budget game and there is hype around it. In other words, the audience for the game is almost entirely different to the audience for Solasta. Comparing the games is an apples and bananas comparison, they are not trying to appeal to the same audience. If we took the maximum steamspy number for Tactical Adventures (50,000) and the minimum for BG 3(1,000,000) and say that 100% of the people who play solasta care about mechanics and dislike the changes made in BG 3, they would still only account for 5% of the players in BG 3. In other words, a tiny minority. Not the same market at all.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Were they to get the Baldurs Gate 4 contract I think the numbers would be comparable.
Unlikely. If you look at the sales figures for Western RPGs, most Western RPGs do not break past the 1m-2m sales figures range. Pretty much the only exceptions to this are the games made by 4 companies. Bethesda, Bioware, CDPR and now Larian with D:OS 2. If you look at the games in particular which sold that much, you will notice none of them are particularly mechanically complex. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are also not the only D&D games produced, there are others and we can look at how many copies they sold. Neverwinter Nights, which was also made by Bioware (so it had company recognition as it was by the company which made BG), sold ~2.6m copies and was about as Faithful to the edition as the BG games were. NWN 2 was unfortunately delisted on steam at some point and so its sales figures are not reliable, but given the history of obsidian, its safe to assume it did not sell more than NWN 1. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is also in the 1m-2m sales figures range. All of these games were games which had brand recognition for some existing IP and none of them surpassed the sales of D:OS 2.

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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Originally Posted by LukasPrism
We don’t need to turn every fighter into Beric Dondarrion to make them viable.

Agreed. It also replaces the martial cantrips like green flame blade -- candles shouldn't compete with class features. What's the point of having a Beric Dondarrian like class if anyone with a candle can replicate the effect?
+1 lol - love these references and makes me want to roll a revenant with beric dondarrion inspiration - maybe bg3 race dlc? altho idk how larian would implement those racial features given the current ea build.

i also agree with the overall sentiment regarding dipping and to a lesser extent the number of consumables/throwables - i think there are too many/plentiful non-hp like potions/throwable items, which really is moreso a critique of the inventory clutter/loot bloat ive experienced in ea, as i do think having these potion options are important. i just wish they were a more rare and thereby increasing their overall impact upon use, but the abundance may also just be an ea feature

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Most gamers today likely do not even know what Baldur's Gate even is, in terms of name recognition, I would say it ranks fairly low.

It's mistake to assume that BG only appeals to gamers.

We can see a pretty clear pattern with Beamdog and Larian -- sales dramatically exceed expectations when the D&D label is used. This is because D&D draws in people who don't identify as gamers. I'm not a gamer, I'm a casual. I have zero interest in playing Witcher or Cyberpunk. (heresy altert) But slap those two D's on a game and: < shut up and take my money meme>

Again, with Beamdog, one of big mistakes they made was only using gamers as beta testers. But the first version of the EEs didn't work on integrated graphics cards -- because what gamer in their right mind uses integrated graphics, right? They lost nearly a year of momentum and undisclosed numbers of refunds because they falsely assumed their audience was limited to the gaming community.
(not trying to bash at all, it's just missteps made on false assumptions are instructive)

Or go to comic con and look a the number of cosplayers, go to any D&D tournament and your will see Baldur's Gate references. You will find Baldur's Gate fans a comic conventions, cosplaye events and, of course at table top tournaments -- it's a Big Tent.

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In contrast, the market for video games is something like 300m+ people who are actively purchasing games.

Of that number we would need to separate fans of shooters and the like from the RPG fans. I'd estimate the number of RPG gamers who had never heard of D&D at about 5 percent or so? And let's also take the growth of DnD interest into account -- compare the sales numbers by years and you will have pretty impressive stonks chart.

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Originally Posted by Sharp
Keeping in mind, this is speculation on both of our parts since neither of us have the market data available to companies like Larian or Bioware.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Mmmm. I attribute the high numbers to a) the Baldur's Gate name
Most gamers today likely do not even know what Baldur's Gate even is, in terms of name recognition, I would say it ranks fairly low.

If this was the case, they wouldn't have named the game Baldur's Gate III


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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
It's mistake to assume that BG only appeals to gamers.
Fortunately I started that paragraph with the general public, not just gamers. Ask someone if they know what Apple is, they absolutely do. Ask them if they know about the Fifa games, they probably do. Ask them if they have heard of Diablo or Skyrim, less likely than Fifa, but there is still probably some awareness. D&D? I would hazard a guess and say the entire brand of D&D has about as much brand awareness as the Elder Scrolls games. Yes, you heard me, the entire of D&D. Baldur's Gate specifically? Its pretty much just something that is obscure.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
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Most gamers today likely do not even know what Baldur's Gate even is, in terms of name recognition, I would say it ranks fairly low.
We can see a pretty clear pattern with Beamdog and Larian -- sales dramatically exceed expectations when the D&D label is used.
In the case of Larian, that was clear marketing bullshit. They knew what they were doing when they spent that much money on advertising. How many games get to be the banner image of steam, or the demonstration for the release of a flagship apple product? They knew they were going to appeal to a much wider audience, because they were marketing on such a huge scale. That 1-2m sales of the EA I would be willing to bet was almost entirely due to this. Now here is the question, of those 1-2m people who bought the game, how many would have bought it without that viral advertising. Just a guess, but I would bet significantly less, regardless of the "D&D" name being there. Beamdog's sales numbers are not even in the same ballparks as Larians, so its not a useful comparison at all.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Again, with Beamdog, one of big mistakes they made was only using gamers as beta testers. But the first version of the EEs didn't work on integrated graphics cards -- because what gamer in their right mind uses integrated graphics, right? They lost nearly a year of momentum and undisclosed numbers of refunds because they falsely assumed their audience was limited to the gaming community.
(not trying to bash at all, it's just missteps made on false assumptions are instructive)
Beamdog was very clearly not marketing to the same audience and at no point was it marketing at the same scale. The only people who would have heard of these games, are people with a vested interest already. When the EA went live, it was most viewed game on Twitch. People I know, who don't play games at all, were talking about BG 3 because they saw it on tech demonstrations, where they were only there for the tech. You can bet that people who are completely unfamiliar with D&D are playing BG 3 and probably a lot of them, I would guess the majority, because that was just how much the game was advertised.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Or go to comic con and look a the number of cosplayers, go to any D&D tournament and your will see Baldur's Gate references. You will find Baldur's Gate fans a comic conventions, cosplaye events and, of course at table top tournaments -- it's a Big Tent.
No, its only a big tent when you look at it in the context of your "world view." If you ask people outside of those conventions if they have ever heard of BG, most of the time, the answer you will get is no. Look at the size of the cult followings for games like league of legends, or Dota or minecraft. Even if you stick to fantasy specifically, D&D is small relative to the big boys. The most valuable fantasy franchise in the world is Pokemon and its worth roughly 10x as much as WotC. Lord of the Rings is worth roughly twice WotC, not just D&D. Those franchise's are so popular that their merchandise is like a plague, you can find it everywhere.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Of that number we would need to separate fans of shooters and the like from the RPG fans. I'd estimate the number of RPG gamers who had never heard of D&D at about 5 percent or so? And let's also take the growth of DnD interest into account -- compare the sales numbers by years and you will have pretty impressive stonks chart.
Separation helps when you do not have viral advertising, because the people who are actively interested in the type of product you produce are likely to actively seek it out. In the case of a game which is advertised on a mass market level, it helps to a lesser extent. Lets say that (hypothetical situation here) there are 1m dedicated RPG fans who will buy pretty much every RPG that is released and actively look for RPGs. Lets say a new RPG comes out which isn't marketed well and they all buy it, so 100% of the RPG market buys it. In contrast, lets say there is another RPG which is released, which does things that dissatisfies people who like RPGs and so only 10% of them buy it. At the same time however, this RPG is mass marketed and over 100m people see an advertisement for it. Of that 100m, 5% decide to try it on a whim. This game has sold far more, simply by virtue of advertising to a larger audience.
Originally Posted by Dexai
Originally Posted by Sharp
Keeping in mind, this is speculation on both of our parts since neither of us have the market data available to companies like Larian or Bioware.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Mmmm. I attribute the high numbers to a) the Baldur's Gate name
Most gamers today likely do not even know what Baldur's Gate even is, in terms of name recognition, I would say it ranks fairly low.

If this was the case, they wouldn't have named the game Baldur's Gate III
Thats assuming there is only 1 reason to name a game Baldur's Gate III. There isn't. You could be a fan of a series and want to make your own sequel to it. WotC could also have a contractural obligation requiring them to use the name. We could also look at another example where something similar happened - Fallout 3. Fallout 1 and 2 had a cult following which was very disappointed (rightfully so imo) with Bethesda's sequel to the fallout games. But you can bet that Bethesda wasn't the underdog in that situation trying to make money off of name recognition, they were the much bigger company.

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No, its only a big tent when you look at it in the context of your "world view."

We'll that's all we have, right? If you have somehow managed the trick of seeing things from the the view from nowhere then congrats, you got me beat. But I don't either of have access to purely objective pov, we're both trapped in our worldview.

As @Dexi says there was a reason so many companies for competing for the rights to the Baldur's Gate name.

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If you ask people outside of those conventions if they have ever heard of BG, most of the time, the answer you will get is no.

Only from your "world view" :p I think people interested in minecraft and pokemon are pretty different from the people interested in DOS or BG. Probably some Dota overlap. Sure LOTR is the grandpa of all fantasy settings but I'm not buying that it's the one IP to rule them all, so much of Tolkien's world shows up in Faerun . . .

@nation

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love these references and makes me want to roll a revenant with beric dondarrion inspiration

Nice smile If they implement it and remove dipping I will definitely run a spellblade at some point. Agreed on all issues.

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To suggest D&D and Baldur's Gate, the name, are not massive draws within the Fantasy/CRPG space, is bordering on insulting to the whole conversation.

Anyone, literally anyone, who play's CRPG's, knows Baldur's Gate.

What a farce of a conversation.

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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
As @Dexi says there was a reason so many companies for competing for the rights to the Baldur's Gate name.
Whilst its not possible to view things from an objective perspective, you can contextualize them within a better framework (I will admit, my wording in the previous quote there was a bit bad). If you only look at D&D within the context of the direct fandom, its the only world you will ever see and so it will appear to encompass everything. But even as a fan of something, where you only personally remain within that community, its possible to "broaden your horizons" by finding metrics or measuring sticks. Hence why I brought up other brands as references. They give you a measuring stick to compare with. Another example I could use is the world. Its huge right? Its all we know and interact with. And yet for scale, this is what we know about the size of the observable universe.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
As @Dexi says there was a reason so many companies for competing for the rights to the Baldur's Gate name.
And there was a reason why all of the others got turned down. You know what that reason was? Money. WotC wanted a game to advertise D&D, not the other way around. They didn't want D&D to advertise a game. Obsidian outright said they didn't get the rights to BG 3 because their publisher at the time didn't have the money for it and so the deal fell through. Sure, there will be some people who play BG 3 because it is BG 3, but the majority of the people who play BG 3 will play it because of mass marketing and not because of the brand, just like Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is actually a very good example of this. Most people now who are aware of the Fallout IP know nothing about Fallout 1 or 2, despite them being the origin of the series. Bethesda's recreation of Fallout effectively "killed" the original image created by Interplay. I would not be surprised if, within 5 to 10 years, the idea of what "Baldur's Gate" is, will have been completely replaced with Larian's new game. The image that you or I have of Baldur's Gate will be completely at odds with what the mainstream media thinks it is, because that is what is probably going to happen.

For WotC, this is not about making a faithful D&D game, its about creating brand awareness within a different market space. If you honestly believe WotC cares 1 whit about faithfulness to rules and not about their bottom line, then let me please point you to Sword Coast Legends or Neverwinter (the mmo). The OGL alone should tell you what they care about, because its not the rules. The rules are not the IP that matters to them, its the setting that makes them money.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
[quote]
Only from your "world view" :p I think people interested in minecraft and pokemon are pretty different from the people interested in DOS or BG. Probably some Dota overlap.
The fact that the people who enjoy minecraft or pokemon are different to the people who enjoy BG or D:OS points out something obvious. If you are trying to market your game towards that larger audience (which, given Larian's marketing tactics, they obviously do), it means you are going to need to make adjustments to your game in order to make it more appealing towards that audience. Which is again, why Solasta and BG 3 are not an apples to apples comparison. Solasta is not trying to appeal to a broader audience, BG 3 most definitely is.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Sure LOTR is the grandpa of all fantasy settings but I'm not buying that it's the one IP to rule them all, so much of Tolkien's world shows up in Faerun . . .
I picked LotR only because its likely you would recognize it, but its also actually not very high up on the list. There are plenty of other Fantasy series between LotR and Pokemon when it comes to generating revenue. In terms of brand awareness, think about how pervasive the merchandise for a brand is and that should give you some idea of just how valuable the brand is. Things which are basically household names are the "kings" when it comes to popularity and D&D is just not up there. Harry Potter, Micky Mouse and other brands like this are up near the top. The average person on the street knows their name. By contrast if you polled a random sample of 100 people, I would guess that only at most 1 or 2 would know what D&D is.
Originally Posted by Scribe
To suggest D&D and Baldur's Gate, the name, are not massive draws within the Fantasy/CRPG space, is bordering on insulting to the whole conversation.
Baldur's Gate came out in 1998. There are people alive now, who were born after the game came out, who are old enough to drink. I would be willing to bet that the majority of people who play RPGs, have not played BG and many people (probably also the majority) have not even heard of it and that is just if we are discussing CRPGs. If we broaden it to fantasy as a whole and not just games, BG might as well not exist, because its influence is negligible next to the likes of Pratchett, Sanderson or the many other fantasy authors who have a huge influence on the genre.
Originally Posted by Scribe
Anyone, literally anyone, who play's CRPG's, knows Baldur's Gate.

What a farce of a conversation.
The great thing about absolute statements is that they are very easy to disprove. A good friend of mine that I met 5 years ago, who is an avid fan of RPGs, had never heard of BG until BG 3 came out. Sure they had played most RPGs post 2006ish, but anything before that point in time was lost in the mists of time to them.

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Sure.

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Nice website. Sure, if you want to make the case that we can ask the question in ways that allows to gather data I'm fine with that. "Have you heard of the Baldur's Gate video game" is a questions that could produce data with a certain degree of objectivity. I'm just saying we are having a conversation without such data available to us so we're just imagining ways to interpret the evidence we have.

Your point is that BG is a 20 year old game / DnD is a game from the 70s and people don't know about 20 year video games much less 50 year old table top games unless you are part of niche market. I also think you are saying that because I played the original that my perspective is skewed. Am I right?

I'm saying that there are somethings before my time that have become well known. Canonical. Part of geek culture. I know about Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Metropolis, Dracula, Frankenstein, the creature from the Black Lagoon, Spaceballs and a whole list of things are that before my time because they have become part of the culture. I think as many people know about DnD as know about Star Wars. I think more people know about Baldur's Gate than know about Fallout.

And I get that's just, like, my opinion man but without data what else do we have? smile

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Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Your point is that BG is a 20 year old game / DnD is a game from the 70s and people don't know about 20 year video games much less 50 year old table top games unless you are part of niche market. I also think you are saying that because I played the original that my perspective is skewed. Am I right?
No, I am not saying that, otherwise I would include myself in that particular skew given I also played those games. I am saying that because you are likely part of communities where D&D is a part of the sub culture, your perspective is skewed. Mine is probably skewed in the other direction, given that I live somewhere on the continent of Africa and I am pretty much the only person I know IRL who even remotely interacts with this kind of media. The only way I can interact with people who have similar interests is...online. If you were to do a survey in my local community, I would probably be the only person who has ever even heard of D&D. The big brands however, are still here. You can still find merchandise for Star Wars, or Mickey Mouse.
Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
I'm saying that there are somethings before my time that have become well known. Canonical. Part of geek culture. I know about Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Metropolis, Dracula, Frankenstein, the creature from the Black Lagoon, Spaceballs and a whole list of things are that before my time because they have become part of the culture. I think as many people know about DnD as know about Star Wars. I think more people know about Baldur's Gate than know about Fallout.

And I get that's just, like, my opinion man but without data what else do we have? smile
Whilst some things may be a "part of geek sub cultures" they aren't all equal. We can almost certainly say that D&D is not equal to Star Wars in terms of brand awareness, given that Star Wars is valued at close to 70 Billion and WotC (not D&D, the entire of WotC including MtG) is valued at close to 10 billion.

Here is another interesting chart to look at. It shows the interest on Google over time in various search terms. Baldur's Gate does not even show on the chart thats how low the interest is in comparison. I would like to note that this is a very inaccurate method of comparing interesting in topics as some topics will have much higher online interest than real life interest (I specifically included World of Warcraft there to illustrate this), but it is still interesting to look at.

Last edited by Sharp; 12/02/21 05:05 AM.
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I don't know if it's fair to compare games to WoW in terms of google searches. WoW is Wow. If data went back to the 90's I'm sure we would see peaks for Baldur's Gate then.

Trends that are interesting to see.

Last edited by DragonSnooz; 12/02/21 05:38 AM.
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Originally Posted by DragonSnooz
I don't know if it's fair to compare games to WoW in terms of google searches. WoW is Wow.

Trends that are interesting to see.
I included WoW specifically to show some of the issues with this method of comparison, namely that some things will have much higher online interest than interest in real life and that for some particular topics, if you are interested in the topic, you will need to google the topic a lot. WoW is an example of both of these. If you play the game, you will need to spend a lot of time referring to articles and videos created by many different people on multiple websites and thus this will result in more than just a single search query. Minecraft would be another example of a game like this, as Minecraft is essentially a wiki game where almost all the information required to play is located on the wiki.

WoW is almost certainly not as big as Star Wars, despite appearing as such on that graphic. In the link you included btw, all the searches for BG 3 are included in the BG topic.

Last edited by Sharp; 12/02/21 05:43 AM.
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