Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General RIP the patch every 2 weeks

so as long as the mass of casuals is happy, keep doing what you're doing? that seems just as ridiculous as pandering to the vocal minority. there's a reason pop music is popular, that doesn't mean I have to just say "oh well, you don't want to pander to the vocal (entitled) minority *shrug*"

I agree with the TV Tropes quote. My experience has been much different than the most unsatisfied people on this forum. I'm admittedly newer to DnD but I'm now DMing my first campaign (and having a blast!) and my friends have been playing DnD for years. I started playing BG3 after playing DnD for a bit and it got me sooo much more excited to play pnp with my friends. I actually got some of my friends to play BG3 after hyping it up for them, and they really enjoyed it. I share some of the same concerns as other posters here, namely with disengage / jump and backstab and high ground being a bit OP, and wanting the UI to improve, but my overall experience has not been deeply negative. None of my friends have said they disliked the game or the combat. The biggest criticism I've heard from them is that the AI is kinda dumb right now and the game isn't totally polished yet.

Call us filthy casuals if you want, but I'm having fun, my friends enjoyed playing it, and from what I can tell no one was super angry while playing because things weren't a certain way. They plan to pick it up again when it releases for reals. I would rather the game appeal to a wider audience and inspire more people to play the genre. I've gotten much more into DnD as a result, which I'm sure WoTC wants to see. Now I'm thinking about playing games like Solasta, not so I can rip apart BG3 but because I enjoyed BG3 so maybe I would enjoy that as well. The playerbase should welcome that kind of response... I've played plenty of games that did one thing or another better than some other game in the same genre, but that wouldn't kill the experience for me completely and drive me to rage on forums.


Yeah? Musicians can pander to whoever they want... If that happens to be the people who like pop music then... so what?

About pandering to fans:

First, I think this isn't as cut and dry as some of you think it is. Without delving too much into death of the author, there are many cases in which ignoring your fanbase completely may lead to disastrous results (star wars prequels hi), but the opposite is also true (check out the development process of final fantasy XV).

I think that the bigger the community, the harder it is to please everyone, and I don't think this is a controversial statement. As such, I understand how it would be difficult for Larian to be attentive to fans and open to make changes. However, Larian did much to provide fans framework for providing feedback, from the form in the game luncher to this forum. I think it is silly to give us so many tools for providing feedback and than completely ignoring it.

In addition, like I said, the problem isn't the fact that Larian don't want to change things and prefers to keep to its roadmap. The problem is this entire facade of listening to feedback and building the game together with the fans.

Nah, it's a bunch of hollow generalizations and "truisms" that sound somewhat smart without having any strong basis in reality or being backed by any meaningful evidence.

The assumption is always been that it's important to pander to the casual audience, but in reality the only thing the "casual audience" cares about is having something that looks good.
On basically any other metric their opinion is pretty much irrelevant on the popularity of the game, mostly because they hardly have strong opinions to begin with. Give them whatever and they will stick with it for a while, then their attention will fleet somewhere else. And that's true regardless of how "hardcore" or "piss easy" the game will be, for the most part.

I also want to add that all of that is fine if that's what you're going for. But I was under the impression Larian wants to make a new RPG legend, not a kind of fun game we'll forget about a month after it's release

Yeah but that is a pretty large assumption consider DOS2 was release in 2017 and still is going strong. Personally, I will hold my overall judgement of the game for the final version after launch. The irony of it all is, there is more of a chance that a game like Solasta from a small studio would be forgotten a month after launch than a AAA game by an established studio. But then again, maybe Solasta will pick up the reigns, and push out an even better expansion. Or it could flounder and die out in 6 months. None of us know that, and none of us know what he success of BG3 will be (although with name recognition I think it is less of a chance as well).

We'll see

Well, I mostly listen to Progressive Rock, and that's clearly not mainstream.

But at some times, I thoroughly enjoy the occational pop song ... When I feel especially good, that is.

Not everything needs to be heavy. A lemonade or a candy can brighten up the day, too !

Well that's the argument isn't it? Is BG3 should be the new shining beacon of video game RPG or a fun forgettable ride?

Pretty much. Most don't like to rock the boat until it's too late. Hindsight is always 20/20, as with all of the problems stemming from the armor system directly encouraging absurd end-game stat bloat in DOS2. And I wasn't someone who took place in DOS2's EA where by all accounts people raised the alarm constantly, and yet this was still something I noticed on my own as I played through DOS2 for the first time several months after the fact.

'X works because I like it' isn't exactly a compelling counter-argument to people with actual concerns based on analysis and foresight.

Right now it still feels like a fun forgettable ride. Of course a lot can change with a patch or two.

As I look at the mega-threads most complaints seem like logical ideas that casual gamers would enjoy too. Improved party controls & UI with asking for less superfluous advantage/disadvantage from verticality/backstab.

Would casual gamers have a preference between RTwP or Turn-based? No.
Would casual gamers have a preference between a party of four versus six? No.

Even if a situation has a vocal minority, it should still be considered if their opinions are valid. Most consumers don't give feedback to the point where 3% responding to a survey is considered a win.

As as others have said casual gamers usually care about the glitz and the glam, which Baldur's Gate 3 has already done well with. So far Baldur's Gate 3 has mass-appeal with little to entice long-term fans of RPGs. I don't think it's too much to ask Larian to change a few things to keep long-term RPG fans happy.

Considering the state of E3 last year, and it being just web broadcast this year, why would ANY studio waste their time with it? They are better off marketing their own products. I am really curious to see what the actual participation numbers of this years E3 are going to be. Honestly, I think it is going to tank. Part of its draw was the "convention" setting, that is why developers paid so much to be a part of it. For the energy that drove word of mouth. I mean do you remember the old days when it was huge and stations like techTV had Olivia Munn broadcasting it? Now, at least for the last 2-3 years it has been just meh.

Realistically, it's going to see bigger numbers this year because people really didn't like the slow drip nature of the announcements spread out across all of last Summer.

Not to mention there's a lot of stuff that has leaked out since that people are excited to see, like Dragon's Dogma 2, our first actual look at FFXVI, and a rumored unannounced higher budget FF spinoff game based on FFI. There's a lot more going on than just cRPGs.

According to these, E3 has been declining since 2017:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/e3-media-attendance-and-coverage-is-declining-study-finds/

https://kevin-velazquez.medium.com/the-apparent-decline-of-e3-1061a7447e3f

https://gamedaily.biz/article/1441/...as-down-by-39-compared-to-2017-evolve-pr

What if we try a different approach? Larian, don't you dare release something this week!

Reverse psychology? Let's give it a whirl...

Yeah Larian, I've still got DA:Inquisition to finish before Patch 5... yep I never finished the original game 7 years ago... don't you derail me now and lure me back into BG3 with your siren song! :P

Wow. And Corypheus hasn't managed to take over the world yet? He really is a pathetic villain.

Well I've been playing EDF 5 with a little BG3 on the side, so I'm in no hurry. Please Larian, no updates for a while

This is right, but there is a reason why the term "vocal minority" in gaming exists. Some people just behave the elitist way, and try to badmouth or silence to death the opinions of others who are not pert of "their" niche.

What I mean is this . If everyone would behave in a civil way, then things would be better.
But some try to dominate.

Some of the worse examples for that are so-called "closed circle discussions", which feel like "forums PvP". In these discussion, it is no more important to exchange opinions. No, in these discussions the only "goal" the participants have is, to dominate everyone else by pushing the own opinion through. This can result (and often does) in a discussion between two or three, maybe four elitists, who are forcefully ignoring everyone else who posts something in that discussion.
You can very clearly see that it is a "closed circle discussion" by these few participants only quoting thmselves; and never ever someone from the outside, never ever someone whom they believe not to be "part of the discussion", read : Part of the closed circle.

Generally speaking, I'm also not sure why there's this ongoing assumption/narrative that history is decided by the silent majority.
That has never been the case. History has always been driven by organized minorities who put their effort in leading around inert masses where they wanted them.
The silent majorities are often silent because they don't have very much to say to begin with. That, and/or they just don't care. Which doesn't change much in practical terms.