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Originally Posted by InkTide
A lot of game devs meet player feedback with the preconception that their personal thoughts on game systems override those of players, because "they aren't making the game, so their feedback is worth less than those who do", and as a result many feel justifying their changes is unnecessary. This is, for obvious reasons, entirely missing the point of player feedback and a very unhealthy stance to take with your community (it practically guarantees an increase in hostile player feedback because cordial feedback is ignored, for one).

This often manifests in a general unwillingness to communicate,

That's an awful lot of generalisation and assumptions, right there. frown


Originally Posted by InkTide
which is compounded by unwillingness that is artificially created by things like employee NDAs/non-compete contracts. There are a lot of unfortunate pressures within a corporation working against actually responding to and considering feedback.

NDAs an corporate bureaucracy is probably closer to the truth - for many businesses anyway.
My workplace is also all very secret-squirrel for absolutely no reason, which doesn't make for a good working environment when you're not even allowed to talk to members of a different team serving the same end customer, you have to go through Management to get your message through and then answered. I really hope Larian is not like this.


Originally Posted by InkTide
Larian's obsession with telemetry suggests to me that those pressures have won out in their internal corporate culture, and they resort to anonymous data gathering as the primary/solitary source of 'feedback' they actually consider, but the early access model requires at least a veneer of accepting feedback because part of what you're selling is player involvement in the development process (whether you officially admit it or not). Protip, Larian: telemetry alone is not feedback - collecting all the stats in the game tells you almost nothing useful if the game those stats were collected from is incomplete. Collecting stats from your existing incomplete product is, however, an extremely effective way to create the delusion that simply regurgitating statistically meaningless stats from a deeply unfinished project counts as 'listening to players', and anyone who verbally disagrees with your decisions is 'just a troll' or 'doesn't understand the game'.

Well, I am very much looking forward to that community update they promised, which is supposed to go more in depth about exactly this. I'd very much like to know more details so will withhold judgment.
However, we can't just dismiss telemetry and data out of hand - as someone else on the forums also recently pointed out, it is largely the same crowd of people who come to the forums every day to participate in discussions. The opinions of the most active/vocal forum members may not represent the opinions of the rest of the thousands of players of this game who might never come to the forums to make a comment... they play the game, enjoy it, and that's it. And I am glad they do have telemetry and data feeding back to them from the game as we all play it, as this is pretty amazing technology really. The main thing that I'd like to know is how do they interpret that data. And that's why I'm looking forward to the update... soon(TM). sigh.


Originally Posted by InkTide
in order to have an effective Early Access phase, you need to be able to communicate well.

100% agree with that bit.

Last edited by Alexandrite; 01/06/21 04:32 AM.
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Originally Posted by Alexandrite
Originally Posted by The Composer
Yes please! Am I right to assume that's a fair example of how people would generally want more of from Larian? I mean, the type of responses. I'm not asking you specifically, Bobla, I already assume that's the case. But I'd love to get a verification from others, just so I can build a case and point to it for reference.

Yes, please - if you're able to whisper in Larian's ears at all, please please relay to them how deafening their silence is to their devoted player base.

Just some kind of contact - a tease here, a tweet there, a "we're working on something really cool, stay tuned" - and then a follow up with something, anything at all. It has been almost 3 weeks since they last promised a community update (last hotfix according to SteamDB was 19 days ago, so coming up to 3 weeks) and no community update has materialised as yet. If they've had another flood, or programming bugs that are difficult to squash, or they've run into any kind of difficulty, we'd still love to know what is happening. I'm sure anyone who's ever touched a computer knows how difficult programming bugs can be, so they would find more sympathy here than derision. If COVID has impacted on their plans or delayed things, again we'd understand, there's still a global pandemic going on - or perhaps, we'd love to hear about how they are overcoming those challenges.

I understand they may have NDAs that they cannot break or reveal details until Big Patch Reveal time comes, but no one here is asking for details or spoilers - just some contact, any at all.

Yes I couldn't agree more with this post!

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Originally Posted by Alexandrite
Originally Posted by The Composer
Yes please! Am I right to assume that's a fair example of how people would generally want more of from Larian? I mean, the type of responses. I'm not asking you specifically, Bobla, I already assume that's the case. But I'd love to get a verification from others, just so I can build a case and point to it for reference.
Yes, please - if you're able to whisper in Larian's ears at all, please please relay to them how deafening their silence is to their devoted player base.

Just some kind of contact - a tease here, a tweet there, a "we're working on something really cool, stay tuned" - and then a follow up with something, anything at all. It has been almost 3 weeks since they last promised a community update (last hotfix according to SteamDB was 19 days ago, so coming up to 3 weeks) and no community update has materialised as yet. If they've had another flood, or programming bugs that are difficult to squash, or they've run into any kind of difficulty, we'd still love to know what is happening. I'm sure anyone who's ever touched a computer knows how difficult programming bugs can be, so they would find more sympathy here than derision. If COVID has impacted on their plans or delayed things, again we'd understand, there's still a global pandemic going on - or perhaps, we'd love to hear about how they are overcoming those challenges.

I understand they may have NDAs that they cannot break or reveal details until Big Patch Reveal time comes, but no one here is asking for details or spoilers - just some contact, any at all.
Agreed ...
Or if they feel like it, AMA is also quite popular method of comunication. :P

I remember there was one last year ...
Maybe we should repeat that sometimes? O:)


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Originally Posted by Alexandrite
Originally Posted by InkTide
Larian's obsession with telemetry suggests to me that those pressures have won out in their internal corporate culture, and they resort to anonymous data gathering as the primary/solitary source of 'feedback' they actually consider, but the early access model requires at least a veneer of accepting feedback because part of what you're selling is player involvement in the development process (whether you officially admit it or not). Protip, Larian: telemetry alone is not feedback - collecting all the stats in the game tells you almost nothing useful if the game those stats were collected from is incomplete. Collecting stats from your existing incomplete product is, however, an extremely effective way to create the delusion that simply regurgitating statistically meaningless stats from a deeply unfinished project counts as 'listening to players', and anyone who verbally disagrees with your decisions is 'just a troll' or 'doesn't understand the game'.

Well, I am very much looking forward to that community update they promised, which is supposed to go more in depth about exactly this. I'd very much like to know more details so will withhold judgment.
However, we can't just dismiss telemetry and data out of hand - as someone else on the forums also recently pointed out, it is largely the same crowd of people who come to the forums every day to participate in discussions. The opinions of the most active/vocal forum members may not represent the opinions of the rest of the thousands of players of this game who might never come to the forums to make a comment... they play the game, enjoy it, and that's it. And I am glad they do have telemetry and data feeding back to them from the game as we all play it, as this is pretty amazing technology really. The main thing that I'd like to know is how do they interpret that data. And that's why I'm looking forward to the update... soon(TM). sigh.

I think the "how" was what Ink was pointing at.

We already discussed this but in an interview Swen said that "you cant sell bless" to players. I'm close to sure that their telemetry will show that many players just don't use bless, or faery fire to give another exemple.
Is that because those spells aren't interresting at all ? is that because the game makes them uninterresting ? Is that because players don"t know what those spells can be usefull for ? That's questions telemetry cannot give any answer.

I think these data can be very valuable especially when they explained a few monhes ago that they use them to understand if the hidden area are not "too hidden".
Or to see if players are playing the story as intended, if there are issues and so on... But a lot of these data could mean very different things to different people when you're talking about the mechanics and that's really dangerous according to me.

The game's balance (difficulty, mechanics,...) is a real problem in the game and looking at "where players dies more often" won't help to understand that.
To understand that you have to play the game a lot, really learn how it works and probably play the game in a solo playthrough. I'm not sure anything else than player's feedback can be valuable in that case.

But yea, let's wait to read them "soon" to have more details smile

Originally Posted by Alexandrite
Originally Posted by The Composer
Yes please! Am I right to assume that's a fair example of how people would generally want more of from Larian? I mean, the type of responses. I'm not asking you specifically, Bobla, I already assume that's the case. But I'd love to get a verification from others, just so I can build a case and point to it for reference.

Yes, please - if you're able to whisper in Larian's ears at all, please please relay to them how deafening their silence is to their devoted player base.

Just some kind of contact - a tease here, a tweet there, a "we're working on something really cool, stay tuned" - and then a follow up with something, anything at all. It has been almost 3 weeks since they last promised a community update (last hotfix according to SteamDB was 19 days ago, so coming up to 3 weeks) and no community update has materialised as yet. If they've had another flood, or programming bugs that are difficult to squash, or they've run into any kind of difficulty, we'd still love to know what is happening. I'm sure anyone who's ever touched a computer knows how difficult programming bugs can be, so they would find more sympathy here than derision. If COVID has impacted on their plans or delayed things, again we'd understand, there's still a global pandemic going on - or perhaps, we'd love to hear about how they are overcoming those challenges.

I understand they may have NDAs that they cannot break or reveal details until Big Patch Reveal time comes, but no one here is asking for details or spoilers - just some contact, any at all.

Huge +1 for me too.

Last edited by Maximuuus; 01/06/21 08:36 AM.

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Originally Posted by <Redacted>
<Redacted>

They could probably answer a lot of questions but there's a lot of things we can imagine they don't want to / can talk about.

- when a specific class will be released
- how specific spells will be implemented
- how many companions or races will there be in the end
- which mechanic they plan to rework
-...

The game is still in developpment. COVID don't help and they probably have a lot of things to discuss / adjust / rework / ...
They probably also have more money than intended so maybe they have to discuss about new features and so on.

Keep in mind that the game is probably in early access for them too.

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Originally Posted by The Composer
Also, I'll suspend myself for making who ever makes it this far suffer with a TL;DR wall of stuff that probably could be about nine paragraphs shorter - Though I'll excuse myself with a 5 day tenure of insufferable heat and no wind. Please send help.

I could send booze, which I'm sure would help. Because I'm sensible like that. Why, yes, I am that person who forgot to drink anything but coffee and spent most of the past fortnight with a dehydration-induced migraine, why do you ask?


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There are other drinks than coffee?

Whoa.

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Not to be (always) the party pooper but I want to oppose the ongoing agreement that even just a couple of teases on twitter and some generic "We are working really hard on cool things" would be enough.
Frankly that wouldn't be particularly different from what we are getting now. And having frequent and regular but ultimately hollow statements from the studio wouldn't really be a meaningful improvement.

What I'd like to see is clear statements about their short, mid and long terms goals. Nothing too detailed, frankly. I wouldn't be asking for minute weekly reports on every single bugfix or anything of that sort.
Frankly even an update every three months (or more) would be perfectly fine as long as we can have a honest insight on what's being worked on, as far as I'm concerned.

It's more a matter of addressing broad topics in less ambiguous terms.
Examples could be:

- "There is a general agreement that controls in the game are fairly bad [and no, it's not just my personal bias, there's almost universal agreement wherever the topic comes up. Even and maybe ESPECIALLY out of this forum]. This is how we see the current state, this is what we are going to do, this is what we are NOT going to do, these are possible tentative fixes" etc.
- "People have strong opinions about these mechanical changes made to the combat. Here's where the problem lies, how we at Larian perceive the current situation, and what we will attempt to solve the matter or what we are definitely NOT going to do".
- "These specific things people are complaining about are just placeholders. Don't worry about them".
- Given that even among "causals" way more people seem to be in favor of a 6-slot party than the ones that are against it, what's the ACTUAL rationale behind the complete refuse to give the option a try for official support rather than "leaving it to modders"? A honest insight on what are the perceived challenges here could help to understand what's the obstacle to solve and what compromises can be made.

On a more generic, less "problem-solving" oriented note, examples of meaningful pointers of what's coming could be "The next update will focus on improving performances and/or introducing new content and/or changing core mechanics and/or speeding up and improving the AI and/or improving the UI in the sequent number of ways".
Also, are new races and classes coming any time soon? Are they still coming ONE at the time? IF they are coming, great, if not that's fine but it wouldn't hurt to know in advance and set expectations accordingly.

What about the level cap? Is it set in stone that it will remain at 4 as long as we will be in EA or is the 5th level and the deluge of new spells/mechanics it would introduce for testing purpose something that is being considered for future updates?

I could go on for a while, but I think I more or less made my point.
We aren't really asking to rob the developers of their working time to indulge in our constant thirst for attention, but I think there's a reasonable middle ground here that could be reached in terms of transparency.

Last edited by Tuco; 01/06/21 11:26 AM.

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3 weeks since they said community update. What kind of organization does this? 100 days since Patch 4 the next milestone.

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A Reddit AMA or a thread on this forum where they answered questions would be great. smile

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I know Larian enjoys talking about the stuff they are working on. These are people that love what they do and they are not shy about it. So I have been curious about the unusually long silence.

I am not too worried as I am sure they are burning the days and nights doing some amazing world-building but I do get excited when they have big reveals. I think there are a lot of good people here who are equally passionate about the work they do. Many of us realize this is an incredibly ambitious work - in fact - THE most ambitious project they have ever undertaken.

And this is just my opinion - based on the 800+ hours I have played, based on the all the great people I have met and hung out with in multiplayer, based on all the late night sessions when we have been laughing so hard in discord that we were tearing up, based on how much joy that this game has given me even in single player exploring different roles and endings and finding new things -and that is I think this is going to be the Game of the Decade when it is finished.

I would strongly encourage them to invest in a development diary of some sort that gets regular updates. That way we can also enjoy the journey to the finished product including the challenges and the triumphs together.


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Originally Posted by Tuco
Not to be (always) the party pooper but I want to oppose the ongoing agreement that even just a couple of teases on twitter and some generic "We are working really hard on cool things" would be enough.
Frankly that wouldn't be particularly different from what we are getting now. And having frequent and regular but ultimately hollow statements from the studio wouldn't really be a meaningful improvement.

What I'd like to see is clear statements about their short, mid and long terms goals. Nothing too detailed, frankly. I wouldn't be asking for minute weekly reports on every single bugfix or anything of that sort.
Frankly even an update every three months (or more) would be perfectly fine as long as we can have a honest insight on what's being worked on, as far as I'm concerned.
This. As far as I see it, the biggest problem I see with the way Larian studios conduct themselves is the very long silence. Look at this topic for instance. If you go to page 2 you will see a comment I made in November (!) where I was fairly optimistic and outright antagonistic towards the guy who opened this topic for being impatient. fast forward six months and his impatience don't seem so exaggerated anymore. Even if I would say Larian did occasionally communicated, they did it in a very unhelpful way, and honestly, it is somewhat even more upsetting that you wait a few months for a big list of statistic anecdotes that tell you nothing about the development process.

If Larian will reveal some of their roadmap maybe some people will lose interest when they'll discover some of their desired changes ain't gonna happen. But if they'll keep doing what they're doing, eventually people will grow bitter and annoyed. And this goes back to my previous comment to the Composer. If you treat your community like that, don't be surprised when people start to be upset and unpleasant.


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Originally Posted by Abits
If Larian will reveal some of their roadmap maybe some people will lose interest when they'll discover some of their desired changes ain't gonna happen. But if they'll keep doing what they're doing, eventually people will grow bitter and annoyed. And this goes back to my previous comment to the Composer. If you treat your community like that, don't be surprised when people start to be upset and unpleasant.
Like I said on a previous page, had I known how poorly they would be communicating and handling this EA, I would never have paid in for it. There's been nothing tangible to make me come back since the initial release.

Compare this to OwlCats with WotR and the progress they've made with alpha testing. I wouldn't even need to see a single statement from that company because they actually release new content for testing in the form of dialogue, classes, mythic paths, chapters, etc.

The difference in funding and studio size is crazy too. Larian drew me in with Divinity and lost me with BG3.

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I'm not in favour of these comparisons for the same reasons I explained Ragnarok. All I know for certain is that almost complete silence between patches, with no substantial information even during community updates is unacceptable.


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Ah, I think I understand Larian's problem now. They killed their off their previous community manager....




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Originally Posted by The Composer
Though there is to some extent a... Let's call it "Negativity bias" for a lack of a better term, I'm sure there is one. In online forums, people tend to be more driven towards voicing their opinions if it's of a "negative" nature- Actually let's call it criticism, that's often what the intent is. I don't actually want to throw shade on any group of people here, rather share an experience.

It's more likely for someone to find the motivation and interest in navigating to an online forum... The point I'm ultimately trying to make is, online forums has the odds stacked against it of often being dominated by variants of criticism or "negativity", often because it's the most passionate fans that in their own way just want something they love to be even more loveable, somewhere deep down, even though others may perceive them as haters.
From personal experience with customer and inter-office responses there definitely is a negative spin to most responses. Response bias is mostly impossible to avoid, unless there are metrics available that are free of bias. It happens in online forums and a lot of other spaces, the main difference for online forums is that we are all veiled behind our profile pictures and usernames.
(There is a lean towards distrust, even when forum members agree. Just as how drivers want to immediately assume the other drivers are the issue, because all they see is a car, not the human being. It's hard for users to read this in my voice or to humanize my posts.)

Originally Posted by The Composer
I want to focus on Larian forums specifically, to "win an argument" here, in the only way that matters in the end of the day imo, is to influence the developers. Most people get stuck in interpersonal squabble instead of focusing on what matters...
So I believe it should be narrated in 2nd person present-tense, so that the player has a stronger sense of driving the story and making the choices as they go themselves." - No squabble, no frustrated rants about how they're bad developers or ruin D&D or how everyone that disagrees with me is ignorant, or get stuck on calling them out for ad hominems, strawmans, or any other non-sense. Just keeping the eye on the ball, and presenting a rational argument.
I will try but writing in the second person has never been my strength xD
I'd like to think I've avoided ad hominems or strawmen for the most part. But that can get challenging if there ever is a prolonged back-and-forth.
As you write in the next quote, it's easiest if the discussion stays focused on the topic or the critique itself.

Originally Posted by The Composer
Now I'm doubtful that my particular message was in any means impactful...
but I believe level-headed discussion that focuses on the merit of the criticism, rather than other participants of the debate, goes a long way. In fact, I believe that undermines the criticism more than anything, and I dare say most people share their criticism because they hope to see it make a difference. That's what I'm trying to say I suppose, that I want criticism and calls for action to actually inspire action, rather than to undermine itself by falling victim to typical weaknesses of the human psyche
It'd be great if discussions stayed on the discussion at hand.

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Right now Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous has me more excited then anything BG3 related...Mythic paths, freeking mounts combat! Become an ANGEL and ride a VELOCIRAPTOR into combat. Game looking pretty tight too.
Tons of branching dialogue options...no stupid cinematic TELLTALE drama...Turn base OR real time with pause...day/night cycles...SUPERB UI...dozens and dozens of classes...variety of interesting playable NPC that FEEL AND LOOK LIKE FANTASY chatacters. And a strong and extremely detailed rule set to back everything up.

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And what exactly does this ad for a completely different game have to do with the theme?


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I agree completely irrelevant unless you want to talk about the way owlcat treat their community.


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They're pretty good at that.

There is a new survey that was just released about the EA phase 2.
There are a lot of communication even if it may sometimes only be a facebook post about "someone's youtube video about the game" or "someone's amazing artwork".
There are also regular new trailer, patches and hotfix and they are pretty active on their discord server.

Last edited by Maximuuus; 02/06/21 02:00 PM.

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