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Owlcat Games Pathfinder wrath of the rightous, Gladitor Guild Manager, Solasta, Ashes of Creation, Hearthstone where regular community updates are posted weekly off the top of my head. There are other examples as well. The community managers of those games all do release regular weekly/bi-weekly updates to progress in the game incase of hearthstone its not really an EA game but its a game that has a smaller staff despite being for a much larger company overall. The lead developer Dean Ayala Interacts with the community once every single week via twitter and replies to the community with updates news ect on upcoming content and answers several dozen questions in Q&A. The pathfinder team from owlcat does a weekly stream update on you tube and interacts with the community.

Steamworks even defines it differently. It is not Alpha, it is not Beta.
"Early Access is a tool to develop your game with the community by giving them access to your title before it is officially released."
Even by Steam works rules, they cannot promise things that are not in EA release that may/may not meet future expectations.

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Though Act 1 (the content for Early Access) is defined, Act’s 2 and 3 are work in progress. It’s therefore difficult to predict when 1.0 will launch. We anticipate Baldur’s Gate 3 being in Early Access for at least one year but we’ll have to see how it goes. It’ll be ready when it’s ready.”

it does say act 1 only thats a copy past right from the steam page however again 1 year noted in the post.

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“The Early Access version of Baldur’s Gate 3 includes Act 1 of the game which, in one playthrough, is approximately 25 hours of self-contained content. 6 player classes are supported and 9 races/subraces with more to be added later. There are 5 origin characters which you can recruit (but not play as for now). Most of Baldur’s Gate 3’s advertised features are included though some are still work in progress. Not every language is currently supported, as our writers are still developing the game which makes translation difficult.

Again copy paste - Note the more to be added later quote.

We’ve worked hard to release an Early Access version that feels complete, fun to play, and has as little stub (unfinished) content as possible. There are bugs and there will be changes to content (often based on player feedback), but our goal is to already now give you something that’s genuinely fun to play.”

Note again there will be changes to the content added based on feedback.

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“Since day one of Baldur's Gate 3’s announcement, community discussion, feedback, and organization (thank you) has shaped what we’ve said and done. Though we have a strong vision for the game throughout our team of over 300 people, our goal is to create a game that gets our audience excited, and to maintain a healthy relationship with those who take the time to provide feedback and help us create a better game. We use automatic data collection tools to help us better balance the game but we also listen to forum feedback and use that to drive internal debate. We create massive, sprawling games, and we couldn’t possibly explore every single permutation and combination of skills, choices, reactions and conclusions without our community. Working with your thoughts, feedback, and behaviour helps us to better understand how our ideas are toyed with, and how we can improve things.”

Note again healthy relationship and listening to forum feedback there is a lack of response to most feedback or interaction with community which that is all directly quoted of the steam forums. Which has been expressed alot by the community. While there are people who have played maybe 30-50 hours in game play in some cases but if you go and read the steam reviews all the negative reviews are generally the same lack of interaction or a particular bug that makes the game unplayable for that person. If you look at the positive reviews majority of them are by people with a low number of hours invested into the game not all of them but a majority of them you looking at 20-40 hours of time on the game.

- Your throwing a comparison of interaction Larion is losing that argument heavily when compared to the competition. When there direct competitors in CRPG time lines are interacting weekly/Bi-weekly in streams with the community and you compare that directly to them where we get a couple comments after a patch is posted and nothing for several months later its a bad reflection.

But again I am not knocking the game I am just stating releasing it as EA with expectations that were set. I would not recommend anyone get the early access version of the game as I posted in my review on steam because there communication is poor. At same time I also stated that I do think the game will probably be much better at full release but there poor communication which can directly be compared to there competitors would make me recommend the competition over them when looking at getting a game in early access weather the full version is better or not. The rate at which the content is being release they have already said will be longer than 2021 so there is no way they will make the OCT 6 deadline of 1 year still listed on the steam early access information. Which should actually be updated as well technically as its misleading.

I would not hold them to that however the other stuff such as regular updates and interacting with the community I would hold them to as that is a showing of good faith. I actually wouldnt be suprised to see WoTC change companies in the future when releasing games down the road. Neverwinter Online which is a horrible game even patched content 1 week following the release of Van Richtens guide to Ravenloft to add content into there game related to the recient book release. Which shows the thoughts you would expect to see them expecting from Larion with how content for the game comes out as well.

If you want a direct comparison go look up pathfinder wrath of the righteous on the steam news and announcements and compare it directly to BG3 as they are directly competing games in comparison you talking you never see 2 weeks without an update. BG3 last news or announcements were in February there is your direct comparison. June 2nd may 25th may 22nd may 21st may 20th may 12th off top of my head were last updates posted on it. its not knocking larion as bg 3 on full release due to the 5e system itself should be a better balanced game compared to 3.5 dnd and bg3 is a much nicer looking game so if done well it could be much better overall but when you compare the rate at which you get updates and content and what you get for the early access direct comparison WoTR is kicking the snot out of them. Having played both games in EA as well as Solasta. WOTR is the clear leader at the moment. When the games originally released I would have given BG3 the better review.

Currently In CRPG direct competition at the moment your looking at POE:2, PF:WoTR, Solasta and BG3. I haven't played POE:2 and solasta because it will not release all the classes cant beat BG3 assuming it releases all the classes in its current state at full release. However WoTR kicks it in the teeth and asks if it would like another which if you were gonna spend money and had bought not bought any of the games is where I would say spend your money currently till bg3 hits its full release and we see how they stack up against each other. My initial review would have put bg3 in the lead but having both games for 6 months + of EA I would give pathfinder the advantage.

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Even if people love to throw these terms around without a clue, they should theoretically have specific definition.

It's al alpha when when a game is not feature-complete yet.
It's a beta when it's feature-complete and every update is a candidate for the final release (bugs permitting).
BG3 is unquestionably an alpha at the current state.

Being "early access" or not is not mutually exclusive with either descriptor. And in fact the definitions typically overlap. "Early access" just means that users are allowed to have access to a build, in whatever state it is, before a public release (usually in exchange of having to pay ahead).


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Personally, I don't understand why they don't have a community manager and staff handing this, supposedly have have 300 plus people working at Larian and they can have 5-10 people working on communications.

Look at D&D Beyond, tiny company, weekly dev updates and several other videos every week. How can they do it? They have a community manager and staff to handle it.

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Originally Posted by Merry Mayhem
Personally, I don't understand why they don't have a community manager and staff handing this, supposedly have have 300 plus people working at Larian and they can have 5-10 people working on communications.
The Larian person who most fulfills the roll of "community manager" is Swen himself, which is one of the main issues with Larian's communication imo. This worked well as a small studio, but now that Swen has to manage multiple studios and hundreds of employees across the world, it's too much to do both.

The bigger of the BG3 Patches came with a youtube video or a multi-hour Panel from Hell, both with Swen as the lead, and require so much more work and coordination than a forum post or tweet or AMA by a dedicated community manager every ~2-4 weeks.

Swen can and should continue creating these fun Larian videos for big events (announcement of a new game, EA release of that game, and the full release), but I think he needs to relinquish his role for ~all smaller updates.

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Still no promised community update after over a month since announced.

With the amount of time elapsed between Patch 4, this is the most pivotal patch and will confirm or dispel a lot of suspicion about the direction of the game. The game is about to be in EA for a year soon.

So if Patch 5 does not have changes to the numerous issues that have been brought up to Larian across multiple channels, it will be safe to say they are not planning on correcting those.

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You can say the same about patches 3 and 4. The criticism was mostly there from the get go. If Larian didn't addressed these issues, I doubt they will. All they need to do is to admit that and stop feeding us false hope


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Originally Posted by Abits
You can say the same about patches 3 and 4. The criticism was mostly there from the get go. If Larian didn't addressed these issues, I doubt they will. All they need to do is to admit that and stop feeding us false hope

The main difference is that we are nearly entering 4 months of total silence, while the previous patches had about a 2-3 month gap between them. There's a good chance that it'll be 5-6 months before the next patch is released.

Expectations are going to be sky high.

Last edited by Saito Hikari; 17/06/21 09:00 AM.
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Aside for the gap between patches, which is just of relative relevance (most of this stuff is probably being worked since before the EA even started, anyway) what's more relevant is that we aren't in "the early days of EA" anymore. We are getting close to clocking a full year at this point.
Every remaining issue will start to look more and more as an EVERLASTING one unless Larian clarifies otherwise.


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Originally Posted by Tuco
Aside for the gap between patches, which is just of relative relevance (most of this stuff is probably being worked since before the EA even started, anyway) what's more relevant is that we aren't in "the early days of EA" anymore. We are getting close to clocking a full year at this point.
Every remaining issue will start to look more and more as an EVERLASTING one unless Larian clarifies otherwise.

Well feedback on possible difficulties/impact on development cycle by the pandemic might be helpful too, to be honest. I've noticed many things have slowed down quite a bit when it comes to decelopment pace of games. I follow various EA currently and some have been noticeably slower due to the covid situation. I wouldn't be surprised if Larian, even with seven studios spread across various parts of the globe, is having similar issues. The more they stay silent, the more trolls will start to suggest they ran off with our money. This is especially true on forums such as the ones of Steam. People get antsy when they don't get somewhat regular updates about progress.

I really hope they will manage to address the majority of the issues posed by the more hardcore D&D fans, albeit some stuff might be down to limitations of the new divinity engine they came up with for this title.

But in the end we will have to wait and see. I do not see this game releasing this year at any rate, it is much larger in scope than Original Sin 2 by far due to the increased complexity of D&D rules. I mean they will have to make wizards unable to learn some spells (e.g. the cleric ones and based on subclass of wizard too), make the ability to use scrolls limited to certain (sub)classes.. just to name a few.

I'm pretty optimistic I'll like the end result though, if it will surpass Original Sin Series for me will remain to be seen. As long as they fix my gripes with wizard, stealth, seperate jump and disengage and scroll usage I'll be more or less pleased. And reactions too (if engine allows such stuff).

On the topic of Jump/Disengage.. is it only possible to jump out of melee range when you use this thing in turn-based mode?? Seeing it used to be you running away like the goblins still do.. Or maybe I am just remembering it wrong.

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The notions of Larian "running away with the money" or "Never completing the game" are frankly too stupid to even entertain with as a thought experiment.
That's not going to be an actual problem with this project.

What they are gong to release, exactly, and at what point they'll be satisfied enough with what they have (without feeling any ulterior urge to reiterate or improve on) is what's worth discussing.

Also, I said multiple times in the past that I'd be shocked if this game released before mid 2022, but I have absolutely no problem with it. "Release it quickly!" has never been one of my worries or desires.
Knowing in what direction they are moving, on the other hand, definitely is.

Last edited by Tuco; 17/06/21 10:55 AM.

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I think the main difference between than and now is the amount of room Larian have for working. The longer they will keep the silence, less people will be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt


Larian's Biggest Oversight, what to do about it, and My personal review of BG3 EA
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Problem is not even the timing between patches but what is starting really to annoy me is the total lack of communication and this is always bad for an early access.

What they are working on?

Are they going to fix D&D heresies such as the wizard learning cleric spell?

Are they going to get closer to the pen and paper rules?

We could finally see other classes as well?

Last time a major patch landed we just had the druid and some minor story alteration as well cinematics fixes.

But that's about it.

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A new video interview dropped today.

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Originally Posted by gaymer
A new video interview dropped today.

Indeed.




Interviewer: Are you making big changes to systems that are already in the game?
Swen: We are actually.

Make of that what you will, but seeing is believing at this point.

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We are now discussing the same video on four different threads?


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Originally Posted by Tuco
We are now discussing the same video on four different threads?

Not everyone makes a home of the forum like you Tuco wink

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Originally Posted by Seraphael
Originally Posted by Tuco
We are now discussing the same video on four different threads?

Not everyone makes a home of the forum like you Tuco wink
But everyone can fucking check the last threads updated in this very same section and see what the posts are about? That's what I did.
I didn't know the video was already discussed because I get a fucking telegram every time a new topic is started.

And you can spare me your condescending bullshit, since I've been on this forum (sparsely and while doing other things) for the last 20 minutes at most, not the last 10 hours.

P.S. Also, it was meant just a fairly neutral heads-up. You could have acknowledged it and own your innocent mistake without being a bitter prick and going into gratuitous personal attacks.

Last edited by Tuco; 17/06/21 06:49 PM.

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Originally Posted by gaymer
A new video interview dropped today.

Oh, good! At least some information~


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Last edited by Maximuuus; 17/06/21 07:14 PM.

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Ok, so, I like this interview. It isn't the most specific thing but then thing I have been asking for are vague stuff, and he has confirmed that he was working on big system stuff, that he is hoping for 2022, and that they are supposedly reading this forum and accounting for our feedback.
Swen needs to do more interviews like this cause this feels like a godsend to me.
There are some things that were eh to me, like how he is saying he has to account for players jumping from DOS2 to BG3. I personally had none of those expectations because it was BG3, not DOS3, but I guess I can see where he comes from. But overall, that there was some communication is what I needed.

If anyone at Larian sees this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do more of these. Take as much time as you need with content, but more communication like this is the thing that sustains me through this EA.

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