Like I give a shit about the sales numbers. I'm talking about someone who actually played (and mostly despises) these games while they were launched. If we were going by popularity contest loads of people would be crazy about Oblvion and Skyrim, but that's not going to stop me from having an abysmal opinion of both.
Yet sales and completion stats are objective metrics. It's ironic, but you yourself used "who cares of what YOU want?" as an argument, so why should Larian care about what you want when they can spend time and effort on implementing and testing something that will help attract more players or will be appreciated by more than just bg1&2 fans?
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What are you even talking about? This is not a competitive game. And different players WILLINGLY choosing to control a different amount of units wouldn't affect anyone who isn't interested in doing so.
You imply that they will want it. The problem is that they will be forced to do it, it the game will be balanced for a party of 6.
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It's irrelevant. No one would stop them from doing so.
Unbalanced difficulty and frustration will stop them. Is it so hard to understand, that there a lot of people who liked NWN1 being centered around sole PC, who only bought OS2 because they could play it with only one PC? People who like parties may want 6+ PCs, but they will still be happy with 4. People who want to play with controlling only one PC won't buy and enjoy a game where they will feel handicapped playing that way.
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We already went over it a million times even just in this very thread. You could at very least make the bare minimum effort to keep up with the discussion rather than just jump in with the preachy tone and pretend to school everyone about core design. Yes, I would preferer to have the game tailored from start to finish around my ideal party size, and nothing would stop Larian from having different difficulty settings about that if they wanted (since they already love to implement half a dozen of them in their games) BUT if they weren't willing to that extra mile in terms of effort, then YES, I'd take the native option to play with a party of six even if the game is not "carefully [UN]balanced around that idea", because this ideal quest for "perfect balance" is fucking irrelevant, especially when it gets in the way of enjoyment.
Then why can't you accept that people who consider 1 or 2 party members as ideal party size want the same thing? It's much easier to make a game enjoyable and balanced for 1 and 2 sized parties using Lone Wolf-style mechanics if the maximum size for the party is 4.
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No, I don't, because my option wouldn't prevent them to play however the fuck they may want.
It will prevent them from enjoying a game the same way it's not enjoyable to play BG2 solo unless you are a hardcore BG2 fan. Vast majority of players just want to chill and have fun playing the game, they don't want extra challenge and they don't want the game to be boringly easy. That's why proper balance is important.
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"We made a game in the genre that is mostly liked by the people who usually hate it" wouldn't really be the best of the box quotes. Here's the thing: you may HATE everything that defines a competent, engaging and complex CRPG, but I don't, so I'm also not so eager to throw in the trash pile any aspect of the genre that doesn't make it closer to Diablo for the sake of mass appeal and praise any trashy attempt to streamline the concept.
Recycling outdated game design doesn't make a competent, engaging and complex CRPG.
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But DOS 2 isn't a better game than BG2, its only advantages over it are pretty much the technical ones (neat 3D engine, better framerate, etc). In basically every other way it's an INFERIOR design with a boatload of downright BORKED mechanics. A clucky control scheme, a messy inventory management, a disastrously bad armor system (so bad that even Swen Vincke himself had to admit at a a later date it was a disaster and they should have not shipped the game with it), a half-assed perk system on top of an exceedingly steep power curve and one of the worst itemizations I've ever seen in the entire genre. I even liked the two DOS games to a decent extent, despise all their flaws, but seeing people like you pretending they redefined the entire genre and that their success proves everything about them was flawless is honestly comedy gold.
BG2 was good in 2000. If it was released today even with modern graphics it would be considered mediocre compared to RPGs like DA:I, OS2, Witcher 3.