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PoE or PF are direct descendants off Infinity Engine games. The INfinity Engine was pretty static even back in the day. Basically, you couldn't touch anything besides loot, loot containers, NPCs and enemies. Else everything was a static, but beautiful backdrop to your questing. Larian jump straight off Ultima (at least, in terms of interactivity and systems). (Almost) anything can be picked up and messed around with in some form or other. One of the first things I did back in the EA was taking delight in taking a couple of corpses (about to raise as undead), throw them in a fireball trap nearby and watch the fireworks when they DID rise. Bliss. For anybody into systems driven games (also to be found in Immersive Sims, e.g. Deus Ex, Dishonored, Prey et all!), the difference is significant. DOes that in itself make the ONE difference? Unlikely. This has become such a huge hit that there are likely various contributing factors at work (one of which also being that there isn't much new BIG games around at the moment, at least until Starfield hits). However, Larian have argued previous that their audience has gone way beyond PF/PoE/BG fandom before. They attributed it to their systemic design (which is also hugely popular in the more recent Zelda games). And it's certainly one major design ethos that makes their games different from any Infinity Engine "follow-up". It also makes for fun Streamer's material...

How not to interpret dice rolls:

Same. Even Larian themselves calculated with up to 100,000 players concurrently (see Vincke's Twitter). The EA was a success, but there was a viable possibility that player's who'd bought the game had already bought it. That said, can you imagine the numbers hadn't they paired with D&D, but LOTR? Crazy. Maybe that's their next goal. Well, either that, or buying the rights to Ultima. For which they now must have money a plenty, given their independent status. How an obsession with Ultima 7 led to some of the PC's best RPGs | PC Gamer I liked the EA back in 2020 already though. And certainly far more than DOS. - The map was actually open, rather than pretending to be (no clearly level gating and zones, no clear gate keeping of every possible path either, making maps feel like thinly veiled linear compat parcours in DOS) - no DOS item system of every gear having a level, so that you'd need to replace it like five minutes after looting - constant looting and selling was a pain in the butt in DOS either way, and a time-sinking mini game on its own, also thanks to UI issues (honestly BG1 plays more user-friendly than this) - Also no copy&paste trash mobs, like the orcs in the second map of DOS, and generally more "quality over quantity", including more varied avenues of getting past foes I honestly think DOS would have worked better as a tactical combat game... with more ressources being spend on making scnearios unique, think Blackguards. BG3 is a fully-fledged RPG proper, including your low int Barbarian having the options to intimdate the **** (and combat urge) out of foes quite regularly.

So far, BG3 is hitting a lot of the right notes for me. Not all of them, but enough that I'm more excited to keep playing it than I have any other game in a long time. I think it hits the right sweet spot on a couple of fronts. It has pretty high levels of polish and attention to detail, almost on the level of Dragon Age or a Bioware game, but it balances that with a reasonable committment to playstyle flexibility and options for problem-solving. Dialogue in particular seems carefully constructed -- there seems to be lots of abilities, items, story states and companions that can grant additional dialogue options. Combining this with a cinematic-ish presentation for dialogue is a tough achievement. But there are lots of surprises -- a fairly robust implementation with Speak with Dead, where many major areas have corpses that will give you scene-relevant dialogue if you have the spell -- these add up to a fleshed out experience. There are still some Larian-isms that I don't love. It's weird that I can stumble onto buried treasure chests for no reason, for example. And although the combat is better than my experience with D:OS, it still feels heavily weighted in favor of elemental and environmental effects. Now they've coupled it with height advantage/disadvantage so you have to constantly worry about getting the high ground before attacking. This adds up to reducing the impact of character builds and turning the combat into something more tactical and, frankly, slow, than I'd like. I also do think that RTwP like original Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter would still fit the genre well. Though I confess that turn-based is a bit less chaotic to manage. I'm also not sure yet about the writing. There are some good bits. But the pacing feels off. All of the companions show up within the first few hours and immediately start spilling their guts to you. Is there enough companion content to last the whole game? Am I going to get to Act 3 and everyone's run out of things to say? Either the game is much shorter than I think, or has a lot more content than I think, or the pacing is just bad. The companions are also all kinda similar to each other? They all have weird addictions and secrets. All in all, it feels like a blend of Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, and Divinity: Original Sin. We'll see!

Nenio's quest is over. Even with a guide, it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had with games. Some lights in the central puzzle were bugged and it took me some time to understand that they were actually on, despite not appearing so. I had to switch to TB in the last battle because the game doesn't pause when Arue/Seelah use Quarry/Mark of Justice. Or is that dozens of notifications appear every time it pauses and I can't find out if they already acted? I need to check the settings. For this act I still need to upgrade the last stat (MIlitary) and attack Threshold. The meeting is not triggering so I'll probably do the Midnight Isles quest that I wasn't even sure I'd do.

There is a lot less text to read. That must be appealing to many people.

I have been picking a subclass for Astarion, so I was wondering about it. According to discription it should trigger for character who haven't taken their turn or are surprised. I wonder if the issue is that if you attack from stealth, you technically attack before the combat started - therefore they are neither surprised, nor turns haven't started counting yet. Seems like it needs getting loocked at. If it works the same as in EA it should work as follows: There are three light states: bright/medium/dark. In full brightness you will always be spotted outright. In medium you roll stealth check. In dark you don't roll for stealth. If enemy has infravision those get shifted by one. So both bright/medium are instant detection, in dark you roll stealth check. I didn't play with stealth much in 1.0, but yes, in EA I found that stealth skill was useless for the most part. Controls are way to clunky to manouver stealth in real time (though you can manually trigger turn based mode (shift+pause) and succeeding in stealth mostly comes down to player skill, not character stealth skill. I think in 1.0, there is also some kind of circular detection range, that is meant to prevent players from walking behind enemies and triggering stealth to confuse AI. I don't quite know how it works. The point is that you detect or not detect trap, you click behind your character to stop him from moving, than all your followers line up behind your PC (because chain system is garbage) and step on the trap that they just spotted. Snarkying aside, traps in BG3 are 50/50. I like those more elaborate set ups, with defined triggers - where you can block vents, jump over triggers, put items on pressure plates etc. on top of the simple spot/disarm routine. A more traditional, spottable mines are tedious, that's true.

I don't see any reason to interpret things this way at all. The game sold a bit over 2 million during EA. And it sat in EA for three years. It should come as no surprise at all to anyone that when the game is finally released, those 2 million people who bought and played it during EA would want to immediately play the full game. Hence the huge surge in people playing it concurrently at release. There is no reason to interpret it as a huge number of NEW players wanting to play the game. I'm sure the game has had decent additional sales in the weeks leading up to and since release, but I don't see any "shocking" numbers.

Well I've given it a solid chance. It's just not for me. The narrative doesn't pull me in, and that's really the most important thing to me. it did teach me something about preferences I have in games. I dont like dice rolls. I never played D&D growing up, which probably contributes to my dislike of the RNG checks. I find myself rolling high on checks I have no skills in, and failing checks I've dumped points into. Your strength has a limit, if you are weak, you aren't going to get lucky and become superman for a moment. I dont like 3D environments in isometric games. Be it RPG or strategy, I like a fixed camera and a pretty background. This one is completely new to me, but I think I prefer a tighter story, to one that is endlessly open. Give me choices to make, but I need some direction story wise. Lastly, and this is specific to BG3... are all the companions obnoxious? They all seem like they are larping as DnD characters. Anyway I'm glad for the success! Can never have enough CRPGs

I don't think so. Baldur's Gate3 is the top selling game, and (at this moment) is 3rd most played game on Steam - beating Apex L. and Pub G.. BG3 player count is around real gangbuster releases (hogwards legacy - 880k , Elden Ring - 950k), so I assume sales must be somewhere around those titles as well. Sven knew how many EA players they had and he still expect 1/8 of the player count that they got. It's not like they didn't expect players to return - they moved the release for a reason. I am curious to hear official numbers, of course - if it's going as well as it seems to be, I am sure Larian will be making victory laps not far in the future. Steam spy estimated 10-20m owners, but unfortunately it tends to not be a reliable source anymore. For comparison D:OS2 player peak was 93k. Deadfire: 22,5k WotR: 46,5k

yeah. they need an instant version of the dice rolls, that just says pass or fail. like the perception rolls when you walk past a trap. it's too much clicking if you are playing a rouge or someone relying on dialogue persuasion.

l like DA:O, it's the D:OS2 part that I'm not too sure about. Saying that I haven't seen anything that jumps out as terrible to me, I'll wait to see some part of BG itself and probably stop watching at that point. Although I do agree to the point someone made, I cannot believe they don't give an option to skip the dicerolls.

Sven said he is not looking to do another big game like that. They are looking to do smaller projects at least for a bit. But who knows - maybe BG3 success will push them toward pursuing more mega-games. I also thought BG3 EA was a major step forward from D:OS2 - a game I wasn't particularly fond of. Still, during EA I lost hope in Larian addressing some long standing problems with their design. While some aspects of the game still aren't quite to my liking, I think they did manage to minimize those issues. I am still being sceptical - I am already getting a bit annoyed by some of the Larian's cheese, and I dread going to Grimforge with it's plethera of instant death draps. Still, it seems a solid balance pass has been done for release. It is an interesting question. I would love to hear game designers opinion on BG3 (Josh S. or Tim Cain) to see if they see some creative new designs that I miss. In my humble opinion, what BG3 has, that other cRPGs don't is the scope. You get cinematic dialogue, you get insane amount of reactivity, you get a lot of systems that can appeal to different players. There is the focus on "the feel" rather than the mechanics - I think it is telling that when advertising "first player experience" during the last Panel from Hell, Larian highlighter unique class animations, while not having such a basic of a feature as class progression preview. Not to say that BG3 is better than those two - smaller scale have their advantages, and I think games like PoE, PF or DE excel in their respective niches. But I think overall more people will find something to enjoy in BG3. And there is production value - I think for mainstream, this is key to success: have someone see an add, or see someone play on twitch and find the game appealing. cRPG tend to be a slog to watch - I don't think it is bad, the proof of pudding is in the eating, and in case of games playing experince is far more important to me than watching experience, but I think current market really favours titles that are fun to watch. Yeah, yeah. They got their Witcher3, we will see what their Cyberpunk will look like.

Completely normal spell + Bubblebuffs mod = giant cheat and I love it. In other news, beer mug Azata summons aggroed next room tenants in that big circular room in Blackwater, who all rushed in right through the walls. The party was buffed up to the gills so wasn't big deal, but from now on that "Control Summons" option in toybox stays ticked, cheaty or not. (Also, missed such a chance to name shaman's wolf "Day Tripper"). In another playthrough, had the druid polymorphed into Shambling Mound, found "Grapple" toggle among its abilities, toggled it to see what it does, and what it does is break turn-based combat - when it is its turn, he slaps the other guy with its appendages and everything halts. Turn-based on/off, slap again. On/off, slap! Like four times, and then I regain control and slap the guy another four or five times, guess because we're hasted? I have no idea what is happening here and why but I like it. Makes sense too, Shambling Mound has a lot of appendages and they all are made for slapping.

Not really. It's just not a very elegant UI Yeah, I didn't see the coming. That is will do well was fairly predictible (I think it already sold 2,5m in early access), but it seemed to break into the mainstream in the way I didn't expect. And so far I am enjoying the game much more than I expected. I really like rewrite of Wyll. It's still more or less the same character, just more charismatic with a better told story. To my shock I am quite enjoying the companions overall - even Astarion. To my shock, because I found them to be insufferable in early access. Funny how much impact small rewrites can have on characters.

Deep Sky Derelicts is quite fun. I played it a long while ago. Everyone ignored the screenshots... I found that after a while it felt more like a lite RPG than a rogue like, being long enough to not feel like a game where you were supposed to have died countless times already to create replayability.

It's them who are dying out there. Ghouls from safe, rich, fat places who complain that counteroffensive isn't ~showy~ enough for their tastes can go f*ck themselves.

We can have a thread about BG3, can we? So, umm, it's out, if you didn't notice. Early reviews seem to be positive. Someone rushed through and said he didn't encounter many bugs. Also:

We will see. I am sure they will not - I think it should be already clear that all companion's archs will culminate once we reach Baldur's Gate. As to how much content they will have per act - we will see. I do agree that companions feel a bit formulaic. Even more so, if one played D:OS2. So far, they are still better than I expected. In EA I found them really grating.

Idk, it's not that riveting gameplay wise, it's worth it to do it early on for the gold and some weapons.

Replaying Born Punk the game does go up a bit in my opinion for having a couple of different ways to solve the problems, will give them that. Still wouldn't pay more than $10 though. Maybe $11. Plodding along in D4 seasons, hit WT3 finally, now can do the tedious renown grind again !

Physicists achieve fusion with net energy gain for second time | Ars Technica

I have played a bit so far there are some notes: 1. give me grapling hooks for gods sake! I am carrying ropes everywhere and can't use them while there is like 100000 vertical places where it would make so much sense 2. Assassin rogue subclass feature seems to be bugged as If i backstab from stealth I don't get automatic crit even if its first attack from my whole team 3. dice rolling could take too long after a while, being able to skip to result right away would be great boon 4. no idea how stealth works. If i am not in line of sight I pass even with heavy armor and no proficiency - If I am in line of sight I got spotted right away no matter what - I assume its because of amount of light but considering its 'bright' everywhere and I can't choose if I play during day or night its pretty annoying 5. traps sucks - just get rid of that feature - you know they are there automatically because you fail perception check so what is the point?

It’s DA:O with D:OS2 adapting D&D5e. Now when I write it down, it sounds awful, but fortunately they picked the good bits from each.

I about 20 hours into KA1 and Im having lots of fun, I am getting more and more comfortable with battles and effective strategy which includes using my cavalry and heroes effectively I am also going to follow the Old Faith, much hotter women like you recommended

Wormie what I have been saying for the last 2 years, BG3 is going to be an epic game. Larian would never let us down on such an iconic game

I have no idea why BG3 turned out to be such a big thing. It doesn't do things that differently from other RPGs like PoE or the PF ones. Better graphics, yes. Besides that (and the nakedness), the only thing it does differently is the large number of options based on class, skill, spells, etc. Which is great, but to me it still doesn't explain the popularity.

yes. have mentioned previous but it bears repeating that overcoming wotr difficulties is not 'bout crafting clever tactics. in spite of all the options available, wotr is not complex. the game is crude. all you need do is stack buffs of your party's ab and dc numbers while simultaneous adding debuff to foes. on the highest difficulties to make nenio one-shot demon lords, make sure you got all the mind effect and illusion boosting gear possible, and consider having a court poet in party for the int boost. the madness domain and hexes also become indispensable for debuffing. is worth considering a single level of crossblood sorc. etc. HA! Good Fun!

Congrats Shady!

I have started Deep Sky Derelicts today, which I got last time as a free game from GOG giveaway, and purchased both the DLCs. So far having fun, despite being asskicked once 😛 We'll see how this will go, as roguelites and card-based games are both not exactly my cup of tea 😛

As far as I am concerned they started with wrong UI design (action bar from D:OS2) and than started to add features to make it viable. I think it's biggest failure is in tutorialising the mechanics - playing Solasta I never had an issue understanding how the class works, what consumes what resource, and what options i have. BG3 is messy in that regard. That said, the UI revision they did midway through EA was a great improvement, and 1.0 is still better than what we have. My prefer method is: 1) remove all (red) weapon skills. Those can be displayed by pressing weapon icon (together with relevant items, like arrows for ranged weapons) 2) If melee class - organise their skills. They tend to not have much, so hotbar is usually enough to have them neatly organised... at least on low levels. 3) if spellcaster - remove all spells consuming a resource from the hotbar. Leave cantrips and item spells only, and organise them in the way so I can see which is which, and what action they consume (main/bonus). If I want to use higher level spell, I will use drop down menu anyway 4) Go to "custom" tab, and assign shortcuts for commonly used skills - so damage cantrips etc. 5) set all reactions to "ask" 6) you can assign passives to main bar - so move non-lethal attack and class specific toggles (like push eldrich blast) to main bar when applicable. More management that I wish I would have to do (preferable would be none, except for occasional shortcuts. Hotbar shoudl be just that - a bar to access "hot" skills, not "design proper UI" toolbox) I am sure the game will be better with time. It is a game in which a lot can happen, and I am sure something is bound to break eventually. So far, though, it is far more polished that I expected. No issues worth mentioning. The real test will be once I leave EA area, that received less public scrutiny over the last 3 years. If companions gain their subclasses later (Laezel, Wyll, Astarion) you choose the subclass on level up. Same with PC. For some unknown reason the game automatically picks first subclass and doesn't highlight it. Abysmally bad design, if you ask me. If you want to change the choices the game made for you and never told you about, your friendly camp ghul will do it for you.

Well, that was short. Finished Born Punk and got the middle ending - not sure how I could get the good ending, I guess I need to suck up to the sociopathic AI more. Decent enough game, but definitely don't spend more than $10 on it.

our grandfather listened almost exclusive to jazz and classical... but not star trek classical. our grandmother, on the other hand, were a bit more cool. . HA! Good Fun!

Speaking of nostalgia...

Childhood memories... yes, I know, this was a year or two before I was born, but my parents had radio and believe it or not, this stuff was played all the way to the end of the 60's 😎

Yeah yeah, but what kind of genitals does he have?

Manage to play a bit yesterday - I encountered nasty "syncing saves" bug, which meant I couldn't save the game (double check immediately after starting the game folks!). I went through the whole tutorial area, before I realised it. Fortunately it is shorter in EA, and aside from character creator, it wasn't a big waste of time. I think it might have something to do with old EA saves - I did go through the effort of erasing everything before installing 1.0, but it didn't help for some reason. Erased save folder once again, and it's been all good for now. Say hi to Andreas le Vilour, an aging, burned out bard, stuck entertaining rich folks in Baldur's Gate instead of pursuing research and true mastery of his craft. His long years of creative vegetation has been interupted when he was abducted by Findflayers on his way to an out of town gig, and infested with a tadpole. So far impressions are positive. No big improvements over EA, but it's all much more polished and enjoyable to play. Companion introduction got a big or a lot of uplift - actual narrative differences are a bit better, but I think Larian did a good job making those characters feel more natural and fit better. I have always enjoyed my BG3 playthroughs that early in their run time, so we will see how things will progress. Edit. Ahh complaints. In spite of hope that dataminig gave us, shields STILL don't deplay on character's backs. How annoying. Also character creation, while it received a visual uplift is still pretty bad. One of the main issues was lack of any information about character progression - what will your character actually do in the game - or even what subclasses are available, if you pick a class that doesn't automatically pick on on lvl1. I optimistically assumed that new "details" button will be just that, however, what it does is display proficiencies that come with that class.... which is already displayed on the main screen anyway. WTF Larian. How is that helpful to anyone.

maybe they should spend a little less time making 16K textures that take up a hundred plus gigabytes and more time on having animations that don't make characters look like animatronics but at least they (presumably) finished the game, unlike the majority of early access scams

Only if it's good! 😛 Idk, from what I'm seeing I would probably give it a shot at some point. But first I need an ssd, a new graphics card and for it to not cost 60euro.

https://imgur.com/a/9G87gvK

Going through the 4159th "grumpy/bored/woeisme/what is even the point" phase. So it's time for another meme cat pic: ...can't even snack properly. I tried, recently. Got sick. Lesson/limits relearned. 😛

long winded walls of text is no mark of excellence. i'm pretty sure it's all based on hard data, they know for a fact no one reads beyond 5 paragraphs. i don't really miss the lore books. it's cool that it's there, but, usually there is so much of it you lose interest very quickly. i'll read through the lusty argonian maid, dwemer lore, not so much.

This worked. But I had to save and reload for the "+" level up sign to appear.

yeah, just found another one - seems there is no way to wake up characters I knocked out. There is this fight before hag where enemies are clearly controlled by her - so i just knocked them out and once hag is dead I can't wake them up... os weird

My guess would be....urk......multiplayer. 🤮

After sitting two years on my SSD unfinished, I'd just uninstalled this today to make some place for BG3. The main reason being that I very much agree with the Codex review's assassment. Owlcat are Combat And Trash Mob Central, basically. And WOTR even tops Kingmaker in that regard in quite a few ways -- unlike Kingmaker, it doesn't have that "detective work" bloom chapter freshing things up either. Last year I completed Solasta plus DLC (not smallest of games either) in like two or three weeks. But that game actually knows combat pacing, and has dedicated dungeon areas where you sometimes have but one or two major fights. Whereas Owlcat outside a few select unique encounters has you fighting mobs over and over and over... Both Icewind Dale's have nothing on their design ethos. It's as if an intern is allowed to go over all their maps at the last minute. Like: "Hey guys, I've spotted another couple empty spots on these maps." "So what's your proposed solution to this?" "I'll just paste&copy another couple mobs from the editor. I mean... these mobs are already plentiful, but more is more, right?" "Ok, shoot. Just as long as we deliver on the promise of offering an experience twice as long as BG1+2." It's always a tiring time sink after a while, wearing you down, like "Quantity Over Quality - THe CRPG". And the buffing routines naturally multiply the issue (which in Solasta, based on D&D 5e, naturally are a non-thing). Which is a shame, as else I quite like these things... so with Kingmaker I took one big break. With WOTR.... who knows. I mean, I want to. But, yeah. May depend on BG3, which in EA already had more options to direct combat than anything Owlcat. Plus, depending on the race you picked, otherwise hostile NPCs turned neutral. Unlike DOS, the map also didn't play out like a thinly veiled combat parcours either (with clearly leveled zones), and was actually fairly open to approach from the go. To quote a current player on the final release: "I'm surprised how little combat I faced so far even with a low int Barbarian (through means of intimidation". We'll see.