Wormerine

Yes, having full VO is nice, but unfortunately in Deadfire the quality of VO suffered. PoE1 had some outstanding voice content, PoE2 not so much, with some weak bits everyonce in a while. Understandable, considering how it got jammed into the production schedule, but unfortunate nonetheless. There are also some conversation trees that don't work terribly well with VO.

Still not feeling it, but at least looks more promising than the awful demo they released a while back. Oh, a Bad Rats sequel?

I did find Laez intro to be a bit over the top, but I do like Wylls. The swashbuckling feel of it fits the image he tries to craft for himself. Where's I can't imagine Laez timing her jump with a dragon just to make an impression on a thrall she wants to kill.

You mean Starfield? Skyfall? Sure. Just trying to guess how the game have sold, based on data they provided. The numbers they shared, just seem much lower than I expected considering the assumed success. Based on those @kanisatha might have been right.

Hmmm, the numbers here don’t seem very impressive. We don’t get an exact player count but we now how many origins were created and that sum is 7% of all characters created. Unless my estimate is off around 1,645,386 characters were created in total. Even if we assume no one created two characters (like I did), that would mean max of 1,6m players at most. That’s, significantly less than 2,5m of early access players.

Eh, you don’t. BG3 is more or less that but better. For the combat system I still would recommend D:OS1 over D:OS2.

Phew. Finally finished surface area of act1. Throwing is still as broken as it was in EA. Since I found returning spike, the game has been laughably easy. On top of doing full attack damage to begin with, if you attack from heigh enough they also stack crush damage (comes from items falling on creatures) on top - it seems to sometimes apply twice. She melts Ogres in one go. I consider abandoning the weapons, and frankly it's been making the encounters rather dull.

Well, yes. That would be entirely different system. Apparently those changable faces are pretty hard to pull off. Personally, I am happy with what Larian did. There is enough variation there for me to find something I like.

It's been posted in other parts of the forum, but Obsidian explained a little bit about Avowed development troubles. Rumors that the game was originally multiplayer focused and Obsidian ended up piviting away from it were true

Hmm, I am starting to see instances of game’s reactivity not catching up. So far minor stuff:

I had a lot of doubts about the camp system, but I think I ended up liking it. In the EA it felt like mandatory evil to facilitate companion story cutscenes, but so far it works so much better in 1.0. First of all, I like how companion’s story progress now both in and outside of the camp (the wasn’t the case in EA). It makes the companions feel more alive - less like you get story story bits gated behind rests. I also can’t stress, how big of an impact made the daylight camp - especially after you rested. It reinforces the idea of going to sleep in waking up before adventuring further, rather that a weird pocket dimension, where all your companions are stored. I am afraid there is no party management UI. Feels like there simply should be one when leaving the camp, and all inventories of all companions should be available while you are in camp. I think it is just something one needs to accept. Not a terrible thing, in my opinion, with original games being nicely wrapped up, but I would prefer if it was Baldur’s Gate: xxxxxxx, rather than a titled entry.

it is a bit weird, isn't it. I had my first encounter with it, and it more or less it is that. Overall, a massive improvement over EA aparition.

yes, and no. I think BG3 lacks tools to make it smoother (you can't access inventory of characters not in your current party, nor level them up, and adding/removing characters is tedious). I think there is also a dissonance between narrative (group of independed individuals with their own agendas) and gameplay experience in singleplayers - main character, and mindless drones with story content at your disposal. I think that if there was a narrative reason for us to be in charge (like in traiditional Bioware RPGs) it would go down smoother. I see it as a side effect of coop design - as players we are not really designed to babysit the party and the game doesn't quite work if you play it like that. That said, I do like micromanaging my party! I am glad that Larian decided not to kill off spare party members like they did in D:OS2. I still might kill off Astarion. Everything he says just enforces me in belief that he is a danger to himself and everyone around him. Actually, so his Gale. And Laez. And maybe Shadowheart.

I am still in EA area with a lot of stuff ahead of me, before I can even consider moving toward new content.

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fortunately, I can't give you specifics, but:

Which UI? Charactercreation/lvl up, is overall an improvement, but I found it confusing at times. I think I could easily miss some choices (even key choices) if I wouldn’t know what I am looking for. For example I don’t like how the game automatically selects things x even key things like subclass. It is especially problematic with classes who get their subclass later (like bard) - there is no fanfare that we get to make an important choice in character’s development. I could easily imagine people just picking stuff the game tells them to and moving forward, not realising they got assigned a subclass. hotbar is over engineered, but at least there are drop down menu. I find it functional, if not elegant.