BG3

[MrBrown]

How not to interpret dice rolls:

 

[Wormerine]

8 hours ago, Sven_ said:

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.

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.

3 hours ago, MrBrown said:

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.

bear sex

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.

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

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 

Yeah, yeah. They got their Witcher3, we will see what their Cyberpunk will look like.

[Sarex]

The more I'm looking at the game the more I think that it's an evolution of DA:O with the D&D world/ruleset and TB combat. They just tried to improve on everything.

[Hurlshort]

5 hours ago, MrBrown said:

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.

I'm not sure how this led to it being a big thing, but it's very different than PoE or PF in terms of gameplay. Solasta might be close (now there's a bad UI), since you can jump around and manipulate a bit of the environment, but BG3 does environmental reactivity dramatically differently. I'd say for better or worse, really. I don't know that I need to be able to move every crate and rock in the game. I don't know that I need to slow down every time a bit of water spills on a patch of dirt. I don't know if I need the camera to be able to zoom in on all those weird angles. But it's definitely something different than other RPG's.

I also probably don't need to roll dice on everything. If I have enough bonuses to cover it, just skip it. Ugh.   

[Wormerine]

48 minutes ago, Sarex said:

The more I'm looking at the game the more I think that it's an evolution of DA:O with the D&D world/ruleset and TB combat. They just tried to improve on everything.

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. 

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

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. 

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.

[kanisatha]

13 hours ago, Wormerine said:

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.

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.

[Gorgon]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

I'm not sure how this led to it being a big thing, but it's very different than PoE or PF in terms of gameplay. Solasta might be close (now there's a bad UI), since you can jump around and manipulate a bit of the environment, but BG3 does environmental reactivity dramatically differently. I'd say for better or worse, really. I don't know that I need to be able to move every crate and rock in the game. I don't know that I need to slow down every time a bit of water spills on a patch of dirt. I don't know if I need the camera to be able to zoom in on all those weird angles. But it's definitely something different than other RPG's.

I also probably don't need to roll dice on everything. If I have enough bonuses to cover it, just skip it. Ugh.   

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. 

[Wormerine]

36 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

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.

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

[Chilloutman]

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?

[Wormerine]

41 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

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

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.

 

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

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.

 

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?

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.

[Chilloutman]

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

[InsaneCommander]

10 hours ago, MrBrown said:

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.

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

[HoonDing]

"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. "

It's a meme game.

[Hawke64]

22 hours ago, Wormerine said:

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.

Thank you. I suppose, those subclasses fit their backgrounds best, so I'll stick with them.

7 hours ago, Wormerine said:

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.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

bear sex

 

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.

 

11 hours ago, bugarup said:

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

I think the success also might be related to the popularity of the IPs used. Baldur's Gate, D&D, and Larian itself are well known, especially with those D&D YouTube shows (Critical Something, haven't watched). I agree that the cinematics, multiplayer, and the advertisement campaign appealed to the more general mainstream audience, even if I was not fond of the latter (I prefer text articles or trailers but not the developers talking). The game has some interesting systems, but it also skips a lot of explanations, making decisions for the player. Though, I must admit the automation for some of the more routine options is welcome (e.g. supply selection during camping or companions' subclass selection). I guess, The Age of Decadence might have some similarities in terms of options, but also was extremely niche.

Funnily enough, it is possible to switch to the other party members during dialogues and reposition them. But Ao forbids they help with the in-dialogue skill checks. I can't quite understand why, but it certainly is a deliberate design decision (one of the last updates on Steam mentioned it) that might have something to do with the MP aspects. Then again, in Wasteland 3 it was possible to switch the conversation to the other player (and their characters' skills) in one click.

Regarding dangerous areas in Grymforge,

Spoiler

It is possible to push 2 duergars into the lava and hold the position on the balcony, providing that the party can dodge arrows or you are willing to reload. Explosives help too. Which does remind of D:OS, but not too much and is optional.

I also had an odd bug when after making the duergar hostile - I tried to approach a specific door under the Invisibility spell and a dialogue with 2 red-outlined guards triggered. They politely told me to look after myself in the next area. After the dialogue they remained hostile and did not notice the invisible rogue.

On an unrelated note, the red dragon looks quite nice (screenshot):

Spoiler

 

---

Edit. Is there any clear indication what causes events to progress, not counting the "Finish everything before proceeding" message, which, I assume, means the start of the next Act? E.g. (small spoilers for Act 1):

Spoiler

Withers comes to the camp on his own if you don't go into the crypt or some random NPCs in a cave get overrun by gnolls or Waukeen's Rest burning.

Is it stepping into a wrong area or progressing an unrelated quest?

Edited August 7, 2023 by Hawke64

[lobotomy42]

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!

[Wormerine]

8 minutes ago, lobotomy42 said:

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.

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.

[Hawke64]

Some story elements remind of D:OS2 as well, such as

Spoiler

each party member having their own dream visitor and the cult thing,

but not too much.

[Gorgon]

2 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

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

 

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. 

[Sven_]

13 hours ago, MrBrown said:

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.

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...

 

Quote

Who mainly are your players? Are they people who played these classic RPGs as children, or are you attracting even more, say, young players these days?

That's one of the surprising statistics, because we thought we were really competing with other developers for that archetypal classic RPG player - it turns out not at all. The market is more about the midcore RPG player. I think it's because of the systemic nature that such people like it. That was certainly the reason for the success of DOS2. I think it will be the same for BG3. We'll see. But it was surprising. We didn't expect it ourselves. We have always seen our games as "classics", competing with the works of Obsidian or inXile, but this is not the case.

 

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by Sven_

[Sarex]

Quote

midcore RPG

That's such a great description and spot on.

[Theonlygarby]

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

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

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 was going to say " this is an outrageous post? How  can you say you wont finish BG3" 

But then I read your post and I get your reasons, they understandable and  based on what you enjoy from RPG. BG3 is just not for you and I think we need to accept that?

Last point from me to try to convince you, Wyll has a hot Cambion   patron as his side quest, if you don't continue to play BG3 you might miss the chance to Romance her or something similar? Are you prepared to take that risk 

Oh and how many hours did you spend playing it?

 

 

 

 

 

[MrBrown]

35h in. Things that annoy me so far:

- Jumping. This was much better done in Solasta.

- Combat/ability/item UI. Ditto, better done in Solasta.

- Inventory UI. Better done in PF:WotR.

- Environmental effects and the imprecise character control. Constantly walking into fire, traps, toxic clouds, etc. Just lost a fight because I clicked to make a melee attacks, turns out character was 1mm too far, decided to take a detour through lava.

- Destructible "sturdy" walls that give no indication of what stuff damages them. And sometimes the same attack does damage, sometimes not.

 

Still a good game though.

[Hawke64]

2 hours ago, MrBrown said:

- Destructible "sturdy" walls that give no indication of what stuff damages them. And sometimes the same attack does damage, sometimes not.

Context Menu (RMB by default) => Examine. The one Sturdy object I needed to destroy had 22DR to piercing damage and immunities to everything else. Went down from a grenade detonated by a fire arrow (for some reason, the Fire Bolt spell resulted in lower damage).

I think, I've reached Act 2 (the second map with DoT) and some issues are starting to show:

Spoiler

The harper from the Grymforge entrance whom I had avoided, later told to her leader that I was with her and I was able to say that I saved some soldiers. Neither of it had happened, I had sneaked past the initial encounter.

Also, does anyone know what are the options in that area to negate the DoT (the stronger one)?

Spoiler

If the drider was thrown into the chasm together with the lamp and the pixie, is there any way to repair and refuel one of the broken lamps or is it a softlock?

And completely unrelated to the things above, the cut-scenes with shorter characters are done quite well - when I was hugged by a human-sized NPC, the NPC kneeled first.

Additionally, one note about the guardian (light spoilers for Act 2):

Spoiler

The purple robe is back but with shorts instead of a skirt. Looks slightly better than in EA, but not exactly fitting the context.