Apparently Baldur's Gate 3 terrifies AAA game companies. If off topic please move.

rinaldo00 said:
This whining from AAA companies is hilarious!



TL;DR "We're gonna excuse why OUR games are awful & terrible."
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They should be scared, Baldurs Gate 3 is a unicorn product.

The company building it has developed their own unique engine for exactly this sort of game. They have spent a decade building and refining their development library and tool set specifically for this sort of game in their engine.
The type of game it is does not require massive graphically intensive resources, it runs and looks good at 30fps and up.
Larian has also developed a massive AI infrastructure for crawling through their games to find broken, and incomplete quest chains and it also has the ability to identify quests that would be considered to have a non satisfactory completion.

Early access for the game also got an unrivalled amount of player feedback, and they have been able to use it to tweak and fine tune the content.

D&D as a whole especially 5e also has far more feed back, balancing tweaks, and player input than just about any other system.

This game is a very tight collaboration between Larian and the player base and it shows.
This is not something that any other studio or community could easily achieve.
 
Larian had the resources to take their time and get things right, and release "when it's done". Small/indie developers can't be expected to meet that standard. When somebody from Blizzard starts in, they get no sympathy.

Sawyer from Obsidian chiming in is interesting. My impression of Obsidian has always been a AA developer constrained by publisher funding. We've yet to see what they can do as part of Microsoft.

AAA publishers have no ground to stand on here.
 
jfreund said:
Larian had the resources to take their time and get things right, and release "when it's done". Small/indie developers can't be expected to meet that standard. When somebody from Blizzard starts in, they get no sympathy.

Sawyer from Obsidian chiming in is interesting. My impression of Obsidian has always been a AA developer constrained by publisher funding. We've yet to see what they can do as part of Microsoft.

AAA publishers have no ground to stand on here.
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I would love to hear Beamdog's take on BG3, but only because they are staffed mostly by the people who made BG1,2, and the other titles in the Infinity Engine.
 
Lakados said:
D&D as a whole especially 5e also has far more feed back, balancing tweaks, and player input than just about any other system.
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No, it's the most incomplete version of D&D ever released. It's also poorly balanced and apart from the new mechanics is missing a lot of content that should be in the core books and not in splatbooks.
 
Yeah idk, I know 5th edition gets a lot of criticism from older fans. I've never played it, so eh. I just want another great crpg.
 
Furious_Styles said:
Yeah it's one of the last things I'd care about when looking at a game's flaws.
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People who have played D&D forever are standing on solid ground. 2.5 was the best version by far, it just had weak mechanics. 3 added good mechanics but broke the experience system.

3.5 tried to fix the experience system but ultimately got too expensive to play with all the splatbooks. 4 was a joke. 5 has the best mechanics without a doubt, but they broke the XP just as bad as 3, and like I said, it's incomplete. Some of the classes just don't function beyond early levels and the multi-class and dual-class systems are worthless.

Knowing this plus Hasbro's recent other shenanigan make this a tough sale. I don't want to give them money anymore, even though I would love a great, new, D&D-flavored game. And I like Larian, too. I'm just not sure they can pull it off with what they were given to work with.

With Baldur's Gate through KOTOR 2, the devs had too much game and had to simplify things to make the games playable. With Fifth Edition, we have to hope that Larian understands D&D on their own well enough to make the game despite Hasbro. That's a tough call.
 
Each version of D&D has it quirks, I play 5 all the time and it works well enough. But to translate it to a computer game always takes a bit more work and some careful modification. Did take me a bit to forget THAC0.
 
This is laughable, snowflakes run gaming companies now. But now they are completely openly demanding snowflake treatment. NO, stop complaining, make a better game if you don't want criticism.
 
I disagree even with indie studios getting a pass, much less the AAA studios. The indie studios have to offer something innovative/unique, even if by budget necessity their games fall short in other areas. If all they are doing is offering the same type of game, with nothing innovative, just saying "hey look, we're indie", then they don't deserve money from gaming customers either. Let their studios fail too.

As for the AAA game studios complaining about a competitor offering a product too high quality, there are a couple easy solutions. Significantly increase the quality of your own products or significantly decrease their prices. My time is valuable though, so I won't be buying low quality games even at cheap prices.
 
Axman said:
People who have played D&D forever are standing on solid ground. 2.5 was the best version by far, it just had weak mechanics. 3 added good mechanics but broke the experience system.

3.5 tried to fix the experience system but ultimately got too expensive to play with all the splatbooks. 4 was a joke. 5 has the best mechanics without a doubt, but they broke the XP just as bad as 3, and like I said, it's incomplete. Some of the classes just don't function beyond early levels and the multi-class and dual-class systems are worthless.

Knowing this plus Hasbro's recent other shenanigan make this a tough sale. I don't want to give them money anymore, even though I would love a great, new, D&D-flavored game. And I like Larian, too. I'm just not sure they can pull it off with what they were given to work with.

With Baldur's Gate through KOTOR 2, the devs had too much game and had to simplify things to make the games playable. With Fifth Edition, we have to hope that Larian understands D&D on their own well enough to make the game despite Hasbro. That's a tough call.
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A game like D&D shouldn't be run as if it were a CCG, with constant new versions. What's M:tG up to, version 17?
 
Axman said:
No, it's the most incomplete version of D&D ever released. It's also poorly balanced and apart from the new mechanics is missing a lot of content that should be in the core books and not in splatbooks.
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GAH. I need you and my old friend to fight. He insists 5th fixed everything. I only know 1st edition which was a bit of a mess, but a known mess.

I have some younger kids very interesting in playing, and I'm trying to navigate these new waters which are 30+ years old now.
Edit: holy snap. Far more than 30 years. Well great.
 
PC-Only said:
As for the AAA game studios complaining about a competitor offering a product too high quality, there are a couple easy solutions. Significantly increase the quality of your own products or significantly decrease their prices. My time is valuable though, so I won't be buying low quality games even at cheap prices.
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DOes it exist ? If it does I imagine we would never known because they would never admit this., maybe a passed the video too quick, but saying not set the expectation for everyone making RPGs, is not saying that expectation for the next Elder Scroll (or any AAA rpg) should be lower.
 
1_rick said:
A game like D&D shouldn't be run as if it were a CCG, with constant new versions. What's M:tG up to, version 17?
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Yeah Hasbro has no idea what their market is with D&D. 3.5 was very CCG-like, with splatbooks that fixed the multi-class/dual-class system uuuuuhhvventually, but you had to buy like 40+ books for that. 4th edition tried to turn D&D into Warhammer to sell minis, it flopped hard.

OutOfPhase said:
He insists 5th fixed everything. I only know 1st edition which was a bit of a mess, but a known mess.
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The core mechanics of 5th edition did fix everything, as far as the mechanics go. Everything else was copy-pastad from 2.5 and 3.5, and then they just left a ton of shit out. The skill system is weak, the feat system is non-existent, the spells are good (because they're from other games/versions), the spell-casting system is an afterthought, and the class progression system is broken. And the combat system feels a little too 4th edition, that is to say, you can roleplay combat to some extent, and there's no fighting styles or specialization any more.

Class balance is terrible, too. They nerfed all of the fighter classes, that goes double for rangers, thieves are weak, clerics are more or less back to tanks again, and bards are insanely overpowered. They can cast spells from *every* class and their casting ability is based on their *constitution*. They can fight almost as hard as fighters, have hit points for days, and can be every spellcaster, in armor. Oh and they have bard-only spells that all use sonic damage as their element which nothing has immunity against and they can enchant their own weapons.

On the one hand, neat, they were always an interesting class especially back in the day, but it shows that the developers didn't understand the way the game works. Like I said, it's largely copied and modified from earlier versions, by people who clearly never played them.

But I gotta give the nerd who put his or her foot down on the core mechanics changes, they are top-notch. Instead of just rolling and adding your number to it, depending on the circumstance, you have advantage or disadvantage, which means rolling two dice and picking either the better number or getting stuck with the worse one.
 
Well farketey dingles. Sorry but not sorry for tangent.

Okay Axman and others - if you were to start playing with young smart players - which ruleset would you pick?

I am very familiar with 1st gen (have the book with the efreeti, froggy statue with gem eyes from players handbook, etc). Somewhat less with 2.x (computer games), and nothing beyond that, really.
 
OutOfPhase said:
which ruleset would you pick?
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I have a great idea: 5th edition.

First of all, if they want to play with other kids, then they’ll all be on the same page. You can homebrew around the shortcomings and find other people’s fixes, and pilfer feats from 3.5 or invent your own.

Have all your players play as bards, they’re in a traveling troupe, solving mysteries going from town to town Scooby Doo style!

They can still pick their races, and they can all focus on a different play style, one focused on fighting, magic, healing, etc.

This gets around the balance issue and gives you a super easy way to build your questlines.
 
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Oh and you, the DM, could roll up a band manager (thief) so you can do the lockpicking and whatnot and put plot armor on doors and chests and that stuff.
 
Axman said:
Have all your players play as bards
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This feels dumber than the team that saved the world in 8-Bit Theater. I mean, I read the description of them as Mary Sues above, but still...
 
M76 said:
This is laughable, snowflakes run gaming companies now. But now they are completely openly demanding snowflake treatment. NO, stop complaining, make a better game if you don't want criticism.
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I think all of the major talent who made good PC games in the past 50 years is gone. Except whoever is working on Ashes of creation. Where they just hired the guy for EverQuest as Lead Designer. I'm not really familiar with foreign countries and their talent pools. Obviously Larain is one of the good guys.
 
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1_rick said:
This feels dumber than the team that saved the world in 8-Bit Theater. I mean, I read the description of them as Mary Sues above, but still...
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Nah, it works great, have you played Brutal Legend? Also single- and similar-class parties are excellent for coming up with a quest line that they are all interested in. But, some single-class parties just don't work. All mages/sorcerers? No full stop. All druids? Works, but boring, and realistically needs a ranger and a barbarian. All fighters? Again, just stop. All palladins/clerics? Gay.

All thieves worked *fantastically* in 3.5, it was the unsung master of single-class setups, and this worked very, very well in Neverwinter Nights 2. I would say that's the reason they nerfed thieves for 5th edition but they are not that smart.

An all-bard party, especially for kids, now that's entertainment. Rock-and- uh, lute, ale, wenches...sometimes vampire wenches...

Especially now that bards are the OP class. There are some higher DPS builds but they aren't immune to charm person.

It comes down to this: when the reviews for BG3 come out, and I decide, "fine, you got me," well you already know which class I'm going to roll up first.
 
Using game dev excuses, CoD should be the most unbelievable series of games of all time then.

It has 20 years+ and an insane amount of games “feeding into it”, and a dev with all the money and development resources possible. Larian has produced what, 5-6 Divinity games total? And is a 400 person team?
 
I remember the same thing happened to Eldin Ring when it was released last year. Developers would give their opinion on the game and critique the UI. Now we have Balders Gate 3 which is this yet again once in a lifetime game that will turn developers heads upside down as they pump out formulaic games that get awful reviews on MetaCritic. The entertainment industry does not reward mediocrity forever. At some point the studios that hire gamers who actually are fans of games and played them will do a better job than the people who played solitaire and maybe Mario Kart that one time. This is why Sega can't make a good Sonic game, and when Sega hired fans who did make fan projects of Sonic and then created Sonic Mania is when Sega finally made a good Sonic game.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Using game dev excuses, CoD should be the most unbelievable series of games of all time then.

It has 20 years+ and an insane amount of games “feeding into it”, and a dev with all the money and development resources possible. Larian has produced what, 5-6 Divinity games total? And is a 400 person team?
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I usually will rant about how COD ruined the modern FPS game. No real learning curve to jump in and be relatively good so when people play games that require more then a basic understanding of aiming and shooting they will usually abandon it or complain about how it should be more like Call of Duty.

I've tried to get a ton of people to play Hunt Showdown but the style of game is unique and the learning curve is steep to be competitive. They will usually play a handful of matches with me and then uninstall it because they don't want to creep up to a building cautiously and use sound/visual cues... instead trying to run and gun and then being mad when someone pinpoints their position and shoots them easily from a distance.
 
DukenukemX said:
I remember the same thing happened to Eldin Ring when it was released last year. Developers would give their opinion on the game and critique the UI. Now we have Balders Gate 3 which is this yet again once in a lifetime game that will turn developers heads upside down as they pump out formulaic games that get awful reviews on MetaCritic. The entertainment industry does not reward mediocrity forever. At some point the studios that hire gamers who actually are fans of games and played them will do a better job than the people who played solitaire and maybe Mario Kart that one time. This is why Sega can't make a good Sonic game, and when Sega hired fans who did make fan projects of Sonic and then created Sonic Mania is when Sega finally made a good Sonic game.
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Thats a really good way to get the very formulaic games that will be built on a long history of rules about how games should play and feel (like Baldur Gates 3 will be), gamers love formula like making yet again an other Sonic game or Soulsbornes game. Pushing formula to the best they can be via many iterations is not necessarily a bad thing in video games.

How could someone that never play game come up with a formulaic game ? They would not even associate w with going forward, to start with, and would not come up with the all game has crafting system by themselves.

What could be formulaic to use D&D rules set on a franchise sequel on a very establish genre like Baldur Gates 3...

UnknownSouljer said:
Using game dev excuses, CoD should be the most unbelievable series of games of all time then.
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If we use what people buy and play to give us an idea, yes arguably that seem to be what gamers things.

It should not be used to be as a bar for everyone, but in the case of shooter nobody does but the bar of small team to the Battlefield-Call of Duty, people do not assume motion capture, voice work, online multiplayer infrastructure of Serious Sam to be at CoD level, it tend to be very trivial and something everyone do.

I can see why the RPG world could be a bit different, no one put the comparable for Wartales to have Elders Scrolls-final fantasy level of work in them, but at surface with a quick look, graphic wise maybe Baldur Gates 3 could look like something about everyone should be able to pull off.
 
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I was always a Gamma World guy myself...................and D&D 1st edition, but that's only because I was there and am now too old to even hope to follow all the changes those games have undergone over the years. RE: Comment above about how Bards are overpowered...so the overweight guys with the huge beards who avoid work and drink ale all day long are the new over powered class? Who writes these new rulebooks anyhow :D


Ok, seriously: What's a Splatbook. </old guy>
 
HeadRusch said:
Who writes these new rulebooks anyhow :D
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Ironically a bunch of blue-haired kids that think the orcs are offensive because they embody negative racial stereotypes.

HeadRusch said:
Ok, seriously: What's a Splatbook. </old guy>
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Any of the materials that aren't in the core books; the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Splatbooks are to tabletop games what expansion packs are to video games. What 5E did differently is they cut out stuff from the core books and only included it in the splatbooks, which means that if you want the complete game, you have to sign up for their subscription service, or buy all of the new materials separately.

When people started sharing this stuff, Hasbro shut down a ton of websites under DMCA, not just reclaiming their content, but destroying a ton of homebrew stuff at the same time. This is troubling for BG3, since the original BG1/2 modding community is huge and still active, and some games, like Skyrim, only exist because of the modding community. We don't know how Hasbro is going to handle BG3 mods.
 
HeadRusch said:
I was always a Gamma World guy myself...................and D&D 1st edition, but that's only because I was there and am now too old to even hope to follow all the changes those games have undergone over the years. RE: Comment above about how Bards are overpowered...so the overweight guys with the huge beards who avoid work and drink ale all day long are the new over powered class? Who writes these new rulebooks anyhow :D


Ok, seriously: What's a Splatbook. </old guy>
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I played the hell out of Gamma World with my friends in HS. Loved it.
 
Axman said:
Ironically a bunch of blue-haired kids that think the orcs are offensive because they embody negative racial stereotypes.
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Picture has been painted. Thx.
Axman said:
Any of the materials that aren't in the core books; the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Splatbooks are to tabletop games what expansion packs are to video games. What 5E did differently is they cut out stuff from the core books and only included it in the splatbooks, which means that if you want the complete game, you have to sign up for their subscription service, or buy all of the new materials separately.

When people started sharing this stuff, Hasbro shut down a ton of websites under DMCA, not just reclaiming their content, but destroying a ton of homebrew stuff at the same time. This is troubling for BG3, since the original BG1/2 modding community is huge and still active, and some games, like Skyrim, only exist because of the modding community. We don't know how Hasbro is going to handle BG3 mods.
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I just dug all those old hardcovers out of the attic......lots o' memories. I enjoyed reading the creature/character backstories and checking out all the illustrations, which usually included fine examples of either gore, titties or sometimes...even both. <sniff..meeeeeemories>.
 
Never played Baldur's Gate 1/2.. but now thinking I should so I am ready once the third comes out.
 
OutOfPhase said:
I played Metamorphosis Alpha with my peers. Basically, the beta version of Gamma World. No one wanted to play the real version when Gamma World was released.

Also, my lord I'm old.
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Yeah, that was a long time ago.
 
The only thing I noticed on Twitter when reading all of these responses from developers agreeing with the original thread were their pronouns in their profile.

That’s all that needs to be said here frankly.
 
DooKey said:
Yeah, that was a long time ago.
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