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Baldur's Gate III released into Early Access

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  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited March 2020
    @Skatan I actually liked Cernd... mainly because he was voiced by the guy that voiced Ajantis in Baldur’s Gate 1... I like to pretend it’s all a big lie and that Ajantis just converted to a Druid and changed his name.. and his death is all a big fake ?

    Ahhh man reminds me of my days trying to get the purple helm brought back in Baldur’s Gate EE ?
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    edited March 2020
    deltago wrote: »
    I’m at work so not able to pay much attention - but level capped at 10 is really interesting. I’m not opposed (or for) that. What’s interesting though is that by 5e, 4 level 10 players can take on one Mindflayer (something like an 8CR) at a time, but definitely not an ulithaird. So the stakes and level seem a little at odds.

    Also level capping at 10 can be seen as something of a tacit admission we will get a BG4.

    This.

    They bit off more than they can chew by choosing Mindflayers as their main villain (or atleast starting villain) for a starting level 1 party (I blame WotC for this more than Larian). I keep hoping its a red herring and mechanic explanation more than anything thing but Sven saying it's hard to balance the encounters has me worried their trying to cram as much epicness in one go.

    A dragon fight would be cool. But not for 4 level 10s
    A Lich fight would be cool. But not for 4 level 10s.

    Baldur's gate did it right. Wyverns were brutal in cloakwood. They were epic enough and rare enough in the game that it felt like it was suppose to be a tough encounter. You didn't need a dragon there. That's still one of my worries.

    Sorry, I don't think that is a general rule. You had illithid, dragon and lich encounters in SoD, all lower than 10 levels. I'd say those were very interesting and felt unique to kill such beasts with all you had. So it can be done, and the limit is only designers' and writers' imagination.

    I like the lower level cap. It would have been hard to balance one game for levels 1-30 and it would have made it tooooooo long. Also, it immediately screams: "We can get a sequel if everything goes right". Which is exciting for me.

    I don't remember the illithid fight. The dragon fight was optional and was a very young dragon. I don't remember the lich unless it was the demilich, which again, was skippable. (edit: I am an idiot I was thing SoU and not SoD. I do remember the Lich fight and you had a 'special' item to make the combat easier.) So I don't know. You can give them the benefit of the doubt if you like, but if one of the first combats (after the tutorial chapter) is against 3 intellectual devourers, I don't think they know how to pace combat properly. edit #2: if we are talking about SoD, we are talking about a group of 6 opposed to 4, which was also part of my main point.

    My point is that they can't (or maybe they still will) throw groups of mindflayers at us like BG2 did. One mindflayer, IMO isn't a convincing and memorable boss. Elderbrain (BG2 again) maybe and if they do, they're going to have to take liberties with the rules to do so (which they already said they're going to do), which is unacceptable to me, especially if their biggest selling point is 'bring TB D&D to the computer screen again.'
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    spacejaws wrote: »
    megamike15 wrote: »
    i feel the same. it's like the witcher 3. dos 2 sold so well it's now the gold standered of crpgs. so if your not a fan of that style of game your out of luck.

    The problem with this is: You're not out of luck. PF:KM, PoE1 and 2, Tyranny and now PF: WotR - there are options for consumers who want that kind of game.

    3 of those are by the same company who deemed them a failure and is very likely to never return to the format. At best they license the engine to someone.

    So you have 1 other company doing it and that's it. Not exactly swimming in it.

    Pretty sure the first PoE wasn't a failure, which is why we got PoE2. Of course, PoE2 did not perform nearly as well in the market.

    I still don't understand this. Can somebody please explain to me how a game that was not only funded through kickstarter, but also reached several stretch goals is a "failure"? Wouldn't any sales at that point just be profit?
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    spacejaws wrote: »
    megamike15 wrote: »
    i feel the same. it's like the witcher 3. dos 2 sold so well it's now the gold standered of crpgs. so if your not a fan of that style of game your out of luck.

    The problem with this is: You're not out of luck. PF:KM, PoE1 and 2, Tyranny and now PF: WotR - there are options for consumers who want that kind of game.

    3 of those are by the same company who deemed them a failure and is very likely to never return to the format. At best they license the engine to someone.

    So you have 1 other company doing it and that's it. Not exactly swimming in it.

    Pretty sure the first PoE wasn't a failure, which is why we got PoE2. Of course, PoE2 did not perform nearly as well in the market.

    I still don't understand this. Can somebody please explain to me how a game that was not only funded through kickstarter, but also reached several stretch goals is a "failure"? Wouldn't any sales at that point just be profit?

    Its reception wasn't as good as it could have been.
    Mighty No. 9 was a successful kickstarter but was consider a complete failure.
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    deltago wrote: »
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    spacejaws wrote: »
    megamike15 wrote: »
    i feel the same. it's like the witcher 3. dos 2 sold so well it's now the gold standered of crpgs. so if your not a fan of that style of game your out of luck.

    The problem with this is: You're not out of luck. PF:KM, PoE1 and 2, Tyranny and now PF: WotR - there are options for consumers who want that kind of game.

    3 of those are by the same company who deemed them a failure and is very likely to never return to the format. At best they license the engine to someone.

    So you have 1 other company doing it and that's it. Not exactly swimming in it.

    Pretty sure the first PoE wasn't a failure, which is why we got PoE2. Of course, PoE2 did not perform nearly as well in the market.

    I still don't understand this. Can somebody please explain to me how a game that was not only funded through kickstarter, but also reached several stretch goals is a "failure"? Wouldn't any sales at that point just be profit?

    Its reception wasn't as good as it could have been.
    Mighty No. 9 was a successful kickstarter but was consider a complete failure.

    But then it just means we have redefined and devalued the meaning of the word "failure."
    I agree claiming PoE2 was a "failure" is rather ridiculous. One could say its sales were a disappointment relative to expectations, but that's about it. It had a very successful crowdfunding campaign. It sold enough copies for Obsidian to gain at least minimal profit. It scored an 89 on metacritic. And all major reviewers gave it very solid reviews and it won some awards. How is all of this "failure"?
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    I thought PoE and PoE2 had a similar review score
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    I figured that PoE1 players were expecting seeing the same Central European-esque setting for PoE2. But were then alienated by its Polynesian-esque game world. Which oddly enough is also the reason why I found PoE2 to be way more fascinating than PoE1. *shrugs*
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    edited March 2020
    I haven't played PoE2 (yet), but based on just the marketing I very much like its setting. I love that they brought the sequel to a land (or sea?) that's culturally unique and a fairly rare setting among CRPGs, much like BG2 did back when it was made.
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,725
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    I don't see how any of that is a "failure" though. The game made a profit, it reviewed well, it was UNIQUE.
  • ZaxaresZaxares Member Posts: 1,325
    Mirandel wrote: »
    That... is bad. And sad. Not a deal breaker, even one companion is better then nothing, but ... sad.
    Well, SoS was moddable in the way to increase party size too. Hopefully, this will remain.

    Yep. :/ I'm hoping that the way BG3 is designed means that we can console/mod the party to increase party size, but we'll have to wait and see.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    I don't see how any of that is a "failure" though. The game made a profit, it reviewed well, it was UNIQUE.

    same way movies fail. it did not make up for it''s budget.
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    megamike15 wrote: »
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    I don't see how any of that is a "failure" though. The game made a profit, it reviewed well, it was UNIQUE.

    same way movies fail. it did not make up for it''s budget.

    Ah, but it did. Per Obsidian's own claim that it did not lose money on the game. And that was even before they added the TB option and before the release on consoles.
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    One thing about games/entertainment not only do they have to make their money back, they need to make enough to find their next game, or at least have enough goodwill and potential to start a kickstarter to raise the money, or find a publisher to foot the bill.
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    deltago wrote: »
    One thing about games/entertainment not only do they have to make their money back, they need to make enough to find their next game, or at least have enough goodwill and potential to start a kickstarter to raise the money, or find a publisher to foot the bill.

    plus all the money that they spent on marketing, no company will say how much they spend on that, but it can be quite costly, i remember one of the prince of persia games cost somewhere around 150 million bucks to make/advertise and they were worried about making their money back because they only sold a couple million copies, and even though they sold that much, doesn't mean they are actually going to profit from it
  • DinoDinDinoDin Member Posts: 1,570
    deltago wrote: »
    One thing about games/entertainment not only do they have to make their money back, they need to make enough to find their next game, or at least have enough goodwill and potential to start a kickstarter to raise the money, or find a publisher to foot the bill.

    Important to understand the opportunity cost as well. Even if Deadfire made a profit, and I believe it did, was it as much of a profit as Obsidian would have made putting all their people to work on a different project? Clearly there's a view within the company that something like this is the case, hence the retrospectives by Sawyer that admit to sales being lackluster.
  • ArdanisArdanis Member Posts: 1,736
    Level cap 10? I changed my mind, I'm not contemplating buying this. The main feature of DnD is its immense character development potential, so if Larian wants to axe it, I see no reason to spend money on this Dragon Age remake.
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Ardanis wrote: »
    Level cap 10? I changed my mind, I'm not contemplating buying this. The main feature of DnD is its immense character development potential, so if Larian wants to axe it, I see no reason to spend money on this Dragon Age remake.

    It’s obvious that they are planning a sequel for levels 11-20.

    I personally also like slow burn leveling systems. I want to experience what it’s like to play at a certain level for a quest or two instead of the opposite where you start it at level 4 and finish it at level 7.
  • spacejawsspacejaws Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 389
    edited March 2020
    DinoDin wrote: »
    Important to understand the opportunity cost as well. Even if Deadfire made a profit, and I believe it did, was it as much of a profit as Obsidian would have made putting all their people to work on a different project? Clearly there's a view within the company that something like this is the case, hence the retrospectives by Sawyer that admit to sales being lackluster.

    I'm not sure but these are the kind of public comments coming out of the dev team.

    Answering to a question from a fan who asked “Will there be a Pillars 3?”, Josh Sawyer said, “that is not something that I get to decide, but I do think that the relatively low sales of Deadfire mean that if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we’re going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game.”

    It sounds like Obsidian consider the game a failure and they are not sure why. Hell I don't even know why. My only consideration is all those people that jumped in on PoE 1 didnt actually play it to completion(yet?) and didnt feel the need to jump into PoE2 immediately. I kickstarted the game but it was a year later before I tried it.
    Post edited by spacejaws on
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    I see it as unlikely that Obsidian will deliver a PoE3 with their old fomat, if at all.

    Especially after the success Outer Worlds had for them. If a future Outer Worlds 2 does also have the same level of critical success as its prequels, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Obsidian would play with the thought of making a PoE3 into “Outer Worlds with spells“.
  • DinoDinDinoDin Member Posts: 1,570
    edited March 2020
    spacejaws wrote: »
    DinoDin wrote: »
    Important to understand the opportunity cost as well. Even if Deadfire made a profit, and I believe it did, was it as much of a profit as Obsidian would have made putting all their people to work on a different project? Clearly there's a view within the company that something like this is the case, hence the retrospectives by Sawyer that admit to sales being lackluster.

    I'm not sure but these are the kind of public comments coming out of the dev team.

    Answering to a question from a fan who asked “Will there be a Pillars 3?”, Josh Sawyer said, “that is not something that I get to decide, but I do think that the relatively low sales of Deadfire mean that if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we’re going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game.”

    It sounds like Obsidian consider the game a failure and they are not sure why. Hell I don't even know why. My only consideration is all those people that jumped in on PoE 1 didnt actually play it to completion(yet?) and didnt feel the need to jump into PoE2 immediately. I kickstarted the game but it was a year later before I tried it.

    Deadfire had some pretty bad launch day issues, especially difficulty. In a way, I don't think the game's difficulty was ever fixed. The game has a very un-fun difficulty, imo. I spoke about this in the Deadfire thread, but failed to articulate one critical point.

    Alot of critiques of games are subjective, but one that is objective is whether the designers achieved their own intended goals. It's clear that the wounds, resting bonuses, empowers and some other per rest abilities were geared towards designing some kind of dungeon-crawly challenge that we see in almost all these RPG's. Your party accumulates some wounds, while slowly burning empowers, and you're forced to make tough decisions on whether to rest or keep pushing on.

    The problem in Deadfire, it's that it's never a tough decision. Just rest. As much as you want. Burn all your highest powered abilities in even the mildly challenging fights and then rest as often as you can. Because there's really no downside to playing that way. And failing to do it means you might get surprised in some battle and face the game's only really bad consequence -- the full party wipe.

    Adding to this is the essentially huge party resource pool that gets replenished after every fight, meaning you're encouraged to cast highest level spells/abilities in every single round of combat, meaning the action even within fights grinds to a slow halt. All these high level abilities have been balanced too around needing to be used in every fight, so they're no longer dramatic, the way say even a simple hold person spell could be in the BG games. So instead of having some really dynamic game changing abilities at your disposal, fights are instead you queuing up roughly the same assembly line of abilities, an assembly line that only grows as the game progresses. What you end up with is slow paced and drama-less combat, where you're frequently chipping away at bullet spongey enemies and using CC skills that are more about slightly moving the dice rolls in your favor as opposed to dramatic debuffs.
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    I see it as unlikely that Obsidian will deliver a PoE3 with their old fomat, if at all.

    Especially after the success Outer Worlds had for them. If a future Outer Worlds 2 does also have the same level of critical success as its prequels, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Obsidian would play with the thought of making a PoE3 into “Outer Worlds with spells“.

    They do have at least three new projects that they're currently working on including TOW2 for sure. On the Obsidian forums we've even identified their likely project code names and project directors. But with respect to the Pillars franchise my guess for their next game is that it will be some sort of "Pillars Tactics" game that's all about TB tactical squad combat.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    I see it as unlikely that Obsidian will deliver a PoE3 with their old fomat, if at all.

    Especially after the success Outer Worlds had for them. If a future Outer Worlds 2 does also have the same level of critical success as its prequels, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Obsidian would play with the thought of making a PoE3 into “Outer Worlds with spells“.

    there is a small section of people that considered outer worlds mediocre. so obsidian is in a very bad place right now. their isometric games did not sell well and some think their last game was mediocre and playing it to safe.
  • PsicoVicPsicoVic Member Posts: 868
    edited March 2020
    Sadly, even if the game is mediocre, they made quite the revenue, and that is what keeps a company doing games, not the critics. So as the others said, I expect more shooters made by obsidian from now on and less isometric RPGs. They had a proper PR campaign for this game with lots of advertising, so I supposse that helps.

    That said, I found the game a little short with too much revisiting zones and the annoying unlimited respawning of the enemies , but the plot and the cast of characters are amusing, the quests are varied; the voice acting is as good as usual ; and the game has some LOL moments like in any game of obsidian.

    Not their best job but still a bad game from obsidian is far above the average quality of dialogues of most RPG.
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    spacejaws wrote: »
    DinoDin wrote: »
    Important to understand the opportunity cost as well. Even if Deadfire made a profit, and I believe it did, was it as much of a profit as Obsidian would have made putting all their people to work on a different project? Clearly there's a view within the company that something like this is the case, hence the retrospectives by Sawyer that admit to sales being lackluster.

    I'm not sure but these are the kind of public comments coming out of the dev team.

    Answering to a question from a fan who asked “Will there be a Pillars 3?”, Josh Sawyer said, “that is not something that I get to decide, but I do think that the relatively low sales of Deadfire mean that if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we’re going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game.”

    It sounds like Obsidian consider the game a failure and they are not sure why. Hell I don't even know why. My only consideration is all those people that jumped in on PoE 1 didnt actually play it to completion(yet?) and didnt feel the need to jump into PoE2 immediately. I kickstarted the game but it was a year later before I tried it.

    Because they over saturated the market with this type of game play.

    If 6 different racing games gets released in a 2 year window, a couple of them are going to underperform as consumers need to choose between the different franchises:

    Since 2012
    Baldur's Gate EE Nov 2012
    Baldur's Gate 2 EE Nov 2013
    Icewind Dale: EE Oct 2014
    Pillars of Eternity March 2015
    Tyranny Nov 2016
    Torement Tides of Numenera Feb 2017
    Planescape: Torment: EE April 2017
    Pillars of Eternity 2 May 2018
    Pathfinder: Kingmaker Sept 2018

    Starting at Tyranny, we have 5 RtwP games released in 2 years. That saturation didn't happen with TB RPGs (not jrpgs) in the same timespan. So a game like D:OS2 gets to feel different when it's released right in the middle of it (Sept 2017).

    Waiting on PoE3 a couple years may reverse this. If everyone is going to start releasing TB games because they think that is where the consumers are going to go, a RtwP game in 3 to 4 years is going to feel fresh and new again.

    However, as he stated, it is no longer up to him, but Microsoft. Microsoft may look at how well Te Outerworlds did, and expect Obsidian to put in all their resources to make a sequel for that to get a nice exclusive for their next gen console and PC.
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    Torment is TB, and the EEs do not count as new games. On the other side there have been quite a number of TB cRPGs released over the past five years. Like I keep saying, just go and do a keyword search for "CRPG" and "turn based" versus "CRPG" and "RTwP" on Steam. The former will generate several pages of games. The latter will not even fill out one page of results.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    does not matter if they arnt new games. they were still coming out along side the newer rtwp crpgs. and it could have been a new game to someone.



  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    Yeah... Torment: Tides of Numenera regrettable turned out to be TB. They put the combat style on a backer poll and RTwP lost quite badly back then. The game still flopped even with TB combat though. To the point where InXile didn't even bothered to sufficiently patch out the remaining bugs. So I don't imagine the studio will continue to work on further Numenera titles. Which is a shame, given the uniqueness of the tabletop campaign setting. They rather put their efforts into Wasteland 2 in 2015, Wasteland 1: Remastered in 2020 and Wasteland 3 (which soon starting its beta phase). Their whole franchise of course being TB as well. The same tale with the Bard's Tale franchise (pun intended).

    As far as not yet mentioned RTwP RPG's goes: there was also The Dwarves in 2016. Tower of Time in 2018. Abandon Ship in 2019. And the yet to be released The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes. RTwP hasn't gone extinct yet, thanks to indie developers. But it sure took a nose dive compared to its TB counterpart.
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