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BG3: Yay or Nay?

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  • BallpointManBallpointMan Member Posts: 1,659

    On D&D, yes, weapons have historically accurate ranges.

    Not in Baldur's Gate they dont. Not even remotely.

    For example - the longbow does not have a range on it directly, so we have to assess its range indirectly. We know that Fireball (the spell) has 30 foot diameter on its explosion, and we can see that a ranger (who has trained all his life, as you have said) with a bow, cannot hit a target much further away than the diameter of the explosion (less than double the range of the explosion, I would wager).

    I suspect the modders in here might have a better idea if there's a variable that directly relates to weapon range for throwing/ranged weapons or not, but it's probably around... 40ish feet in range. Sounds like D:OS2 to me...

    It's an abstraction. It's not meant to be faithful to PNP or reality, because it's not feasible to play a party based RPG where your archer is 150 feet away from the rest of your characters and still hitting the enemy.

    If you play tabletop, you'll run into the same issue. The ranger in my party has a crossbow that has well over a 100 foot range, but never gets to use that range because the battlemaps we use dont allow him to position himself far enough away. So by contrivance, he is commonly shooting at enemies 40ish feet away (Or to say another way, far enough away that they cannot get to him in 1 move action).

    byrne20ThacoBell
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    @BallpointMan couldn’t of put it better myself. That’s exactly the point I was trying to make. Just didn’t put it quite so well.
  • YamchaYamcha Member Posts: 486
    byrne20 wrote: »

    I also completely disagree with people saying that using the name Baldur's Gate 3 is wrong. Yes Charnames story is over but it will be set in the same world where all of those events took place and lets be honest, Larian would be fools not to take advantage of at least a bit of nostalgia and have all sorts of lore available in this game in relation to the previous games and maybe some related quests. Those things on their own are enough for me to justify the title.

    We still have a great connection to the earlier games. Charname found that sewer key that would unlock an entrance in the sewers of Athkatla - a secret base of the Ilithids.
    Clearly something similar was going down in Baldurs Gate (or not)
    But for me, thats connection enough to use that name.
    byrne20BallpointMansemiticgoddessTakisMegas
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    @Yamcha Exactly, that could easily of been one of their early attempts to establish a foothold in general. Obviously that happened in Amn but even so.
  • BallpointManBallpointMan Member Posts: 1,659
    edited June 2019
    I mean (spoilered for OT),
    - Episode 5: excellent
    - Episode 4: very good
    - Episodes 3, 6: good
    - Episides 2, 7, 8: trash
    - Episode 1: luckily the Doctor saved humanity by cordoning it off in its own mini-dimension, excising it from the normal timeline

    So yeah, TFA is tied for fifth best Star Wars movie... but, that's really not saying much.

    As a side note - I have a theory, based on in anecdotal observation on these forums and a few others. Those that are "nays" in this thread are more likely to be people who also have a dim view of the new Star Wars movies. They're also likely to be people who think that Skyrim was worse than Oblivion and Morrowind. That Fallout 4 was awful, fallout 3 was "ehh" and that Fallout NV is the only one that holds a candle to 1&2. They'll hate D3. They probably found Dark Souls 2 to be the worst in that franchise as well.

    Yamcha wrote: »
    We still have a great connection to the earlier games. Charname found that sewer key that would unlock an entrance in the sewers of Athkatla - a secret base of the Ilithids.
    Clearly something similar was going down in Baldurs Gate (or not)
    But for me, thats connection enough to use that name.


    I saw someone else mention this in one of the other threads, and I honestly hadnt considered the point. It's a tenuous connection, but I agree that it's a very cool callback if it's at all related. Something like - the Bhaalspawn prevented Athkatla from being attacked by dealing with the Alhoon in Amn.

    Those are the sorts of references I hope to see. Easter eggs that make players of BG1 and 2 think to themselves "Oh yeah - I remember doing that!".
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @byrne20 , If the only reason you couldn't give NWN2 a real go was because of the camera speed, that can be fixed in the .ini file. I'd be glad to send you a copy/paste if you're interested. (My current .ini probably only works with the current GoG release of NWN2.)
    Grond0mlnevese
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    byrne20 wrote: »
    For one I am a fan of Larian Studios and of both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2. Like them or not both of those games where almost universally acclaimed. The small minority of people on here that don't like them for one reason or another are obviously entitled to their opinion but the facts are facts.

    Okay, I'm gonna try and not be rude but this argument is beyond patronising. I do not care what "universal acclaim" anything gets. That doesn't prove a damn thing, and it doesn't mean a damn thing. Original Sin 2 sucked. Not my problem most people don't understand why. It is no less arrogant for me to say that, to be judgemental of that, than anyone trying to use the popularity argument to justify their position. I think people are insane for liking Dark Souls as much as they do, and that the game is a piece of shit. And I will always, 100% believe I am right there, and I finished and suffered through the thing so I'm bloody taking my right to feel that way, fuck everyone else.

    I will have a civil debate over the merits of a game based on other people's feelings and interpretations, even the ones I passionately hate, because I can respect someone giving me their take but I consider it bad faith and incredibly arrogant to take this kind of attitude, and I don't respect it, and those of us in the positions that we do should make it utterly clear we won't be belittled by it.

    Original Sin 2 had strengths as a game, good interactivity, good online, likeable art design. It also had bad things, the combat gets monotonous and one dimensional, the writing lacks focus, the tone is all over the place, the graphics could look a bit ass at times, the performance tended to be a problem, and to me those are all very easy things to back up, and those things as truths hold a lot more weight than what the Gaming journalists say, and honestly if you've been gaming for a while, you ought to know those journalists are crap at their jobs anyway.
    kanisathaArdanis
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    TakisMegas wrote: »
    Did anyone stop to think that maybe WotC has put certain game restrictions on Larian. To fit a more casual audience maybe?

    Well, according to at least one interview, Larian said that WotC gave them almost complete freedom. So based on their word alone, nah, I'm gonna fully blame them for every misstep. "If the game sucks, we only have ourselves to blame." They seem very willing to put themselves forward on this one.


    @BallpointMan Nah, Dark Souls 3 was the worst one. Falout 3 was pretty good.
    SorcererV1ct0r
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited June 2019
    @hybridial like I said in my original post. You’re entitled to your opinion and that’s fine :smile: No need to start swearing and getting defensive. I never meant to offend or make anyone feel I was trying to belittle them so I’m sorry if you feel that way. I won’t engage in arguing with you about this because you are clearly very passionate about how you feel on the subject and that’s fine. You have your opinion and I’ll have mine :smile:
    Lotti
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited June 2019
    @BelgarathMTH that would be awesome. I also recently purchased the GOG version and tried it for about 5 mins and had the same issue so gave up. I’m not the most tech savy person so had no clue how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated :smile:
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    I'm not (too) mad, but there's just some things that I don't take very well, and I'm fine if you like Larian (and I don't really dislike them, I just don't think their games succeed that well in the end, but the effort's clearly there) and are hyped for BG3, and holding that position isn't disrespecting those of us who disagree, but when you're giving a take, give your own, not the herd's, because as I said, why should that mean anything to us? It doesn't, and it shouldn't, and I know you probably don't think that was being disrespectful, but it really is, it is belittling. Yes its a fact, but its not justification for your own position and in that context there's no way to make it sound like it isn't justification if you bring it up.
    ThacoBell
  • BallpointManBallpointMan Member Posts: 1,659
    ThacoBell wrote: »

    @BallpointMan Nah, Dark Souls 3 was the worst one. Falout 3 was pretty good.

    Hence my use of the phrase "More likely", and "pretty good" isnt particularly far away from "ehh".

    I stand by my observation.
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    @hybridial Fair enough. Like I said your aloud to have an opinion the same as I’m aloud mine. And mine is as above and hasn’t been changed by anything you have said. :smile: That’s the beauty of having an opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own :smile:
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    As a side note - I have a theory, based on in anecdotal observation on these forums and a few others. Those that are "nays" in this thread are more likely to be people who also have a dim view of the new Star Wars movies. They're also likely to be people who think that Skyrim was worse than Oblivion and Morrowind. That Fallout 4 was awful, fallout 3 was "ehh" and that Fallout NV is the only one that holds a candle to 1&2. They'll hate D3. They probably found Dark Souls 2 to be the worst in that franchise as well.

    Heh, I have some interesting opinions here for your theory;

    I don't really like Star Wars at all anymore, but if I had to the original trilogy only, for me. I actually liked Skyrim, but I would not call it a great game, but it kinda worked for a run for me. Oblivion and Morrowind I just could not get into due to their engines, or how combat worked, etc. I am 100% that on Fallout, Fallout 4 even compared to Skyrim is an absolute failure. I don't like Diablo at all, assuming D3 means Diablo 3. I don't like Dark Souls at all, as I mentioned, but I also finished 2. It was moderately less annoying, it addressed some issues I had. The series as a whole is one I just don't care for, that's for sure.

    BallpointManThacoBell
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176

    On D&D, yes, weapons have historically accurate ranges.

    Not in Baldur's Gate they dont. Not even remotely.

    For example - the longbow does not have a range on it directly, so we have to assess its range indirectly. (...)

    Baldur's Gate doesn't have 200m+ bows, but at least doesn't have bows with less range than an nerf toy....

    As for pnp, one strategy that we used on pnp to kill an much stronger enemy was firing poisoned arrows from the range limit, they took so many rounds to reach close to my party that become easy prey to the few melee guys. And if you have an heavily caster/ranger group that nobody founds playing at melee funny, this long range weapons are most of the time an good solution. And yes, my old group was heavily range based. An warlock, an sorcerer, an assassin and an cleric. Nobody liked to play at melee on my old group.

    They'll hate D3. They probably found Dark Souls 2 to be the worst in that franchise as well.

    DkS 2 is not the worst. I mean, has his problems. Mechanics like soul memory and ADP stat, but being honest, almost every build is viable, pvp and pve. The game is linear? Compared to 1 yes, compared to 3 is not linear. The 3 is the worst one IMO. Too much gimmicky bosses, too much focused on fast swinging blades, armor is useless. No poise!!!

    Can you do pure roleplay builds like Portudas D Ace and be pve/pvp viable on DkS 3??
    hybridial wrote: »
    byrne20 wrote: »
    I think people are insane for liking Dark Souls as much as they do, and that the game is a piece of shit. And I will always, 100% believe I am right there, and I finished and suffered through the thing so I'm bloody taking my right to feel that way, fuck everyone else.

    Being very honest, the difficulty of any souls game is tied to your build. Try play as an paladin, wearing heavy armor and casting miracles. The game will be much easier.
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    ]Being very honest, the difficulty of any souls game is tied to your build. Try play as an paladin, wearing heavy armor and casting miracles. The game will be much easier.

    Well going into too much detail would be a bit off topic, but basically, I don't dislike them because they're too hard, if anything I think they were insultingly easy as much as they could be frustrating, but I just had so many issues with them in terms of design top to bottom, and the first game in particular is very sloppy and clearly unfinished, and its just never actually fun. The rest of it is it has one of the worst fanbases in history, and you probably don't need told that. I have plenty of friends who like it, but they do get my issues with it too.



  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    edited June 2019
    I think a lot of people on both sides of the yay-nay divide are going to end up surprised/disappointed when the game is more fully revealed. What everyone is completely ignoring or glossing over is that this game is indisputably a AAA game. This was not the case for any of the IE games, the NwN games, the D:OS games or any of the so-called "RPG renaissance" games. So expecting this game to be similar to any of those games, I think, is going to end up causing surprise/disappointment. I think this game is going to be more in the category of games like Inquisition, Skyrim, Witcher 3, etc., albeit with multiplayer/co-op and party-based. I don't see any chance the game will be isometric.

    D:OS2 sold very well to be sure. But those sales numbers are not even close to what a developer would expect/want/need for sales numbers from a AAA game. Larian will be expecting to sell a minimum of 10 million copies, and hopefully closer to 20 million copies of this game. So it's not going to be anything like BG1/2 or D:OS1/2 or PoE1/2 etc. other than in a few superficial ways. Rather, it will be all the things that a successful AAA game must have.
    Mantis37byrne20
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    Do we know if this game has a higher budget than the developer's previous games, and by how much?
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    They have over 300 people working on it, which is more than a lot of other AAA production casts, especially for an RPG. I would not be surprised by Larian using a budget of $50 million on this game.
  • DinoDinDinoDin Member Posts: 1,567
    hybridial wrote: »
    byrne20 wrote: »
    For one I am a fan of Larian Studios and of both Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2. Like them or not both of those games where almost universally acclaimed. The small minority of people on here that don't like them for one reason or another are obviously entitled to their opinion but the facts are facts.

    Okay, I'm gonna try and not be rude but this argument is beyond patronising. I do not care what "universal acclaim" anything gets. That doesn't prove a damn thing, and it doesn't mean a damn thing. Original Sin 2 sucked. Not my problem most people don't understand why. It is no less arrogant for me to say that, to be judgemental of that, than anyone trying to use the popularity argument to justify their position. I think people are insane for liking Dark Souls as much as they do, and that the game is a piece of shit. And I will always, 100% believe I am right there, and I finished and suffered through the thing so I'm bloody taking my right to feel that way, fuck everyone else.

    I will have a civil debate over the merits of a game based on other people's feelings and interpretations, even the ones I passionately hate, because I can respect someone giving me their take but I consider it bad faith and incredibly arrogant to take this kind of attitude, and I don't respect it, and those of us in the positions that we do should make it utterly clear we won't be belittled by it.

    Original Sin 2 had strengths as a game, good interactivity, good online, likeable art design. It also had bad things, the combat gets monotonous and one dimensional, the writing lacks focus, the tone is all over the place, the graphics could look a bit ass at times, the performance tended to be a problem, and to me those are all very easy things to back up, and those things as truths hold a lot more weight than what the Gaming journalists say, and honestly if you've been gaming for a while, you ought to know those journalists are crap at their jobs anyway.

    What other standard could there possibly be for judging the quality of games than things like "universal acclaim"? If a game a. sells well, b. has good reviews c. spawns similar types of games... I'm sorry, but you can't really say it "sucked". I think people are conflating their personal tastes with attempts at dispassionately judging these products.

    It's fine to not personally like the Souls series or the OS series. No one is saying you have to enjoy them. But people should be able to point out that it's a weak argument to claim these games have low quality in any objective sense. Overwhelming acclaim and subsequent copycat titles is evidence!
    byrne20Sjerrie
  • 1varangian1varangian Member Posts: 367
    edited June 2019
    kanisatha wrote: »
    I think a lot of people on both sides of the yay-nay divide are going to end up surprised/disappointed when the game is more fully revealed. What everyone is completely ignoring or glossing over is that this game is indisputably a AAA game. This was not the case for any of the IE games, the NwN games, the D:OS games or any of the so-called "RPG renaissance" games. So expecting this game to be similar to any of those games, I think, is going to end up causing surprise/disappointment. I think this game is going to be more in the category of games like Inquisition, Skyrim, Witcher 3, etc., albeit with multiplayer/co-op and party-based. I don't see any chance the game will be isometric.

    D:OS2 sold very well to be sure. But those sales numbers are not even close to what a developer would expect/want/need for sales numbers from a AAA game. Larian will be expecting to sell a minimum of 10 million copies, and hopefully closer to 20 million copies of this game. So it's not going to be anything like BG1/2 or D:OS1/2 or PoE1/2 etc. other than in a few superficial ways. Rather, it will be all the things that a successful AAA game must have.

    This is a good point and a scary one. They simply have to sell more than what an isometric RPG can.

    Hell, it's going to be like Mordheim.

    Or same thing will happen to BG that happened to Dragon Age. They will streamline the combat system into a mindless chore so that the FPS kids won't be scared off. RPG fans will still buy it and play it for the story. So we get a weaker game that more people buy.
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714
    @SorcererV1ct0r Linking to a Steam forum is useless. That forum is currently almost unreadable, with people throwing troll comments, insults, and not listening to others nearly about every subject. If you look at the current state of the Steam forum for BGIII, you'll see that the game will be a 100% failure because:

    - it'll be TB
    - it'll be RtwP
    - the writing will be terrible
    - it'll have all the social politics in it
    - it won't be like BG 1&2
    - it'll be a DOS clone

    Etc etc.

    Seems like everyone has a strong opinion about almost all aspects, all bits of information the developers have provided.

    Not going to argue with that. I'll just say that in my personal opinion DOS 1&2 combat is not gimmicky, I've enjoyed it tremendously. And whatever gameplay DOS 1&2 games had, it doesn't mean BGIII will have any similar gameplay.



    Really. Honestly. Over the weekend, I've been monitoring the Steam forum, the BG subreddit, several other sites, and the biggest conclusion I've made that a lot of people are actually not complaining about BGIII. They're complaining about DOS 1&2 games, as if we're in 2017, or even 2015, and discussing the DOS games. The next popular point of concern is that the game won't be their ideal BGIII, i.e. everyone has a vision of their own BGIII, and every bit of information about BGIII in development is being compared to this ideal version.

    There's nearly no talk about how BGIII will be different from BG 1&2, how it will improve on them, what will change taking into account 20 years and changes in gaming + changes from 5E. But there's a lot of talk about how BGIII will or will not be different from DOS 1&2, PoE, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, or whatever game a user has a strong feeling about (either positive or negative).
    SjerrieBelgarathMTH
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    buxr6eyryd2e.png

    Gotta have to hand it to Larian: after seeing this little bit of information on BGIII's GOG page, I'm now far more optimistic about this title than before. :)

    Huh... so I took another peek at the GOG page, only to find that they have removed the Real-Time tag.
    Either that information was published too soon, was falsely tagged as such by Larian, or it was taken down to not kill the TB crowd's hype (and financial pre-order power).

    Color me suspicious. Now I'm back at the twilight of Yay and Nay.
    BallpointManThacoBell
  • PokotaPokota Member Posts: 858
    I'm going to repeat what I said in the "Ask Beamdog" thread.

    On the one hand, just calling it "Baldur's Gate III" implies that it's the third chapter of The Bhaalspawn Saga (and that has a canonical ending beyond the Amelyssan battle as of 2013), so would at worst just be dishonest advertising.

    On the other hand, Wizards of the Coast has a dirty habit of pushing The Next Big Module onto all of their licensees.

    And in my case, the main determining factor in if I get it is the release cost. I can't afford to buy a $50 game every three months (though given the expected development timescale I should have the extra funds when the game finally does release).
    [Deleted User]
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    Yamcha wrote: »
    byrne20 wrote: »

    I also completely disagree with people saying that using the name Baldur's Gate 3 is wrong. Yes Charnames story is over but it will be set in the same world where all of those events took place and lets be honest, Larian would be fools not to take advantage of at least a bit of nostalgia and have all sorts of lore available in this game in relation to the previous games and maybe some related quests. Those things on their own are enough for me to justify the title.

    We still have a great connection to the earlier games. Charname found that sewer key that would unlock an entrance in the sewers of Athkatla - a secret base of the Ilithids.
    Clearly something similar was going down in Baldurs Gate (or not)
    But for me, thats connection enough to use that name.

    I have also just noticed that the stone golems who inform you about the doppelgangers in Durlag's Tower keep mentioning being influenced by the "tentacles".
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited June 2019
    JuliusBorisov, most topics are bad, but doesn't means that the guy that i quoted doesn't have good points. I an not saying that changes are automatically bad. Dragon disciple doesn't exist on original BG and is my favorite class. But there are an detail. If you don't like this, you can easily not play with this class. And BG still one of the most sold games even on cellphones that are a extremely casual market.

    But if they go with the idea that "misses not work"(despite worked on tons of different games), then they need to re write all rules. And why have feats like spell penetration, spell focus, weapon focus, weapon proficiency, evasion, improved evasion, etc? There are no cRPG on D&D 5e. The most recent D&D game already tried to re write the rules and failed. If you wanna create your own rules, make it optional.
  • O_BruceO_Bruce Member Posts: 2,790
    I'm late to the discussion but I'm definitely for "Yay". I was looking forward to some kind of sequel for Baldur's Gate since years and now it is confirmed to be in the works, and what's more in hands of competent people. I also think that even though Beamdog didn't end up working on BG3, enhanced editions and SoD reminded people of serie's existence and that might be a contribution to BG3 as well.

    I do have some concerns, but these are not related to fifth edition, changes related to implementation the rules to videogame etc. My concerns lies mostly in the way western "entertaiment" industry works nowadays. But I suppose there is no point in worrying too much. My worries have no power after all.
    byrne20
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited June 2019
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
    ThacoBell
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    I liked Oblivion and Skyrim about the same. Morrowind ranks slightly lower but only because I played it after the other two. I still enjoyed it, just not quite as much.
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    DinoDin wrote: »
    It's fine to not personally like the Souls series or the OS series. No one is saying you have to enjoy them. But people should be able to point out that it's a weak argument to claim these games have low quality in any objective sense. Overwhelming acclaim and subsequent copycat titles is evidence!

    Copycat titles happen because that's how the market works, there's a demand for something these other guys did, so lets jump on that instead of making anything different.

    And sure, they can claim its a weak argument, I'd call them wrong and if they want to have an actual debate, we can, but this isn't really the place for it, and there is a point where I have done these arguments with people and am sick of it, and honestly I only brought it up because I wanted to be illustrative of this point;

    Was something liked by a lot of people: this is an objective observation based on clear stats.

    Did something do well with critics: also an observable fact

    Was it good: subjective, with everyone who ever played it having their own thinking of why it was good, or why it isn't; and nobody is going to just lie down and roll over because their viewpoint isn't the popular one, but you know, you're pointing it out because your arrogant enough to think they should. Yeah, sorry but no. And once again, I've been playing games since the mid 90s; I have absolutely no respect for the Games journalists of today, they don't represent me, and they are at worst dishonest and corrupt, at best, do the job for a living with no real passion or understanding for games design; and that part isn't even directly relevant either but it does demonstrate what "universal critical acclaim" in this context means to me. Not a lot. And I could say a lot more on the state of games now in general, but yeah I will stop there.

    I just feel like if the people who are looking forward to BG3 want to understand more why some of us are more cynical about it, they need to be understanding of how our thinking is different and how just because something did well doesn't mean we think its good. because we are clearly coming at it from a different angle.
    SjerrieThacoBell
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