Future updates?
Erethaar
Member Posts: 12
Hello 
I was wondering about future of BG:EE. As the updates bring a lot of changes and fixes I was wondering when can we expect the final patch? Taking under consideration how long it took to get to 2.5 beta (since release of BG:EE) does this mean that I will have to wait another few years before BG:EE will be finally patched?
I was wondering about future of BG:EE. As the updates bring a lot of changes and fixes I was wondering when can we expect the final patch? Taking under consideration how long it took to get to 2.5 beta (since release of BG:EE) does this mean that I will have to wait another few years before BG:EE will be finally patched?
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I always assume that the next announced patch will be the last one. The Enhanced Editions themselves are going on 6 years old at this point (of originally 20-year old games!). Any future patches we get on these games are gravy.
Three versions of the shaman were introduced as a playable class for AD&D in 1995. There was the Shaman sourcebook, a shaman class in the Complete Barbarian's Handbook, and another shaman class in the Player's Option: Spells & Magic book.
IIRC, there was even a shaman PC class introduced in one of the Gazetteer adventures for BECMI D&D.
Then again... neither Bioware or Black Isle ever followed the PnP AD&D (or D&D, in the case of Icewind Dale 2 and Neverwinter Nights) rule sets to a t in their games. Making them more of a mish-mash between official rules and house rules. Which in turn makes Beamdog faithfully follow this tradition quite well.
As for how long Beamdog will keep patching their older games? A couple of years at the minimum, I'd wager.
By that time there will probably be either:
a) no more bugs and/or upcoming features to be added to the IE/AE games, or
b) it will financially cease to make sense to support too old titles anymore for whatever reason.
Although I'm inclined to believe that a) is more likely to happen by the current look of things.
For more concrete informations on the future you'd need to consult with an seer or oracle, I'm afraid.
There seems to be a distorted narrative going on - some people would have you believe that the EEs are still undergoing active support after over 5 years simply because Beamdog won't give up on improving their releases.
I find it very hard to believe that back in 2012 Beamdog planned on be patching BG(2):EE and IWD for the best part of a decade. It seems that a proper stable version that can be left alone and allows the IE team to move on keeps eluding them due to a lack of proper planning as well as a lack of clear design goals.
2012, November 28th: BGEE release 1.0.
2013, October 31th: BGEE patch 1.2.
2013, November 15th: BG2EE release 1.2.
2014, August 29th: BGEE patch 1.3.
2014, October 30th: IWDEE release 1.3.
2014, December 16th: BG2EE patch 1.3.
2015, March 3rd: IWDEE patch 1.4.
2016, April 1st: BGEE patch 2.0, BG2EE patch 2.0, SoD release 2.0.
2016, April 14th: BGEE patch 2.1, BG2EE patch 2.1, SoD patch 2.1.
2016, May 17th: BGEE patch 2.2, BG2EE patch 2.2, SoD patch 2.2.
2016, June 8th: BGEE patch 2.3, BG2EE patch 2.3, SoD patch 2.3.
2017, April 11th: PSTEE release 3.0.
2017, June 1st: PSTEE patch 3.1.
2017, September 13th: BG2EE patch 2.4 for iOS.
2017, September 14th: IWDEE patch 2.4 for iOS.
2017, September 28th: BGEE patch 2.4 for iOS, SoD patch 2.4 for iOS.
2018, May 1st: IWDEE patch 2.5.
2018, June 28th: BG2EE patch 2.5.
2018, August ??th: BGEE patch 2.5, SoD patch 2.5.
There's one year between BGEE and BG2EE. During this, they also produced a BGEE patch.
There's one year between BG2EE and IWDEE. During this, they also produced a BGEE patch.
There's 18 months between IWDEE and SoD. During this, they also produced a BG2EE and an IWDEE patch. Considering creating SoD is likely a lot bigger than updating the existing game, it's likely that SoD development ran alongside IWDEE for quite a while.
There's one year between SoD and PSTEE. During this, they also produced 3 patches for BGEE and BG2EE.
Since PSTEE, nothing but a couple of patches, no new games whatsoever, and it still takes over 7 months to get patches from Beta to Release?
Unless some secretive Infinity Engine stuff is going on (IWD2EE somehow? New IE game/expansion? Neither seem very likely), it's clear that the team currently patching the EE games is far from the "active" team that used to work on all the IE EEs.
What's much more likely is that during development and after release of PSTEE, a lot of people from the IE crew have been moved over to the NWN crew, and a skeleton crew is left to work on the EE patches.
I'm not blaming Beamdog, though. Even the Enhanced Editions of the IE games can certainly be classified as old by now. At one point the developers need to move on.
Blizzard focuses on MMO games, which are a totally different situation. Zenimax owns Bethesda and Skyrim (released in 2011) saw its last patch in 2013. Fallout 4 and Doom have been out for 3 and 2 years, respectively, and are bigger releases with massive player bases. I'll bet you either one of these games has sold more in the last 12 months than all of Beamdog's titles combined since 2012.
Thels' comment about the IEs being maintained by a skeleton crew makes a lot of sense, but still, I'm not sure it justifies the massive delay behind this new patch (which they have confirmed as not being the last).
I used to empathize with Beamdog's woes until their petty move of removing the original games from sale. From where I stand it was nothing short of a highjacking of BG's legacy and time will ultimately prove them to be unworthy. Yes, I'm still sour over that.
Also the fact that they continue to make patches might acutally be more economically viable then you think. It certainly has continued to create interest in the EE releases amongst the people that I know. Some of whom did not end up buying them until certain bugs and features were fixed or added. The Infinity Engine games are as close as any game series has come to producing real "classics". They are so highly regarded that like with classic novels and films people come back to them again and again and new genertations check them out to see what all the fuss is about. We might not be talking the millions that play WoW but it might be sizeable enough to justify a small team's continued development. Thus maintaining this IP might make for a realiable low flow of sales that might be lost or diminshed if they stopped working on these titles all together.
No, seriously. Why would you say that? There are numerous games from 15, 20, even 30 years ago being sold digitally. Have you ever heard of GoG?
Baldur's Gate (along with Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment) was being sold by GoG as digital downloads made compatible with modern systems.
The only thing that's ludicrous is claiming that one should settle for hunting down CD or DVD versions when the modern alternative is or was already available. Please. This is a non-argument. It's good for nothing other than shutting down debate. This makes a lot of sense. Thanks for giving me a different perspective. I own all the EEs (except NWN) on all platforms (including Android). Haven't redeemed serial keys for the original BGs because I had already bought them from GoG. And yeah, I've played the EEs extensively. Have clocked about 400 hours on Steam alone for BG:EE. My last playthrough was of the original, unmodded BG1 a couple of months ago. I play the EEs for the quality of life improvements and the originals because right now I prefer them overall.
The removal of the originals from the store didn't affect me personally. What I find so infuriating about it is that it seems totally unnecessary. They already had EE on every other platform, including GoG. It's not like the originals would ever make much of a dent on their sales (though they were supposedly outselling the EEs on GoG, but what's that compared to their numbers on Steam?).
I don't think it matters that from a capitalist point of view it makes sense to eliminate competition - it seems outright petty, specially considering the timing (right after the SoD backlash). The fact that they tried to shift responsibility over to WotC to later admit it was their own decision makes it even worse. I'm mad because I expected better from Beamdog. I expected them to trust the supposed superiority of their versions enough to leave the originals alone. Instead, they force people to pay them to play those.
All I want is for them to stop holding the originals ransom like this. Let people buy those separately if they want to. If the EEs are truly superior, the majority of BG fans will keep referring new players to them anyway.
Whilst what you say makes sense the whole sorry business does leave a bad taste in the mouth. I thought the idea behind the enterprise was to keep a classic game alive and instead it has effectively been taken out of circulation.
Though I believe everyone who was interested in the original BG games certainly already have them one way or another and those who haven't tried the Infinity engine games yet would probably go to the EE anyways?
My personal experience as a fan of BG and player of Bermdog's EEs is that they do try to listen to what fans have to say and in many cases do eventually get round to addressing wishes and concerns. There are certainly less responsive game developer companies out there.