Game News Larian is making Baldur's Gate 3

[Jarpie]

To those who got triggered by me shitting on Larian and upcoming BG3...

 

[Jasede]

They hated Jesus because He told them the truth. (Gal. 4:16)

 

[agentorange]

what did jesus say about being a furry faggot who takes it up the ass?

 

[Jasede]

He said not to act on it, which I don't. Now what?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Jesus is just god’s fursona. —Tertullian

 

[Farewell into the night]

What's next? Icewind Dale 3 ?

 

[Mr. Hiver]

There is no next. None of the old games have enough attraction and past Kickstarters spent the good will.

 

[vortex]

What's next? Icewind Dale 3 ?

Yes, and Planescape. :sweating:

 

[Morality Games]

What's next? Icewind Dale 3 ?

Yes, and Planescape. :sweating:

Larianscape. Don't know that they need encouragement to go off the walls.

 

[Sensuki]

- player skill > character skill

This is never a bad thing in my book

 

[Jasede]

It's an RPG. You're basically saying you want lockpick minigames that let you open doors even though your skill is low, or the ability to cheese encounters even with bad combat skills because you're good at aiming if it's first person.

This is not Bayonetta or Ikaruga. It is the hallmark of an RPG that character skill beats player skill.

Don't be pedantic and argue that building your character or mastering the combat system is player skill. This isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about hitting the enemy, picking the lock, hacking the computer.

Decline!

 

[CryptRat]

It's an RPG. You're basically saying you want lockpick minigames that let you open doors even though your skill is low, or the ability to cheese encounters even with bad combat skills because you're good at aiming if it's first person.

In the big picture they may be to some extent but overall lockpicking and stat checks in dialogs are rarely good non-combat gameplay in a game where you can save everywhere except during a fight (with restrictive they totally can be). In an RPG good non-combat gameplay generally involves observation and good active use of skills and spells, like in Quest for glory, it can't be just about the character having the right score to be really challenging. It's different from a fight where a lot of things happen and you can't save after each character's action.

because you're good at aiming if it's first person.

What the fuck has this thing to do with RPGs?

Don't be pedantic and argue that building your character or mastering the combat system is player skill. This isn't what I'm talking about.

Except of course that's what we're talking about when we're saying player skill must be more important than character skill. You're the one bringing shit like first person aiming skills.

I'm talking about hitting the enemy, picking the lock, hacking the computer.

Yes, sure, just mix everything just to be right even when you're wrong. No problem with hacking the computer being a research on a DOS kind of interface and if your character can't hack you've no access. Challenging players' brain is fine as long as you don't go too far away from stats. Comparing that with hitting an enemy is plain dumb, hitting an enemy is part of a fight where all the protagonists try to hit an enemy several times and the player takes a lot of decision which makes it challenging, you save before the fight and after the fight, not during the fight, so it's perfect like this, and why the best RPGs are those with lots of combat (Blackguards, KOTC ...), that's characters' skill intensive and challenging.

 

[Strange Fellow]

It's an RPG. You're basically saying you want lockpick minigames that let you open doors even though your skill is low, or the ability to cheese encounters even with bad combat skills because you're good at aiming if it's first person.

This is not Bayonetta or Ikaruga. It is the hallmark of an RPG that character skill beats player skill.

Don't be pedantic and argue that building your character or mastering the combat system is player skill. This isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about hitting the enemy, picking the lock, hacking the computer.

Decline!

It's no coincidence that the most fun gameplay in RPGs is combat, the outcome of which is determined by player skill just as much as character skill (in good RPGs, that is). Injecting shitty tests of player skill like minigames into a trivial activity like lockpicking, which is never fun on its own no matter how you do it, is a bad idea, no shit.

Player skill doesn't equal reflex skill.

 

[Jasede]

It's an RPG. You're basically saying you want lockpick minigames that let you open doors even though your skill is low, or the ability to cheese encounters even with bad combat skills because you're good at aiming if it's first person.

In the big picture they may be to some extent but overall lockpicking and stat checks in dialogs are rarely good non-combat gameplay in a game where you can save everywhere except during a fight (with restrictive they totally can be). In an RPG good non-combat gameplay generally involves observation and good active use of skills and spells, like in Quest for glory, it can't be just about the character having the right score to be really challenging. It's different from a fight where a lot of things happen and you can't save after each character's action.

because you're good at aiming if it's first person.

What the fuck has this thing to do with RPGs?

Don't be pedantic and argue that building your character or mastering the combat system is player skill. This isn't what I'm talking about.

Except of course that's what we're talking about when we're saying player skill must be more important than character skill. You're the one bringing shit like first person aiming skills.

I'm talking about hitting the enemy, picking the lock, hacking the computer.

Yes, sure, just mix everything just to be right even when you're wrong. No problem with hacking the computer being a research on a DOS kind of interface and if your character can't hack you've no access. Challenging players' brain is fine as long as you don't go too far away from stats. Comparing that with hitting an enemy is plain dumb, hitting an enemy is part of a fight where all the protagonists try to hit an enemy several times and the player takes a lot of decision which makes it challenging, you save before the fight and after the fight, not during the fight, so it's perfect like this, and why the best RPGs are those with lots of combat (Blackguards, KOTC ...), that's characters' skill intensive and challenging.

Did you somehow miss all these first person RPGs with guns coming out in the last twenty years or are you trying to troll me?

I don't know why you people are even here if you don't like RPGs. What kind of argument is "you can't use skill checks because players will just reload" - that's up to the player, isn't it? It's not your problem if the player wants to scum.

It's an RPG. You're basically saying you want lockpick minigames that let you open doors even though your skill is low, or the ability to cheese encounters even with bad combat skills because you're good at aiming if it's first person.

This is not Bayonetta or Ikaruga. It is the hallmark of an RPG that character skill beats player skill.

Don't be pedantic and argue that building your character or mastering the combat system is player skill. This isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about hitting the enemy, picking the lock, hacking the computer.

Decline!

It's no coincidence that the most fun gameplay in RPGs is combat, the outcome of which is determined by player skill just as much as character skill (in good RPGs, that is). Injecting shitty tests of player skill like minigames into a trivial activity like lockpicking, which is never fun on its own no matter how you do it, is a bad idea, no shit.

Player skill doesn't equal reflex skill.

This is a very broad statement; would you say the most fun gameplay in PST was combat? How about Fallout 1? What about Arcanum?

 

[Strange Fellow]

This is a very broad statement; would you say the most fun gameplay in PST was combat? How about Fallout 1? What about Arcanum?

Yeah I see how I've kind of opened the 'what is gameplay' can of worms. I think combat in Fallout and Arcanum is excessively driven by character skill - there's not much you the player can do to affect the outcome of combats, and it suffers for it - but as you rightly say combat isn't the point. However, those games are at their best when they let the player come up with their own solutions to problems, which something like AoD doesn't, for the most part. Say you're tasked with healing a sick child, and you've previously found a herbalist deep within the forest which you had decided to explore to see what was there. You go back and find that there is indeed a cure there. You pass a speech check that lets you buy it. Is this solution not driven by player skill? The skill check here feels a bit tangential, yet that's how a lot of the checks in those games work. It's more adventure gaming skill than l33t reflexes, but in my opinion it's player skill nonetheless. Of course, if you think Age of Decadence is the height of CRPG design then this argument won't make sense to you.

 

[CryptRat]

Did you somehow miss all these first person RPGs with guns coming out in the last twenty years or are you trying to troll me?

I only played Bloodlines. If your point is that action has nothing to do in an RPG then yes action has nothing to do in an RPG.

Challenge and then player's skill are a central issue when making an RPG.
For combat no problem, it's perfect since Wizardry 1 and probably before.
For non-combat it's complicated. Chests in Wizardry 1 are an example of something which works.

I don't know why you people are even here if you don't like RPGs. What kind of argument is "you can't use skill checks because players will just reload" - that's up to the player, isn't it? It's not your problem if the player wants to scum.

What about making the player have to think like during fights? It's not only about savescumming, it's also about having an environment more interesting than a series of doors to pick.

 

[Black Angel]

Yeah I see how I've kind of opened the 'what is gameplay' can of worms. I think combat in Fallout and Arcanum is excessively driven by character skill - there's not much you the player can do to affect the outcome of combats, and it suffers for it - but as you rightly say combat isn't the point. However, those games are at their best when they let the player come up with their own solutions to problems, which something like AoD doesn't, for the most part. Say you're tasked with healing a sick child, and you've previously found a herbalist deep within the forest which you had decided to explore to see what was there. You go back and find that there is indeed a cure there. You pass a speech check that lets you buy it. Is this solution not driven by player skill? The skill check here feels a bit tangential, yet that's how a lot of the checks in those games work. It's more adventure gaming skill than l33t reflexes, but in my opinion it's player skill nonetheless. Of course, if you think Age of Decadence is the height of CRPG design then this argument won't make sense to you.

Say you're tasked with healing a sick child, and you've previously found a herbalist deep within the forest which you had decided to explore to see what was there. You go back and find that there is indeed a cure there. You pass a speech check that lets you buy it. Is this solution not driven by player skill?

Going by this alone, it means that you NEED to have sufficient skill to pass the speech check. Now, if your character happened to not have sufficient skill, and say the quest is timed because if you try going somewhere to get some XP, level-up and finally invest in speech, the sick child either dies or is cured by someone else, hence you missed out on the rewards. Does that still sounds like 'player skill > character skill' to you?
What is this, instead, is that player skill = character skill, where players give *inputs* into the game (you explore the forest, gets knowledge of a herbalist living deep in there, and use it as a way to solve a quest) and then you need to pass a challenge imposed by the system which can only be won by your character's skills which ultimately influence the *outputs* of the gameplay.

So now, my personal interpretation of Jasede's points, in context of what Swen said in the interview, particularly this part:

One of the modifications: Misses from dice rolls. “The very obvious one would be that you tend to miss a lot when you roll the dice, which is fine when you’re playing on the tabletop, but it’s not so cool when you’re playing a video game,” Vincke said. “We had to have solutions for that.”

I should ask: do you think player's skills can somehow influence the results of the dice rolls?

The answer to that is resounding yes, simply by virtue of players investing in the right skills, using their wits and commit proper preparation beforehand like gathering information, stocking on utilities that will help solving problems or help fighting the next combat encounter like buying bolas in AoD, etc etc. However, I don't think Swen is considering any of this when talking about solutions to misses from dice rolls. In fact, this seems like the solution Swen came up with is somewhat similar with what Tim Cain talked about during his presentation at Reboot Develop 2017

• Mistake #3 - Conflating Player Skill With Character Skill: This one will be familiar if you've watched some of Josh Sawyer's talks. Aiming and hitting in an action-RPG should not be determined by character stats. On the other hand, things like the impact of recoil can be affected by stats, as well as the aforementioned critical hit damage.

Now, I'm not implying BG3 will be an action-RPG, but how do you solve the 'problems' of dice rolls misses in a video game format? Even though as many has said already, this is not a problem whatsoever and the ruleset has been working fine, whether in RTwP (BG1&2) or TB (ToEE).

 

[Strange Fellow]

Going by this alone, it means that you NEED to have sufficient skill to pass the speech check. Now, if your character happened to not have sufficient skill, and say the quest is timed because if you try going somewhere to get some XP, level-up and finally invest in speech, the sick child either dies or is cured by someone else, hence you missed out on the rewards. Does that still sounds like 'player skill > character skill' to you?

You could always kill the herbalist. Anyway, it doesn't matter. A good RPG requires both.

Now, I'm not implying BG3 will be an action-RPG, but how do you solve the 'problems' of dice rolls misses in a video game format?

Like DOS 2 did it. You'll end up with a shitty game in the end, but hey, when has that ever stopped anyone.

 

[Black Angel]

Going by this alone, it means that you NEED to have sufficient skill to pass the speech check. Now, if your character happened to not have sufficient skill, and say the quest is timed because if you try going somewhere to get some XP, level-up and finally invest in speech, the sick child either dies or is cured by someone else, hence you missed out on the rewards. Does that still sounds like 'player skill > character skill' to you?

You could always kill the herbalist. Anyway, it doesn't matter. A good RPG requires both.

And that still ultimately needs to have your character having sufficient combat skills to kill the herbalist. What if he's actually a John Wick character who's retired but still as capable of killing anyone as in his prime?

But yeah, good RPGs requires both.

Now, I'm not implying BG3 will be an action-RPG, but how do you solve the 'problems' of dice rolls misses in a video game format?

Like DOS 2 did it. You'll end up with a shitty game in the end, but hey, when has that ever stopped anyone.

So does that mean you guys will be getting turn-based D&D game or nah?

 

[CryptRat]

• Mistake #3 - Conflating Player Skill With Character Skill: This one will be familiar if you've watched some of Josh Sawyer's talks. Aiming and hitting in an action-RPG should not be determined by character stats. On the other hand, things like the impact of recoil can be affected by stats, as well as the aforementioned critical hit damage.

IMHO these debates about dices and stats in action games are pointless stuff from guys who hate RPGs .

What makes RPGs good are stats and dices and therefore turn-based combat for these to shine. Also a party.

What makes action games good is action, some long term character customization can be fun but that's it, you may as well not care that much about dice roll mechanisms and highly stat-based gameplay hiding player's action game skills as far as I'm concerned, it's not like combat in Dark Souls is one million times worse than in Morrowind, if you want deep dice roll mechanisms and highly stat-based gameplay which is also what I want as a player then why not making your game turn-based and we're turning around in circles.

So yes, just make party-based turn-based RPGs and stop talking about stuff which don't concern the genre.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Thats all explained here:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-defining-core-of-rpgs.127949/

The player and character skills in RPGs play like this: character abilities like stats and skills impose limits on the gameplay content and options within it, that the player cannot directly override - but instead the player handles the strategic and meta options of the gameplay and has to evolve and enhance character skills to succeed at anything.

But because the amount of influence of either is not strict and specific, we have a lot of variations on this basic approach where player skills take over to some extent, but not completely and you get Action RPGs and other hybrids.
As long as the game has some character abilities that impose at least some limits on the gameplay and options within it, it belongs to the RPG genre although not to the same place within it.
If character abilities stats and skills and similar do not impose limits on the game content and options within it - at all, then its not a RPG game at all.

For this same reason and defining feature, all TB games are closer to the ideals of RPG while any RTwP are further away, although still belong to the genre.
Same for the POVs, isometric point and click interface enhances and strengthens the influence of the character stats and skills, while any FP or TP reduces it and transfers influence more towards player skills.

 

[Poseidon00]

Don't you all hate it when those damn RPG's have things like "difficulty" and "the possibility of not being perfect at everything" in them?

Well, have no fear! Larian will insure none of those pesky gameplay bugs like "challenge" and "losing" will effect your game play experience.

"There are some things on the chopping block, however. It's an interpretation of D&D, specifically 5th Edition, because porting the core rules, which Larian tried to do, doesn't work. Or it works, Vincke clarifies, but it's no fun at all. One of the culprits is missing when you're trying to hit an enemy, and while the combat system has yet to be revealed, you can at least look forward to being able to smack people more consistently.

"You miss a lot in D&D—if the dice are bad, you miss," he says. "That doesn't work well in a videogame. If I do that, you're going to review it and say it's shit."

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-will-combine-the-best-of-divinity-and-dandd-5th-edition/

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Funny how we are calling it shit already because of that.

Old news man. Codex already grew maximum paranoid bad reactions out of it, turned it into fertilizer and is now in process of growing more new bitching from it.

 

[Rpguy]

Not everyone think it's going to be shit

 

[hpstg]

Codex already grew maximum paranoid bad reactions out of it, turned it into fertilizer and is now in process of growing more new bitching from it.

As is tradition.