Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Pre-Release Thread [EARLY ACCESS RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[LESS T_T]

At least we can expect fun headlines:

 

[AwesomeButton]

This Facebook guy on the E3 Gamespot stream talking about building safe spaces in gaming communities... his description of the AI that reads what you're typing and decides if it's offensive, and then doesn't let you post it if it is... that's some scary fucking shit. AI reading your input before you even send the message.

https://medium.com/the-mission/its-a-cyber-security-issue-no-one-is-talking-about-ad60c3c41d50

I'm thinking of starting a thread about how we already live in Cyberpunk, and including in it news bits like those.

 

[Sherry]

Hi.

https://www.twitch.tv/gamespot

Just about to start. See you there, okay? OKAY!

Thanks,
Sherry

 

[Infinitron]

It's live:

 

[vazha]

good lord, that Mearls guy needs a hair transplant. And thats coming from a bald dude. You just dont do what he did there.

 

[CRD]

I bet PR told them beforehand to not bring up questions about the combat system.

obvious as those would be the very first things to ask and not a single interviewer did.

Everyone is asking over and over the same questions, they don't ask what they want, but what larian hands to them. By the third interview I was fed as I knew what they were doing.

 

[fantadomat]

good lord, that Mearls guy needs a hair transpart. And thats coming from a bald dude. You just dont do what he did there.

Which one? Also only cucks get bothered by being bald. True chads just shave it all and put a swastika and a cross in its place .

 

[Artyoan]

I prefer a restrictive mana system that attempts to capture the strengths of vancian casting. Low level and/or weaker spells costing near trivial mana, say 1/500. Higher level and/or stronger spells being significantly higher. But recasting the same spell more than once per day adds to the mana cost, chance of failure, self inflicted status effect, etc. to encourage more strategic decision making and higher risk if the player relies on only a handful of spells instead of using a variety. It gives a better scaling magic system for consumables or partial resting while maintaining a need to use magic proportional to the fight. Tactical spell use is encouraged by having increased risk, strategy punishes inefficiency from repeated poor decision making and over-reliance on a handful of spells while maintaining the ability to do so if the player judges it worth doing.

 

[Galdred]

I prefer a restrictive mana system that attempts to capture the strengths of vancian casting. Low level and/or weaker spells costing near trivial mana, say 1/500. Higher level and/or stronger spells being significantly higher. But recasting the same spell more than once per day adds to the mana cost, chance of failure, self inflicted status effect, etc. to encourage more strategic decision making and higher risk if the player relies on only a handful of spells instead of using a variety. It gives a better scaling magic system for consumables or partial resting while maintaining a need to use magic proportional to the fight. Tactical spell use is encouraged by having increased risk, strategy punishes inefficiency from repeated poor decision making and over-reliance on a handful of spells while maintaining the ability to do so if the player judges it worth doing.

Another way to encourage the use of "situational spells" would be to make some spells stronger in some environments (ie, cold spells stronger in snowy areas, or horror/sleep spells stronger at night...)

 

[Chippy]

good lord, that Mearls guy needs a hair transpart. And thats coming from a bald dude. You just dont do what he did there.

He's a shifty dude. Body language is a bit socially inept - yet he's the creative head?. Notice how Sven Vincke does that charismatic intro and finished with "now we're married" and that Mike guy has nothing. The girl just looks across to the interviewer and he pushes on, and Sven Vincke is probably thinking: "I'm gonna have to carry the whole interview here".

I know I keep bringing this up, but if I ran my own RPG studio and interviewed a potential employee: wouldn't the question most likely asked be "what's your favourite RPG?" Or "what RPG do you think most influenced the genre in the last 20 years?". How did we get to live in a world where a developer announces to his team they're making BG3, and many of them haven't even played the game?.

 

[Sentinel]

That girl is cute.

 

[Chippy]

The Vancian magic system is supreme. Behead anyone who says otherwise, and mount their head on a pike for the crows to peck at.

See, when you're saying shit like this, it shows a massive disconnect from the reality of what D&D is at the moment, worldwide. For every two clueless newcomers to the hobby who just bought their 5e PHB, there's one DIY enthusiast who has been working on homebrew and tweaking rules for years. If you actually followed those sizable online communities, you'd know that a tiny handful of people are still painfully attached to Vancian and everyone is trying new things. Do those things always work better? Most likely not, but it's the willingness to try something new.

At the same time, the lot of you braindead know-it-alls who think you understand a lot about RPG design because you played a 20-year-old game to death, are stuck in your little echo chamber and speak with authority even though your authority is based on such a narrow view of what D&D is at the moment, it's not even funny.

Depends on whether BG3 will be a shit revolution of 5E rules, when it could be an evolution of what 2nd Edition rules worked in a PC game 20 years ago.
If you've been studying DnD rules for 15 years, you should appreciate that new isn't always better, doesn't always translate into PC games well, and hardly ever evolves on what worked in -even decades old- games.

 

[Jimmious]

Good interview but of course they don't want to talk gameplay yet. I still don't get a feeling we'll see some dumbed down action-rpg, at all. I actually ,so far, think they'll go turn-based again

 

[Storyfag]

Btw, I honestly can't think of that many examples of "systems the player can use to overcome challenges". Talking with animals, teleportation, crafting shit, moving crates, environmental combos, anything else?

Divination. Classical Necromancy.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I wasn't able to follow this discussion and E3 much, soooo...Is there any information about actual gameplay or people still fabulously optimistic or violently edgy about BG 3 without actual information?

 

[Curratum]

I wasn't able to follow this discussion and E3 much, soooo...Is there any information about actual gameplay or people still fabulously or violently edgy about BG 3 without actual information?

The latter.

 

[Sentinel]

I wasn't able to follow this discussion and E3 much, soooo...Is there any information about actual gameplay or people still fabulously or violently edgy about BG 3 without actual information?

A little bit of a), a little bit of b).

 

[santino27]

2018 was a seriously shitty year for the Codex.

 

[smaug]

2018 was a seriously shitty year for the Codex.

How we got Kingmaker and other games I’ve heard were pretty good? Unless your referring to something else?

 

[Riddler]

I wasn't able to follow this discussion and E3 much, soooo...Is there any information about actual gameplay or people still fabulously or violently edgy about BG 3 without actual information?

People are speculating based on what they aren't saying, information about team size/budget and what implications that has as well as their statements about DnD in general.

 

[Murk]

Good interview but of course they don't want to talk gameplay yet. I still don't get a feeling we'll see some dumbed down action-rpg, at all. I actually ,so far, think they'll go turn-based again

If they basically made a D&D themed Divinity 2: Ego Illithid I'd actually be just fine with that as long as they improved on it somewhat. Some of the original design docs for Divinity 2 were very impressive, especially the early combat system they had in mind, but a lot of it got scrapped and stupified. Still, the game was very fun, and I ultimately agree with Yeesh's "It's the best shit game I've played" description.

The expansion, Flames of Vengeance, was already clearly moving in the right direction in terms of setting, quest design, and interactivity. I they figure out how to make good items, which they kind of show a bit of in the original sin games with the gold-named "premade" weapons/armor that are spaced around the game world.

 

[Dux]

If they manage to refrain from using WoW-ish graphics then there's a chance of it being decent, although I'm not really expecting anything of the sort. Less cartoonish bullshit and a more or less grounded medieval aesthetic, as it was in the previous installments. If they want to fuck with BG at least do it right. Don't go from what made Baldur's Gate so visually memorable and rustic, to the Blizzard-patented ebola posing as graphics.

 

[Mortmal]

I wasn't able to follow this discussion and E3 much, soooo...Is there any information about actual gameplay or people still fabulously or violently edgy about BG 3 without actual information?

They are "adapting" rules, he dont like hit chances, he dont like vancian system cause its not intuitive for the mainstream. Extremely shy about gameplay during interview . Team is huge and you can see on belgian tv they were working on facial animations.Google stadia : xbox controller .Those are the hard facts , its not leading towards anything good.

 

[Chippy]

I wasn't able to follow this discussion and E3 much, soooo...Is there any information about actual gameplay or people still fabulously or violently edgy about BG 3 without actual information?

People are speculating based on what they aren't saying, information about team size/budget and what implications that has as well as their statements about DnD in general.

I think people are a bit miffed at their poor marketing for the game. The DnD guy has 1 script: "Descent into Avernus is cool, BG was cool, tabletop roleplaying is great and player choice in games is also great, wider audiances and magi orcs" etc. Sven Vicke mixes it up between getting his facts wrong (3.5 BG), pissing people off with suggesting/hinting/maybe there are some changes in the works for gameplay and rules, and putting his foot in his mouth by saying some of his team haven't even played the IE games.

Brian Fargo was interesting when he was talking about (was it Joe Dever or John Grant) getting annoyed at the level of violence in Fallout 1, (or was it Wasteland at the time) and how he basically told him it was staying, and then it became Fallout. That worked because Fallout had come out and was a good fucking game. These guys talking about how they had lunch while aquiring the rights to BG doesn't interest me because I haven't played their games, and don't know if they're worthy of calling the next one they make BG3.

So yeah, if their marketing campaign was designed to irritate grognards like me: it's working.

 

[Volourn]

They don't care about grognards and 'veteran BG players' or their (our) opinions. Why? They likely already have 99% of our money anyways. Their goal is to convince others to buy it. They know D&D nerds ar elikely to buy it because of the D&D label same with BGers. It is why they don't have cater to our 'wants'. They likely already got us... well.. most of us...

If theyw ere to cut dwarves... FUKK EM. No money from me. L0LZ