What drove BG3's success, game mechanics or emotional engagement?

[GamerCat_]

Were you not paying attention when 'The Day Before' became one of the most pre-ordered games of all time?

For any No Man's Sky there are plenty of games that do not get that kind of recognition or commercial success. So this is more of an exception rather than the general rule you claim it to be.

Not every game makes a fortune. But any game with serious attention seeking force behind it is a good chance.

'Horizon: Forbidden West' made more money than all of this site's favourite CRPGs put together.

It is pretty fucking easy to make money in gaming.

You contradict yourself here. On one hand you say it is easy to print money by making games, on another you admit that "this site's favourite CRPGs put together" made less money than some action game. Apparently it is not so easy to make money in gaming.

Perhaps I should have said "easy to make money in gaming now". We are talking about the present. If those games were made for release this year they'd stand a pretty solid chance each of getting the BG3 money with a bit of shamelessness in putting themselves out there.

 

[JB_0x0003]

You contradict yourself here. On one hand you say it is easy to print money by making games, on another you admit that "this site's favourite CRPGs put together" made less money than some action game. Apparently it is not so easy to make money in gaming.

Those RPGs weren't really trying to make money. Games like age of decadence (A child of the rpg codex theory of game design) were made because they were opinionated on what made a good game, and made that. They weren't trying to make a specifically marketable and successful game, they were satisfying their autistic personal preferences, and yet that game still turned a profit. Imagine if someone with a similar skill level tried to make something for people who don't post on RPG Codex.

Meanwhile the median steam game makes ~$700 in revenue. This sounds like pennies until you realize that the average steam game looks like this:



This took someone three years to make. Amateur art is good, but this is clearly a half-assed effort by someone with no real vision or desire to learn the skills necessary to work on games. They're just filling in the numbers on a vaguely game shaped product. It still made a couple grand because it's tagged "roguelite" on steam and has a trailer with 3d graphics.

Now imagine if someone willing to sit down and learn to 3d model and compose (formal coding is optional at this point) put in the effort for 3 years. You're not guaranteed to make a ton of money, but it'd certainly beat minimum wage. That's very rare for a non-porn artistic product made by an amateur.

 

[kigmathelm]

Ah, its the old debate frequent in music circles. I'm leaning towards side which doesn't measure things in money earned - people just like to consume palatable shit, but it doesn't change the fact that its still shit.

 

[Laz Sundays]

I'll read the pages thoroughly I just have a quick question: is the faggotry avoidable or not? Cause looking at the overall impression people are divided between " yeah" and a hard "no it's everywhere". I ain't touching this shit if I am forced to acknowledge California Love. Bear fucking is kinda funny?

All in all I think the game's popular because it's looking and playing like a high quality product with hyped IP history and everlovable DnD. Coming out in times where almost everything is garbage, there's no mystery to it's popularity.

 

[Laz Sundays]

If Jack Black can fuck a dragon, I can totally see myself fucking a bear. Easy

 

[Shadenuat]

1. It's because it's a Baldur's Gate sequel.

People like to bring this up, but I do wonder how much Baldur's Gate's brand really helped Baldur's Gate 3 in the practical sense. For example, Baldur's Gate reddit has ~99k people. Baldur's Gate 3 has 1.9m people. That puts Baldur's Gate pre Baldur's Gate 3 somewhere around 5%. Divinity: Original Sin reddit has 227k, meaning it is more than twice as big. So, yeah, I doubt the "it's a Baldur's Gate sequel and that's why it sold so well" argument being accurate.

2. It's because they made it turn based as DnD should be.

Wasn't the argument that turn-based is less attractive for mainstream?

This argument was always nothing but fantasy of gaem journalists. Same as 2d dead 3d bettar
Fucking pokemon is turn based and it always sold buckets.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

delivers what rpgs have been promising for decades. Its the rpg closest to the tabletop experience

Yeah, this is pretty much it - the experience of playing BG3 was a constant stream of thinking "can I do [unorthodox idea]?" and the game answering "yes" pretty much every time.

The tradeoff is that it's a bit too easy overall since you can try pretty much any ridiculous scheme and it'll work - and there are some painfully obvious ones that literally always work in every situation, like barrelmancy - but that's the price of the mechanical freedom offered to the player. If they can find a way to keep the difficulty reasonably high without sacrificing that freedom in their next game, then they'll be winning big-time.

Yeah in my solo playthrough it was way too easy on tactician without even using gimmicks. Just a decent mage build without minmaxing let me basically never die cause 5e apparently sucks ass. At least in co-op when everyone acted like a griefing retard it actually got challenging. People not showing up to fights until turns later, shoving people off ledges for no reason, my paladin using holy smite + guaranteed crit on the zombies that reflect it back at twice the damage etc etc. And we still won most encounters first try on tactician. Kinda sad. Pic related, our asshole paladin let all three of us die before helping us versus the undead miniboss

adasdasdas

Thankfully they said they aren't using DnD for their next game because of hasbro rejecting their terms or something so they have the freedom to actually make the game's difficulty more fine tuned. Hopefully in the next game creativity is like sekiro's system where it doesnt auto kill the boss every time but just makes things a lot easier. If they make divinity 3 I'm just pirating though. That series is terrible in every way.

 

[Drakortha]

I'm not going to read through 8 pages of this shit and I'm just going to say that BG3 was successful because consumers enjoy consuming anything that's trash, while the rest just want to play anything that's popular at the moment because they suffer FOMO (fear of missing out) and just want to feel included. Consumers are nothing but tasteless cucks who couldn't form their own taste to save their own life. They only play whatever is at the top of the steam charts this month without even a second thought. That is what drove BG3's success. It wasn't because BG3 actually had any good merits. Any supposed "good merits" it had are just lies consumers tell each other to hide the fact they're only playing something because everyone else is. And then the effect just snowballs from there.

I have a friend who I've known for years. He's a total consumer these days, so of course he bought and played BG3. He then moved on to play Palworlds even though he never even liked Pokemon. And the cycle just continues. You just hate to see it.

 

[Baron Tahn]

is the faggotry avoidable or not?

It depends. For me, the writing is rife with it. Its always alluded to, half the v/o is camp as hell and everything just RADIATES modern day progressive values. Its Larian. If you can handle Larians completely camp colourful habits and inability to set dark tones (they are probably worse than disney at this) then you might be okay.

Does that mean I cant avoid the gays? No, I can, but you better be damn sure you dont misclick sometimes. Its a grind to play and eyerollingly cringy at times. I see why the girls love it. Again, on brand for Larian. But I have been able to avoid the worst of it so far.

Oh and I recommend just stabbing Astarion in the throat. That will save you some trouble.

I should also mention I havent even got to Act 3. Hahaha? *despair*

 

[GamerCat_]

What is the point in playing a game where you are almost certain you despise the sensibilities of its creators? What possible appeal could it hold for you? Do you love rolling virtual dice to stab goblins that much?

 

[Baron Tahn]

Yeah. Asking myself the same. But I paid for the game and its in my backlog, thought id give it a go now its patched up a bit. Also I nuked the narrator with a mod that helped somewhat. Also about to get a new PC and I think the missus might like it.

Im an old DnD hand and the kid is showing an interest in it as well so we might do a multiplayer run...

Also I dont mind some of the stuff in it combat wise the animations and Turn based is preddy ok sometimes. Couple beers and its playable till I get to the next writing slog.

 

[Haplo]

Where does this shit opinion that Larian is good at gameplay come from? Ok, I get it, they obviously focus on gameplay more than say on writing (Good God, I could shit out better stains onto paper than their writers' work), but just because you focus on something doesn't automatically mean you are good at it.

Let's break down RPG gameplay into its substituent elements and examine Larian:

- exploration - They have never been particularly good at this. Mostly because post-Divine Divinity, their worlds have been basically blobs, where you just go around on a fairly predictable path, and just complete shit in front of you. On top of which, there is almost never anything to find in Larian games (which kills the motivation for exploration): what are you going to find, another Diablo-style weapon you will be replacing soon, or some asshole yelling out Belgian jokes? And then the bazillion of fucking crates to rifle through for trash.
- puzzles - if Owlcat didn't exist, Larian would have the worst puzzles in RPGs. Pixel hunting for levers and similar trash.
- world interactivity - I don't know if people bring this up because in the beginning of D:OS you can put out a ship fire with a rain spell/scroll, but how often do their games actually have meaningful world interactivity outside of combat? You can probably count it on one hand. Unless you think moving barrels and crates all the time counts.
- combat - So overrated here. Combining fire with oil or water with electricity is only fun the first few times, after that it becomes a chore. And outside of that, Larian combat has some of the most boring and silly tactics/gameplay ever.

Was this in relation to BG3?
Because if so, you are gravely wrong on at least 2 accounts here, possibly 3.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

• D&D name recognition
• Baldur's Gate name recognition
• Larian / Original Sin name recognition
• Local or online Co-op play
• Audience flattery / emotional connections (dress up, companion bonding, romances, sex, cutscenes)
• Recognizing player narrative/quest choices via visual consequences
• Game mechanics, i.e. itemization, character building, TB combat, full party control, encounter design, map verticality

Are you fuckling kidding? How about "manufactured hype"? That ever cross your mind? Fuck off.

 

[agris]

• D&D name recognition
• Baldur's Gate name recognition
• Larian / Original Sin name recognition
• Local or online Co-op play
• Audience flattery / emotional connections (dress up, companion bonding, romances, sex, cutscenes)
• Recognizing player narrative/quest choices via visual consequences
• Game mechanics, i.e. itemization, character building, TB combat, full party control, encounter design, map verticality

Are you fuckling kidding? How about "manufactured hype"? That ever cross your mind? Fuck off.

marketing is itself a process, you have to market a *thing*

it's fair to consider marketing and hype-making, and i think those are covered by the first 3 or 4 bullets. those are the things that marketing focuses on, brand names and the studio's history.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Name recognition is a marketing freebee, not a strategy.

 

[Laz Sundays]

is the faggotry avoidable or not?

It depends. For me, the writing is rife with it. Its always alluded to, half the v/o is camp as hell and everything just RADIATES modern day progressive values. Its Larian. If you can handle Larians completely camp colourful habits and inability to set dark tones (they are probably worse than disney at this) then you might be okay.

Does that mean I cant avoid the gays? No, I can, but you better be damn sure you dont misclick sometimes. Its a grind to play and eyerollingly cringy at times. I see why the girls love it. Again, on brand for Larian. But I have been able to avoid the worst of it so far.

Oh and I recommend just stabbing Astarion in the throat. That will save you some trouble.

I should also mention I havent even got to Act 3. Hahaha? *despair*

It's really strange. I'm on page 4 atm and some of the seemingly objective/neutral codexers are claiming it's a choice rather than constantly in our face. So now I'm simply not sure whether to attribute that to actual objectivity, or Westerners are so drown in deviant perversion that they can no longer see things from a traditional perspective.

Fuck it, I'll give it a try in the summer.

 

[mondblut]

The game was catered towards and marketed exclusively to... critical role fans

Sufficit. The rest is tautology.

 

[Harthwain]

You're not guaranteed to make a ton of money, but it'd certainly beat minimum wage. That's very rare for a non-porn artistic product made by an amateur.

OK? But I thought we were talking about big piles of money here, not "beating minimum wage"...

 

[luj1]

I just have a quick question: is the faggotry avoidable or not?

No

But there are worse things for me than faggotry. I stopped playing because classes and races were dumbed down and were quite thin in terms of rules.

Every class can use scrolls, every class can disengage/hide/dash, different classes have the same spells, with significant overlap, etc. I mean Clerics have fireball now, gimme a break. Clearly all was subdued to MUH ACCESSIBILITY.

This is what's disgusting to me, it makes every RPG unplayable.

PS Racial bonuses are paper thin compared to earlier editions too.

 

[Baron Tahn]

The above post is also annoying for me - I prefer a game that sticks by its rules. It got softened a lot to allow for flexibility and they did odd stuff with stats/bonuses/height/race limits to allow for snowflakery. Grinds my gears a bit but realisitically I get that people arent going to want to play another 100 hr run+ just to experiment.

But Im the kind of person thats annoyed by Larians shit: 'Oh, lets set it in Faerun, where humans are most common': Humans therefore rare as rocking horse shit with mountains of teiflings and a fkn Githyanki cos why not. 'Oh, lets be incloosive': No beardy dwarf companion in sight because thats not 'sexy for the girlz'.

 

[Iucounu]

Im an old DnD hand and the kid is showing an interest in it as well so we might do a multiplayer run...

You shouldn't expose children to things like this. Wait until they're at least past 40.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Im an old DnD hand and the kid is showing an interest in it as well so we might do a multiplayer run...

You shouldn't expose children to things like this. Wait until they're at least past 40.

Quite so, its one of the reasons Im giving it the scan because it aint appropriate for kids, which is weird as fk cos its totally marketed at teens, like a youth emo romance novel. The people who wrote it cant be much older, either, its like DnD soft erotic fanfiction. No exploding bodies or anything dark and hardcore like any tone that hits hard enough, just reams of campy gay gender identity shit.

Edit: Yet, anyway.

 

[Laz Sundays]

5th edition may be good in PnP sessions, atleast parts of it. It speeds up the process but it only works if the DM and players know what to do with it. Yet in crpg it can never replace 3.5, ever. But since we're on the topic of BG3 appeal and pages 5 and 6 of this thread were brilliantly retarded to read, I'll just drop a few burning questions and gtfo.

1. Can I create my own party and absolutely annihilate every colorful singing/dancing fag that comes my way, on sight?
2. Are there ANY NPCs that are actually cool here?
3. I rarely see alignments mentioned. How does the karmic system work and is it impactful?
4. If so, is it safe to say that the "evil" playthrough would be the best and most satisfying way to experience this mess?

Cause that might be the newfound appeal that I've been looking for, quite honestly. If I can play this shit like I would occasionally storm through ToEE with custom party wiping out everything and everyone because I don't like their face, including Gods, that'll be fucking perfect. Therapeutic even.

*edit: disclaimer - I'm usually very balanced with story and combat, and I certainly like the freedom to find innovative ways of dealing with the situation. However, if it's a gigantic levels of faggotry that we're fighting, I know exactly how to play this game. If it allows me to.

 

[Poseidon00]

1. Can I create my own party and absolutely annihilate every colorful singing/dancing fag that comes my way, on sight?
2. Are there ANY NPCs that are actually cool here?
3. I rarely see alignments mentioned. How does the karmic system work and is it impactful?
4. If so, is it safe to say that the "evil" playthrough would be the best and most satisfying way to experience this mess?

1. Yes, it's recommended
2. I think Gale is objectively pretty well written
3. They literally took alignment out of the game because the idea that some beings are inherently evil is a wrongthink. This Nu DnD, the flesh eating monsters are as Lawful and as Good as you are. to think otherwise has dangerous political implications. I have not seen any big impacts from my general alignment patterns yet.
4. Absolutely

 

[jackofshadows]

4. If so, is it safe to say that the "evil" playthrough would be the best and most satisfying way to experience this mess?

100%. No matter what new "evil" path they're cooking, trust that the current one is the best one. Yes, it denies "the content" but the content you wouldn't be glad to see actually.