General Gaming Baldur's Gate III - Information Thread, update: Larian doesn't plan to release DLC/expansions for BGIII nor develop BGIV

[Best]

Why are we talking about Dicks in this thread?

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, best3444 said:

Why are we talking about Dicks in this thread?

It's a great place to do it considering you pick your own penis in this game

[legend]

Holy shit, it's only gone up with more reviews. It's now the highest rated game of all time on open critic:

 

[legend]

2 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

I feel like most video games solved that ages ago with damage ranges. Eventually in most RPGs that have accuracy, you can choose to hit an accuracy cap and straight up stop missing barring some buffs/debuffs, and then it's all about damage ranges. And not these fucking silly damage ranges like "2-68 damage" (what the fuck?) but like, 48-70 damage. You always have a good baseline.

 

Also it's hard to believe I'm going to be doing any serious world saving when I miss a melee attack against a dude flat on his ass a foot in front of me. Kinda feels like this but less delightfully stupid:

 

 

 

Those big ranges are not actually bad. Big ranges happen when you have many dice rolls, but the benefit of many dice rolls is the low range (and high range) is virtually impossible. you get a Gaussian-like distribution. As a reference point consider that a regular Gaussian distribution for continuous values has some probability density across the entire range of real numbers from - infinity to + infinity, but in practice you're not going to see results bigger than 10 because the probability of extremes drops off exponentially.

 

That's why I said I'm not opposed to dice, but D20s are awful and multiple dice provides a much better game dynamic.

 

There is an argument that it's difficult to communicate that fact to players though.

[Bacon]

6 minutes ago, legend said:

Holy shit, it's only gone up with more reviews. It's now the highest rated game of all time on open critic:

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[Bacon]

It's crazy how many people I see shitting on SE over their stance on turn-based FFs since BG3's success.

I agree 100% that they should make FF turn-based again, but lumping FF and BG into the same "turn-based" category is just wrong. Like, Diablo and Kingdom Hearts are both ARPGs. Watermelon, bananas, and blueberries are all berries. That said, I would play the fuck of an FF with this kind of turn-based gameplay. I think it could work VERY well.

[Best]

8 minutes ago, Bacon said:

It's crazy how many people I see shitting on SE over their stance on turn-based FFs since BG3's success.

I agree 100% that they should make FF turn-based again, but lumping FF and BG into the same "turn-based" category is just wrong. Like, Diablo and Kingdom Hearts are both ARPGs. Watermelon, bananas, and blueberries are all berries. That said, I would play the fuck of an FF with this kind of turn-based gameplay. I think it could work VERY well.

 

After playing FF16 I'd be all over turn-based gameplay. I enjoy that a lot anyway. 

[legend]

8 minutes ago, Bacon said:

It's crazy how many people I see shitting on SE over their stance on turn-based FFs since BG3's success.

I agree 100% that they should make FF turn-based again, but lumping FF and BG into the same "turn-based" category is just wrong. Like, Diablo and Kingdom Hearts are both ARPGs. Watermelon, bananas, and blueberries are all berries. That said, I would play the fuck of an FF with this kind of turn-based gameplay. I think it could work VERY well.

 

I agree. If you want to argue that FF turn-based is still viable and can be successful, I would point to Persona 5.

[Fizzzzle]

For JRPGs, it's like publishers hit this point in the mid-00's where they were like "ehhhhh, no one wants to play that shit anymore," without actually trying it. And then it became gospel that you couldn't do a turn-based, big budget JRPG, despite the fact that Final Fantasy X is literally one of the most successful video games ever made and came out in 2001. Even Final Fantasy XII is turn-based, though it covers it up. Hell, Pokemon is a thing.

 

Over the last 15 years, there has pretty much been Lost Odyssey, The Last Remnant, Dragon Quest XI, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Persona 5 in terms of "AAA" turn-based JRPGs. That's it. Actually, Lost Odyssey and the Last Remnant came out over 15 years ago, now that I think about it. Maybe you could count Resonance of Fate as a AAA title.

 

The point is, the entire industry just all decided at once that no one wants to play turn-based games anymore, so we only get them as niche titles, when clearly people DO want to play them. You can't point to a turn-based game that failed and say "well if it wasn't turn-based, people would have liked it."

[Xbob42]

1 hour ago, legend said:

 

 

Those big ranges are not actually bad. Big ranges happen when you have many dice rolls, but the benefit of many dice rolls is the low range (and high range) is virtually impossible. you get a Gaussian-like distribution. As a reference point consider that a regular Gaussian distribution for continuous values has some probability density across the entire range of real numbers from - infinity to + infinity, but in practice you're not going to see results bigger than 10 because the probability of extremes drops off exponentially.

 

That's why I said I'm not opposed to dice, but D20s are awful and multiple dice provides a much better game dynamic.

 

There is an argument that it's difficult to communicate that fact to players though.

 

Mm. Yes. Quite. Indubitably. Gaussian distribution for normalized values. Quite indeed.

 

49 minutes ago, Bacon said:

It's crazy how many people I see shitting on SE over their stance on turn-based FFs since BG3's success.

I agree 100% that they should make FF turn-based again, but lumping FF and BG into the same "turn-based" category is just wrong. Like, Diablo and Kingdom Hearts are both ARPGs. Watermelon, bananas, and blueberries are all berries. That said, I would play the fuck of an FF with this kind of turn-based gameplay. I think it could work VERY well.

 

39 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I agree. If you want to argue that FF turn-based is still viable and can be successful, I would point to Persona 5.

 

We've already made the point of Persona 5. But then there's Pokemon as well. Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Etc.

 

The notion that "nobody wants to play turn-based" is horse shit. Yes, these are different kinds of turn-based games, but people said the same exact shit about BG3 being turn-based. Go look at some comments from before the early access hit. People just talking shit on how no one wants to play turn-based and how Baldur's Gate 3 was doomed to failure.

At some point the industry just decided, apropos of virtually nothing, that turn-based was out. And lukewarm, half-assed action combat by non-action combat developers was the hot shit.

Maybe it was just an easy scapegoat, like how Eidos was a scapegoat for Square Enix sucking fat balls for a decade. Our sales are down, it must be because no one wants to play turn-based games, not that we've continued to make shitty ones, or that we haven't made one in 5 years and it's an easy excuse.

 

I dunno, but it's such an exhausting argument that seems to not be based in reality or any kind of studies at all, just assumptions piled upon assumptions.

Meanwhile, I kind of think Live Service games have got one foot out the door (with the same exception as mobile markets: a few big winners and everyone else just has their game die in under a year) but these companies all think they're gonna be the next big hit. That's how it's been for a long time and I think that's the true rot: trying to be the next big thing instead of playing to your strengths, trying to make something you have almost no chance of making in a way that will be successful, in a way that by its nature can only be successful for a handful of games.

 

We've got so many goddamn companies making games they have no business making and almost every big hit this year has been in complete defiance of that. (Not defiance in game devs making a stand or anything... just making good, complete games that they're skilled at making.)

[thedarkstark]

Anyone tried playing on Deck? I know its "verified" but that doesn't mean much. 

[legend]

2 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

 

Mm. Yes. Quite. Indubitably. Gaussian distribution for normalized values. Quite indeed.

 

I mean, I could have said "bell curve" but then it would feel like I was just talking down to you  

 

[Xbob42]

17 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I mean, I could have said "bell curve" but then it would feel like I was just talking down to you  

 

I appreciate it! Though I do wonder if at that point, the multiple dice rolls are functionally identical to a standard video game damage range. I mean I guess it is, just with less proficient characters getting worse ranges with lower ends. I would definitely prefer what you're proposing over just one big d20, though. I'm really interested in checking some mods out now.

[legend]

3 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I appreciate it! Though I do wonder if at that point of multiple dice rolls it's functionally the same as a standard video game damage range. I mean I guess it is, just with less proficient characters getting worse ranges with lower ends. I would definitely prefer what you're proposing over just one big d20, though. I'm really interested in checking some mods out now.

 

 

Depends a bit on how the damage range is implemented. If it's implemented as a uniform distribution over a small range (i.e., the extremes are just as likely as the average) that does behave a little differently than multiple dice which progressively become less likely as you get further away from the average. The multiple die also allows for very rare events that either feel absolutely amazing for absolutely horrible  I think keeping some degree of those really rare events is usually fun -- it gives you something to talk about, especially in a social game -- and the nice thing about multiple die is its a natural consequence of the simple mechanic, rather than something that has to be hacked on. But your mileage may vary.

[Air_Delivery]

4 hours ago, Bacon said:

It's crazy how many people I see shitting on SE over their stance on turn-based FFs since BG3's success.

I agree 100% that they should make FF turn-based again, but lumping FF and BG into the same "turn-based" category is just wrong. Like, Diablo and Kingdom Hearts are both ARPGs. Watermelon, bananas, and blueberries are all berries. That said, I would play the fuck of an FF with this kind of turn-based gameplay. I think it could work VERY well.

BG3's turn based battle system is more akin to FFT which I would die for a big budget modern Final Fantasy with an updated FFT combat system.

[Fizzzzle]

3 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

 

Mm. Yes. Quite. Indubitably. Gaussian distribution for normalized values. Quite indeed.

 

 

 

We've already made the point of Persona 5. But then there's Pokemon as well. Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Etc.

 

The notion that "nobody wants to play turn-based" is horse shit. Yes, these are different kinds of turn-based games, but people said the same exact shit about BG3 being turn-based. Go look at some comments from before the early access hit. People just talking shit on how no one wants to play turn-based and how Baldur's Gate 3 was doomed to failure.

At some point the industry just decided, apropos of virtually nothing, that turn-based was out. And lukewarm, half-assed action combat by non-action combat developers was the hot shit.

Maybe it was just an easy scapegoat, like how Eidos was a scapegoat for Square Enix sucking fat balls for a decade. Our sales are down, it must be because no one wants to play turn-based games, not that we've continued to make shitty ones, or that we haven't made one in 5 years and it's an easy excuse.

 

I dunno, but it's such an exhausting argument that seems to not be based in reality or any kind of studies at all, just assumptions piled upon assumptions.

Meanwhile, I kind of think Live Service games have got one foot out the door (with the same exception as mobile markets: a few big winners and everyone else just has their game die in under a year) but these companies all think they're gonna be the next big hit. That's how it's been for a long time and I think that's the true rot: trying to be the next big thing instead of playing to your strengths, trying to make something you have almost no chance of making in a way that will be successful, in a way that by its nature can only be successful for a handful of games.

 

We've got so many goddamn companies making games they have no business making and almost every big hit this year has been in complete defiance of that. (Not defiance in game devs making a stand or anything... just making good, complete games that they're skilled at making.)

You said what I said but better!

[Kal-El814]

11 hours ago, Bacon said:

Also, as someone who has never played any DnD, at times I wish the game had a codex. Like, I don't know anything about the gods tho the game acts like I should. I get that, you know, it's Baldur's Gate 3, but I feel what is not expanded on is the actual DnD stuff, not BG-specific stuff. Like, I don't even know who Shar is and why I should care. I mean, I kinda do now, but wow is it really hard to care about what god someone worships when you don't know any of them. Thankfully, there has been a decent amount of "shrug idc" dialogue options.

 

If it makes you feel any better that shit was obscure in BG 1 and 2 also.

[Bacon]

11 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

If it makes you feel any better that shit was obscure in BG 1 and 2 also.

No. It makes me angry

[Bacon]

Not to keep on talking about how much more I enjoy Barb RP, but man I was so bummed you couldn't get proper angry during this scene. Well, it turns out you can on Barb and it is

Spoiler

 

Get scared, bitch!

[Paperclyp]

11 hours ago, legend said:

Holy shit, it's only gone up with more reviews. It's now the highest rated game of all time on open critic:

 

 

I like a lot of those games, but I do feel like we have insane recency bias these days. And be we I mean the internet I guess. 

[legend]

9 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

 

I like a lot of those games, but I do feel like we have insane recency bias these days. And be we I mean the internet I guess. 

 

There is some bias on opencritic because they only track "recentish" games for which scores can be crawled. Stuff from the 80s isn't going to make the list. Or if there are any instances, they're very few.

 

But that aside, while there are things about the game industry that have gotten worse (*cough* $20 "micro" transactions where the only thing micro is the content you get *cough*), on the whole games continue to get better and it is reasonable to expect that. Relatively speaking, games are a new medium, which means it takes time to learn what works and for the community hone the craft. Games are also *heavily* reliant on hardware, software tooling, and just "process" (e.g., voice acting/mocap studios, etc) to make the game, all of which improve through continual development. And on top of even that, more games are made as time goes on and it becomes more mainstream. That means there's more chances for the "best" to be on the more recent side than not.

 

So on the whole, I do think games have been getting better with time since their inception so I think it's appropriate for the "best" games to skew more recent.. And in this case, I don't think you can find a better RPG than BG3. You can find a small handful of ones that are maybe equally good in different ways, but not better, and BG3 excels in ways we haven't really seen with the closest being DOS2 (for obvious reasons).

[Fizzzzle]

@legendraises a good point. Video games as we know them (the home console era) are still only about 35 years old

 

It took movies a long time to become recognizable to us. Like, from the first movie to now, we would just now be hitting the first "talkie" 

 

To an extent, Baldurs Gate 3 represents a closer shift to something like The Sims or Stardew Valley, but with much more gameified mechanics. There is no wrong way to do things, there is no "best way" (I've seen some "most optimized way" sprout up here and there for EXP), you just... Play. 

 

You could play the game 5 times and have 5 different experiences in a way I'm not sure I've experienced from a video game before.

 

It's like Skyrim funnels everyone into being a stealth archer/stealth destruction build because that is objectively the most efficient way to play the game. Baldurs Gate doesn't do that. And weirdly that also makes it more stressful to play

 

[Air_Delivery]

There are many games that hold up espeically in the early arcade era but I'd argue most games from the early 3d era to about 2005 don't hold up at all.

I'd still put in 25c if I see a Ms Pac Man cabinet in the wild. 

 

 

 

[Xbob42]

If you want to see how well a game holds up, have someone play it who's unfamiliar with it and games from that era in general. I think you'll find the overwhelming majority of older games hold very little appeal. We can talk about recency bias, but I think historical bias is an unrepentant blight on gaming discussions. 

[Air_Delivery]

Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Galaga, Missile Command, all the Mario Bros pre Super Maro 64, all the Zeldas pre Ocarina of Time hold up.


This probably is a controversial opinion but almost all N64 games don't hold up and I thought they were shit at the time. The N64 is the inflection point from when I changed from a Nintendo fanboy to a free agent. 

[Xbob42]

3 minutes ago, Air_Delivery said:

Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Galaga, Missile Command

I find these games insufferably boring, akin to a fidget spinner or something.

[Keyser_Soze]

55 minutes ago, Air_Delivery said:

I'd still put in 25c if I see a Ms Pac Man cabinet in the wild.

 

This is an illegal game and you should be arrested for playing it.

[Air_Delivery]

29 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I find these games insufferably boring, akin to a fidget spinner or something.

 

I still enjoy arcade style games. It isn't something I actively play but I'd very much play them if I was at a pizza place or something. But at the very least the graphics of those games still are crisp and the controls feel good. N64 games like Goldeneye (which I played the shit out of in high school) are unplayable by todays standards. 

I thought Ocrina of Time looked and controlled like shit WHEN it came out. 

[Fizzzzle]

42 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

If you want to see how well a game holds up, have someone play it who's unfamiliar with it and games from that era in general. I think you'll find the overwhelming majority of older games hold very little appeal. We can talk about recency bias, but I think historical bias is an unrepentant blight on gaming discussions. 

Some older arcade games with really tight gameplay loops still hold up. Me and my friends (most of whom don't play video games) love to take 4-player pac-man for a spin. Double points if we're on drugs when we do it (not that I've done drugs in years, but there was a time while playing 4-player pac-man while rolling tits was a favorite activity)

 

But I would agree, a lot of games from the ~1995-2004ish era don't hold up so much. And that's much more than just the graphics. Take Tales of Symphonia, for example. I'm 100% convinced that anyone who never played that game on the GameCube and says that they enjoy playing it now is a dirty, filthy liar. The AI blows so much ass in that game compared to later Tales games, making battles feel like babysitting a 2 year old.

[Paperclyp]

7 hours ago, legend said:

 

There is some bias on opencritic because they only track "recentish" games for which scores can be crawled. Stuff from the 80s isn't going to make the list. Or if there are any instances, they're very few.

 

But that aside, while there are things about the game industry that have gotten worse (*cough* $20 "micro" transactions where the only thing micro is the content you get *cough*), on the whole games continue to get better and it is reasonable to expect that. Relatively speaking, games are a new medium, which means it takes time to learn what works and for the community hone the craft. Games are also *heavily* reliant on hardware, software tooling, and just "process" (e.g., voice acting/mocap studios, etc) to make the game, all of which improve through continual development. And on top of even though, more and more games as time goes on and it becomes more mainstream. That means there's more chances for the "best" to be on the more recent side than not.

 

So on the whole, I do think games have been getting better with time since their inception so I think it's appropriate for the "best" games to skew more recent.. And in this case, I don't think you can find a better RPG than BG3. You can find a small handful of ones that are maybe equally good in different ways, but not better, and BG3 excels in ways we haven't really seen with the closest being DOS2 (for obvious reasons).

I don’t disagree. When it comes to review aggregation though, I guess what I mean is that like Super Mario World, or let’s say a more recent game I guess like, I dunno, Mass Effect 2, are not reviewed in a context of “games will get better over time, so I have to factor that into this score.” If that makes sense. So while I agree with Xbob as well in that if you give 1,000 fandoms folks breath of the wild and a link to the past, I suppose most will say BOTW is amazing and not only is LTTP not as good it is actually a waste of their time; I think we just live in a time where we need to proclaim something one of the best ever or barely worth your time. 
 

So perhaps recency bias isn’t the right term. You see it in sports too. Every player is one of the best who has ever played or is trash. 

[Paperclyp]

Oh and perhaps to be more clear I think BG3 is on that level. I was more looking at like … ok I know I have my biases but is God of War really a top 10 game ever, or the last of us, or BOTH recent Zelda’s, or I mean come on, Persona 5? 
 

I can pick a lot of games that came out in the last decade that I much prefer over a lot of these titles. I just think they have a combination of mass appeal and in a lot of cases a very high budget so they look and run real nice. 

[Best]

8 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Oh and perhaps to be more clear I think BG3 is on that level. I was more looking at like … ok I know I have my biases but is God of War really a top 10 game ever, or the last of us, or BOTH recent Zelda’s, or I mean come on, Persona 5? 
 

I can pick a lot of games that came out in the last decade that I much prefer over a lot of these titles. I just think they have a combination of mass appeal and in a lot of cases a very high budget so they look and run real nice. 

 

I for one have been gaming since 1985 and yes, GOW and both of the TLOU games are in my personal top 10. Not because they run and look really nice but because of the incredible gameplay and stories. 

[Air_Delivery]

ALttP is still the best Zelda game. 

[Best]

9 minutes ago, Air_Delivery said:

ALttP is still the best Zelda game. 

 

I never played that but I understand it kinda laid the foundation of how Zelda games were designed? Is that accurate minus the 2 new open world Zeldas I guess?