Uhh… today’s AAA studios have THOUSANDS of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets, and huge IPs on which to draw. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian. Like, an order of magnitude larger. This is gaslighting and whining. I’m not having it. Do better, AAA devs. Do a lot better.
That’s why their games suck. Smaller teams and budgets make better products.
It’s really not the team size, but rather the management that comes with it.
The devs aren’t the problem 99% of the time.
Well I wouldn’t say that exactly. GTA 5 had a huge budget and a huge team and it’s objectively a better product if you compare the two (which is only to say they’re both great games but the bigger budget game has and does more).
It’s a matter of the motivations of the developers and their financial backers. If your goal is to make an ok game that maximizes profit focused mechanics, most of these AAA developers are hitting the mark perfectly. If your focus is to make a good game like it seemed to be with the BG devs, they absolutely hit the mark and are being rewarded for it.
This is just a reminder to an industry that is trying to tell us that pay to win mechanics are the standard that they do not in fact get to dictate what those standards are. We do. If a game is shit people will abandon it even if you poured millions into that product. The recent battlefield game is a prime example of this. Even something as guaranteed as a new battlefield game isn’t enough to overcome a shitty leadership team emphasizing the wrong things. The community bailed on their product and they’ll never get them back. All those millions in guaranteed revenue are gone forever.
GTA 5 does not look like a better product to me.
GTA V story mode was an excellent game, but it’s hard to realistically say a game from one genre is better than another, apples and oranges and all that.
GTA V’s online multiplayer, however, at this point is such a shitstain that I think it alone is enough to make the distinction clear.
but it’s hard to realistically say a game from one genre is better than another, apples and oranges and all that.
I agree.
It is. But only in so far as the content and scope of the game far surpasses anything a smaller developer could ever hope to accomplish. You may prefer one over the other, totally fine, but objectively speaking you get way more out of gta 5 content and scope wise than bg3.
As others point out gta online is a dumpster fire but it’s still massive and allows you to do endless amounts of things, racing, heists, owning property, running businesses, etc.
More content doesn’t mean better, especially when that content isn’t the kind that I find enjoyable.
This is just a reminder to an industry that is trying to tell us that pay to win mechanics are the standard that they do not in fact get to dictate what those standards are. We do.
Quoting for emphasis. We control the purse, we have the voting power of the wallet.
Not AAA devs, they’re doing what they can. The problem is with the AAA CEOs
💯
When I read ‘AAA devs’ in this context I see it as ‘AAA game development companies’ not programers and artists working in them.
Not AAA devs, they’re doing what they can.
Blaming consumers, in this instance. You could well be right that the problem is internal but in that case that’s where it needs to solved. Or if they want to get the support of consumers, be honest with their reasoning. Crying that the expectations of consumers are too high doesn’t help at all. It just makes them seem out of touch with reality.
Blaming consumers
No, blaming CEOs and the c-suites
The Divinity games are some of my favorites ever made. It makes me giddy that BG3 is doing so well to embarrass big companies 😂
This is partly why I ponied up full price.
I want more games from Larian.
I bought the game 4 times.
Twice for me, and a copy for 2 of my friends.
Pretty cool seeing one of them log a ton of hours in it after working. Like, I gave them that happiness :')
They’re scared. There’s no excuse anymore. And people have become aware of it.
Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the team that worked on Skyrim was significantly smaller than the Larian team that worked on BG3.
Perhaps? But Skyrim is also 12 years old. Whatever team is working in Elder Scrolls 6 is certainly not smaller than Larian’s.
Skyrim had under 100 employees.
IMO the most important distinction is a game that puts play experience first vs profit.
I have no problem if games reached this via a similar model that Larian used here (lots of experienced staff, pre-built systems, 6 years of development, 3 years of expertly done early-access with a highly engaged player base) but they’re not going to. They’re going to implement more crunch, more abuse, more destruction of the few people who want to work in games in order to get there. And that’s where I have the issue.
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less. Because that’s what’s needed to make truly great games. People who are passionate, not burning themselves out just to barely make deadlines, make great games.
Sir… Socialism is already ruining this nation.and you are daring to propose communism?!
Sorry, I’m neurodivergent. Can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but the post looks sarcastic to me. Have a good day!
Not the person who said it, but yes, it’s sarcasm
I’m neurodivergent
Godsdamned illithids
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less.
Honestly that’s an excellent summary.
Don’t get me wrong BG3 is probably one of the best games I’ve ever played and I eventually want BG4 or whatever expansion/spin-off/sequel they want to make. However I waited 23 years between BG2 and BG3, I don’t want to wait that long again, but I can wait.
But to your point I want good games. I don’t need 100+ hour adventures. In general I don’t want 100+ hour adventures. Those should be rare. I want games that I can finish (at a casual pace) in a weekend or two.
Portal 1? Braid? Both are short puzzle games that are absolutely fantastic.
Stanley Parable? Gone Home? Excellent story games. You can beat them in about as much time as it takes to watch a movie.
It’s disappointing that AAA studios don’t recognize this. I don’t want a bloated game that takes 300 hours to experience most of it. I don’t want a giant map. I want a good game. I want a small map filled with life, not a large one with soulless procedurally generated dungeons.
I’m just putting it out there that I have finished almost 3 different playthroughs and I would 300% purchase DLC.
If the initial game is a full game and satisfactorily so, I would gladly fork over more money for additional content.
DLC is not inherently bad. It’s just the way most companies have done it is.
What’s particularly notable about this well above average gaming year is that the clearly top two games so far aren’t using state-of-the-art graphics.
Given how messy PC gaming has been lately, with a recent history of GPU shortages followed by an underwhelming new generation and some very poor game optimization, I wouldn’t mind seeing a trend of game development slowing down on graphics tech for a bit.
We have to go back!
But also legitimately. Like remember how good games would get near the end of a console’s lifecycle? Then a new console generation would drop and the games would look sharp, but also a bit wonky, until enough years has past, and thennn… another new console generation would drop, and the constraints would disappear again. Always too soon, I thought - just as the games were getting truly good again!
Heh, yes, I still have fond memories of the late 16-bit generation and early fifth-gen games that didn’t get on board the 3D bandwagon. Sprite-based games started to look mighty sexy until everyone decided that untextured polygons were the way to go for a while. 😑
Always preferred Duke 3D to Quake. The later is way more sophisticated from the technical standpoint (though Build does allow some neat tricks) but Duke is just so vibrant and fun. Destructible environment, original weapons, large enemy variety and proper bosses… Meanwhile Quake is just… brown.
Educate a pleeb here, I’ve been out of the gaming loop. What’s the notable exceptions of great games this year and what two that are not state-of-the-art graphics do you mean?
This thread’s on Baldur’s Gate 3, that’s one of them. I should have specified the other of the two most highly-rated games this year; it’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Both games are more or less running last-gen graphics tech and are ahead of the pack on review scores. Zelda looks good for a Switch game, though.
You could probably ask a dozen gaming enthusiasts and get a dozen different answers on why this year has been exceptional. I’d say it’s because we have a lot of big releases from venerable franchises arriving all in the same year (Baldur’s Gate is one, plus Diablo, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Resident Evil, Star Wars, Street Fighter). There are hits from new IPs like Cassette Beasts, Dave the Diver, Hi-Fi Rush, and maybe Starfield in a few weeks if it’s not a disaster.
It’s a nice mix of old and new worlds and plenty of surprises. On top of all that, it’s only August. I think there’s a sense that the industry is starting to leave the pandemic behind, too.
I don’t think demanding quality games is inherently at odds with wanting studios to not abuse their workers. What we really should support is broad labor protections and labor unions for developers. Because clearly the AAA studios don’t need the excuse of high demand for features from gamers in order to abuse their people since they have been doing that for years while churning out trash titles.
Completely agreed. The issue is that gamers™ aggressively advocate for better quality, and do not care about workplace abuse or worse products with more features. This creates the current feedback loop we have where games that are longer, have flashier features, and aren’t finished at launch.
Labor unions and protections would be excellent, but isn’t something that I, a non-game developer, can do much to advance, besides avocation.
and do not care about workplace abuse
I think the recent ActiBlizz situation proves that one incorrect.
Not saying that 100% of Gamers care, just saying it’s not 0% of Gamers who care.
Why are they getting so much attention for it?
Nintendo does the same with BoTW and ToTK. Long dev cycles that releases a functional game without micro-transactions.
FromSoft does the same with most of their games. Where people actually beg them to release DLCs.
But no… it’s Larion they seem to go after.
Nintendo is huge. FromSoft has their own cult. But Larion? What’s can they blame there? Nothing. Most big studios that bitch about this is larger than Larion. Maybe because they are more scared that if Larion can do it. There’s no excuse anymore.
Most of the Sony exclusives are the same. God of War, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima.
Just solid AAA single player games, no nickel and dime bullshit.
Every F2P model is predatory as fuck, and relies on taking advantage of whales over a prolonged period.
…but I paid full price for D4 and still got a half baked game with an invasive in-game shop.
Not to victim blame, but if you looked at everything Blizzard have done over the last 10 years, and thought “maybe this one will be different” then perhaps the problem is you.
Not to X, but…
[Proceeds to X]
[Proceeds to X]
Sometimes, if the subject is important enough, you just have to X.
Sure but don’t lead by saying you are not going to do x.
I don’t think this comment really deserved this discourse, it seems pretty clearly tongue in cheek to me.
Not everything needs to be so dire.
Don’t forget the battle passes.
Ironically I’m less concerned with battle passes as long as they don’t sell power. The actual mtx itself doesn’t bother me, I’ve easily spent hundreds in path of exile. But I prefer to enjoy the game first, and then at some point decide that I want to support the devs, and then maybe I buy something.
Yeah it blows my mind how much I’ve spent on league supporter kits as well. Not sure if it is because I enjoy the game or I respect the business model.
I’m not against battle passes, but there are plenty of examples of how they fall under the predatory monetization category. Not selling power is hardly a justification that they aren’t unethical.
I’m as frustrated with D4 as the next guy, but I’d hardly call their in-game shop invasive. Their MTX has been minor and cosmetic thus far. There are far better examples including one within the Diablo universe.
The shop had an un-clearable red alert notification any time they released a new skin for your character chat.
The only way to clear it was to open the shop and scroll to find the new item and click on it, opening the store page. Then when you backed out it would go away.
You had to do this for every single item that was released.
Maybe I’m neurotic or autistic or OCD or all three but those stupid red alerts trigger me and I need to clear them all to keep playing the game.
I don’t even want the fucking store in my game. Give me an option to turn it off for fuck’s sake.
While not exactly their in-game shop…
Dota 2 did it really well, it was and still is an amazing game, and you couldn’t pay to get any gameplay advantage.
I sank a lot of money into it just to support such system.
I think the “problem” for those people is that the game broke out of its bubble. nintendo, from soft and also larion up until now all had their own bubble of fans. Larion broke that mold and even people who have nothing to do with the genre celebrate it.
Critical mass has been achieved.
I think it’s due to the little guy making a huge wave that other people don’t feel they’re “allowed” to make. These other devs work on “AAA” companies working on big name titles from studios everyone has heard of so. But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don’t like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison. Showing you can release a big complex game without it being an absolute buggy mess, doesn’t need microtransactions, doesn’t need to sell millions of copies to be considered a success, and isn’t just a copy paste of the previous game with a handful of modifications made to slap a new “FOR SALE” label on it…
But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don’t like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison.
Larian is similar in size, if not significantly larger, than Bethesda when they made Skyrim.
Less established though. I’d say that Larian wasn’t on most gamers’ radar until Divinity Orginal Sin 2.
Even then I feel like they were too underrated for their obvious potential. I’m glad the studio is fully in the spotlight now. With so many shitty companies out there it feels like they earned and deserve it. Now we just have to hope they don’t fall to temptation and turn to crap like so many others
“AAA” in price tag only.
(Content may vary. Please purchase premium battle pass to see more details.)
You’re not referring to Larion as a small indie studio right? They are not a small indie studio.
There was plenty of distaste for Elden Ring when it came out – devs at Ubisoft I believe ridiculed how the UI wasn’t informative and such.
I think AAA studios are terrified because they’re seeing just how much consumers value quality over quantity and MTX bullshit. Games that should be in self contained bubbles are now hitting mainstream and becoming absurdly popular.
Lmao Ubisoft of all folks should shut the fuck up about UI, they are literally the source of the meme about cluttered and overly complicated UI. If Ubisoft is complaining about a UI I have to automatically assume it is a good UI.
Also, if AAA developers have been paying attention for the last decade, they would know that consumers have valued quality and shown disdain for MTX since MTX started becoming pervasive. MTX overall can generate a lot of revenue, but it isnt sustainable, hence why there is always some sort of FOMO characteristic included with the MTX system, making things limited time and constantly shovelling low effort “new content” to fill out the MTX system.
They’ve been working for almost a generation now on changing the mindset of gamers as to what they should expect from a game, and here comes a really good game from a little known studio doing exactly what games used to expect before the mind changing was attempted.
I personally think this is because gaming journalism isn’t real journalism. They don’t actually care, they just want clicks and perceived relevancy when people repost their tweets to reddit
“They don’t actually care, they just want clicks and perceived relevancy when people repost their tweets to reddit”
Kinda sounds like real media to me then lol they all suck if they’re major corporate media.
A lot of journalists do care, but they also have a job to do and a boss that tells them which articles to write.
Like I don’t care about whatever business my company is competing in, but I’ll keep working for them because they pay me.
but I’ll keep working for them because they pay me.
That’s just it, you can move to a different company that has a better working situation in environment. You just have to be a brave enough to fight the inertia that keeps you where you’re at.
And in fact, if you want your salary to steadily increase over your career, you’re supposed to move from company to company every couple of years.
Yeah I’m thankful to have got that advice pretty early in my career. Generally get itchy feet around 3 years now.
The lesson here is you can trust most big Japanese publishers/developers and it’s the opposite for American ones. Christ, Death Stranding was almost ruined by all the “subtle” product placements they put
Kojima got away with his product placement in mgs3 because nobody in the west knew calorie mate was a real product lol.
Would it be so bad if games didn’t have insane budgets? Most of my favorite games from the past decade are from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
BG3 did have a pretty huge budget though. I would totally be fine if games took notes from BG3 but reduced scope a lot. Bioware used to make games similar to BG, but they stopped and now make garbage. The idea other studios can’t make similar games is wrong. They can’t make games this big usually though without publishers telling them they need to include microtransactions and other bullshit.
BioWare didn’t just make games similar to Baldur’s Gate, they created Baldur’s Gate.
Wasn’t that Black Isle? Or had they already evolved into their future downfall? It’s been a hot minute since I’ve last looked at BG credits.
Black Isle was the publisher, Bioware developed the game. Baldurs Gate lead to BG2, which lead to Neverwinter Nights, which lead to Knights of the Old Republic.
which lead to Knights of the Old Republic
Which lead to Mass Effect, don’t forget
True, but IMO the link wasn’t nearly as strong between KotoR and ME as any of the previous games in the link which were all clearly D&D based systems. ME1 had a lot in common with KotoR but there were some major deviations too as they moved away from the table top standard.
TIL Baldurs gate is the reason i hated the ending to ME3.
Kind of! Though if we are being entirely honest, the real thing to blame is the head writer being replaced and the dev time cut by almost a year.
Personally would have enjoyed it more if they went with the Biotics/Dark Energy that Drew Karpyshyn had put down groundwork for, rather than the AI subplot that Mac Walters hastily slapped together for ME3 that directly contradicted ME1 threads and subplots.
Yep, you’re right. I didn’t realize they were a studio at that point. Yeah, they have no reason to complain about new expectations. They could have created BG3 if they had kept doing what they were known for, but EA and the money were too good…
Lower budgets would probably be better. High budgets mean high risk, developers and publishers try to minimize that risk and you get bland games that try to cater to too many tastes. Movies suffer from the same problem. They get budgets in the hundreds of millions and you wonder what they spent it all for.
High budgets are killing the film industry. In the case of gaming, it plays a factor, but greed is probably the main issue. Most big budget AAA games in the past made large amounts of money even if they didn’t have universal appeal. Because companies realised that they could make large amounts of money off loot boxes, microtransactions, cash shops and battle passes, they started trying to funnel players into games, mainly so that players would buy things. That’s one of the main reasons the AAA industry is getting worse: games need to appeal to as many as possible, while coming out as fast as possible, all so that players will buy the overpriced in-game items endlessly shoved in players’ faces.
I love me some good AAA games and want them to stick around. But I think it would be much better if they were a bit fewer and further between, and the big studios shift to more regular AA games, and give their devs chances to do some more oddball stuff with even lower budgets. More expiremntation and risky projects can only enrich the industry.
You never know what those experiments can lead too. There will be a lot of failures however someone is going to look at the failure and realize what needs to be need to be tweaked.
Yep. The final fantsay series was a bunch of lads in an attic. Now those lads are legends… with a fantasic legacy. Yet I’m still waiting for ES5 and GTA 6…
from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
And that’s how it started.
You could give studios unlimited budgets and they’d still complain they don’t have enough time / money to get things right. The rhetoric is that “games are just so complex nowadays” and that justifies their 4/5/6 year development periods.
I’m not seeing the complexity that warrants that type of long development period. The visual fidelity on some games is impressive, but is it actually worth that 5 year dev time?
Yeah, don’t expect funding for AAA games!
Wait…
To the contrary, they had to pay to have the IP
Complaining about it having funding… AAA… lol. Thats the fucking point of AAA. Big fucking budget.
Remember fellow gamers, you hold the power of the purse, you get the final vote with your wallet.
If some studio head or developer manager tries to tell you that you have to accept micro transactions and such, just say no thank you, and move on.
There are plenty of other games from other good studios out there for you to give your hard-earned money to.
Dont say no thank you, give them the middle finger and tell everyone to not buy it
Dont say no thank you, give them the middle finger
You could also do both, for that slightly comedic type of reply. Keep them guessing.
AAA companies: Makes bad game and releases apology promising to make good games now
Also AAA companies: We are not capable of making good games, stop expecting to much.
New expectations? Lol. These were always the expectations!
That’s what I don’t get. These are expectations that I’ve had for years. The indie space has kinda proven that creativity will take a game a hell of a lot farther than cash ever will. With few exceptions I simply don’t buy AAA games anymore because honestly I just don’t expect the same level of effort will be put into making them.
How does it go?
I want smaller games, with lower quality graphics. Made by happier developers who are paid more to work less. And I’m not kidding!
I mean we can have large games with detailed graphics and have employees treated well. We just need to accept 10+ year timelines for releases on big games which I’m ok with as long as we get quality results and the team is treated well.
I follow star citizen though so I could be the weird one here lol
And then you need someone to foot the bill for all that. Preferrably ahead of time.
That’s kinda how lucky Star Citizen got, but that’s not a business model you can replicate a second time.
That’s a valid point. As long as there’s a publisher and investors we’re more than likely never going to see what I suggested, I kinda forgot star citizen is what it is because it’s funded by us.
It’s always the same crunch time for employees and rushed buggy products to feed the investors from “AAA” corps. Hope we can push for some positive change :/
I can’t understand why crunch time has become so normalised. There’s no other software development project where constantly failing to plan for the needed time requirement would be accepted. Crunch is a sign of bad project management, it isn’t normal.
But when it works, when that day comes, we’ll make a hell of a lot of money for the shareholders! Isn’t that nice?
At some point, people figured out that during a couple of weeks of mad rush right before a deadline, if you’ve got committed, well-rested employees who know they’re going to get a rest afterwards, they tend to be much more productive than they normally are. Some bad managers only paid attention to part of that, and determined that eighty hour weeks are more than twice as productive as forty hour ones, and intentionally started inducing crunch. They somehow didn’t notice that the third week of crunch is only about as productive as a regular week, and after that, it’s way less productive as everyone’s exhausted. Combine this with the fact that people with management knowledge tend to flee from the games industry rather than to it, and you end up with the software engineering industry’s least effective managers running things with easily debunked dogma.
The main differences with Star Citizen are that it’s
- Funded in advance
- Funded by people who have no say in how the product/company should work
- Massively overfunded
This means, CIG has no pressure to ship soon or even at all (if the project fails, they have no liability). They also have nobody telling them what to with the money. They have already made their profit.
I am not knocking CIG for this situation, but if you put it like this, it’s easy to see why for each CIG out there, there are tens of thousands of games on crowdfunding sites that either
- Failed to raise funds
- Failed to get a decent company/legal structure running with the money they raised
- Failed to actually ever deliver anything in an usable state
- Are just pure scams
So as a general business model rather than just an insane stroke of luck, I don’t think this is a good option.
A business model that only earns money after release (like the classic publisher-funded development model) is bad for the obvious cash-grabby and buggy reasons, but at least it consistently delivers games. Contrary to the “earn money before you start development” model that is enabled by crowdfunding, which in general does not deliver games.
In my (not very educated) opinion, early access is probably the best middle ground. You start off with little initial funding required, but by the time you turn to the crowd, you already have a working prototype and company structure. That makes it much more likely for the game to eventually be released in a full version. This option obviously comes with its own downsides as well, but many of my favourite games have been small studios or even individuals who use early acces to fund development.
Dreaming of riding an army of unicorns to battle.
Here’s my thing: I don’t necessarily care what sort of game you make, I just want it to be feature-complete and technically solid (I.e. mostly bug-free). Whether that’s a small indie game or a massive AAA game, those two things should be true.
I think what most people find frustrating is that the in-game store is the most well developed part of most AAA releases nowadays, which often ship riddled with bugs.
BG3 has still been riddled with bugs for me and since it doesn’t have MTX or a store or anything, it feels kinda worse. At least I know why the crap riddled with MTX is rife with issues; what is BG3’s excuse?
I probably wouldn’t mind the bugs so much if the whole game was shit. But the game is fucking awesome. I just want to play it without being frustrated by technical issues. 😩
I’m hoping that by the time the PS5 version launches, it’ll be much smoother.
I actually agree with you. People praise BG3 as if it were the most perfect 10/10 video game in existence. Its far from it. It is riddled with bugs reaching from minor to game breaking. The best example is the very first few seconds of the game. The first thing the players are likely to interact with is the tadpole pool after awekening on the ship.
Minor spoiler
It explodes, knocking you back and causing damage.
As someone who made a few characters and played the intro section a lot, the animation is often times bugged and confusing. And thats the first interaction a player has with the game.
A few seconds later you stand in front of a door. Usually the door opens and you can go through. But sometimes the opening animation doesn’t play. This happened on my very first time playing and I couldn’t figure out where to go, because my first instinct wasn’t to clip through the closed door. Things like this are absolutely unacceptable in the tutorial area.Even though they already have full controller support it is very clear why the console release is delayed. The console player base is expected to be a lot more casual and unless they iron out all the confusing bugs they run the risk of people being frustrated and dropping the game.
And then there are other major things.
- Why is there no native option for 3rd person WASD movement even though it is fully implemented for controllers?
- Why does only the controller get a search area function but the keyboard doesn’t?
- Why is there no camera sensitivity for controllers?
- Why are there no deadzone settings for controller joysticks?
- Why is there a 1 second delay on movement when using a controller?
- Why can’t I set the text size below 64px when using a controller?
- Why in a game that has been in early access for so long and a world full of magic can’t we change our characters appearance post creation? (I know it’s announced but why just now?)
- Why do we not have advanced difficulty settings? (I’d love the enemies to be smart like “tactitian” but not be unhittable bullet sponges.)
- Why is every adult character so goddamn hot in this game? I need my blood in my brain.
- Why can we select a player voice, if the player isn’t voiced beyond some minor quips?
- Why isn’t there a random name generator for your character?
- Why can’t I shift + click multiple items or containers to queue them up for pickup or search?
- Why do container windows open on top of each other or other inventory windows?
- Why can’t I rename containers in my inventory?
- Why can’t I filter out or hide wares in my inventory?
- Why can’t I sort or filter items during trading or in the party view?
- Why do containers always open in a 5x2 grid instead of trying to fit all the items without scrolling?
- Why can I skip the rolling animation but not the success-continue animation?
- etc.
I know I’m nitpicking here, but for a game that is as highly praised as this, I expect it also to nail all those minor things that other games have already figured out already (some of which were even their own older titles). Especially because it was Early Access and they had a lot of user feedback. I see it times and times again that studios apparently throw out all their previous knowledge of videogames and seemingly start from scratch on every title, making small stupid mistakes that could have been easily avoided. It’s like the research process for video mechanics and UI never consists of actually looking at other games.So for me, it’s a very pretty game, its a beautifully sounding game and even a very fun game. But nowhere near a 10/10. It’s a 7/10 game. Fix the bugs to bump it up to 8/10 implement some QoL for 9/10 and release modding tools so the community can make it a 10/10.
Why is everyone so damn hot?
I can’t say for anyone else, but Karlach is hot because of that infernal engine she has for a heart. :P
Why can’t I sort or filter items during trading or in the party view?
You can on a controller. Press in the left stick. The fact the UI between a controller and the M&KB is so completely different and you get dumb differences like this is another amateur hour move. I’ve played entirely on controller, but from talking to other people and seeing my sister play on her laptop, the M&KB interface is garbage and offers for fewer options far some damn reason.
I know I’m nitpicking here, but for a game that is as highly praised as this, I expect it also to nail all those minor things that other games have already figured out already
You realize that smaller companies have to do triage and prioritize what they’re working on, yes? Take bugs/enhancements in a certain order? And usually the major things get taken care of first before the minor things are.
Also, some of the things you ask for, they may just not agree with you as being needed in the game.
Have you submitted that list to them for their consideration, directly (Github, etc.)?
Edit: typo
Stupid question, but have you been letting Steam do game updates?
Unless you’ve changed the default settings, you have to let Steam do updates while not playing any games through Steam. By default it won’t do any updates in the background.
Yes, everything updates automatically. I’ve gotten all the updates so far. Only a few of the changes made in any of them actually affected me. Most of the things I’ve experienced have yet to be addressed.
Most of the things I’ve experienced have yet to be addressed.
I was going to reply humorously with a comment along the lines of you should be moving from a technical to a spiritual solution, an exorcism perhaps, but I don’t want to kick somebody when they’re down, for the sake of comedy.
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Ah, the contrarian.
If you let other people ruin something for you, that’s on you, not them. Especially if they “ruin” it by celebrating and enjoying it.
“I won’t try this game because it’s too highly reviewed!” What a weird hill to die on.
D4 seemed to have been great at launch, but the seasons and battle pass stuff ruin it for me (though you can like it if you want, I don’t care). I don’t like the idea of a game being on a timer and asking me to play the way they want me to play it. This is what BG3 does right. It’s a game with many options and many ways to play. It never tells you how you should and you also don’t need to pay extra for other crap. You get a complete experience from start to finish with no timers and nothing extra asked of you.
This is why I dropped Destiny, despite loving it to pieces.
I liked D2 in the beginning until I realized it was CoD’s multi-player put into its single player.
Maybe part of the issue is I left and came back, but I couldn’t make sense of any sort of storytelling and “go here, shoot this” stopped being fun.
Which sucks because Destiny has some amazing worldbuilding ideas.
Still salted that they removed my boi Xol
…what?
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He opened with praising Diablo 4, feels low effort and should net a penalty, with a bad finish too. I’ll go with 4/10.
If he’s an actual shill from ActiBlizz I would vote a lot lower than 4/10, for having done such a poor job, based on that ratio.
Needs a bigger bait. If he opened with slamming Baldur’s Gate 3 right away or “as a gamer” it might have been a 7
BALDUR’S GATE 3 IS WOKE TRASH
I dunno the part where they try to make themselves out to be some kind of hero over racism randomly because they didn’t play a game has gotta decrease the score by at least a couple. Just feels like they’re trying too hard I dunno. Feels basic
Jesse, what the hell are you talking about?
You know, you’ll go through life a lot happier if you stop restricting yourself from experiencing something just because it’s a popular thing.
Huh? The game literally lets you play any way you want.
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I feel you on the deepthroating shit. It’s a great game, no doubt about it. But some of these articles act like it’s the second coming of Christ, and if I am to be entirely honest… It’s not quite as good as the original games. It’s lacking a lot of depth in the story telling (it’s almost entirely voiced so there’s more brevity in any given conversation than the pages upon pages of text even a random nobody can give you in BG2), but makes up for it with mechanical depth.
I agree it’s a big deal for a major release to not have MTX or a season pass or other bullshit, and that should definitely be applauded. But some of the things I’ve seen said about the game are out right fraudulent. Like an article the other day saying it is the most polished AAA game in over a decade, which is absurd. The game is plagued with issues and the polish is literally the one thing I can not give it praises for. It even feels amateur in a lot of ways. Like it has many little issues I would not expect from a seasoned developer, and many bugs ranging from minor inconveniences to full blown game breaking stuff like scripts firing wrong leading to an outcome you didn’t choose to take or characters becoming comoletely broken being unable to move or be interacted with.
Story is great. It actually feels like a remix of the first Baldur’s Gate story. Characters are some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. The combat is super fun, especially when you try to do weird random shit just to see if it works; cuz 90% of the time it does. There is a depth to the changes you can have on the world at large that are extremely cool and haven’t been done on such a scale before in all the RPGs I’ve played over the years…
Although that last part is where the previous talk about bugs really starts to drag the experience down. There have been so many points in my two playthroughs of the game where I took one path, but got the dialogue and changes to the world of another path. Like currently, my party keeps talking about one of the companions killing another. But they didn’t; I stopped that from happening. So now this character is standing around in the background while other characters talk about her death. And that’s not even the worst one I’ve encountered.
I think it’s funny talking about the second coming. It really is the second coming if anyone follows it. The thing is, it’s not extraordinary in the grand scheme of gaming. It’s just not something we’ve had in a long time on a large scale. It pretty much follows the norm for 2000s/90s games, but that’s why it’s an outlier. We don’t get those anymore. Bioware used to make games like it, but they don’t now and they’ll tell you it’s not going to happen again despite technology being better.
I understand that publishers will force them to do certain things, but most AAA studios have the capability of making games that follow the same standard (but maybe not scale) of BG3 if it weren’t for publishers. They shouldn’t copy it, but they should internalize that players want complete experiences in the box, and they want to be treated like adults who can think for themselves.
Like it has many little issues I would not expect from a seasoned developer
You wouldn’t expect little bugs from a newly released AAA game? Really?
It sounds like you were expecting 0% bugs.
Not all the issues are bugs. There are issues in the actual design of some systems that are amateur at best (such as the UI). Even most indie developers wouldn’t have these issues, so seeing them in a AAA game that was in early access as long as this one has is totally unacceptable.
That sounds like your subjective opinion on how you’d make it and not like an objective fact to me
Not all the issues are bugs.
As a software developer of over 30 years, I’m aware of that.
Even most indie developers wouldn’t have these issues
Got to be honest, I don’t think your perspective is very accurate on the subject.
Meanwhile:
Jan 2022: “Heres xenoblade 3, an absolutely gigantic single player game, no microtransactions, pushes the console to it’s absolute limit, Monolithsoft at the top of their fucking game. Announced today, out in september.”
April 2022: “Lol, it’s now out in july. Enjoy.”.
Baldurs gate is fucking sweet, but let’s not act like it’s a unique occurance in AAA gaming.
This isn’t a pissing contest and no one is acting like this is unique. We saw the same excitement for the last 2 Zelda games, God of War, Spiderman, Elden Ring etc. (post more examples, I don’t pay as much attention to the industry anymore so I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch). Let’s celebrate them if that’s what you’d like to see more of. They’re all awesome and they all add to the evidence that there is a large population that still want to experience games this way.
no one is acting like this is unique.
Yes actually, they are. That’s the entire reason this debate began; some developers claimed that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a unique occurrence and should be treated as such, rather than an example of a AAA video game meeting the expectations of consumers.
I think that was the point the person you replied to was getting at: not only is it completely fine for consumers to have these expectations, but it’s actually not even as rare as these developers are making out. There are other examples of AAA development studios and publishers who aren’t engaging in blatantly anti-consumer practices, so the ones that do really have no excuse.
That’s a bingo
My example was just the first that came to mind. But like baldurs gate, you can tell the amount of care and passion that has been put into it. And it’s a AAA title no matter whether people think otherwise due to it being a Switch exclusive (admittedly, I only play switch games nowadays on my PC emulated in 4k60fps but still…)
Yeah it’s a great game. Monolith and the Zelda devs constantly knock it out of the park with these huge titles.
Ugh, totk can’t break 30fps on my computer. What’s your rig?
botw and todk are fps limited to 30fps by default due to their physics engine being tied to the framerate. There are workaround/hacks though to get them running smoothly in an emulator. (At least there is for the wii u version of botw in cemu, I’m not quite up to date with switch emulation but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t)
I know of the hacks, my pc is just incapable of running it. After install i think i got 60fps, sometimes, if i looked at the ground. :)
i9 9900k @ 5ghz, WD black 1tb nvme, RTX 3080 12gb, 32gb ddr4 ram, win10
I get 60fps in totk
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Xenoblade 3 is a Nintendo exclusive. Baldur’s Gate is unique to me because a game like this hasn’t clicked with me since Dragon Age Origins.
That waifu/husbando enslavement game was AAA??
No, that was 2. That mechanic and plot point doesn’t exist in 3. 3 has very little, if any, fanservice, most due to its dark subject matter (infinite war, limited lifespans)
And yes, AAA. It cost multiple millions, hundreds of staff working on it, hundreds of hours of VA including notable UK talent (Jenna Coleman, etc), a fully orchestral soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda recorded in multiple countries, and the game itself pushes the switch to breaking point. It absolutely counts and is considered by Nintendo as one.
There’s loads of other examples of decent single player experiences without bullshit, this one just came to mind first. And I hope Baldurs Gate’s success brings more like these
- psych
Wizards of the coast paid $0 to fund this game, that’s why it says Larian in the publisher field on Steam and not WoTC or Hasbro.
Although they probably got some good sweet Nvidia dollars.
I think that one (HUGE) part of BG3’s success is that it was in Early Access for, what, 2-3 years? During which it grew a dedicated modding scene, received a metric fuck-ton of feedback, and regularly dropped large content patches. This wasn’t an average dev cycle, and I think it shows. In some ways, the Dev. Feedback and interactivity reminded me a lot of the way Warframe does dev interactions.
Yeah, I agree with that similarity to Warframe’s level of developer interaction.
Sure, in the past they’ve been slower to respond to feedback about problems, and often times old things have fallen out of relevance because something else just outright does the same thing, and more, but better.
But as it is now, DE really seems to be prioritizing listening to feedback, almost exponentially so, and as an example, bringing things up to par with what they should be at the current level of the game, a concept that much more rarely got the implementation it deserved in years before.
And warframe has been rewarded with a practically methusalian lifespan for a game in its genre, I hope we see the same for baldurs gate 3 with a similar level of ongoing support and improvement.
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Exactly. Every new game doesn’t have to be an instant classic that breaks new ground. But they should be functional, playable, and have enough polish to be considered finished. That doesn’t necessarily mean bug free, but we all know what a finished game looks like, and what one doesn’t.
The worst one I’ve ever personally played was the Lego Hobbit game. My wife and I used to line up kamikaze shots and play Lego games, figuring a child and a drunk adult were about the same level. The game stops when Smaug flies out of the mountain. Roll credits. I guess the last movie did so poorly that they never bothered making the rest of the game.
For ages, AAA games were classed as such by brand recognition, not by quality. Inevitably, they devolved into being just a platform to sell microtransactions. The shareholders want their dividents and the CEO needs a new yacht with coke and hookers.
It’s too easy to exploit the dopamine rush playing the new, official installment of a well-known series. Even if it’s terrible, the customers get their joy by ranting about how trash the game is and how they hope the next one will be better. BG3 being an actual game does not change anything and will not reset expectations.
That’s sad because TT’s games were quite good, I think they hit their apex at Lego Marvel Superheroes 1. Awesome open world, a ton of characters, and lots of exploration in addition to the normal level quests.
