"Baldur’s Gate 3 is Causing Some Developers to Panic"

[Mad Vader]

To be fair, the consumer-milking/defrauding practices won't stop if people keep giving them money.
Star Citizen has shown us how much money is in the unfinished game business.
Pre-order frenzies beyond all reason keep happening because many players are easily excitable suckers that hype themselves into poor decisions. Change the players, not the game.

Just watch the Starfield fans buying all kinds of merchandise with a Starfield logo on it and not stopping to think for a bit. And they haven't even played it! These guys decide for the rest of us what kind of game we will get.

 

[Galdr]

Im a Star Citizen backer since 2014. This is a very special game. Unique in every way. In total, Ive pledged about ~$250, this is an amount I feel I want to pay in order to see such a game take shape and be part of the development as a player. Its progressing. Its becoming an actual game. Im super excited for this games future.

Starfield, on the other hand, invented nothing but a singleplayer Todd adventure in space.

 

[JunKeteer]

Im a Star Citizen backer since 2014. This is a very special game. Unique in every way. In total, Ive pledged about ~$250, this is an amount I feel I want to pay in order to see such a game take shape and be part of the development as a player. Its progressing. Its becoming an actual game. Im super excited for this games future.

Starfield, on the other hand, invented nothing but a singleplayer Todd adventure in space.

Completely subjective. Objectively, both Starfield and Star Citizen have not been officially released - regardless how long it's been cooking or how much you pledged or prepurchased. Once released can you better measure its 'state' as a game 'officially'.

But when it comes to comparing the official release 'state' of BL to BG3, it's specifically that difference why BG3 is getting a lot of praise (overinflated imo); despite the bugs and flaws that game has (like any other game).
BL is a single-purchase, no GAAS, no cosmetics, etc...so that is part of their saving grace why it's not headline news in media as a 'failure'. Whereas games like OW2 or D4 (ie. GAAS/seasons/subscriptions/cosmetics) with their releases and lack of completion at release or predatory cash models, receive more public backlash (rightly so) then releasing games incomplete.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Don't take us has beta testers or cash cows, finish your games, plan your stuff better and respect your community.

Why would any compnay take this advice when its been proven to be less profitable?

 

[Mad Vader]

Im a Star Citizen backer since 2014. This is a very special game. Unique in every way.

Sounds a lot like a cult, particularly the part where all non-cultists tell you it's a scam and Chris Roberts sleeps with backers (maybe!).

 

[Apocal]

Objectively, both Starfield and Star Citizen have not been officially released

A person can boot up and play Star Citizen right now.

 

[froggyluv]

Im a Star Citizen backer since 2014. This is a very special game. Unique in every way. In total, Ive pledged about ~$250, this is an amount I feel I want to pay in order to see such a game take shape and be part of the development as a player. Its progressing. Its becoming an actual game. Im super excited for this games future.

Starfield, on the other hand, invented nothing but a singleplayer Todd adventure in space.

Hmm, also backed and bought a $35 ship in 2014. Since then ive spent zero dollars and probably 10 hours gaming on it. Granted i dont really want much PvP if any as hearing HoogeJackA$$314 as my co-pilot cussin in internetz speech kinda ruins my immersion. Gameplay wise it feels ok but really has no "hook" that really great games have to pull you back in daily. The level of feature Creep in SC is unprecedented - I follow the quarterly reports and enjoy reading the very in-depth planning of the games AI in which things like "We've now added both animation, dialogue and sound effects for female Aliens on the toilet in zero-G while other nearby NPC's who were also given proper reactions to her situation which varies Race to Race..." -type minutiae. Just reading those has been worth the price of admission.

So for SP, im more interested in Squadron 42 and ill probably give Starfield a go once its converted to VR as bethseda games are amazing in there.

 

[Galdr]

In 2023 with pretty much the entire globe being online, I think its waste of money to develop games that is solely singleplayer. Its a one dimensional, tunnel visioned shallow choice. The entire concept of space adventure begs for multiplayer and then you go and make a singleplayer. . . Todd went full Howard

 

[Mad Vader]

In 2023 with pretty much the entire globe being online, I think its waste of money to develop games that is solely singleplayer. Its a one dimensional, tunnel visioned shallow choice. The entire concept of space adventure begs for multiplayer and then you go and make a singleplayer. . . Todd went full Howard

"i like multiplayer therefore everyone likes multiplayer"
well no

I started playing Elite: Dangerous where you can't really have a single player experience, although you can opt to play solo. You still get ruined immersion when encountering systems first mapped by xx_milfhunter69_xx. I don't want to see any of that.
There's a lot to say for a playing experience crafted by professionals and not ruined by randoms.

 

[froggyluv]

You still get ruined immersion when encountering systems first mapped by xx_milfhunter69_xx

Exactly this. Theres something to be said for a beautifully crafted SP experience that has invested in a heavy plot, game mechanics, AI etc.. Some games work well in MP or both -Warband was a good example of that (no not vanilla BL) but I had a blast playing with Clans for years.

 

[Saint Jiub]

why is everyone pretending this game wasn't available in an unfinished state for 3 years

 

[Ningauble]

And even BG3 is coming crashing down to Earth round about now as players realise it too is pretty much, in its current state, a scam, in the sense that studios indeed know exactly how good / polished / finished their baby is, or rather is not, but will cynically release them anyway, take the money and run.
In hindsight it is now just sad to see all the community goodwill and excitement Larian had c launch, and all the 10/10, GOTY etc review hype. Reviewers that evidently had not played far into the game ......
Now we know that BG3 could have done with easily another year in the incubator, not just for QA, but also for wholesale writing and plotting etc revision / refinement.

Could Bethesda have a lot more professional pride ie with Starfield ?
We will know in a few weeks ......

 

[JunKeteer]

A person can boot up and play Star Citizen right now.

In this case, I'm meaning official as in 'official'. Pace withstanding, they get some modicum of leeway when it's still a beta/EA/alpha/pre (or whatever next catchy adjective the industry finds).

why is everyone pretending this game wasn't available in an unfinished state for 3 years

It was? That was EA, so whoever paid into it knows what they were (or should be) expecting. Once it hit 'official' release is where you should realistically expect a 'finished' game - that which is missing in BL now nearing 1 year post-release.

 

[Orion]

And even BG3 is coming crashing down to Earth round about now as players realise it too is pretty much, in its current state, a scam, in the sense that studios indeed know exactly how good / polished / finished their baby is, or rather is not, but will cynically release them anyway, take the money and run.
In hindsight it is now just sad to see all the community goodwill and excitement Larian had c launch, and all the 10/10, GOTY etc review hype. Reviewers that evidently had not played far into the game ......
Now we know that BG3 could have done with easily another year in the incubator, not just for QA, but also for wholesale writing and plotting etc revision / refinement.

You mean to say content that wasn't available for any public testing with lots of multiconditional, highly interconnected quest outcomes/dialogs might have some bugs? Densely populated & highly detailed urban scenes in the final act have an impact on performance? Say it ain't so. Calling BG3 a scam because it isn't literally perfect is asinine. Larian also has a consistent track record of maintaining their games post-release, short- and long-term, which for DOS1 & 2 eventually led them into system overhauls, improved UI, expanded options, etc. that they rolled into their "Definitive Edition" releases, provided as free upgrades for everyone who already owned the original games. There's nothing left to say to this line of argument except "haters gonna hate," because every rational, objective analysis of the game and the studio's history contradict your position.

 

[Totalgarbage]

You mean to say content that wasn't available for any public testing with lots of multiconditional, highly interconnected quest outcomes/dialogs might have some bugs? Densely populated & highly detailed urban scenes in the final act have an impact on performance? Say it ain't so. Calling BG3 a scam because it isn't literally perfect is asinine.

I haven't played BG3 at all or really kept up with it, but I've seen several people complaining about the 3rd Act being unplayable or nearly unplayable, though I assume there's some have exaggeration, the plot being nearly identical to DOS2 (I haven't played either game so I wouldn't know) and the story in act 3 being dog**** and rushed (also probably exaggerated).

I don't care whether BG3 is good or not, as it's not really my type of game, I really wouldn't call it a scam unless >50% of the people are unable to play the game at all. But if the game's last act (I'm assuming it has 3 acts) is almost unplayable due to it having a ton of bugs, bad optimization affecting FPS or is incomplete due to being rushed or whatever (as opposed to having some bugs, which is probably unavoidable), it makes BG3 no different than a typical AAA release rather than the second coming of Christ in the video game industry as it's portrayed on social media (though to be fair, there's no micro transactions for the game afaik so it's on the better side).

 

[JunKeteer]

I haven't played BG3 at all or really kept up with it, but I've seen several people complaining about the 3rd Act being unplayable or nearly unplayable, though I assume there's some have exaggeration, the plot being nearly identical to DOS2 (I haven't played either game so I wouldn't know) and the story in act 3 being dog**** and rushed (also probably exaggerated).

I don't care whether BG3 is good or not, as it's not really my type of game, I really wouldn't call it a scam unless >50% of the people are unable to play the game at all. But if the game's last act (I'm assuming it has 3 acts) is almost unplayable due to it having a ton of bugs, bad optimization affecting FPS or is incomplete due to being rushed or whatever (as opposed to having some bugs, which is probably unavoidable), it makes BG3 no different than a typical AAA release rather than the second coming of Christ in the video game industry as it's portrayed on social media (though to be fair, there's no micro transactions for the game afaik so it's on the better side).

All exaggerated but there is truth behind all of that. Act 3 definitely not as polished as Act 1, mainly because of all the permutational/connected results based on what you did (or didn't do) in both Act 1 and 2 leading up to it. You get some janky quest triggers or missing/skipped plot sometimes. It's still functional and the stories can be completed on their own relatively bug-free; still leagues above other releases that have some very questionable/game-breaking bugs or conditions.
There's also a lot of verticality in Act 3 (for top-down isometric game) so the camera angles can get jumpy/janky in some areas, and loads more NPCs in town so there are clearly performance issues/leaks there.

It's not a scam, and was for sure a breath of fresh air for the gaming industry to what most people used to expect out of games before all this EA/GAAS/Monetary lack of 'quality' nonsense past couple years. Same goes with games like BoTW, ER, GoW, etc...also high praises, also 'complete' games at release.

 

[Totalgarbage]

All exaggerated but there is truth behind all of that. Act 3 definitely not as polished as Act 1, mainly because of all the permutational/connected results based on what you did (or didn't do) in both Act 1 and 2 leading up to it. You get some janky quest triggers or missing/skipped plot sometimes. It's still functional and the stories can be completed on their own relatively bug-free; still leagues above other releases that have some very questionable/game-breaking bugs or conditions.
There's also a lot of verticality in Act 3 (for top-down isometric game) so the camera angles can get jumpy/janky in some areas, and loads more NPCs in town so there are clearly performance issues/leaks there.

Yeah figures that there's some exaggeration, thanks for detailing it for me. I've seen some people saying that they had less than 30 fps in act 3, that the quest trigger broke and it triggered the ending scene, or some quests didn't complete/led to nowhere, but it's hard to understand exactly how many people are affected by these.

It's not a scam, and was for sure a breath of fresh air for the gaming industry to what most people used to expect out of games before all this EA/GAAS/Monetary lack of 'quality' nonsense past couple years.

People on the internet often seem to think that scam means "stuff I didn't like", so I don't take those accusations seriously (I mean I've seen several people on these forums calling this game a scam and abandonware even when there was a beta patch with a hotfix every week/2 weeks).

Same goes with games like BoTW, ER, GoW, etc...also high praises, also 'complete' games at release.

I'm curious about why BG3 specifically is treated this way as if it saved the video game industry singlehandedly, I would argue that ToTK is better suited to this "mantle" (but it's possible that I'm being unknowingly contrarian because BG3 is the famous thing now). Similarly, I never understood the amount of praise Witcher 3 got despite playing it a lot and really liking it several years after its release (so it was better optimized and far less buggy).

Also on a separate note, holy crap the video posted in the thread is terrible. I thought people hating on video game journalists was stupid (I thought it was about gamers being mad at them for playing on easy mode so they would actually have time to write their article quota) but no, the games "journalist" in the video is a total hack. Not only does he repeatedly tell the viewers how they should feel, he also deliberately misrepresents the things the original twitter post by the dev this video is about (it's about feasibility & logistics, not devs saying that games should be low quality). He then says "he went on to add a lot of important context" and he shows the developer's other tweets on the same thread (literally 4 out of the 5 tweets in total) for 3 whopping seconds to continue spouting the same garbage. And it's not like I disagree with what he's saying; I hate microtransactions as well, and I think AAA releases could be much better.

 

[Ningauble]

You mean to say content that wasn't available for any public testing with lots of multiconditional, highly interconnected quest outcomes/dialogs might have some bugs? Densely populated & highly detailed urban scenes in the final act have an impact on performance? Say it ain't so. Calling BG3 a scam because it isn't literally perfect is asinine. Larian also has a consistent track record of maintaining their games post-release, short- and long-term, which for DOS1 & 2 eventually led them into system overhauls, improved UI, expanded options, etc. that they rolled into their "Definitive Edition" releases, provided as free upgrades for everyone who already owned the original games. There's nothing left to say to this line of argument except "haters gonna hate," because every rational, objective analysis of the game and the studio's history contradict your position.

Are you really endorsing studios releasing games that do not work as intended, that the paying player experiences as a " WIP ", that hopefully comes good with some " Definitive Edition " a year or more later ?
Games like Bannerlord, and, for sure, right now, Baldur's Gate 3 ( just peruse Larian's own BG3 forum for the widespread disillusionment setting in now - and these are / were the fans, saying they are putting it aside midgame ......... ).
The question is simple - why launch your supposedly lovingly - crafted baby, your " vision ", prematurely?
Why choose to go off half - cocked?
Cynically taking truckloads of customers' money for your product when you know inside and out it does not ( yet ... maybe one day it might ..... ) work properly could well be a scam in my book.

 

[Orion]

All exaggerated but there is truth behind all of that. Act 3 definitely not as polished as Act 1, mainly because of all the permutational/connected results based on what you did (or didn't do) in both Act 1 and 2 leading up to it. You get some janky quest triggers or missing/skipped plot sometimes. It's still functional and the stories can be completed on their own relatively bug-free; still leagues above other releases that have some very questionable/game-breaking bugs or conditions.
There's also a lot of verticality in Act 3 (for top-down isometric game) so the camera angles can get jumpy/janky in some areas, and loads more NPCs in town so there are clearly performance issues/leaks there.

My anecdote for this is that I missed one of the post-finale companion dialog sequence scenes because a choice in a different character dialog scene prematurely ends the entire sequence, and in act 2 a blacksmith NPC didn't show up for me where he was supposed to so I had to put off a companion's quest until he appeared in act 3 (coincidentally, same companion whose finale scene is bugged). I also experienced some performance hits and crashes in acts 2 and 3, which I could consistently replicate by having my main character hit enemies with a melee weapon in fights that went on longer than 5 turns. That was seemingly fixed before I finished my first campaign a week ago. I also had a couple of crashes entering dialogs in busy parts of act 3, but updating my drivers and setting a more conservative frame limit (72, down from 144) remedied those. Was it perfect? No. Frustrating? Yes. Did I persevere and try to find solutions to the problems I experienced before whinging about it on Twitter? Trick question, I don't have a Twitter account.

Are you really endorsing studios releasing games that do not work as intended, that the paying player experiences as a " WIP ", that hopefully comes good with some " Definitive Edition " a year or more later ?

Careful what words you put in my mouth. If that's the standard you're going to set, you're hopelessly deluded and not worth talking to about this at all. Literally no game works as intended on release because nobody intends for bugs to exist or crashes to occur, and this is especially true on PC where there is an impossibly large number of hardware combinations and external factors that can affect a game's performance. Again, calling BG3 a scam because it isn't literally perfect is asinine. Haters gonna hate.

 

[Ningauble]

My anecdote for this is that I missed one of the post-finale companion dialog sequence scenes because a choice in a different character dialog scene prematurely ends the entire sequence, and in act 2 a blacksmith NPC didn't show up for me where he was supposed to so I had to put off a companion's quest until he appeared in act 3 (coincidentally, same companion whose finale scene is bugged). I also experienced some performance hits and crashes in acts 2 and 3, which I could consistently replicate by having my main character hit enemies with a melee weapon in fights that went on longer than 5 turns. That was seemingly fixed before I finished my first campaign a week ago. I also had a couple of crashes entering dialogs in busy parts of act 3, but updating my drivers and setting a more conservative frame limit (72, down from 144) remedied those. Was it perfect? No. Frustrating? Yes. Did I persevere and try to find solutions to the problems I experienced before whinging about it on Twitter? Trick question, I don't have a Twitter account.


Careful what words you put in my mouth. If that's the standard you're going to set, you're hopelessly deluded and not worth talking to about this at all. Literally no game works as intended on release because nobody intends for bugs to exist or crashes to occur, and this is especially true on PC where there is an impossibly large number of hardware combinations and external factors that can affect a game's performance. Again, calling BG3 a scam because it isn't literally perfect is asinine. Haters gonna hate.

Mate, the words that you yourself are putting in your own mouth are a bit salty, especially coming from a moderator, do you not consider ?
You are saying I am " asinine ", " hopelessly deluded ", " not worth talking to ", a " hater "........... I am none of these things.

Well, are you impressed by how Larian " delivered " on Act 2 and Act 3 ?
I mean as an honest, professional, product quality, critique?
Not too sketchy and obviously rushed for a premature launch ?
You did not feel the game " content " falling off progressively after a solid Act 1 ( which had the benefit of EA, and for nearly 3 years )?
Many are now saying BG3 was released way too early and needs a lot more work, re both writing and polish.
I am interested in how that comes about.
Because a game can instead be launched when it really is ready.
Nothing to do with some concept of " perfect " ( a word you put in my mouth ).

True, BG3 is still a better effort than Taleworlds' Bannerlord debacle.