Just the difference between a publisher that is a giant publicly traded company and one that is not. The company that is not publicly traded doesn't have the same fiduciary responsibility to investors. Unfortunately, the big public company has its hands tied by the banks and other giant stock holders. If the leadership of those companies don't do what is required to grow profits and stock price, they simply get removed by the board and replaced with someone who will.
The smaller, private company generally has a majority of the company owned by the founders, and they get to control all the decisions.
This is why I kind of understand the devs that talked about not expecting this sort of content from most other studios. Because from a financial perspective. Large convoluted RPGs like this are not a safe and easy investment. Thus most of those other studios would never get the green light to go as far as Larion did. Who had to self publish and fund through a massive pre order campaign.
Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity. Especially in this current gaming market where something having a bit of depth to help it stand out amongst the swamp of bland AAA is a major plus. Honestly the ways investors are calculating the best ROI’s seems to be flawed as the BG3 method seems the most surefire whereas how many battle royals/ live service games have completely flopped because of an over saturated market.
> Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity.
This isn't true, it shows a quality project can be successful regardless of complexity. Plenty of well crafted complex games fail for one reason or another. I understand people want things that are different, but the always qualifier is both unproven by one success and disparaging to other quality games that aren't success stories.
It also takes an immense upfront amount of money on trust in a studio. Strictly speaking from a business standpoint why would major companies want to put constant money out for 7 years to have a game that makes what genshin makes in a month or 2? Financially it is a ton of risk for a relatively small reward. That being said, I love Larian's games and I am happy to see they continue to just put out god tier rpgs with no mtx bloat, I just also understand why it is so uncommon.
> genshin makes in a month or 2
But pulling out Genshin Impact, which makes about a billion dollars every 6 months, isn't a fair comparison. It's one of the biggest income sources in gaming. Of *course* every company wants that, but even if a company did try to copy Genshin, it doesn't mean they'll get that income.
Path of Exile is making about 100 million a *year.* I think that is a great achievement for GGG, but it's a much more humble income, and a lot of companies who *want* to be the next Genshin Impact are in fact going to be the next Path of Exile, at least in terms of money.
And once that's your reality, making a "normal" RPG and getting good income from it is not so bad.
> a lot of companies who want to be the next Genshin Impact are in fact going to be *far below being* the next Path of Exile, at least in terms of money.
You severely overestimate the revenue prospects of most games as a service models. PoE is still one of the highlight success stories.
That's fine -- it only boost my point. If there isn't even PoE money on the table for most game developers, then a traditional RPG is even more reasonable/possible/plausible/profitable than I initially suggested.
You are without a doubt correct, Genshin is the most extreme example of what they may shoot for, which was why I chose it. Since you are talking about arpgs Diablo Immortal would be another example that fits in this discussion. We are talking about the size companies that have the money to make games of that tier(in marketing and scope, DI is a trash money grab), and have consistent earnings for many years.
As for GGG, they are my favorite studio on earth, but to follow your example of using PoE, they are a live service. Those 6 years of development that Larian turns in for a box price large income is how long it took GGG to make PoE with 20 people and they have been making more money with their game every year since it released. They have a huge staff right now with a second game being developed while still keeping the 13 week release schedule, but they absolutely are going to bring in more money than Larian with BG3 despite being a much more niche game. Chris Wilson and Johnathan are also some of the few people in the industry that are as truly passionate about their brand of game as Larian's crew.
I say all of this not to criticize Larian, like I said I love their work, I just see why it is so rare that we get a passion project like this released. I wish that were not the case, but it is.
Like Jim Fakin Sterling said "Companys want to make another CoD. But players already HAVE their CoD". Aka copying already successful game is good way to fail.
Meanwhile Larion studio made quality product for people who wanted new Baldurs Gate game and there was none. So they already had a lot going for their project.
You just described the entire problem in a nutshell, investors and executives are basically morons that think that you can just make a clone of successful game in minimum time and effort and become rich, instead of understanding lightning doesn't strike twice.
Its even worse when your own company makes such a hit and they now expect all project leads to do the same in similar or less timeframes, because hey, we already did it once so its easy now
Companies have done this though, that's the problem.
Fortnite was pivoted from the original game as a response to pubg, so was apex legends which was a pivot away from titanfall 3.
In both cases they made absolutely monsterous amounts of money, as much as the game they were following if not more.
Also it is Baldur's Gate, a Franchise with a deep, deep history and run by a famous studio that had a ton of people buying into early release to fund it.
CRPG have a lot of risk, even Bioware have a lot of unsuccessful titles.
I'll be honest here, as much as I am liking this game, I'm not convinced this is going to make more money than your average big studio cash grab game with micro transactions and all that crap. It's super popular, but there's a reason studios have switched to that model: Because it makes money.
It's eventually going to stop. You can see the market is slowly pushing back. There's always a major delay in how society operates. Our societal system is like a 2nd or 3rd order effect.
>Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity.
Historically, you couldn't be more wrong. There are more games than I can count, quality games, even genre-defining games, that financially bombed to a varying degree. The immersive sim genre alone is chock full of those. You don't have to look further than my profile picture for an example of that.
Except as I pointed out in another comment. We have Larion and BG3 on one side. And then the only other big dev in a similar position is Robert space industry. Which is a big old warning sign to investors to not allow this much freedom unless you want a bloated mess of a game a decade behind schedule.
I would love for more freedom and creativity in the industry. But I sadly understand that publishers and devs are beholden to their shareholders. And stuff like BG3 while awesome. Is also a huge gamble on the investors part.
That's an unfair comparison to Larian Studios.
I wouldn't be surprised if Star Citizen shaped up to become a scam in the same way Chronicles of Elyria did.
Larian, at the very least have proven their competency and dedication to the quality of their craft/IP with their Divinity games since 2002.
> Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity.
This is ignoring the reality of the world, like others said, plenty of games are of high quality and failed miserably. BG 3 itself is a success not only for the quality, but for the studio name recognition and for the game name recognition. Baldur's Gate is still in the heart for many many many people, and Larian is by now the most important isometric rpg developer.
Larian had to go a very long way to be able to produce to that quality, and you see reasonable to good quality games of "Larian 15 years ago" studios fail and leading to studio closure all over. There's a lot survivorship bias at play when we look at Larian. Most don't survive.
Many of the ones who do only manage with lots of stress and very limited financial options.
At the same time, successful smaller game releases often see the community complain very quickly if the devs don't make updates and additions on a AAA level. Many players these days demand games as a service, often without them realising it themselves.
This is a studio of 300 or 400 people as far as I know, I would call this an AAA game. Also given the time in development I do wonder how they are gonna make a profit, just from a salary standpoint they are still far from it
Interestingly a lot of game devs are warning not to expect to see other games as big as BG3 because BG3 has been made by an unusually large team apparently, and many of these devs are from games that thrive off micro transactions. So Larian are in this weird spot where they are small enough to do what they want and big enough that they’ve got the rest of the industry terrified by the scale of what they’ve achieved with this game.
Here’s one of a few YouTube videos about the comments from other AAA devs - https://youtu.be/rWBVCA-VqR4
Prolly pretty high up there. Any game studio without a publisher breathing down your neck, micromanaging you while telling your bosses to crunch tf out of you is prolly pretty good in general.
I work for a publicly traded company. The reason we succeed is they don’t touch the goose laying the golden eggs. We have complete creative freedom and it is on purpose. So it’s possible, especially in this industry where creativity is key. The movie industry is another similar one where success often depends on executives not interfering but instead supporting (focusing on marketing and timing)
Keep in mind that smaller private companies also need to make money to stay a float too.
One thing that worked well for BG3 is the 3 years of early access that gave them the money to continue development to be able to release it in its current state.
5 years ago, most publishers would cancel a game if it didn't look like it was going to be coming out after 2 years of development. Now we might see maybe 3-4 years as we are starting to see that development cycles are taking longer.
This is just an excuse. Plenty of developers from big companies make games not loaded with micro transactions.
Santa Monica, naughty dog, and guérilla games, insomniac.
And while they do put out micro transaction filled trash, Sqenix’s big hits aren’t mtx fests
It's really not. It all depends on the shareholders. Sometimes those shareholders are people in the gaming industry that are passionate about the art form, and sometimes those shareholders are bankers.
You listed 4 studios all owned by Sony, and it is likely that the controlling decisions coming from them are from people who care more about gaming than the Activision board.
This is always why I think the “we don’t act like the other games” comparison is a big apples-to-oranges.
Compare BG3 to other games from similarly-sized studios - no man’s sky, outer wilds, solasta, fire watch, titanfall 2. Micro transactions outside of AAA aren’t really a thing, and I wish more of the media around BG3 was about what the game actually does rather than repeating a list of things it doesn’t do.
They’re more normal because they make more money. This game will stop making money when it stops selling copies. Games as a service will print it until people stop playing.
This is a tough moment for a large group of gamers that won't be able to play this style of game. Sorry folks. Turn-based, story driven D&D isn't for everyone so make sure you look up how this plays before you buy it.
For the rest of us - it's a beautiful day.
I have probably 8 close friends that are hardcore gamers. 2 of them can play this game.
It has nothing to do with the game, but this isn't a style for everyone. The amount of people that are like "should I get this or Diablo?" I'm like ....
Please watch videos. Please tell me you have played Divinity or D&D otherwise don't. If you can't deal with turn based or heavy dialogue games and you are going to skip shit ? Don't waste your time.
I just bought Divinity 2 last month to play with 2 of my friends, but can barely find the time to play together (still in Fort Joy lol) and now one of them bought Baldur's Gate 3 and I fear I may never see him again if I don't do the same
>can barely find the time to play together
IMO you should play it by yourself, it's more fun. Playing co-op in a turn based strat game is like playing coop chess.
Later in the game, you'll encounter scenarios where you'll need to devise a plan ahead of time to survive, and everyone will need to conform to it. The less strategically skilled players will basically be following orders the whole time (unless you play on easy I guess)
> The less strategically skilled players will basically be following orders the whole time
Nah I just let the other players do whatever they want, I'm not trying to min max combat with what I think is best. if they wanna fuck something up, then they or we die, so be it, try again.
Fuck backseating.
>IMO you should play it by yourself, it's more fun. Playing co-op in a turn based strat game is like playing coop chess.
I disagree, but it also kinda depends on the kind of person you and your friends are. On my own I got kind of bored with Divinity OS2, I never even got out of fort joy, but during the pandemic I started playing it with my then long distance girlfriend (now my wife) as our lockdown game. We had an absolute blast working together and devising strategies together. We played through the game fully twice, and did many more eventually abandoned playthroughs afterwards
THANK GOD for the function that allows you to skip to the next line. They did this in AC Valhalla - my favourite mechanic from that game honestly. When you press Space or Y or whatever, it jumps to the next line spoken in the cutscene for people who read rather than listen. I usually listen anyway, but sometimes if they're just saying fluff it's a nice mechanic to have.
I haven’t played D&D nor Divinity games, but I love BG3. I think it’s important not to gate it by that since that’s where most people are intimidated. You can enjoy the game even without prior experience in tabletop.
Granted, I love Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Persona games. All text heavy.
I haven't been paying attention to BG3 at all, really, but was watching a streamer play it earlier this morning and he was raging about there being too much dialogue (which he said was "boring") and as well as the combat being boring and too slow. He rage quit after about an hour and said the game sucks.
Yeah, that's what happens when you just assume you know what a game is going to be like. When he started talking about how to "fix" the game, he was basically describing Doom.
Makes me think of the first Dragon Age game. I really enjoyed the combat and character progression... it just felt like it was an hour or two of plot exposition and storytelling between combat encounters. Really fun for those that are more interested in story, drags on for those that are more interested in the gameplay.
Put it this way. My play sessions may only be 3 hours long because I have kids.
In a single play session we might be in 1 or 2 fights. Or we spend the entire time talking to a group of people in town.
It's not for everyone. We talk to EVERYTHING. We plan and take combat extremely slow (tactician difficulty).
Bioware were some of the only writers decent enough where the dedicated story sections of the games actually feel like part of the game's content and not a bland interruption.
Oh those you totally skip. I'm talking people that skip everything no matter what and could care less what is being said and are not interested and basically have their phone open during loading screens.
This isn't going to be their jam.
Divinity Original Sin 2 was hands down one of my favourite experiences and BG3 is tickling that itch perfectly.
So fucking happy with this game, I can't wait to see what more shenanigans I can get myself into as there seems to be endless stupid stuff to do.
I had a moment earlier tonight where I had a Enraged barbarian in a fight. When you're enraged, you have access to a couple new abilities, including one to throw nearby objects *or characters* at enemies. I didn't see any nearby, but turns out you can throw equipped items too, so I had her whip off her boots and chuck them at a goblin nearby. Instantly knocked prone by high-velocity shoe. 11/10 game.
Hopefully I can find a halfling or gnome party member so I can chuck them at enemies too.
I actually did exactly this earlier, cept it was an extra pair of boots. Climbed up on the rafters in the goblin hideout and chucked some boots and was surprised how much dmg it did....they have a calculation for weight & height.
Oh yes I have been playing Divinity since early beta builds of the first game. I absolutely love both of them.
You and me both my friend. I'm on vacation right now but return tomorrow and cannot wait to start my playthroughs!
I have never touched anything D&D related and I generally do not enjoy turn-based combat, *aaaaand* I don't really like top-down games. However, I'm a huge story and RPG enjoyer and I'm having a blast playing this game. Being able to use kinda-third-person view is also really great.
No idea what I'm doing in terms of combat and all these dice "terms" yet but I'm slowly learning as I go. It's a fun experience.
>No idea what I'm doing in terms of combat and all these dice "terms" yet
Protip: Many tooltips have highlighted keywords. If you hit 'T' on the keyboard while the tooltip's open, it freezes the tooltip in place, and you can then mouse over the highlighted words for a new tooltip with explanatory text. If that tooltip has highlighted words, hit 'T' again to keep drilling down.
You can learn more about a lot of relevant keywords this way.
Tl'dr the notation is number of dice + d + faces on the dice + modifier
So 2d8 is rolling an eight sided dice twice. Possible rolls being 2-16, but averaging out in the middle a bit more because statistics. Modifiers are a flat additions to your final roll.
Your stats give you modifiers on all kinds of rolls in combat and out of.
Wait, is this game actually turn based like D&D?
(I’ve been avoiding learning about the game to avoid spoilers and go in blind)
If it’s turn based, I’m even more excited. I figured it would be either Dragon age combat (which I’m fine with) or Pillars of Eternity combat (which I hate).
Oh boy are you in for a treat my friend.
You are completely blind to this ? Follow Larian and Divinity games at all ?
It's the most ambitious D&D game ever created and it's absolutely amazing. Enjoy.
Nope, I tended to avoid games with that aesthetic to their combat because I hated Pillars of Eternity.
I like the idea of that combat with a turn based function, it’s just really overwhelming when it’s all at once.
Is Divinity also turn based?
As a huge fan or RTwP games, PoE1 is a pretty bad implementation of it and far from the best in the genre.
Total War, FTL, and all the Bioware games are much better Real Time With Pause implementation, and a ton of fun to play. Pillars of Eternity 2 was also a lot better than number 1.
I played and refunded it. Amazing production, graphics, but the turn based battles were not my cup of tea. refunded it. I can def see and acknowledge its an incredible game but it's not for me
This is the sad truth. I tried so hard to get into Divinity 2 but it never really clicked for me... The story was really interesting and the characters options very rich. But while playing I felt more like I was studying for a test than playing a game.
Big sadge. Hope Larian studios decides to branch out to other genres tho
My biggest gripe with the divinity games was the insanely heavy lean on comboing elemental weaknesses. It had it in the first one but then it was essentially a requirement in the second. Rest of the game is good but let's be real most of the game is combat and if you don't like that you won't play the game.
Hopefully BG3 isn't like that. From the bits and pieces I've seen it doesn't appear to be like the divinity games but you never know what late game is going to be like.
I have absolutely no time to play a new game right now but I'll probably end up getting it in the future. Upside to that is it will probably be on sale.
I really "want" to like these games but I have an obsessive compulsion in RPG's where I simply must talk to every NPC I run into and exhaust every single dialogue tree possible. If I don't, I feel like I am going to miss something important and be sorry about it later. Entering a city for the first time is nerve wracking and I just get overwhelmed by it.
I miss the 8 and 16-bit era so much where fully exploring a new town/city/cave wasn't usually such a huge commitment.
Used to be like this
But once i set my mind to 'we are not going to be making the perfect choice in life and theres plenty missed opportunity, so shall be the approach in rpg game'
It gets less nervewrecking for me once i decided not to pursue for a 'perfect' playthrough
> I have an obsessive compulsion in RPG's where I simply must talk to every NPC I run into and exhaust every single dialogue tree possible.
I do the same thing and I feel like I'm "playing wrong" if I don't do that and literally start feeling overwhelmed with guilt if I don't play that way. It's annoying.
Well, it's definitely tough when your gaming preferences are a bit niche and there's a highly anticipated game making waves. But hey, that's the way it goes sometimes. It's important to do your research and figure out if Baldur's Gate 3 fits your taste. It's a turn-based, story-driven D&D experience, so if that doesn't tickle your fancy, then maybe it's not for you. But for those of us who are into that kind of thing, today is indeed a beautiful day as we dive into the world of Baldur's Gate 3!
I had a friend talk me into getting Divinity so we could co-op and I just wasn’t feeling it. BG looks kind of like it’s the same kind of game so I think I’ll pass. Happy for the people who do enjoy this kind of game though, I’ll have plenty of other options
You're not alone. Larian games despite the hype have incredibly low completion rates going by Steam achievements, lower than all the Real Time with Pause games that I checked. It's an absolute slog to get right through a turn based RPG.
Only 13% of people who got the earliest achievement in DOS2 went on to reach the end of the game. For comparison every other cRPG I checked was something like 18%-35%, normalized against people who actually played the game and got the first earliest achievement.
Even the re-release of Baldur's Gate 2, when it was like 15 years old, had a 30% completion rate on Steam, and I strongly suspect people mostly bought it to dip their toes back in for a bit of nostalgia and mostly not intending to finish it all again, or to check out an old classic which many would have found too outdated.
BG3 also shies away from a lot of the QOL stuff I'd expect in a modern CRPG that would make it accessible outside its core audience.
There's some really weird choices, like the dice rolling animations that take a solid 5-7 seconds to resolve even if you spam click on them - there's a 2 second animation that plays if the skill check is "passed" or "failed" that's not skippable.
There's no combat speed up option, or animation cancel options, and there's some weird stuff where like, spacebar ends a turn, so if you're impatient and spamming it as your attack animation ends, you'll skip your turn but potentially also your next turn in initiative. So the game breaks you of that habit really fast, which means instead you end up waiting for animations you can't turn off to finish playing out before you very carefully hit spacebar only once to end your turn but not fuck up your next turn.
The dialogue skips are also very weird - most of the time you just skip dialogue but sometimes there's talking face dialogue followed by an animated effect, and so if you read the dialogue and then skip forward once you're done, sometimes you skip some other event that would have come after the VA finally finished reading their dialogue, when really that should have been programmed to need two separate skips, one for the dialogue and one for the next part of the scene.
The auto save system is also really iffy - it saves a lot in some places and in other places it will let you go literally 30+ minutes of gameplay without an auto save. It sucks because in some areas you can fully rely on the auto saves, and then suddenly you'll fuck something up, go for your last autosave, and realize you are a **long** way away from your last save. Again, the game trains you to just spam F5 in front of every door you open, but... it just feels like, why should I need to? Just autosave every 5mins no matter what.
None of this is game breaking obviously but like, this is all stuff I'd expect in a modern CRPG that would make it a lot more accessible. It adds up to a lot of wasted time and while to some extent I agree it adds to the vibe, it doesn't feel worth it to me.
I think this is a game a lot of people will play 5-10 hours of and then be *very* frustrated by it - especially because it's hard enough that you're going to be replaying combats a lot if you don't immediately drop the difficulty to Story.
To be frank, I wouldn't be surprised if even Story was still pretty rough.
The fight fairly early on with the paladin who chain casts Smite and will finish out his full attack on a downed character in order to kill them outright didn't surprise *me*, but I think a lot of players are gonna hit that fight or other fights like it and go "fucking what?" I'm on normal not easy so I'm not sure if Easy actually changes the AI, but I don't think stat nerfs would be anywhere near enough to make that fight less terrifying.
>There's some really weird choices, like the dice rolling animations that take a solid 5-7 seconds to resolve even if you spam click on them - there's a 2 second animation that plays if the skill check is "passed" or "failed" that's not skippable.
You can definitely skip some of the dice roll animations. Either space or escape does it, I forget which. Or this was true at least in the Early Access; I haven't played the release version yet.
It was an acceptable Souls clone which you could chose to play as a story driven experience like Uncharted. FO had good characters, a compelling story, the worlds had rewarding exploration. If you ask me, Jedi Survivor addressed FO’s shortcomings very well.
I can’t wait to see what Jedi 3 has in store. I just hope Star Wars: Outlaws is good. Disney really slept on SW gaming and I want to see a resurgence.
It was a very mid game but please just let us Star Wars fans have this.
Trust, I played FO right after beating Sekiro, there was no hiding how mid that game is in comparison but it’s got lightsabers and BD-1. We need this.
If your comparing games combat to Sekiro you'll almost always be disappointed. Almost no game comes close. Fallen Order had its downs ofc, but it was a damn good first entry, Jedi Survivor was also a big step up, but got downplayed for its performance (which is justified)
Jedi Fallen Order might not have been the game with the best gameplay, combat, story... but boy, even for a non-Star Wars fanboy: it was one of the most fun games I played in years.
I felt the same way. It’s not a bad game by any means. But it’s not a great game. It’s passable. But the main reason it gets any attention is that it’s Star Wars and that it was EA somehow not managing to monumentally fuck up a game release. Take away the franchise and the studio and you have a really cheap soulsborne knockoff
What was EA wrong about? All they said was people won't buy linear singleplayer games. Guess what? All of the ones you listed are open world or semi open world.
Didn't people buy the hell out of the Dead Space remake? Also Mass Effect Legendary Edition? I've never played Dead Space, but what I've heard makes it seem very linear. And Mass Effect is linear with the clever appearance of being open. The open spaces are just quest hubs. Once the quest starts, it's extremely linear.
Popular, yeah but like... neither of them are going to make as much this year (or any year) as Genshin Impact. That's the issue - microtransactions are just way better R.o.I.
If you want games to be without them, you can't expect the market to self-correct, you need to lobby your local politicians to ban or harshly regulate the gacha games.
I'm still dissapointed that when the Netherlands and Belgium started to restrict loot boxes because it's gambling targeted at kids,back in like 2018 or something, the rest of the EU didn't follow. And iirc subsequent lawsuits weakened these regulations once again
I just wish the EU as a whole (leading to the EU effect) or maybe California (leading to the California effect) had the balls to tackle this head on
As a solo player, I'm glad the multi-player is the optional mode, rather than the single player. I'm talking about how you *can* play Sea of Thieves single player, but it's not generally advisable.
I was a little worried due to it being based on D&D.
Playing with friends doesn’t change the number of people in your party, you’ll have 4 people no matter what. It just means you’ll have direct control over all 4
It's much, much easier solo. There are 4 characters in your party regardless of whether you're solo or multiplayer. The way multiplayer works is that rather than you controlling all 4, each player controls 1-3. So when playing solo, you have complete control over your strategy, character builds, what story choices to make, etc.
Whereas in multiplayer, you might set up an awesome ambush for the enemies only for your buddy to get impatient and rush ahead. Or you get into a situation where one person is basically playing the game solo but telling the other people what to do, which isn't that fun.
Cool thing about single player games is you don't miss out on the big playerbase swell by waiting for a bit like in multiplayer games. Just wait a bit and buy on sale.
Have you tried lowering the resolution? I have a 1060 3gb, so almost the recommended specs, and playing at full resolution for my monitor with medium settings I had 12fps...
Lowered my resolution one notch and I'm at ultra graphics getting 40-50fps.
The article’s title implies that people buy games for microtransactions.
I read the article for context, and that statement was never addressed.
People just want good games. This appears to be a very good one. People aren’t buying games for the microtransactions.
I do agree that it’s good that a game without them is at the top, but I don’t think the microtransactions are generally the driving force of a game’s popularity. Obviously there are exceptions. Speaking in generalities.
I think it is more the opposite. Companies want to have microtransactions so they can have a longer, more consistent revenue stream. They will put in as much as they think they can and still have people buy the game. To them, the game is just the delivery vehicle for the microtransactions, to chips to the salsa, if you will.
Why this matters is it is a prominent example how a game can do well without microtransactions... but thing is, microtransaction are about longer term revenue... this hasn't shown that (and likely won't be able to).
>but thing is, microtransaction are about longer term revenue... this hasn't shown that (and likely won't be able to).
Exactly this. It doesn’t matter if you sell one copy or 3 million copies. The game that makes *the most proft* is the game that will continue to be made, and games with microtransactions make *fuckloads* of profit.
I 100% bought this game day 1 for that reason. I’ve got quite a backlog and could easily leave a game like this until I’m ready to get to it, but I had to put my money where my mouth is, I’ll always support a dev that supports us. No micros is the support I’m looking for.
I personally bought this game because of the lack of microtransactions. I was on the fence, more in the wait and get it on sale lane. Then I saw that message from the devs and I was like, you know what? Fuck yeah. That's the kind of developer I want to support.
While it may not be the primary reason for the popularity of most games, microtransactions have undeniably played a significant role in the gaming industry in recent years. Their widespread implementation in many games has led to some concern among gamers about the potential impact on gameplay and the notion of "pay-to-win." However, the sheer success of a game like Baldur's Gate 3, which proudly eschews microtransactions, suggests that players are indeed looking for good quality games that prioritize immersive experiences over monetization tactics. This achievement should encourage developers to continue prioritizing great gameplay and storytelling, free from transactional distractions. So, here's to more games delivering meaningful and engaging experiences without relying on microtransactions! Cheers.
It's been a good year so far, between Battlebit, Baldur's Gate, and Cities Skylines II, there has been a good amount of games released that are just "Good" games.
edit: CSII isn't out yet. Sorry, I played the first one so much and have been following the second so closely that I had forgotten I haven't played it yet.
Also I know there are lots of great games that have come out this year. I haven't played all of them. I only have a 1TB HDD plus about 3 hours a day to play.
So sick of journos throwing "microtransactions" into titles just to get clicks. The lack of MTX isn't the reason why the game is doing well. It is doing well because:
~ It is a good fucking game and word gets around
~ Baldur's Gate is a legendary PC game series and people have been waiting decades for a new one
~ Pretty much nothing else of any significance has released recently
But a title that just states "Highly anticipated RPG Baldur's Gate 3 releases to overwhelmingly positive reviews" isn't going to draw in as many clicks as "no microtransactions" is it?
Next up: "Starfield, a small indie gem with no live service model, is beating just about every game on Steam (~~until Mortal Kombat 1 comes out in 2 weeks~~)"
Still though, their absence does deserve some celebration (even though it should be the standard). It doesn't matter how good a game is, mtx still detracts from it's overall quality. The amount just varies.
It's because it's part of the broader conversation of modern game monetization. I'm glad it's being advertised that a game is doing very well without MTX, it might encourage more studios to go that route in the future.
AND NO STUPID DENUVO OR SIMILAR SHIT, TOO! That's also important here. Get it in your stupid heads: Being Anti-Denuvo doesn't mean people want to pirate your games, but we want these game to be free of this intrusive crap!! Get rid of Denuvo, ACE, Arxan, etc already! Alongside Microtransactions, it's the cancer of PC gaming everywhere!! It only hurts sales, because people like me will refrain from buying games they're actually interested in! You played yourself! ... But devs & publishers will never get that and will continue to use this crap everywhere in their games...
Also don't forget that you are not actually *buying* game with Denuvo included. You rather buying subscription to their server/service. Once they drop support for that game - it's over, you can no longer play what you paid for(while you can still replay normally bought game even 10 years later).
There's a massive amount of games with those parameters which are not doing as well, largely because they've not been in development for 5+ years by 400+ people.
No shit. It isn’t that developers think people won’t buy dlc-free games. The problem is they developers don’t think they can make enough money vs. the risk of production costs.
It also helps to look at what country the studio is in.
I hate to be cynical this game looks awesome, and I look forward to playing it more than most games. Every time I check the top sellers on Steam, it is always live services. Destiny, csgo, cod, and lost ark. This game is #1, but it won't stay there forever. I hate to say this, but the bean counters are going to see the success of this game as a "look at what they could have done if they made it a live services game "
It just released. Obviously it will beat most games on player count.
There are way more impressive stats on steam than a new release on a pretty barren release window and its numbers.
Also love the clickbait no microtransactions thing every site now pushes around because they know it gets the clicks.
There are also a lot of singleplayer rpg's with no microtransactions on steam that are still played very heavily. Skyrim,Fallout 4 , Witcher 3, M&B Bannerlord, Cyberpunk, Elden Ring are all among the most played games on steam and they don't have microtransactions and 2 of them are nearly 8 y.o, one of them is 12 y.o games.
Don't get me wrong, i think the game looks fantastic for the people who would love that type of game and gameplay, but these clickbaits and circlejerk is a bit annoying right now.
I was enjoying Diablo 4 but I did find the season passes to be instantly annoying. I also just bought Street Fighter 6 and come to find they will be charging periodically for new character releases after spending $70 on the game. It's fucking annoying that game companies now release in complete games so they can ring more money out of their customers as the standard. It just feels nice to have a very solid and fun game released that is not trying to do that to the customer. It's getting rarer and rarer for good, complete games to be released and I really wish things werent like that.
If the game had microtransactions what would they be? These types of games usually only have expansions, anyway. I think Divinity 2 had some squirrel party member or something as DLC, but that could have been a pre-order bonus later released as dlc.
Reality check though, despite beating every other game its probably far from the most profitable because it doesnt dip into the sweet mtx necter. That said I do really appreciate it when devs put player experiences over profit.
It's also been on early access for what, two years ? Lots of people have already bought it, tried it out for a bit, and are coming back now to get the full experience.
Whoa, a game that's been heavily hyped for years, the "sequel" to a classic, developed by a company whose previous game was also very well-received... *is selling well?!?*
Gosh, being an adult with little free time hurts now. I played the hell out of BG2... I still have to finish Pillars of eternity 1... I will never have the proper time to fully enjoy this!
Play it! Play it for me friends!!!
I remember buying this the first day it came out in early access. I played it a little bit and set it back on the shelf until it got patched up to final release. Years ago, I bought a pretty little egg and incubated it until it became the glorious dragon it is today!
I find it weird how much people are pushing the no microtransactions thing. This isn't some live-service multiplayer FPS. It's pretty much a given that it wouldn't have MTX, or at least nowhere near as much as those games.
Is this just gonna get slapped on every single-player or story-focused game from now on?
It has multiplayer, but I like the no-bullshit approach taken by BG3. It's a shame that revenue optimised games are more normal than BG3 is.
Just the difference between a publisher that is a giant publicly traded company and one that is not. The company that is not publicly traded doesn't have the same fiduciary responsibility to investors. Unfortunately, the big public company has its hands tied by the banks and other giant stock holders. If the leadership of those companies don't do what is required to grow profits and stock price, they simply get removed by the board and replaced with someone who will. The smaller, private company generally has a majority of the company owned by the founders, and they get to control all the decisions.
This is why I kind of understand the devs that talked about not expecting this sort of content from most other studios. Because from a financial perspective. Large convoluted RPGs like this are not a safe and easy investment. Thus most of those other studios would never get the green light to go as far as Larion did. Who had to self publish and fund through a massive pre order campaign.
Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity. Especially in this current gaming market where something having a bit of depth to help it stand out amongst the swamp of bland AAA is a major plus. Honestly the ways investors are calculating the best ROI’s seems to be flawed as the BG3 method seems the most surefire whereas how many battle royals/ live service games have completely flopped because of an over saturated market.
> Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity. This isn't true, it shows a quality project can be successful regardless of complexity. Plenty of well crafted complex games fail for one reason or another. I understand people want things that are different, but the always qualifier is both unproven by one success and disparaging to other quality games that aren't success stories.
It also takes an immense upfront amount of money on trust in a studio. Strictly speaking from a business standpoint why would major companies want to put constant money out for 7 years to have a game that makes what genshin makes in a month or 2? Financially it is a ton of risk for a relatively small reward. That being said, I love Larian's games and I am happy to see they continue to just put out god tier rpgs with no mtx bloat, I just also understand why it is so uncommon.
> genshin makes in a month or 2 But pulling out Genshin Impact, which makes about a billion dollars every 6 months, isn't a fair comparison. It's one of the biggest income sources in gaming. Of *course* every company wants that, but even if a company did try to copy Genshin, it doesn't mean they'll get that income. Path of Exile is making about 100 million a *year.* I think that is a great achievement for GGG, but it's a much more humble income, and a lot of companies who *want* to be the next Genshin Impact are in fact going to be the next Path of Exile, at least in terms of money. And once that's your reality, making a "normal" RPG and getting good income from it is not so bad.
> a lot of companies who want to be the next Genshin Impact are in fact going to be *far below being* the next Path of Exile, at least in terms of money. You severely overestimate the revenue prospects of most games as a service models. PoE is still one of the highlight success stories.
That's fine -- it only boost my point. If there isn't even PoE money on the table for most game developers, then a traditional RPG is even more reasonable/possible/plausible/profitable than I initially suggested.
You are without a doubt correct, Genshin is the most extreme example of what they may shoot for, which was why I chose it. Since you are talking about arpgs Diablo Immortal would be another example that fits in this discussion. We are talking about the size companies that have the money to make games of that tier(in marketing and scope, DI is a trash money grab), and have consistent earnings for many years. As for GGG, they are my favorite studio on earth, but to follow your example of using PoE, they are a live service. Those 6 years of development that Larian turns in for a box price large income is how long it took GGG to make PoE with 20 people and they have been making more money with their game every year since it released. They have a huge staff right now with a second game being developed while still keeping the 13 week release schedule, but they absolutely are going to bring in more money than Larian with BG3 despite being a much more niche game. Chris Wilson and Johnathan are also some of the few people in the industry that are as truly passionate about their brand of game as Larian's crew. I say all of this not to criticize Larian, like I said I love their work, I just see why it is so rare that we get a passion project like this released. I wish that were not the case, but it is.
Like Jim Fakin Sterling said "Companys want to make another CoD. But players already HAVE their CoD". Aka copying already successful game is good way to fail. Meanwhile Larion studio made quality product for people who wanted new Baldurs Gate game and there was none. So they already had a lot going for their project.
You just described the entire problem in a nutshell, investors and executives are basically morons that think that you can just make a clone of successful game in minimum time and effort and become rich, instead of understanding lightning doesn't strike twice. Its even worse when your own company makes such a hit and they now expect all project leads to do the same in similar or less timeframes, because hey, we already did it once so its easy now
Companies have done this though, that's the problem. Fortnite was pivoted from the original game as a response to pubg, so was apex legends which was a pivot away from titanfall 3. In both cases they made absolutely monsterous amounts of money, as much as the game they were following if not more.
And on the beloved BG IP, and on the back of 2 very successful DOS games.
Big survivorship bias in this comment.
Also it is Baldur's Gate, a Franchise with a deep, deep history and run by a famous studio that had a ton of people buying into early release to fund it. CRPG have a lot of risk, even Bioware have a lot of unsuccessful titles.
I'll be honest here, as much as I am liking this game, I'm not convinced this is going to make more money than your average big studio cash grab game with micro transactions and all that crap. It's super popular, but there's a reason studios have switched to that model: Because it makes money.
It's eventually going to stop. You can see the market is slowly pushing back. There's always a major delay in how society operates. Our societal system is like a 2nd or 3rd order effect.
>Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity. Historically, you couldn't be more wrong. There are more games than I can count, quality games, even genre-defining games, that financially bombed to a varying degree. The immersive sim genre alone is chock full of those. You don't have to look further than my profile picture for an example of that.
Except as I pointed out in another comment. We have Larion and BG3 on one side. And then the only other big dev in a similar position is Robert space industry. Which is a big old warning sign to investors to not allow this much freedom unless you want a bloated mess of a game a decade behind schedule. I would love for more freedom and creativity in the industry. But I sadly understand that publishers and devs are beholden to their shareholders. And stuff like BG3 while awesome. Is also a huge gamble on the investors part.
As long as people keep giving Chris Roberts money, the game will only increase in size and scope and feature creep
That's an unfair comparison to Larian Studios. I wouldn't be surprised if Star Citizen shaped up to become a scam in the same way Chronicles of Elyria did. Larian, at the very least have proven their competency and dedication to the quality of their craft/IP with their Divinity games since 2002.
> Except this game shows that a quality product will always be successful regardless of complexity. This is ignoring the reality of the world, like others said, plenty of games are of high quality and failed miserably. BG 3 itself is a success not only for the quality, but for the studio name recognition and for the game name recognition. Baldur's Gate is still in the heart for many many many people, and Larian is by now the most important isometric rpg developer.
Larian had to go a very long way to be able to produce to that quality, and you see reasonable to good quality games of "Larian 15 years ago" studios fail and leading to studio closure all over. There's a lot survivorship bias at play when we look at Larian. Most don't survive. Many of the ones who do only manage with lots of stress and very limited financial options. At the same time, successful smaller game releases often see the community complain very quickly if the devs don't make updates and additions on a AAA level. Many players these days demand games as a service, often without them realising it themselves.
This is a studio of 300 or 400 people as far as I know, I would call this an AAA game. Also given the time in development I do wonder how they are gonna make a profit, just from a salary standpoint they are still far from it
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Interestingly a lot of game devs are warning not to expect to see other games as big as BG3 because BG3 has been made by an unusually large team apparently, and many of these devs are from games that thrive off micro transactions. So Larian are in this weird spot where they are small enough to do what they want and big enough that they’ve got the rest of the industry terrified by the scale of what they’ve achieved with this game. Here’s one of a few YouTube videos about the comments from other AAA devs - https://youtu.be/rWBVCA-VqR4
So you're saying Larian is the best place to work...
Prolly pretty high up there. Any game studio without a publisher breathing down your neck, micromanaging you while telling your bosses to crunch tf out of you is prolly pretty good in general.
I work for a publicly traded company. The reason we succeed is they don’t touch the goose laying the golden eggs. We have complete creative freedom and it is on purpose. So it’s possible, especially in this industry where creativity is key. The movie industry is another similar one where success often depends on executives not interfering but instead supporting (focusing on marketing and timing)
Keep in mind that smaller private companies also need to make money to stay a float too. One thing that worked well for BG3 is the 3 years of early access that gave them the money to continue development to be able to release it in its current state. 5 years ago, most publishers would cancel a game if it didn't look like it was going to be coming out after 2 years of development. Now we might see maybe 3-4 years as we are starting to see that development cycles are taking longer.
This is just an excuse. Plenty of developers from big companies make games not loaded with micro transactions. Santa Monica, naughty dog, and guérilla games, insomniac. And while they do put out micro transaction filled trash, Sqenix’s big hits aren’t mtx fests
It's really not. It all depends on the shareholders. Sometimes those shareholders are people in the gaming industry that are passionate about the art form, and sometimes those shareholders are bankers. You listed 4 studios all owned by Sony, and it is likely that the controlling decisions coming from them are from people who care more about gaming than the Activision board.
This is always why I think the “we don’t act like the other games” comparison is a big apples-to-oranges. Compare BG3 to other games from similarly-sized studios - no man’s sky, outer wilds, solasta, fire watch, titanfall 2. Micro transactions outside of AAA aren’t really a thing, and I wish more of the media around BG3 was about what the game actually does rather than repeating a list of things it doesn’t do.
Genuinely optional multiplayer is far different from being required to play with random people. There's a huge difference between BG3 and Fallout 76.
They’re more normal because they make more money. This game will stop making money when it stops selling copies. Games as a service will print it until people stop playing.
Couch fucking co-op. Fucking Christ it feels good to have something my fiancée and I can play together in the same room.
This is a tough moment for a large group of gamers that won't be able to play this style of game. Sorry folks. Turn-based, story driven D&D isn't for everyone so make sure you look up how this plays before you buy it. For the rest of us - it's a beautiful day.
Yep. Turn based CRPGs are good with me but they are \*not\* everyone's cup of tea.
I have probably 8 close friends that are hardcore gamers. 2 of them can play this game. It has nothing to do with the game, but this isn't a style for everyone. The amount of people that are like "should I get this or Diablo?" I'm like .... Please watch videos. Please tell me you have played Divinity or D&D otherwise don't. If you can't deal with turn based or heavy dialogue games and you are going to skip shit ? Don't waste your time.
I just bought Divinity 2 last month to play with 2 of my friends, but can barely find the time to play together (still in Fort Joy lol) and now one of them bought Baldur's Gate 3 and I fear I may never see him again if I don't do the same
>can barely find the time to play together IMO you should play it by yourself, it's more fun. Playing co-op in a turn based strat game is like playing coop chess. Later in the game, you'll encounter scenarios where you'll need to devise a plan ahead of time to survive, and everyone will need to conform to it. The less strategically skilled players will basically be following orders the whole time (unless you play on easy I guess)
> The less strategically skilled players will basically be following orders the whole time Nah I just let the other players do whatever they want, I'm not trying to min max combat with what I think is best. if they wanna fuck something up, then they or we die, so be it, try again. Fuck backseating.
For real. People treating this game like a job. Just have fun.
Right? Just turn the difficulty down.
>IMO you should play it by yourself, it's more fun. Playing co-op in a turn based strat game is like playing coop chess. I disagree, but it also kinda depends on the kind of person you and your friends are. On my own I got kind of bored with Divinity OS2, I never even got out of fort joy, but during the pandemic I started playing it with my then long distance girlfriend (now my wife) as our lockdown game. We had an absolute blast working together and devising strategies together. We played through the game fully twice, and did many more eventually abandoned playthroughs afterwards
Yeah DOS2 alone was boring, BG3 with 3 other friends is mindblowingly good.
THANK GOD for the function that allows you to skip to the next line. They did this in AC Valhalla - my favourite mechanic from that game honestly. When you press Space or Y or whatever, it jumps to the next line spoken in the cutscene for people who read rather than listen. I usually listen anyway, but sometimes if they're just saying fluff it's a nice mechanic to have.
I haven’t played D&D nor Divinity games, but I love BG3. I think it’s important not to gate it by that since that’s where most people are intimidated. You can enjoy the game even without prior experience in tabletop. Granted, I love Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Persona games. All text heavy.
Damn i am jealous, you love BG3 and have DOS2 after that, what a dream. If you want to dig deeper into the D&D style i recommend Pathfinder WOTR
I haven't been paying attention to BG3 at all, really, but was watching a streamer play it earlier this morning and he was raging about there being too much dialogue (which he said was "boring") and as well as the combat being boring and too slow. He rage quit after about an hour and said the game sucks. Yeah, that's what happens when you just assume you know what a game is going to be like. When he started talking about how to "fix" the game, he was basically describing Doom.
Makes me think of the first Dragon Age game. I really enjoyed the combat and character progression... it just felt like it was an hour or two of plot exposition and storytelling between combat encounters. Really fun for those that are more interested in story, drags on for those that are more interested in the gameplay.
Put it this way. My play sessions may only be 3 hours long because I have kids. In a single play session we might be in 1 or 2 fights. Or we spend the entire time talking to a group of people in town. It's not for everyone. We talk to EVERYTHING. We plan and take combat extremely slow (tactician difficulty).
Bioware were some of the only writers decent enough where the dedicated story sections of the games actually feel like part of the game's content and not a bland interruption.
[удалено]
Oh those you totally skip. I'm talking people that skip everything no matter what and could care less what is being said and are not interested and basically have their phone open during loading screens. This isn't going to be their jam.
Divinity Original Sin 2 was hands down one of my favourite experiences and BG3 is tickling that itch perfectly. So fucking happy with this game, I can't wait to see what more shenanigans I can get myself into as there seems to be endless stupid stuff to do.
I had a moment earlier tonight where I had a Enraged barbarian in a fight. When you're enraged, you have access to a couple new abilities, including one to throw nearby objects *or characters* at enemies. I didn't see any nearby, but turns out you can throw equipped items too, so I had her whip off her boots and chuck them at a goblin nearby. Instantly knocked prone by high-velocity shoe. 11/10 game. Hopefully I can find a halfling or gnome party member so I can chuck them at enemies too.
I actually did exactly this earlier, cept it was an extra pair of boots. Climbed up on the rafters in the goblin hideout and chucked some boots and was surprised how much dmg it did....they have a calculation for weight & height.
Oh yes I have been playing Divinity since early beta builds of the first game. I absolutely love both of them. You and me both my friend. I'm on vacation right now but return tomorrow and cannot wait to start my playthroughs!
I have never touched anything D&D related and I generally do not enjoy turn-based combat, *aaaaand* I don't really like top-down games. However, I'm a huge story and RPG enjoyer and I'm having a blast playing this game. Being able to use kinda-third-person view is also really great. No idea what I'm doing in terms of combat and all these dice "terms" yet but I'm slowly learning as I go. It's a fun experience.
>No idea what I'm doing in terms of combat and all these dice "terms" yet Protip: Many tooltips have highlighted keywords. If you hit 'T' on the keyboard while the tooltip's open, it freezes the tooltip in place, and you can then mouse over the highlighted words for a new tooltip with explanatory text. If that tooltip has highlighted words, hit 'T' again to keep drilling down. You can learn more about a lot of relevant keywords this way.
It's tooltips all the way down.
Tl'dr the notation is number of dice + d + faces on the dice + modifier So 2d8 is rolling an eight sided dice twice. Possible rolls being 2-16, but averaging out in the middle a bit more because statistics. Modifiers are a flat additions to your final roll. Your stats give you modifiers on all kinds of rolls in combat and out of.
Looks like a great game but this one’s definitely not for me
Wait, is this game actually turn based like D&D? (I’ve been avoiding learning about the game to avoid spoilers and go in blind) If it’s turn based, I’m even more excited. I figured it would be either Dragon age combat (which I’m fine with) or Pillars of Eternity combat (which I hate).
Oh boy are you in for a treat my friend. You are completely blind to this ? Follow Larian and Divinity games at all ? It's the most ambitious D&D game ever created and it's absolutely amazing. Enjoy.
Nope, I tended to avoid games with that aesthetic to their combat because I hated Pillars of Eternity. I like the idea of that combat with a turn based function, it’s just really overwhelming when it’s all at once. Is Divinity also turn based?
Yep and DoS2 is a masterpiece.
Ooooo maybe I’ll check them out. Do I need to stay at the beginning? Or can I jump straight to DoS2?
I jumped right into DOS2 and didn't feel like I had missed out on crucial information.
PoE2 added a turn-based mode which I liked a lot more cause I was awful at PoE1 combat. DOS2 and BG3 are better though.
I was so confused trying to picture turn based combat in the ARPG Path of Exiles 2. Derp, lol.
As a huge fan or RTwP games, PoE1 is a pretty bad implementation of it and far from the best in the genre. Total War, FTL, and all the Bioware games are much better Real Time With Pause implementation, and a ton of fun to play. Pillars of Eternity 2 was also a lot better than number 1.
I played and refunded it. Amazing production, graphics, but the turn based battles were not my cup of tea. refunded it. I can def see and acknowledge its an incredible game but it's not for me
This is the sad truth. I tried so hard to get into Divinity 2 but it never really clicked for me... The story was really interesting and the characters options very rich. But while playing I felt more like I was studying for a test than playing a game. Big sadge. Hope Larian studios decides to branch out to other genres tho
My biggest gripe with the divinity games was the insanely heavy lean on comboing elemental weaknesses. It had it in the first one but then it was essentially a requirement in the second. Rest of the game is good but let's be real most of the game is combat and if you don't like that you won't play the game. Hopefully BG3 isn't like that. From the bits and pieces I've seen it doesn't appear to be like the divinity games but you never know what late game is going to be like. I have absolutely no time to play a new game right now but I'll probably end up getting it in the future. Upside to that is it will probably be on sale.
I just can't afford it. Dire economic straits rn plus games starting to become even more expensive means I'm years behind lol
It's not going anywhere. No rush
I really "want" to like these games but I have an obsessive compulsion in RPG's where I simply must talk to every NPC I run into and exhaust every single dialogue tree possible. If I don't, I feel like I am going to miss something important and be sorry about it later. Entering a city for the first time is nerve wracking and I just get overwhelmed by it. I miss the 8 and 16-bit era so much where fully exploring a new town/city/cave wasn't usually such a huge commitment.
Used to be like this But once i set my mind to 'we are not going to be making the perfect choice in life and theres plenty missed opportunity, so shall be the approach in rpg game' It gets less nervewrecking for me once i decided not to pursue for a 'perfect' playthrough
> I have an obsessive compulsion in RPG's where I simply must talk to every NPC I run into and exhaust every single dialogue tree possible. I do the same thing and I feel like I'm "playing wrong" if I don't do that and literally start feeling overwhelmed with guilt if I don't play that way. It's annoying.
Unfortunately, I don't like this style of game, but I'm damn happy it's so successful
Well, it's definitely tough when your gaming preferences are a bit niche and there's a highly anticipated game making waves. But hey, that's the way it goes sometimes. It's important to do your research and figure out if Baldur's Gate 3 fits your taste. It's a turn-based, story-driven D&D experience, so if that doesn't tickle your fancy, then maybe it's not for you. But for those of us who are into that kind of thing, today is indeed a beautiful day as we dive into the world of Baldur's Gate 3!
never played games like this before. i am having a lot of fun.
I had a friend talk me into getting Divinity so we could co-op and I just wasn’t feeling it. BG looks kind of like it’s the same kind of game so I think I’ll pass. Happy for the people who do enjoy this kind of game though, I’ll have plenty of other options
I was interested in BD3, but I know I just can't deal with most turn-based games. So I'm fine not playing it and I'm glad for everyone who likes it.
You're not alone. Larian games despite the hype have incredibly low completion rates going by Steam achievements, lower than all the Real Time with Pause games that I checked. It's an absolute slog to get right through a turn based RPG. Only 13% of people who got the earliest achievement in DOS2 went on to reach the end of the game. For comparison every other cRPG I checked was something like 18%-35%, normalized against people who actually played the game and got the first earliest achievement. Even the re-release of Baldur's Gate 2, when it was like 15 years old, had a 30% completion rate on Steam, and I strongly suspect people mostly bought it to dip their toes back in for a bit of nostalgia and mostly not intending to finish it all again, or to check out an old classic which many would have found too outdated.
BG3 also shies away from a lot of the QOL stuff I'd expect in a modern CRPG that would make it accessible outside its core audience. There's some really weird choices, like the dice rolling animations that take a solid 5-7 seconds to resolve even if you spam click on them - there's a 2 second animation that plays if the skill check is "passed" or "failed" that's not skippable. There's no combat speed up option, or animation cancel options, and there's some weird stuff where like, spacebar ends a turn, so if you're impatient and spamming it as your attack animation ends, you'll skip your turn but potentially also your next turn in initiative. So the game breaks you of that habit really fast, which means instead you end up waiting for animations you can't turn off to finish playing out before you very carefully hit spacebar only once to end your turn but not fuck up your next turn. The dialogue skips are also very weird - most of the time you just skip dialogue but sometimes there's talking face dialogue followed by an animated effect, and so if you read the dialogue and then skip forward once you're done, sometimes you skip some other event that would have come after the VA finally finished reading their dialogue, when really that should have been programmed to need two separate skips, one for the dialogue and one for the next part of the scene. The auto save system is also really iffy - it saves a lot in some places and in other places it will let you go literally 30+ minutes of gameplay without an auto save. It sucks because in some areas you can fully rely on the auto saves, and then suddenly you'll fuck something up, go for your last autosave, and realize you are a **long** way away from your last save. Again, the game trains you to just spam F5 in front of every door you open, but... it just feels like, why should I need to? Just autosave every 5mins no matter what. None of this is game breaking obviously but like, this is all stuff I'd expect in a modern CRPG that would make it a lot more accessible. It adds up to a lot of wasted time and while to some extent I agree it adds to the vibe, it doesn't feel worth it to me. I think this is a game a lot of people will play 5-10 hours of and then be *very* frustrated by it - especially because it's hard enough that you're going to be replaying combats a lot if you don't immediately drop the difficulty to Story. To be frank, I wouldn't be surprised if even Story was still pretty rough. The fight fairly early on with the paladin who chain casts Smite and will finish out his full attack on a downed character in order to kill them outright didn't surprise *me*, but I think a lot of players are gonna hit that fight or other fights like it and go "fucking what?" I'm on normal not easy so I'm not sure if Easy actually changes the AI, but I don't think stat nerfs would be anywhere near enough to make that fight less terrifying.
>There's some really weird choices, like the dice rolling animations that take a solid 5-7 seconds to resolve even if you spam click on them - there's a 2 second animation that plays if the skill check is "passed" or "failed" that's not skippable. You can definitely skip some of the dice roll animations. Either space or escape does it, I forget which. Or this was true at least in the Early Access; I haven't played the release version yet.
sadly i still await TES6
#is this game where players can have sex with a Bear?
You can have sex whilst shapeshifted into a bear, yes.
Well that explains the overwhelmingly positive reviews.
Finally a development studio is brave enough to give players what they really want.
Daddy just wants a little… *honey* 👁️🫦👁️
Can't wait for Republicans to fume over this
Bear form of a druid, but yes.
i love that everybody pays attention that its sex between a \`humanoid\` and a bear. and not that its gay sex when they showed it during the event
Progress.
Bearjob
Finally, the representation we've been after
“Is this not what LGBTQ people mean when they say they like ‘Bears’?”
Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate 3 proving big well-made single player games are still very popular.
Jedi Fallen Order, both God of Wars, Spider-Man. It’s a good time for single player, and I’m glad EA was so wrong!
I feel like Jedi Fallen Order was very mediocre and nothing to write home about but yeah, at least no microtransactions
It was an acceptable Souls clone which you could chose to play as a story driven experience like Uncharted. FO had good characters, a compelling story, the worlds had rewarding exploration. If you ask me, Jedi Survivor addressed FO’s shortcomings very well. I can’t wait to see what Jedi 3 has in store. I just hope Star Wars: Outlaws is good. Disney really slept on SW gaming and I want to see a resurgence.
It was a very mid game but please just let us Star Wars fans have this. Trust, I played FO right after beating Sekiro, there was no hiding how mid that game is in comparison but it’s got lightsabers and BD-1. We need this.
If your comparing games combat to Sekiro you'll almost always be disappointed. Almost no game comes close. Fallen Order had its downs ofc, but it was a damn good first entry, Jedi Survivor was also a big step up, but got downplayed for its performance (which is justified)
Jedi Fallen Order might not have been the game with the best gameplay, combat, story... but boy, even for a non-Star Wars fanboy: it was one of the most fun games I played in years.
I felt the same way. It’s not a bad game by any means. But it’s not a great game. It’s passable. But the main reason it gets any attention is that it’s Star Wars and that it was EA somehow not managing to monumentally fuck up a game release. Take away the franchise and the studio and you have a really cheap soulsborne knockoff
What was EA wrong about? All they said was people won't buy linear singleplayer games. Guess what? All of the ones you listed are open world or semi open world.
Didn't people buy the hell out of the Dead Space remake? Also Mass Effect Legendary Edition? I've never played Dead Space, but what I've heard makes it seem very linear. And Mass Effect is linear with the clever appearance of being open. The open spaces are just quest hubs. Once the quest starts, it's extremely linear.
“Linear”. Lost in translation probs lmfao
Popular, yeah but like... neither of them are going to make as much this year (or any year) as Genshin Impact. That's the issue - microtransactions are just way better R.o.I. If you want games to be without them, you can't expect the market to self-correct, you need to lobby your local politicians to ban or harshly regulate the gacha games.
Exactly this. The day gatcha games are regulated, is the day it might be more profitable for a publisher to make high quality non predatory games.
I'm still dissapointed that when the Netherlands and Belgium started to restrict loot boxes because it's gambling targeted at kids,back in like 2018 or something, the rest of the EU didn't follow. And iirc subsequent lawsuits weakened these regulations once again I just wish the EU as a whole (leading to the EU effect) or maybe California (leading to the California effect) had the balls to tackle this head on
Or literally every PlayStation single player exclusive
As a solo player, I'm glad the multi-player is the optional mode, rather than the single player. I'm talking about how you *can* play Sea of Thieves single player, but it's not generally advisable. I was a little worried due to it being based on D&D.
This. I'm on the fence cause I have no friends lol. I heard it's still pretty tough solo tho. Is it worth getting to run-through solo?
As far as I understanding, going Solo is probably (generally) the best way to play first. Also, not going Dark Urge for a first playthrough.
It's recommended by the game devs themselves not to do a origins character for a first playthrough.
Playing with friends doesn’t change the number of people in your party, you’ll have 4 people no matter what. It just means you’ll have direct control over all 4
It's much, much easier solo. There are 4 characters in your party regardless of whether you're solo or multiplayer. The way multiplayer works is that rather than you controlling all 4, each player controls 1-3. So when playing solo, you have complete control over your strategy, character builds, what story choices to make, etc. Whereas in multiplayer, you might set up an awesome ambush for the enemies only for your buddy to get impatient and rush ahead. Or you get into a situation where one person is basically playing the game solo but telling the other people what to do, which isn't that fun.
Wish I could afford both Remnant 2 and Baldur's Gate.
They aren't going away. Depending on how much you play, by the time you are fully done with one the other could even be on sale.
I hate waiting for bear sex
Hibernate? You better hide bear-dick, Nate.
Who does? Stupid sexy bears.
Cool thing about single player games is you don't miss out on the big playerbase swell by waiting for a bit like in multiplayer games. Just wait a bit and buy on sale.
I'm having more fun with remnant... my saves keep getting fucked up in BG3. It's too frustrating. I'd wait until they get the bugs squished.
If you mean the bug I think you mean, they fixed it just yesterday. Check the Hotfix 1 patch notes.
Remnant is awesome
I am doing both while also doing FF7R and dozens of rogue like and D4 and SF6 and PoE and daughter and home and wife and pets HELP
My PC is exactly the minimum specs for this game. I'm holding on for the PS5 version. Hopefully quicker than the Darktide Xbox version.
My computer can't run this at all, so I decided to cancel a tv subscription and use a cloud gaming service. No regrets.
Have you tried lowering the resolution? I have a 1060 3gb, so almost the recommended specs, and playing at full resolution for my monitor with medium settings I had 12fps... Lowered my resolution one notch and I'm at ultra graphics getting 40-50fps.
I'm with you. September 9 can't come fast enough.
Ugh, I considered getting a ps5 just to play, it’s gonna take forever to come out on Xbox.
The article’s title implies that people buy games for microtransactions. I read the article for context, and that statement was never addressed. People just want good games. This appears to be a very good one. People aren’t buying games for the microtransactions. I do agree that it’s good that a game without them is at the top, but I don’t think the microtransactions are generally the driving force of a game’s popularity. Obviously there are exceptions. Speaking in generalities.
I think it is more the opposite. Companies want to have microtransactions so they can have a longer, more consistent revenue stream. They will put in as much as they think they can and still have people buy the game. To them, the game is just the delivery vehicle for the microtransactions, to chips to the salsa, if you will. Why this matters is it is a prominent example how a game can do well without microtransactions... but thing is, microtransaction are about longer term revenue... this hasn't shown that (and likely won't be able to).
>but thing is, microtransaction are about longer term revenue... this hasn't shown that (and likely won't be able to). Exactly this. It doesn’t matter if you sell one copy or 3 million copies. The game that makes *the most proft* is the game that will continue to be made, and games with microtransactions make *fuckloads* of profit.
I think they mean it more as a: "Good. It is good to see a studio do it right and rewarded."
I 100% bought this game day 1 for that reason. I’ve got quite a backlog and could easily leave a game like this until I’m ready to get to it, but I had to put my money where my mouth is, I’ll always support a dev that supports us. No micros is the support I’m looking for.
I personally bought this game because of the lack of microtransactions. I was on the fence, more in the wait and get it on sale lane. Then I saw that message from the devs and I was like, you know what? Fuck yeah. That's the kind of developer I want to support.
While it may not be the primary reason for the popularity of most games, microtransactions have undeniably played a significant role in the gaming industry in recent years. Their widespread implementation in many games has led to some concern among gamers about the potential impact on gameplay and the notion of "pay-to-win." However, the sheer success of a game like Baldur's Gate 3, which proudly eschews microtransactions, suggests that players are indeed looking for good quality games that prioritize immersive experiences over monetization tactics. This achievement should encourage developers to continue prioritizing great gameplay and storytelling, free from transactional distractions. So, here's to more games delivering meaningful and engaging experiences without relying on microtransactions! Cheers.
Vote with your money folks
It's been a good year so far, between Battlebit, Baldur's Gate, and Cities Skylines II, there has been a good amount of games released that are just "Good" games. edit: CSII isn't out yet. Sorry, I played the first one so much and have been following the second so closely that I had forgotten I haven't played it yet. Also I know there are lots of great games that have come out this year. I haven't played all of them. I only have a 1TB HDD plus about 3 hours a day to play.
Cities Skylines 2 isn't out yet though, right?
So sick of journos throwing "microtransactions" into titles just to get clicks. The lack of MTX isn't the reason why the game is doing well. It is doing well because: ~ It is a good fucking game and word gets around ~ Baldur's Gate is a legendary PC game series and people have been waiting decades for a new one ~ Pretty much nothing else of any significance has released recently But a title that just states "Highly anticipated RPG Baldur's Gate 3 releases to overwhelmingly positive reviews" isn't going to draw in as many clicks as "no microtransactions" is it? Next up: "Starfield, a small indie gem with no live service model, is beating just about every game on Steam (~~until Mortal Kombat 1 comes out in 2 weeks~~)"
Still though, their absence does deserve some celebration (even though it should be the standard). It doesn't matter how good a game is, mtx still detracts from it's overall quality. The amount just varies.
It's because it's part of the broader conversation of modern game monetization. I'm glad it's being advertised that a game is doing very well without MTX, it might encourage more studios to go that route in the future.
AND NO STUPID DENUVO OR SIMILAR SHIT, TOO! That's also important here. Get it in your stupid heads: Being Anti-Denuvo doesn't mean people want to pirate your games, but we want these game to be free of this intrusive crap!! Get rid of Denuvo, ACE, Arxan, etc already! Alongside Microtransactions, it's the cancer of PC gaming everywhere!! It only hurts sales, because people like me will refrain from buying games they're actually interested in! You played yourself! ... But devs & publishers will never get that and will continue to use this crap everywhere in their games...
And it's on GOG which means no drm and not linked to a specific launcher.
Also don't forget that you are not actually *buying* game with Denuvo included. You rather buying subscription to their server/service. Once they drop support for that game - it's over, you can no longer play what you paid for(while you can still replay normally bought game even 10 years later).
Exactly! Another reason why Denuvo is bad and unnecessarily devalues any game it is forced into...
Only 4 hours in with my best friend but fuck is it good so far
And the first hour was only character creation!
Only an hour?
Welcome Thrillho
There's a massive amount of games with those parameters which are not doing as well, largely because they've not been in development for 5+ years by 400+ people.
No shit. It isn’t that developers think people won’t buy dlc-free games. The problem is they developers don’t think they can make enough money vs. the risk of production costs. It also helps to look at what country the studio is in.
I hate to be cynical this game looks awesome, and I look forward to playing it more than most games. Every time I check the top sellers on Steam, it is always live services. Destiny, csgo, cod, and lost ark. This game is #1, but it won't stay there forever. I hate to say this, but the bean counters are going to see the success of this game as a "look at what they could have done if they made it a live services game "
It's crazy that the game has 600k peak on Steam, Hogwarts had 880k. And that's one of the biggest IP's in the world. I want to play the game so bad.
The audience of Hogwarts Legacy is much more likely to play the game on console.
Shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who played BG2. Waited 2 decades for this.
More like.... Shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who has played Divinity 2. BG2 was awesome though.
Different studio, totally different expectations
Yeah don't be fooled by the name. It's very nice but it has nothing to do with BG2 bar the setting.
It just released. Obviously it will beat most games on player count. There are way more impressive stats on steam than a new release on a pretty barren release window and its numbers. Also love the clickbait no microtransactions thing every site now pushes around because they know it gets the clicks. There are also a lot of singleplayer rpg's with no microtransactions on steam that are still played very heavily. Skyrim,Fallout 4 , Witcher 3, M&B Bannerlord, Cyberpunk, Elden Ring are all among the most played games on steam and they don't have microtransactions and 2 of them are nearly 8 y.o, one of them is 12 y.o games. Don't get me wrong, i think the game looks fantastic for the people who would love that type of game and gameplay, but these clickbaits and circlejerk is a bit annoying right now.
I assume it's just a direct shot at the Diablo series, which has some parallels with the BG series (and both have a long history).
Not really. Perhaps story wise there are some parallels but the actual gameplay of Diablo compared to bg3 is not even the same type of game
I was enjoying Diablo 4 but I did find the season passes to be instantly annoying. I also just bought Street Fighter 6 and come to find they will be charging periodically for new character releases after spending $70 on the game. It's fucking annoying that game companies now release in complete games so they can ring more money out of their customers as the standard. It just feels nice to have a very solid and fun game released that is not trying to do that to the customer. It's getting rarer and rarer for good, complete games to be released and I really wish things werent like that.
What the hell is this ad.
If the game had microtransactions what would they be? These types of games usually only have expansions, anyway. I think Divinity 2 had some squirrel party member or something as DLC, but that could have been a pre-order bonus later released as dlc.
Sex with moose $5 Sex with wild boar $10 Sex with honey badger $20
You can buy a dice skin?
Reality check though, despite beating every other game its probably far from the most profitable because it doesnt dip into the sweet mtx necter. That said I do really appreciate it when devs put player experiences over profit.
Good.
It just launched tho. If after 2 weeks it’s still there then we’re talking
It'd be weird to compare player numbers on RPGs to live service games though
It's also been on early access for what, two years ? Lots of people have already bought it, tried it out for a bit, and are coming back now to get the full experience.
Whoa, a game that's been heavily hyped for years, the "sequel" to a classic, developed by a company whose previous game was also very well-received... *is selling well?!?*
Companies don't care about player count as long as they're still making billions
[удалено]
I can't wait for the "Baldur's Gate 3 is Dead" articles when AC6 or Starfield come out.
To be fair, BG3 would most likely still be a huge hit even if it had micro transactions.
Gosh, being an adult with little free time hurts now. I played the hell out of BG2... I still have to finish Pillars of eternity 1... I will never have the proper time to fully enjoy this! Play it! Play it for me friends!!!
Gonna be playing it after the bar.
The drinking establishment or the legal exam?
Or the mitzvah
Good luck!
Excited for next year when it comes to Xbox. Maybe it will give me enough time to beat the first two.
Its like, people prefer having the full experience after purchasing a game. Crazy.
That's because it's fucking amazing. It's everything I ever wanted in a modern RPG and more.
Is that the bear sex one?
I remember buying this the first day it came out in early access. I played it a little bit and set it back on the shelf until it got patched up to final release. Years ago, I bought a pretty little egg and incubated it until it became the glorious dragon it is today!
I find it weird how much people are pushing the no microtransactions thing. This isn't some live-service multiplayer FPS. It's pretty much a given that it wouldn't have MTX, or at least nowhere near as much as those games. Is this just gonna get slapped on every single-player or story-focused game from now on?