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‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

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Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#271

Post by fbdab103 »

bentcorner wrote: post #71
WillPostForFood wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, go look at the top selling games of 2022. Largely old games/franchises, many over 20 years old. I'd argue video gaming is pretty stale because game companies play it safe and mostly recycle old games. Bless Elden Ring, one of the only big new games that wasn't a sequel last year. Madden - 34 years old Pokemon - 26 years old FIFA - 29 years old Mario Kart - 30 years old Call of Duty 20 years old this year! (2…

FWIW I don't think it's necessarily bad that a old game franchises continue to get made. I don't have experience with every franchise here but at lest with God of War and Call of Duty, there are lots of gameplay and graphical innovations that get made despite the game being largely the same at the 10,000 foot level. On top of that a lot of people enjoy these games and are willing to pay for a version that works on mo…

Given rising expectations, is it any surprise that AAA games are mostly working within pre-established paths? Signing $50MM+ checks on a new IP/gameplay mechanic has to be a hard swallow that only a really established entity (Nintendo first party, Hideo Kojima, etc) can justify.

Any true novelty is likely to come from a mid/indie developer.

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#272

Post by paulryanrogers »

lost_tourist wrote: post #268
heywoodlh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree. I love the idea behind CRPGs, but have found that I have a difficult time committing to them. I.E. I own Divinity 2, but have struggled to get past the first few hours of the story as the first area makes it so open-ended it's tough to know how to move forward. Additionally, turn-based games often get quickly boring for me as they are often so challenging it doesn't feel worth it (I'm aware I defini…

Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and watch a couple walkthroughs and character build videos to get into a game from someone who has mastered it; just to get over that hump.

This is why I always bounce hard off RPGs yet love immersive sims with RPG-elements. Traditional CRPGs feel so hostile to players new to the genre, or those without a lot of free time. I would think difficulty sliders could help, though not sure if that's seen as sacrilegious or something.

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#273

Post by chii »

thereisnojesus wrote: post #186
handmadeta wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to attack you personally but I think your post illustrates an common error in thinking that caused gaming to stagnate for the past decade. I can just hear the army of MBAs making spreadsheets and checklist reflecting exactly this "paint by the numbers" style of thinking. This in turn means that the next ten AAA titles starting production are going to check all these boxes and then ... will still fail. In…

This game is huge. It's 4 modern games in one. I am curious how one keeps a budget for a game like this. I agree love and passion are the reason this game is doing well, but honestly how do you convince the money to invest in something like, besides the trend of copying BG3 simply due to success?

> honestly how do you convince the money to invest in something like, besides the trend of copying BG3 simply due to success?

you cannot. The money is interested in making more money. Good art may, or may not make money - and that's because the goal of the artist(s) aren't aligned with making money. It just so happens that it _could_ make money, and thus that became the pitch to investors.

If given the chance (imagine an unlimited UBI for example), the same artists would make such a game without investors (and might make an even better one...).

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#274

Post by phyrex »

wlesieutre wrote: post #185
mastax wrote: post #18

I am a bit shocked by how popular this game is. All the signs were there, though. - Their previous game Divinity: Original Sin 2 was critically acclaimed, very popular for a pretty hardcore CRPG, and had long legs. - DnD has a lot of brand power and has been strongly in the zeitgeist for years. - There's a big cohort of millennials who have strong nostalgia for Baldur's Gate and who have plenty of money to buy games…

I've made a habit of not buying games at launch anymore. Most of them are nagging me for microtransactions (rant: don't like that word for repeated $10 purchases on top of a $70 game, that's not "micro" at all), they require an internet connection for single player, or are otherwise full of bullshit that to me makes them not worth $60+. This one doesn't do that, so I bought it! I've never played any of the previous B…

Thang’s, that’s good to hear. I’ve been incredibly disappointed with diablo 4 for that reason!

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#275

Post by wlesieutre »

phyrex wrote: post #274
wlesieutre wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made a habit of not buying games at launch anymore. Most of them are nagging me for microtransactions (rant: don't like that word for repeated $10 purchases on top of a $70 game, that's not "micro" at all), they require an internet connection for single player, or are otherwise full of bullshit that to me makes them not worth $60+. This one doesn't do that, so I bought it! I've never played any of the previous B…

Thang’s, that’s good to hear. I’ve been incredibly disappointed with diablo 4 for that reason!

Yeah there's lots of reasons I didn't buy it, even though I enjoyed a lot of Diablo 3 and thought the Diablo 4 beta was fun enough. I got D3 after the expansion unfucked the loot drop rates that had been tuned super rare to drive people to the real money auction house.

Fingers crossed that Diablo 4 will eventually be on sale for $30 and have reached a point where it's worth that much. That's my price cap for anything with always online single player, and I can't see that being fixed.

Maybe I can be generous and bump it up to $35 now to give them 50% of the launch price.

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#276

Post by wlesieutre »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #208
wlesieutre wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main thing I'm missing so far is you can't ready an action, which makes it nearly impossible to play defensively. If your turn doesn't give you enough movement to run up to the enemies and stab them, you can't say "I run next to the doorway and wait to stab the first person who runs through it." Instead, you have to waste your turn and then stand around getting attacked. So it's often to your advantage to roll worse…

i think the key is to start combat in stealth so they're surprised and they waste their first move

Works for some characters, not really a strategy for a heavily armored fighter.

And either way, if there's a crowd of archers in the next room I wouldn't want to walk in (sneaking or no) where I have no cover, so I'm going to try and hold at the door. Still the better play even if it costs a whole turn of not being able to use my action.

The missing Ready action really tilts things toward those "alpha strike" characters made to hit first and hit hard, which isn't a design choice I like much. I want to be able to lure enemies into a room with minor illusion or other sounds and have the whole party readied the jump them.

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#277

Post by ericksoa »

bastardoperator wrote: post #223

I bought it, I'm playing it, it looks nice, but this game is a snooze fest. It's so slow and the camera is "different". I've rolled the dice and lost so many times at this point that it reminds me of gambling/Lost Ark.

This. I like a lot of the game, but something feels off with movement.

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#278

Post by antisthenes »

flohofwoe wrote: post #25
jakebasile wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the CRPG genre a lot, but I think one reason that BG3 is taking off is that it _looks_ like a modern AA(A?) game while the rest look basically like Baldur's Gate did in 1998. BG3 lets you see the world in a lot more detail and it helps immerse you in Faerûn. Many people will claim "graphics don't matter", but the reality is that they do help.

TBH it looks and especially feels much more like a reskinned Divine Divinity OS2 with DnD rules implanted than BG1 and BG2 (which isn't necessarily a bad thing of course, but I don't feel a lot of BG1 and BG2 nostalgia when playing BG3, instead I'm constantly reminded of OS2). PS: One thing that is a lot better than in BG1 and BG2 is that combat with low-class characters feels a lot more interesting. Not sure how muc…

> Not sure how much of this is because of the ADnD vs DnD5 rules or whether Larian has added some tweaks to the DnD5 rules.

That's entirely on D&D 5e rules. Combat with chars under lvl 5 is essentially 1 mechanic per class, and really boring.

Tabletop suffers from exactly the same issue, even if you use all the extra/optional subclasses and backstories. So does Solasta (the other 5e PC game)

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#279

Post by misterio7 »

meristohm wrote: post #216

It is phenomenal that so many people are concurrently playing BG3. I played through Divinity: Original Sin 2 and if Larian did at least as well this time around, hats off for their efforts. I have concerns, though, admittedly filtered through my preference for talking about things I'm interested in, namely not playing any videogames for a year because I realized I'd been using them as an escape from emotions, respons…

Your comment was very interesting to read! I wanted to chime in and mention that "Life is Strange" has a lot of this "what choice did you make?" book club-like feel to it, it's pretty fun to talk about!

Re: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

#280

Post by Loocid »

LegitShady wrote: post #153
ls612 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this take, just in the past 12 months we have seen -God of War Ragnarok -Tears of the Kingdom -Hogwarts Legacy -Star Wars Jedi Survivor -Final Fantasy XVI All entirely or almost entirely singleplayer and all receiving critical acclaim (except for the poor launch of Jedi Survivor's PC port). And the next few months include Starfield and Spider-Man 2, both blockbuster singleplayer games with no microtransac…

>-God of War Ragnarok playstation exclusive >-Tears of the Kingdom nintendo exclusive >-Hogwarts Legacy I don't know anyone who has played it - maybe we're just not that interested in harry potter >-Star Wars Jedi Survivor launched with multiple huge bugs including progression stopping bugs. I'll get it when its cheap and theyve fixed everything, or they haven't and I won't. If your game is bugged from day one don't…

This feels like moving goal posts. Why does platform exclusivity exclude them from being considered in this discussion? They are still all very successful AAA games that have no microtransactions.
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