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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

#331

Post by jncfhnb »

jterrys wrote: post #86
mastax wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the Divinity: Original Sin 2 combat system had the huge emphasis on elemental effects and surfaces and interactions which I found a lot more fun than the traditional RPG systems which feel more like solving a math equation. So far there has been a lot less of that in BG3 which is disappointing but maybe I just need to level up my spellcasters more. (I hate the DnD spell preparation system but that's another matt…

The element interaction from Divinity: Original Sin 2 are still there. Grease works and will catch fire, you can get ice spike and it'll create an ice surface where enemies and players will slip, then turn into a puddle next turn. They will also slip on a sufficiently large puddle of blood. The intro ship has vats of mysterious liquid that will catch fire.

Huh. Interesting. Grease in kingmaker is probably the most powerful early game spell. I would think this translates to Baldurs gate too. Not so much in real world dnd where there will be fewer enemies and more theatre of mind.

Making it flammable sounds very powerful.

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

#332

Post by majormajor »

zyx321 wrote: post #322
majormajor wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the "new game onboarding" process at Nintendo looks like. Thinking of something relatively more left-field and recent like the Mario Rabbids tactical thing for Switch. Was that pitched to them? Solicited to studios by them? In the latter case that would be a fascinating process to observe.

Rabbids are a spinoff from Rayman. I would assume Ubisoft was the driving creative force behind it. And it's somewhat damning that the "relatively recent" innovation is currently two expansion packs into its second installment.

Video games are like 50 years old now, relatively recent is relative... ;)

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

#333

Post by milesvp »

wlesieutre wrote: post #196
galangalalgol wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This game also has the meta that most recent D&D games missed. If you know the tabletop game, you can build an optimized character in the bg series, because the game system is close wherever it can be. Some spells are just too freeform to work without a human DM, but they seem to have done very well, perhaps a bit too much focus on environmental damage like the divinity series, but they toned that down right? I haven…

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…

Interesting, the way other games have dealt with this problem, is a wait option. you roll to move first, decide to wait, now everyone with lower initiative must move before you do. It’s a version of first in last out, if everyone waits, the last to wait must move first. Sort of an elegant solution to part of this problem. Other games might also have a generic guard move. Move+guard and you attack first thing to come in range

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

#334

Post by account42 »

caskstrength wrote: post #246
jakebasile wrote: post #23

It's a really, really good game. I'm glad they decided to make it turn based vs the real time with pause, though I know that's a somewhat controversial decision (what isn't?). The game itself is beautiful, the music is immersive, the writing is (so far) intriguing, and it runs on Linux with only minor tweaks. The game does wonders to capture the feel of playing a well-DMed campaign. It's no surprise to me that it's g…

>It's a really, really good game. I'm glad they decided to make it turn based vs the real time with pause, though I know that's a somewhat controversial decision (what isn't?). Yes, but naming the game "Baldur's Gate 3" instead of something like "Divinity: Dungeons & Dragons" is, unfortunately, a successful cash-grab. Which is to be expected considering that AFAIK _none_ of the original developers or writers worked o…

Agreed. A hate this trend of making supposed sequels that thake significant liberties with what kind of game they are making compared to the original. At least this one wasn't a Kickstarter.

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

#335

Post by account42 »

Loocid wrote: post #280
LegitShady wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>-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.

Because the disussion is taking place in the context of not-platform exclusive game with the article title talking about the number of concurrent Steam (ie. PC) players.

If you don't want to pay for hardware you don't get to own then console games might as well not exist.

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

#336

Post by bluefirebrand »

moonchrome wrote: post #255
mastax wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned many other great games in this genre which were lucky to have 1/100th of the success of this game. But okay, those didn't have the multiplayer, or the presentation, or the accessibility. But Larian's previous game was extremely similar to this one in all respects. It's not even that flippant to say BG3 is DOS2 with the lore and rules swapped for DnD ones which isn't that much of a practical difference (I'…

I've never played BG (I did play icewind Dale when I was a kid but it was annoying to read the dialogue without voice acting). I did play all Neverwinter Nights games so I have some background in this genere and DnD rules - but that was always the tedious part for me. I heard of Divinity but just not into gaming anymore (too much other stuff going on). That said I'll probably find the time to play this on PS5 because…

> I've never played BG (I did play icewind Dale when I was a kid but it was annoying to read the dialogue without voice acting)

I genuinely am surprised that there are people out there who think this way.

I'm the complete opposite. I skip all voice acting, because I read faster than anyone can deliver lines, and frankly I'm not there for the performance or the "experience". I'm there for the game. The voice acting doesn't add anything to the gameplay for me. I wish games that have dialog boxes would let me turn it off entirely, honestly.

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

#337

Post by account42 »

jdright wrote: post #30
cube2222 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote your comment as though it's not ok, while you can play it offline in single player just fine. But there's optional Cross-Platform save sync (independent of the steam one) and multiplayer. Anyway, as a person who bounced off of the previous entries of this genre I'm really enjoying this one, and I'm very happy for the success the studio is having - they deserve it!

You all forget about all the telemetry, which most decent games from the last 5 years have. It is fact of life that they collect all kinds of data to understand better their user base and game usage for future improvements.

It's not a fact of life, just people with low morals making excuses.

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

#338

Post by account42 »

vagab0nd wrote: post #249
tmtvl wrote: post #244

The Baldur's Gate series is one of the best cRPG series that exists. When another company wanted to use the name for their games they made a separate series called Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Larian's defilement of this series being rewarded like this just breaks my heart. They could have easily called it Baldur's Gate: Ulitharid or something, but no, they had to stir up maximum nostalgia by calling their game whic…

I've accepted the fact that it's "just" a good game and try to enjoy it. For a real BG game, Obsidian is probably our best hope.

> For a real BG game, Obsidian is probably our best hope.

They had their chance and came out lacking.

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

#339

Post by albrewer »

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…

> Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

I nominate adding Torment: Tides of Numeneria to this; I discovered it's a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment (which I never got to play); I had never played a CRPG before and I could not put it down until I was done.

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

#340

Post by albrewer »

heywoodlh wrote: post #44
jakebasile wrote: post #23

It's a really, really good game. I'm glad they decided to make it turn based vs the real time with pause, though I know that's a somewhat controversial decision (what isn't?). The game itself is beautiful, the music is immersive, the writing is (so far) intriguing, and it runs on Linux with only minor tweaks. The game does wonders to capture the feel of playing a well-DMed campaign. It's no surprise to me that it's g…

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…

I know what area you're talking about - I had my party sneak around that area and come in through the side. I had made some dialog choices earlier where the rest of the goblin area wasn't hostile to my party.

Also, I forgot about plain old jumping for the first ~15 hours of play. I was so stumped about a route I was supposed to take until I put on my glasses and _really_ scrutinized the action bar.

I gave my rogue an amulet that lets him use Misty Step; it's been an absolute game changer for my rogue stealth archer.

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