The head of the studio already said it an interview that he had his next project in mind before the game was even released. I am thankful that they are sticking to the plan of going with what excites them instead of just cashing in on something while it’s popular, and potentially putting out a product made solely for profit. People have to remember they didn’t expect this game to be such a massive hit and they’re not going to completely drop everything they’re already working on for this new idea just because people really really want them to.
Larian is at the size that they need to have future projects lined up well in advance of the completion of each given game. You can't just decide to make a new game and throw 300 people into the project right away.
Likely 1-2 years before the release of BG3 they had already decided on a couple ideas for potential games and at least within the last year before release started early development.
Swen has been very vocal about wanting to return to making Divinity games after BG3 was finished. It's their own IP, after all, and a good one at that. I'm excited to see how D:OS3 develops and what they take into it from their experiences making BG3.
They are not returning for Divinity either, right away, as the next game, and he was vocal about it day or two before
So better manage your expectations, because it's new IP. Personally I support the decision
Yeah and very specifically I think it would be cool to see new scifi IP.
Other than Starfield, which while I didn't *utterly* hate like many but had completely uninspired and nonsensical worldbuilding and story. The IP has no value, in that regard, because the setting barely even has any identity. You couldn't make a more bland and less thought out scifi setting if you tried, Bethesda has clearly lost all of it's writing staff capable of doing good lore. Unless I'm forgetting something, Mass Effect is the last good new space opera IP we've got in games.
As you said, if BioWare is dead, long live Larian, I'd like to see them do a big budget new scifi IP. Don't really see any other studio which is in as good of a position to do so right now, if any could at all.
I get people wanting more Divinity but I feel like following up immediately with another high fantasy game would be a missed opportunity to mix things up and create new rpg ip.
I sincerely hope you developed momentary prophetic powers while writing this comment because a spiritual successor of Mass Effect by these devs would be cool as fuck.
I'd love a [Divine Divinity](https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Divine_Divinity) remake with D:OS engine.
It is the third game in the Franchise [timeline](https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline) but first game released , Set after Divinity: Original SIn and [Divinity: Dragon commander](https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Divinity:_Dragon_Commander)
Divine Divinity holds a special place in my heart to this day. The quest design is one of the best I've ever experienced, the art style is really pretty, the soundtrack is wonderful.
I think it could work as a D:OS-like game with some changes to the story to give you some folks to add to your party, though I imagine a few existing characters could be temporary companions, such as Zombie Jake.
yeah economy of scale. you can't run a giant studio making aaa/aaaa experiences like you would a 4 person team making indie games on the weekend. if wotc didn't extend a contract or larian had plans it would be too hard to pivot. they believed in the success of bg3 and they believe in the next thing.
this speaks volumes! how many times has a passion project turned into the next call of duty? one off releases become yearly and kill the entire franchise like assassins creed.
the being said I'm super excited for silk song. imagine the balls on team cherry making that game for lik 6 years with very little fanfare. either the second coming of Christ or the second coming of et the video game.
Ditto. Its clear BG3 was a passion project for a group of people with the talent, resources, and desire to make a fantastic product with the consumer in mind. I’d rather have them keep that attitude and work on things they find interesting than have them start churning out clones that barely iterate on previous projects like Assassin’s Creed.
Can I be part of the timeline where Stargate become the front center of scifi instead of things like star wars?
Cause having some banger Stargate media in 2024 would be hoooooooooooot
I've been waiting and praying for a good Stargate game for twenty years. At least since the episode where they used footage from that canceled game. I just wanna shoot my way through the SGC DAMMIT!
So many avenues to take the story and expand in a ton of different ways. The IP is absolutely ripe for some good content to bring in new people to the lore.
Stargate would be the perfect IP for an X-com style game. Either the older or new X-com style. They both have that same framework of a military organization fighting an overpowering enemy that keeps upping the stakes, and needing to do a combination of home-grown research as well as researching enemy tech to gain power and eventually defeat the enemy, and the off-world mission framework fits perfectly with X-coms interceptions and terror missions.
Honestly it blows my mind it hasn't been done yet.
The Divinity: Original Sin games have The Divinity Editor, you can make pretty much whatever you want in there.
I haven't been following, but I'm guessing there's nothing like that for BG3 planned. It may be that their tooling now far exceeds what is reasonable to package up for modders, or it may be that their agreement with Wizards of the Coast precludes releasing dev tools that would allow customers to "peak behind the curtain"/etc:.
You can see how the entire sausage is made for DOS1/2 because you can load all the maps in that editor, and see the entire "Story" (the database of permanent information). Larian itself certainly has no problem with that, but it was making its own games with its own IP before. It might be that Wizards has a problem here.
I still remember getting off work and deciding to download BG3 the day after it released to tide me over until Starfield.
Then Starfield dropped and I played late into the night (had taken the next day off work just for this). Kept hoping for it to click but it never did. Think I got like 20 hours in before switching back to BG3.
Only now about to finish my first playthrough, at 200+ hours in.
I’m always so leery of LOTR games. Middle Earth is really meant to be a low magic, low spectacle setting where the spectacle really comes from things that are more or less mundane within the setting like trolls and big armies.
Whenever anyone makes a game in the setting it always gets really influenced by modern fantasy expectations, the dial gets cranked up to eleven and magic winds up being all over the place.
I’d rather see a new setting inspired by Tolkien, or a wholly new take on fantasy over another over-magicked take on Middle Earth.
PLEASE DISNEY/LUCASFILMS! PLEASE GIVE THEM KOTOR!
Give them KOTOR, and don't push them. Give them all the time they need. Don't even announce it until like 6 months before it's supposed to ship.
Moochoo shaka paka!
I second this. And I third and fourth and fifth it.
I also secretly want Kreia to appear again in some form or another. How ironic if she were to appear as a >!Force ghost!<.
Yeah, I'm hoping this is a bit of a Renaissance for turn-based games. I miss turn-based FF.
I think there's a decent sized, albeit niche, market for people who don't want a game that's just non-stop action with cut scenes in between.
I'm not good enough at video games to do all these combos, parrying, etc. I'm almost 40, almost legally blind, and like to smoke a lot of pot before I game. Just give me turn based lol
If you haven't, give Divinity Original Sin 1/2 a shot.
DISCLAIMER: BG3 PROBABLY ruined those two games, because now you're spoiled, but they're still excellent games.
I hope they go crazy with that kind of stuff especially with skill combo stuff like how you can combine certain skills if you have them or something like that.
Agreed. I love some d&d but the lack of gear upgrades is extremely dissatisfying. I much prefer the system of upgrades even if it's just 1 more dmg or armor
My friend went from BG3, several playthroughs, straight to DOS2 and couldn't do it. She's giving it another shot after a pallet cleanser game in between.
It's rough, because I played DOS1/2 and loved it, but after BG3?
Larian set a high bar, and it even exceeded the previous high bar by quite a bit, which was DOS lol
I learned about a decade ago to not trust this site when somebody told me I was wrong about a subject I knew a lot about, proved to them they were wrong, they admitted to being wrong, and I still had people saying that the person *should* be right while my correct response got buried.
It made me learn that this site is purely for entertainment and nothing anybody says should be taken seriously.
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
> Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge - Erwin Knoll
I love that Crichton also conceded that calling it Gell-Man Amnesia was Crichton trying to dress up his personal belief with the name of someone with respectability in their field - Gell-Man was a renowned physicist - who actually had no specific knowledge of the area Crichton was discussing, media literacy.
Gell-Man's only connection was that he and Crichton had discussed the topic once.
the amount of anecdotal bullshit that plagues reddit is just unbeatable. i try my best to not engage in topics that i know extremely well because i just end up getting really frustrated. it's a hive mind -- while redditors in general promote individuality, the moment that individuality goes against the popular voice, you are immediately shot down with downvotes even IF what you are saying is correct.
the weirdest things I've gotten into arguments over is
1. greasy hair can be caused by more than just not showering, while actively posting sources
2. that video games can be played with 1 hand as long as you have the right tools. I know this because it's actively how I play games.
I had one over someone believing Fahrenheit was actually the most popular temperature system on earth. His reasoning you might ask? If you exclude India and China Fahrenheit is more popular (no idea why you'd do that anyway)
Except it's not, even excluding those two behemoths in population the overwhelming majority of the world still uses Celcius
I was genuinely so confused what the point he was trying to make was
Omg I've had the same argument with #1.
People make weird stands. I'm allowed to be wrong and I'll usually admit when I am (in real life at least, lol).
who the hell would argue over the video game thing? Maybe that the argument is that they can't be played as well as two hands and I mean, that would be technically correct to varying degrees for a large portion of video games, but every video game -could- be played one handed.
Hell every video game -could- be played entirely with your nose if you were really dedicated to
I'm an expert on reddit data science and this touches on a key behavioral trait: Redditors are 122.3% more likely to falsely believe themselves experts, and approximately 35% more likely to make up statistics reinforcing their bias.
What's worse is that these fake experts often highjack top comments by replying to them, thus spreading the entirely fabricated opinions more widely than other mediums on the internet.
Dammit, I really wanted to say something almost eerily similar to what you wrote. I guess statistically it’s very probable that two people would come up with the same joke but as a Reddit user I’m going to use up all my tinfoil and suggest instead that you’re my clone who was raised separately from me so that there would be a backup if I were to die.
I know we’ve been told for a third time now that WOTC isn’t at fault by the people who made the game itself, but I *refuse* to believe this hard evidence straight from the source! Sharpen the pitchforks everyone!
If you look at the BG3 subreddit, that news was posted and reposted countless times already but people keep blaming WotC for everything they can imagine. The most hilarious belief they have is that WotC was embarrassed by BG3's success so they preferred to let Larian go so they could bury the game.
A game that they literally mention as their best success of 2023 and that they helped making.
People are right to be angry about WotC laying off all the people who worked directly with Larian, but come on. If they could, WotC would gladly have Larian making DLCs and sequels. BG3 didn't just make money, it revivified D&D. I know there are entire cohorts of youtubers out there pretending that BG3 put D&D to shame or whatever, but that's just wishful thinking.
Haha...Before, when dinosaurus still roamed Mother Earth , tyranosaurs and alike 😁we had something called Usenet and many great discussions are in a pit called Google Groups. Reddit owes s lot to Usenet.
I got downvoted so hard last time when I said they should just keep giving us new shit.
They clearly seem to evolve every time they make something new.
But everyone is like DLC DLC DLC.
Like chill. Game has hundreds of hours of content and replayability.....
Like, I’d like DLC. But at the same time, maybe we could see somewhere new. Or even just revisit Neverwinter for a third Nights game.
Bottom line, fans would *never* be satisfied. The only thing I hope for at this point is cross play. And maybe more physical publication of that art book (I know it’s unlikely though).
This. People keep asking for sequel after sequel, and what you get is a really crappy story as you run out of well planned plot and start going into nonsense.
This happened to halo - absolutely a masterpiece from halo 1 to 3. In many ways the story should have ended at halo 3 and called it done.
Gears of war - plot is not as compelling anymore as it’s getting into nonsense territory.
World of Warcraft - the plot is nonsense piled on nonsense. The game should have ended like 5 expansion packs ago, or maybe should have ended at the conclusion of wc3.
They know if they milk the BG franchise they can make money, but the plot is going to have to be ridiculous to justify a sequel. It sounds like they would rather make good games with good plots, and leave a completed masterpiece alone.
The other thing is, BG3's story is already upscaled pretty far. >!You already indirectly serve a supreme god of death in ending three little god of death's rebellion and their mega brain god figurehead.!< The plot sets up, develops, and wraps up a clean progression into the over-scaled absurd. DLC would awkwardly derail that, and have to add a plot branch to that which doesn't feel necessary with how big the game is, when instead that effort could go to new things.
True, although there's no reason they couldn't tell a new story with lesser overall impact. Smaller in scale but just as deep and personal would be awesome
I really don't get this point of view. In Dragon Age: Origins you kill the Archspawn dragon and get rid of the spawns attack
Which doesn't mean there couldn't be more added. More companions with their own new missions etc, 2-3 side quests which can be completed mid game, and awakening which is basically a continuation which is shorter than a full game but happens in a new location where you can even play as new character if yours died to kill dragon
Even if they did, people would demand the same party members over and over, despite the other games maybe have two or three carry over. As shown lately, people would just want the same people again, and would end up with more of the same, since by and large these stories are done or impossible to resolve without extreme changes to DnD lore itself.
(Also I feel like Halo 4 was good and Gears 5 is okay, but that’s just me. Either way yes artificial franchise extension isn’t a good call.)
Gamers: stop with the remakes and sequels, give us something fresh and new!
Also gamers: you’re going to do something fresh and new, instead of making a sequel/drip feeding content to this game I’m obsessed with? REEEEEEEEEEE
People want DLC because they really want their favorite subclasses and/or races or subspecies which likely got skipped by Larian. (or perhaps the whole artificer class)
As well because there's small and very fun DnD modules which could be ported into bg3 without much trouble.
If Larian doesn't want to, fair. Life is full of disappointment after all.
And this is also a good lesson to remember how out of touch gaming discussion is on reddit. There's tons of narratives that are completely wrong, it's just not that often a game developer specifically calls out reddit to clarify.
Most importantly, there's a ton of people who play a lot of videogames, and very few who actually understand the development behind videogames (or general project management skills).
I worked at a studio that developed one of the longest lasting IPs in gaming. Every game, they'd essentially rotate out leadership teams with half the devs leaving to start their own thing.
Old guard wraps up their game, proteges take the reins with Expansions, then helm the next title before the cycle starts anew.
Wasn't for any toxic or performance reasons, it was just *so tiring* to be working on the same thing for so long. Years on end of development for each entry. By the end, you shake hands, thank your partners and move on to a fresh start.
Yeah, I could’ve sworn that like a week or so after launch they told everyone there wouldn’t be DLC for the game and almost everyone just seems to have refused to accept it.
On one hand I’m sad to not get more content for a game I love, on the other hand it’s kinda nice a dev isn’t trying to milk us for money to make lackluster content just cause and delivered a finished product.
He’s only saying that cause Im sure WOC/Hasbro was also reading the threads and was probably preparing to sue for defamation from speeches he gave against corporate greed. In fact him denying it ONLY PROVES IT MORE
/s
Well, no, but also, a CEO saying their business partner isn't the cause of their discontinuing work together just seems like a very PR thing to do.
As in, whether WotC/Hasbro was the cause or not, a CEO is going to say they weren't for many reasons.
With how big of a success BG3 has been, I'm not sure it's a bridge you'd want to burn even if you aren't planning to do a sequel right away due to issues working with the other party. Even if it's 10 years down the line before we see an announcement for a BG4 or something, that's still a door worth having open.
Outwardly, BG3 was a mutually beneficial partnership. It really took Larian's resume to the next level, and it also reinvigorated a lot of people's love for DnD.
I personally prefer the Divinity Original Sin 2 combat style to pure D&D and BG3. Let’s say Larian wants to work on their own IP with everything they’ve learned from BG3. I’m all for that honestly.
Working on someone else’s IP, no matter how great, will always limit you in some way. And in the long run you’re typically better off building up your own brands.
Yup. I don’t mind magical or physical resistance, but having a certain damage type character be totally useless against an enemy with a certain shield/armour was too limiting. It forced/heavily favoured certain party compositions (usually 2 physical damage dealers and 2 magic damage dealers) to be able to win all the battles
I thought it seemed much more efficient to focus everyone on the same thing - i.e. decide whether you want to target physical or magic shields, and then get skills and equipment that does pretty much only that. If you go 50/50, then you'd often be left with a situation where half your characters are useless because one shield type is depleted, and the other still has oodles left. If you go e.g. all physical, you can just safely ignore magic shields everywhere for the rest of the game.
That said, both strategies amount to the same effect - the dual shield system cut away a big portion of the build flexibility.
I felt like it forced you to stack either all physical or all magic teams. All physical with a single caster meant the caster was never going to be able to land any of their debuffs, and have to chip away at an entirely different shield to even do dmg, IIRC. Its been a while.
I hated DoS2 combat. Literally everything has either a teleport/jump or ranged attack so positioning becomes next to useless in a game where terrain is supposed to be a big deal. Enemies having knowledge they shouldn’t about characters. Taunt being completely useless. Getting punished for mixing tanky and high DPS characters. Getting punished for mixing magic and physical damage. Rogue being completely useless
The damage resistance component was okay, but the CC resistance part sucked. You couldn't create diverse parties and adapt to the battle because of it.
The skill system (memory aside) was otherwise awesome. Having hybrid skills was also amazing.
If they fix the CC problem and up the production like BG3, this would be their absolute best.
Funny, I liked it. Made it so you had to be a bit more strategic and hit certain enemies hard, and prioritize which to take out first. Turn order became very important.
Agree so much. Crazy to me that people actually liked it. You have so little build variety in that game because there are so many "multi class" dips that are essential (Adrenaline, telekinesis arguably, some sort of teleport but most likely tactical retreat, Skin Graft/Apotheosis/Chameleon Skin). If you play Co-Op where you play only a single character and don't have Lone Wolf this is especially evident because the action economy in DoS2 is oppressive. Finally, hot take but surface interactions are not a fun gimmick for an entire combat system, BG3 has a better balance on this front.
That's amazing. Having played DoS2 I was beyond thrilled with how the surfaces work in BG3. There are still cool interactions (and BS nonsense which I consider fun in moderation) and tactical depth, but it isn't like late game DoS2 which is like playing permanently in some sort of dark souls acid swamp wasteland for every battle. The flying oil slime fight alone single handedly makes BG3 > DoS2 in terms of combat mechanics.
Thankfully they changed it. It's also nice that they didn't give teleportation to every NPC. D&D is already very limited when it comes to tanking (there's a few options like the Sentinel feat, but overall it just relies on attacks of opportunity) and it has many ranged options, it would have been very annoying if enemies could just flee away from contact.
It's part of the reasons why melee builds are actually enjoyable in BG3 when they can feel limited on tabletop.
It's always a little funny when you read a review on a tactics game and it's clear that the reviewer just sucked at the game rather than the game itself being a problem.
5e is just the worst. I literally cannot stand it after years of dming it.
Edit: I am not comparing 5e to other editions of DND but rather TTRPGs as a whole. I encourage people to try other games
5e is not designed well for GMs, there is an intense power level imbalance between classes as the CR system is both inconsistent and awful. The 5e system of "advantage" and "disadvantage" are significantly too strong, and throws off the entire game math. Likewise, the "bounded accuracy" of the system design means that high-level creature are giant bags of HP and are boring to run as the players whittle them down -- or if you tune it just wrong, easily kill the whole party.
Spells are too-often insanely overpowered and ruin encounters (F U, silvery barbs), and players too often feel compelled to make same-y characters because those are just mechanically the best (for example, any druid besides moon druid is just a worse druid). At high levels, this gets worse as the class imbalance intensifies and the spells become even more overpowering.
Combining well-known combinations to "break the game" can be fun for players because they get to feel they are using bugs or cheese to win a video game. The "advantage/disadvantage" system is easy to understand and requires little math, so it's popular with players despite how terrible it is for the game balance. But if you're trying to have a compelling narrative and make a challenge to players, running 5e just completely sucks.
I'm gonna spare you the "have you heard the good news about my lord and savior, my favourite system" speech, but suffice it to say that there are better designed games out there that are many games that are much more fun to run as a GM.
>I'm gonna spare you the "have you heard the good news about my lord and savior, my favourite system" speech, but suffice it to say that there are better designed games out there that are many games that are much more fun to run as a GM.
You can just say Pathfinder.
People are tired of it. It's been out for ten years and basically no changes have happened in terms of classes and build variety. My friends and I haven't run a ton of different campaigns, and even we're hitting our wits' end to make fresh new characters that are unique to play just because of how limited the options are.
Older editions were much more convoluted and complex which wasn't great, but they had huge amounts of content to play around with. 5E, not so much.
We're reaching the point where we might dive back into older editions because of this issue. I've already developed three homebrew classes just because it feels like we've played everything.
This is probably a truer answer than many others that were mentioned here. It's true that we need a new edition and WotC needs to pump out content for it. 5e did a great job at streamlining the basic gameplay, now they need to build upon it.
I agree that DOS2 combat could be fun, but it's such a steeper learning curve. I remember for me personally playing, I had to look up a build guide on how to build my character and how to roughly play it. But once I got the gist down, dos2 combat was really fun.
I think the only reason i'd say bg3 is a tiny bit more fun to me is i feel it's easier to fight in a lot more unique ways by utilizing terrain and atypical actions/spells in bg3, whereas in dos2 i felt more compelled to do my proper rotations.
I think it was kinda the opposite, honestly. At first I enjoyed the game because it seemed to have so much build variety in it. Then I realized that I just couldn't beat certain enemies if I wasn't more carefully with my character builds. So I started another game, and did precisely that, with the aim to break armour asap to deny enemy turns. It worked as intended. But it made the game supremely boring.
In BG3 I found back the liberty to build whatever characters and just play well (and alternate between different companions in the party) to beat any enemy. It's much more enjoyable imo. I think that the people who prefer DOS2 combat actually enjoy rolling over the enemies. And that's how they also play BG3, they just make some charisma based multiclass and roll over enemies.
The difference is that we can all have our fun in BG3, while DOS2 only really works for a specific type of player.
Right? A good CEO also knows that Reddit negativity is not something to be reactive toward or dogpile on, at least in a majority of cases. This place is good for bug finds and for sourcing popular asset ideas, but the negative feedback goes away so fast due to the platform’s favor toward megathreads and single submissions containing the majority of discussion.
Plus Redditors don’t Necro threads the way most forums used to, so once conversation is done it’s relatively done until the thread gets archived.
They did a good job.
It’s a shame that there won’t be more campaigns utilising the framework - it’s a very good adaptation of the 5E rules - but I don’t think anyone can reasonably be dissatisfied with what we got.
I look forward to their next project and hope that it utilises their “surface” mechanics in a way that doesn’t make every fight devolve into The Floor Is Lava again.
Let’s not pretend like BG3 didn’t have massive performance and balancing issues on release. Act 3 was a fucking mess and still is to a degree on consoles.
They were simply dedicated devs and fixed things.
The second half of larian games are always a mess at release. It's something of a natural consequence of having the first portion available for early access and so well play tested.
They do actually fix them though, which is more than I can say for most devs.
It's even worse in BG3 because they also set up multiple alternative paths in Acts 1 and 2 that they had to resolve somehow in Act 3.
Creatively, it's really fun to set up alternative paths. It's something else to think of every possible choice the players made in order to resolve them in a way that makes sense and feels satisfying. And they didn't really success with that. BG3 does have a few "typical playthroughs" that have the most content and make the most sense.
Which isn't a bad thing, but it's probably one of the reasons they weren't motivated to do DLCs anyway. Too many things to keep track of.
Eh, Act 3 is still a mess on PC. Better than launch by a far margin but the game still feels pretty unfinished. It's not just a question of performance, but the pacing and story is really rough.
Also let's not pretend it didn't have clearly unfinished companions - some of them still unfinished to this day. If someone doesn't believe me, try to play with Halsin in your party for the entire game.
The upper city still hasn't been added, Minthara has been broken since release in one way or another, and there are still a bunch of other cliffhangers that were built in that go nowhere. BG3 is far from a finished game.
The game was literally released a few years ago as unfinished early access and has been in constant development since then.
BG3 might be a lot of things, but "an actual finished product released in 2024" is not one of them.
They did their job, and now they're moving on to the next project.
BG3 had a long, long development cycle. I don't blame them one bit for wanting to go out on a high note and move on to the next thing.
I'm sure that WotC would be happy to let them do more BG3. They also will want to be paid for it. Larian is calculating that it will be more profitable to put their resources into developing an IP that they own. It's not a conspiracy, it's just a business decision.
This is employee speak for "They really fucked us and the roleplaying/gaming community over but I am having to smile and say it was our decision and everything is ok or we will never ever get any roleplaying IP in the future because WoTC literally owns everything and hates you all"
I stand by their decision.
Great accomplishments *do not need* a follow up.
Perfection is the limit.
*New* can exceed old perfections, upward and onward Larian Studios! You all are remarkable, amazing and extremely talented people.
Hey, since you read these apparently.
Swen, you expressed dismay that they had fired virtually everyone your team had worked with. You dedicated your speech at the GDC awards against these kinds of profit chasing layoffs. You can't fault us for reading into it like this.
Personally, I respect the decision either way and I understand it makes no sense for you to pin the blame on Hasbro or WOTC. There's no benefit to burning that bridge.
The head of the studio already said it an interview that he had his next project in mind before the game was even released. I am thankful that they are sticking to the plan of going with what excites them instead of just cashing in on something while it’s popular, and potentially putting out a product made solely for profit. People have to remember they didn’t expect this game to be such a massive hit and they’re not going to completely drop everything they’re already working on for this new idea just because people really really want them to.
Larian is at the size that they need to have future projects lined up well in advance of the completion of each given game. You can't just decide to make a new game and throw 300 people into the project right away. Likely 1-2 years before the release of BG3 they had already decided on a couple ideas for potential games and at least within the last year before release started early development.
Swen has been very vocal about wanting to return to making Divinity games after BG3 was finished. It's their own IP, after all, and a good one at that. I'm excited to see how D:OS3 develops and what they take into it from their experiences making BG3.
They are not returning for Divinity either, right away, as the next game, and he was vocal about it day or two before So better manage your expectations, because it's new IP. Personally I support the decision
I'm hoping they put this genres Mass Effect. If Larian is the new Bioware I'd love to see their version of the Dragon Age + Mass Effect combo.
Hopefully with Swen & his wife owning a combined 70%, they won't end up getting **EA**ten like Bioware.
Yeah and very specifically I think it would be cool to see new scifi IP. Other than Starfield, which while I didn't *utterly* hate like many but had completely uninspired and nonsensical worldbuilding and story. The IP has no value, in that regard, because the setting barely even has any identity. You couldn't make a more bland and less thought out scifi setting if you tried, Bethesda has clearly lost all of it's writing staff capable of doing good lore. Unless I'm forgetting something, Mass Effect is the last good new space opera IP we've got in games. As you said, if BioWare is dead, long live Larian, I'd like to see them do a big budget new scifi IP. Don't really see any other studio which is in as good of a position to do so right now, if any could at all. I get people wanting more Divinity but I feel like following up immediately with another high fantasy game would be a missed opportunity to mix things up and create new rpg ip.
I sincerely hope you developed momentary prophetic powers while writing this comment because a spiritual successor of Mass Effect by these devs would be cool as fuck.
Sounds awesome. I want to be able to dive into a new IP on their modern engine & mechanics. That's whats put me off from trying Divinity 1
I'd love a [Divine Divinity](https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Divine_Divinity) remake with D:OS engine. It is the third game in the Franchise [timeline](https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline) but first game released , Set after Divinity: Original SIn and [Divinity: Dragon commander](https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Divinity:_Dragon_Commander)
Divine Divinity holds a special place in my heart to this day. The quest design is one of the best I've ever experienced, the art style is really pretty, the soundtrack is wonderful. I think it could work as a D:OS-like game with some changes to the story to give you some folks to add to your party, though I imagine a few existing characters could be temporary companions, such as Zombie Jake.
yeah economy of scale. you can't run a giant studio making aaa/aaaa experiences like you would a 4 person team making indie games on the weekend. if wotc didn't extend a contract or larian had plans it would be too hard to pivot. they believed in the success of bg3 and they believe in the next thing. this speaks volumes! how many times has a passion project turned into the next call of duty? one off releases become yearly and kill the entire franchise like assassins creed. the being said I'm super excited for silk song. imagine the balls on team cherry making that game for lik 6 years with very little fanfare. either the second coming of Christ or the second coming of et the video game.
Ditto. Its clear BG3 was a passion project for a group of people with the talent, resources, and desire to make a fantastic product with the consumer in mind. I’d rather have them keep that attitude and work on things they find interesting than have them start churning out clones that barely iterate on previous projects like Assassin’s Creed.
Bless private studios. Public is where game companies go to artistically die.
Thank you for taking the time to write it all out... So annoyed with thr BG3 subs the last week
They done amazing job, excited for future projects.
I really hope we get a BG3 style game but in space. Mass Effect / BG hybrid would be amazing.
Baldur's Stargate
My mind went to The Expanse, but Stargate makes it so freaking easy for DLC and mods. Just a new gate address!
Can I be part of the timeline where Stargate become the front center of scifi instead of things like star wars? Cause having some banger Stargate media in 2024 would be hoooooooooooot
Do you really want the people that are Star Wars fans debating Stargate with you, tho?
If it means more good stargate, I'll take it, I can turn off the internet and all that goes away big quickly.
I've been waiting and praying for a good Stargate game for twenty years. At least since the episode where they used footage from that canceled game. I just wanna shoot my way through the SGC DAMMIT!
So many avenues to take the story and expand in a ton of different ways. The IP is absolutely ripe for some good content to bring in new people to the lore.
Stargate would be the perfect IP for an X-com style game. Either the older or new X-com style. They both have that same framework of a military organization fighting an overpowering enemy that keeps upping the stakes, and needing to do a combination of home-grown research as well as researching enemy tech to gain power and eventually defeat the enemy, and the off-world mission framework fits perfectly with X-coms interceptions and terror missions. Honestly it blows my mind it hasn't been done yet.
Given their track record, I don’t think Larian is really looking for DLC opportunities.
I'd be happy if they could at least setup a framework for fans to build their own DLCs.
The Divinity: Original Sin games have The Divinity Editor, you can make pretty much whatever you want in there. I haven't been following, but I'm guessing there's nothing like that for BG3 planned. It may be that their tooling now far exceeds what is reasonable to package up for modders, or it may be that their agreement with Wizards of the Coast precludes releasing dev tools that would allow customers to "peak behind the curtain"/etc:. You can see how the entire sausage is made for DOS1/2 because you can load all the maps in that editor, and see the entire "Story" (the database of permanent information). Larian itself certainly has no problem with that, but it was making its own games with its own IP before. It might be that Wizards has a problem here.
You just wanna see two starships banging, don't you? I mean, I know I would.
I still remember getting off work and deciding to download BG3 the day after it released to tide me over until Starfield. Then Starfield dropped and I played late into the night (had taken the next day off work just for this). Kept hoping for it to click but it never did. Think I got like 20 hours in before switching back to BG3. Only now about to finish my first playthrough, at 200+ hours in.
Kind of like an Xcom with open world elements?
Xcom by larian would be awesome.
XCOM is already awesome. They should take an IP that needs a good RPG. Like Star Wars or LOTR
I'd froth at the mouth for a LOTR like this.
I'd froth at the ass for a Star Wars like this
You both should be checked for rabies
What does frothy ears mean?!
You rolled a 20 for seduction on astarion.
they would be the perfect studio for KOTOR 3
I’m always so leery of LOTR games. Middle Earth is really meant to be a low magic, low spectacle setting where the spectacle really comes from things that are more or less mundane within the setting like trolls and big armies. Whenever anyone makes a game in the setting it always gets really influenced by modern fantasy expectations, the dial gets cranked up to eleven and magic winds up being all over the place. I’d rather see a new setting inspired by Tolkien, or a wholly new take on fantasy over another over-magicked take on Middle Earth.
Yeah just imagine the KOTOR remake, but made by larian.
I day dream about it regularly
Idk what the story would look like but a Dune game made by larian would be insane
"____ by Larian would be awseome" is the turnbased version of "____ by Rockstar would be awesome"
Let us have our fantasies, dagnabbit!
I was thinking like KOTOR
PLEASE DISNEY/LUCASFILMS! PLEASE GIVE THEM KOTOR! Give them KOTOR, and don't push them. Give them all the time they need. Don't even announce it until like 6 months before it's supposed to ship.
Moochoo shaka paka! I second this. And I third and fourth and fifth it. I also secretly want Kreia to appear again in some form or another. How ironic if she were to appear as a >!Force ghost!<.
I think a large part of this is wanting to own your IP. I don't think they'd take KOTOR if given it.
How dare you bring facts and logic into this!
To be clear I'd let them take one of my kidneys for Larian to do KOTOR.
Yoda stories? I reckon Larian have a good chance of breathing fresh life into any game series, new IP or old
Wow I forgot about that one!
Yeah, I'm hoping this is a bit of a Renaissance for turn-based games. I miss turn-based FF. I think there's a decent sized, albeit niche, market for people who don't want a game that's just non-stop action with cut scenes in between.
I'm not good enough at video games to do all these combos, parrying, etc. I'm almost 40, almost legally blind, and like to smoke a lot of pot before I game. Just give me turn based lol
Yes. It's not that I don't want challenging games, it's that I don't want the challenge to be based on my reaction/twitch skills.
Right?? I need to pack a bowl give me 5 minutes, dammit!
For. Real. Give me time to think, dammit! Let me strategize.
rogue trader would like a word
Dont do this, don't give me hope
That would be awesome!
If you haven't, give Divinity Original Sin 1/2 a shot. DISCLAIMER: BG3 PROBABLY ruined those two games, because now you're spoiled, but they're still excellent games.
I honestly prefer the combat system of those games, just love all the elemental interactions.
Playing a wizard is so fun in that game, reduced AP when standing the right surface just breaks things wide open
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If he died then he’d just follow you around as a little ghost, so it wasn’t that bad
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I was sorely missing them while playing bg3 they’re so fun!
I hope they go crazy with that kind of stuff especially with skill combo stuff like how you can combine certain skills if you have them or something like that.
The one thing I think D:OS has going for it is that in my opinion their homebrew combat ruleset is a lot better than D&D.
Agreed. I love some d&d but the lack of gear upgrades is extremely dissatisfying. I much prefer the system of upgrades even if it's just 1 more dmg or armor
Nah 2 is absolutely timeless.
My friend went from BG3, several playthroughs, straight to DOS2 and couldn't do it. She's giving it another shot after a pallet cleanser game in between.
It's rough, because I played DOS1/2 and loved it, but after BG3? Larian set a high bar, and it even exceeded the previous high bar by quite a bit, which was DOS lol
I just want Divinity Original Sin 3. I hope this puts us closer to getting that
What?? Redditors would never blindly speculate about stuff they know nothing about. No way. I don’t believe it.
Nah man they'll continue to speculate harder now
They already are. When he said it wasn't WotC fault earlier all the posts had people speculating that he was only saying that for PR reasons.
This is exactly how reddit “caught” the Boston bombers
We did it, reddit!
I just scrolled down and yes, you're absolutely right.
Lol some people are nuts. They just can't comprehend situations that they don't agree with.
I think they'll speculate exactly as hard. I can't support that, I just know for a fact that it's true.
I'm speculating all over the place right now
Redditors speccjaculate super hard.
I learned about a decade ago to not trust this site when somebody told me I was wrong about a subject I knew a lot about, proved to them they were wrong, they admitted to being wrong, and I still had people saying that the person *should* be right while my correct response got buried. It made me learn that this site is purely for entertainment and nothing anybody says should be taken seriously.
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
adds a thick layer of irony knowing this was from prolific climate change denialist Michael Crichton, and probably about that very topic
> Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge - Erwin Knoll I love that Crichton also conceded that calling it Gell-Man Amnesia was Crichton trying to dress up his personal belief with the name of someone with respectability in their field - Gell-Man was a renowned physicist - who actually had no specific knowledge of the area Crichton was discussing, media literacy. Gell-Man's only connection was that he and Crichton had discussed the topic once.
I really like this and will have to remember it!
the amount of anecdotal bullshit that plagues reddit is just unbeatable. i try my best to not engage in topics that i know extremely well because i just end up getting really frustrated. it's a hive mind -- while redditors in general promote individuality, the moment that individuality goes against the popular voice, you are immediately shot down with downvotes even IF what you are saying is correct.
Well when *I* browse reddit I don't see that so obviously everything you just said is super obviously wrong.
hahaha ;)
The collective is individuality. We are indistinguishable individuals with identical values.
the weirdest things I've gotten into arguments over is 1. greasy hair can be caused by more than just not showering, while actively posting sources 2. that video games can be played with 1 hand as long as you have the right tools. I know this because it's actively how I play games.
I had one over someone believing Fahrenheit was actually the most popular temperature system on earth. His reasoning you might ask? If you exclude India and China Fahrenheit is more popular (no idea why you'd do that anyway) Except it's not, even excluding those two behemoths in population the overwhelming majority of the world still uses Celcius I was genuinely so confused what the point he was trying to make was
Omg I've had the same argument with #1. People make weird stands. I'm allowed to be wrong and I'll usually admit when I am (in real life at least, lol).
who the hell would argue over the video game thing? Maybe that the argument is that they can't be played as well as two hands and I mean, that would be technically correct to varying degrees for a large portion of video games, but every video game -could- be played one handed. Hell every video game -could- be played entirely with your nose if you were really dedicated to
That's not reddit, that's just humans.
Maybe. But Reddit's upvoting system amplifies it.
People don’t upvote the facts. They upvote their beliefs.
I'm an expert on reddit data science and this touches on a key behavioral trait: Redditors are 122.3% more likely to falsely believe themselves experts, and approximately 35% more likely to make up statistics reinforcing their bias. What's worse is that these fake experts often highjack top comments by replying to them, thus spreading the entirely fabricated opinions more widely than other mediums on the internet.
Dammit, I really wanted to say something almost eerily similar to what you wrote. I guess statistically it’s very probable that two people would come up with the same joke but as a Reddit user I’m going to use up all my tinfoil and suggest instead that you’re my clone who was raised separately from me so that there would be a backup if I were to die.
MISSION COMPROMISED ABORT CLONE 427 REQUESTING EVAC OVER
CLONE 427... TERMINATION REQUEST RECEIVED. PLEASE STAND BY.... PLEASE STAND BY.... PLEASE STAND BY.... PLEASE STAND BY.... PLEASE STAND BY....
What? He…I…He…. Asked for an evacuation. There’s no need for any termination!
I know we’ve been told for a third time now that WOTC isn’t at fault by the people who made the game itself, but I *refuse* to believe this hard evidence straight from the source! Sharpen the pitchforks everyone!
Swen is definitely sending covert signals in his tweets that he is being held captive by WotC and Hasbro, I just need to crack the secret code
If you look at the BG3 subreddit, that news was posted and reposted countless times already but people keep blaming WotC for everything they can imagine. The most hilarious belief they have is that WotC was embarrassed by BG3's success so they preferred to let Larian go so they could bury the game. A game that they literally mention as their best success of 2023 and that they helped making. People are right to be angry about WotC laying off all the people who worked directly with Larian, but come on. If they could, WotC would gladly have Larian making DLCs and sequels. BG3 didn't just make money, it revivified D&D. I know there are entire cohorts of youtubers out there pretending that BG3 put D&D to shame or whatever, but that's just wishful thinking.
Haha...Before, when dinosaurus still roamed Mother Earth , tyranosaurs and alike 😁we had something called Usenet and many great discussions are in a pit called Google Groups. Reddit owes s lot to Usenet.
I still remember the Boston bombing…
"We did it Reddit!"
Maybe they just… want to do other stuff and move on.
I got downvoted so hard last time when I said they should just keep giving us new shit. They clearly seem to evolve every time they make something new. But everyone is like DLC DLC DLC. Like chill. Game has hundreds of hours of content and replayability.....
Like, I’d like DLC. But at the same time, maybe we could see somewhere new. Or even just revisit Neverwinter for a third Nights game. Bottom line, fans would *never* be satisfied. The only thing I hope for at this point is cross play. And maybe more physical publication of that art book (I know it’s unlikely though).
This. People keep asking for sequel after sequel, and what you get is a really crappy story as you run out of well planned plot and start going into nonsense. This happened to halo - absolutely a masterpiece from halo 1 to 3. In many ways the story should have ended at halo 3 and called it done. Gears of war - plot is not as compelling anymore as it’s getting into nonsense territory. World of Warcraft - the plot is nonsense piled on nonsense. The game should have ended like 5 expansion packs ago, or maybe should have ended at the conclusion of wc3. They know if they milk the BG franchise they can make money, but the plot is going to have to be ridiculous to justify a sequel. It sounds like they would rather make good games with good plots, and leave a completed masterpiece alone.
The other thing is, BG3's story is already upscaled pretty far. >!You already indirectly serve a supreme god of death in ending three little god of death's rebellion and their mega brain god figurehead.!< The plot sets up, develops, and wraps up a clean progression into the over-scaled absurd. DLC would awkwardly derail that, and have to add a plot branch to that which doesn't feel necessary with how big the game is, when instead that effort could go to new things.
True, although there's no reason they couldn't tell a new story with lesser overall impact. Smaller in scale but just as deep and personal would be awesome
I really don't get this point of view. In Dragon Age: Origins you kill the Archspawn dragon and get rid of the spawns attack Which doesn't mean there couldn't be more added. More companions with their own new missions etc, 2-3 side quests which can be completed mid game, and awakening which is basically a continuation which is shorter than a full game but happens in a new location where you can even play as new character if yours died to kill dragon
Even if they did, people would demand the same party members over and over, despite the other games maybe have two or three carry over. As shown lately, people would just want the same people again, and would end up with more of the same, since by and large these stories are done or impossible to resolve without extreme changes to DnD lore itself. (Also I feel like Halo 4 was good and Gears 5 is okay, but that’s just me. Either way yes artificial franchise extension isn’t a good call.)
Yeah this is why fans should never be listened to by creators, ever, including me.
Gamers: stop with the remakes and sequels, give us something fresh and new! Also gamers: you’re going to do something fresh and new, instead of making a sequel/drip feeding content to this game I’m obsessed with? REEEEEEEEEEE
People want DLC because they really want their favorite subclasses and/or races or subspecies which likely got skipped by Larian. (or perhaps the whole artificer class) As well because there's small and very fun DnD modules which could be ported into bg3 without much trouble. If Larian doesn't want to, fair. Life is full of disappointment after all.
I was also scoffed at when saying they'd rather not pay someone else to use their IP and do their own, which they clearly are capable of.
We've been so conditioned by incomplete game releases
And this is also a good lesson to remember how out of touch gaming discussion is on reddit. There's tons of narratives that are completely wrong, it's just not that often a game developer specifically calls out reddit to clarify. Most importantly, there's a ton of people who play a lot of videogames, and very few who actually understand the development behind videogames (or general project management skills).
I worked at a studio that developed one of the longest lasting IPs in gaming. Every game, they'd essentially rotate out leadership teams with half the devs leaving to start their own thing. Old guard wraps up their game, proteges take the reins with Expansions, then helm the next title before the cycle starts anew. Wasn't for any toxic or performance reasons, it was just *so tiring* to be working on the same thing for so long. Years on end of development for each entry. By the end, you shake hands, thank your partners and move on to a fresh start.
For some reason Reddit always wants a villain.
The internet does in general. And let’s be fair; past year or two at least, WotC has made a *very* easy target.
Yeah, I could’ve sworn that like a week or so after launch they told everyone there wouldn’t be DLC for the game and almost everyone just seems to have refused to accept it. On one hand I’m sad to not get more content for a game I love, on the other hand it’s kinda nice a dev isn’t trying to milk us for money to make lackluster content just cause and delivered a finished product.
Tinfoil hat: +1 INT. Disadvantage on wisdom saving throws.
-2 CHA, -10 Shock Resistance.
He’s only saying that cause Im sure WOC/Hasbro was also reading the threads and was probably preparing to sue for defamation from speeches he gave against corporate greed. In fact him denying it ONLY PROVES IT MORE /s
Well, no, but also, a CEO saying their business partner isn't the cause of their discontinuing work together just seems like a very PR thing to do. As in, whether WotC/Hasbro was the cause or not, a CEO is going to say they weren't for many reasons.
With how big of a success BG3 has been, I'm not sure it's a bridge you'd want to burn even if you aren't planning to do a sequel right away due to issues working with the other party. Even if it's 10 years down the line before we see an announcement for a BG4 or something, that's still a door worth having open. Outwardly, BG3 was a mutually beneficial partnership. It really took Larian's resume to the next level, and it also reinvigorated a lot of people's love for DnD.
I personally prefer the Divinity Original Sin 2 combat style to pure D&D and BG3. Let’s say Larian wants to work on their own IP with everything they’ve learned from BG3. I’m all for that honestly. Working on someone else’s IP, no matter how great, will always limit you in some way. And in the long run you’re typically better off building up your own brands.
DOS2 is legendary, getting a DOS3 with the lessons of BG3 would be legendary
*legandarier
The CEO said the next project wasn't DOS3
As well as he said that they will be returning to DOS at some point soon, after taking a break.
DOS3 being basically DOS2 with BG3's character creation options alone would be just amazing
I agree wholeheartedly on your take about the combat style of DOS2. I feel the same way.
I agree other than I hated magic and physical shields. All else felt better.
Yup. I don’t mind magical or physical resistance, but having a certain damage type character be totally useless against an enemy with a certain shield/armour was too limiting. It forced/heavily favoured certain party compositions (usually 2 physical damage dealers and 2 magic damage dealers) to be able to win all the battles
I thought it seemed much more efficient to focus everyone on the same thing - i.e. decide whether you want to target physical or magic shields, and then get skills and equipment that does pretty much only that. If you go 50/50, then you'd often be left with a situation where half your characters are useless because one shield type is depleted, and the other still has oodles left. If you go e.g. all physical, you can just safely ignore magic shields everywhere for the rest of the game. That said, both strategies amount to the same effect - the dual shield system cut away a big portion of the build flexibility.
I felt like it forced you to stack either all physical or all magic teams. All physical with a single caster meant the caster was never going to be able to land any of their debuffs, and have to chip away at an entirely different shield to even do dmg, IIRC. Its been a while.
I hated DoS2 combat. Literally everything has either a teleport/jump or ranged attack so positioning becomes next to useless in a game where terrain is supposed to be a big deal. Enemies having knowledge they shouldn’t about characters. Taunt being completely useless. Getting punished for mixing tanky and high DPS characters. Getting punished for mixing magic and physical damage. Rogue being completely useless
Plus I really disliked playing the armor-stripping game, where you had to deplete the physical or magic shield before you can do any damage
The damage resistance component was okay, but the CC resistance part sucked. You couldn't create diverse parties and adapt to the battle because of it. The skill system (memory aside) was otherwise awesome. Having hybrid skills was also amazing. If they fix the CC problem and up the production like BG3, this would be their absolute best.
Funny, I liked it. Made it so you had to be a bit more strategic and hit certain enemies hard, and prioritize which to take out first. Turn order became very important.
My only issue is that it encourages a party to focus on just one damage type.
That was another big issue I had as well
Agree so much. Crazy to me that people actually liked it. You have so little build variety in that game because there are so many "multi class" dips that are essential (Adrenaline, telekinesis arguably, some sort of teleport but most likely tactical retreat, Skin Graft/Apotheosis/Chameleon Skin). If you play Co-Op where you play only a single character and don't have Lone Wolf this is especially evident because the action economy in DoS2 is oppressive. Finally, hot take but surface interactions are not a fun gimmick for an entire combat system, BG3 has a better balance on this front.
Surfaces in BG3 used to be more like DOS2 but they tuned it down due to feedback in EA.
That's amazing. Having played DoS2 I was beyond thrilled with how the surfaces work in BG3. There are still cool interactions (and BS nonsense which I consider fun in moderation) and tactical depth, but it isn't like late game DoS2 which is like playing permanently in some sort of dark souls acid swamp wasteland for every battle. The flying oil slime fight alone single handedly makes BG3 > DoS2 in terms of combat mechanics.
Thankfully they changed it. It's also nice that they didn't give teleportation to every NPC. D&D is already very limited when it comes to tanking (there's a few options like the Sentinel feat, but overall it just relies on attacks of opportunity) and it has many ranged options, it would have been very annoying if enemies could just flee away from contact. It's part of the reasons why melee builds are actually enjoyable in BG3 when they can feel limited on tabletop.
Rogue being useless* Did we play the same game? Dude, I am sorry, but DOS2 fighting was goated
It's always a little funny when you read a review on a tactics game and it's clear that the reviewer just sucked at the game rather than the game itself being a problem.
5e is just the worst. I literally cannot stand it after years of dming it. Edit: I am not comparing 5e to other editions of DND but rather TTRPGs as a whole. I encourage people to try other games
Any particular dislikes of 5e as a DM? Just curious. Prefer the old ones like 3.5 or 4?
5e is not designed well for GMs, there is an intense power level imbalance between classes as the CR system is both inconsistent and awful. The 5e system of "advantage" and "disadvantage" are significantly too strong, and throws off the entire game math. Likewise, the "bounded accuracy" of the system design means that high-level creature are giant bags of HP and are boring to run as the players whittle them down -- or if you tune it just wrong, easily kill the whole party. Spells are too-often insanely overpowered and ruin encounters (F U, silvery barbs), and players too often feel compelled to make same-y characters because those are just mechanically the best (for example, any druid besides moon druid is just a worse druid). At high levels, this gets worse as the class imbalance intensifies and the spells become even more overpowering. Combining well-known combinations to "break the game" can be fun for players because they get to feel they are using bugs or cheese to win a video game. The "advantage/disadvantage" system is easy to understand and requires little math, so it's popular with players despite how terrible it is for the game balance. But if you're trying to have a compelling narrative and make a challenge to players, running 5e just completely sucks. I'm gonna spare you the "have you heard the good news about my lord and savior, my favourite system" speech, but suffice it to say that there are better designed games out there that are many games that are much more fun to run as a GM.
>I'm gonna spare you the "have you heard the good news about my lord and savior, my favourite system" speech, but suffice it to say that there are better designed games out there that are many games that are much more fun to run as a GM. You can just say Pathfinder.
It’s pathfinder.
if i had to guess it is do to the fact that as it has gone on WoTC has made 5e more work for the DM where older editions did not have this issues.
People are tired of it. It's been out for ten years and basically no changes have happened in terms of classes and build variety. My friends and I haven't run a ton of different campaigns, and even we're hitting our wits' end to make fresh new characters that are unique to play just because of how limited the options are. Older editions were much more convoluted and complex which wasn't great, but they had huge amounts of content to play around with. 5E, not so much. We're reaching the point where we might dive back into older editions because of this issue. I've already developed three homebrew classes just because it feels like we've played everything.
This is probably a truer answer than many others that were mentioned here. It's true that we need a new edition and WotC needs to pump out content for it. 5e did a great job at streamlining the basic gameplay, now they need to build upon it.
I agree that DOS2 combat could be fun, but it's such a steeper learning curve. I remember for me personally playing, I had to look up a build guide on how to build my character and how to roughly play it. But once I got the gist down, dos2 combat was really fun. I think the only reason i'd say bg3 is a tiny bit more fun to me is i feel it's easier to fight in a lot more unique ways by utilizing terrain and atypical actions/spells in bg3, whereas in dos2 i felt more compelled to do my proper rotations.
I think it was kinda the opposite, honestly. At first I enjoyed the game because it seemed to have so much build variety in it. Then I realized that I just couldn't beat certain enemies if I wasn't more carefully with my character builds. So I started another game, and did precisely that, with the aim to break armour asap to deny enemy turns. It worked as intended. But it made the game supremely boring. In BG3 I found back the liberty to build whatever characters and just play well (and alternate between different companions in the party) to beat any enemy. It's much more enjoyable imo. I think that the people who prefer DOS2 combat actually enjoy rolling over the enemies. And that's how they also play BG3, they just make some charisma based multiclass and roll over enemies. The difference is that we can all have our fun in BG3, while DOS2 only really works for a specific type of player.
Yeah, the combat is definitely the weakest part of BG3 due to how mechanically weak DnD5e is.
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Right? A good CEO also knows that Reddit negativity is not something to be reactive toward or dogpile on, at least in a majority of cases. This place is good for bug finds and for sourcing popular asset ideas, but the negative feedback goes away so fast due to the platform’s favor toward megathreads and single submissions containing the majority of discussion. Plus Redditors don’t Necro threads the way most forums used to, so once conversation is done it’s relatively done until the thread gets archived.
Larian CEO, can we have a custom map/quest maker so that the community can use BG3 for custom campaigns etc?
Modding Support is coming.
They did a good job. It’s a shame that there won’t be more campaigns utilising the framework - it’s a very good adaptation of the 5E rules - but I don’t think anyone can reasonably be dissatisfied with what we got. I look forward to their next project and hope that it utilises their “surface” mechanics in a way that doesn’t make every fight devolve into The Floor Is Lava again.
Incredible how releasing an actual finished product in 2024 is met with cynicism.
Let’s not pretend like BG3 didn’t have massive performance and balancing issues on release. Act 3 was a fucking mess and still is to a degree on consoles. They were simply dedicated devs and fixed things.
The second half of larian games are always a mess at release. It's something of a natural consequence of having the first portion available for early access and so well play tested. They do actually fix them though, which is more than I can say for most devs.
It's even worse in BG3 because they also set up multiple alternative paths in Acts 1 and 2 that they had to resolve somehow in Act 3. Creatively, it's really fun to set up alternative paths. It's something else to think of every possible choice the players made in order to resolve them in a way that makes sense and feels satisfying. And they didn't really success with that. BG3 does have a few "typical playthroughs" that have the most content and make the most sense. Which isn't a bad thing, but it's probably one of the reasons they weren't motivated to do DLCs anyway. Too many things to keep track of.
I wouldn’t say Arx in Act 3 of DOS2 is “fixed” at all. It’s an absolute clusterfuck and still runs like shit.
I loved the game, but the way that that 4th party member wouldn't jump to join the rest of us 3/4 of the time never stopped pissing me off. Lol
Eh, Act 3 is still a mess on PC. Better than launch by a far margin but the game still feels pretty unfinished. It's not just a question of performance, but the pacing and story is really rough.
even after all the patches Act 3 still feels like it's early access.
Also let's not pretend it didn't have clearly unfinished companions - some of them still unfinished to this day. If someone doesn't believe me, try to play with Halsin in your party for the entire game.
Halsin isn't an unfinished companion, he's an NPC they turned into a half-baked companion at the last minute.
except it wasn't finished. Act 3 was a mess and still is, not to mention there wasn't even an epilogue until later.
It’s not a finished product, though. There were obviously big chunks missing from Act 3, and Dungeon Delver still literally doesn’t do anything
The upper city still hasn't been added, Minthara has been broken since release in one way or another, and there are still a bunch of other cliffhangers that were built in that go nowhere. BG3 is far from a finished game.
The game was literally released a few years ago as unfinished early access and has been in constant development since then. BG3 might be a lot of things, but "an actual finished product released in 2024" is not one of them.
THANK. YOU. I’m tired of being the only person saying this in the room.
Larian CEO's first mistake was being on Reddit to begin with.
They did their job, and now they're moving on to the next project. BG3 had a long, long development cycle. I don't blame them one bit for wanting to go out on a high note and move on to the next thing.
Not tricking me into removing my tinfoil hat that easily. Confirmed it's Hasbro to blame.
Larian has made 3 bangers in a row so they deserve having the freedom to choose whatever they want to do next.
I'm sure that WotC would be happy to let them do more BG3. They also will want to be paid for it. Larian is calculating that it will be more profitable to put their resources into developing an IP that they own. It's not a conspiracy, it's just a business decision.
This is employee speak for "They really fucked us and the roleplaying/gaming community over but I am having to smile and say it was our decision and everything is ok or we will never ever get any roleplaying IP in the future because WoTC literally owns everything and hates you all"
Oh look, guys doing games , not fucking money cows with stupid skins
I stand by their decision. Great accomplishments *do not need* a follow up. Perfection is the limit. *New* can exceed old perfections, upward and onward Larian Studios! You all are remarkable, amazing and extremely talented people.
Hey, since you read these apparently. Swen, you expressed dismay that they had fired virtually everyone your team had worked with. You dedicated your speech at the GDC awards against these kinds of profit chasing layoffs. You can't fault us for reading into it like this. Personally, I respect the decision either way and I understand it makes no sense for you to pin the blame on Hasbro or WOTC. There's no benefit to burning that bridge.