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‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K
- redbell 3y agohttps://archive.ph/TbzGM https://archive.ph/TbzGM
- leshenka 3y agoOh it's okay, it's a single-player game, it's not that you need any server capacity for that. Other than download servers but it's Steam's problem, not publisher's. ...right?
- jncfhnb 3y agoIt’s also multiplayer coop but I assume this is P2P
- meltyness 3y agokind of like how disk shouldn't be a bottleneck for framerate, but, you know... how we forget.
- alasdair_ 3y agoBG3 even has an explicit “slow hd” toggle in the options to help mitigate this issue.
- mastax 3y agoThey have a cross platform save sync service which has been disabled, but it sounds like that wasn't load related. I'm not sure how big the save games are but 700k people mashing the quick save button every 30 seconds probably adds up.
- jakebasile 3y agoI have a total of about 75 saves: quick and auto saves are limited to a rolling 25 by default, plus about 25 manual saves. Steam shows I have used 795 MB of space, so they're not _big_ but they're not small.
- _cenw 3y agoThey are a pain. I'm 9 hours in and at 1/17GB in Steam Cloud. I've been going between my Mac and an ROG Ally and syncing saves takes upward of 3-4 minutes and sometimes just fails silently (loudly if you launch the game, but still fails). Steam is definitely not built for that, considering that piece of the user interface barely gives any feedback.
- nickthegreek 3y agoIve stopped playing on my Ally and only play on Geforce Now as I encountered a save issue that woulda lost over 7hours of play.
- ragestorm 3y agoIt might be related to multiplayer or that one had to redownload the game. The EA was so different, you had to uninstall and then install when it unlocked globally. No preload available.
- barbazoo 3y agoIt has a multiplayer mode https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-multiplayer-co-op-guide/ https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-multiplayer-co-op-gui...
- cube2222 3y agoYou 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!
- jdright 3y agoYou 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.
- account42 3y agoIt's not a fact of life, just people with low morals making excuses.
- wilde 3y agoCan you start it without a login? They have a launcher
- xaduha 3y ago> it's not that you need any server capacity for that They had Twitch integration since the beginning and judging by some accounts they weren't prepared for how much that would be in demand on full release. Each user can see streamer's full inventory and journal, vote on dialogue options when asked, etc. Surely Steam isn't handling that.
- PicassoCTs 3y agoSo, the whole middle management caste, that pushed for simplified, broader appeal consumer friendly games while naying any attempt to revive old games, is currently packing its cardboard boxes and lining up for the exit?
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoSeems like both are making $$$
- PicassoCTs 3y agoSo, its okay if you leave money on the table when it comes to business decisions?
- wcoenen 3y agoIt's called "opportunity cost". Companies don't have infinite budgets, so they have to make such decisions.
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- WillPostForFood 3y agoI 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! (23 if you count back to Medal of Honor) God of War - 17 years old Gran Turismo - 26 years old https://www.statista.com/statistics/1285658/top-ranked-video-games-sales-annual/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1285658/top-ranked-video...
- ivanbakel 3y ago
- rcoveson 3y agoIt's not obligate-multiplayer, but seeing as it's a Dungeons and Dragons implementation with lots of best-in-class multiplayer features it seems libelous to call it "single player".
- mastax 3y agoI love how the party can split up and go do completely different things. That's often difficult to do even in a traditional tabletop setting.
- renewiltord 3y agoThey do that very well in Divinity : Original Sin (by the same devs). This class of couch co-op game is becoming rare but I buy them each time they come out. I hope there's enough of us to provide a market.
- ycombinete 3y agoThank you, can you suggest some others please! I find the usual list of couch co ops it be total trash.
- ramses0 3y agoOG Wasteland had that feature, along with a pretty decent macro system. Worth a look.
- mastax 3y agoI 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 (if not time to play them). - The Early Access release for this game was wildly popular beyond the developer's expectations, and maintained interest for years. I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate because they aren't very important to me, personally. But also there have been a load of really good CRPGs in recent years and there seemed to be a pretty low ceiling to how much interest they could get. Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and a few others were amazing and beloved CRPG games but were lucky to have a tenth of the success of BG3. But those games were generally less accessible, mostly not multiplayer, and again lacked the brand power.
- jakebasile 3y agoI 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.
- flohofwoe 3y agoTBH 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 much of this is because of the ADnD vs DnD5 rules or whether Larian has added some tweaks to the DnD5 rules.
- jakebasile 3y ago
- jakebasile 3y agoIt'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 getting a lot more sales than they expected, and I'm glad to see devs get rewarded for making a quality product.
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- spacemadness 3y agoAs someone who mostly dislikes real time with pause I am glad they didn’t go that route. I just like the see the full results of my action such as to see a spell go off completely. Real time with pause also often messes up the art that went into the sound design and animation choreography. Relatedly, it’s so satisfying the way the care they took with sound and how impactful your combat actions are as a result. So many game designers ignore sound design; I think this is a huge factor in the success of Blizzard games. People can argue Diablo IV is a poorly designed game, but the sound design is excellent and greatly contributes to the weight of actions and ultimately the dopamine hit factor. I think it’s been their secret weapon as people don’t often realize the effect it has on them. Larian took the same care here and it’s awesome.
- jakebasile 3y agoAgree about sound design, both in this game and its importance in general. That's something I failed to mention. The sound of combat and just environmental sound is great and adds even more to immersion. If you're a fan of sound in games, check out the original Dead Space. Master class in using sound to create atmosphere.
- spacemadness 3y ago
- neom 3y agoI'm not a gamer but I randomly stumbled across someone playing this on twitch couple days ago, gotta say my mind was pretty blown at how far video game graphics have come (granted the last thing I played was Quake/UT/HL back in the day). Some of the cut scenes are basically just amazing movies, but even the in game graphics are fantastic. Does anyone happen to know what game is considered the gold standard for gfx in vidya games is these days?
- trostaft 3y agoIt's a subjective question. Three that struck me recently were - Cyberpunk 2077 with its new path traced lighting option - Plague Tale Requiem (in general) - The high action sequences and cut-scenes of FFXVI These games have their flaws in terms of graphics, but they were very striking to me. Note, this is speaking purely graphics, there's more to be said regarding art design as enabled by graphics tech.
- jsnell 3y agoIt depends a bit on what you're into. For a decent sample, have a look at Cyberpunk 2077 (especially with the RT Overdrive update on the PC), Horizon Forbidden West, and Forza Horizon 5.
- ycombinete 3y agoI want to say Crysis
- macNchz 3y agoFor me, having not really played many video games between ~2008 and 2020, Red Dead Redemption 2 has continued to really wow me. It's is particularly impressive in both its breadth and depth: not only does it have huge beautiful landscapes in deserts, plains, mountains, forests, swamps, beaches, snow & rain, but also includes tiny details like being able to shoot out individual spokes of a wagon wheel, and the way the sun glows through the cartilage of characters ears.
- izacus 3y agoCyberpunk 2077 with their new path tracing probably beats everything. Also their facial animation and dialogue direction is far ahead of any other game I've seen - those conversations feel much more visceral than anything.
- offtwit 3y agoIs this game mostly an inventory management game like Divinity Original Sin 2? I tried playing it but I was just clicking around menus 80% of the time.
- bitcharmer 3y agoI don't think you played it at all
- bunga-bunga 3y agoMore constructive comments please. What does this mean?
- huhtenberg 3y agoRight back at you. It's pretty obvious what the GP meant.
- aoanla 3y agoI don't know, the brief time I spent with D:OS2, there was quite a lot of inventory shenanigans.
- theduder99 3y agoThis is a well-known criticism of the game though. Even putting rune mgmt and crafting aside, after dinging a new level, you should be hitting up the vendor and upgrading/selling gear so that you can deal with enemies at your new level effectively. And you do that process x4 because you are managing 4 characters. I personally didn't mind the ceremony too much but I can definitely see how some people would be put off by it.
- Ekaros 3y agoI suppose it depends how hard you hoard loot... It is quite bad and filters are slightly lacking if you really collect it to pawn to vendors.
- koof 3y ago
- xwdv 3y agoAny time someone gives me some max capacity estimate to aim for, I multiply it by 10 and design the system for that. That’s 10x developer thinking.
- CamperBob2 3y agoThat's 10x budget thinking.
- Detrytus 3y agoMaybe I missed something in the article, but they do not mention any technical issues caused by the 7x number of players, they are just expressing their surprise with the game popularity. So it seems IT team followed your advice?
- carabiner 3y agoGeneral consensus I've heard is it's nothing like BG1/2. Less atmospheric, less writing overall: > Baldur's Gate 3 tells its story differently too. Those atmospheric chapter introductions, where the narrator sets the scene, are sadly gone. Dialogue is short and to the point, with no great walls of descriptive text drawing you into the world. And honestly, that's something I miss. I love the sheer wordiness of the old games, and how a flurry of prose would bring those pre-rendered backgrounds to life.
- ivalm 3y agoThere is a ton of lore to discover and a huge amount of fully voiced out interactions.
- nottorp 3y agoWhat do they mean, concurrent players? Did they turn it into a multiplayer game?
- ivalm 3y agoPeople playing at the same time. Its not an mmo but you can party up with up to 3 friends.
- junon 3y agoSteam has statistics for how many people are actively playing any particular game, regardless of how the game's multiplayer works, if any.
- nottorp 3y agoAh I thought they f-ed us over and made it a multiplayer mandatory game. I didn't want to follow it before it was out, waiting a bit before I jump in.
- jamesgreenleaf 3y agoI don't believe that no one predicted the overwhelming success of a long-anticipated sequel to one of the most legendary and deeply-loved games of all time. Maybe I've played BG2 too many times, but for me this was a no-brainer. You could read the steam reviews from early access as well, and the prediction should have been pretty easy. People were already impressed with the early campaign. Personally I'm putting off buying BG3 because I know how addictive it'll be.
- meristohm 3y agoSame here; I won't buy it anytime soon (possibly ever; depends on if there's still a place for games in my life after going without for a year), though the fact that I'm reading and commenting this thread says that gaming is still important to me, if not just out of nostalgia but also that I recognize the importance of games in our collective experience, and I know something about them after three+ decades of playing and designing (table games; no publications, just for me & friends). I like to read the negative reviews on Steam to help talk myself out of purchases. I usually find something convincing, the urge passes, and I spend more time doing something with a longer-lasting benefit (for who I an now, anyway). I thought for so long that I'd never quit gaming, but it served its purpose, I try not to regret it as wasted time (gaming gave me an easy sense of purpose, without which I might have joined a cult or become an alcoholic like my dad), and I try not to rain on anyone's parade.
- jamesgreenleaf 3y ago> I like to read the negative reviews on Steam to help talk myself out of purchases. Hah, I do the same thing. On other sites too - the well-written negative reviews have a lot of value. Although, on some of the best games on steam, I've seen a few top negative reviews that say something like: "Why are you looking at the negative reviews? You know this game is great." I think you're right though. Games have their place and are culturally important, but the trend has veered more toward optimizing for engagement (addiction) and dark patterns like overcharging for cosmetics and such.
- worrycue 3y ago
- henning 3y agoI bought BG3 just because it's a AAA-quality game with no microtransactions, no battle passes, no bullshit, no pay-to-win monetization of any kind. What you buy is what you get, just like how video games generally were up until about ~10 years ago.
- password54321 3y agoAn extreme amount of triple A games are exactly what you described. Elden Ring, God of War, Zelda are some recent examples.
- LegitShady 3y agogod of war and zelda are platform exclusives. for elden ring, not everyone likes souls-like games.
- sedatk 3y agoEh. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2378500/Digital_Deluxe_Edition_DLC/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2378500/Digital_Deluxe_Ed...
- 3LazTjBv-f 3y ago> no bullshit There is stinky game launcher. It might not waste my money, but it definitely wastes my time
- ivann 3y ago
- ctenb 3y agoDoes anyone else think that modern rpg art style and graphics are often too flashy and overwhelming? I'm tempted to try this game, but held back by its appearance.
- aoanla 3y agoAbsolutely. I watched a few people playing Early Access builds of BG3, and I can't believe more people aren't put off by how overly flashy everything is. Characters models overact expressions, and even the simplest action in combat is accompanied by loud sound effects and exaggerated actions. It's very off-putting.
- intelVISA 3y agoI'll give Larian a pass for the gaudy aesthetics, I'm more concerned that they cut out the GM mode from DivOS2 (same engine/game basically).
- kuang_eleven 3y agoIn a team-based isometric RPG like BG3 you kinda have to be, the characters are dime sized and anything less flashy just wouldn't read. It's like stage acting, you have to overexaggerate so that audience can actually see what's going on from a distance.
- ctenb 3y agoThat's an interesting perspective, hadn't thought of it that way. Even so, the fact that everything is so overwhelming also adds to that problem in a way. Can't see the wood through the trees so to speak.
- AndryOre 3y agoI was watching this game on twitch and it looks great, hope to play it soon.
- janmarsal 3y agoAfter seeing some gameplay footage, this game seems more like a spiritual successor to Dragon Age: Origins than to Baldur's gate 1 & 2. Of course Dragon Age was intended as a spiritual successor to Baldur's gate back when it was released. Even the hype is very similar to Dragon Age: Origins, and how journalists were surprised that an "old school" RPG like this could be so popular.
- ledauphin 3y agoI appreciate this note - I have no exposure to the original games, but Dragon Age: Origins was one of the best games I've ever played.
- azlev 3y agoI still remember the fireball in the trailer and I'm counting days to play the original one.
- izzydata 3y agoWhat really sealed the deal for me checking out this game is the promise to not have any microtransactions. That's a trend that has only been getting worse for 20+ years now and I'd gladly pay full price for a game that simply gives me a whole game upon purchase.
- fredley 3y agoNo micro transactions, offline single player. A luxury in 2023.
- ls612 3y agoI 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 microtransactions which stand a good chance of winning game of the year.
- izzydata 3y agoThat may be so, but for every game like this there are a dozen that aren't. I just happened to not be interested in any of the above mentioned games. Still, I think the trend of releasing completed games is slowly becoming in favor again. I don't think Nintendo really strayed very far from this so props to them.
- hinkley 3y agoAlso you’re dealing with a lot of pent up rage from a decade of systemic abuse.
- LegitShady 3y ago>-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 expect day one pricing to work out. >Final Fantasy XVI playstation exclusive. out of your list there the only ones not platform exclusive or riddled with bugs on launch is hogwarts legacy which honestly doesn't sound like anything I'd be interested in playing.
- Ekaros 3y agoI think Steam bandwidth use peaked at 146.3 Tbps at launch time... With majority of it coming from people downloading BG3...
- musha68k 3y agoFan of the series and general “infinity engine” era, but was somewhat “worried” it would be less fun than Larian’s last great game (Divinity Original Sin 2). I was glad to learn it’s likely as silly (good!) and enjoyed dipping into twitch to get a feel on the pen & paper turned "cyber" D&D party play. It really looks like great fun, wish I had the time / friends in sync / on same platform. Eventually the bespoke Apple silicon version should work cross play with Windows / Linux but console friends apparently won’t get included. https://www.twitch.tv/willneff/clip/TentativeSweetEyeballTBTacoLeft-GPKyo16caoCHoUVO https://www.twitch.tv/willneff/clip/TentativeSweetEyeballTBT...
- ilaksh 3y agoTakeaway: even executives with a highly technical background will often make lazy incorrect decisions that can potentially sabotage months of effort by the company. Vinke's decision to under-prepare for scaling issues has put the team in the position of needing to possibly do heroic work at the last second to prevent the online part from falling over and creating very bad experiences for users.
- hinkley 3y agoWhen your player base is predicted to be small you also can’t afford to do little niche things that 5% of players will appreciate. Depending on which strategies you’re talking about, that can add depth to the game, or extra revenue. So there’s a deluxe edition, which is an extra ten bucks and adds some cosmetics and physical items. But with the base game at $60, the collector’s edition probably should have brought it to $75. For a game that will easily hit 1.5 million downloads in the first few weeks, let the whales fund updates and sequels.
- xena 3y agoThey're at near 800k users now! Here's for a million concurrent players!
- yownie 3y agoThe title of this article is essentially meaningless. BG3 is single player offline game, mainly distributed globally through Steam (and GOG) which runs it's own CDN for games. There is a multiplayer mode but that is co-ordinated via p2p for the most part. The "IT team" at Larian doesn't get hit with those downloads as they only send a single copy up to Steam's CDN which handles the traffic (perhaps some backend user authentication too?) so essentially this article is "Baldur's Gate 3, is a very popular download on Steam" just buzz to push more sales presumably.
- mathgeek 3y agoIt’s somewhere in the middle, as there is online multiplayer, but not at the scale that it could be compared to a “truly” online game.
- 59nadir 3y agoI searched for "multiplayer" here just to see if maybe I was mistaken about this game; number of players is not a super meaningful stressor on a system when you're not providing a whole slew of live services and simulation, so I was wondering what the point of mentioning the 700k user count was. 700k players when you: - Don't run your own game update distribution/patcher - Don't provide real-time chat - Don't run your own arbitration (what's the point if mostly everything is P2P/high trust sessions and cooperative?) - ... 700k players is great for them and by all accounts they seem to have done a great job overall, but it's a far cry from League of Legends or even DotA2 in terms of system stress.
- strken 3y agoEven if you're just doing NAT holepunching and orchestrating some P2P sessions, if you get 700% of your expected load and still stay online then good for you.
- javajosh 3y ago>The title of this article is essentially meaningless. It's worse than that, it's creepy. What is a single-player offline game phoning home anyway? On every play? It's crazy how much software companies get away with these days. The frog is well and truly boiled.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- suryong 3y agoI have played for over 30 hours since release, and now at Act 2. It's one of the best games I have played. I am not a huge D&D fan, but I like real RPG games where the player choice actually matters such as DOS 2 and Pathfinder WOTR, so this one was instant buy for me and I am very pleasantly surprised. I can already see myself doing another playthrough, there is lots of diverging in the story. Too many so called RPG games nowadays are just pipes that you walk through with some kind of illusion of choice and few lines of different dialogue. The inventory management is little messy and could be better, but honestly I don't find much else to critique yet.
- gaws 3y ago> The inventory management is little messy and could be better, but honestly I don't find much else to critique yet. This is a Larian staple. The Divinity: Original Sin series also had terrible inventory management.
- honeybadger1 3y agoThe shills are already out from the big players denouncing the 'type of game' development behind BG3. They're justifying the reskinning of the same shit over and over and calling it the next best title when it's basically nothing but the same shit regurgitated over and over. I am already almost finished with Act 2 and I have to say this game will keep me occupied for many a night to come. AMAZING team they have at Larian and their passion for quality shines in this game.
- pierrebeucher 3y agoCan you be more specific about "big players denouncing the 'type of game' development behind BG3" ? I've heard a few things about BG3 development method being critized by some devs and/or companies but haven't read some source material yet. EDIT: nevermind, Googling "baldur's gate 3 development critics" yields tons of results
- lizardking 3y agoThe sentiment that set of the firestorm was from an indie dev, and his point was perfectly reasonable. Once the pitchforks came out that details was lost.
- honeybadger1 3y agoI was apart of the original thread, won't say who I am, but needless to say I am not in agreement with him. He is wrong, I don't really think I need to say why considering the firestorm was completely not in his favor. I wrote my own opinion piece on the matter; and as someone who works in the software industry at one of the largest software companies in the world, he should not be defending practices of running developers ragged. Hard selling the world and delivering a polished turd full of bugs and broken promises until 2 years later with a few expensive add-ons, season packages, just to make a game more profitable and still not deliver.
- lizardking 3y ago
- littlestymaar 3y agoIf your game's subreddit alone already has 250k subscriber pre-launch and you are only prepared for 100k concurrent players at launch, you're probably not the right person for this job anyway.
- meristohm 3y agoIt 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, responsibilities, and growing up in general (this is not to say that anyone who plays games is thus not an adult, just that by staying hooked I was holding myself back from feeling my full range of emotions and from being the person I want to be). I'm open to returning, but only after I live long enough without to make a whole-hearted decision. One of my concerns is that these single-player (even small-group-of-players) games are too much like choose-your-own-adventure books (I'm in my 40s and don't remember any of these being very good; maybe modern ones are better, if they even exist?), which are difficult to have a shared experience over unless reading together or the discussion is about what options you each chose and why. Now that I've read Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy), The Kiss Quotient (Helen Huang), and Feral (George Monbiot), and so on, I have more common ground with anyone I meet down the road who has read those books. When I meet people who sunk years of their lives into WoW or EverQuest, the predominant feeling seems usually to be a shared sadness and also relief at having finally unsubscribed. When I meet someone who has played single-player games there's not much to talk about either, other than listing games we've played and thus bonding a bit over the games we have in common. Maybe that's enough, but it feels more shallow than I'd like. Maybe post-activity discussion really isn't the point, though? Are there game clubs like there are book clubs? Perhaps it is enough to have an artificial sense of purpose and to share in that escapism, but escapism beyond coping with stress until a better opportunity arises (I didn't have much guidance out of a rough childhood and took refuge in games, which may have helped me survive) feels like an unmoored state that contributes to our collective apathy over existential crises (looking at you, anthropogenic climate change, which will be an "interesting story" but not one I look forward to living through part of and ultimately dying in :). What can we do to reduce the stressors we escape from, and/or increase our ability to respond in healthier ways? My main hope for writing this is that it helps anyone who wants to spend less time playing games take the steps to do so (for the rest of you who can moderate their playtime, hats off to you, too ;). I would love to discuss all this more, but my relationship with social media is similarly troubled and thus I almost never wade back in to learn more from responses. I DO learn quite a bit from so many of you, and I'm grateful for the depth and breadth and moderation of HN discussions.
- bastardoperator 3y agoI 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.
- ericksoa 3y agoThis. I like a lot of the game, but something feels off with movement.
- xdennis 3y agoMy test for whether I should play a game is to check if has sexes or body types. Unfortunately I can't play this game.
- tmtvl 3y agoThe 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 which has about as much to do with the original trilogy (yes, we, the real fans, called it the Baldur's Gate trilogy back in the day) as Star Trek has to do with Star Wars "Baldur's Gate 3". If it were still just "Divinity Faerun" but actually continued the story of the Bhaalspawn it would be fine, it may even have been interesting to play a really high-level adventure, but instead they do this shit and because it looks fancy people eat it up hook, line, and sinker. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I can't deal with this. It reminds me of those activists who glue themselves to works of art, but whereas those people at least nominally have a good reason to do so, Larian is only out for self-interest. While I am probably taking things too seriously, after all it's "only a game", only a piece of childish amusement, I still feel like I can't deal with the disappointment. The statement "gamers have no standards" has never felt as real as it does now. It's like as if Ultima IX had been successful, a clear showing that "video games are art" is an empty, hollow statement, easily disproven by a single look at reality.
- lyu07282 3y agoI've played the original, that came on 5 CD-ROMs, the expansion, Baldur's Gate 2 on launch, the expansion and have played it over and over again for over 20 years at this point. I also played table top games and read the novels behind Toril, like Elminster and Drizzt. I was extremely skeptical of 3 but the developers are clearly dedicated fans of not only the original but also DnD and Faerûn, IT IS a worthy successor of the originals and an excellent adaptation of the 5E ruleset. They had to start a new character at level 1 anything else would've made no sense at all and you clearly don't know what you are talking about if you think they could've continued the Bhaalspawn story (at level 31/40+) after Throne of Bhaal. But it's funny because you basically sound like me before I actually gave it a shot, I didn't think they could've possibly pulled this off, but they did, as unlikely as that sounds in the gaming world today. In many aspects it is even closer to the table top experience, which to emulate, was the entire point of the original, but some things couldn't be done because of technical limitations at the time. Just give it a fair shot, it's worth it.
- tonfreed 3y agoBuT tHeRe'S nO mArKeT fOr SiNgLe PlAyEr GaMeS My only complaints about the game are the rough edges it's inherited from 5e and the general horniness of all the main characters. Otherwise having a really great time with it, fantastic game that deserves all the accolades it's getting
- machiaweliczny 3y agoI with they added dubbing. BG2 was very popular in Poland due to great dubbing.
- iamflimflam1 3y agoI don’t really play games much anymore. Too many other calls on my time. But I have many fond memory’s of the Baldur’s gate games. So I’m not surprised it’s doing well. I will probably try and have a play myself.
- variadix 3y agoIt’s good, Larian did a great job with DOS1/2 so I expected it would be a great game. I’m surprised this many people are playing it, but maybe Baldur’s Gate and DND are part of why. My only complaint is the combat is a little underwhelming, it feels like there’s less depth than DOS1/2 because of how actions/movement use separate pools instead of unified AP, where better positioning can net you more attacks per turn.