Honestly, this kind of pleading from the other AAA developers is just making them look pathetic. Yes, it’s reasonable not to expect BG3 for every AAA games, but it’s not because of time and money, but simply because developers are just not always going to make lightning strike twice. But these devs have plenty of time and money and they look terrible in comparison to a dev that took it’s time to make sure it was well polished before release.
Exactly. Every new game doesn’t have to be an instant classic that breaks new ground. But they should be functional, playable, and have enough polish to be considered finished. That doesn’t necessarily mean bug free, but we all know what a finished game looks like, and what one doesn’t.
The worst one I’ve ever personally played was the Lego Hobbit game. My wife and I used to line up kamikaze shots and play Lego games, figuring a child and a drunk adult were about the same level. The game stops when Smaug flies out of the mountain. Roll credits. I guess the last movie did so poorly that they never bothered making the rest of the game.
For ages, AAA games were classed as such by brand recognition, not by quality. Inevitably, they devolved into being just a platform to sell microtransactions. The shareholders want their dividents and the CEO needs a new yacht with coke and hookers.
It’s too easy to exploit the dopamine rush playing the new, official installment of a well-known series. Even if it’s terrible, the customers get their joy by ranting about how trash the game is and how they hope the next one will be better. BG3 being an actual game does not change anything and will not reset expectations.
That’s sad because TT’s games were quite good, I think they hit their apex at Lego Marvel Superheroes 1. Awesome open world, a ton of characters, and lots of exploration in addition to the normal level quests.
We should make sure to label games exactly like this. Beta at release? Depending on microtransactions? -> It’s an AA game at most, no matter the production costs.
Maybe we need to update the nomenclature. Software with loot boxes, pay to win mechanics, predatory gameplay loops, and storefront-first design should now be called “casinos”. They should have disclaimers about gambling and addiction in their load screen, have age restrictions, and should be forced to institute limits on what can be spent in a certain time frame. Feature-complete software with zero storefronts of any kind would be allowed to brand themselves as “games”.
Fair but let me make a vain attempt to save face: Did that actually make an impact in the industry, given they’re small countries with not much customers.
Oohh. I like this. I’ve been bothered by the rise of gambling in different packaging in the world over the last decade. We really should be acknowledging that gambling is different from gaming, separating them meaningfully. Are toy department shelves still full of child gambling reandom toy bullshit too? I haven’t had reason or opportunity to pay attention to that for a few years.
I’m not sure about toys, but watching my son grow up with app stores has made me very aware of how so called “games” have been monetizing our children makes me want some real legislation and restrictions on what is legal to market to children. The “idle” category of games is just egregious. They’re a flimsy and thin veneer of game painted over a bank machine. AAA is not much better - they just have more complicated routes take your money.
Who the f is Shawn, wtf is evolve? Why is every shitty game dev crying that other people make good games, without shame? Oh that’s right, based on their releases, they have no shame.
He didn’t have anyone’s attention and he craves attention and now he has lots of attention, so I guess everything is coming up Milhouse as far as Shawn is concerned.
I know and I fucking hate it. I was one of the fanboys defending them even through the first SwSh trailers, but the more they showed stuff the more it was clear it wasn’t the franchise I used to love anymore.
Man I hope the next great Pokémon (even if it’s not pokémon) doesn’t take until I have kids to come out. I heard good stuff about Coromon but I’m not sure if it’s genuinely great or “great for an indie”.
"what funding?"is a dumb question. all companies have funding. especially software. very few companies legit started in a basement and progressed to international status relying purely on profit and loss sheets.
you are ignorant.. you don't understand what he's talking about.. they are both talking about VC funding.. that means Venture Capital, which you did not know.. for some reason you are here being ignorant and loud about something you do not understand..
Larian recieved debt funding to found in 2009, late stage VC in 2011 (presumably to offset loan repayments), recieved ongoing support from Arkafund VC and has crowd funded every year 2013–2019. Tencent bought 3006 shares for 30% stake in either 2020 or '21 (not sure exact date).
Those developers trying to shit on Larian need to cry and seethe more. Terribly incompetent people who can’t create good games themselves, why not trying taking notes instead?
But I was told every individual ruthlessly and insatiably acting solely out of greed for personal gain — regardless of ethics, morality, or empathy — was the greatest, most efficient, bestest, freedomest thing to have ever existed?
Why would corporate sociopaths lie? What could they po$$ibly have to gain?
I’m not talking about Larian, I’m talking about the studios who want to keep cranking out suppisedly AAA games that are little more than creatively bankrupt, dressed up vending machines.
The picture in the OP is PR for a publishing company. There are many other accounts of people who work in the industry who are angry/jealous of Larian. You’re probably just not looking in the right places.
Try actually reading what the developers are saying. Most are saying that they can’t make good games because the suits won’t let them. They keep fucking over and chasing off the most experienced and visionary people, force teams to chase trends instead of concentrating on one type of game and never give them enough time.
From all that I’ve seen it’s more like they are trying to dismiss the success that Larian has found by saying that they are a special case which is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Larian did hard work and are being rewarded for it.
People have been saying this game is exciting because of the lack of mtx, but it seems to me that any big rpg gets a lot of attention. Eldan Ring got similar praise last year. Bioware was making these kinds of games fairly consistently about a decade ago and then stopped to make shit like Anthem. It’s a design decision not a budget problem.
Microtransactions come with specific challenges. Specifically, you have to give the players a reason to pay them, and that’s usually done by making the game purpously worse for those who don’t pay.
Or the other trend these days, Wich is to remove content from the base game and sell it as dlc or just money-gate it even if it’s on the base disk/release.
I don’t necessarily believe this to be universal. I’ve played plenty of games with cosmetic mtx that I can absolutely play without the desire or need to spend money.
Edit: Looked it up a bit, the shares are 70% Sven and wife, 30% Tencent. Honestly not too bad considering at the time those shares were sold, Larian was almost bankrupt.
Love seeing you edit your comment and correct yourself/validate the other user’s statement. Breathe of fresh air from the toxic doubling-down 99% of the time on reddit.
their 1 Child per family policy for decades has left them with a gigantic pile of elderly and not nearly enough working age people to support them. not to mention the young people have no training on how to support their infrastructure or manufacturing tools.
This doesn’t even mention the gender ration disparity either that is going to hit even harder as well for them. China is gonna have even more issues in the next few decades
because if you can only have 1 child to support the family in the future you need to have the one that gets educated and paid. it went on for decades. if you search youtube for the word ‘china’ theres countless recent explanations of the various ways they are collapsing.
Why are people pretending baulders gate is the only high selling game with no microtransactions as of late? Off the top of my head Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom both released in the last year or so, no microtransactions or dlc as of now.
I have a large backlog of games to play before I even think about buying anything new, but is this even a good game? Serious question because I know there has been a huge amount of press on it, but haven’t watched any reviews yet (on purpose because I hate spoilers and don’t want to be tempted with a new purchase yet).
If it doesn’t immediately spark the interest to buy it, go ahead and wait for it to go on sale. It sounds like you may have buyers’ remorse if it ends up not being your thing and you pay full price.
I’m not too fond of CRPGs and I’m hooked on this game. It oozes excellent workmanship and appreciation for the genre/source material which makes it hard to resist.
Yes. Yes it is. Excellent story so far. Gameplay is the best of DnD mixed with the best part of Divinity Original Sin 2. Difficulty is maybe a bit harsh the first few levels when an encounter with a bad initiative can take you out before its your turn. It looks graphically good and runs fine on older graphic cards. The companions have interesting backstories and related quests.
I havent tested it in co-op yet.
I have encountered a few bugs: Actors missing in cutscenes. Money-stacks getting corrupted. The ugly pre-order clothes just disappearing after a patch. But nothing serious.
Co-op is excellent. Drop in/drop out works flawlessly, no lag. It even has LAN options in the year of our lord 2023. One issue is that a player can start an encounter without the others and people can miss out on story. All in all highly recommended.
It looks graphically good and runs fine on older graphic cards.
Yes, but not older processors, apparently, as I found out. I sure as hell never expected a CRPG to be the first game that screams at me to get a better one.
Have you played Divinity: Original Sin 2? Because it’s literally just that game with a D&D skin on it. If you liked D:OS2, or you’re really into D&D/Forgotten Realms, then it’s fine. If you were frustrated by certain things in D:OS2, they’re probably not fixed here.
It uses DND 5e as the underlying rules set. I hate DND 5e. It’s a garbage system full of old bad ideas, and it has such tremendous brand awareness it sucks all the air out of the hobby space.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is still an extremely good game in spite of all that.
That sounds promising, because like you I really really really do not like the DnD system. But to hear that the game is decent in spite of that makes me curious about trying it soon, TYVM. :)
Controlling 4 digital 5e characters in rapid succession feels very different from controlling 1 character in a tabletop setting. Idk if it’s better or worse this way, but (to me) they’re pretty distinct experiences so it’s worth at least trying
Haven’t played it, but been reading/watching a lot of reviews. Seems like they got a lot right and a few things wrong, still some early bugs but not nearly the amount that most releases have, some people complain about length (very long playthroughs might drag out for some, especially the slow combat). But I suspect many people will love or hate this game based on whether they like turn based combat.
I bought the game early access a couple years ago. The reason they got so few things wrong is they actually listened to community feedback from the early access. They made a lot of minor changes on things (from what I saw most of that was to make the game feel more like DND)
Honestly I’d recommend watching someone play it to get an idea of if you like it. Steam also has the option to let you “borrow” someone’s account so I’m sure if you have friends playing this you could ask. That’s what I did and enjoyed it so much I ended up buying it.
If you approach it with a standard videogame attitude (get the strongest weapons and most powerful skills, steal everything that is worth good money and so on), then it is a solid game.
If you approach it as a simulated tabletop rpg game, it is fantastic. You can experiment with all sorts of things. For example: in one fight I was outnumbered and cornered in a small room, with enemies coming from outside. I pulled some furniture in front of the door to block the passage, threw some oil on the ground in the other side and lit it with a torch, then hid my characters behind the walls out of any projectile’s path until I could fully heal them.
Unlike other games those weren’t things that the devs put there specifically for this fight. There was no button prompt suggesting the furniture could be moved or anything like that. They just put a bunch of stuff in the world that can be interacted with in many ways depending on what sort of skill you have and leave it up to you to find a way to use them, or not. You can still min-max your stats and ignore all that. You won’t even know you’re missing anything.
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