They made a D&D video game. The most popular and successful board game ever made. They had BUCKETS of funding from wizards of the Coast for this. They also had a massive studio with more than 400 people working on it.
James Stephanie Sterling did a fantastic video about Baldur’s Gate 3. Essentially, everything came together in just the right way for this game to be made. It’s not responsible to call this the new standard in the same world where we vilify overwork and ‘crunch-time’, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t expect more from game developers. You absolutely should. But you should do so reasonably.
Other triple A devs have massive funding, a giant staff and other unlimited resources and they still can’t make a game devoid of microtransactions or bugs. Are you stunned?
I’m pretty sure EA and Activision-Blizzard have similar or bigger budgets for their AAA games and they either make shit or microtransactions-filled games.
2K is huge and they always make NBA2K decent/good but full of terrible microtransactions
I’m no financial expert so maybe I’m mistaken in some figure, but the bottom line is WotC is not the only big (and growing) company, so this are nothing but excuses.
They had BUCKETS of funding from wizards of the Coast for this. They also had a massive studio with more than 400 people working on it.
They had the IP; they did not receive a single cent from WotC. They funded the game with money from their previous games, and in fact, they paid WotC for the IP.
Just clarifying what you meant. I thought I missed something. DLC to my mind is like... an extra race or somthing a bit more relevant than purely cosmetic stuff. Not going to argue semantics here, fair enough to call that a micro transaction and it's certainly DLC.
That’s a courtesy for people who didn’t pre-order but want the dice cosmetic. It was originally a pre-order exclusive but they changed it when asked to.
$10 purchase for soundtrack, dice skin and some DSO2 cosmetics that everyone who bought the game in early access gets. This allows everyone else to purchase.
Even excluding the cosmetics, this DLC includes the soundtrack. I haven’t purchased it myself (yet), but I’d imagine that a soundtrack to a game with over 200 hours of cinematic would be rather extensive (again, I have not seen it, so I don’t know). Even if it’s only 30 to 40 minutes of music, at $10, that’s at least on par with the cost of most albums anywhere else. I feel it’s got to be more than only 30ish minutes of music, though, so, for the album alone the price seems legit.
Edit: Maybe I’m just too old, but I thought microtransactions were something you get prompted to purchase while playing the game. Is that no longer the case?
Microtransactions are 'small' purchases made in a game (or via some kind of store that allows you to buy stuff to be used inside of a game).
DLC is any additional downloadable content that is not included with the game (so something like a day 1 patch wouldn't be considered DLC, I'd say).
All microtransations are DLC, but not all DLC are microtransactions, generally (before someone comes along with some kind of physical microtransaction or something I guess)
I personally just view microtransations as anything that isn't 'playable content'. So buying a mount from an in-game store would be a microtransaction, while buying an expansion wouldn't be. Map packs kind of blur the line in this instance, because one could argue that they're essentially 'world cosmetics', but its a hard and fast rule and not something I'd try to enforce as a law, ya know?
It’s clear that there are multiple different definitions that people have for “microtransactions”. I think it’s safe to assume that larian has a definition similar to mine. No time in the game that I’ve noticed did I get prompted to buy the DLC. In fact, I didn’t buy it; it seems early access people got it for free.
It's the soundtrack and some DSO2 cosmetics that everyone who bought the game during early access got for free. They're selling it to everyone else for $10.
Technically it's DLC, not MTX as MTX almost always entails individual purchases of items, usually in-game. It's more of a Collector's Edition than anything. That no one seems to care about, even the people who detest predatory practices.
Do you mean the Mask of the Shapeshifter? That allows, once per long rest, to change appearance to another random character. Effectively a Disguise Self cast.
There's also the dagger that's 4-7 weapon. But I replaced that before I even dealt with the goblin camp. There's so many magic items I wasn't worried about it.
The biggest coup is the hat and cape. They offer no bonuses but they look so fly I'm probably never taking them off.
Not correct Larian reached out to WOTC coast first to try get the licence after Divinity Original Sin but were turned down because they felt that they were too new. Was only after DOS2 that they got the license.
If devs actually think all 800k active players + the ones who pirated it all play DND, then they have another guess coming. Most of them probably have never touched a Handbook
And they’re staring to have Battle Passes have multiple tiers of cost such as in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and NBA 2K24. What’s next? Multiple battle passes at once like in the free to play Monster Legends? In $69.99 priced games? Where the battle passes cost at least $19.99 per month?
Now if they’d just make it an actual game rather than a story-heavy romp that should have been a movie instead. BG has always aspired to be a Western version of a JRPG, and it’s terrible.
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