I suspect your feelings are not uncommon. Now that you have played BG3 and enjoyed it, do you think you would be more tempted to try their next offering? Or to your point you might try it, but give up on it after a bit?
In any case, after the success of BG3 Hasbro will have someone create a BG4. Hopefully they find a competent team.
What is the state of BG3 modding? I haven’t been following it at all. Are (or will) there be support for new content via mods? When I played NWN/NWN2 I spent more time playing mods than the main storyline.
I played D:OS2 and really liked it. When I played BG3 I recognized a lot of elements from the earlier game. I feel like Larian honed some of their ideas in the Divinity games and by the time BG3 came around, they really had their systems figured out.
So my hope is that the next game they come out with can build even further on them, and is better than the Divinity games. But I’m also cognizant of how rare a game like BG3 is, that it was probably lightning in a bottle, and it’s unlikely that Larian will make a game as good in the future. That’s the danger of having a really successful creative work; anything you make from that point on will be compared to it, and if you aren’t creating something comparable you “failed” even if you’re making stuff that’s really good, make even superior to your competitors. Because your real competitor is your past self.
Or, even worse, you do make something just as good or even better, but customers think it’s too different from what you made before and is therefore inferior. Even though if you made something that’s too similar, you’ll be accused of being unable to innovate and just recycling what you made before.
Let’s hope that Larian is able to escape this trap they created for themselves.
Me too, but those games were designed with the idea of including that feature (Wasn’t it called “The Forge” or something?) and they went out of their way to accommodate folks. It was like free content for the developers; customers get more things to do and the developers didn’t have to pay anyone to write and implement it. I definitely played more customer-made content than the “real” story just because there was so much of it. (And a lot of it was really good; most was crap as you’d expect, but I really enjoyed much of it.)
Good point, NWN was designed with modding as a first-class citizen. Modders had access to the same tools the devs had. And while the official game had a release schedule to meet, modders could develop for as long as they wanted. I remember a few modules that had really good storylines with multiple endings – a preview of what BG3 would push to the limit.
I’m sure I will look at their next offering, although that won’t be released until 2030, so maybe not. At least, I think that’s how long their development cycle has been.
I think my problem with games is liking the idea of them but needing an implementation that works for me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m old or don’t play them enough but I am terrible at RTS games. I used to get them and play them a bit more until the easy AI wasn’t so easy for me. I think I had to learn what games I liked that I would work to improve and what games I like to dabble in and amuse myself for a while.
I like action games. I play Arizona Sunshine 2 with a Quest 2 and my brother and enjoy that. Bullet Hell type games are also ones that keep me coming back.
I was average at games like Counterstrike or other FPS games. I could finish the single player game and was in the middle rankings when playing with people. I think Battlefield 1, set in WW1, was the last one I played. Maybe a Star Wars version of it. It didn’t help that other things were taking my attention and I need to practice to stay good. Duh.
Equally, my exceptions are strange. The most hours I have in a game is Gems of War, a match three game. My wife and I play it, are the only ones in a guild, and its something we can talk about. Equally, the Battletech game really worked for me. I have 230 hours in that and enjoyed it.
MechCommander, though, frustrated me and I never got very good at it. C&C Generals was also frustrating. I think when RTS games required coordinating so much and understanding how they implemented strategy, was when I stopped playing them. IIRC, one RTS game had it where you could set waypoints for multiple groups. Each group would reach the same numbered waypoint at the same time. That allowed for coordination. It seems straight forward but for some reason, I couldn’t make it work. One group would get there first and lose and my next wave couldn’t win.
I know the plan to put an API or something to allow for modding and it’s coming but that’s about it.
I also played a lot of NWN/NWN2 mods. I seemed to find a lot of single dungeon ones but they usually had some trick that was fun.
I’m hoping that whatever they do for modding, it’s easy to activate and play/use the mod.
I’m not planning on that. They did release several games before BG3 and none were particularly great.
Wait, did you mean to say you have trouble with turn-based RPGs (Role-Playing Games) like BG3? Or real time RPGs like the Witcher games? Or were you talking more generally about games and how you have issues with RTS (Real-Time Strategy) like Starcraft et al?
If you meant RPGs generally, I can get the learning curve being an issue. They’re certainly not always easy to jump into compared to action games. I prefer the complexity myself. But I remember one friend (who wasn’t a big RPG guy - he liked twitchy shooters mostly) that just got disgusted dealing with the somewhat notorious layered charm/counter-charm chain system of busting spell defenses in BG2. You should always stick to what’s fun for you, not what annoys .
I’m reasonably okay with turn based when I can think about it. I enjoyed BG3 (and Battletech) for the turn based combat.
I’m okay with real time RPG, a la Skyrim. I have the Witcher games but they didn’t pull me into them. Or maybe I haven’t spent enough time with the Witcher games to be pulled into them.
I am mediocre and struggle with RTS strategy games like Starcraft, C&C games, and the Total War series. I want to like them, I think, but get frustrated with them. On this front, I think it depends how much micromanagement there is. I definitely suck at micromanagement in games.
I think OotS had the best version of what an epic spell battle looks like in DND, maybe computer RPGs, and it is always more epic in my head.
Ah, gotcha. Ditto, really. I found them fun enough in a way, but also frustratingly hectic and I long ago abandoned the genre myself. I do enjoy deep strategy games a la Europa Universalis, but even those I don’t play often anymore. Recently it has mostly been more traditional rpgs like BG3 and action rpgs like Grim Dawn (but not Diablo 4 or die-a-thousand-times Soulslike games).
I also don’t like Souls like games. I find games that assume it will take many attempts to beat the boss annoying.
I love Grim Dawn! That’s a fun action game.
I got D4 but fizzled out on it. For some reason, the devs decided to scale all fights. What’s the f’ing point of that? If every fight is the same because it’s scaled, it’s boring. I want to be able to do side quests to make the main quest easier, but this took that option away from me.
The few RTS games I like are Rise of Nations and Age of Empires but only on easy mode for fun.
I did like Majesty 1 & 2 but haven’t found anything like that.
Count me in as another Grim Dawn fan. I’ve been playing it for a long time with a fun pet build, running around with my little magic army that I’m buffing like a magical general is very satisfying.
Larian DID start on some DLC for the game but decided to just move on because people’s hearts weren’t into stretching it out and they were just doing it because it was expected. So they cut bait and everyone was thrilled to close the book on BG3.
I’ve started up another playthrough. My first playthrough was solo, avoiding letting anyone into my camp. This time I’m playing in a duo with Wyll and myself as the Dark Urge. I’ve killed all the other origin characters* on sight, without letting them join the party. I’m trying to keep Wyll happy, but he’s still whining about killing Karlach**. His patron was pleased with him, but still gives me the side-eye. I’m going to have to remove her from the picture–Wyll is going to be mine.
I’m rather surprised at how blasé Wyll is about my killing. I expected more goody-goodness, but he’s eager to kill goblins and their kin. I’m not sure if I’ll go all-in down the Dark Urge path. I’ll see if Wyll starts pushing back against my murdering ways.
* I never touched the broken sigil, so I assume Gale stays disappeared. Forever.
** Karlach was by far the hardest to kill. I almost felt sorry enough for the false paladins to not kill them. Almost.
I started a bunch of playthroughs when the game first came out. Mostly to get a handle on how the game works. All the companions at once were giving me social anxiety. Their strong personalities and demands were just too extra for me. So I went solo, with some mods to make it doable.
Now that there’s been plenty of updates, I felt like doing another run. This time with one companion. In another six months maybe with two.
The game has lots of content and there’s no reason for me to try doing it all at once.
Started an honor mode run earlier this summer and didn’t get around to it much. Just died in the blighted village basement because I had an invisible Shovel the Quasit selected when a fight started. So it didn’t go into turn based mode and half my party was killed before I paused. I knew that happens, but haven’t played in a while and forgot (also, it’s a really stupid design decision). Plus never used Shovel before.
“Only” 7 hours of play down, but I had managed to get Zhalk’s sword on the nautiloid. I’m pretty annoyed right now.
As someone who plays a lot of hardcore Diablo you have to get into the mentality of “how far will I get this time” or it will get pretty frustrating. Don’t go in expecting that you will actually win.
I spent my College years with a crappy laptop so mostly stuck to a few games, one of which was the 2012 XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I played it with the Long War mod, on Ironman, on Impossible difficulty.
I beat honor mode before and found it very fun. The stakes being higher makes the fights very intense. I nearly died in the Cazador fight, which would have been bad because it was like 80 hours in, but would have felt justified because I was over confident and didn’t prep correctly. This was annoying not because my party died, but because the manner of it.
Yes. The only difference is you don’t get the cosmetic gold dice.
I’m ok with not finishing a run. My party getting killed in real time when I have another character selected because of one specific mechanic was my issue.
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