What drove BG3's success, game mechanics or emotional engagement?

[Baron Tahn]

Yep. That checks out. Bug fixes and QoL? Nah fk that gimmi more smootchy bois. Demographic knows what it wants.

 

[0wca]

Degeneracy.

 

[jackofshadows]

To be fair that's what: twitter representative sample? Then no surprise there.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Makes ya wonder, what if Larian HQ actually wanted to make an rpg and these were the stats/numbers/data they were crunching? Id probably drop it like it was scalding and go work on another project too. Like Conan the Barbarian or something.

 

[Hellraiser]

To be fair that's what: twitter representative sample? Then no surprise there.

I tried looking for the OG tweet but couldn't find it since the image is without the user name. Mainly I wanted to see it because it seems to have been screencapped just 40 minutes after the poll was made, so I was wondering what the final results were and how many total votes there were.

 

[Swen]

All fake news and framing to make my game look bad.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Very based of Swen to call it a day on BG3 and move on to his next project. His hair aren't growing back from making BG4...

 

[The Wall]

What made BG3 succesfull more then anything else? Being ONLY Western AAA RPG in last 5+YEARS(?)* with competent production values. All other things are poisonous cherries on top of cake served to cake-starved audience

*West is perfectly fine. Ignore falling bridges, crushing planes, brewing American Civil War, inflation, drugs and cancer epidemic and crime. Complex games not being made has NOTHING to do with all other complex systems failing

 

[Lhynn]

and I had nobody present an intelligible argument to disprove my points. Its all limp-wristed rating.

Just what kind of argument are you looking for?
I think there were many of us out here who provided just that.

Then I must be blind, because I have not seen a single post praising the combat in detail, or the progression, or the character system or even the writing.

It is all "Yeah, this is shit, and that is shit, and the other thing is shit, but MAGICALLY it works!"
Fuck off with that retarded bullshit. Show me a post highlighting the good of the game, because ever since I started posting in that thread I've been asking for it and seen nothing.

Or tell me, what exactly did you like about the game, and how did the elements I mentioned stack up to other games in the genre? Particularly against other ITS games.

 

[NecroLord]

and I had nobody present an intelligible argument to disprove my points. Its all limp-wristed rating.

Just what kind of argument are you looking for?
I think there were many of us out here who provided just that.

Then I must be blind, because I have not seen a single post praising the combat in detail, or the progression, or the character system or even the writing.

It is all "Yeah, this is shit, and that is shit, and the other thing is shit, but MAGICALLY it works!"
Fuck off with that retarded bullshit. Show me a post highlighting the good of the game, because ever since I started posting in that thread I've been asking for it and seen nothing.

Or tell me, what exactly did you like about the game, and how did the elements I mentioned stack up to other games in the genre? Particularly against other ITS games.

As I've said, games like Toee are just superior tactically to BG3.
Hell, other games of the past already accomplished a great deal of tactical combat depth.
Story is just Forgotten Realms type fan fiction tier wankery. I do admit that the original Illithid premise was pretty cool, but it quickly goes downhill from there.
Sleeping with a Illithid? This is straight fan fiction furry pr0n...
May I remind you that the Mind Flayers and most Aberrations view Humanity and the whole of the Prime Material Plane with complete revulsion? Their alien mindsets do not bother to understand us, we are fit only as slaves to them or to be exterminated.
Anyway, I'm diverging a bit, but that's just the truth of it.

 

[Lhynn]

As I've said, games like Toee are just superior tactically to BG3.

Are they though? Its been a long time since I played ToEE, but wasnt it entirely dependant on build and numbers and making a party of diverse 1 trick ponies?
Like ToEE was praised for many things back in the day, but depth of tactics wasnt one of them. Remember having a bunch of dudes that hit hard, a caster that nuked, and maybe someone doing crowd control.

I know I have a lot more options available to me with any given character or party on how to approach a situation in BG3 than I ever had in ToEE. Also the sheer amount of trash fights in ToEE are disheartening, the only reason I never replayed it was knowing how many hobgoblins were waiting for me.

Story is just Forgotten Realms type fan fiction tier wankery.

Agree. I dislike the characters, find the story to be an unfocussed mess.

What else?

 

[NecroLord]

As I've said, games like Toee are just superior tactically to BG3.

Are they though? Its been a long time since I played ToEE, but wasnt it entirely dependant on build and numbers and making a party of diverse 1 trick ponies?
Like ToEE was praised for many things back in the day, but depth of tactics wasnt one of them. Remember having a bunch of dudes that hit hard, a caster that nuked, and maybe someone doing crowd control.

I know I have a lot more options available to me with any given character or party on how to approach a situation in BG3 than I ever had in ToEE. Also the sheer amount of trash fights in ToEE are disheartening, the only reason I never replayed it was knowing how many hobgoblins were waiting for me.

Story is just Forgotten Realms type fan fiction tier wankery.

Agree. I dislike the characters, find the story to be an unfocussed mess.

What else?

So you like BG3 just for the combat?

 

[Lemming42]

I'd love a whole game of BG3 combat, Dungeon Rats style. I still don't get where the complaints come from, it's genuinely got far more tactical options, character builds, and interesting mechanics than a great many other games, and when you factor in the immense environmental reactivity then it opens up a whole world of options. People will be saying fucking Fallout's combat was better in a minute. People will be saying Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession had better mechanics because you could "really feel the hits" when spam-clicking enemies or some shit.

 

[jaekl]

Combat?? How do you even make it to combat before mashing your computer monitor into pulp with the nearest blunt object to make the cringe stop? Doesn't make any sense, the game effectively has no combat whatsoever because it's impossible for a human brain to take that much abuse and still remain intact.

 

[sser]

The Dragon Age/Mass Effect-style of Bioware was completely absent from the market and, despite being turn-based, BG3 filled it. Pre-BG3, Larian had already gotten the attention of the grognard-types, so it was only a matter of finding the rest of the consumers which the insanely high production value + marketing accomplished. I'd hazard a guess that more women played BG3 than probably any singleplayer RPG in existence, a strong indicator of large market-share capture.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Larian were always trying though. D:OS had its main artwork as a couple holding hands didnt it? Was always designed for the girls. The difference was marketing, which worked very well this time.

 

[Infinitron]

The Dragon Age/Mass Effect-style of Bioware was completely absent from the market

This is Spiders erasure! Roguey

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, Greedfall sold 2 million just by showing up and being Bioware-like enough.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Degeneracy.

This. It's no secret that most gamers are mentally ill basement dwelling faggots who fap to tranny/horse porn. BG3 appeals to recetera types who, unfortunately, are the majority.

 

[The Wall]

Yeah, Greedfall sold 2 million just by showing up and being Bioware-like enough.

Market LOVES! Skyrims. There have been very few Skyrims since Skyrim. Every competently made Skyrim-like, with or without bear forest gangbangs, sold really well. Demand for Skyrims/DAOs is STRONK. Even on Codex

Why? Stupidly simple. Closest thing to isekai. Being transported into another fantasy world. Normies love it, and you who are reading this also have pre-cum. Such are Humans...

Everything else is of minor importance. Even hardcore gay-vampire lovers wouldn't have bought BG3 had it been 2D and isometric without voice acted vampire blowjobs. PRODUCTION VALUES

 

[sser]

To detail it a bit: I'm speaking more to the character-centric stuff that draws in casuals. I know people who liked Dragon Age because of the story and characters, without any real attempts to play it as a min-maxxing sperg or really caring much about the gameplay in general. Same for Mass Effect. Bioware dropped all that to chase after that live service revenue stream leaving an abrupt hole in the market. It wasn't like a Sim City --> City Skylines thing where another franchise just came in and toppled the previous one for slacking. POE, Pathfinder, etc. were just knocking on the door, but their read-heavy style was necessarily casual-hostile.

Besides Freedom Force not getting a Kickstarter during the superhero-movie frenzy, my next biggest surprise is that this era did not see a revival of Fable to slam a AAA-hog back on the table.

 

[antimeridian]

my next biggest surprise is that this era did not see a revival of Fable to slam a AAA-hog back on the table.

Well they're working on it now. Brace yourself for the horror.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Witcher 1 has better combat than BG3

 

[Lemming42]

To detail it a bit: I'm speaking more to the character-centric stuff that draws in casuals. I know people who liked Dragon Age because of the story and characters, without any real attempts to play it as a min-maxxing sperg or really caring much about the gameplay in general. Same for Mass Effect. Bioware dropped all that to chase after that live service revenue stream leaving an abrupt hole in the market. It wasn't like a Sim City --> City Skylines thing where another franchise just came in and toppled the previous one for slacking. POE, Pathfinder, etc. were just knocking on the door, but their read-heavy style was necessarily casual-hostile.

I think even more than this it's a case of Larian just making a combat system that's actually fun, which BioWare have singularly failed to do over their entire career. People are coming for the characters, quest design, exploration, and C&C/roleplaying opportunities, but are really enjoying the actual mechanics themselves, something that can't be said of many ME/DA players (or, for that matter, other mainstream crossover RPGs like TES or Fo3/NV), where people are coming for aspects like writing and quest design and simply putting up with the combat and trying to get it over with as fast as possible, rather than actively enjoying it.

The lesson to take away from Baldur's Gate 3 for the games industry as a whole is that the public aren't stupid, and are entirely capable of embracing things like turn-based cRPGs (previously thought to be too "inaccessible" or w/e during the Diablo-clone era of the 2000s) as long as they're well-designed and fun, and it turns out people actually vastly prefer this to shitty dumbed down half-measures like Dragon Age.

The public, including people who normally don't play games, are genuinely enjoying turn-based combat and getting interested in things like character builds and party compositions. This is hugely exciting. We're in a position now, for the first time in decades, where a turn-based isometric Fallout game could be extremely commercially viable and enormously popular. Unfortunately, I imagine the lesson Bethesda, Owlcat, BioWare, Obsidian, etc will actually take away from BG3 though is "we need to spend 80% of our budget on motion capture" and "we need a campsite with companion dialogue". Then they'll sit and wonder why everyone keeps thinking their games are middling as fuck.

 

[Butter]

The public, including people who normally don't play games, are genuinely enjoying turn-based combat and getting interested in things like character builds and party compositions. This is hugely exciting. We're in a position now, for the first time in decades, where a turn-based isometric Fallout game could be extremely commercially viable and enormously popular. Unfortunately, I imagine the lesson Bethesda, Owlcat, BioWare, Obsidian, etc will actually take away from BG3 though is "we need to spend 80% of our budget on motion capture" and "we need a campsite with companion dialogue". Then they'll sit and wonder why everyone keeps thinking their games are middling as fuck.

See below. You're huffing the real stuff if you think normies are interested in the combat of all things.

"What drove BG3's success, game mechanics or emotional engagement?"

An isometric turn-based Fallout without BG3's dating simulator elements could be expected to sell about as well as Wasteland 3 did.