For context, Larian Studio founder Swen Vincke predicted that the game could reach 100,000 peak concurrent users during its debut period, and that was a fairly optimistic prediction. I work in IT, and really feel for those folks. I hope they designed their infrastructure to scale!
And that’s only Steam, not including GOG, or the influx of PS5 users next month. Let’s take it to 1 million!
Really seems like they hit a nerve with this game, which seems to be that people want these giant RPGs with tons of quests, choices and companions, but also want them to have actual cutscenes and not just textboxes as far as presentation goes. Probably helps that this is like the first AAA CRPG like this since like Dragon Age: Origins, which came out 14 goddamn years ago. I don’t quite think the overwhelming praise the game has gotten is quite warranted, since it just doesn’t seem inspired to be more than a good DnD campaign, but at that it is really good and manages to be just polished and streamlined to be a hit (even though parts of it feel undercooked and janky, like the map or the inventory system).
Why would it want to be more than a good DnD campaign? That’s exactly what Larian hoped it would be, and pretty much what it is. It’s not as open-ended as a real campaign can be, but given the scale and quality of the content, it’s really something special. It’s only the best dnd game ever made.
I don’t question the quality of the game, I just don’t feel that just doing Baldur’s Gate again, twenty years later, really warrants ALL of the hype. Like the games from that time people still talk about, like Planescape Torment, Arcanum, even something like Fallout 2 or somewhat later Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines are games that are just a bit more “out there”. Baldur’s Gate feels comparably more vanilla compared to those. It’s full of tropes and it does them well, but as far as I’ve played it doesn’t always manage to rise above them and even from a design standpoint it is not that much different from original Baldurs Gate games.
I guess this is more of a lament about the state of the industry right now, but the fact that twenty years of gaming evolution leads to just doing the same types of games again but doesn’t really fill me with that much excitement.
Those are completely different genres of games, though, and certainly not what I or anyone else I know that was hyped for BG3 wanted. We wanted a modern DnD game, Larian wanted to make a modern DnD game. We got a modern DnD game.
DnD is massively popular nowadays, more so than ever. It’s okay that it’s not what YOU wanted, but it’s not saying anything about the “state of the industry”.
This the exact kind of hyperbole the thread op was just talking about. The “best d&d game ever made” is a highly subjective opinion. The amount of content is being massively overrated by the hype. Yeah, it’s a solid amount, but BG2 had more content than this game 20 years ago especially when it comes to dialogue, since people can’t be bothered to read without a voice actor doing it for them.
I’m really enjoying it but I’m also tired of how ridiculous and aggressively cultish fanboys get during the post release period. The game is far from perfect.
I have 165 hours played, about half of that in early access. I’m just about to get to Baldur’s Gate itself for the first time, and can already see that I’m going to have at least two more full playthroughs to explore the campaign’s boundaries. How much content do you think qualifies for your standard?
There are no perfect games, but this one hits a lot more than it misses.
I think part of it is that it’s a single-player RPG (or co-op if you want) with a focus on the story experience. No mmo-lite features, battlepasses, always online requirements, live service, etc. bloat to be found. A concept that the current AAA market seems to be allergic to.
It says what it is on the tin and delivers that. That’s a breath of fresh air for many people right now.
Also, there was that whole drama with devs complaining about how BG3 was going to ruin it for everybody else by making gamers expect a higher quality product from studios. Which isn’t really what those devs were saying, but it’s what it came off as to people, and that probably gave the game a lot more positive attention than it probably otherwise would’ve gotten.
Those damn gamers and their expectations of receiving a quality product they pay for!
Not that I strongly disagree with you, but did you see the map in early access? Ha! And at least we got a few things fixed in the inventory system since EA. Sorting and multi-select are key for a hoarder like me. They took so much feedback from early access and fixed most of the worst things they could. But I’ve been playing since patch 0, so…
Any game that gets anywhere close to being a good DnD campaign is Gold in my book. But yeah; certainly still lots of bits are undercooked and janky.
There is still stuff in here that other games have managed to fix like a decade ago, like being able to access all your characters inventory in the camp, having a place where all the books and texts you’ve read are collected, automatically picking up gold or merging the inventories of enemies when their bodies are close together. The quest log is just a void filled with text, without any flavor or convenience whatsoever, no way to click on a quest and see where the quest marker is or anything like that. Same with the map, there’s no worldmap that shows the location of the individual maps on some larger scale that would help you orient yourself, no way to even switch between the different maps and all the fast travel points are just in one giant list. Also even in singleplayer I’ve not found an actual way to pause this game. For a game that was in early access for three years, these feel like basic things that never got the second round of polish they deserved.
I have collected several chests/containers that are in my box in camp. I have sorted my inventory into these containers, one with books for example. It’s relatively easy for me to add any books I find to it, so that part isn’t really an issue if you think for a second about it.
As for the quest log showing you were to go, yes it totally does if you know where to go. There’s a “show on map” button at the bottom of the log.
To pause, enter turn based mode. Shift-space on KB&M, or the button on the button right next to the camp button, where end turn is in combat. I somewhat agree in single-player, esc should just pause as well, but it really isn’t an issue worth worrying about.
The rest of what you said, yeah I agree with. Probably the most frustrating thing you’ve mentioned is the fast travel not allowing you to see other maps. I remember where each one is, but it’d be easier to select it on a map for some of them. They’re ordered based on the order you found them, so close ones may not be grouped.
My biggest wish is either to be able to place other chests in camp for better organization, rather than having the chests in the traveller’s chest. This could be done with a zone in camp that’s saved, or even better would be a portable hole item. It’s one of the oldest and most useful items in DnD, next to a bag of holding. Maybe the issue is dealing with taking one inside the other, which is supposed to open a portal to another realm and kill everyone basically, which requires work to add and sucks for new players who don’t know that.
I still think having it fully voiced makes it lighter than it could be if conversations were entirely text. Even the longest speeches in BG3 pale in comparison to random idle banter found in a tavern of BG2. There’s just more of it. More dialogue, more lore, more background… If they could do that, and still have that density, that but still be fully voiced, that would be the dream.
Personally, I don’t mind reading and I wish we’d get more games that don’t require voice acting for everything. It’d allow them to do so much more with a lot less. I do think at some point we’ll get that that point with synthesized voices, but it isn’t quite there yet. I’ve used several in Ludum Dare games, and they sound great but not perfect. Still, even as they are if they let devs write more and create more options, I’d take it. Adding options with voice acting balloons work required fast, so that’s why it’s so often fake choice but the other person (or, in FO4, the player character even) responds similarly no matter what you pick.
Would need to lean on AI for something like that, I think. Keep the normal human-acted main cast/supporting characters, delegate everything else to AI.
It’s already been done with a Skyrim mod.
I mean, good compression and a huge budget for VAs would also accomplish it. The limiting factors are really just cost and storage space of the files. Like they probably pay the devs $35/hour and that sounds good; but a big name actor like JK Simmons probably gets like $1000/hour for his work as Ketheric.
As a Linux user I am all in on supporting Steam. They are the reason I was able to comfortably leave Windows. And I like their Big Picture Mode to browse my games and then I can use my controller and big TV to game.
Hell yes. Proton is huge, and Big Picture Mode is basically a console. I feel you on the controller support. With your encouragement, I finally connected a PS4 controller to my PC, and SEAMLESSLY explored a hostile area as a conjured cat. Amazing. (Still not giving up M+K, though…) Cheers!
LOL well Larian made sure we were both happy with K&M or controller.
Did your conjured animal get attacked? My summoned quasit has invisibility.
No, my cat passed without going hostile, but it was a L4 Ogre, so, ya know. I even meowed at her; she responded, but did not attack.
I haven’t even tried my quasit yet!
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I am not a Linux user mainly because windows is the way to go for gaming, but what steam is doing is good and necessary, it keeps a door open for gaming in case Microsoft want to close their system.
I use arch btw
What infra do they need? It’s an offline game except for cross-saves.
The first thing that comes to mind is the sheer number of crash reports they were getting early on. I know I submitted probably two dozen myself those first few days. Game is rock solid for me now, though.
The second thing that comes to mind is that they are clearly sucking up a whole lot of data around gameplay. The stats they published on Friday about how people played opening weekend was eye opening to me regarding the amount of data they are ingesting: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1086940/announcements/detail/6199820457241938860
Of all player deaths, 12% were caused by friendly fire. Nice spellcasting there, Dave!
I feel attacked.
For what it’s worth - I work in the AAA game industry. Every AAA game collects those kinds of metrics, even “singleplayer only” ones.
They answer a few questions:
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Are things too strong and the player is dying too much? Too weak and the majority of players breeze through difficult sections?
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Are players getting lost/stuck? Are there softlocks or progression blockers?
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Where do players stop playing the game? Can we work out why those areas are more likely to stop playing?
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Are players going to certain areas? Are important areas being skipped? Are areas without a lot of content seeing more traffic than expected?
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What kinds of builds are players trying? Why are they playing those builds? Do they change builds midway through? Why?
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What NPCs are the players talking to? How do they interact with those NPCs?
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What do gamers do over the course of the lifetime of a game? What do hardcore passionate fans like? What do casual players like?
These sorts of data points are really critical for things like future patches or DLC. They help point out the places in the game that need love and adjustment going forward. (For example, how many people romance Karlach vs. Shadowheart? How many people go for the Underdark vs. the Mountain Pass? How many people investigate the Creche vs. skip Gith stuff entirely?)
For example - in a game I worked on, we saw a spike in players quitting the game at the section where they needed to crouch for the first time. This meant either crouch wasn’t being taught well, crouch controls weren’t intuitive, or something broke. A subsequent patch changed the crouch tutorial and the spike of players quitting went away.
Every single moment that is spent working on the game has a cost. The job of production is to ensure that development resources are spent in places that give the biggest bang for the buck. Places like the tutorial or early missions are super duper hyper important because 100% of players will see them. As things diverge, fewer segments of players see them - some players quit entirely, while others commit to one section of content over the other. You want to figure out where “most” players go and focus there, only moving down once those areas are fixed.
For example, 1/3 of players choose evil. So 1/3 of the time should be spent on the evil path, because why invest 75% of resources into something that 66% of players won’t ever see? You still need something there, but when you need to make decisions, production (and publishers!) only drive decisions based on data.
Community feedback is biased. The loudest minority are the ones who choose to give feedback online. These are players who are highly invested in the game, much more than a “typical” player. But they represent a relatively small chunk of the player base - 5-10%, on the high end - and not a representative sample at that. While community feedback is important (and does drive many decisions, if only to make sure the Internet doesn’t get mad), it isn’t “good enough” for dev teams to focus on it exclusively. The numbers guys work in numbers, not sentiment.
So the data basically is used to say “Look: players are romancing XYZ more than we expected. We should invest more resources into making sure that their romance is rewarding” and if that’s true it’s likely that production will greenlight some dev time to work on that.
It can also be used for “Hey, players are seeing framerate drops in these areas, consistently. Can we have a patch that improves framerate here?” and production will balance that against everything else (how many more sales will be made by raising the quality bar and fixing the framerate in this spot?), create tickets, and triage them out for a future patch.
Then if Larian works on Baldur’s Gate 4, data from Baldur’s Gate 3 can help drive decisions. Should the dev team invest resources in a better character creator? What areas are really resonating with players - and how can a sequel replicate that? What areas were more disappointing than the dev team expected, and how can they be fixed? (For example, the devs seem surprised that the community has rejected Giths as much as they have - this isn’t too surprising from the outside looking in, but it’s easy to be blinded and lose sight of things like this when you work on a project for 4-5 years with dev goggles on.)
This is all super duper common data to collect, on any game. I wouldn’t read too much into it; Larian is just being more open than most by sharing selections of that data with the community.
Thank you for the insights. While I think I knew a lot of this on some level, it always helps to have it pointed out. I guess what I find enchanting is Larian’s willingness to share some of that data with us. It’s not something I have spent much time thinking about, and is much more Black Mirror than I assumed. A little scary, really. I thought it was just me by myself playing this game.
For what it’s worth - you are one of millions of entries in a server somewhere. It is extraordinarily unlikely that anyone would look at you in particular.
There’s a list of user IDs that devs can map to various tables. These tables can be device information (OS, GPU, CPU, RAM), graphics settings, framerate data, player character details, whatever. They would basically have to know what your player character’s name is and use that to find your unique ID, which would in turn be able to be used as a lookup for the other tables. (It’s possible that they also log your Steam ID or something but I’ve never seen that happen. Certainly possible though.)
More likely, unless you did something that made you stand out (like you are an obvious cheater, or you were the only player in the whole world to do something, which happens) your data just gets put in a bunch of graphs and averaged out. Then some data guy gives a presentation in a boring meeting where the graphs are presented and analyzed. Conclusions are drawn and then producers chase you down to fix the things based on those conclusions. Rinse and repeat.
There are times where I would find someone doing something that should be impossible, and then I poke at the data to figure out why. Usually that gives me an idea on where a bug could be. But you’re one entry among millions; it’s statistically extremely unlikely that you are the standout that gets analyzed - and if you are, it’s not necessarily the case that they dig deep into everything you’ve ever done.
You can pretty much assume this about every game these days, by the way. Singleplayer, multiplayer… if a AAA publisher is involved, they’ll all do it. Starfield will certainly do it too.
You can probably use Wireshark to peek at the data being sent, if you’re really curious. Multiplayer games I worked on did this stuff server-side when possible to avoid players using Wireshark to look at everything, but singleplayer games don’t have that luxury. I doubt they encrypt the data (but it’s possible).
“you are one of millions of entries in a server somewhere” … that makes me feel better. /s
Have you watched DEVS? This feels a lot like that.
That was a great read, thank you for posting this. As a kid I always wanted to get into game dev but never managed to (I’m still a dev, but not in the gaming industry since it hasn’t thrived where I live). So it was very interesting to see the inner workings of taking decisions in a game dev sense.
Larian also shared an infographic detailing that data collection (e.g. they posted how many players have pet a dog in total), so it makes sense they have a ton of other data collection.
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There’s coop, although I assume it’s just peer to peer.
The game is too good. It’s like crack. I have to work today.
I have to work too. Still think of stuff I want to do in Faerun though. There are caves to explore.
I don’t have much time to play but I managed to play during peak with a friend who bought me the game (money’s tight with a kid on the way). Our duo play a nude halfling divorcee monk (midlife crisis!) and his buddy dwarf barbarian who’s going nude too. He’s happily married with kids, selling smoked meats— at least, until their abduction anyway!
So there’s our contribution!
I had no way to justify buying this one. I own a bunch of CRPG that I haven’t finished, as well as jrpg on the backlog.
But I am so very glad for everyone who enjoys BG3. It’s good to see a franchise taken to the next level without getting bastardized. It doesn’t happen a lot.
Honestly I bought it a week later to make sure it wasn’t a lemon. I am glad I got it though. My wife and I play it together and it’s the first game in a long while we both enjoy and play together. It has been over a decade since I have been this time invested in a game and not regretted it later.
It doesn’t happen a lot. And I bet if you did pick this one up, you would finish it.
Not necesarily. The thing I’m struggling with in BG3 is that I just don’t like any of my party mates. I’ve got no interest in playing an evil playthrough, yet most of my party members are either outright evil, or simply self interested. We’re not saving anything, we’re not fighting for something bigger. We’re just throw together by chance and are working on solving our shared predicmanet.
I’m just not invested in most of them or their stories, and the backstory for the background I chose has me doing evil things sometimes against my will. And all of my tough choices I get to make about exploring my history amount of “become more evil for power”. I don’t want to do evil things. I don’t enjoy that game style
The game is amazing. But the story isn’t coming close to grabbing me in the same way previous BG stories did, or the way the pathfinder NPCs did.
Why did you choose the background that makes you do evil things if you didn’t want to do evil things or at least grapple with the struggle of trying (and possibly failing) to overcome those urges?
Also, can’t think of a single party member so far except one that is straight up evil. Selfish sure, but realistically ALL people are either self-interested or suicidal. Even the folks who do selfless things do so for some sort of selfish reason, even if that’s personal fulfillment through good deeds. But even the first two companions are neutral at worst. Rude? Definitely. Not evil. And their views can evolve over time.
Also… How do you KNOW you aren’t fighting for something bigger?
Hate to nitpick an opinion but it feels like these problems are self-inflicted or based on the first 15 minutes of the story with most of the dialogue skipped.
“I hit myself on the head with this stick and now it hurts. How could the stick do this to me?”
I’m one of those, been playing non-stop all weekend much to my wife’s chagrin lol
What an incredible achievement for Larian, and well deserved!
Oh and I played ALL day yesterday and today on Steam. So I am counted.
I got my game from Gog, so I guess I’m not in that statistic.
I can’t find any GOG stats. Doesn’t seem like they offer any numbers. I bought the game on Steam, GOG and also the collectors edition, and gave that steam key away. I’m currently only playing on Steam, but I do want to get BG3 up and running on GOG as I do prefer that platform.
How would GOG know? The attraction of the platform is they hand you the game file and are done with you, no DRM, no tracking, no nothing.
Well, GOG certainly has sales numbers at least. And Larian certainly knows how many people are playing the game. Just look at the stats they published last Friday.
Presumably that’s the whole point of the absolutely necessary launcher.
“–skip-launcher” is your friend. Supposedly improves in game performance as well. https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-disable-launcher/
Oh believe me, it was the first thing I looked up after being greeted with the launcher. But good to spread the message, the game is great but god the spam of launchers all over gaming is awful.
Amen. Not sure if the launcher has anything to do with the stats they collect, though. Would be nice to know. But Larian is one of a very few companies I don’t mind hoovering up my data.
Does that launch it in vulkan though? Or just skip to dx11
I think that depends on what executable you are calling. The default shortcut installed with Steam is to some online steam BS. I switched to using a shortcut directly to “bg3_dx11.exe” but I assume you could do the same with “bg3.exe”, which I assume is Vulcan. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
EDIT: Reddit says I’m right:
Location: “By default it’s C:/Program files/Steam/steamapps/common/Baldur’s Gate 3/bin”
Versions: “Here you should see both bg3.exe (Vulkan) and bg3_dx11.exe”
Here’s how to do it directly in Steam, too, if you want: https://eip.gg/bg3/guides/how-to-skip-the-launcher/
EDIT 2: @Hairyblue commented here: “Thankfully, you can use the launch command --skip-launcher to boot straight into the DX11 version of the game, or use --skip-launcher --vulkan to boot straight into Vulkan.”
I assume a lot of people that use gog also use gog galaxy. It’s nice to know you actually have the game files drm free, but I still prefer having the features in gog galaxy like automatic updates for example.
Good luck with that. I bought it on gog, had to jump through hoops to have it install, only to have the download stall again the next day on a patch. They have to get their act together, I just wanted to play so got a refund and bought it on steam where it downloaded, installed and patched without a hitch…
That makes me sad. But I guess there was a reason I chose to install via Steam on launch day instead of GOG. But as I said, I do prefer the platform. I played all of early access on GOG without a hitch.
Curiosity, why do you prefer GOG? I haven’t used it much.
I think many like the DRM free games. I have gotten a few very old games (Ultima series, Neverwinter) from them. I like to use Steam over GOG because of the Big Picture Mode and Proton. I even added GOG Neverwinter to my non-Steam games to be able to access it with Big Picture Mode.
I had never played a turn-based RPG before BG3; and I had zero knowledge of DnD systems, besides the little I’d gleaned almost by osmosis via memes.
Wasn’t sure if this game was for me, also wasn’t sure if the two hour refund window would be enough to find out; I got out the pirate patch & peg leg to find out. As another commenter said this game is like crack… well deserving of £50 so I bought it yesterday. I was always too intimidated by the deep systems to join any local DnD outings as a fumbling noob, but wondering if this game might have opened me up to it! Wouldn’t that be ironic, a single player RPG (I know you can multi but I don’t) getting me outside and socialising.
Nice. I can’t afford it, but if I could I’d give a copy to my roommate. He’s been looking forward to this game for years but rent is too damn high.
Share your library with him and play in offline mode. Or do couch coop.
Great advice. I don’t own it either though. Just want to make him happy before I’m gone.
Are you moving out or dying?
