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I wish they had done it without Tencent.
Interesting, I didn’t even know Tencent was involved, was their influence very visible?
The amount of money that was dropped on the making of the game is a clue but unpopular opinion? Who’s a fan of tencent anyway?
For those who don’t have the context Tencent is a huge Chinese company that has many investments in games. They are the type that plays it silently usually invest and they do let the people do their thing then take their share. But the problem is two fold first of all you cannot start saying much abou the ccp tencent wouldn’t send you to jail but would pull the plung of the funding. Secondly any client info that ends in Tencent hands is potentially viewable by the ccp. There’s no need of a Snowden to tell you that, the government made it law so if you buy the game your data goes to China.My thing about china getting my data is ‘so what?’ I live in the United States. Every major corporation will sell my data to the government, and no warrant is necessary. The fuck is China going to do to me? Send some of their secret police to my house? Fucking TIGHT. I can tell them to fuck off and eat my ass.
Shouldn’t they eat your ass first and then fuck off?
Every major corporation will sell my data to the government
And also to China. I don’t trust Tencent any more or less than I trust Ubisoft or 2K
Yea you can tell them that but the more china as on you and other citizen of where you live the better they can make the propaganda and influence election and other fun thing like that sure they can do it without all the data but it will be less efficient
but unpopular opinion?
I don’t think Tencent’s involvement is common knowledge among BG3 players. It’s hard to have an opinion about something you’re unaware of.
They don’t have a controlling share on Larian, but they don’t own an insignificant amount of it. I wouldn’t say it is noticeable. Doesn’t have MTX, which I’m sure they would’ve loved.
Isn’t Larian independent?
It’s a situation similar to Epic. The controlling shares are in the hands of the CEO, Swen Vincke in this case. But at least Tencent only owns 30% of Larian, which is better than 49% of Epic, even if the end result is effectively no different.
Do you have a source for that?
This article corroborates the statement that Tencent owns 30% of Larian, but they do not have voting rights. Swen Vincke and his wife control the direction of the company with their combined 70%.
I realized I was actually slightly off base on the Epic share numbers, where Tencent owns slightly less than the 49% I had initially stated. This article claims the number at 40% total capital, which works out to 48.4% issued shares. However, CEO Tim Sweeny remains the majority shareholder of the company, and Epic has apparently stated that Tencent does not have any involvement with the way they run their business (at least as of when this article was written in 2019, I don’t know if things are different now but I have not heard as such.)
The romance aspect is a complete waste of time and the time spent on it could have added so much more to the game.
You can only bone your companion the one time and they turn the lights off in Sharesses Caress.
I want my companions to have a “Let’s fuck” button.
Unpopular for sure ha ha
It’s not super fleshed out, but it also isn’t time consuming. Like if you are talking to your companions regularly, we are talking about selecting a couple of extra dialogue options here and there.
I’m talking g air the time the developer put into the whole thing. The coding, the animation, the VO… all the time could have been put to better more useful things.
I decided not to buy it yet.
I find Astarion severely overrated
I leave him out entirely. Can’t stand him
Happy cake day!
I killed him after he tried to bite me. I felt a little bit guilty and replayed that part but letting him draw a little blood from me. He killed me and the next day acted like nothing had happened, like he didn’t know why I was dead. Fuck that guy, reloaded the save where I killed him.
4 max party size was a mistake
by the end game I was running around with two druids, Gale and a Karlach. It was enough to create an army
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x3 fire elemental lv 6
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x2 woodland being lv 5
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x6 ice elemental lv 4
spamming through “end turn” because moving them all will take longer than finishing the fight next turn was very annoying
though it did feel good to have a whole army at my command, the encounters took forever
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Isn’t it laughably easy to mod? I’m okay with them saying “this is what we balanced for, anything else is on you”, though it should be like those divinity “prepackaged mods” like the zoomy boots
If they went any higher they’d have to make some encounters even larger and lengthier for balance, and some of those encounters already feel like they go on forever 💀
I installed the 16-member party Mod and took all the origin characters (except urge) around for a while. Combat became a chore. Probably the biggest grievance is they’d block each other’s movement, but it just took REALLY long to do combat with them all present.
I dont care for the lengthy skill checks with the dice roll animation
You are able to click again to skip the animation. The rest of the setup though is important to be able to apply bonuses.
Is it though? Surely it can be made less obtrusive
No physical copy on release day.
It was too long and had too much content.
Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).
Would have been nice to finish the game then still be able to poke around in all the acts.
It felt like turning in quest coupons and getting your magic item/promise of aid and otherwise very low stakes.
In terms of pacing and stakes, it would have made much more sense for the PCs to have gone to Baldur’s Gate earlier in the game to do all the “adventurers faffing around” stuff, then revisited the city during the endgame. Though it would have clashed with their “each act is one set of maps” setup.
Instead, in the last act we have Gortash, supposed 5D chess player, centering all his plans on the PCs flipping to his side. Then he sits back and lets them wander all over the city, undermining him. Ultimately, when they don’t take up his offer, his backup plan is “whelp, guess I’ll die”.
Maybe the excuse is that the Elder Brain was making him stupid…
The spell VFX don’t feel incredible after level 3.
Me casting Curriculum of Strategy: Artistry of War expecting the coolest shit and getting lame ass skulls that don’t even explode
I find all the party members insufferable. I change their classes almost immediately for better synergy or I switch them out for the soulless NPC’s Withers has. Ironically, I’ve been D&D 5E Dungeon Master numerous times and I find the party members to be absolutely authentic characters real people would play. Good work Larian, ya made the characters so table top believable that I want to find a new group to play with.
I loved the character design because I hated the characters too: Lae’zel was a close minded warrior, Shadowheart a smartass, Gael Mr nice guy not so nice when you do something he doesn’t approve, Astarion the vampire rapist… Etc.
But then I kept on playing and I realized they were really deep characters. Lae’zel was indoctrinated super hard, but she’s smart and can recognize when things don’t make sense, even if she totally believes those things. Shadowheart has been lying to everyone, including herself, and putting a mask on; but she’s a really sweet woman. Astarion was abused in every possible way for centuries, and being a total asshole is his way to cope.
My point is, yeah, the characters are flawed and can come across as dicks, but many real people do too until you understand their circumstances. Not saying that what they do is justified, just that they are interesting characters and redeemable from my PoV.
I feel like a lot of characters were just standard RPG archetypes with maybe a wrinkle added in. Like Wyll is the classic “Warlock that makes the deal for the right reasons” and the wrinkle is that he has dad issues.
Compare him to one of my favorite RPG companions. Classic elf wizard nerd with an abusive father that made him hit the books and hit him also… but because of his childhood trauma his soul’s past life, a foul mouthed woman from a long time ago awoke within him and when sometimes he dissociates and she takes control because she wants him to be assertive… which, along with his fears of animancy, caused him to have an obsession with control, and why he accepted to join the baddies some time before you meet him.
Oh they’re great characters and well written. I just don’t like them though. I can’t justify my tastes.
Act 3 destroys the pacing
They should have just let you dye equipment at will from the character screen
The Emperor isn’t even that hot
I don’t think your act 3 take is particularly controversial tbh
You can tell Act 3 had the least amount of polish put into it. Act 1 and 2 feel very carefully and intentionally designed. You can tell they planned everything out. Act 3 feels like it was rushed and they had to make a lot of compromises.
The pacing is the most obvious thing but there’s also stuff like why is Gortash, the literal ruler of the city, being sworn into power in a random fort in the lower city instead of you know… the actual castle?
I always describe it like this:
Act 1 is a great sandbox and the most D&D like experience as a result.
Act 2 is the strongest story and writing, much more focused and tightly built. Some cool D&D like dungeoneering/puzzles to boot.
Act 3 is what happens when you don’t leave enough time and energy to wrap it all up. It tried to be as expansive (more even) as Act 1 and they couldn’t keep up with the writing. They also should’ve done away with the entire section before you actually enter the city. Talk about a momentum killer.
It’s weird, but I suspect that Act 2 and Act 3 were swapped originally. It makes more sense to have Act 2 be where you go to Baldur’s Gate, learn more about your companions, resolve their personal stories, explore a large open map, and THEN move on to the big confrontation against the Absolute at the tower.
From a story perspective it’s really weird how you confront the Absolute and then go on to sort of aimlessly do all that other stuff in Baldur’s Gate. It makes more sense if the story acts are swapped, imo.
The game is good despite DND 5e’s rules, not because of them.
Unfortunately, DND is mega popular. Many people have never played anything else. Many people have never even played it. So any discussion about it has a “of course 15 strength is +2, isn’t that just how RPGs work?” segment where you have to establish that DND is in fact weird.
Hard agree the ruleset is the mayor shackle to the game. I think the DnD part also includes the whole lore of the forgotten realms which is the incredible foundation in which the game could bloom tho. I’m not saying larian can’t create fantastic worlds and I’m looking forward to the next games, but the lore aspect of the DnD license is mayorly beneficial to the game
I hate multiplayer in pretty much any game where there’s a lot of menuing. And being able to wander off? There’s a reason you don’t split the party IRL and it holds here. Having a shopping session also is boring IRL and it is here, too. Oh, there was important plot stuff happening? I didn’t know the other person was in a conversation.
There’s a setting, I think it’s called eaves drop mode, where you will automatically listen in on any conversation that another player initiates.
Just let me auto follow the party leader, please
You can do this and also listen to conversations you aren’t present for from the active character portraits without changing settings. There’s even a prompt for ongoing conversations to join in on them as a listener remotely.
The marketing oversold the idea that if you wanted to do something it would amaze you to find it was expected.
Most of the, I thought at the time, very obvious thing I wanted to explore thematically were not there. Also, Romance felt clunky and unnuanced.
In Act 1 there is a downed bridge. I had something like a scroll of fly and it wouldn’t let me cross.
I strongly dislike turn-based combat and I would love an option for real time combat. I just want fights to be over, they distract me from enjoying games. With real time combat I just mash the same attacks until it is over. BG3’s combat is a fucking chore and it’s the only reason I abandoned the game on the second map (in that monastery ruin).
You’d probably like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games. They’re dated (PS2 era) but really fun, and it’s literally just Baldur’s Gate, but more like Gauntlet-style rogue-like games. Real-time, not turn-based, and they’re just side stories to the Baldur’s Gate canon.
That’s as far as I got too before quitting due to boredom, but for different reasons.
Character building and combat are the main draws for me to D&D, but D&D 5E character building is a step backwards from 3&3.5E and micromanaging an entire party through turn based combat feels like a chore. I’d like to see a Borderlands or Diablo II mod that takes those gameplay styles into the Forgotten Realms setting - a fast paced, skill based game that focuses on action, where you control a single character who’s design and progression increase the skill ceiling by providing more options to make split-second decisions about what tactics to use during each encounter.
I love the turn based combat but sometimes it does feel like a chore, I wish I could do real time sometimes or purely rules-based AI, and switch to turn-based only when shit goes wrong. For those fights that really do not pose much of a risk and are not that interesting. Someone might say on the difficulty so no fight is trivial, but that can tire one out as well as now every fight can be a major obstacle and sometimes you just want to move the story on a little.
Scalding hot boiling take
In this community? Definitely. People tend to downvote me when I voice this opinion. But it is what it is. I’ve hated turn-based games ever since I first tried some X-COM game on the Amiga. It’s just not something I enjoy.
But I wish I could enjoy BG3. Everything apart from the combat is so much fun that I really want to finish the game. But for me the combat is such a major drag that I don’t think I’ll ever play BG3 again.
You might enjoy the Pathfinder games then. I’ve only played Pathfinder Kingmaker, but it has a real-time combat mode. I spent 3 weeks doing nothing except playing that game, so I think it’s fair to say that I enjoyed it. I did not use the real time combat mode though, so I can’t say how well it works. The game is good, but it’s definitely not as polished as BG3.
If you hate turn based games why do you buy them? It’s like if I bought COD and complained about everything being too fast and the lack of civ building mechanics
Generally, I don’t. But the hype around BG3 was so big and it looked so fun, that I thought I could see past the combat.
The good news is there’s a couple of decades where games in this style WERE real-time for the most part. A majority of players seem to like turn based a lot more, but neverwinter nights and the earlier baldurs gates have a pause-assign actions-unpause flow rather than turns.
With pen and paper d&d, guidebooks explain that turns represent about six seconds of action. Some of the older titles took this seriously and it makes trying to use mages in small parties absolutely insufferable, especially at early levels with a low concentration skill total.
Hilariously, this is one of the VERY FEW genre where I find I do prefer turn-based personally. I didn’t turn on ATB mode in ff15, I refused to use strategic view and pausing in dragon age, but for CRPG I’ve found solidly defined turns to really help drive my decisionmaking.
Turn the difficulty up.
Why? I hate combat. It’s not something I enjoy.
