WotC Baldur's Gate III Announced; Powered by D&D 5E

CapnZapp · Jun 13, 2019

Staffan said:
Not in the slightest. Though I guess it depends on how generous the DM was with story XP in 2e (1e was more objective in this manner, giving 1 XP per gp worth of treasure brought back home).

But I think the tolerance for slow leveling was higher back in the day. The original Baldur's Gate had an XP cap of 89,000 XP, which translated to 7th level for single-classed fighters, paladins, rangers, wizards, and clerics, and 8th level for single-classed druids, thieves, and bards. That's for a game that takes 40-80 hours to play through. Today, I think that would be a hard sell.

One of the problems is that games with frequent leveling, e.g. World of Warcraft, have many many more levels than D&D. WoW started with 60 levels, and I believe they're up to 120 now. That gives you a lot more room for frequent "dings", and even after you've reached the max level there are many goals left (reputations, gear, crafting skills, dungeons/raids, and so on). With only 20 levels (and it's likely the game won't go to 20), that's hard to do.

Okay so he's just yet another eater of cake who gets upset he doesn't get to keep the cake too.

Thank you for telling me what I need to know to ignore his "difficulties".

Paul Farquhar · Jun 13, 2019

Staffan said:
But I think the tolerance for slow leveling was higher back in the day.

I actually think this is insulting to younger players. "Grown Up" game designer: "those kids today they need to level up every 10 minutes in order to not get bored (my generation was oh so superior)".

Actually, fast levelling comes from games like Diablo where there was minimal story advancement to reward players, so some other sort of candy was needed to keep players interested.

Give players of any age a sufficiently engaging story and they don't need to be fed a constant diet of loot and levels to keep them playing.

gyor · Jun 13, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Dungeons & Dragons isn't just the Forgotten Realms (and Golarion is basically the same thing, improved).

One of Dragonspear's creators became a pet hate for alt-right trolls, and it attracted a lot of unfair criticism as a consequence. Not that it's perfect, but it's better than SoZ, and infinitely better than Sword Coast Leg Ends. The ending of Dragonspear is a bit weird because it's basically an extended plot hook for a Baldur's Gate 3 that will never happen.

I'm not taking sides as I haven't played it and don't plan to, I can't go back to 2e, I just can't.

I do remember hearing the writer was silly enough to bait ganergaters. I was not involved in that movement, I have never taken video game journalists seriously enough to expect them to be ethical, but that seemed a silly thing to do. Anyways I don't want to get involved.

And people are making too much of big deal about his leveling comments, he said 5e leveling is in, it's just there is going to be some kind of parrell system (I don't know what that will be, I look forward to funding out).

Dire Bare · Jun 13, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
One of Dragonspear's creators became a pet hate for alt-right trolls, and it attracted a lot of unfair criticism as a consequence.

Really? That sucks. Too much of that crap going on these days.

Gradine · Jun 13, 2019

Dire Bare said:
Really? That sucks. Too much of that crap going on these days.

It literally boiled down to two things:
a) Minsc makes a dumb joke about "ethics in adventuring" that ended up getting patched out anyway
b) There was a trans character

That was all it took for the trolls to ascend from their pits to review bomb it into oblivion.

It's otherwise a perfectly serviceable mid-quel with some awkwardly heavy foreshadowing of events that will now never come

Consona · Jun 14, 2019

So could anybody explain to me how is this "Baldur's Gate 3"?

There's like literally nothing in the trailer or the dev vlog that evokes "this is a Baldur's Gate game" feeling.
I'm fairly shocked, to be honest, to have this kind of reaction to something like a new Baldur's Gate game, but this just does not feel like a BG to me at all.

Demetrios1453 · Jun 14, 2019

Consona said:
So could anybody explain to me how is this "Baldur's Gate 3"?

Since we have no idea of the plot - no, we can't.

It could build upon or pick up storylines left hanging in BG2 (and there was an illithid subplot that was left dangling, for example), or it could be something entirely different, just set in the same city. But until more is revealed, we simply don't know.

Parmandur · Jun 14, 2019

Consona said:
So could anybody explain to me how is this "Baldur's Gate 3"?

There's like literally nothing in the trailer or the dev vlog that evokes "this is a Baldur's Gate game" feeling.
I'm fairly shocked, to be honest, to have this kind of reaction to something like a new Baldur's Gate game, but this just does not feel like a BG to me at all.

Because they are setting it in Baldur's Gate, and they like money.

gyor · Jun 14, 2019

Consona said:
So could anybody explain to me how is this "Baldur's Gate 3"?

There's like literally nothing in the trailer or the dev vlog that evokes "this is a Baldur's Gate game" feeling.
I'm fairly shocked, to be honest, to have this kind of reaction to something like a new Baldur's Gate game, but this just does not feel like a BG to me at all.

It's literally showing the city of Baldur's Gate in the trailer. But otherwise yeah, BG3 naming was a cynical act because it's not a continuation of the first 2 or even BG dark alliance.

But I get why they did it.

Really I don't care that much because I'm more interested in what it is, then I would be in an actually continuation of the original games, it's the first proper 5e game in the current realms.

gyor · Jun 14, 2019

Consona said:
So could anybody explain to me how is this "Baldur's Gate 3"?

There's like literally nothing in the trailer or the dev vlog that evokes "this is a Baldur's Gate game" feeling.
I'm fairly shocked, to be honest, to have this kind of reaction to something like a new Baldur's Gate game, but this just does not feel like a BG to me at all.

It's literally showing the city of Baldur's Gate in the trailer. But otherwise yeah, BG3 naming was a cynical act because it's not a continuation of the first 2 or even BG dark alliance.

But I get why they did it.

Really I don't care that much because I'm more interested in what it is, then I would be in an actually continuation of the original games, it's the first proper 5e game in the current realms. That is exciting.