D&D General New Baldur's Gate III Teaser Trailer

Larian Studios posted a teaser trailer for Baldur's Gate III on Twitter, showing off both apparent cutscene and gameplay footage.

​

The trailer ends with the statement "Join us on the road to Baldur's Gate Starting June 6" This date is the first date of the Guerrilla Collective Indie Game Showcase, taking place online from June 6-8. Larian Studios is a participant in the event and previously promised Baldur's Gate III news at the showcase. This statement lends further credence to industry speculation that the big announcement will be the date of early access, and it may hint that early access will start on June 6. But it looks like we still have another week before we know for sure.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'd be really interested to hear the play times on the DOS games, especially DOS2, because I strongly suspect the pattern is similar to BG2EE, though nowhere near as extreme.

I have 166 hours logged on DOS2. That's way behind Pathfinder Kingmaker, with 789 hours, but ahead of Pillars of Eternity 2, on 117 hours.

I've never played DOS2 multiplayer, and I don't know anyone else who has either. It's like Baldur's Gate multiplayer - it exists in theory, but in practice the game is too slow paced for enjoyable multiplayer.

 

[Var]

But does steam also count playtime of people who play the game offline (which you totally can do with bg2) ?

Don't know how well the devs did their homework on statistics.
However It takes active work to play offline these days. The only time I ran Steam games offline in the last few years was to install some mods steam kept detecting as corrupt game files. They did mention their stats are relative to other games in the same genre, but haven't the foggiest how elaborate feedback tools for devs on steam are or how well they were utilized.

Couldn't pull up any numbers on how many people played DOS Multiplayer, given it's an RPG I'd recon a lot less than you'd think. You can totally play DOS offline as well though, even (local) Multiplayer works, although that's very likely the least utilized scenario by far.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I got Baldur's Gate on the iPad a few years back. In that form factor, it was almost unplayable. Maybe it's gotten better since -- I heard they made some UI improvements -- but I am definitely part of the "bought it for the reputation, didn't complete it" crowd.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I have 166 hours logged on DOS2. That's way behind Pathfinder Kingmaker, with 789 hours, but ahead of Pillars of Eternity 2, on 117 hours.

I've never played DOS2 multiplayer, and I don't know anyone else who has either. It's like Baldur's Gate multiplayer - it exists in theory, but in practice the game is too slow paced for enjoyable multiplayer.

Yeah, that's my point. I see a few people with decent to really high hours played on DOS games, and then larger numbers of people with 0 or very low numbers, and I know that an awful lot of these copies were gifted - I was gifted both DOS and DOS2 and I know a lot of other people were too. I played maybe 2 hours of DOS1 MP, and never played DOS2 MP, despite the fact that the gifter gave four of us copies, and I think there's an awful lot of this going on - perhaps it's rare to not play it at all, but to not get very far? Play only an hour or two? Effectively sell a bunch of copies to people who wouldn't otherwise play? Yeah. I don't see the same pattern with Pillars or Pathfinder (though PF being in a Humble Bundle recently may have changed that). Instead those tend towards having at least a few solid hours logged on them.

I've seen similar patterns with some other CRPGs with MP. I know two people who have copies of ME3 solely for MP, for example (both of them did play it a fair bit MP at least). Outwards is minor, dodgy RPG that I know a number of people have just to play it MP with friends, because it's the only way to play that kind of game MP without getting into complicated mod territory.

Happens with non-CRPGs as well. Way more people I know own Borderlands 1/2 than actually have played it at all non-MP. Even the potential of playing it MP gets people buying and gifting copies.

This is purely anecdotal of course, but if anyone does have Steam Spy and if it does actually cover this (it might be analytics only game studios/publishers get), I'd be interested to know more.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

People often buy highly rated games when they are on special offer, with the intention of playing them when they get time. I know, I do it myself. My copies of The Witcher games had been sitting around for years with less than an hour logged until lockdown, and now they are on something like 250 hours (all three combined). The same goes for Wasteland 2.

Pathfinder Kingmaker is very much a niche game - it's sales figures are tiny compared to DOS2, and even on special offer doesn't attract notice from anything but hardcore (you kind of need the Pathfinder 1st edition rulebooks to play it!).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

People often buy highly rated games when they are on special offer, with the intention of playing them when they get time. I know, I do it myself. My copies of The Witcher games had been sitting around for years with less than an hour logged until lockdown, and now they are on something like 250 hours (all three combined). The same goes for Wasteland 2.

Pathfinder Kingmaker is very much a niche game - it's sales figures are tiny compared to DOS2, and even on special offer doesn't attract notice from anything but hardcore (you kind of need the Pathfinder 1st edition rulebooks to play it!).

That's all true but doesn't really impact my point, because it applies to a lot of games. And I suspect the pattern with multi-player games of this nature (i.e. which are supposed to benefit from playing with other people - much as you may say they're too slow, both DOS games were specifically designed as MP games) will exaggerate the "buy and didn't play" effect considerably.

PF:KM's failure wasn't down to "needing the 1st edition rulebooks" (which you don't - I certainly don't have them, and finished it on settings designed to reflect tabletop - I read a couple of build guides, but that's the case for any RPG, including both DOS games and Witcher 2 and 3 - or just look at Path of Exile and it's millions of players, where you absolutely need a build guide in 99% of cases). It's failure was down to two things - firstly, whilst vast, it's a pretty bland and uninvolving game, which lead to a lot of mediocre reviews from a gameplay perspective. The management aspects are downright bad. Second off, on launch, it was terminally buggy and crashy. Like, however bad you think a game that's really bad on launch is, multiply that by ten. I'm not kidding. Even right now, it's more buggy than most games would consider an acceptable launch state (i.e. still has common enough crash bugs, infinite load bugs, and so on). Those things combined to mean most major outlets gave it reviews in the 60-70-something range, which is absolutely the kiss of death for a single-player game.

I'll be interested to see how well the next PF game does. I suspect it's going to be quite successful, if they can just avoid the bugs/crashes this time around (which should be doable, as it's the same engine, and most companies can keep dead bugs squashed - Bethesda being an exception in their failure to do so).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's all true but doesn't really impact my point, because it applies to a lot of games. And I suspect the pattern with multi-player games of this nature (i.e. which are supposed to benefit from playing with other people - much as you may say they're too slow, both DOS games were specifically designed as MP games) will exaggerate the "buy and didn't play" effect considerably.

The early ones where, but it really only exists as a legacy feature in DOS2. It's an excellent single player CRPG, but as a multiplayer game it sucks big time.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The early ones where, but it really only exists as a legacy feature in DOS2. It's an excellent single player CRPG, but as a multiplayer game it sucks big time.

OK, I take it's that's your view, but if you look at reviews from the time, they generally say the opposite re MP. Many reviews of DOS2 massively praise the multiplayer, even whilst noting it's different from the previous game. Loads of people have written about how great they thought DOS2's MP was, what an amazing time they had. Rock, Paper, Shotgun had a regular column quite recently about the misadventures of two people playing it MP and clearly having a great time.

Further, you're saying it "sucks big time" for MP, but you also very specifically said you'd never played it MP. So what are you going on? Reviews tend to say otherwise. You have no experience of it. So you're going on assumption? What other people have said on other messageboards? What? That seems like a strong statement to make after specifically saying you'd never tried something.

Do I suspect you're correct? Sure. I strongly do suspect you're right.

But it's immaterial, because reviews ranged form the neutral to the very very positive about the MP, and that includes a lot of the early player reviews.

And my point is that people buy games based reviews and based of word-of-mouth, and even if this has changed and somehow escaped my notice, at launch and for some time thereafter the reviews and word-of-mouth were that DOS2 had MP and the MP was cool.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Further, you're saying it "sucks big time" for MP, but you also very specifically said you'd never played it MP.

It sucks because it is a feature that is logistically impossible for me to use. The game has a 100+ hour story. Getting friends together on line at the same time on a regular basis to play a small fraction of the story simply isn't practical.

Exactly the same problem as the original Baldur's Gate had.

Mass Effect 2/3 is similar. It has a huge story with lots of detailed and fully voiced characters. And none of that is multiplayer. The multiplayer uses the game engine to throw a few players together in a room so they can shoot at each other for 10 minutes. Now, if players want to buy a game for a tagged on feature that's no problem for me, but it's obvious where all the development time and money has gone (hint, it's not multiplayer).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Mass Effect 2/3 is similar. It has a huge story with lots of detailed and fully voiced characters. And none of that is multiplayer. The multiplayer uses the game engine to throw a few players together in a room so they can shoot at each other for 10 minutes. Now, if players want to buy a game for a tagged on feature that's no problem for me, but it's obvious where all the development time and money has gone (hint, it's not multiplayer).

Duuuude. Maybe don't make up things about games you've clearly never played much if at all?

ME2 has no multiplayer. At all. Of any kind. Why add it in there?

ME3 has only co-op "horde"-style multiplayer, where 4 players work as a team to defeat enemies whilst achieving objectives. They are not "shooting at each other", as you claim - it's purely "PvE" not "PvP", as they say. ME3's MP was also outrageously good. It was low-budget, and part of that was because it relied on re-using assets from the main game (i.e. models and level components), but it was astonishingly good. No-one was more surprised by this than me, who had assumed it would be the worst kind of "tacked on" multiplayer.

And comparing that to the DOS games is not accurate, which are designed to include MP through the whole story. But the point I'm making is, even having an MP option at all seems to increase copies sold. If there's also a perception that that MP is good, and runs through the whole game, I'm pretty sure it increases it more.

I agree that it's impractical to have people for 100hrs of gameplay, but in DOS2, you don't actually need that - it's drop-in, drop-out. They player just controls one or two of the people in your party (DOS1 wasn't like that). I think preemptively declaring it sucks on that basis is therefore a bit much.

But anyway, I feel like I've said all I've got to say on this subject - my point is simple - including a whole-game MP element is what, I suggest, pushed the DOS games into truly stellar selling numbers, because they were selling so many extra copies to people that way - people who wanted to play a multiplayer CRPG (none were on the market, I think DOS1/2 remain the only really-MP ones that aren't ARPGs). BG3 should have crazy sales on the name alone, but if it also has DOS2-style MP, I think they'll be even crazier.