Search results

Fortunately, both online discourse and the industry as a whole have gotten a lot better about explicit design goals over the last decade or so. Most books I've received over the last 5 years or so (and some before) have provided a lot of sidebars focused on design goals and intent.

Much like the companions in BG3, some people don't require a lot of interaction to get their crank turned. :)

Oh, totally agree. No one is wrong with not liking a decision that cuts off a fiction you liked. It's more how the general tenor of those complaints become "the design is doing something wrong" rather than "I don't agree with that decision". A lot of complaints seem to fail to recognize that...

That's fair. From my perspective, it's relatively easy to generate supporting fiction from rules inferences (like magically empowered humanoid monsters being fiends or elementals), but I can understand a desire to have some of those inferences be more concrete and detailed. I do have less...

Any class-based fantasy game should offer a simple warrior, a simple mage, a complex warrior, and a complex mage. Player preferences for simple vs complex and martial vs caster have no correlation.

And even the engine only has so much value. Larian has already said they're doing a major revamp of their engine for Divinity; precisely because their engine required them to make major trade-offs in D:OS2 and especially BG3 in Act 3.

Absolutely. If it isn't your hobby, it's your job. :) And I'm going to read your opinions very differently if you're talking about your job versus talking about your hobby.

I think it's just the very universal situation that the more you're immersed in a specific topic, the more the small details seem like major consequential events. Like, I'm pretty familiar with WoW, and it's amazing how you'll see thousands of people howling about how they'll quit the game...

As a total tangent, people often use "origin characters" as a synonym for "companion characters"; but "origin characters" are only a subset of "companion characters" in BG3. Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Karlach are "Origin Characters" because you can choose to play as them as...

For me, it was more the statements of "They're making changes for the game first, and not basing it on the STORY!" That's been the cri de coeur of frustrated simulationists for decades now. :)

I mean, there's an argument that allowing for suboptimal and weak choices is necessary to allow for more character concept visualization, and also as a way for system mastery to shine. I don't agree with those arguments, but I can't say they have no validity.

One person's "optimize" is another person's "playable". :)

Agreed. Any suggestions I make are predicated on the idea that BG4 is a done deal and will be released by the end of the decade; my personal preference would be to let the property rest on its laurels for a generation and do another game in the 2040s.

No idea. I would have to see a 5e14 and a 5e24 character of similar concepts side-by-side at low level to actually see if something is "OP", and I just don't have enough exposure to the 5e24 ruleset to make that determination.

I think the most explicit scene is the Minthara Act 1 romance scene, and even that is more like a late-night "Skinimax movie" from the '90s than actual pornographic material. The most provocative scene is more provocative by implication, where your character consents to getting down with the...

Well, there's two different threads of arguments here. One is how should WotC market create and design material, especially "edition changes", to ensure a broad and growing player base with minimal losses. The other is how should a singular player, when faced with rules changes that are...

BG3 Cameos only. Single story main character that's customizable. (Like the BG3 Dark Urge.) No storyless Tav, no playing companion characters as the main (Origin characters). That's a Larian thing, and as someone who played all the Origin characters in BG3, it was one of the weaker aspects...

Yep. It's pretty common among those who are newer to the hobby, and especially those who are focused on implementation and technique within one system rather than playing a broader swathe of games. They lack the familiarity with the concepts of how different systems work, so changes feel much...

Sim-oriented guy mad new rules less sim-oriented, news at 11.

56 base damage seems really high for level 8. You did multiply that by an assumed hit rate, right? (DPR calculations without hit rates are invalid for any sort of comparison purposes.)