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‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

(www.forbes.com)
400 points redbell | 9 comments | 06 Aug 23 15:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.441s | source | bottom
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mastax ◴[06 Aug 23 16:47 UTC] No.37023856[source]▶
I am a bit shocked by how popular this game is. All the signs were there, though.

- Their previous game Divinity: Original Sin 2 was critically acclaimed, very popular for a pretty hardcore CRPG, and had long legs.

- DnD has a lot of brand power and has been strongly in the zeitgeist for years.

- There's a big cohort of millennials who have strong nostalgia for Baldur's Gate and who have plenty of money to buy games (if not time to play them).

- The Early Access release for this game was wildly popular beyond the developer's expectations, and maintained interest for years.

I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate because they aren't very important to me, personally. But also there have been a load of really good CRPGs in recent years and there seemed to be a pretty low ceiling to how much interest they could get. Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and a few others were amazing and beloved CRPG games but were lucky to have a tenth of the success of BG3. But those games were generally less accessible, mostly not multiplayer, and again lacked the brand power.

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jakebasile ◴[06 Aug 23 16:53 UTC] No.37023935[source]▶
I like the CRPG genre a lot, but I think one reason that BG3 is taking off is that it _looks_ like a modern AA(A?) game while the rest look basically like Baldur's Gate did in 1998. BG3 lets you see the world in a lot more detail and it helps immerse you in Faerûn.

Many people will claim "graphics don't matter", but the reality is that they do help.

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1. flohofwoe ◴[06 Aug 23 16:59 UTC] No.37024019[source]▶
TBH it looks and especially feels much more like a reskinned Divine Divinity OS2 with DnD rules implanted than BG1 and BG2 (which isn't necessarily a bad thing of course, but I don't feel a lot of BG1 and BG2 nostalgia when playing BG3, instead I'm constantly reminded of OS2).

PS: One thing that is a lot better than in BG1 and BG2 is that combat with low-class characters feels a lot more interesting. Not sure how much of this is because of the ADnD vs DnD5 rules or whether Larian has added some tweaks to the DnD5 rules.

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2. jakebasile ◴[06 Aug 23 17:03 UTC] No.37024083[source]▶
The closest game that BG3 "feels like" to me is Dragon Age: Origins, which is great since I loved that game and the sequels just never did it for me.
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3. oblio ◴[06 Aug 23 17:21 UTC] No.37024337[source]▶
The sequels just turned it into action games for the sake of 10% extra sales and for console ports.
4. D13Fd ◴[06 Aug 23 19:06 UTC] No.37025414[source]▶
The screenshots definitely look like DOS2.
5. Shared404 ◴[06 Aug 23 20:12 UTC] No.37026113[source]▶
Haven't play BG3 yet, but my DM has been and noted a few tweaks that Larian made to 5e, especially around spell durations and moving shoving to a bonus action.
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6. antisthenes ◴[07 Aug 23 02:24 UTC] No.37029295[source]▶
> Not sure how much of this is because of the ADnD vs DnD5 rules or whether Larian has added some tweaks to the DnD5 rules.

That's entirely on D&D 5e rules. Combat with chars under lvl 5 is essentially 1 mechanic per class, and really boring.

Tabletop suffers from exactly the same issue, even if you use all the extra/optional subclasses and backstories. So does Solasta (the other 5e PC game)

7. theoriginaldog ◴[07 Aug 23 09:55 UTC] No.37032373[source]▶
And yet the graphics are obviously better and more immersive than BG 1 and 2. Of course they build their technology from their previous games, but it doesn't change the fact that most other CCRPGs are less immersive for most gamers. I am pretty confident that high fidelity 3D graphics attract more gamers than isometric 2D, no matter if these look like the studios previous game.
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8. squeaky-clean ◴[07 Aug 23 10:20 UTC] No.37032553[source]▶
Potions being a bonus action is the biggest thing for me. I've house-ruled that forever. Glad Larian agrees.
9. flohofwoe ◴[07 Aug 23 10:51 UTC] No.37032767[source]▶
TBF, BG3 is still at its core a top-down "feels-like-an-isometric-camera" game, this is still the best solution for managing a whole party of characters, especially in combat (unlike Witcher3 for instance, which has a traditional 3rd-person camera - but has no party to manage).