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

(www.forbes.com)
400 points redbell | 6 comments | 06 Aug 23 15:38 UTC | HN request time: 1.006s | source | bottom
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jakebasile ◴[06 Aug 23 16:56 UTC] No.37023992[source]▶
It's a really, really good game. I'm glad they decided to make it turn based vs the real time with pause, though I know that's a somewhat controversial decision (what isn't?). The game itself is beautiful, the music is immersive, the writing is (so far) intriguing, and it runs on Linux with only minor tweaks. The game does wonders to capture the feel of playing a well-DMed campaign.

It's no surprise to me that it's getting a lot more sales than they expected, and I'm glad to see devs get rewarded for making a quality product.

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1. heywoodlh ◴[06 Aug 23 17:26 UTC] No.37024401[source]▶
Absolutely agree.

I love the idea behind CRPGs, but have found that I have a difficult time committing to them. I.E. I own Divinity 2, but have struggled to get past the first few hours of the story as the first area makes it so open-ended it's tough to know how to move forward. Additionally, turn-based games often get quickly boring for me as they are often so challenging it doesn't feel worth it (I'm aware I definitely fall under the "casual" category in this realm).

After playing BG3 for over ten hours, I'm hooked. It seems they have struck such a great balance for me (on the "Balanced" difficulty) at making combat engaging, difficult and interesting -- but not so difficult I get bored/hate it. As a casual CRPG gamer, BG3 seems to have struck a near-perfect balance for me.

One of my favorite moments so far: get into a fight with a group of around 10 goblins with my 3-member group. I'm outnumbered so I fall back to a somewhat narrow bridge, to serve as a bottleneck. Once I have all 3 members of my group on the bridge (none of the goblins have made it yet), I throw a grease bottle at the beginning of the bridge to slow down my enemies. Sure enough, it slowed down my enemies enough that when they got to the bridge, I took them out with my two archer party members.

Amazing game.

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2. bigger_cheese ◴[06 Aug 23 23:10 UTC] No.37027925[source]▶
The difficulty ramps a fair bit at least in my experience I have just started act 3.

There are also zones later in the acts where they disable resting - this really impacts spell casters. You have to really ration your ability usage (rely on consumables for healing etc), somewhat annoyingly you have no real way of knowing how far through the no-rest zones you are (could be 4 or 5 fights in a row you need to get through or only 1 or 2). I'd often end these zones with big spells still in reserve cleric in particular with turn undead would have helped immensely in one area but I thought there would be another fight still to come so I saved it. This is somewhat true to tabletop D&D but left me feeling a little frustrated I think on repeated playthroughs these areas will be much less frustrating.

3. lost_tourist ◴[07 Aug 23 00:11 UTC] No.37028364[source]▶
Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and watch a couple walkthroughs and character build videos to get into a game from someone who has mastered it; just to get over that hump.
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4. paulryanrogers ◴[07 Aug 23 01:42 UTC] No.37028997[source]▶
This is why I always bounce hard off RPGs yet love immersive sims with RPG-elements. Traditional CRPGs feel so hostile to players new to the genre, or those without a lot of free time. I would think difficulty sliders could help, though not sure if that's seen as sacrilegious or something.
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5. jakebasile ◴[07 Aug 23 05:24 UTC] No.37030474{3}[source]▶
BG3 does have difficulty levels but even the lowest can be deadly. The game intends for you to save very often, even in combat. F5 is your friend!
6. albrewer ◴[07 Aug 23 16:43 UTC] No.37036949[source]▶
I know what area you're talking about - I had my party sneak around that area and come in through the side. I had made some dialog choices earlier where the rest of the goblin area wasn't hostile to my party.

Also, I forgot about plain old jumping for the first ~15 hours of play. I was so stumped about a route I was supposed to take until I put on my glasses and _really_ scrutinized the action bar.

I gave my rogue an amulet that lets him use Misty Step; it's been an absolute game changer for my rogue stealth archer.