Baldur's Gate 3 - Interview @Wccftech

I played BG2 and IWD with my buddy in another state. It was our excuse to get together online.

TomRon said:

"Also: multiplayer. We're a multiplayer game and day-night cycles in multiplayer becomes incredibly complicated."

THAT's easily solved. Just drop the MP.

I would love to see how many people actually played DOS1&2 in Co-op. Perhaps it's a lot more people than I assume since I don't go to far from this forum, but still…

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I played both DOS and every BG/IWD/NWN game in co-op and I consider this an essential part of the game package for my enjoyment.

SSIGuy said:

Played it in coop with my daughter - and loved the ability to do that. I can understand people not wanting/caring about coop but I think it is more popular than some of us old-timers might think. I see my daughter gravitate to coop games with her friends a lot.

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I've played Baldurs Gate 2 and Icewind Dale in Coop with a friend of mine back in the early 2000's and i really enjoyed it. First via Multiplay.com and later with Gamespy.
It made the TCP connections a lot easier and you didn't needed the Hosts IP Address with that.
I think Coop can really beef up your RPG experience if it's done right.

I play these games by myself, but playing them multiplayer has long been a part of these games, and is an important part of Larian's games. In no way does it detract from the single player experience (D:OS2 is an enormous, enormous game, and is playable entirely in single player just fine)

I used to like the idea of co-op, but found out that I like to play games on my own pace. Taking a break, or continuing the main story when I want it.

The OS games are fine games and the multiplayer aspect doesn't detract from it. Of course, adding co-op means spending less time elsewhere but I don't want to be selfish by demanding to drop it :d

Again, OS didn't suffer from it, but more generally I really don't want my games to be a direct translation of a board game. Larian wants to carry over the D&D experience to a cRPG. This is fine but requires careful thinking of what works and what not, and how to implement it properly.

I think co-op is fun for folks who have someone to play with and they share similar game styles ... or at least one of them is willing to be way more laid back about how its played.

Otherwise probably not as an attractive feature.

As far as day and night cycles what I find will be lacking is they love to use nothing but a constant bright sunny day experience in the outdoor environments in the game demo. I would like to see cloudy different times of day, maybe Twilight maybe some mist, fog and rain. This would help tremendously in setting the mood outdoors as well as helping for stealth based actions outdoors. You can’t always have stealth in bright sunlight, or you can but it just gets monotonous

With the large offer of tabletop, board games, the main reason to fall back on a MU UgoIgo like DOS is the impossibility to re unite players for a session in a same location.

ilm said:

The OS games are fine games and the multiplayer aspect doesn't detract from it. Of course, adding co-op means spending less time elsewhere but I don't want to be selfish by demanding to drop it :d

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Weird statement to claim selfishness when UgoIgo players have been pressing all time long for anything to be UgoIgo.

Months ago, the potential incompatibility between MU and SP was reminded and met with the usual disdain for anything gameplay related.

BG3 makes a case for it and suddenly, the dedication for solo gaming is expressed by belittling the impact of MU features.

Players are committed to SP as long as it does not jeopardize the presence of MU.

ChienAboyeur said:

With the large offer of tabletop, board games, the main reason to fall back on a MU UgoIgo like DOS is the impossibility to re unite players for a session in a same location.

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This is false. My boyfriend and I sit next to each other in the same location, and we don't feel like we "fall back" to online playing, we love it and prefer it over tabletop in a lot of cases.

Honestly, it baffles me how about every company doesn't pay so much mind to cooperative games as a way to sell two copies of a game instead of one (or none, definitely I wouldn't own some games if they didn't have coop mode).

The comment was made from a gaming perspective and does not address non gamers.

Up to now, in board gaming, tabletop gaming, gaming is put at the forefront, socialization is a by product, as the activity of board gaming, tabletop gaming provides empty spaces of time. They incidentally may be filled with socialization.

It happens with many other activities: going to a gym, people may go there to train first and second, socialize. Restaurants, eat and then socialize etc

Now people can reverse the proposition: they may go to a gym to socialize first and train secondarily.

It works the same for gaming. Especially among couples. The partner, the spouse is not so much in gaming. If one plays on their own, it is time that can not be allocated to the couple.

So products must be found to deliver, to match the demand.

The cultural activity of gaming is no longer a cause, it is a pretext to socialize. To upkeep a relation.

Players come for socialization then maybe play something. First, spend time together. Number one requirement. Chilling out.

Works as a TV show may work. Couple sit down on a couch, watch a tv show to spend time together first, not so much for the tv show itself.

Usually, those couples stay away from anything head to head, their preferences go to co op.

It was never stated otherwise. DOS is an excellent vid product for players who look for socialization as a cause to meet up.
In which case socialization provides empty spaces of time that might be filled with something loosely related to gaming.

Now, from a gaming perspective, the tabletop and board gaming offers are so large, apart from an impossibility to gather, no cause to opt for DOS.

I personally really don't understand what is so hard about day/night cycles and NPC schedules. Whether your engine is 2D or 3D, the basic mechanics and supporting code for these systems are essentially the same.

Why would multiplayer make a day/night cycle difficult? Both players are sharing the same world at the same time using the same game clock. I can see day/night cycles possibly causing certain problems if the game is "on rails" with forced advancement of time vs. a truly open world. But even then, there are ways to work around that. I don't get it.

NPC schedules too. What's so hard about a basic rudimentary NPC schedule system? Programmers in the 90's figured this kind of stuff out without even a fraction of the memory, CPU power, and disk space of modern systems. What is so difficult about it? You don't have to create a super advanced, self aware AI that emulates human behavior for this. A basic checkpoint system tied to in-game time and day/night cycle does the trick just fine.

Adding day/night cycle is not the hard part, the hard part is to make something out of the addition.

Now if players press enough, there might be a day night cycle just as there might be rural areas.

HellRazor said:

I personally really don't understand what is so hard about day/night cycles and NPC schedules. Whether your engine is 2D or 3D, the basic mechanics and supporting code for these systems are essentially the same.

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It's not hard, just very time consuming.

If you want to do it proper it should look artistically good both during the day and a night. It's not just changing the light, but adding torches, new sounds, etc. to create a complete different atmosphere.

Schedules requires a complete decision tree per NPC. Probably also new animations for the different activities that they will be doing.

I think not enough people consider it a buying factor for the time that developers spend on it.