RPGHQ

Oh so I get it now. Refugee crisis. Dumb scared people giving power to evil politician promising security who immediately enforces police state. Act 3 is basically a childish "here's what happens when you vote for big bad extreme right" allegory. Much fantasy. Much subtleness. Much best RPG ever made guys.

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ January 9th, 2024, 21:15

They just hate us.

It really is that simple.

Go back a few pages until the part where Reddit was supremely butthurt over how the analytics gathered from romances didn't come close to matching social media. The cope over that was next level with things like "m-m-muh lesbians…"(1-2% of the population, a subgroup of a group that plays RPGs far less to begin with), just further proving what a bubble these people live in.
The fan art, twitter, reddit, and so forth is overwhelmingly full of garbage for the male romances yet they make up a tiny minority. Shadowheart wasn't just the most romanced character, over half of all playthroughs including those that didn't romance anyone romanced Shadowheart.
You can trace this sort of stuff back to Bioware publishing data on male Shepard despite the so-called 'fandom' overwhelmingly pushing the female variant. The same exact thing happened a few years ago with Assassin's Creed Odyssey where the non-canon male character was heavily favored over the canon female character that was used in all the promo material. Their own playtests had the female character picked more, the people they use to playtest their own games aren't even people from their target audience.

And gamedevs almost exclusively live in this bubble. There's a reason many devs have just stopped publishing their analytics, Larian is essentially unique in this now.

If you are making an RPG, your target audience is a white male. And they actively design games made to antagonize these people.

This is all a good argument for why you should always enable analytics, by the way. Same reason things like browsers keep getting worse: power users disable analytics. Stop it, you're making everything worse.
I always assume my choices are being recorded in things like character creation and always create a white human male due to it.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 10:59

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ January 9th, 2024, 21:15

They just hate us.

It really is that simple.

Go back a few pages until the part where Reddit was supremely butthurt over how the analytics gathered from romances didn't come close to matching social media. The cope over that was next level with things like "m-m-muh lesbians…"(1-2% of the population, a subgroup of a group that plays RPGs far less to begin with), just further proving what a bubble these people live in.
The fan art, twitter, reddit, and so forth is overwhelmingly full of garbage for the male romances yet they make up a tiny minority. Shadowheart wasn't just the most romanced character, over half of all playthroughs including those that didn't romance anyone romanced Shadowheart.
You can trace this sort of stuff back to Bioware publishing data on male Shepard despite the so-called 'fandom' overwhelmingly pushing the female variant. The same exact thing happened a few years ago with Assassin's Creed Odyssey where the non-canon male character was heavily favored over the canon female character that was used in all the promo material. Their own playtests had the female character picked more, the people they use to playtest their own games aren't even people from their target audience.

And gamedevs almost exclusively live in this bubble. There's a reason many devs have just stopped publishing their analytics, Larian is essentially unique in this now.

If you are making an RPG, your target audience is a white male. And they actively design games made to antagonize these people.

This is all a good argument for why you should always enable analytics, by the way. Same reason things like browsers keep getting worse: power users disable analytics. Stop it, you're making everything worse.
I always assume my choices are being recorded in things like character creation and always create a white human male due to it.

If it's reddit you can always assume that it's full of lefties putting their precious minorities on a pedestal. There is also the virtue signaling factor to consider: People who know they are normal and part of the majority (meaning guys who romance Shadowheart) don't feel the need to blab about it endlessly. The constant need for outside validation is generally a coping tactic reserved for feminists, simps and ******.

Btw what's even funnier is that Larian has always been ****** at us for making a "generic" male protagonist, but out of all companions most of them also are white humanoids. Their "variation" are a tiefling and a githyanki horny baits.

Those fucks couldn't even design a single gnome or dwarf companion, they have a way more generic mindset than we do, as they aren't capable of making anything that isn't a horny bait. I for certain would've made a fun evil ******* dwarf as and a funny crazy gnome companions at minimum, following BG1 and 2 fashion. They think a single black companion already filled all their "diversity" quota meanwhile interesting, good diversity was all left out. But hey, who would want to **** a crazy gnome right?

edit: typos

Anon wrote: ↑ January 9th, 2024, 19:33

What a big surprise! Make your own conclusions:

FYI I'm pretty sure this is actually Swen's quote being misunderstood in typical game journo fashion. As a developer, I interpreted it as him telling people to go test the other races and features:

We gave you demon eyes, horns, and even tails. We are sorely disappointed. Go crazy. We worked hard on this!

Things like horns and tails can cause a lot of issues with e.g., model swapping for equipment, animations, cutscenes, and so forth.

This was when the game was still in early access.

Anon wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 13:53

Btw what's even funnier is that Larian has always been ****** at us for making a "generic" male protagonist, but out of all companions most of them also are white humanoids. Their "variation" are a tiefling and a githyanki horny baits.

Those fucks couldn't even design a single gnome or dwarf companion, they have a way more generic mindset than we do, as they aren't capable of making anything that isn't a horny bait. I for certain would've made a fun evil ******* dwarf as and a funny crazy gnome companions at minimum, following BG1 and 2 fashion. They think a single black companion already filled all their "diversity" quota meanwhile interesting, good diversity was all left out. But hey, who would want to **** a crazy gnome right?

edit: typos

Because the Origin Companions are self-inserts.

So they can virtue signal all they want about disabilities, but when push comes to shove, everyone wants to be attractive and special. That's why all the Origin Companions have a terrible case of "Main Character Syndrome".

Funnily enough, Lae'Zel is actually pretty normal, outside of being a Gith. She is just a rank and file soldier. Not special at all. The people of the creche barely know her. She is a nobody.

Everyone else is special.

Gale is a super awesomest mage that speaks casually to the Big E and even banged the Goddess of Magic. He is so special he won't even allow you to die.

Shadowheart is literally required for the plot to happen. No matter how many times you avoid or reject her joining your party, she will join and deliver the MacGuffin to you. Also she is an amnesiac soap opera heroine.

Karlach is designed to speak like a Redditor, is supposed to be a super special warrior that was hand picked by a Demon to be one of their champions and has a sob story about an infernal artefact that gives her power but will eventually kill her.

Astarion is a gay vampire that has special vampire powers that the Player character cannot have. Also his sob story is specifically designed to appeal to middle aged whales that read romance novels like 50 shades of grey and such. He is Evil and a piece of ****, but its all fine because his sob story is soooo sad, guys!

Wyll is the son of a High Lord of Baldur's Gate and also a folk hero in his own right and he even made a deal with a Devil.


Of course they moved meeting Minsc until the end of the game. He would have overshadowed all these snowflakes.

And like you said, no dwarf or gnome in sight. Because they couldn't have that. A different writer wrote each Origin Companion as it was the main character of the story and they did their best to one up each other. Again, perhaps except Lae'Zel since she is a nobody.

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:19

Shadowheart is literally required for the plot to happen. No matter how many times you avoid or reject her joining your party, she will join and deliver the MacGuffin to you. Also she is an amnesiac soap opera heroine.

she is also my waifu (do not steal)

game would have been much more enjoyable if minsc and jaheira were available from the start. They quickly became a permanent fixture in my party.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:20

game would have been much more enjoyable if minsc and jaheira were available from the start. They quickly became a permanent fixture in my party.

100%. But then they would have had to write an actual storyline for them since their success is 90% because the game is so "cinematic".

Like honestly how hard would it have been to write a small story with a couple sidequests for Hirelings in BG1/2 fashion.

But no they wanted and needed "main" characters for their interactive movie game. To be fair again they were commercially right since this is what drew all the casuals to it.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:20

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:19

Shadowheart is literally required for the plot to happen. No matter how many times you avoid or reject her joining your party, she will join and deliver the MacGuffin to you. Also she is an amnesiac soap opera heroine.

she is also my waifu (do not steal)

game would have been much more enjoyable if minsc and jaheira were available from the start. They quickly became a permanent fixture in my party.

Minthara is pretty greatly written too imo, and of course that means she's only accessible since act 2. In fact the drought of a decent companion is so high the reddit snowflakes screeched to allow Minthara being recruitable for everybody and obviously Larian, being as spineless as they are, accepted it. That effectively made a major decision of the game (deciding whether you raid the grove, save it or just leave) completely hollow (saving them all will always be the best option and ultimately a non-choice as you never lose anything at all and gain everything from it, meanwhile you suffer extremely heavy losses from raiding the grove and gain nothing from it).

Hope somebody can eventually mod Minthara, Jaheira and Minsc into being recruitable since start so I can always have my definitive party since start.

I hope this game will be playable this year

I truly don't understand why any of the druid grove ******** is my problem as the main character.

I play a paladin of vengeance (the righteous OSR-style paladin, a.k.a. a real one).
I don't give a **** about the tree-hugging druid heretics and their hippie anti-civilization ********. They should all be exiled from the nation.
I am extremely suspicious of the tieflings, for obvious reasons. Seems like they should be exiled as well, if not quickly disposed of as the fiendish fifth column they may be.
And the goblins and drow working for a mind flayer cult? That's what my mace and sword were made for.

I've got a tadpole to extract and evildoers' skulls to cleave. This ******** is a distraction.

Rand wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:19

I truly don't understand why any of the druid grove ******** is my problem as the main character.

Pretty sure you can just completely ignore them and the goblin camp and progress without doing any of it.

As for the companions, they can all **** off.

I don't need all these needy, horny idiots causing drama.
I need a cleric that heals and buffs, a wizard that does magic ****, and a sneaky type that can scout and deal with problems.
If the game weren't such a limited ****-show technologically, I'd add in a tank/bruiser warrior as well. But I can only have four, for no good reason.

Yeah, I know there are extra slot mods, but the coding of their ******* story railroading often causes havok with more than four.

Rand wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:23

If the game weren't such a limited ****-show technologically, I'd add in a tank/bruiser warrior as well. But I can only have four, for no good reason.

I was able to easily expand the party during early access with a small tweak, surely someone has published a mod for the release build.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:22

Rand wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:19

I truly don't understand why any of the druid grove ******** is my problem as the main character.

Pretty sure you can just completely ignore them and the goblin camp and progress without doing any of it.

My point is that they made this as the centerpiece of act 1 and I have no idea why.
It's just sort of weirdly jammed in there.
We're on a mission about mind flayers. The goblin cult encampment should be the main focus for destroying and gathering leads from. Not some arguments between two groups of shitheads and their pervert leaders.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:25

Rand wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:23

If the game weren't such a limited ****-show technologically, I'd add in a tank/bruiser warrior as well. But I can only have four, for no good reason.

I was able to easily expand the party during early access with a small tweak, surely someone has published a mod for the release build.

Oh, it exists, but it has issues with the scripting in a bunch of places.
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/327

Rand wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:19

I truly don't understand why any of the druid grove ******** is my problem as the main character.

I play a paladin of vengeance (the righteous OSR-style paladin, a.k.a. a real one).
I don't give a **** about the tree-hugging druid heretics and their hippie anti-civilization ********. They should all be exiled from the nation.
I am extremely suspicious of the tieflings, for obvious reasons. Seems like they should be exiled as well, if not quickly disposed of as the fiendish fifth column they may be.
And the goblins and drow working for a mind flayer cult? That's what my mace and sword were made for.

I've got a tadpole to extract and evildoers' skulls to cleave. This ******** is a distraction.

They screwed up the tieflings lore purposely and turned them into a analogy for "immigrants fleeing into Europe", absolutely libtarded behavior. Tieflings are the spawn of demons, devils, their nature is evil it's not just simply you can get rid of what they are and turn them into something else. Does modern D&D treat tieflings like an oppressed minority's when tabletop games are played?

Sorry I know nothing about the D&D 5 rules, are they not evil anymore?

Goblin_Hammer wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:46

They

To be fair, this was WotC not Larian.

This all started decades ago by officially allowing players to play as half-orcs, btw. Once a player can play as a race, they just become slightly odd humans. Now that players can play everything in the name of ~diversity~, everything is made equal and therefore equally boring and ****.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:20

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:19

Shadowheart is literally required for the plot to happen. No matter how many times you avoid or reject her joining your party, she will join and deliver the MacGuffin to you. Also she is an amnesiac soap opera heroine.

she is also my waifu (do not steal)

game would have been much more enjoyable if minsc and jaheira were available from the start. They quickly became a permanent fixture in my party.

Rumor has it that Minsc was supposed to join in Act 1. If true, they must have realized people would ditch their snowflakes and roll with Minsc and Jaheira.

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 20:05

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:20

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:19

Shadowheart is literally required for the plot to happen. No matter how many times you avoid or reject her joining your party, she will join and deliver the MacGuffin to you. Also she is an amnesiac soap opera heroine.

she is also my waifu (do not steal)

game would have been much more enjoyable if minsc and jaheira were available from the start. They quickly became a permanent fixture in my party.

Rumor has it that Minsc was supposed to join in Act 1. If true, they must have realized people would ditch their snowflakes and roll with Minsc and Jaheira.

The 'rumor' is true. I know because I'm the one who originally datamined him when the EA released.

Goblin_Hammer wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:46

are they not evil anymore?

Technically, they never were.
I believe they originated in the Planescape era, where they were rarely of even modestly good alignment, and mostly neutral shading strongly to evil and actually evil.
But OF COURSE they strongly appeal in various ways to the rainbow/woke people, and they don't think of themselves as the bad people most are, so we get the recasting in WOkeTC infested garbage lore.

2E tieflings were setting specific to Planescape and effectively unrelated to post-2E tieflings.
3E tieflings were evil.
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/planetouched.htm

Alignment: Usually evil (any)

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 20:20

2E tieflings were setting specific to Planescape and effectively unrelated to post-2E tieflings.

Ah, well there's the difference, then.

tieflings

immigrants fleeing into Europe

spawn of demons

their nature is evil

oppressed minority

are they not evil anymore?

Technically, they never were.

rarely of even modestly good alignment, and mostly neutral shading strongly to evil and actually evil

don't think of themselves as the bad people

Alignment: Usually evil (any)

Hey, this kind of reminds me of someone!

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 20:16

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 20:05

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 14:20

she is also my waifu (do not steal)

game would have been much more enjoyable if minsc and jaheira were available from the start. They quickly became a permanent fixture in my party.

Rumor has it that Minsc was supposed to join in Act 1. If true, they must have realized people would ditch their snowflakes and roll with Minsc and Jaheira.

The 'rumor' is true. I know because I'm the one who originally datamined him when the EA released.

There we go.

Just goes to show, this was all Larian. No pressure from WotC.

I am not saying WotC let them do whatever they wanted, but I see a lot of people defending Larian for a lot of terrible decisions, specially in regards of the wokeness.

But they have spoken about how much they care about "muh diversity" and "muh inclusion". And also stuff like this, purposefully delaying the returning characters that people actually like just so they don't overshadow their self-inserts.

Anyways, thanks for confirming that, Rusty!

Goblin_Hammer wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:46

Rand wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 19:19

I truly don't understand why any of the druid grove ******** is my problem as the main character.

I play a paladin of vengeance (the righteous OSR-style paladin, a.k.a. a real one).
I don't give a **** about the tree-hugging druid heretics and their hippie anti-civilization ********. They should all be exiled from the nation.
I am extremely suspicious of the tieflings, for obvious reasons. Seems like they should be exiled as well, if not quickly disposed of as the fiendish fifth column they may be.
And the goblins and drow working for a mind flayer cult? That's what my mace and sword were made for.

I've got a tadpole to extract and evildoers' skulls to cleave. This ******** is a distraction.

They screwed up the tieflings lore purposely and turned them into a analogy for "immigrants fleeing into Europe", absolutely libtarded behavior. Tieflings are the spawn of demons, devils, their nature is evil it's not just simply you can get rid of what they are and turn them into something else. Does modern D&D treat tieflings like an oppressed minority's when tabletop games are played?

Sorry I know nothing about the D&D 5 rules, are they not evil anymore?

Modern d&d treats tieflings like women. They’re oppressed and misunderstood and forced to defend themselves and dismantle the evil patriarchy. They are also all a mixture of mary sues and literal succubi/incubi.

Wretch wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 23:43

Modern d&d treats tieflings like women. They’re oppressed and misunderstood and forced to defend themselves and dismantle the evil patriarchy. They are also all a mixture of mary sues and literal succubi/incubi.

I assure you that any actual succubus or incubus would be extremely insulted if you called them tieflings.

Mostly because they're actual fiends with all the perks that implies while tieflings look like fiends but have just about no powers to show for it. Pretty **** deal honestly.

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 22:20

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 20:16

Cipher wrote: ↑ January 10th, 2024, 20:05

Rumor has it that Minsc was supposed to join in Act 1. If true, they must have realized people would ditch their snowflakes and roll with Minsc and Jaheira.

The 'rumor' is true. I know because I'm the one who originally datamined him when the EA released.

There we go.

Just goes to show, this was all Larian. No pressure from WotC.

I am not saying WotC let them do whatever they wanted, but I see a lot of people defending Larian for a lot of terrible decisions, specially in regards of the wokeness.

But they have spoken about how much they care about "muh diversity" and "muh inclusion". And also stuff like this, purposefully delaying the returning characters that people actually like just so they don't overshadow their self-inserts.

Anyways, thanks for confirming that, Rusty!

Thing is Larian wasn't like this when they made DOS 2. This change is pretty coincidential with them getting to make BG3.

DOS1 is 100% wholesome fairy tale-esque fantasy adventure. The two main protagonists are even eternal lovers of some sort, been years since I played it. Easily one of my all-time favorite games.
Really sad to see the directory Larian took tbh.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 11th, 2024, 04:00

DOS1 is 100% wholesome fairy tale-esque fantasy adventure. The two main protagonists are even eternal lovers of some sort, been years since I played it. Easily one of my all-time favorite games.
Really sad to see the directory Larian took tbh.

You either embrace misogyny, or live long enough to become a ******

RIP Larian studios