Really? Just a reminder, Steam’s front page and recommendations aren’t word of mouth.

I mostly agree, it’s more a matter of exposure and, as you say market share. It’s a weird situation to be in, that in order to really get the most sales on PC you need to be on steam.

Steam’s business model is convenience first. If someone wants to do something don’t get in their way. That’s how they can be a monopoly and no one complains, because there’s very few walls or barriers. Every time there have been barriers, steam not accepting games, NSFW games, crypto, AI, they either get out of their way, or take a reasonable philosophical/ethical stance. Even if you disagree with their stance its hard to be angry about it and often their stance changes or gains nuance to it as time goes on.

What meta narrative? That we all eventually remove the swimming pool ladder or trap them in a room on fire? Or having to buy the >£300 ($700) dlc multiple times?

True, but you need someone to buy in first and there’s no real reason for the DM to buy-in outside of the setting. If the DM doesn’t buy in you don’t even get to the stage of pitching it to the players.

That said it is an easy pitch to the players since you can straight convert characters across.

That’s a damn good question

It didn’t, there’s no children in the first game even.

They didn’t make more Bg3 because the teams heart wasn’t in it. They didn’t have the drive. You can mourn the departure all you like, but don’t put words in their mouth. They’ve spoken on the decision, go read about it.

Well the ones you need to win over are the DMs and there’s not really any DM-side improvements as far as I’m aware, it’s basically just worth it if you like their setting.

This response feels like the ceo has been paying attention to arrowhead. It feels genuine and respectful if too little too late for the community harmed. It’s good to see we’re starting to get companies realising they’re talking to adults and not a random group of mindless kids or something. Arrowhead has proved the effectiveness of genuine empathy and transparency. When the devs can come out and say “yeah, that’s feeling really rough to play right now, we’re working on some ideas to fix that”. I see some of it in the self-reflection on their statements here, the acknowledgement that they Cavendish improved as they’d hoped and haven’t managed to fix things as they thought they would.

Now to see if these words actually have weight.

They basically made 5e that uses 2d10 and feats on cards with a not-great partial success system. So I wouldn’t get too excited.

So far we have a lot of “totally not 5e” RPGs

It usually delays some sales and in theory stops early piracy. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t buy something because it had denouvo.

The way to get them to stop is to boycott any game that ever had it installed to reduce life time sales. But there’s just not enough consumer sentiment against it to really make an effect right now.

Subscriptions are to keep the lights off, servers on and server maintenance and improvement. Then purchases of expansions covers the cost of development.

MTX in such a game is a bit weird, but it does give something for extra asset creation and animation. I suppose if they make something that doesn’t end up being used they can repurpide it as a pet or mount.

It’s the trading money for gold and the effects of the economy in wow that put me off.

They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re playing the software game. Right now they’ve turned their development studios into marketing divisions for game pass. They don’t need to do anything special right now other than let their teams make games, put them on their subscription library and watch the money roll in.

Versus Sony, which not too long ago was rabidly against anyone having crossplay with their console and is individually publishing titles.

The thing is, for the most part it doesn’t matter who’s holding the strings so long as good games get made available for as many people as possible at a decent and not rising price point.

The whole $70-80 free rise is being done by companies that are struggling to keep their foothold with their current MTX-based models.

In comparison to other games I’ve played I find this the opposite. Proficiency and ability scores basically never change after creation. And level ups allow for very very little decisions and distinction other than class.

Can you explain why? It’s fast, sure, but it’s simultaneously the most important character design choice you can make and also cripplingly absent of actual choices.

I think a fair few people have tied their identity to products so they feel like it’s a personal attack to not agree or not like something they like.

it’s an aggressively mediocre system that’s had years of a huge community polishing it to a mirror shine.

You can praise it for the community content, or go off-book like you can with any other system, but that’s applicable to any system with the same community size.

Whatever you look for in it it’s lacking in comparison to another system. Tactical combat? PF2e. Rules light? Worlds without number.

It’s a decent middle ground of a system only because of community hard work. But that’s only for the GM side. Players still need to deal with the poor character creation, unless they get a lot of support from their GM.

Not sure why you’re being down voted, it’s a reasonable opinion to have if you don’t like their games. I feel the same about the originals. I tried them and respect them a lot, but they’re just not for me.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t know about that or think everything is fine now.