Lmao I honestly so hard at this, but honestly they were probably thinking "what's the lowest fucking bar we have here?" And instead this success told them that a little more investment might actually have better returns
That simply isn't true, I think. A game based on Pathfinder made by Larian would most certainly do better than anything they could pump out based on D'n'D without Larian. It's Larian and Baldur's Gate specifically who got more recognition, not D'n'D as whole.
5e combat is better than their garbage elemental system from Divinity. Stopped playing that shit after the tenth flight with necrofire covering the entire battlefield.
Hasbro? The ones who sent gones to someone's house and fuck them up because they accidentally got a pre release version of magic the gathering? Yeah they probably will fuck it up.
Don't just say "goons," say Pinkertons. Actual literal union organizer murdering Pinkertons. Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast sicced those Pinkertons on a children's card game reviewer for the crime of telling people about something they received in the mail.
In other news, 5e.tools is a great resource containing all official 5e content, in a convenient easily navigable website. Personally I prefer the mobile interface, but the desktop is great too.
because they accidentally got a pre release version of magic the gathering?
It was a streamer that got the pre-release boxes early by mistake, and live-streamed opening them to drive traffic to his channel. Most cards aren't revealed ahead of time so these leaks let potential pre-buyers see what was in the set and decide if they wanted it.
What he did was stupid, but he did nothing wrong, and nothing especially harmful.
Calling the Pinkertons on him was obscene on principle, but it was especially egregious when the damage was so minimal. They hurt themselves more with that stunt than the leaks hurt them.
Nothing this good can be replicated. People would be better off if they kept their (coughCDProjektRedcough) expectations low after a smash hit that fans love.
I really disliked it for many reasons even though I had no bugs but can't pretend it wasn't ambitious, Guys did jump over their head with it and tried to do something entirely new for them. And they had a hard crunch to complete it. Can't hate the product, these devs, but honestly fuck their management.
I liked the story, I think Jonny was integrated fantastically, and the mechanics were decent
My only complaint is there wasn't enough. Not enough cyberware, not enough branches in the story, not enough ways to feel the power growth as your character levels and gets better gear
All in all, I don't get the hate. It was a good game. With more time to flesh it out it could've been an instant classic, the bones are all there... I've got the dlc sitting in my library for when I'm ready to devote the time to dig into it
The witcher games preceding Witcher 3 did very well, and TBH Cyberpunk turned out pretty ok as well. So I'm not sure your example really fits. For its own part, Larian was picked to make this game because the Divinity games are so popular and successful.
But I'll agree that it's really unlikely to do this more than once on purpose, but clearly it can be done by competent studios.
Cp2077 is a good game. Did they hype it too hard, overpromise, fumble the launch, and launch too early? Yes, to all of those. But it's one of the better games I've played recently.
A lot of people are focusing on the D&D part but honestly what the people really want is for any and all studios to take the time they need so they can release non-buggy, higher quality games.
No we don't. BG3 is great for a lot of reasons, but nowhere on the list is "it uses the rules of D&D". D&D is a terrible game system. Make a game like BG3 that isn't.. that.
Fuck these people, they did every single thing wrong with their product and the only people who do good things with it are independent content creators. Critical role made D&D the thing to play in the internet age and Larian made a great game with it. Meanwhile D&D under Hasbro has done...what? Fucking nothing is what. They give you shitty books with 95% fluff you don't need and/or makes no sense, but it has a new subclass for each class in it. Are the classes good? No! No they are not. But while you buy those books anyway please take a look at our 100$ deck of cards that we pretend is gonna make you able to create great adventures on the fly. Nevermind that the whole mechanic of it could fit into a few pages of text as die roll tables.
They can't even publish all the 50 year anniversary D&D books in their 50th anniversary! They also said those books are a combined 1000 pages as if it's a value add or impressive, when the current 3 books also have that combined page count. They basically want you to re-buy your books for 50 bonus pages and the only value add you get will be some fucking focus-tested subclasses. Will they be good? WHO CARES! Even if they are good, the classes will get put on the internet within a day and you don't need the rest of the books at all!
Don't buy any D&D products. Don't give money to these people. Let their company die.
Also, play better games. Fabula Ultima, Lancer, Sentinel Comics TTRPG, there are innumerable games that do any genre you could ever want better then D&D does fantasy.
I'd heavily recommend people who want to play DnD but better and without Hasbro look at Pathfinder 2e.
Fixes all the major issues with DnD (boring combat where melee gets glued to each other due to attacks of opportunity, no variety in actions outside of magic, broken balance, mandatory healer, etc)
It's also being produced by the only unionized TTRPG company.
I hope laurin switches to Pazio material or some other lore source tbh. I mean they (hazboro) fired all of they're working partners from their side and are clearly bad fucking stewards of the IP.
Everyone always says how great and optimized etc the game is, but for me, I had glitches every few minutes with crashes every few hours. Maybe the multiplayer is worse, but how I experienced the game, it was far from being ready to ship.