I hate cities in (C)RPGs!

[Vince]

Looking forward to BG3 immensely, but the biggest trepidation I have is in its title: Baldur's Gate.

While I love lore entrenched cities in fiction, I hate them in games. Why?

1.) Fillers. The main plot is almost always slowed down to a near halt and giving way to filler quests like settling feuds between merchants, or stealing X for person Y that eventually leads to nothing of import -- hence the filler.

2.) Information overload! There's so much to see, so many people to talk to! This goes hand-in-hand with my first point. It just slows the immediacy of it all down so much. Generally, I just don't care about museums and feuds between guilds or politicians. The completionist in me painfully accepts that I just wants to know what optional things I don't want to miss, and what I can ignore.

3.) Performance and load-times. Most games have city hubs cut into multiple areas connected by a loading screen. They are also filled with tons of NPCs, buildings and other assets that can slow performance down. The loading times between points A, B, C & D are an arrow to the knee of immersion.

We're heard from much of the latest news regarding this game, that Baldur's Gate in BG3 is going to be HUGE with most NPCs being interactable. This is announced as good news, while I received it as absolutely terrible news because of the above mentioned reasons.

I wonder if there's ppl like myself out there!?

PS: This isn't a big deal. The post is (almost) tongue-in-cheek. I'm a father with 2 young girls so I prefer to spend my me-time doing less city-hub chores and more cool immersive stuff that matters. That being said, though, I've always hated city hubs, even before I became a dad.

[🅱⭕🅱R⭕D⭕🅱R⭕🍷]

noone cares. make a refund and never return here

[Vince]

Originally posted by 🅱⭕🅱R⭕D⭕🅱R⭕🍷:

noone cares. make a refund and never return here

My, you must have lots of friends! I'm just trying to have a friendly conversation. I'm still looking forward to the game. I just hope Larian will somehow make the city enjoyable for (people like) me.

[indiewo1f]

Cities have definitely sucked in other crpgs but they are great in Baldurs Gate 1 and 2. The problem is when people don't do them right.

[Arani]

I'm mostly with you on that. Sometimes less is more, and the thing I look most forward to in any RPG is that sense of adventure. Cities don't provide that. It's like watching your favorite sci-fi series like idk Stargåte, Star Trek or Orville or whatever where the best episodes are the ones where they go to some completely new place and explore some weird, otherworldy phenomena, science stuff or time travel etc... and then instead you get an episode that's about how Jane lost her cat and Timmy is trying to pass an academy test in their main ship / home, where absolutely nothing interesting happens in the entire episode. Literal fillers.

But ever since D:OS2 and in particular with BG3 EA, I've learned that in some sense, I'm my own worst enemy in this. I'm a completionist. I want to see everything, do everything, experience everything. And over 10 years ago BioWare made games exactly for people like myself. They had just enough, but never too much. But whether it's open world sandbox grind games, or the way Larian has done things with BG3 - tbh Larian's way is *way* better, at least they mostly have actual content and not just pointless filler like Bethesda -, modern games just have too much.

So if I just do everything like my instinct tells me, I will absolutely hate the game. The pacing will be horrible, it will take days to get to see the main quest advance to the next interesting stage, I might spend dozens of hours doing nothing but burning myself out on yammering on with random NPC #34589 I'm not even interested in. So I need to control myself. Set limits like "don't explore every single house, don't talk to and do every single random NPC's quest, don't loot every single object in every single room", and simply accept that yes, it means I am going to miss out on quests, dialogue, story and content that I WOULD have liked to experience. But that's the price I have to pay. Because as a whole, it will make the game much more fun for me to play.

I could just barely do (almost) everything in the EA with my good character, just ignored a ton of the looting. But I have no doubt at all I will reach my limit when I reach the city.

[Amix]

You arrived here to seek answer. I will try my best to answer.

1. The name of the game is 'Baldur's Gate 3'. Baldur's gate is name of the city. And number 3 was given because two games already exist.

2. Information overload? It is there for immersion. We are not wandering wasteland. The game is story driven. It will have NPCs, their stories, locations & history. You see, everything will have meaning.

3. Loading times? I suppose every game has loading screen times. Unoptimised game have worse loading times.
Judging from your post, you actually want meaningless things as fillers with no story or purpose.
Anyway, you can actually lower the graphics setting to improve loading times. It will be better option because you do not care about visuals.

[Ark]

im kinda the opposite i loves rpgs or cprgs that has cities

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Nah, I disagree. I love worldbuilding. I love to see well made cities with tons of distractions. The journey os the goal, not reaching the end of the game as quickly as possible...

[Vince]

Originally posted by Arani:

I'm mostly with you on that. Sometimes less is more, and the thing I look most forward to in any RPG is that sense of adventure. Cities don't provide that. It's like watching your favorite sci-fi series like idk Stargåte, Star Trek or Orville or whatever where the best episodes are the ones where they go to some completely new place and explore some weird, otherworldy phenomena, science stuff or time travel etc... and then instead you get an episode that's about how Jane lost her cat and Timmy is trying to pass an academy test in their main ship / home, where absolutely nothing interesting happens in the entire episode. Literal fillers.

But ever since D:OS2 and in particular with BG3 EA, I've learned that in some sense, I'm my own worst enemy in this. I'm a completionist. I want to see everything, do everything, experience everything. And over 10 years ago BioWare made games exactly for people like myself. They had just enough, but never too much. But whether it's open world sandbox grind games, or the way Larian has done things with BG3 - tbh Larian's way is *way* better, at least they mostly have actual content and not just pointless filler like Bethesda -, modern games just have too much.

So if I just do everything like my instinct tells me, I will absolutely hate the game. The pacing will be horrible, it will take days to get to see the main quest advance to the next interesting stage, I might spend dozens of hours doing nothing but burning myself out on yammering on with random NPC #34589 I'm not even interested in. So I need to control myself. Set limits like "don't explore every single house, don't talk to and do every single random NPC's quest, don't loot every single object in every single room", and simply accept that yes, it means I am going to miss out on quests, dialogue, story and content that I WOULD have liked to experience. But that's the price I have to pay. Because as a whole, it will make the game much more fun for me to play.

I could just barely do (almost) everything in the EA with my good character, just ignored a ton of the looting. But I have no doubt at all I will reach my limit when I reach the city.

Haha, it's funny because I'm exactly like you word for word. The completionist thing is the problem, isn't it? ;) I'll try to apply your wisdom and try not to give in to the completionist too much!

[Vince]

Originally posted by Amix:

You arrived here to seek answer. I will try my best to answer.

1. The name of the game is 'Baldur's Gate 3'. Baldur's gate is name of the city. And number 3 was given because two games already exist.

2. Information overload? It is there for immersion. We are not wandering wasteland. The game is story driven. It will have NPCs, their stories, locations & history. You see, everything will have meaning.

3. Loading times? I suppose every game has loading screen times. Unoptimised game have worse loading times.
Judging from your post, you actually want meaningless things as fillers with no story or purpose.
Anyway, you can actually lower the graphics setting to improve loading times. It will be better option because you do not care about visuals.

I wasn't seeking answers. I have to scroll up and see if my OP even had question marks. Ah yes, seems there were, but it seems you misunderstood them and the entire post. You also assume too much.

[Rusted Metal]

Heavily disagree i love cities in CRPG's they do sometimes feel not like cities due to being empty but Larian has been pretty good at making large towns and cities feel like large towns and cities

[Vince]

Originally posted by Dαятн Wαfflεmαncεя:

Nah, I disagree. I love worldbuilding. I love to see well made cities with tons of distractions. The journey os the goal, not reaching the end of the game as quickly as possible...

Agreed! As long as the journey isn't 400 hours of which 10% is actually meaningful, immersive content. :P

[Vince]

Note for some of the salty types responding: there's no right or wrong opinion here. I just innitiated this topic because this is how I feel and I'm simply wondering how the rest of the community of similarly passionate fans feels.

[Amix]

Originally posted by Vince:

Looking forward to BG3 immensely, but the biggest trepidation I have is in its title: Baldur's Gate.

While I love lore entrenched cities in fiction, I hate them in games. Why?

1.) Fillers. The main plot is almost always slowed down to a near halt and giving way to filler quests like settling feuds between merchants, or stealing X for person Y that eventually leads to nothing of import -- hence the filler.

2.) Information overload! There's so much to see, so many people to talk to! This goes hand-in-hand with my first point. It just slows the immediacy of it all down so much. Generally, I just don't care about museums and feuds between guilds or politicians. The completionist in me painfully accepts that I just wants to know what optional things I don't want to miss, and what I can ignore.

3.) Performance and load-times. Most games have city hubs cut into multiple areas connected by a loading screen. They are also filled with tons of NPCs, buildings and other assets that can slow performance down. The loading times between points A, B, C & D are an arrow to the knee of immersion.

We're heard from much of the latest news regarding this game, that Baldur's Gate in BG3 is going to be HUGE with most NPCs being interactable. This is announced as good news, while I received it as absolutely terrible news because of the above mentioned reasons.

I wonder if there's ppl like myself out there!?

PS: This isn't a big deal. The post is (almost) tongue-in-cheek. I'm a father with 2 young girls so I prefer to spend my me-time doing less city-hub chores and more cool immersive stuff that matters. That being said, though, I've always hated city hubs, even before I became a dad.

Alright. Just to have note in case you edit again.

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Originally posted by Vince:

Originally posted by Dαятн Wαfflεmαncεя:

Nah, I disagree. I love worldbuilding. I love to see well made cities with tons of distractions. The journey os the goal, not reaching the end of the game as quickly as possible...

Agreed! As long as the journey isn't 400 hours of which 10% is actually meaningful, immersive content. :P

With Larian I expect more like 400 hours of which like 70-80% is meaningful immersive content, 10-20% is silly stuff and the rest is filler in BG3 ^^

[Amix]

Originally posted by Vince:

Originally posted by Amix:

You arrived here to seek answer. I will try my best to answer.

1. The name of the game is 'Baldur's Gate 3'. Baldur's gate is name of the city. And number 3 was given because two games already exist.

2. Information overload? It is there for immersion. We are not wandering wasteland. The game is story driven. It will have NPCs, their stories, locations & history. You see, everything will have meaning.

3. Loading times? I suppose every game has loading screen times. Unoptimised game have worse loading times.
Judging from your post, you actually want meaningless things as fillers with no story or purpose.
Anyway, you can actually lower the graphics setting to improve loading times. It will be better option because you do not care about visuals.

I wasn't seeking answers. I have to scroll up and see if my OP even had question marks. Ah yes, seems there were, but it seems you misunderstood them and the entire post. You also assume too much.

Well, you can not have meaningless things in game as per your thoughts. lol
I did not assume anything, read again. Nah, I am just here to help see the reason.
I will explain again. Since you completely go against developer story design.

1. Fillers. No, you are taking bad examples. And judging cities from other games you have played. Game is not released yet. The game's name is Baldur's Gate. Do you expect them to not show city? lol

2. Information overload? I see lot of influence of other games on you. You must try to play this game from first perspective.

Have you played Early access of this game?
Every NPC has some dialogues and most of them have stories. Every location you visit has something interesting to take note of.