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For two days I have tried playing DOS with a friend in amultiplayer session. This turned to be a big, big, fat horror for both of us, me and my friend.

The idalogue system simply seems to be too weird for us and we do not understand how it is meant to be played in multiplayer. The point is, that whenever my friend is starting a dialogue with an NPC, I simply cannot get the whole picture of what is actually going on. Simply too much text to follow, where maybe 1% of all the text on the screen is quest relevant. Also there is information missing. I spend way too much time scrolling in the some windows to read up all the dialogue text. This is frustrating.

HOW IS IT MEANT TO BE PLAYED, LARIAN? DID YOU PLAY YOUR GAME YOURSELF BEFORE SHIPPING IT TO THE MASSES?

Last edited by axz; 20/07/14 02:17 PM.
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The conversation your partner is having with an NPC appears in the dialogue box on the bottom-right of your screen (assuming you haven't moved it elsewhere). It's also visible if you bring up the Log/Journal (L key) and click on the "Dialogue" tab. You can follow the conversations there. My friend and I have been able to follow the conversations each of us have had without issue.

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Originally Posted by axz
HOW IS IT MEANT TO BE PLAYED, LARIAN? DID YOU PLAY YOUR GAME YOURSELF BEFORE SHIPPING IT TO THE MASSES?


Save the frustration and don't do it.
Don't listen to the fanboys. Nor the defense of it.
It makes no sense and yes, I tried it myself before giving up.
If you actually gave two shits about the story, you probably need to play it in single player.

So why do you co-op?
Just for fun, I guess.
The whole multiplayer is a mess. Especially when both players enters combat at two different times. And coordinating buff in real time is difficult due to the short time the buffs last in real time.

TBH, I wouldn't recommend co-op at all.
When the deveoper argued that they made this game for co-op first, I want to believe it. However, I lost a faith after experiencing it.

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Originally Posted by rk47
Originally Posted by axz
HOW IS IT MEANT TO BE PLAYED, LARIAN? DID YOU PLAY YOUR GAME YOURSELF BEFORE SHIPPING IT TO THE MASSES?


Save the frustration and don't do it.
Don't listen to the fanboys. Nor the defense of it.
It makes no sense and yes, I tried it myself before giving up.
If you actually gave two shits about the story, you probably need to play it in single player.

So why do you co-op?
Just for fun, I guess.
The whole multiplayer is a mess. Especially when both players enters combat at two different times. And coordinating buff in real time is difficult due to the short time the buffs last in real time.

TBH, I wouldn't recommend co-op at all.
When the deveoper argued that they made this game for co-op first, I want to believe it. However, I lost a faith after experiencing it.


I've played the game entirely co-op, and neither I nor the friend I've been moving through the campaign with have had any trouble at all following the story. All the conversations are stored in the areas I outlined in my earlier post.

You can be stubborn and miss out if you want to, but the fact is the game can be played co-op without issue. That's not being a "fanboy", that's just being honest. Where as you're coming across as a disgruntled player who is choosing to see everything as broken simply because he's angry rather than because it represents reality.

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Originally Posted by rk47

When the deveoper argued that they made this game for co-op first, I want to believe it.


The game does not feel like it, to be honest. I found it hard to coordinate dialogues. It was too much to read all the possible choices my partner can make, but i did not see any. It must get more "co-op" in a way, that we can both, my mate and me, see the choices we can make, even if dialogues are meant to be answered by only one of us. Also, some events (accidently?) trigger dialoges (for example when passing some point in a city), when my partner is somewhere else, so he does not have the slightest idea where and what is actually going on at this moment and cannot participate.

Please elaborate this a little bit more. I think it has a potential to become a really good game, but it REALLY needs improvements(!)!

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You're all wrong, so horribly HORRIBLY wrong.

What's supposed to happen is this:

1. Your friend is supposed to wander into a bug, get teleported into Rob Zombie while level 2 then claim it wasn't their fault.
2. Your friend is also supposed to accidently attack a guard, causing you to have to reload the last 10 minutes worth of vendoring you just finished across 4 vendors to find enough gold.
3. Your friend is also supposed to not tell you to save right before an important RPS roll off to get the Mortician to confess... again causing you to lose 20 minutes because you can't save while they're crafting or it closes their bags.

What is ALSO supposed to happen is every time a conversation comes along, you need to give a dramatic reading of the text, in an appropriate voice for 17th century England.

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Originally Posted by Gyson
Originally Posted by rk47
Originally Posted by axz
HOW IS IT MEANT TO BE PLAYED, LARIAN? DID YOU PLAY YOUR GAME YOURSELF BEFORE SHIPPING IT TO THE MASSES?


Save the frustration and don't do it.
Don't listen to the fanboys. Nor the defense of it.
It makes no sense and yes, I tried it myself before giving up.
If you actually gave two shits about the story, you probably need to play it in single player.

So why do you co-op?
Just for fun, I guess.
The whole multiplayer is a mess. Especially when both players enters combat at two different times. And coordinating buff in real time is difficult due to the short time the buffs last in real time.

TBH, I wouldn't recommend co-op at all.
When the deveoper argued that they made this game for co-op first, I want to believe it. However, I lost a faith after experiencing it.


I've played the game entirely co-op, and neither I nor the friend I've been moving through the campaign with have had any trouble at all following the story. All the conversations are stored in the areas I outlined in my earlier post.

You can be stubborn and miss out if you want to, but the fact is the game can be played co-op without issue. That's not being a "fanboy", that's just being honest. Where as you're coming across as a disgruntled player who is choosing to see everything as broken simply because he's angry rather than because it represents reality.


Wow so much effort to make co-op fun. Did you see any good co-op games executed in this manner? Apparently not, cause Larian invented their own method. Such genius. Such neanderthal-like inspiration. OP if you want better co-op go play Diablo 3. This whole multiplayer strengthen singleplayer is just hypespeak. I backed the game I love it, but some things are just left wanting and I'm calling them out on it.

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Putting dialog cleanly in the lower-right section does help. There is an issue though when you are speaking with NPC's the last thing said isn't always at the bottom of the log:

For example here is a conversation and in chronological order, how it should read:

Me: Hey yo NPC how's it hanging?
NPC: Hanging well, the wife's been swinging on it for weeks.
Me: Cool. Tell me about your place.
NPC: Zombies been peeking in to my house at night, a bit creepy, otherwise no complaints.
Me: Anything for sale?
NPC: Yeah look down my wares.


However it can appear like this in the dialog:

Me: Hey yo NPC how's it hanging?
NPC: Hanging well, the wife's been swinging on it for weeks.
NPC: Zombies been peeking in to my house at night, a bit creepy, otherwise no complaints.
NPC: Yeah look down my wares.

Me: Cool. Tell me about your place.
Me: Anything for sale?


Depending on the dialog choice/chain, it can bunch up the NPC's comment in the order they say it but not in the overall order of the entire back and forth conversation. That could use some clean up.



Last edited by Horrorscope; 21/07/14 04:17 AM.
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With a friend/significant other.

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I don't mean to be rude, but you're allowed to speak to each other. Relay the gist of the conversation, this way it also gets more social. I really like doing it like this, anyways, and even though I might have missed a bit of the story, I have had a blast.

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Originally Posted by Horrorscope
Putting dialog cleanly in the lower-right section does help. There is an issue though when you are speaking with NPC's the last thing said isn't always at the bottom of the log:

This bug happens occasionally, but when it does you still have the option of going to your journal (default "L" key) and following the dialogue in the "Dialogue" tab. Obviously it would be better if that were not necessary and the bug were fixed, but until that happens it's a usable workaround (and hardly a reason to "avoid co-op").

I've been playing D:OS mostly co-op and having a blast and practically no co-op related issues. Frankly, it works a lot better as a co-op game than a few titles in the past years that have billed themselves as being primarily built around co-op play.

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Also missing a bit of the story means you get to enjoy more of it in another playthrough (assuming you're crazy like me and want to play through the game multiple times).

I think the best suggestion I've seen is allowing your character to spectate in your co-op partners dialogue, or making it so you have to both confirm to go to the next piece of text. This would really add a lot to the co-op experience if it were a possibility.

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When in Coop conversation with two players we still have the issue you can't see what the other person said without scrolling up each time and you cannot see the dialog box in the bottom right while in coop conversation.

This is what you see if you do nothing but watch:

NPC: Hey how ya doin?
Wait Coop Partner
NPC: I'll tell you about this shit hole, orcs to the left, zombies to the right, worse than the Baxter's and Roho's I tell ya.

That is the issue. Here is what you do every time to know what your partner asked or said:

NPC: Hey how ya doin?
Wait Coop Partner
(Now Scroll up to see your partner asked: "What can you tell me about this town?")
(Then Scroll back down to see response or your list of choices)
NPC: I'll tell you about this shit hole, orcs to the left, zombies to the right, worse than the Baxter's and Roho's I tell ya.

This is how all coop conversation plays out, your partners questions or responses are always right out of view. The game gives you focus on story choice, but to know wtf is going on you have to scroll up each time to see what your partner said, then back down.

The Fix: Obviously show and focus on what your partner said and if you need to scroll down to see more of what the NPC said or what is being asked of you, you do that. The point is we need to see the conversation without scrolling up in chronological order. Since I have to scroll up and down each time, I won't have any issue scrolling down to where it's my time to make a choice after I read everything in order.

I'd still love a total revamp of the coop system, but this is one last step imo in conjuntion with the improved dialog box for non-coop conversation to make the system, ok.


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