Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Terrible time with multi-player

I love D:OS and so far D:OS2, but the multi-player feature has been extremely disheartening for me so far. I was personally really excited to play MP with a party of strangers and so far it seems impossible. I constantly get kicked, or people scream at me for joining (with plenty of interesting adjectives).

I'm really hoping there is a way to distinguish an "open" lobby where someone is looking for players and one where its closed to friends so I can potentially skip that.

Sorry if this is a bit ranty, but most of my time has been spent being kicked from other peoples games for no reason.

I agree, I have been on the other end of this (no offence). While I didn't use any "interesting adjectives", it was quite surprising to have a stranger pop into our game and take control of one of our characters (it took a bit to notice).
I feel like an options menu when you start a multiplayer game would solve a lot of these issues, i.e. it could ask if you want strangers to be able to join your game. Rather than having to search through the options to get to these settings.
This is an alpha build so I expect/hope cleaning this up is in the plans.

I agree partially. There probably will be a more detailed lobby implemented closer to release, but it would be really thematically fitting to leave things as they are now specifically if you have Loshe in your group.
If you have her anyone can join your game and take control over her at any time.

Hello,
I found this thread and though i add my view here to.
I had the belief that you could join with your characters and create a party together. But its actually not like this. You have to chose between the existing characters and they are bound to that specific playthrough. Do we know if the characters will ever be seperated from a specific campaign game? i would love to use him with my friends and/or in other games and help ppl out and play together.

kind regards.

You will not be able to join an existing campaign with your own characters for balance and quest purposes.

If you want a custom character in another players game the best way to do it is to join them during character creation. (This allows you to customize your character)

Larian ended up getting rid of global chat in DOS1 because it became such a cesspool when it went to Steam early access. I suspect they will do something similar eventually since the game is only getting a larger audience and the law of averages on the Internet tends to make things worse rather than better with larger sample sizes.

I would highly suggest trying to organize here or somewhere else where you can find like-minded people to play with and start your own game.

@Ninjasteave
thanks for your reply.
(and to you to Windermere!)

I was thinking futher ahead. Not many people want to replay it from scratch once you start to get some character attachments and nice outfits/gear.
once you have played through the campaign you might want to use your character again (i only play lonewolf btw) and keep doing some of the endbosses etc (start a game on a specific quest with already existing characters from your characterpool). This way you have a higher character attachment and a "highend" where you can optimize your character and reach max lvl/gear/specializations.
Sounds almost like im describing an ARPG and in some ways i am. The option to replay with your character and up the difficulty and/or start on specific quest to further optimize your character is a high value replayability. But maybe the pure purpose with this game is not to have characterattachment and all about playing the storyline from start to finish. (once you are finished your character cant be used anymore, anywhere, except for running around in an empty world).

So, im just curious if this idea has been explore for DoSII. there might already be ideas and suggestions regarding this but i have yeat to find them, so sorry if its been mention before!

Tbh, DOS 1 and DOS 2 have never been meant to play with complete strangers and are aimed at friends or at least Steam friends. Both games are very lengthy and choices made at some point will have long-lasting consequences (as an example: if a drop-in player decides to steal an apple and angers the whole town then the host is stuck with all these hostile NPCs even after the drop-in player has left the game five minutes later and never joined again -> a perfect thing to mess up someone's game). So, I am not really surprised that many people are apprehensive of strangers joining their game - though it never justifies foul language. DOS 1 had settings which allowed you to make the game open only for your friends or for people whom you explicitly send an invitation, so I presume that similar options will be coming for DOS 2 if they do not exist yet (I jave not tried out MP so far for the main campaign)

To the OP: you may find it very hard to find other players who would be willing to let complete stranger join their games. Maybe you should try asking here if someone wants to play MP with you? Or start your own game and advertise it in the global chat that all are welcome to join? Also, the arena fights are as far as I can tell aimed at random players, so maybe you can try them as well?

You can turn off randoms. Though its never stated to newer players that you can do this, which should change (it should ask you when you start a multiplayer game). You can switch between: Anyboy, Friends, Invites and Nobody.

Thanks for all the nice replies.

I think something might be a bit at odds here between the gameplay that larian has created and the multi-player possibility. They have been talking a lot about poisoning a friend and dueling motivations. In order to have this then yes, a random could steal an apple and grief your game.

I would love to play with like minded players (I tend to roleplay the character within reason). I'll look for a thread to maybe find a couple new friends (I have none that play divinity).

Until then, my steam is http://steamcommunity.com/id/sluntchop/

I hope you find some people to play with. Divinity is an awesome multi player game with friends. I'm fortunate to have my brother to share this experience with. (Its much easier to know exactly how hard you can troll someone you have grown up with. A more anonymous online friend might be a lot less lenient with my shenanigans) :3

Perhaps there's another thread for this, but I've had a different kind of terrible experience with multiplayer.

Playing Co-Op with someone else on my LAN, we weren't able to get far before the game became nearly completely unsynced. Actions that I took would take seconds or more to be reflected on the other PC. Additionally, dialog boxes and loot boxes would take seconds to open up and seconds to proceed from one option to the next.

Initially, all was fine, but by the time we got to encounter the Elf (that you can invite to the part) I do not remember her name, sorry, the entire experience was ruined by the desync.

A simple way to solve this would be asking players to name their lobbies. If you join a lobby named "all players welcome" and still get kicked within 5 seconds then at least you know the host is a bit bonkers.

Like others have said, just ask on the forums for likeminded players who want to play coop with you. Then you guys can hash out a time and date, etc.

I've been on the other side of what you have went through but I didn't use any name calling. I was playing with 3 friends and a stranger jumped in during character creation (you can't set the game to private before character creation, I've tried). My friends immediately wanted him kicked but I gave him a chance. We got semi-far but the way he played just did not mesh well with us (We're quick and each have our set paths on how to progress, while he took his time. Not his fault, just didn't mesh with our style). After I kicked him though we were stuck with his character (please address this Larian)!

But yes, searching the steam forums or even here for potential coop partners is a good start as you can list what/who you're looking to play with.

I agree with Elwyn. I've played the original OS and am now playing early access with friends/family and it's been amazing. It's great because we all know each other and can chat about what decisions we're making, share quests we've received (or not, if we're feeling devious) and know how to fight cohesively during battles. Plus we can coordinate play times together. I can't imagine allowing a random person into my game, knowing they may well wreck our world state.

However, there are plenty of people in the same boat, looking for games to build together. You might want to ask around here or start a thread in the Divinity subreddit asking for people who'd like to join.

well devs cant fix people. thats just the fate of multiplayer games.

That actually sounds like a very serious problem.

Larian's designed the game to have some amount of mischief. But it gets out of hand, as you say, if they can just steal an apple and turn the whole town against you. Another problem with the way NPCs overreact to stealing.

You can currently set multiplayer games to "invite only" preventing anyone from joining that you don't wish to join. Not a problem.

Well, it does feel as though the game is setting up for a Highlander-esque "there can only be one" showdown at the end of the campaign. In a multiplayer game, each player visits their respective god and told directly that there will be a time when they will have to betray their party in order to secure their rightful position as the new Divine. If you protest to this, your god will berate you and tell you that there is no other way.

However, only one member of each race can be Godwoken. In our game we had two lizards and the second one wasn't able to visit the Seven or gain Godwoken powers like Bless.

Point being, it seems like this kind of inter-party trouble-making is encouraged from the get-go. I can understand not wanting to get in the way of progression by upsetting important NPCs, but I can see this creating a more selfishly driven gameplay experience where each player is constantly seeking for ways to pull ahead of everyone else (hoarding loot and resources above all).

It appears co-op is being designed to be competitive, so you're supposed to screw each other over...

But obviously there should be limits to this.