Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Multiplayer makes each PC perform separate checks

[Act I and II minor spoilers]

Howdy howdy, friends!

Is there some workaround to the game treating two players in a co-op game as different parties? My friend and I are engaged in our first playthrough, and this is causing a small amount of strife.

We first noticed the game really treating he and I separately when we found the Keep in chapter 1. His PC had a ring or some such on him, so the gargoyle guarding the entrance sent him straight through the maze--leaving me behind. And when I approached the gargoyle guardian, lacking the item in my own inventory, I had to go through the same dialogue my friend did. Failing that check, now I was left to navigate the maze alone from the entrance, while he had to choose between working through it backwards towards me--or using a waypoint and meeting back up with my PC, and giving up any advantage received from being ported forward.

Similarly, in Driftwood in Act II, he received a writ of passage as a part of the magister quest. This allowed him to leave through the western exit, past the two guards and their source hounds. But even as I followed right along on his heels, the dogs and guards also stopped me, forced me into the same conversation--and, lacking the writ of passage myself, I ended up failing the check and we were forced to kill the guards.

Is there something we're doing wrong? Is there someway for his PC to essentially say to a guard "hey this writ I have is not just for me and my NPC companion, but also for this other PC and their compainion as well, since we're all in the same party"? Or are we going to essentially be forced to do all these sorts of persuasion checks twice, if we both want to get past something?

To be sure, sometimes it's worked in our favour. If one person fails a check that has no consequence other than "you fail to unlock X option", sometimes the other player can try the same thing. But those instances aside, the immersion is pretty broken when things like the Driftwood guard experience happen... when my friend is able to flash the writ and pass right through, only to have my character immediately have to pass the exact same check, fail, and be forced into killing the guards that just told my friend a few seconds prior that all was well and that we could pass.

Ergh. Halp plz

I'll be starting a coop playthrough next month, I have the same question!! I wonder how questing and dialogues work in a coop enviroment, if they're any different if the party is playing split screen or with separate PCs...

When I see your question, the first thing that comes to mind is whether or not you can chain two human controlled characters. Chaining them should result in a single quest log and a single dialogue check for certain events. If chaining is not possible at all, I have to wonder how questing in its entirety works... I've never seen a game where you can play the coop campaign with friends (like, what are those exactly?)

Unfortunately D:OS 2 does a horrible job at treating multiplayer as a co-op effort. For example, there are several instances where one player receives massive positive attitude adjustments with NPCs for completing a quest, but the other player does not (even though the process completes the quest for both players, and both players had a hand in successfully completing the quest).

The first Divinity: Original Sin also had this problem, but it was eventually corrected in later updates. We have had a few major patches since D:OS 2's release and I have seen no fixes towards this problem. It is as if the developers are determined to make D:OS 2 multiplayer a PvP experience rather than a co-op one, and to ignore the progress they made in this area in the first game.

Very disappointing, and I have a difficult time seeing myself taking an interest in future projects if this trend continues.

As I wrote more than once, all this competitiveness killed the cooperative feeling you got in the first game. Perhaps having now 4 possible player character also had an influence, but I'm pretty sure, the huge part is done by the competetiveness.

First, if someone suggests this game handles coop poorly, remember next to nobody even attempts coop in iso crpgs. To me whatever flaws it has and it has some, it is still the best coop iso crpg experience you can have.

Personally I would have you and your buddy flip a coin to see who becomes the leader. Now sure you don't have to do this, but to me when you start bringing multiple heroes into the party and wanting to do quest lines together, it gets messy. You notice sometimes you talking has a different result in them talking... sounds great right? Well then you become a slave to both always trying to talk to see if there is something there for each of you or not. You find out it can be different, but most the times it is a waste of time and doesn't feel smooth and more a burden to try.

I'd do it where whoever wins the flip, picks the hero to play, the other 3 are characters you build from scratch and they listen in on leaders dialog vs mixing who's in control. I would ask the leader to always say out the line choice they are doing, so the other knows what they picked. This also adds a nice little role playing element without trying hard. For some reason, otherwise you have to scroll up each time to see what they picked as it isn't visible. (To me this is a pretty big coop issue.)

Also at the start of dialog the leader should tell the other (assuming you are on mic together) this is happening. The system only shows an icon on their avatar, it needs a Sound Option for this as well. Point is you want to know when the leader is talking to a NPC so you can listen in. Listening in is done overall well in this game.

After you play the game through crisply with one hero, now it is time to change sides on who leads, pick a new hero and teammates and do it all again and again.

I'm sure you won't do this, not that I mean that in a bad way, you'll try to maximize an all encompassing run, but to me it gets muddied that way and around a 1/3 of the way through it sinks in.... this could have been smoother if we had a true leader.Could be wrong.

Also I want to add, we currently have 39 sessions now as I do a full save at the EOD noting. I am nearing the end, probably have another 5'ish sessions to go. I figure each session equals around 3-4 hours. So that is quite a commitment. I'm sure a lot of people go in with very high intentions cooperatively but life will get in the way for most. Sort of like "I am making a mod!!!" and we're fortunate to see 10% make it to the end. Again, could be wrong.

You know, we can compare this game to the first one and there was a far better feeling or being a team between the two main heroes. In this game the 4 heroes don't feel, like they are a team, but more like four individual who happen to have the same direction, because there are never group talks. You can listen into a talk, but you never take part of a talk. You can just do the same talk afterwards like the first never happened, except there is a questline and somebody finished the quest already.

In Duo-Games I always let my friend lead, because he was the one with the bartering and persuasion skill and would do the shopping anyway. And it still sucks, that only one guy can see the shop at the time and not all can check it at the same time. This was an issue in the first and did not get solved, just got worse with now having to ask 3 other guys instead of only one and because you still can't check for yourself, what the others are wearing. Getting all the stuff to sell to one guy is still tedious work and even more with 4 people. They did not improve stuff, that was already an issue in the first and the stuff they had kind of working, got worse.

4 player coop has a lot of parts, which are boring for about 3/4 of the team, because only one guy can really do something, which is most of the time the talking.

I am more of the school of thinking that if you're going to do something, do it right. I am not just going to give Larian a pass because they bothered to implement multiplayer into their game, especially when:

1) They billed it as a major feature of this game. And if they're going to do that, then they should do it well. Simply allowing 2-4 players to exist in the same game doesn't cut it. I'm not suggesting that's all D:OS 2 offers on the multiplayer front, but I feel like you're suggesting we should be thankful just to have that, and everything else should be considered a bonus (and the flaws ignored).

2) A lot of these are complaints are based on common sense expectations. If (for example) the players in your story are tasked with finding a lost sheep, and they return together with said sheep, it makes more sense for the quest-giver to realize that everyone present was involved in finding the sheep and not just the person who happens to be speaking. This, by the way, was a quest from the original D:OS that (originally) resulted in only one person receiving a huge positive attitude adjustment with the quest-giver instead of the entire party.

3) A lot of these complaints are based on shortcomings Larian already resolved in the first D:OS, but then allowed to return in D:OS 2. The above issue (with the sheep, and all quests like it) was corrected post-launch in an update after the reasoning was argued to the developers. And yet here we are again in the sequel, reversing that decision for no apparent reason and doing things worse instead of better.

If the developers wanted to focus more on a competitive instead of a cooperative experience, then it is what it is. But, by that token, the co-op experience is obviously going to take be hit. The more they move away from cooperation and towards PvP, the more subpar and frustrating the co-op experience becomes.

I am not suggesting there isn't room for both options to exist in the same multiplayer game, but it requires adequately supporting both play-styles and not gutting one at the expense of the other. You can allow just one person to be the hero of the story, and you can also allow the party to share in being the heroes of the story - maybe ask the players which method of multiplayer (co-op or competitive) they would prefer when they start a multilplayer game? Or handle it through creative dialogue choices:

1. "Good news! My comrades and I have located your lost sheep, and we came back here to bring you the fair tidings together."

2. "I and I alone was able to locate your lost sheep, no thanks to these misfits behind me who continue to ride my coattails and make every effort to steal my thunder."

I'd be an idiot to think they did it poorly and it is no good. When in fact I've now played both games coop from A to Y and enjoyed myself and others have expressed the same feelings. No it isn't perfect, yes there is room for improvement. I say the #1 issue with coop is finding a team that will stick with it for 120 hours, that is a huge time and scheduling commit that I bet destroys more coop intentions than issues with the coop system, by far.

Where is Pillars of Eternity's coop option? Xcoms coop campaign? Yeah I'll take what Larian offers over nothing at all. So I guess if I need a job done, I have someone willing to do it, might not be Hercules doing it, but it is better than nothing and does the trick, really they still did a damn good job of it. Beggars want to choose to?

I agree on many of the complaints though, I still feel the "I have to scroll up each time a teammate makes a dialog choice to see what they choose to understand the reply coming from the NPC". Why not have that choice visible, so I can see what they choose without doing that every single time? Yes buying from one vendor at a time isn't ideal, typically there a multiple vendors in the area to help that out some, so it isn't anything like a total wait twiddling thumbs every time. Or an audio alert to tell you a teammate is starting up a conversation, so you can click in to listen. Toggle options to see teammates stats. See teammates Skills/AP when it is their turn in battle. Toggle to completely share inventory like your family/friends. Yes there are things that can be done. But this is by far and I'm talking like a 3 vs a 10, the best TB COOP CRPG I've played. And if the keep quality high, I'll buy everything they ever make on this engine.