Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Dialogue System like SWTOR for Multiplayer

I would like to see a system like SWTOR has/had. Basically if you are in a group in SWTOR the player who answers to the quest giver etc is decided by dice throw. That makes it way more interesting to play in a group to have different outcomes. I do not like that the dialogue is depending on the person who for example enters a building first and gets to talk.

There should be also a option to not say anything. That gives the party the choice to let a specific person speak.

In SWTOR was also a hidden mechanic to prevent that solely dice luck decides who is speaking. If someone has answered he had a lower chance so others get to speak aswell for the next roll.

There was also the case if for example the player with the dark side option wins the dice roll but you picked a light side option you still get light side points

I think this is almost a must have for the game. In DOS2 we always had a dedicated player who did the dialogues but thats not that much fun.

What you guys think?

Sorry for grammar. I did write that during lunch break.

I honestly dont like rolling for speaking in SWTOR ...
But this suggestion was here few times allready, and people mentioned that DoS(?) contained something like "rock paper scissors lizard spock" ... wich sounded much better to me, since "who will speak" is actualy in our own hands, instead of just RNG.

+1! I love SWTOR’s system because everyone gets to participate in the conversations.

I haven’t tried the rock-paper-scissors system used in DOS.

No idea how it looked in DOS2 but DOS dialogue system was...not perfect. The first player to engage got into it and the others could just spactate if I remember correctly.

SWToR has it right when it comes to dialogue, maybe not perfect but good enough.

Ideally I would love to see a roll being made, and the other characters that wanted to say something else would instead roll their eyes in the backgournd

Why don't you like rolling in SWTOR? I'm guessing RNG or trolling is the concern, and it is a valid one, especially for multiplayer games with total strangers. Not so much if you play with friends IMO, but a valid concern nonetheless. If you introduce democracy(or trolling), you might not have a consistent playthrough.

However, a concern is not enough to dismiss the concept of a system like this, you just have to address the concern. The concept is to introduce democracy to multiplayer dialogues, to make multiplayer dialogues engaging for the whole party. Remember, in multiplayer, your party members are actual people, who might want a say in the decision making. Ultimately it is up to the devs to find the best system to implement.

A few ways:
- Majority vote: Depending on the party, the playthrough would likely remain consistent, with the one player who disagrees(or trolls) likely having no effective say. Easy to implement, but tiebreakers need to be debated.
- Total RNG roll per player, highest individual roll wins: Even in this system, if there is a majority, with more dice rolls, they have a higher chance collectively to roll the highest, but the one player who disagrees(or trolls) will still have a relatively high chance to steer individual dialogues away from the majority. Still, the playthrough would remain largely consistent. Trivial to implement.
- RNG rolls of the same choice are pooled together: Similar to total RNG, but skewed more towards majority. For example in a 3v1 vote: The troll rolls 50, the others roll 25 each. In Total RNG the troll would win but in this system the combined points of the majority(75) outweighs the troll. The playthrough would be more consistent than total RNG, but the one troll could still cause some surprises here and there. Trivial to implement
- Weighted RNG: The weight could mean a lot of things, class, attributes, etc. For example if a class has a special dialog option not available to others(barbarian being able to kick the door in, a rogue being able to lockpick the door, etc), that player choosing that option could have a higher weight. You could also increase the weight for the players who lost the last vote so over time, they have a better chance to speak. Harder to implement with considerations for weights, skills, etc. Lowest playthrough consistency IMO.
- *Insert your idea here*

Personally, I vote for the 3. option with similar choices pooled together. The majority steers the playthrough, but there is still a small chance for the individual to let their voice heard.
But the choice is actually easy, just let us customise the system, give us multiple options, so parties can fine tune their experience.

I do think a system like this is needed, and is actually my top feature request for the game. It gives you the sense that you are part of the group, and you all contribute to the story. It gives chance for a more dynamic, emergent gameplay experience. It gives chance for actual roleplay. Just imagine the shenanigans while in a group of friends when the cleric of the group is having a conversation with the enemy, trying to resolve the conflict peacefully, and then the barbarian goes ENOUGH TALK! I do get that some players might find that frustrating, but among friends, it's fun. The best route is to give options tho.

BTW this is how the SWTOR system works in video form for those who haven't played it (starts at 2:09):

Yes ...
That and the fact that you have no way to interfere ...

That is something that bothers me in such multiplayer games in general.

Quite honestly what i imagine as properly created conversations for multiplayer, is that everyone pick what they want to do ... or say ... and they WILL do that ... but that person who win the roll (or even better rock/scissor/paper/lizard/spock, since i really dislike when RNG decides fate for me) will finish it.

For example:
Person A wants to free NPC
Person B wants to arest NPC
Percon C wants to kill NPC

Curent system:
Person A wins ... person B and C watch NPC run away, do nothing.
Person B wins ... person A and C watch NPC got arested, do nothing.
Person C wins ... person A and B watch NPC die, do nothing.
That sucks. :-/
Especialy if Jedi and Sith goes the same flashpoint. :-/

Ideal system (imho):
Person A wins ... person B is pissed and coment on it ... person C may try some ranged attack, wich will be sabotaged by person A.
Person B wins ... person A is pissed and coment on it ... person C may try some meele attack, wich will eb sabotaged by person B.
Person C wins ... person A and B will try to sabotage his attack, but both fail in their effort, NPC is dead.

This way other party members will still express their own opinions, and attitudes about curent situation ... instead just be like:

That would be the best system, yes. Each player would see their own dialog animations with their characters in the center stage even if they lost, as if they were the protagonist.
However, even if they could get away with just creating a couple of extra animations and voices and repeating them, it would still be a lot of extra work involved that I'm not sure Larian would be on board with, especially this late in the dev cycle.

Because of the hand crafted cinematics, I'm not sure how they could pull off switching speakers without insane amounts of extra work actually. The only thing I can hope for is that the character leading the conversation "speaks for everybody", so they would say the line chosen by the party.

SWTOR had it easy because in every conversation, all characters were standing in a circle, and devs could just use a script for the camera work and character focus - at least, that's how I imagine they did it. I guess Larian could try ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Depends ...

In single player its quite easy actualy ...
All you need to implement is follower reaction like i dunno:
- blah blah blah
- blah blah blah
- [Persuation] blah blah blah
- [Persuation - Wyll] blah blah blah

This way we as a player would have option to actively choose to be interupted by Wyll, and let him speak instead of us.

Alternative option would be:
- blah blah blah
- blah blah blah
- [Persuation] blah blah blah
- [Persuation - Wyll] Tav: "You have something on mind, Wyll?" > Wyll: Blah blah blah

Multiplayer is a little tricky tho ... since every player would like to have acess to every dialogue option ...
So i gues the best way here is to somehow decide who is speaking (RNG is an option, but i still like rock/scissors/paper to be better), and just pretend others are not there for that part of conversation. :-/

I didn't mean that as the problem. Every character/class/skill specific unique dialog option could be listed for everybody, I think that should be easy to do, even by modders.
What I meant by hard work is the cinematics. Larian set up the cinematics to be protagonist focused, not party focused. By focus I mean it in the literal sense, the scenes are set up for one character only, the rest of the characters are background elements. There are some cinematics for companion quests, where the companion is beside the protagonist, but in the vast majority of cinematics the party members are just "extras". If they stick with how the cinematics are set up right now, when a "background" character is chosen, the transition to show them would be awkward, they would either need to walk forward, get teleported forward, or say their line in the background. These options both require a lot work, and don't lend well to the (gah I'm getting tired of using this word) ...cinematic nature of the dialogs. Again, SWTOR had it easy, because every scene was primed for every character to speak whenever from the start of the scene.

They could:
1. Change nothing, have all options(granted by other characters) be visible to everybody. The protagonist would present the winning choice. Basically no work, but it would feel awkward if for example a cleric trying to diffuse a situation with an aggressive goblin would suddenly break character and strike down the goblin, because the barbarian behind the cleric telepathically said so.
2. Same structure for the characters in the scenes, every dialog option visible to everybody, the winning choice would be presented by the winning character. The problem is, the character could be in the background. Larian would have to rework the scenes for the winning character to either walk forward, teleport forward after a transition, or present their line from the background. Lots of work, would still feel awkward.
3. Change the scenes so the party together approaches the NPC they wish to converse with, basically how SWTOR did it. Nearly the same amount of work as with 2., but much better IMO.

Before the latest patch, I said this would be too much work, but in patch 8, they apparently touched upon the cinematics with background characters getting some animations... But STILL they feel like "extras". Larian, if you put the extra work in so my companions don't stand in the back like a stone staring into the void, why not do it properly and make them act as a TEAM?? It's like in LotR during the council of Elrond, Elrond would be talking to Frodo alone while Gandalf, Aragorn and the rest are wherever behind a random tree T-posing.


EDIT: OMG it just dawned upon me. The protagonist...whoever it is... doesn't...even...speak. You just pick the choice and the NPC reaction is shown. Haven't played for awhile, but I don't know why I remembered that the game featured voiced protagonists. Well in that case, there's no real issue I guess, no need for any transitions and whatnot. Why even switch the camera back to your mute character at all? Just show the NPC you are talking to. The point with your companions feeling like extras still stand tho.