Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Co-op feedback thread

Here's an issue: Someone can join your game without the game letting you know that someone has joined. I thought that my game had glitched out, but it turned out that someone had joined my game, and I had no real indication that it had happened.

Yes, we'll fix it asap - it'll be one of the first things we patch. You can get some nasty surprises that way

But think of the pranks!

OK Feedback after 4 Hours of gameplay - great and funny hours, the game is on a great way ...

Noted Bugs:

• If the second player joins during the character creation, he can take control of scarlet and run around - very cool
• During the dialogs, i can't see the answer of my partner. A "ok i've finish reading' button is missing
• The BackgroundMusic while fighting isn't dimmed correctly according to the setup. I have to turn it of commpletly or its to loud...
• AI Ignoring (ice)walls, sometimes they shot trough
• GraficError: If the second player leave the screen, somethimes his armour displayed somewhere in the scene. As soon he appears back on the screen all is normal
• GraficError: after a combat some of our characters was highlighted red (same effect like "character is affected by AOE)
• some items (like the roboter-remote-control) are displayed in the trade window but are not "tradeable"

Balancing:

• Now its feels more "correct". Mages are not overpowered that mutch. Often my partner (mage) has to go in close combat, cause of "lack of speels"
• WinterBreath is way to strong, kills every enemy in the first round
• Phoenix dive seems to strong
• Ranger need some more usefull spells, seems a little bit to week
• Character stats and skills seems well balanced (but the text for intelligence seems wrong or the effect is disabled...)

Some thoughts:

• KnockDown on ice spawn to often...
• Compagnions should be controllable by the second player (handover). It's a little bit "boring" for the second one to wait while the first one has to move 3 characters...
• Ingame Chat and Voice is needed. We are using the currently Steam Chat/Voip
• a player to player trading would be nice

overall sneaking, steeling an lockpicking seems harder. For example Esmiralda take notice, that i'am entered their private rooms through the walls ...

HAven't been playing a lot yet, essentially explored around with a mage Roderic and a ranger Scarlet.

A few things :
- The yellow / orange difference when hovering above a container or item can be hard to tell, maybe, when you're about to interact with someone else's property you should have a clearer hint. Maybe a good ol' red?

- The ranger starting abilities feel quite weak compared to warrior or mage. Essentially not having an AoE hurts a bit. With the standard skill points, a mage is quicker than a ranger, while having both a heal, and a kinda ranged AoE spell.

- Has Lockpicking been put into the game yet ? I couldn't find how to use it. Maybe an item is required ?

- A very, very annoying bug we find - game breaking actually.
We ventured into the forest and got into a hard fight. A few zombie boars, a necromancer, some skeleton archers.
Scarlet got killed, Madora followed shortly, Roderic had to flee. He respawned with a live Madora, Scarlett (me) kept kissing the ground. He came back, proceed to wipe off the remaining ennemies, and we all passed a level during the fight. I was returned to full life but not properly rezzed. Even when the fight was over, I couldn't move. I left the game, my friend got the control of Scarlet back, he TPed to the Homestead... A dead Scarlett followed, still uncontrolable.
In short : gaining a level while dead seem to bug your character.

- This may come later, but I think we are quite used to the Escape key closing any opened panel before getting us in the main menu.

You need to buy a Lockpick skill book to learn the skill (from the arrow seller in the market) and invest a point into that ability.

Okay just posting a few bugs that we (my husband and I) noted while playing co-op.
1. Questwise, the journals are not shared between player. I had no idea what my husband's character was talking about when our characters engaged in a conversation after he picked up and opened the Journal of the dead man at the start of the game.
2. If the host leaves the game while the player 2 is in the main menu, the game freezes for the latter. A connection lost error menu appears outside of the game which when clicked can freeze the whole pc until forcefully closed via task manager. After doing this and returning to the game, player 2 had the ingame pause menu layered on top of the main menu. http://imgur.com/HpgrVUt
3. Random lag spikes where the player will move one step at a time. Happens more often if one player initiates battle and the other is out of range of the battle.
4. This can also happen http://imgur.com/JOqAJLR when one of the player gets out of stealth. The player is not actually at this location but further ahead.


Suggestion:
1. Maybe we should allow the co-op player joining to choose the class/character he/she wants to play as with the host having the right to veto.

Couple of points after playing with a friend and discussing it:

- Dialogue windows should maintain a history of past sentences to ensure you can get the full picture when discussing - it can become a bit tedious to follow up on what is being said. Somehow it feels awkward to have lines disappear rather than populate the window.

- Ranger is a fun class but it feel fairly weak compared to damages dished out by a Mage; I understand there's a balance to be achieved of course, but slightly tweaking the base damage could help. Or a slightly better bow to start with, maybe.

- An indicator on screen (not within the map) to give a bearing of where your co-op player is could help with visual cues and sense heading.

- Quest indicators can be invasive, but the first village having a lot of quests break the initial action momentum, while it's not necessarily a bad thing for people that like exploring, indicating the main quest "location" for the players that don't necessarily over explore can help.

- Already mentioned above, giving control of a henchman to a co-op player should be possible to give them something to do.

- Dialogue options between players are often not shown on the "pre-ending" discussion; not indicating what the other player chose.

- The ultimate decision being always given to the "dialogue intiating" player feels a bit harsh of the co-op player. If it is score driven, a [Failure] indicator on the argument should appear; as it stands it just seem like the other player ultimately says "It's always going to be my way".

I got a chance to play a few minutes.

The connection was smooth despite me being in Canada, and the other guy being in Europe.

• REQUEST: An in-game chat feature is desperately needed, using the Steam overlay is cumbersome.
• REQUEST: Dialogue doesn't work very well. Player to player dialogue conversation works fine, but player to NPC Dialogue is almost impossible to follow for the second player.
  
  Players need a way to keep track of the conversations other players are having with NPC's. It's especially bad because we can see only one half of the conversation and don't know what our ally says. This is a big deal that needs to be addressed.
• REQUEST: There needs to be a way to assign a second companion to the control of the other character - preferably a way to assign a specific companion so you don't end up with one player controlling two mages, and another character controlling two fighters.
• I experienced a couple odd desyncs. Desync #1 - I snuck into the basement of the Legion cook while my partner stayed upstairs. When I came back up, my partner wasn't moving, and his companions were invisible - that is, their armour was there but their bodies were invisible. It turned out that the other player wasn't there at all, but was in the barracks.
• Desync #2 - I was south of Esmerelda's shop and found more invisible companions. I checked the map to see where they were, and saw them entering the crime scene room. At that point, my game froze up and I could do nothing - not even use the Steam Overlay - except alt-Tab out. I suspect that what might have happened is that the game tried to trigger the "Star Stone Lightning" effect, but I was out of range. My partner didn't see the Star Stone Lightning happen at all.
• REQUEST: The minimap should have an indicator showing the direction of your partner, because it's really easy to lose sight of them, and having to bring up the big map to track them down can get old if you have to keep doing it. This is disabled by default in single-player, unless you split the party members up.
• REQUEST: Players NEED to be able to use local waypoints when their partner is not around. It's fine if everyone needs to be together to travel past a loading screen, but I should be able to go between the harbour and the statues without my parnter being at my side.

Yes, this.



Yes, at the moment, Rangers are not useful. They're complete garbage against the Undead, which make up 75% of the enemies in the Alpha. Once, both Roderick and Madora got themselves killed, and even though it was just Ranger Scarlett against a single enemy Undead Archer, the fight was AGONIZING. It took forever and I used up all my health potions before I could beat it.



You need to buy a Lockpick skillbook from the Arrow merchant. There are so many questions about this. Honestly, Larian should remove the Lockpicking skillbook, and simply automatically grant you the skill once you put a point into lockpicking.





Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems to me that when controlling Roderick, almost every time I get into an argument, Roderick's argument wins. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but it might be bugged to always go with the first guy's decision as winning.

Echoing what Stabbey said, it's usually hard to follow co-op conversations, especially since you're under a bit of pressure not to take too long. I even got the impression that some of the conversations got resolved without my input, even though the dialogue window was open. Overall, the process needs to be made clearer and less confusing.

It also seems that (temporary?) desyncs tend to occur when certain things happen, such as one player going to a different level of a building, or during scripted events. Otherwise, the connection is indeed fairly smooth.

Apparently complete strangers who are not even on your Steam Friends list can join your game, without your knowledge or permission. I was Alt-tabbed out to write some feedback for the forums, when I heard sounds of battle. Someone had taken control of Scarlett and was alternately shooting me, then healing me. It was apparently to get my attention.

The only friend who was currently playing D:OS said it wasn't them, so I have no idea who it was, and because of the lack of in-game chat, had no way to ask, or tell them things like "I have to go AFK now".

Whenever we would lose a battle our bodies would just sit there with no control over them. No respawn, no reload, nothing. It was just 5 minutes of sitting there waiting for nothing to happen.

If both main characters are dead, it is game over, there is just no indicator for that currently (that should be added soon).

After a few hours of co-op with my husband, I'll have to agree with most posts about the conversation with npc breaking immersion for whichever player not participating in the conversation. It seems the devs tried to use chat bubble to make the co-op partner participate/see the conversation that is happening but it does not work well for the two following reasons:
1. The other player cannot see the choices/options the player engaged in the conversation hence missing out on half of the conversation.
2. The two players will never read the same line of texts at the same speed to keep up with the chat bubble. (This is also an issue with the random chat bubbles that pop up when the players come close to a npc conversing with other npc)

Suggestions:
Allow the other player to drop in the convo if they wish and follow it up either by:
1. A pop up icon in a corner of the player 2's screen informing them that the other player has engaged in a convo and to click on the pop up icon to read the convo if they wish. Obviously the player engaged in the convo will not be able to exit it until the player 2 has finished reading or picked a choice.
2. Or the ability to drop in by clicking on the npc engaged in a convo with player 1 and seeing the same chat window as player 1.

It pretty much breaks co-op for us and that was the only reason we increased our pledge on KS. I do hope you guys will find a solution to it.


And now for some bugs that have not been mentioned yet:

1. If more than one npc is engaged in a conversation with a player (for example the guards blocking the small bridge at the start or the guards deciding the fate of the female orc), the other player can literally steal the conversation by clicking on one of the npc (usually it's the one that player 1 did not click on to engage in the conversation). Player 1 loses the conversation window.
2. If two players are engaged in a conversation with two different npc. And one npc has trade option while the other does not. The trade option will also appear on the npc that did not originally have one and if clicked it will have the same inventory as the initial npc that has the trade option.

Just some observations while playing with my partner (some have already been mentioned, and so I definitely agree with some feedback, but I just feel it best/easier to write up all my thoughts rather than quoting each individual post one by one :D, so sorry about that!)

Potential Issues
1) Loading a game during co-op, and being assigned the wrong character.

When we load a game, after already being in-game. For example, we died and need to reload. There is an issue that the host that loads defaults to one of the characters and the second player automatically takes up the other character. In our playthrough earlier, I ended up being stuck in my partner's character when we loaded without a way to switch characters between us.

The solution for the moment is to have your co-op partner quit to the main menu, then rejoin once you have selected your character.

It would be nice if the game remembered which character you were using, or if it allowed us to switch characters at will between us (maybe have something like, player wants to switch characters, y/n option for the host?), so we don't have the case of someone forcing you to swap.

2) While in co-op, players can have dialogue individually and there is no way for the other player to follow the conversation.

This was mentioned already I think, but I agree, sometimes the text that floats above an NPCs head moves too fast (or because it disappears when the other player chooses another dialogue option), and thus the other player can't follow what the NPC is saying.

One possible solution is having a chat box on the screen similar to say how an MMO records dialogue (maybe make it optional for those that don't want it) which records the dialogue history, including dialogue choices.

For example, Scarlet asks: Tell me about yourself, would show up on the dialogue window on the bottom and the NPCs response will show up there too. Players can then see a history of dialogue in case they forget something recent.

3) When in co-op dialogue, the last option/winning dialogue doesn't show up as the dialogue box closes.

My partner and I have had to recount what choice they selected everytime we end a dialogue sequence between our characters because the box disappears right after clicking it and 'showing the result' (i.e., +1 pragmatic).

If it is possible to have a button for both players to press to 'end dialogue' at the end, so that it closes when both players are ready, that will help the co-op experience

4) In-game chat

There is no in-game chat, so we have had to use steam because we don't have mic access for the moment, so we had to constantly bringup the steam overlay to discuss things (as you know, talking to each other abot what's happened is part of the fun ! )

Solution: Just like the chat box for the other solutions, if players could use that same chatbox to text chat to each other (again chatbox should be optional for those that don't want it showing up on their UI), that would be very helpful for those that don't use a mic or can't for whatever reason

* * * * * * *

So far, we are having A LOT OF FUN and we've only had the chance to play maybe an hour!! Keep up the good work Larian We love the game already and can't wait until it's feature complete

It may just be me but i cant seem to assign partymembers to control to the second player.
Still.. managed to play about 2 hours of co-op with a guy (it crashed once due to us doing multiple big things at the same time (starting a quest at a questgiver while at the same time stealking stuff from the questgivcers house proccing his aggresive mode) and didnt crash at a second co-op session.. so not bad at all

I am a real fan of this game and generally love what Larian has done here, but I have to say that the first co-op experience did not meet up very well with my expectations. The only part that feels truly cooperative is combat. If Larian can manage to incorporate better co-op play with the dialogues, it would feel much better. Here are some observations on that front:

1. Some dialogues fail to have any context for one player. For instance, if one person picks up the adventurers journal and reads it, it offers a party conversation where the other player has dialogue lines assuming they know what is going on. If you are going to do something like that, the dialogue should begin with one character explaining to the other what was read rather than assuming the information was already communicated somehow. Either that, or if reading a book is going to open a conversation option, the book UI should pop up for both players.

2. The conversation experience for the non-initiating player is very poor. You feel like you are simply watching from the sidelines rather than being involved, and then suddenly your input is requested. The flyover text is too hard to follow and seems to be missing the player lines (only NPC strings are displayed). I would love to see this become more interactive in co-op mode. Just some brainstorming suggestions here:

• When a player begins a dialogue with an NPC, if you are in co-op mode and the other player is in range, prompt the other player with a box offering to participate in the conversation. This gives them a choice to be involved in the dialogue, or to continue questing independently. If they accept, they get the same dialogue UI as the other player.
• When both players are participating in a conversation, why not allow both to choose dialogue options and have a random roll determine whose choice is selected? If for some reason you only want the initiator to be able to choose the standard selections, have the options greyed out or not present for the other person. But at least this way, the other person can have the UI there and see what questions are available and have a record of the conversation rather than the difficult to see flytext.
• I would like to see a new UI element that contains conversation history. It would be ideal if it could be brought up and collapsed like other inventory, skill, etc. windows. Anytime some flytext or conversation string is displayed to the screen, it would be great to have a record of it in this history window with something like "speaker:<dialogue line>", with player lines also there in a different color.

I have to admit that the state of the dialogues in c-op is worrying. The co-op gameplay has been a key concept from the start, and even way back at the first videos there was some co-op play shown. There was co-op play shown off many times in the pre-alpha kickstarter videos months ago.

And yet, after all this time, there are still obvious issues like it being impossible to follow a conversation your partner is having with an NPC, and the second player having no context for the dead-guy book conversation, they just get dumped into a dual-dialogue? These are pretty big issues for co-op play, and no one's thought of those at this stage?

These are dominantly UI issues and we'll fix them soon enough. We've grown so used to playing in the same room that we didn't put these UI's as high on the priority list as they should've been.

Okay, good to hear. Thanks for the reply, Swen!