Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General multiplayer: playing in anothers shoes

As I had given the games quite a few walkthroughs since I got it, I decided to try out (at last) the multiplayer...
I was extremely pleased to be able to play with a friends.... BUT:

Since the two players play on one of the players file, it means that the guest wont get anything back in return for all the time he invested in his friends game, as such as game progress, drops, leveling, etc... This is a huge letdown for me, as I dont plan on playing DOS only when my friends are around because we wont all have the same amount of time available, and continuing a game without a friend is very, very, very bad gameplaywise, for a few reasons:
-the missing person doesnt get to see whats happens.
-the host gets to make choices for the missing player, which arent always the ones he would have went for.
-lets say my friend wants to play his high level warrior in the latest parts of the game, but in his party I dont have a single character that truly feels like mine, and thus it isnt very motivating playing for a friend knowing that you wont get anything back from it.
-its not fun to be left with the ugly troll of the party when your friend has the prettyface he geared with his best gear he had available.
-you have to start over each time if you truly want a game with a friend, and which will last forever since having synced playtimes is not always easy... and I think a few people out there already went through the first stage of the game enough to move around by heart.
-if you play a game, you usually play it for yourself, so not bringing anything back isnt satisfying



The only solution i can think of, would that when you join a friend, you may pick the character you want to play from the ones you have already created, and when you join your friend, that character would take the place of one of his followers.
I see two issues with this: the gain/loss of exp for some characters(why not imagine that while Xs character level is above Ys follower leve, it would transfer the xp to the follower then, at the moment they reach the same level, they start leveling up together?). The second issue is with the relations between players/NPCs if the guest comes in instead of a follower.

With changes such as those, we could imagine 4players game mode.

But then , those are my own opinions and ideas.

I think the best we can hope for is a way to share the savegames with our host. The host can continue playing in singleplayer, so why not the guest?

You can use different player profiles to keep saves separate (one for single player, one for a co-op game with a certain friend, etc).

If the host gives the other person a copy of the save folder they can continue to play, but there is no way to sync progress between the 2 divergent copies of the save.

the problem is that even if the two players share the saves, when they continue on their own, they make decisions for their own, and get drop for their own that the other player maybe doesnt have...

You're contradicting yourself here, or at least being selfish.

Either you want to play in co-op and share the experience together, or else you want to advance in single-player on your own. It doesn't really sound fair to the other player to play a game co-op together, intending to play from start to finish, but then go off on your own and do something else.

What were you planning to so to your co-op partner. "Sorry, I got bored, but you can pick up my game a few hours later. I had some good adventures on my own, I'll fill you in."

If you want to play together, then play together.

So assuming you're hosting, save at the end of your session, and then stop. Don't play that co-op saved game any further in single-player. Instead, create a different profile. If you want to keep that character for single-player play, then copy the co-op profile saves into your new profile directory, and play that single-player character all you want.

When your buddy is available for co-op again, switch profiles and pick up the co-op game exactly where you left off. No, you won't have the exact same adventure - but that's the point, isn't it? To play with your buddy?

You're forgetting Stabbey, that sometimes the host simply cannot play the game for quite some time, and he wouldn't mind you (guest) continue the game with someone else.

It might be interesting to have savegames labeled with a 'time played in coop / total time' tag. If you want to join a game in multiplayer you'd rather have one where both characters are ~equally strong; that might not be the case when the savegame was made exclusively in singleplayer, thus overpowering one character in favor of the other. A high percentage in this tag means it's a good game to join for multiplayer.

yeah personally I share Stabbey's opinion.
If you really want to play with a specific friend then play this game only with him !! and start a single game for you, or if you really want to continue the game solo, just save on another save and when your friend is available load the prior save...

Im am currently doing that, playing a game only with the friend i started it with, and since he doesnt want to play DOS anymore, the game hasnt moved since then...and the result is the following: i have a bunch of midlevel characters, some of them are made up with my friends playstyle and for those two reasons that game will never be played again if i have a later save in the game in the soloplayer section.

It may sound selfish, but if you have to start over a new game each time you want to play with a friend, and if you have to be with that friend to go forward, the game will take FOREVER to go on.

The point is that when you join a friends game, OR you are gonna repeat the same things you already did 20 times before, OR you are gonna do some new stuff in "shoes" you have never tried before and which might be not to your liking...

For the part when you fill in your game mate... well, what if you kill interesting bosses or did some gamechanging decisions, as a part of the coop game, if its coop the way you mean it, the selfish person... is then yourself...

If your buddy doesn't want to play D:OS anymore, then there's no point waiting for him, is there? You may as well play, because the current saves will be invalidated once the beta ends and the full game comes out.

I just told you a solution to the problem: If you want to have a start-to-finish co-op experience, keep separate profiles for single-player and co-op. If you want to advance without your buddy, copy the co-op saves and such into the new profile. That way, if your buddy gets time to play again, he has a choice: continue where you two left off, or join your game a few hours later.

The problem you are having is is not a problem with the game, it's a problem with you and your friend.

hmmmmm Larian talked about reset the skills and abilities (and the stats probably), perhaps this would be a solution to your problem

The issue stabbey, is that the choices you make have repercussions, the drops you get will influence your gameplay, and so on... so even if two people continue on their side, when one of them join his mates game, it isnt really his game anymore depending on the amount of time played etc etc etc

and the prob with my friend was but an example, if he doesnt want to play D:OS for a while, fine by me, but continuing the game alone would kind shred coop from its meaning...

If you don't have friends who want to commit to playing a 50-100 hour game, wait until mods are released that are focused on shorter play times.

Even if you could import a character into another person's game, there would still be a problem of doing things differently in different playthroughs.

That's a great idea Raze! The winner of the next Larian competition should win a buddy for 100h multiplayer! Maybe you should volonteer.

then, it all depends on how long the game will last... but that, we dont know yet!

Why would doing things differently affect your character as for fights, sneaking, stealing, etc etc etc? I could forsee an issue with quest items, but nothing unachievable...

Okay... so for the THIRD TIME, can you answer this: What. is. the problem. with keeping two profiles - one for single-player and one for co-op? Heck, you do not even really need two profiles.

Save Game > "billy ray co-op 01"

Now as long as you don't delete that, you can keep playing with your own character and if billy ray gets the time to play again you can Load Game > "billy ray co-op 01".

If your problem is that billy ray does not want to (or does not have the time to) play a 50 hour game with you, then you should instead play co-op with someone who does have the time. No amount of programming in the world can solve the problem of "I want to play co-op with my buddy, but my buddy does not have time/inclination to play with me."

As i checked in the data, i didnt see any direct character save as you could find in the Diablo 2 files so i assume it isnt possible to just transfer one piece of data.

If you continue the game... then reload it to a previous point... does it feel very rewarding for you?

Then, for dinging someone willing to spend some time on the game, it isnt always easy to find some random dude since you could almost consider it as a commitement x)

No, I am afraid you cannot import your own character into the game. This is because of the game design: no level scaling, no respawns and a continuous character progression. So, it would be kind of impossible for your friend to save his character at level 3 and then import it back into your game when you have already reached level 10 after playing it solo for quite a while and there are only level 10 monsters left around.

must be the same reasons as why DKS has no multiplayer neither ^^

but im sure there would be ways... i wonder if mods will be able to correct what i consider as a flaw

Ego Draconis had a multiplayer .. that was ultimately discarded. Publisher made clear there was no time to spend on it's development. Which was true, considering they even forced the singleplayer to be released too soon.

well, dragon knight saga isnt really meant to be played multi... it kind of destroys the lore, and there isnt any kind of cooperation needed anywhere...
For Original Sin, the cooperation is really awesome as it takes a load of your shoulders and is actually pretty interesting (despite the few bugs you could find, such as the loss of control of your characters, which can only be fixed by reloading)
But i still think that being able to bring in your own character would be awesome