Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General [Suggestion]Group-based social abilities in SP

Individual social abilities in SP only cause tiresome micromanagement

I think that the social abilities

- lucky charm
- bartering
- loremaster
- persuasion

should be group-based abilities when you play the game in SP, not abilities that are only applied on an individual character in your group. The overall reason is pretty simple and straightforward: reducing tiresome micromanagement. Much of the reasons comes from my personal observation that there is usually too much unnecessary character changes and inventory movements involved in these abilities in SP. But let's have a look at the individual abilities and why they could work in my opinion better if they were abilities that benefitted the whole group and not just the respective individual character:


1) lucky charm

The reason why I think that lucky charmshould be group-based ability in SP is that there is often a dissent between the character having the ability and the character you usually navigate through the world and the character who is able to carry a lot of stuff around. Lucky charm gives your character more and special loot when opening chests and containers. But usually you control either your PC or the character with the hightest wits score in order to detect traps and secrets. To benefit from lucky charm you had to manually change to the character with the highest score in this ability before opening chests. And in case this character has low strengths (e.g. a mage) you regularly have to move stuff around in the inventory, even on top of that. That's a lot of tiresome micromanagement without any obvious benefit in SP. If lucky charm was a group-based ability you wouldn't have to change your controlled character every time before you open a container and you also wouldn't have regularly move things in the inventory because your lucky charm character cannot carry all the things it collected.


2) bartering

The reason why I think bartering should be a group-based ability is very similar to my reasoning for lucky charm. Again, it only produces tiresome micromanagement in SP if you had to change characters every time before you lead a bartering dialogue. On top of that, the character with the highest bartering score in your group isn't always the one carrying all your valuable stuff, e.g. because it's a low-strength mage. So you have to move the stuff you want to sell and the stuff you just bought between you characters every single time before bartering. I don't see any possible benefit for SP if bartering is only an individual ability.


3) Loremaster

To be honest, the identifing part of loremaster is already a group-based ability. If you play in SP and you want to identify an unknown item you don't have to move the item to the character with the highest score in loremaster. It works on the fly for the whole group which is really a good call (Larian changed that during the DOS1 development). But the second part of loremaster, the identification of an enemies strengths and weaknesses is still based on the individual characters. Again, that makes much sense in coop MP (where everybody fights for themselves) but in SP it's just a tiresome annoyance because often your character with the highest loremaster score isn't the one with the highest initiative as well. On top of that, you had to remember every single enemy profile during the turn of this vry character because you can't just look the enemy profiles up if another character with a low loremaster score is next in line. Again, I don't see the benefit for SP if this ability remains an individual one.


4) Persuasion

Like I already discussed in this thread that the conversation system in DOS2 is designed with a great coop MP experience in mind. It's also a very systemic approach which serves the coop experience well. People have to talk to each other, make compromises and help each other out with their individual skills. But in SP you play alone, naturally, and all characters are controlled by yourself. There is no real-life social component to it. Right now, you can lead dialogues with everyone in your group, even the very same dialogue one after another (I already criticized that in the thread above). As long as this is the case there is pretty much no point why not having a high reasoning score for every single one of your group characters because every character of your group can lead the same dialogue and maybe start an origin or racial specific dialogue with an included persuasion process. And since you have no firm character for conversation and since you don't know when you need persuasion for which character you have to skill each and everyone with this social ability. That reduces freedom of choice significantly and makes this ability rather redundant in SP.
If the dialogue system was changed to a more SP-specific experience (like only allowing your PC to lead dialogues or only allow one character of your group to lead one dialogue) the introduction of persuasion as a group-based ability would even be more pressing. If for example only your own PC could lead dialogues he would be the only one that needed persuasion. The ability would be pretty much completely pointless for the rest of the group if it's not a group-based ability.

I fully agree with points 1-3.

For the persuasion however, the situation might be a bit more complicated as different characters might have different dialogue options, and the persuasion options themselves can be coupled to a primary attribute (convince somebody with strength rather then finesse, maybe even character specific options?).

I do however want to point out that I like Larians approach of differentiating between skill points for primary attributes, fighting attributes, social etc. This way, I have less of a feeling of loosing fighting stats by giving my "navigating" character some soft skills.

Still, I think some changes in part one like the shared lore and magic pockets really improve how the game feels, and unless there is a really strong reason to keep soft skills on individual characters I would always prefer the option that offers more immersion and less window management.

P.S:

Talking about convencience option, it might be nice to have the option of a shared inventory. While assigning weapons, scrolls etc. to characters does of course have a relevant purpose, buying and selling is made a bit annoying, as the OP already pointed out.

Maybe there could be a different view in the bargaining window, that just shows all items of all characters at once, or you could have a dedicated shared inventory where to put stuff you only plan to sell anyway.
While looting, you could then have to option to put stuff "on the pile", and the pile is accessible for all characters during trading.
When looting, you would then assign specific items to the characters that can use them, and then with one click throw the rest "on the pile".
The pile would have a size limited by the sum of all members inventory space combined (as that is in reality what the size is anyway).

The pile could be used in a similar way for crafting, as there is no reason to assign all the wood and toes to a specific character besides his strength (boring) or because you might be able to save 2 clicks when crafting later (boring).

Loremaster and Lucky Charm might be acceptable to stack party-wide, since they're basically 'knowledge' skills, and it can be handwaved away as everyone knowing exactly the right amount of different things.

Barter and Persuasion should absolutely not, since even in SP you can approach certain dialogues/shopkeepers differently if you use a different character, and it would make no sense to have everyone involved in conversations that, for example, are meant to exclude them.

Loremaster and lucky charm should be party based skills even in MP.
Loremaster because it is just extra work and lucky charm because it sucks if only 1 player can loot.
Persuasion should never be party based.
Barter would be nice but would be okay either way.

Making these abilities group-based would exactly serve that purpose, not prevent it.

If for example one of your party characters has a bad reputation (due to narrative reasons) with an NPC that also trades good stuff and the very same party character is also the one who has a high bartering score you're screwed.

I also can't remember a single event in which it mattered for trading which character you used. The offering is always the same, just the price is different, based on reputation and your bartering skill.

As for persuasion I suggest you read my critique of the dialogue system in the other thread I linked. Currently, no party character is excluded from dialogue in SP, quite the opposite. I'd really like Larian to change that. And making persuasion a party-based ability would only support such a change. But I agree that persuasion is a special kind of breed that heavily depends on the question how Larian will deal with the whole dialogue system in SP in the long run.

The basic point is though that in SP you always control the whole party and you usually try to make a party with characters that complement each other. That works pretty well for combat, but not for most social abilities. They are either not compementary (persuasion) or they lead to a lot of unnecessary and tiresome micromanagement (lucky charm, bartering) or they even make combat gameplay less fluid and intuitive and more tiresome (loremaster). I think the game's ability system in SP should make the player's life easier and focus on the fun, not make it harder and force the player to deal with extensive micromanagement for no real benefit.

That's simply untrue.
Your individual persuasion affects the outcome as much as your tags do, and having a Barbarian borrow a Scholar's or a Noble's Persuasion for the purpose of his brutish grunts is simply ridiculous.

Barter is on the same boat, because your characters build relationships with traders on an individual basis.
It's entirely possible to have your top Barter character have a negative attitude with a trader, while everyone else has a positive one, and making barter global would let you completely bypass it.

All conversations should be based on the group present for the conversation.

In some cases, a companion might interject on their own.

In other cases, maybe you can take the option of getting the help of a companion who would be more persuasive (or the one with pet pal) -- without exiting the conversation.

There are plenty of situations in this game where the character to speak to the NPC will just be the character who coincidentally is closest to the NPC.

Also, don't you think it's weird if a group of adventurers approach a merchant, and the merchant suddenly forgets he hates three of them because the fourth one hasn't done anything bad yet?

By the same token a merchant forgets he hates three of them, he might just like the one he does like, enough to overlook their company. There would be some reason he does like the other guy, and as far as SP goes, the game already assumes a party split that's more convenient(i.e.: you are alone for the purpose of conversations that require you to be alone, even if everyone else is standing right next to you).

As far as group present and closest first goes, that's an issue much more easily solved by allowing you to switch who's talking.

You have to keep in mind that it would make Persuasion checks impossible to fail if it just stacked, cause you could simply put a point in Persuasion on everyone, and have up to 4 times what's in theory possible right now.
Even doing just double the current curve would be silly, and unlike Lore and Luck, which do not explicitly benefit from going above the curve, it would trivialize the Persuasion challenges.

I never suggested stacking persuasion stats. You would either average it, or you would use the highest stat... Or my preference is that you just allow all characters to participate individually. For example, if there's a persuasion check, then it's an opportunity for your most charismatic character to take over mid-conversation.

That't true - but it's pointless in SP. Don't forget, you control the whole group. Every character is your character. When you're in SP the reputation with NPCs should affect all characters in your group, not only an individual one. That only makes the game more tiresome (for the reasons already stated above) without giving any real benefit. Again, not everything that makes sense for coop MP also makes sense in the same way for SP.

@OP: Agreed on all points. I hope the SP NPC interactions overall become a lot more intelligent with respect to it being a group dynamic rather than having each interaction being so silo'd. Being able to cross talk would be amazing. As for the group skills change, I'm fine with it, it just makes the balance a little more interesting. Regardless, the world acknowledging the "group" rather than just the currently controlled character (in a SP experience) is a "desperately want" for me in a sequel to the point where I'd be willing to give up on other things to get this aspect really right.

Yes I hope this is one area that gets some refinement.
Lucky charm and loremaster I see no reason not to just share with all characters you control.

Bartering and persuation I'd like to remain individual for roleplaying and background tag interaction purposes.
You can still kind of solve the bartering thing by allowing the bartering character to acess all bags that are selected to be open.

As a side note I think all of these should be available as an option but not obligatory. I really like the idea they have for competetive multiplayer and will be having tons of fun trolling moments with my brother. We generally cooperate, but sometimes we want different things and for those situations it would be fun to have control of the lore master in the party as a bartering chip. So shared access to all characters you control or who toggle to share their social skills with you would be nice to see.

+1 for lucky charm to be party wide - a loot character sucks anytime. Better yet, remove lucky charm and implement a static lucky to all chests for all characters

I play co-op and SP and I like that the other skills are separate. However,

+1 to the suggestion of having the bartering character being able to access companions bags - in MP, it's easy enough to say, gimme your crap Im selling crap right now.

+1 for having 'examined' enemies stats viewable for the whole party - but still require the loremaster to examine them.

+1 to allowing multiple characters to participate in dialogues (this was in D:OS wasn't it?) My biggest gripe with the way it is now is how many innocent animals were slaughtered when my partner who REALLY LOVES PET PAL was just one step behind me when I stumbled into a dialogue I had no clue was coming.

That's what Larian wrote about how inner-party relationships and persuasion in SP will work in DOS 2 during the kickstarter campaign:


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/posts/1360696

That means that in inner-group dialogues we can only and exklusively use our main player character. The rest of your party is controlled by the AI during these dialogues and decision situation. While I really like this approach (I personally would like the whole game in SP would function like that) there is a dissent between thenarrative approach and the currently implemented gameplay approach. In DOS 1 inner-party decisions were no mere numbers game, they depended on a game on rochambeau. Social skills gave you a better chance of winning, but winning was never sure. It felt like your companions had a real saying in your decisions which actually catered to the "I narratively only play with one character" experience, especially after the EE update with AI-controlled character traits. But in DOS 2 the game of rochambeau is no more. Everything depends on numbers and so does your persuasion ability. For coop MP that's perfectly fine since it's up to you whether you invest more points in persuasion or in something else, always closely monitoring what you coop partners do (it has a real game theory vibe). But in SP you control every gameplay aspect for your whole party and especially how each character is levelled up and how they spend their abilitiy points. It's up to you whom in the party you give more points in persuasion. So there is simply no real chance to only control one character through the narrative in a believable way if you can always trick the odds by spending persuasion points. You can make your own character unbeatable in group dicussions by giving him 5 points in persuasion and everybody else 0, sure. But that way you just trick the system in the most unimmersive way possible, depending on hard numbers and the obvious dissent between narrative approach and gameplay design. Point is, if you want to solve that issue in a believable way you have to roleplay all four characters in your party up to a certain degree which is exactly what people (like myself) complained about in DOS 1 - and which is exactly the reason why Larian came up with the AI-controlled character traits. But the dissent between manual social skills points for everybody by the player and the narrative concentration on the main player character was never fully solved and I really hoped that DOS 2 would do better here. With the (hopefully still) coming relationship system that is completely catered to only the main player character in SP there would even be a new dissent between two divergent way of narrative control and roleplaying. At one point you only control your main player character and at another point you roleplay all your characters, spending points on their social skills like persuasion, changing the way how the whole party interacts in the future. That really doesn't sit right with me and it's imo a huge blow to immersion.

I think Larian has to really overthink he whole persuasion system and how dialogues within the group and during decisions should actually work in SP, because right now it's imo pretty much a mess with no consistent design and no clear vision.

My (new, slightly different) suggestion is that lucky charm, loremaster and bartering (which means, all active, gameplay related abilities) should still be group based. The highest individual value is set as the group value (every chained character belongs to the active group).
But persuasion should be an AI-controlled ability for your companions which means that the AI controls its value when you level up. You can only put points in persuasion for your own player character. That way both the dissent between narrative and gameplay and the dissent in the narrative itself would be solved (or at least vastly improved). Or maybe persuasion as an active social ability should be ditched completely. Just give every character and companion and pre-defined persuasion score. Something like that was honestly already mentioned by Larian themselves during the quote at the beginning of this post.


If I read that correctly persuasion in SP is pretty much ditched once the love and hate system is implemented ("own beliefs and relationships" instead of "persuasion"). I'd really love to know what Larian has to say about that now...

Add pet pal and persuasion to the party wide list please.
In SP the answer is to simply not have inter party disagreements and only having love/hate scores. Like in Bioware Dragon Age RPG's. They love/hate based on your decision, and leave if you make them hate you enough.

In MP, there should be no persuasion between characters. The dissenting (player who picks to not lift a finger) player always wins. You want to convince them, convince them in chat. That or those in agreement do and those not in agreement don't.

Persuasion should be a skill solely based on making NPC and non companion characters do things you want them to do. And in this case party wide is perfect. Because it's all about talking that dude in to giving you his amulet for a favor, and it doesn't matter if your silver tongues lizard companion throws in a couple of good arguments while your hashing it out.