Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Single player v. co-op play

So I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on an issue that has not received much discussion here or elsewhere. I've been pretty vocal on my feelings about certain aspects of BG3, but to be honest the issue that worries me the most is actually the game's expected focus on co-op/multiplayer play.

Here's my big question: Can a game provide a really awesome experience for people looking for co-op/multiplayer play while at the same time also provide a really awesome experience for those looking exclusively for single player play? And to keep the discussion on topic, I am only speaking of RPGs here and not games in other genres.

Personally, I don't see how one game can possibly deliver a truly great gaming experience for both audiences. Just as an example, in a co-op game, if you have one player who really wants to spend their time exploring the world and delving into extensive lore and such, but the other players are not interested and they just want to get on with "action", the latter are going to win out. And it is highly unlikely in a co-op/multiplayer setting that the majority of players will want to do a lot of world and lore exploring. So then the developer's incentive is to build the game to favor action and combat over more passive aspects such as story, world, lore, character development, etc, because all of those passive aspects of the game will be boring to most players in co-op/multiplayer mode.

So is it possible for one game to satisfy both audiences: people who want easy character creation, and simple and easy-to-figure-out game mechanics, so that they can gather their group of friends and quickly dive right into the game where the core gaming experience for them comes from combat; and people like me, who can spend an entire day working through the details of just creating their character, who want an extensive and complex character creation and character development system, who want a very deep and rich story and a very detailed and interactive world (outside of combat) and a very extensive amount of lore through which to spend hours wading and exploring? I am not convinced this is possible for any developer to deliver, short of literally creating two games in one.

I don't think it can, no. At some level it's possible, but ultimately my opinion is that games need at least some degree of fine-tuning and tweaking to properly adapt them to the relevant gameplay style. Trying to go for a "one size fits all" solution involves too much compromise and will frustrate some if not all players.

As a habitual modder, that's one of the most obvious examples right there. Mods don't generally translate well into coop and are typically outright banned from larger-scale MP, but as someone who plays entirely SP games and who enjoys modding them, mods aren't a problem for me but their absence can be. Same thing with lots of other factors too.

Some games manage to be less bad at catering for multiple audiences than others, but IMHO trying to properly engage multiple groups probably involves more effort and luck than accepting from the outset that exactly the same game isn't going to cater for both and working on two separate branches instead. There's probably not that much that has to change between them, but my observation is the industry's current habit of trying to hammer various square and triangular pegs into a round hole hasn't been a resounding success.

Yes I also am a strictly SP gamer. And I agree with your take. But this brings me to another question, which is, if the developer happens to be a big-name studio with relatively deep pockets, surely they ought to be able to afford creating quasi-parallel gaming experiences attuned to both camps within one game, right? Why not have at least some features and systems that are different in your gaming experience based on whether you are playing the game SP versus MP?

I do not think it is going to be the case, but the best-case scenario is that you separate mp and sp, like in DAI or ME. But usually, only the devs with big studios and a long bucket can do that.
I agree that when you try to make your OC a MP experience, you have to make some concessions to make the game pace more fluid and you have to cut some things. And forget about to stop talking to npc, reading books or crafting because you make the other party members wait too much.

In DaO2, for example, the banters between party members and involvement in conversations were minimal. They also changed the thievery mechanics since the beta. In beta the guy you robbed call his friends and they search for you as a mob, but in the final version only the robbed person does that, and it is very easy to evade.

Well right. Exactly. So if the other players are not going to want to wait while you spend as much time as you want exploring everything and reading everything and talking to everyone, etc., and as a result your players are not going to do any of that in the game, then what is the point of spending time and resources creating and including any of that in the game? This is what I fear will happen to an RPG that is co-op/MP first and foremost.

People are always surprised when I tell them how many hours I have spent on just a single playthrough of the RPGs I like to play, usually more than 200 hours and often more than 300 hours. This is precisely because I love just whiling away my time on just exploring what the game has to offer. Heck I even read every entry in the encyclopedia or reference section of the game if such is provided, and can easily spend hours just fiddling with the equipment distribution among my party. But for me to be able to do this and get this level of enjoyment from a game, the game must provide to me all of this content and material in the first place.

IMO differing playstyles is entirely an issue between the players, and not anything the game has to go out of its way to manage. If the majority of players think a section of the game is too slow, or doesn't have enough combat, for example, that is an issue that should be looked at. Picking a preferred playstyle for the sake of multiplayer, to the detriment of the single player experience seems counterproductive when most people play RPGs single player (I think the survey during the D:OS 2 Kickstarter put that about 70% for D:OS).

i dont understand why this is an issue.
OS was as great a single player RPG as a multiplayer RPG.

I love all the lore/exploration/fluff. I also love multiplayer, but RP heavy(as in stay in character). As long as you find the right group it can work fine. I have had some great RP based groups in the past. If a player runs off and gets themselves killed, they don't really last long in our style of group. Conversely if a group as a whole wants to rush and ignore all the lore/exploration, the a slower player(like myself) wont last long in that group either. These things are perfectly fine and might just take a while to find the right group. This is why when I post LFG posts, I am always clear about what we are looking for from players.

So for me(maybe selfishly), I want as much lore and exploration as possible. If a group wants to play fast they can easily ignore all that and get on with it. So I say put it all in and let people choose whether to indulge in it or not.

Absolutely. I agree with this. But my concern is that for a developer there will be, if the MP side of the game is what they are emphasizing even if publicly they are not saying/admitting this, a very strong incentive to shift resources away from such things as lore, world-building, character development, exploring, even roleplaying, in favor of action and combat.

Doubt most of you have played the older Larian games these were strictly singleplayer games and were a lot more action-focused and weren't nearly as deep as the last 2 Coop DOS games. So nope adding Coop does not mean less complexity and of course BG1 and 2 had Coop as well.

Well, I guess this is where I have a different view. I just didn't see the D:OS games as being deep or complex at all. Playing D:OS, I clearly felt the game was designed to be played co-op, that this was the default, expected way you were supposed to play it, and the SP experience was very much secondary.

And yes, the BG games did have MP, but those games were clearly built from the ground up for the SP experience, and this is evident in the fact that one of the most common and strong criticisms of those games was how lousy the MP experience was (beyond technical issues).

I did not mean that. Fact is that their previous games were not as deep, so your argument coop=shallow gameplay is not true for Larian.

I suppose being the contrarian that I am I'll take yet another approach. I really enjoyed the Original Sin games, even if the lore of the second may raise some questions with me (or may not: perhaps the next instalment will bring it all together) but I just viewed them as their own thing. From my perspective I can't really say they lacked depth, given the usual slew of literature, back-story and other creative process that was evident.

I still view Divinity 2 as my favourite of the series. It had a play style and a particular vibe all of its own, and one that I love to this day even if in its original Ego Draconis incarnation it saw me being pwned probably more than any other game I've played. Even on the easiest setting. I didn't care, it was just somewhere I loved to be.

But I've absolutely enjoyed the others too. My preference would be another D2-style game but given enough time to gripe about it I've thoroughly enjoyed the others too. The only one of the main series I didn't finish is Beyond Divinity, and not because it was bad (it wasn't, except for "that" voice acting: but the same was levelled at Two Worlds, which in spite of, or perhaps partly because of its comically bad VA was a really awesome game... but I digress) but for the incredibly lame-sounding reason that it wasn't green and leafy enough. Of all the things it didn't do wrong (and some that it did), that's what eventually killed it for me. So I guess the secret for tempting fat grumpy goth lardlings into any given game is to just make it look like the local woods.

Ok I see what you are saying. Even if the D:OS games were not deep/complex in an absolute sense (by my personal evaluation), they were not relatively less deep compared with previous Larian games. Fair enough. I accept your point. But one could then argue that the previous games were so very shallow that it really didn't take much to improve upon them, and as such the later games are not a sufficient test of my hypothesis.

@vometia, I agree there is considerable subjectivity here and do not question your or others' experiences with the D:OS games. I can only speak to my experience.

But I was all geared up for an argument!

*pouts*

Hehe. Sorry to disappoint. But I'm sure there'll be other opportunities down the road.

And honestly, I get where you're coming from. It was just a very different experience for me.