Originally Posted by Dagless
Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by _Vic_
Two words: Multiplayer mode.
It´s easier to code for both if you do it that way instead of giving group orders.

Yes, and I also had this same feeling myself. And that again just feeds my concern that pretty much all major game design decisions have been made with the co-op play side of the game in mind.


And so they should be, IMO. Like the DOS games, they are making BG3 with the full campaign for single player and multiplayer. That’s really quite rare. Its not a multiplayer game with a single player campaign bolted on the side. Neither is it a single player game with a crappy arena battle system just because everyone expects a multiplayer mode.

It’s not really something to be concerned about, provided they are also building everything with single player in mind, which I’m sure they are.

If some compromises have to be made, I’m fine with that. I don’t remember anything in DOS games where it seemed that multiplayer functionality was detrimental to the single player experience.

If anything, the ability to split the party over a large distance seemed an underused feature they could have made more of. There was one puzzle (I don’t remember which game) with twin dungeons, and what you did in one affected the other. You needed to switch between the two, which was perhaps slightly clunky in practice but still a nice little puzzle. It’s the only example I can think of that seemed designed around it though.

Of course it does mean that most of the time you won’t actually need to gather your party before venturing forth. I’m sure someone will complain about that.



Making a game good for both single and multiplayer is a laudable goal, but there is a lot missing from that at the moment, as this thread shows perceived inadequacy in both camera handling and group control, but there is also a lack of companion AI when they are not all player controlled ( SP and short-handed MP groups ).

Being able to split the party in the D:OS games ( and still present in BG3 ) is a good idea, but if Swen has problems with using it ( I did too in D:OS ), the chain UI is probably a bad design that needs reworking. The chain system also has no concept of group arrangement or follow/separation distance between linked members that would be important in SP, but not needed in MP.

Camera view handling seems reasonably fully featured but also appears to lack much thought as to options that would allow both SP and MP players to see things as they prefer. Adding configurable camera-follow features would help both the 3rd person and high-angle cameras avoid the need to be manually changed, without having to really alter their current view handling code. The OP wish to have only a fixed-orientation high-angle camera would be more difficult since the environment is truly 3D, which means a great deal is hidden from a fixed orientation camera: you would lose much of the benefit of 3D, and the view handling would need significant alteration to be able to indicate the existance of hidden features ( adding flase-color silhouettes, etc )

Just assuming Larian will know what everyone wants and do it right is probably wishful thinking.