Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback In a two player co-op game, the party should be treated as one whole party in conversations

Hi all. Played all of Divinity OS 2 with my fiancée, and a decent amount of hours of BG3 early access on different patch versions. Love both, but would love this co-op improvement. My suggestion is as follows.

In conversations, the group is treated as two different parties. Let's say I have Shadowheart and my fiancée has Wyll. If I trigger a conversation that is relevant to Wyll or Wyll's quests, Wyll will not speak up because he is not under my control as a player. Same goes in reverse. If my fiancée triggers a conversation that would be relevant to Shadowheart, Shadowheart would not speak up, as she is not under my fiancée's control. A great example is the goblin fight at the windmill. We want Wyll to speak to and interrogate the goblin. If I trigger the conversation, this does not happen, as the game does not recognize or acknowledge that Wyll is there. We have to reload, and basically use metagame knowledge to say "Hey, this is relevant to the person you're controlling, you trigger the conversation."

This one change would make co-op a lot more fluid. I love playing these games as fully fledged co-op games, and for the most part they work fantastically. This however is a bit of a bump in game design that I definitely think could be smoothed out before launch. I understand why they are two separate parties from a gameplay/control/combat perspective, but from a conversation perspective, I think everyone present should be acknowledged, regardless of which player triggers the conversation.

+1

+1

However, as some have recently pointed out, BG3 is being designed so players can troll one another for super fun trolling fun.

So, they don't force even combat to be pause the world turn based. Players can separate and run around the whole map while others are locked in dialogue or combat. This is so players who don't want to be stuck in conversations or dialogue can keep going and aren't locked into a party event. It isn't designed for party together. It's designed for competitive gameplay and mischief potential.

Which I hate... But it's streamable and fun. Right? RIGHT?

I'm like you. I want party fun. Dialogues and combat together. If we split up, and I get in a fight, everyone is in Turn based mode. But it doesn't sound like we'll win that fight.

The focus on trolling other players rather than playing as a D&D party is ludicrous and ultimately not even fun beyond the first meme. Larian should get their priorities straight.

There, I got it off my chest. Thanks for reading.

That sounds like a very good suggestion OP. Didn’t try in Coop, but I would find it detrimental if followers of each players wouldn’t be recognised, if they are not the ones leading the conversation.

Overall, I think BG3/D:OS2 would, benefit from a more “party based” dialogue system. Considering how little identity as a leader there is to our main in singleplayer, and how much the game supports coop, I think making the dialogue system more of a party interacting, rather then single character interaction would make more sense.

+1

+1

Larian needs to realize this is DnD, not Divinity. The whole point of DnD is for a party to contribute together, not two separate parties with only 2 people contributing to conversations and everyone getting locked out because you didn't trigger it. I know this topic has been posted and talked about many times over by many different people, so hopefully it will catch their attention and make them realize we want the core of DnD preserved, not competitive co-op. If they can't do that, it might be best to just remove multiplayer since one person will be the true main character, and everyone else is just a companion.

Maybe they should make some combat a bit harder to really nail down the whole reason everyone whose ever played DnD knows to never split the party. Action Economy rules all.

Aside for the fact that, as already pointed, the choice to let the players act as completely different entities is in by design and something that Larian explicitly pushed MORE since DOS 2 (with their bizarre notion of "competitive co-op", which in practical terms is every bit as oxymoronic as it sounds), I remember when at the very beginning of this EA we got some vague reassurance on the fact that the dialogue system was being reworked to include the entire party better (and to allow skill checks even from characters that didn't start the dialogue)...
Well, we are still waiting.

+5

I doubt they changed co-op and how it's handled, back when I did a run with my buddies the convo's were only for the first person to interact with the npc and the other players had to spectate the convo just to see what was going on. Over all, co-op needs a rework on how they handle convo with multiple players, so all of them are included.

If I'm playing the party Wizard in multiplayer and won't be allowed to roll my Arcana or History checks in a dialogue just because someone else started the convo...its not D&D. And it's definitely not co-op no matter what they call it.

Same even in single player if I can't have Gale step up in those situations.

The gimmick of being able to hold an NPC hostage in dialogue while someone else runs across the map to pick pocket them doesn't begin to solve anything.

Sure it does. It solves the problem of Multiplayer situations where players want to troll one another and exploit everything in the game just to fool around... For memes... And for streaming. See?

Because there isn't enough of that already...

As you can tell, I'm NOT happy with that gameplay style. It's a HUGE bummer for this game and I hope people are wrong that THAT'S what Larian is gearing the game towards. That is SO not serious RPG ing. That's just people screwing around. To hinder single player especially to allow players to be butts is just... Ugh!

I hope it's not true and Larian fixes these things.

Where did you get the idea that it is supposed to solve anything? O_o

I mean ... its exploit, they dont exist to solve problems.
They exist to give us opourtunity to ignore some rules.

And it doesn't really ignore any rules. That whole stance that using dialogue as a distraction for pickpocketing is somehow wrong is quite funny.

Exploit is not the same as design. Exploit is something that will slip through cracks - that kind of an interaction is what Larian builds their games around. It's been like that in D:OS1&2 and it is the same in BG3. It's a natural interactions that come up once the players gain a basic understanding of the mechanics.

They "feel" like exploits because they break both balance of the game (systems) and the theme ("immersion" or whatever you want to call it). But it's not an exploit - it is how larian designed it to work since D:OS1. Which back then it was cute - and overambitious crowdfunded coop RPG with big potential and some very rough edges. It's not cute anymore with it being the third game.

Even the npcs do it! Mattis holds you in convo, while his friend sneaks over and picks your pocket.

I think the timing (or lack of it) is wrong. Maybe the rest of the party should be in turn based mode while conversations are held?

The Mattis thing, and pickpocketing in general, could be somewhat solved by doing a simple Slight of Hand vs Insight or Perception check. Their (or Your) Slight of Hand vs the Insight or Perception of the party/individual. This could be done still in the turn based conversation where everyone is involved, and could give consequences to getting caught, though knowing how Larian handles NPCs it will almost always just result in a giant fight with no way to de-escalate the situation through persuasion/deception/intimidation or even some spells.

+1 !

Rather than start a new post on this subject, I think it makes more sense to add my thoughts here.

I completely agree that members of a party need to be handled as a likeminded entity whenever they're making an effort to perform an activity together. I am not talking about scenarios where two players are intentionally playing apart within the same game, but rather moments where everyone is present at an event and contributing towards its progression. As an example, matters like reputation adjustments with companions and/or NPCs should occur party-wide to all present, especially when there's a consensus between players on the dialogue options being used.

This particular issue with how multiplayer is handled in parties existed as far back as Divinity - Original Sin. The difference is that this flaw was thankfully corrected in a patch after feedback was given, such as this thread below.

Guilt & praise by association, attitude score woes

On matters of reputation adjustments, I provided the following argument then, and I feel it still makes sense today.


In addition, what others are saying in this thread regarding having access to the entire team as a resource also makes sense. If Tom is having a conversation with an NPC and Sue is listening in, and an insight check needs to be made, then both players should be able to perform one. And (in this example) if Sue succeeds and Tom fails, then Tom should be able to benefit from Sue's success because this is a group effort where there is a mutual interest in succeeding. And, if you want to provide Sue with the option to withhold information from her team, then that's also great - but obviously it's extra work to implement. But there should be an option for teams to share resources like this somewhere.

I'm concerned that this is still a problem years later, as this is one of those issues that needs to be fixed by launch or it will negatively impact playthroughs starting then, particularly in areas of reputation.

so picking the pocket of a fellow gamer is wrong now but giving them a shub to their death is still cool right?