Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Multiplayer Discussion Deactivate forced Split Screen?

Exactly, it's just like one person playing alone, at any time, the single player is controlling just one character, right? So whoever that character is assigned to, that person gets to play this character.

Also, this feature can be set as an OPTION to choose from, so people who enjoy playing simultaneously can choose to do so, and others can choose to have merged screen and waiting in turns.

I've given up playing the game on split screen. The game freezes and is nauseating because it's forced split screen all the time. Has anyone had any luck getting a refund? I contacted the playstation store but they won't give me a refund because I played more than a couple of hours.

They did away with merging split screen, swapped out cumbersome yet effective toolbars for annoying wheel selection, made the inventory text super tiny, but hey, I have the option of five different penises and three different vulva. /s

I have to say I am pretty disappointed. I have faith that Larion will address these issues and based on what I've come to understand their past games have done the couch co op correctly so I will not seek a refund. I bought another copy of this game for PS5 and a new PS5 controller specifically to play couch co op with my fiance and within minutes we experienced the camera bug. I was a bit perplexed as to why I felt like the forced split screen was terrible but after reading everyone's comments it appears I'm not crazy and it actually is simply terrible.

Please Larion, fix these problems I beg you. It took great courage to convince my fiance we could play a game together. It's very rare that I am able to motivate her to try a game with me, only to fall flat on my face with immediate game breaking bugs that require tedious fixes. I don't even currently have a 3rd party member to swap to so I can temporarily fix the camera problem.

The biggest issue for me is that it's tough to navigate and explore when the surroundings are divided into separate screens. Details easily get lost, and it can be disorienting to try and remember where everything is. This can really disrupt the immersion that Baldur's Gate 3 is known for, and it detracts from the overall experience.

My suggestion would be for Larian to consider incorporating an option for a single screen during combat encounters as well as close proximity couch-co op. This could help alleviate the chaos and make the game feel more cohesive and enjoyable. At this rate, its unplayable. I love my CRPG's, my twin absolutely hates them. I bought the game for us yesterday on PS5, and he LOVED IT. Spend 2 hours on his dragonborn, created a background for him and even decided on the style he wanted to play. THE moment he experienced the split screen, it became frustrating. He loved the combat and found it strategically compelling and immersive but I could tell from him question what even was on the screen that it wasn't going well for him.

Would love if they touched this up.

I don't have faith that Larian will address this issue, given that they haven't said a single word about it this whole time while patching nipple covers and $h. Baffling for a company being so highly praised for listening to players. Do they even read this board?

At this point I doubt any company reads their own OFFICIAL boards. Everyone seems to think Twitter/X is the go to for official information these days.

The Larian community management team do indeed keep an eye on these forums to see what we’re talking about, but they’re mainly for players to connect with each other and other than official announcements they don’t post much here. This may already have been said in this thread, but while reporting bugs here can be great for seeing if others have come across the same problem or if there’s a workaround, the way to report them to Larian is via their support site. There’s a Report a Bug link on the game launcher that will take you to the right place.

My experience from reporting bugs myself is that the support team do get back eventually, but are snowed under so it could take some time.

Split screen did not get as much attention as other parts of the game during its development. Split screen wasn't even available during the entire early access period so there was no time to listen to community feedback. Whatever happened during development, split screen is available to us now and we should be making ourselves as loud as possible to Larian that we want a better experience. This thread is one of the most active ones in the forums right now, we need to keep it going if we want Larian to address this.

To any Larian employees reading the thread, we want to have the best experience possible when we share this game with the people in our household. Many of us recognize the monumental effort that went into the game, and we feel gutted that the couch co-op experience is not as good as it could be because of the forced split screen. We're only going to get one chance to experience this game for the first time with our loved ones, and we know that you can do better because you've done better in your previous titles.

This is the most frustrating part of it all. They know how it should work as they did it in both Divinity games.
It's almost as if none of the devs working on BG3 even heard of Divinity with this decision to make split screen full time.

Yeah, I bought the game expecting split screen to be as good as Divinity OS 1 and 2. Honestly at this point I regret the purchase. It's still a fantastic game, but I have other games I play single player, or online. We wanted an experience we could play together, spending hours sat on the sofa having a shared experience, and currently this game isn't it.

My own fault for breaking my 'never pre-order a game' rule.

I’m a little confused about the complaints about split-screen. I’ve played over 200 hours of couch co-op with my husband and we are loving it. My only issue with it is that it can be buggy but hoping that gets patched eventually. I don’t think it was ever promised that split screen would work like DOS. Does it make that much of a difference?

Yeah it's night and day, especially if you have played DOS. It's one of those things where you don't know what you're missing if you've never experienced it. I'm glad that you are able to enjoy the game though. Maybe we were all a bit spoiled by the dynamic split screen that we have grown to love from Divinity series.

Agreeing with labpluto123 here. My wife and I sunk 341hrs into DOS2 and dubiously assumed that the couch co-op for BG3 would be identical. We assumed so much that we went out and dropped money on a PS5, an extra controller, and BG3. With taxes it came to $700+, which in today’s economy is an investment, just shy of two car payments.

But beyond just a game, we saw this as an opportunity to reconnect and spend time with one another. We have an 18 month old, and are so tired at the end of the day, we just do our own thing (like reading next to each other), or we go straight to bed. We looked forward to getting proverbially balls deep into D&D and BG3 together.

I myself might be able to get used to the split screen, but my wife definitely cannot (first-person views in any game make her sick, for example). She isn’t a dedicated gamer as much as I am. Also the text size at times is way too small for both of us, and we have a 52inch screen. We’re in our forties, we don’t have the best eyesight, even with glasses. None of these problems were had in DOS2.

Yes, our situation is very similar. We also come from the DOS era so it was clear to us that co-op in BG3 would be just like that. Give me one damn reason why it shouldn't be like that!
I never thought it would be the way it is but it is what it is.
We had very outdated tech in our household, a PS4 and a 32'' TV. BG3 was the main reason to upgrade our tech. We bought a PS5, a second controller and a new TV. I initially wanted a 48'' TV because I'm not a fan of really big ones but in the end, we went for 55'' since that seems to be the new standard. Luckily, we opted for the larger TV!
I can't imagine playing this game in couch co-op on a smaller TV without rearranging the living room. I know from many games that it's usually safe to wait another six months to a year until the game runs as it should. Well, in the future I won't be preordering games from Larian anymore and if there's a DOS3 or something similar, I'll wait and see first.

What is gradually but undeniably incensing me is the fact that the game has been out for a while and there is no communication regarding future update plans or how priorities are being addressed. that sucks!

Is the issue that you can’t see enough of the environment in split screen? I do find the text when reading books to be too small.

Yes, while exploring, the split screen hides the surrounding area. If both of you like to stay close to one another, then both screens become redundant with visual info and thus confusing. Also, during combat, the split screen doesn’t give nearly as good a layout as DOS2 did. Basically load your game with just one controller, single player. That’s how you could make it look but with both players dickin’ around on the same screen. You then had the option to split off and run wherever you want, auto-engaging the split screen. One player could start a battle far away from the other player, and then once that other player ran over and joined in the battle, the screen would auto-merge again, and you could see the entire battlefield, without any visual redundancies.

My apologies if you played DOS already and I’m explaining the obvious.

Yup, and like I and many others have said, it worked perfectly. There was ZERO reason why they had to make it the way they did in BG3.

to be honest, i'm actually on the extreme, i wish (even in DOS) that there were no split screen at all lol, and that the screen is always merged.

One might argue, well, when the other characters is leaving the small area, the split screen has to be engaged, but optionally, sure that's something i can sacrifice such that both parties always stay in the same area. (In DOS2 this might not even be possible as I remember there were plots where the characters have to be separated), so I don't have any hope for this to actually happen (because there would be major design changes), all i'm saying is that, my perfect scenario would be Diablo-like always merged screen.

But realistically, an optional merged screen just for combat is not too bad, right? After all, all the characters are in close vicinity with each other.

Haha actually now that you mention this. If I had to pick between 100% forced split screen or 100% forced merged screen, I would much prefer the merged screen. That's the point of Co op , is to stay together!!