Heated Debate @ RPGWatch - Larian Studios forums

Hello,

Longtime fan of Divinity games here! Very excited about the new Divinity game that has been announced.

There is a Heated Debate going on at RPGWatch that multiplayer aspects of Divinity:OS will take precedence over the single-player experience.

I was wondering if we could get a comment directly from the developers on this?

Looks like Raze already addressed concerns in that thread..

I'm sorry, I'm not seeing any questions on the subj?

A couple people in that topic have already quoted Lar / Swen Vincke responding to those concerns.

From a comment in Divinity – Original Sin revealed !

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The idea is that the inclusion of the cooperative mode actually increases the quality of your single player experience. How that's going to work exactly I'll reserve for a future post, but rest assured that we're focussed on making single player as cool as we can.

Originally Posted by DebateMe

Hello,I was wondering if we could get a comment directly from the developers on this?

I can only corroborate what Swen said before: the single player experience is just as important to us as the multiplayer one.

In the RPGWatch topic Moriendor says:

Originally Posted by Moriendor

Seriously, they all lie about this stuff. Of course they will tell us that SP and MP are equally viable but if the game was made with a strong focus on multiplayer then you will notice it to some extent. It doesn't necessarily have to ruin the SP but the SP will likely never be as good as it could have been if the game was made with purely SP in mind from the beginning.

There probably are games to which this logic may apply, Moriendor, but we will most certainly do our very best to prove you wrong as far as Original Sin is concerned. And no, I'm not lying!

Yeah, I've seen that which means we didn't communicate very well, but t think the debate is going to move away as we show more and more stuff. The cooperative mechanics translate very well to party mechanics in single player, and the system is much more complex than might be surmised from the little details we've shown so far. Rather than type essays about it, I think we'll address this in a future video under the motto show, don't tell

Thank you all (devs) for taking a moment to respond. Divinity:OS is a day 1 buy for me - multiplayer, no multiplayer whatever, the game is looking really fun.

It looks like Swen has indicated in a reply on his blog post some of the ways in which the multiplayer experience complements the single player one (rather than substitutes away from it) - at least in w.r.t. dialog:

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so the idea is that in single player you can select a character type for the AI in which case the AI will answer in line with his character. Alternatively, you can opt to always have it your way, in which case the AI will not interfere. It's really up to you personal preference, though putting the AI on random will give you the most fun imho.

By giving coop players choices to disagree with one another, a framework (involving charisma rolls etc) would seem to be in place that puts the infinity engine party quarreling to shame - being much more dynamic and responsive (to your chosen character's statistical profile, it would seem) than the more solidly scripted party incompatibilities in BG. I wonder how many personalities this will cover? Can all 4 party members have very distinct personalities?

Anyway, the fact that they are giving the option to prevent AI from interfering is also a promising sign, since there are obviously some people who like to 'get their own way' all the time. Personally I think this sort of customisation and innovation should be encouraged. Should give game journalists more interesting things to write about (if they weren't so obsessed with their 'visceral combat' and 'mature themes'.

My reply on that at the Watch :

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Several sets of "responsive AI" would be great !

And the player could choose between one of them !

TBH with my recent experience, I would normally side with the "multiplayer harming the single player aspect".

But, the focus seems to be on multiplayer as cooperative. If I got this right, you can have a campaign structure that addresses both the single player and multiplayer cooperative. IMO, the multiplayer will drain massive resources from the single player once you introduce PvP, since the team will be working on more aspects that are separate from the sp experience, like balancing player character builds against each other (which literally takes forever).

The question is : Will there be PvP at all ? I ask because I don't get this impression. The focus of the news were always on "cooperation".

And, I don't think that this game will focus on "character builds" (can you imagine people asking for the best character build for Drakensang 2 ?).

There is no PvP. There is less combat than previous Divinity games, but there are still different skill groups (4 of the 6 are magic - Earth, Wind, Fire and Water), and your stat choices will effect conversation options, etc.

Well I'm sold as long as it's a single player game much as it is multi-player. SP for me,,, just saying