Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General NPC Dialog still extremely frequent after patch?

Is anyone else still having extremely frequent spoken dialog from NPCs in town after the 1.0.47 patch? I thought this was supposed to be resolved but it doesn't seem any better to me.

My wife and I are playing co-op with the steam version and I've verified the cache to make sure we are on the latest patch. The voices are muted for her when she's in a dialog but they aren't for me, and vice versa if I'm in a dialog. The local chat box is still spammed with constant banter as well.

Do we need to start a new game to fix this? Or is this not actually what the patch did?

If you're saying you haven't noticed a difference between pre- and post-patch then I dunno what to tell you. It is 100% better than it was. If you're saying it's still too frequent for you then to each their own. Personally I don't mind it at all how it is now.

The patch appears to have reduced the amount of crosstalk (2 voices maximum), to the point where you can actually miss out on voiced dialogue from your party (it will only appear as text instead) if two nearby NPCs are making a comment. An annoying drawback to the fix. In the end there is less chatter happening at any given moment.

Busy places like the docks and the marketplace are always going to be, well, busy. They're packed with NPCs working and hawking their wares, and shouldn't be expected to have the ambiance of a library.

If you were expecting the cheese vendor not to talk about his cheeses anymore, you're going to be disappointed. He has a variety of comments he makes and the same one usually isn't repeated for at least one minute. That is more than reasonable.

If you find it overwhelming, I suggest tweaking your voice volume in the audio options. You should set it so the voice at your camera's location (usually centered on your character) is at a pleasant, normal level. Voice volume is scaled with distance, so if you take the time to do your settings properly you can get the banter in the background to sound more like, well.. background noise that should be easy to tune out. Again, the volume is loudest where your camera is focused, so if you're moving your camera independently of your character and over nearby NPCs who were chatting, expect them to be louder.

The chat box always picks up the dialogue of nearby NPCs. You can stop it from moving and focus on a single point in the dialogue by simply rolling it back from the latest entry. It will not automatically move again until you either move it yourself, or return it to the latest entry manually.

I am saying that I don't notice a difference. Which is why I am asking if there is some problem that I need to restart the game for? Or is it just that co-op still has issues?

The problem that I have is that all 'chatty' NPCs start speaking again as soon as they have stopped. For instance, on the docks there are the two men right off of the ship who have two or three different dialogs. As soon as one stops they launch right into the next and continue on forever. Once I've heard the dialog I don't really need to keep hearing it over and over again.

To be clear I am fine with the vendors saying things once ever few minutes or whatever but there is no need to have them start again as soon as they have stopped.

If you have seen an actual reduction between patches then it is different than what I am currently seeing. There is no change for me between patches, thus my question.

I have to agree, it is still a bit to much, to often, and I really don't like how you can dip out on something one of your party says because a bit of useless banter from a NPC.

I'm actually of the mind that locations like the market feel much less alive since the patch reduced the amount of banter. It's not a good direction to continue down, in my opinion, and the change has already impacted party chatter negatively.

I'm a little frustrated that these lively areas are slowly getting ruined because people are either being overly sensitive or refusing to even try to set their audio up properly. It would be like me complaining that all the art is oversaturated with color to the point of annoying my eyes and making it hard to focus on anything, and insisting it all be toned down and washed out for everyone.

I think it's much better than what it was, and I think player requests were perfectly reasonable. That said, I think this is one of the areas where Larian just plain goofed. NPCs shouting the same lines ad infinitum doesn't make a city seem more lively, it makes it seem more artificial. Games like Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights did it much better, in my eyes, with a constant but nondescript background murmur.

Background chatter sound effects do happen, in addition to the voiced text. It works well for the marketplace. Vendors attempting to sell their wares in a marketplace are bound to cycle through the same speech repeatedly - only so many different ways to try and sell your cheeses or potions. I think the cheese vendor cycles through four different statements, repeating the same one only once per minute - which isn't bad at all.

I find it odd that you label it as artificial as it is *exactly* the type of behavior one sees in an online (MMO) trade chat channel, and those are players doing it.