Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Multiplayer Suggestion - My Char!

Guys, the game is great Im not gonna lie.
Im very excited about the multiplayer, especially...the multiplayer.

But theres one thing thats bothering me...
If I join someones game, why can´t I use my character?

Why I need to use a NPC?
I know, its strange (roleplaying speakly) someone pop from mid air and substitute that party npc but I don´t want to play a lizard, or an Elf...

I want to have options.
I want to choose wich NPC I want to possess OR...If I can join with my own character.

I dont see a problem with that and it would be super fun to join my friends game and participate with my own creation.
If level difference is a problem, tune down or up according to the maximum lvl of the party, and we are good.

Please consider implementing this before launch.

We work SOOOO HARD and dedicate so much time with our chars...I just want to play with them.

I don't think you can just JOIN a game as a custom character mid-game, but I'm pretty sure that if you've joined at game start (As in during chargen) you can in fact use a custom character then and during any subsequent runthroughs. Like you join during chargen, and make your custom character. They save with you around, and from then on you join the game when they load and you're in.

But letting you 'import' your character from another save would be work they didn't do / is actually pretty hard to do, so it's not in. Plus level balance is hard, and if you export a character at level 7 you basically CAN'T de-level it to fit with a level 3 party (that's just not how the game is currently statted to support, to my knowledge) so that's part of it.

So if you want to use a custom character in your friend's game, long and short of it? Join when they're first starting the game.

I suspect they will have a feature, like in DOS1, where you can re-spec and re-customise your characters during the game.

Then it was in the Hall of Echos, now I suppose it will be on your ship. So it is entirely possible that you can change everything about your characters (barring the origins) if you join a game after leaving Fort Joy.

(I haven't played the new patch, but since I haven't seen any comments about having a mirror/re-spec on your ship, this feature might just not be ready yet. I'd be surprised if they cut this feature from the game entirely.)

Oh I know you can't, thats why I'm asking this feature to me implemented.



Ehhh, im sorry but it's not.
Its actually pretty simple. You just need to equalize the level of the chacacter to the current level of the game you are playing. The only "issue" you may find is the itens you are carrying.
And those items, your gear, can have a penalty according to your level.
Say you are 10 and playing on a 5 game, you get 50% penalty on every stat of your itens. Sure you can balance that somehow.



I know that too, and thats sound more a workaround than a proper solution.
Can you imagine the amount of friends of mine Im gonna have to ask..
"hey man, don't star the game without me, so I can join you in the future!"...
2...4...10 times...

Can you imagine how hard is to make new friends?
You are not gonna ask a stranger to restart its game just so you can play with the character you want.

Roleplaying speaking, im huge fan of fighters, barbarians and humans, I don't feel confotable join a game and playing (by randoness) a lizard wizard...a dwarf battlemage....an elf Rogue... or w/e the person of that game created. I can´t choose who im going to possess and I can't bring my own and beloved character... I don't care if he's coming naked, zero gear. I just want to be possible to play with him.

Hence why, try to join a multiplayer game.
"you have been kicked from the party" over and over again.



I think thats not the point.
I don't want to respec the npc so I can play with the class, race, gender etc. Besides imagine if someone enters your game, respec one of your npcs for something you don't want/need... nah.
It's much better if someone joins the game and takes plance with his own character the current place of that npc. If the guy leaves the game, the npc comes back. It's pretty simple and a elegant feature for multiplayer.

Dark Souls 3 has a pretty cool system for something like this, with the password co-op. It'd scale you down to the host.

Unfortunately, I don't really see this game getting a system like that, given how the game is set up to be more like "joining a friend on their save", and the release date is getting pretty close.

Maybe we'll be able to hire people like we could in the first game? That way if a friend joins you on an on-going save, they could make a hireling, and you customize the race/looks/name/stats/etc.

At the very least, it would be nice if we could save our origin/race/customization options as player presets, so we don't have to re-create the same characters repeatedly.

Sadly it's not a simple thing. Would require significant changes to how saves work, being able to extract characters from saves and add them to other games on the fly. Simply not how the game architecture is structured. Even something like scaling down character stats to the host's level would require programming whole new systems and a ton of time balancing things out.

I think we will be able to recruit hirelings in act 2.

As stated by LaughingLeader and Baardvark, the game doesn't work like that, and it would in fact be very difficult to implement if it's not already.

As for your notion of just randomly joining multiplayer games and being assigned things by randomness... Well, a lot of people don't realize they can turn off the ability for random strangers to join in on their games, and so just kick said strangers.

The system as it is now works fine. Join the game with your friends while they're in character creation.

As for saying that it's 'pretty simple' to do something a completely irrelevant game series did... Well by all means, then! It being so simple, use the modding tools and make a mod for it so that you and all your friends can use that system!

uh yeah, its pretty simple.
It's no different to encounter any new npc or companion in the journey ahead.
Im not talking about a whole different character, Im talking about sprites, skills, models already in the game. There's simply no significant change at all.



Workaround is not a solution, It's a temporary break from something that can be implemented for good.



I'm sorry, but It's very hard to assume you have a notion about game developing.
So I'm not going to discuss about what works and what doesn't with someone who is not involved in the project. It's not like you are going to convince me otherwise.

Afterall, this is a suggestion, and unless Sven comes here and say "yeah, can't do it for XXX reasons"..just, don't.



Paid game, free suggestion.
Believe me, if I had the time and the notion to implement something like that I would do it.
But hey, if you are willing to pay me so I can quit my job to work on that, I'm in!
I can even move to Belgium

What if you are playing Ifan and join the game of someone else who is also playing Ifan, for instance, and what if you are level 20 with level 20 equipment. and the other Ifan is level 3, and both Ifan's completed quests in very different ways?

How is the Two Ifans supposed to work, since there will only be one Ifan-specific NPC for both Ifans to interact with?

Don't blindly say "its pretty simple" just because you're not the one who would have to actually think about, implement, and balance it, and pay for people to think about, implement, and balance it.




The game is not designed to all you to import characters from a completely different world into another world.




This is a public forum you posted on and therefore other people are free to respond and engage you and tell you why your idea is unworkable.

Swen is extremely busy and therefore extremely unlikely to respond. If everyone here insisted on only accepting answers from a dev, they would be waiting a very long time.

So here's why this is not going to happen: It would be a HUGE amount of work needed to resolve the GIGANTIC amount of potential conflicts and problems it would cause, which is not at all a good use of time and resources since the game is deliberately designed specifically so you can't move characters between worlds.

What seens to be the problem? Not like your RP head will explode.
Can't you rename the character? Can't you roleplay you are a lone wolf other than Ifan, Red Lizard or whathever origin story you will come up? It can't be only one.

Besides who said all Ifans are exactly the same? One is a warrior, the other a Knight, maybe a Wizard? Battlemage... A cruel battlemage...a very good cleric...there are infinite possibilitys here and yet you are asking me to pretend...TWO EXACT SAME PERSONS ROLEPLAYING IFAN are going to join and thats why it's bad to implement this? come on............ Hell, and even if this happen all can be solved, open your mouth and talk to your partner.



Game sets your equipment and level according to the max level of the host.
I kinda said that like 3 times. Read the topic. This is one solution, I'm pretty sure if given time ppl can come up with others.



Kinda like the same question.
So basically same answer. Sets according to the host.
This is one solution, I'm pretty sure if given time ppl can come up with others. (dejavú)



Balance balance balance... Theres a lot of balance in that sentence.
Is that what you are worried? Balance?...*roll eyes*

Theres a Arena..worry about balance there.
Cause there a multiple topics talking about imbalance already.



Let me rephrase for you.
"The game currently does not support"
Wich why this is the SUGGESTION forum, and this is my request.



I have no idea what you said here but whatever.



I'm not blocking anyone from expressing their feelings.
That doesn't mean you can come up with assumptions and zero knowledge of how a game is design to tell me "yeah uhm this is not going to work..impossible...yadda yadda"



Again.. assumptions.
You barely paid the game and yet you are trying to convince me all of this is impossible.
it demands "huge" "gigantic" work and conflicts...I mean, really? Whats your profession? Game developer? What university you graduated from?
What games have you worked or are currently working? Have you participated in any decent project like this?

You have no idea how to run a script, It's hard to even convince me you installed your own Windows 10 man..... Don't come with the bullcrap that it's impossible, you don't know that.
Instead of wasting my time, pull up some ideas better than:
"this is not going to work...I used my magic to forsee the future and its not going to work"

You should come with the problems AND the possible answers for those.

Theres not a single CON why this should not be implemented.
You have no idea the potencial of this if they can achiev this suggestion and make it live. Just like the GM module, that was brilliant on paper and it's soon live, why not make it better. Yeah.

I like how you're directly refuting everyone by just saying they're wrong. But

I will say this ; there is inf act ONLY one red lizard. The Red Prince is the only one, at all, in the world. Because he's a unique origin character.

Again, there's already a way to have a custom character iny our friends game - join when they're creating. This doesn't even mean you have to tell your friends not to play at all without you, because save files are a thing. One game on their own or with other friends, one with you(and other friends..). Though considering the way you're acting...

And again, if you're so sure it's so easy, make a mod. Mods aren't paid for, because they're fan things that are changed by the gamers. So really, if you're so sure it's SO simple that within the next three months everything could be rewritten and changed, then by all means, once the game comes out write up a mod for the game that changes all the required variables throughout the game to allow you to import and export characters and to level scale them automatically to match the host of the world and so on. You yourself have said, multiple times now, that it's simple. And if it's simple, it's a one man job, and since you're the one who wants it, you can certainly code it.

Okay you win, you are smarter than everyone else on the entire planet, and you know better than everyone else especially those stupid lazy hacks actually programming the game. I'm done.

Swen has said this is not possible, some time ago... IIRC for the original D:OS. With the increased emphasis on relationships between the characters in D:OS 2, swapping characters in and out of the game is even less feasible.
Relationships between NPCs and party members are tracked, and dialogue / quest choices and character development can influence each other. Having one new character drop in and make arbitrary choices and actions results in non-trivial consequences for the development of the character that was replaced (what happens they were not present for a key part of their personal quest, etc?). That doesn't even consider the issue of scaling characters by level (it isn't just equipment; there are also skills, tags and attribute/ability/talent point distributions to consider) or exploits of bringing unlimited gold and potions, etc, into a game.

The release date has been set and the focus now is on finishing the game, not adding new features, especially ones as significant as this would be (for example, no game systems are written to account for the possibility of multiple characters with the same unique origin story).

It's kind of ironic but I'm pretty sure you could recreate the entire campaign in GM mode and then you could have people join as whatever. I would assume the major barrier for them to making this happen is one (or both) of two things:

1) They are concerned that pub games would be ruined by over-leveled characters joining low level games. (Which is an easy fix, you just put a cap on level difference to join a game)

2) The framework/netcode they are using for the campaign is fundamentally incompatible and would require serious reworking. (Which would mean that we definitely wouldn't get it on launch and probably ever)

If they did do it though, the easiest way would simply to have the game pause for the host when a player joins and has selected the character they want to play. Then the host is presented with the faces of their NPC party and selects enough NPCs to kick to accommodate the PCs that enter the party. The NPCs poof, the PCs join, and when/if the PCs leave you are allowed to bring NPCs back into the party that appear the same way they left. The only issue with this is that there might be exploits here that would make the game trivial, but it's an rpg, if they want to ruin it for themselves then let em.

I'm pretty sure GM mode also doesn't have the ability to bring in new characters whenever, since the GM needs to save the game and it saves the existing characters for use by the same players as I gather it.

The host can already reassign which player controls which character, which could include swapping out companions, if the party isn't made up of all custom characters.

There is also a shapeshifting mask that will be available in the full game, which would at least let one player alter their character, in addition to any respecing options or cosmetic changes that are possible.

Would you talk about medicine with an astronaut? And you ask me if I think they are wrong..hah.
Noone here, including me have the credentials to say how hard (and how easy) is to implement a feature. So don't pull that on me trying to be the victim. Bring solutions to the real professionals, not imaginary problems.

When I say "it's easy" to implement something like this it's because I already played games and I know this is possible. And I'm not talking big games, huge studios like Blizzard, BioWare... I know it's a feature that sure, it takes time to implement, but it's not a game breaking. Thats the base for all this.

They are adding a GM mode.I mean really? That is huge...
It's not a leap from DOS1, it's a space jump foward.
If they ever mentioned they are planning this, would you come here saying:
"nah man..impossible...game doesn't work like that"
thats why they just announced its a work in progress already.


Again, thats a workaround, not a proper feature / solution.



I get your point Raze, so...what happens to our companions we don't use in the party?
We currently have...4?

Red Lizard /Lohse /Sebbile /Ifan

And you...Wich mean at some point of the game...or most point... of the game you are not bringing one.
Wich is exactly what you are saying...



Nothing.
But also, nothing bad happens. It's just a situation.

You are worried about npc character development in the campaing when you could have the most rich possible character (a real person) playing? I rather have someone over an scripted NPC. It's much more fun, engaging and rich.



The game tracks your progress. Your character development, I think you all can agree with me on that?
Wich means if you join a lvl 5 host when you are a lvl 10, it just brings you to the point when you were lvl 5...
Is it bad? Well, you could respec your char then. All the points to a lvl 5 char.
Gear? Tune it down, like the penalty system wich is in the game already.
Is it bad? Go naked in the game, you can buy some gear in order to survive at specific vendors
Is still bad? You are given a gear that scales with level, can't be tradable, when you join the game.

Theres a lot of possibilitys when it comes to this. Bring new ideas.

So you want to join with your own character, but changing the name would be fine? Changing the backstory of your character to fit into the hosts world would be fine? Isnt that exactly what you try to avoid?



How do you adjust stats? A percentage based malus or a absolut malus? Which skills get replaced? How about skills learnt another way (like corpse eating)? Can a skill you get late game break early game? Do equipment boni stay ? And how would you adjust skills? How should the game know what skills/stats are important for the character you created and what not? The game is classless, its alot harder to balance those things out than in a class based system.

EDIT: (i wrote my reply and didnt see the new post)
The tracking of skills isnt a bad idea. There would need to be changes to what gets saved, but other than that i covers quite some problems. It still has problems though. For example: What if you decide mid game that your character be a different class? Do you use the stats tracked? It may be against what your Character is supposed to be.



He is worried about a late game character breaking early game, or a early game character playing late game content. That would create alot of QA work.
Also, if you come up with the "Singleplayer dont need balancing" argument, its untrue, so dont even try to. Also if multiple threads are about balancing already you have to see that there is very little time for big the feature you want.



Yes this is a suggestion forum, but im not (that not is an EDIT, sorry for that mistake) saying that your idea is terrible. There are a lot of games doing what you want very successfully. But this game wasnt designed with importing characters, so it wont be in this game. Its just like real time combat or respawning enemies. You cant just change it a fundamental aspect 3 months before release.



The game releases in 3 months and isnt done yet. There are still other promised features that need to be implemented/looked at (like full crafting, skill crafting, origins, QA, balancing, kb/m UI needs some fixes, Controller UI, Splitscreen, adn more). With all that its impossible to make that feature until release.

EDIT: (i wrote my reply and didnt see the new post)


The GM mode is very different from your suggestion.
- It was a reached kickstarter stretchgoal (= a planned feature).

- They were able to start almost 2 years ago instead of the 3 months left with your suggestion.

- the game master mode doesnt change the main campaign at ALL. Its a seperate mode. There is no need to do additional balancing, because its the Game Masters work to balance his campaign.

If the GM Mode wasnt planned and someone suggested it 3 months before release, it would have gotten around the same replies. Its a good idea that may have been implemented, if it was suggested a lot earilier in development.

I would argue that the only people that have the "credentials" on that subject are the Larian team themselves, given that they know what is required to add more features to their engine, or what it would take to rework things to meet your request.


But by your own logic, you don't have the "credentials" to say that such a thing is easy or even possible to implement within the time between now and release, right?

That kind of thinking is a logical fallacy though. You don't need credentials to make logical assumptions based on time, experience with the game and development progress, and rationality.


GM mode seemed like a reasonable outcome to me, mainly because such a thing most likely existed in some form as an editor they used to create content for the game itself. Tweaking it and adding things to make it a viable as a mode for players was just a wonderfully creative idea.



I think there's some inherent limitations in the way the party system works right now, specifically with player characters. Try it yourself: Host a game, and connect 3 other instances to it and make 4 characters.

Now disconnect the other 3 players, and play is as a singleplayer game. Maybe you eventually want to dismiss one of the player-created characters and recruit an origin party member. Unfortunately, you can't. Where would the player character go anyway? Even worse, if one of the player characters was an origin character, dialogue is bugged with them. You can't dismiss them.

There's a lot of problems that need to be addressed to make new player characters seamlessly able to drop in and out of the host's world:
(Note: Nesting lists within lists doesn't seem to work, so I'm using quotes to make it easier to read)

Potential Issues to Solve:


As you can see, just logically working it out reveals a lot of problems that need to be solved, and I don't even know how things work behind the scenes, programming-wise.

For all I know, there's inherent limitations in just the way all this data is stored in the save file, and untangling it to somehow transfer and store it in someone else's save file results a huge mess.

Something like this is usually easier to plan and implement near the beginning of development, as it could affect the way you design saving, NPC interaction, quest progression, stat balancing, loot impact, and so forth.

This is also why multiplayer is usually better planned and implemented when development starts, instead of at the end, as designing your systems around the idea is more efficient, and creates less problems down the road, than trying to cram it into an already built system.

Consequently, that doesn't stop modders from working out the problem on their own, and finding a way to implement it (as evidenced by multiplayer mods for single player games).

Er, no?
I don't see a problem at all join a game with a new name.
There can be only Ifan and thats the host.

I don't even know why bring this particular topic, its a situation that might happen but so what? bring solutions to this.
At every game and every multiplayer I played so far I've seen unique characters. The origin ones are just a bonus in the game, the majority of the player base uses custom and builds its own history.



It's not an idea, its a hidden script in game already.
Hence why they collect all data in this alpha module.

Besides, don't overcomplicate things.
If you change your class mid game you can do it too in the host's game.
On a briefing screen or at a vendor. There can be multiple alternatives if you think about it, given time.



Not if you bring a late char to the level of its current host.



You even whatch the dev videos?
Theres one guy especifically working for that.
And I never said singleplayer doesn't need balance, I simply don't care and don't wimp like most.
If I want to play my fighter, even if a wizard is far better, im gonna play my warrior.



Urgh... I don't get this "import" my character...
You dont need to import anything. You just need to join and play a session your friend is playing with your own char.
It's a connection in a session. You don't need to download my whole info to stick to that specific host forever and its history.
To keep it simple, think as Diablo 3. You are playing with a companion NPC, then someone connects takes the place of that companion and play with you. The guy leaves, the companion comes back.



Don't be naive.
You are playing an alpha. The real game is in MUCH more advance state.
Much of the features you listed are already done. Wait for the next patch to test it.




Never said this feature needs to be implemented in the first day.
It can be implemented via patches, dlc...

Altought it would be very nice, since the game reaches it's the peak of the players.
And what keeps a player playing the game after the end of the campaing?.......

Multiplayer.... make it strong for it to last it long.
Game Master is a good adition, but aditional features are also needed.