Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Game Master GM Limitations

GM MODE/MENUS/GAME
1)Menus are in SWF.....WTF (uneditable, unchangeable, etc...)
2)A new player can't play when he join an ongoing custom campaign if it already started and the rest of the players moved from the starting point/map/level, there's no PC creation, that means you can't create a new character if yours get killed. Also the GM can't help you do reroll since he can't change your race
4)You can't change the color of the surface painted effects, they change the color when they change the properties, but again, no color picker, no properties chooser.
5)You can add vignette images easily, but you can't import music nor sound effects, also, theres NO LOOP BUTTON. In addition, STOP/PLAY buttons work a weird. When you play a song you can't stop it right away, losing control ot the atmosphere if you missclick.
6)I Understand that the main campaign is made for 4 heroes, but pushing that limitation through players' throat in custom campaigns makes no sense
7)When you play between Steam and GoG you choose direct connect, it gives you a connection ID, that you give to your friend, a normal human would press ctrl+c and ctrl+v to paste it on place but someone actively disabled cntrl+v and programmed a button to paste from clipboard Yes, it sounds stupid and minor, but it says a lot of the weird design philosophy they have at Larian.
8)Different players can't be in two different areas (scenes)
9)Item creator is vague, you can't see how is the object you make in game until you make an NPC equip it (no preview). Also you have to create it from a copy of a previous object instead of picking the model and create it from scratch
10)No ingame Wizards for creating NPCs, encounters, improvised dialogs, etc.
11)If you create an NPC in the game master mode, you can't set emotes, patrol waypoints, or make him sitting on a chair
12)Unable to control several npcs at once
13)Unable to control encounter difficulty in an easy way.

Addressed by Kevin here and posting them there for tidy purposes.

Nice list. I'd personally move #6 to #4, and take a more diplomatic tone, would probably be received better by the developers. I know I'd be rolling my eyes when I read this if I was them.

In editor wizards would be fantastic for creating skills and statuses. Would be cool to have these wizards in GM mode too. A pop up window that has various drop down menus for the various stat editor fields w/helpful tool tips that briefly describe what they do would be a godsend and remove the tedium of trial and editor that comes with creating/editing new skills.

I'd like to know what (if at all) is exactly the engine's limitation?
You can't enter character creation again, because that's a new level? =>

Well, that's simply an engine's limitation. I guess we have to live with that, though I have to say areas can be pretty huge and still be playable. And there are ways to create different regions and terrains in one level. This game is not made for persistant worlds. But actually i like even the concept of having small levels (this is not a limitation, you are free to create huge plain levels in the editor to use in the GM Mode). GMed campaigns isnt about running around, but imho having one meaningful scene.


I'd like to have an option to cycle through the visible sets of an item / weapon



Place an NPC, deactivate it (can you deactivate items?), and then manage it isn't such a bad workflow


I second that. I dont need to have real scripting functions (this is not enables in GM Mode) but having a order queue for NPCs (cick here and there) to create "patrols" (a loop function could be cool)
Emotes is a must. For PCs and GM / NPCs


Yes we need that. Generally would be nice to give orders to NPCs without possessing them (see 11 and sit chair)



You shouldn't have deleted the GM part from the original post as Kevin is quoting them, and it is confusing now.
I copy Kevins comments in Spoiler here:


For me the most important features,(without repeating too much the OP):

• text bubbles (emotes)
• increase number of players
• multiple GM. At least one Santa's little helper GM slot which maybe hasnt full control, but can place objects / characters
• open ongoing campaigns with the editor
• character export / import; character delete / reroll
• camera features (giving the players at certain points a different camera angle than the classic top down. could be even while players are immobile

That's the problem, fancy and easy example 1) tell that you (GM) your friend Bob, Peter and Morris start playing your amazing "Shadows Of Brackenborough" campaign. Bob rolls an rogue elf, Peter a cleric dwarf, and Morris an Undead warlock. You start playing with them, weeks go by, but then, another friend (Brian) buys D:OS2 and wants in, the groups has passed maps scenes and levels, enemies and stuff, you load your savegame and you have to let control over the characters to the players. Which character can Brian play? Does it pop up the character creation for him or since it isn't the campaign start and a savegame we are past that point? 2) Let's say Morris can't play, so instead of popping the character creation, you have to apply control over Morris' character to Brian?That would solve Brian problem, but it won't be his character.
3)Peter's dwarf died a hero against some dragon or something. The game gives the opportunity to resurrect, but the group aren't clerics, have no gold, and/or resurrect scrolls (Or you just simply do not want to allow resurrection in your campaign) How can Peter reroll to a new character in the middle of the campaign?


You can invite people as secondary GM, I think

I meant level in sense of scene.

My question was if the engine so far is really limitating a character infinitely bound to a (save)game.
OR if you cannot reenter char creation to select name / race etc.. because this needs to be a different scene. This could be solved with a kind of lobby / hall of heroes scene the GM is deleporting everybody to introduce the new player.
BUT yes if the char slot is occupied for good and all because of deeper engine functions, which will not be possible to change, that would be a let down. Though I already see workarounds.
The question always stays what are real engine limitations (like all players in one scene, all walkable stuff / AI Grid has to be done beforehand in editor) and what could be easily changed (Race / Name / N-Player / N-GM? / create some stuff like Patrols which normally would require scripting in editor / opening a GM campaign with the editor with some save game export import tool?)




I tried that with no success. I guess it is meant that there is a "invite" button for the Game Master. Please proof me otherwise.

I see the "Invite" button in the image I posted. Haven't tried that feature yet. It doesn't work then?

Hi! Nice to see more feedback on GM mode.

Lets start answering!


No, sadly you can't. This is a localization mistake in lobby screen.



Ah! We thought of that during development but in the end we decided to use 1 GM because it is closer to the table top experience. That's why we try to give the GM as much control as we can by encouraging usage of the pause and peace modes as much is possible.



The idea behind game master mode is not to allow you to run Story-like adventures with scripted events and smart AI. Neither was it intended to make an in game toolset editor like the Divinity Engine 2. The idea is to use our game as a platform for your table top sessions. Real life roleplay tabletop games offer unlimited freedom as one of their main perks and this freedom is basically impossible to reproduce with AI scripting, triggers creating and etc. That is why we don't want or expect the player to manually script every event or dialog in his scenario. Forcing GM to go through such process seemed like a bad decision to us.

If we were in a table top session - the GM would ask - "what you want to do?" And then players decided what exactly by group or each member would do what (s)he wants in turn based fashion.
Now lets imagine we doing same thing but in videogame. No one holds players, they can go immediately whenever they want discussing things on the fly and talking with NPC without consulting with group or Game Master.
That leads can quickly lead to a broken table top experience because the Game Master has lost control and can't follow 4 players simultaneously.

To come closer to your case - if you have 3 players in 3 different dialogs - the GM would need to be able to roleplay all of them in the same time.
Imagine if a players wants to say something else what is not in dialog and at the same time 4th person is attacking a guard who is set to patroling area?
Those scenarios are more suited to a standalone adventure as a GM would not be able to roleplay and manage the game anymore.
Iagine having a guard patrolling the area - how it should react if for example player spawned wall of barrels on his way? Should he just avoid it, or feel suspicious about that and start investigating?
The GM has to roleplay this, and Ai could then easily hinder the GM by visually doing something else.

That is why we decided not to offer tools in Game Master mode (you still can do that for standalone adventure) that allow you to automate things.
Because, as we see it, automation will backfire at GM the moment he didn't think of a player doing something crazy.
And in table top adventure you cannot predict everything - sometimes you need to improvise - which is why the tools focus on fast interactions and giving all control to the GM himself.

That being said, we're here to help you by showing how we generally handle these situations. Sitting on a chair for example is done by possessing a character and then sit him down on the chair.



I would suggest you to use Status Panel (it's button pop up when you select a character). It has a lot of statuses like "Fear", "Sick", "Knocked down" which you can use to set a particular emotion. Making duration -1 will cause statuses to stuck forever until you will collapse them or manually delete. I personally use that to roleplay NPC emotions in my sessions.



As Kevin showed, you can create and manage encounters via encounter panel. The button is on the GM tools panel. From there you can set encounter level, encounter alignment, follow current state of HP and armor (press + for that), drag NPC between encounters, rename them,... You can also drag monsters into the encounter from the Monsters and Items panel or select an encounter by clicking on it and spawning monsters on the ground - they will be automatically added to encounter getting its alignment. You also can "deactivate" an encounter - that way you can disable all creatures in it (helps for ambushes). Use right mouse click to access those options.

For NPCs - you can spawn one from the Monsters and Items panel and then fully manage it via right-click and selecting "manage".
In the "appearance" tab you can alter their appearance. Not all NPCs have th same options though, these are defined by the visual sets made in the editor.

Absence of wizards - I understand. But Game Master mode aims to allow you create things based on the templates you have in a fast manner, keeping your game flowing. If you want the full power of customizing these templates - you need to use Editor because this is where the data comes from. As I said Game Master is not a toolset to build standalone campaigns. It is a set of tools allowing you to visualize you tabletop experience.



Good you noticed that. The engine indeed does not allow that. In Game Master, however, mode you have work around. Since tabletop session in mainly turnbased, and for example your party could want to go separate ways you can "disable" (with right click) a player character, go to needed scene with another player, have some role play there, then do the same for the other player(s). This way you will be able to mimic "different areas" at the same time and the player won't be bored when the GM's attention is on another player because they still will want see what happens in the scene.



Hmm... I don't see what you mean by Item Creator. We have pre-defined items in the Monsters and Items panel (works same as spawning NPCs but you also can drag it directly from panel into inventories) and we have the Item generator. The Item generator allows you to quickly create randomized items you want with a pre-set rarity and level scaling. If you want to some in-depth managing - as with a character - with right click - you set and manage almost all properties items have.



All songs and ambiances are supposes to be looping by default, but you are right - there is a bug there and we are working on improving that panel.



That is true. We will keep that in mind.



For that you have vignettes. You can add text there, with options to answer, you can group them by folders (to have chapter based logic) and depending on what players want you can add new answers or select next vignette. Note: if you publish a vignette and then click "edit" - players will still see the old vignette - that should help you keeping them in the narrative flow if you're adding other answers or selecting appropriate vignette images. If you have a linear dialog structure (not branched) - you can scroll between vignettes - right from the published mode. Be sure to group vignettes by folders in needed order by dragging and dropping them in the side panel because that helps organizing things a lot.


Sooo... i think this is it. I maybe missed something - but don't to hesitate to bring it up again.

In a tabletop session if the GM says "the market streets bursts with activity, people go by, kids run around, the merchants yell the wonders of their products yaddayaddayadda..."
We could create that market street in the editor, we could place the npcs in the game master mode, but automation can be useful for a GM to a certain point. We could do a loop (breakable any time when the gm possess an npc) of the customers that just move around from one shop to another, goes to point A (fruit shop, f.ex), then spawns a talk emote, waits a couple of seconds, goes to point b (fish shop) when you do that with a dozen npcs suddenly you have a realistic belieavable medieval marketplace, instead of a bunch of static, silent characters just looking ahead. GM could possess any of them at any time and make them talk, but he can create such a scene if he doesn't have the tools.


Maybe it wasn't really well explained. In GM mode you can create f ex a sword based on another sword's template, you can name it, put its properties and rarity and stuff, but there's no preview of the item in that menu, you can't see how does the sword looks until you equip to an NPC, also you can only create new swords from the pre-existing ones, the ideal move would be a window that let you choose type of weapon, then shows you the models you have available (from main game and mods), you pick the one you like and from there it would be the same, it sounds syupid, but it's a game changer for things like armor, to be able to see how an armor that the players might find will look in GM Mode is no small deal imho.



By difficulty it's meant a calculator of the encounter dificulty. It's impossible for a GM to know exactly all the skills, powers and strength of all the monsters (apart from it¡s level) so it would be VERY useful to see in the encounter menu a calculator based on the player's gear and level to see if it was an easy, normal, hard, almost impossible or certain death encounter, so the gm can buff or nerf monsters on the fly.

By wizards, Yes, everything is made out of copies from the editors data, a blank template or a quicker way to edit, preview and save those copies would be very nice.

Seter - appreciative of the detailed reply, however for me you have missed by far and away the most important point which is the inability for players to roll up new characters after a campaign has started or to export their characters for use in another campaign. In my opinion this is a deal breaker that will prevent GM mode being used in longer campaigns. At the moment it is basically a tool for one shot adventures.

I would love to see this feature implemented.

I would run my players through workshop adventures of we could export characters instead of having to do it stand alone.

EDIT dont know why my quotes and HTML aren't working right. post preview looks fine then in thread the quotes arent showing for me. This is a response to Seter and Noctro:

I am all for being an active GM in the campaign. I am not asking for tools that will completely automate a campaign by any means but I can give you another example of a scene I wish to add that can not currently be created in GM mode currently. Adding to the busy marketplace example given above.

I wish to create a big chaotic battle scene where 2 forces are engaging each other on screen but not paying attention to the pc directly. Picture the players leading a small party to reinforce the (left flank area) and having to run past a small groups of soldiers fighting to get to the flank. I don't want these npcs to ACTUALLY be fighting each other. I want them to just be firing off attack animations on a loop while facing each other to simulate a fight and the players can run by them without engaging or even have an encounter with a separate group next to the dummies while still not including those dummies in the combat order etc.

Basically I want lots of dummy animations to fire off and loop at will to actually create a battle scene or to make populated market/city scenes come alive.

As far as patrol goes, I completely disagree with you. We need a patrol function in GM mode to create realism. The GM only having the ability to control and emote 1 npc at a time is simply not enough for any scene with any real complexity. At the very minimum we need the ability to select and move multiple npcs at once but that still is only part of it.

It is about COOP GMing.

On the one side i really would like to support my old tabletop GM friend who is more about telling stories than going deep into technical click adventure or doing infinite pauses.

On the other side it is really about COOPing. Where is the point of having coop multiplayer in a turn-based RPG? It is about fun, yeah lots of fun. And exactly this i could have being a coop DM team game mastering for not only friends but the unknown crowd..

I really want this.

In the sister post for the editor i wrote about an interesting insight about GM-Editor Coop-interaction




I do love the vignettes. Especially the possibility of importing assets from your local files on the fly.

But vignettes are rather unfit for dialogs, though for voting siutations they are perfect.

I still like to see me animated avatars (emotes, text bubbles) being part of the mise en scene of our RP theatre.

[IDEA] Here my suggestion: Create another mode let's call it the theatre mode. Here the DM defines a background by choosing is current camera position (maybe different camera angles). Then he transports the players to another stage level (a new scene), similar to character creation. Here you do have/see all players' characters in their full beauty (as in the char creation) able to launch emotes and text bubbles but are immobile (like char creation).
Now even better:
Having something like this scene in another region ( I know currently different regions are not supported ) but the same level it would practically act like a pause function where in the meanwhile the GM has time to setup things, but the players are busy to Roleplay.

Or just don't transport them to a new scene but let them where they are immobile but with different camera angle (not top down) and emote text options as I suggested here

Well just an idea.. i hope you got it. [edit: i am talking here about internal PC2PC conversations not with NPCs]

salute

EDIT: @Seter: I forgot to thank you for your long post. I really appreciate that.

Hey, indeed i didn't answered that. For now you can't re-roll new characters or export them in another campaign. We heard a lot of requests for that feature but i can't comment on our dev plan just yet.




This may cause your NPC, spanwed items to disappear and go nuts, custom changes to be voided. You can use that yes, but for your own risk. I would recommend to do that only for terrain changes for scenes you didn't decorated yet. Also that change of the level will be applied for all scenes based on that level you editing

Thanks for that quick replay.

The Void does fit in your Divinity Original Sin setting though


I still love that functionality that GM Mode is always loading the updated data (root) and not storing closed entity in its saves.

This way you can easily update your scenes with the editor between the sessions: like to replace all items with their burned variants after our group of pryomaniac adventurers were raging in the last session. I already hear the laughter when starting the next session and players see the evidence of their destruction.

If you continuing the session - its just enough to load savegame with it. All changes done to the level will be kept in scope of the saved session. I.e. if you started a session with players - saved - then loaded - everything will same as when you saved - so all destruction and flames and blood everywhere all will be kept. Even if you go away from scene and returned to it later - it still will be in the state you left it.

Yes but if you change the mod in the editor it will b applied to the next loaded save. Right?

Depending on kind of changes you did. Most of them will be applied - yes. But surfaces are saved in the save game so they could not be updated for already existing scenes in the campaign

14)Gold. You can create piles with a random number of coin in its inventory, and you can reward gold directly to players, but you can't control the amount of gold laying on a table or on the floor for the players to pick up later when you are preparing your game, unless you 1)create a lot of gold piles, 2)split the gold in the desired quantiy in your GM inventory, and 3) place the coinstacks manually. Or place the desired quantity inside a chest! Don't you think these are too many steps for something that can be simpler? I find very weird that you can place items in a container but there's no way to directly control how much gold there's in them. A cool feature would be a button to add X gold in a container, so we can place the chest and add the exact quantity of gold the GM has planned the evil and corrupt tax collector has in it's private cabinet...

I just want to play. Haven't been able to play the thing since release (Gm Mode). If it's not crashing it just never loads.

Hi!
Is that only GM mode behaving like this?
Please can you post your issue with more info, like your PC specs, list of mods you may have into the Trouble Shooting section?

http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=68&page=1