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#568027 27/08/15 03:40 PM
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The more I watch of this game the more I see that it's much more geared towards multi-player than DOS. The fear this gives me is that in games I've played before that were built this way I found that the NPC companions were pretty much nothing but stat-bots if there wasn't another person playing them. They were lifeless, emotionless, you gained no connection to them.

In a single-player game I like the NPC companions to be interesting, be someone I want to learn more about, get connected to them, heck even want to romance them, etc. Just playing my character and some basic stat-bots for support gets very boring to me. Note I think the companions in DOS were fairly interesting, though I wish it could have gone a lot further. Now that the NPC's can be swapped for real players I fear that no effort at all will be put into them for single-player.

So, when playing DOS2 are the NPC's going to have any life of their own? So far I just haven't seen anything.

LeBurns #568029 27/08/15 03:45 PM
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From what I have seen, it looks like Swen has plans for that but I get the feeling that they are prototyping exactly how it's going to work. So the details aren't clear yet, but it seems to be a major goal of theirs to give the companions a strong set of AI to have a life of their own.

I could go either way. I'm also a fan of singleplayer, party based games where you can define the personalities and actions of each member of your party and play it out however you imagine that character. I could see lots of enjoyment with that in this system.


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LeBurns #568031 27/08/15 03:50 PM
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There will be an update about how single player will work.

Raze #568035 27/08/15 03:59 PM
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Originally Posted by Raze

There will be an update about how single player will work.


Waiting on that then.

I have played games that 'by design' have you use stat-bots for companions. While you can generally customize these more to make a 'super squad', I find myself losing interest in the game since I don't really have any interest in the characters themselves. They're just ... bots. I do know that many others like it that way, it's just not for me.

LeBurns #568050 27/08/15 10:22 PM
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Yeah I agree the stat bot npc companion feel was one of the lackluster aspects of D:OS, they need to do like Bioware has done and have an official predefine and coherent story line for NPCs, Companion and quests that won't be affect by the co-op aspects of the game.

Like in Kotor, Revan main character on the star wars lore went to light side in the end and other npc did x stuff but that did not prevent the player from going to the dark side or taking other paths.

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LeBurns #568062 28/08/15 01:04 AM
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What the interviews on RPG Codex and RPG Watch said didn't really make a lot of sense when it came to SP so I am waiting for that update too.

I can safely say that if the companions are anything like in D:OS then this will make D:OS 2 a skip for me... but that's fine. No dev has to cater to my needs wink It would just be nice if Larian came back to it's SP roots and actually implemented a system that is first and foremost there to make SP great, and not just COOP.

Edit. Guess I have to add, but to me "great" means immersive writing, character development spanning the entire game, and interesting well developed companions that disagree with me when it makes logical sense in their writing, not because I lost rock paper scissors....


LeBurns #568264 30/08/15 06:58 AM
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I get your "fear" for the experience of single player. I had the same thought occur as I saw the PCGamer pre-alpha demo. That said I really enjoyed playing single player in D:OS.

I think Larian can go one of two ways:
1) the 3 other characters in the group becomes NPCs and are controlled by the AI. I find that really difficult to pull off, because what should determine whether you want to work with or against each other? There are timing issues, which can lock you out of certain sidequests etc. All in all too many variables which removes the players freedom of choice to play the game as you prefer.
2) You, the single player, control and build all 4 characters in the group, and it is up to you to roleplay them differently to your preferred experience. This is basically how I would have liked all 4 characters in the first game to be, so this is my hope for the route they will take.

Will be exciting to see the single player information once it is revealed.

Last edited by Gnoster; 30/08/15 06:59 AM.
LeBurns #568272 30/08/15 12:12 PM
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Well like I've said you can do both. Have three or four pre-defined NPC companions for those that want story, and have hireling NPC companions that others can use just to grind through the MQ with. DOS had this already to a degree, your four 'story' NPC's and others you could just hire from the Hall of Champions (or whatever it was called). Just polish that system up a bit and everyone wins.

LeBurns #568279 30/08/15 03:05 PM
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I disagree completely. (With the premise of the thread). DOS was absolutely oriented towards multiplayer. That was... the core foundation of the entire game. Hell, I'd call it the number 1 selling point. That's why Larian is focusing so heavily on the multiplayer component when talking with the media (they did the same thing back in 2013).

I don't think there's any real cause for concern, as DOS demonstrated Larian to be perfectly capable of crafting a game that offered fantastic experience both with and without a co-op partner.

LeBurns #568289 30/08/15 05:31 PM
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What I got from the RPGcodex article was that you'd control your companions most of the time, but at certain key moments, the AI might take over. Like, if you watched one of the videos, Hudson is an assassin, and he can team up with these other assassins that attack the rest of the companions on sight. So like, maybe if you wandered in there as a whole group, he might actually side with the assassins and try and kill the rest of your party :P

Sounds ridiculously hard to make work well, though. Swen has been justifying the focus on multiplayer by saying that making all these different routes and activities available to multiple players will also strongly enhance the roleplaying experience for one player, which I think is true. I'm really not worried at all that the single player experience will suffer, and I might actually play it multiplayer.

LeBurns #568293 30/08/15 06:49 PM
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It's actually perfectly possible to make that work. See BG2 Jaheira and the Harpers incident. If you play a certain way, Jaheira WILL join the fight against you (And given her skill selection in THAT fight, this can be absolutely crippling too, especially when you do that quest late-game). Attack children on the street, and the paladin will openly attack you right then and there.

My point for bringing this up, the huge exposition dump this kind of design requires (select companions "front-loaded" at the beginning of the game) aside, is that I don't see how the game can be immersive when I travel as a "group" but every single character acts as a standalone entity. In BG2, when your *party leader* gained entry, the *party* was allowed in. This is why you call BG a "party based CRPG"

And this is what confuses the heck out of me. Are we playing a PARTY of people, 1 designed by us, up to 3 chosen at the start as companions. Or are we playing a mob of 4 people who we have to talk with 4 different times in every dialog ?

Or better put. Are companions actually integrated as part of the party, do they banter amongst themselves? Or are they just traveling along, but technically they are all stand-alone puppets who might at certain trigger points do X no matter how the travels, dialogs etc went?

LeBurns #568297 30/08/15 07:21 PM
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I RPG a person, not a team. I want any NPC I ask to join me to be a unique individual with their own likes/dislikes/issues/etc. Otherwise I'm just grinding a story using Bot-A, Bot-B, Bot-C and Bot-D.

To me this is the major difference between Bauldar's Gate and Icewind Dale. In BG you role-play a character, not a team, even though you control that team during combat (though I loved playing DAO and using the companions tactics to let them control themselves .. more challenging). Some like teams and that's ok, however when I do it I end up building some elite unstoppable custom made squad and the game get very boring.

Granted DOS made you play two characters and it was awkward at times, but the gameplay made up for it.

eRe4s3r #568316 30/08/15 11:38 PM
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Originally Posted by eRe4s3r
It's actually perfectly possible to make that work. See BG2 Jaheira and the Harpers incident. If you play a certain way, Jaheira WILL join the fight against you (And given her skill selection in THAT fight, this can be absolutely crippling too, especially when you do that quest late-game). Attack children on the street, and the paladin will openly attack you right then and there.

My point for bringing this up, the huge exposition dump this kind of design requires (select companions "front-loaded" at the beginning of the game) aside, is that I don't see how the game can be immersive when I travel as a "group" but every single character acts as a standalone entity. In BG2, when your *party leader* gained entry, the *party* was allowed in. This is why you call BG a "party based CRPG"

And this is what confuses the heck out of me. Are we playing a PARTY of people, 1 designed by us, up to 3 chosen at the start as companions. Or are we playing a mob of 4 people who we have to talk with 4 different times in every dialog ?

Or better put. Are companions actually integrated as part of the party, do they banter amongst themselves? Or are they just traveling along, but technically they are all stand-alone puppets who might at certain trigger points do X no matter how the travels, dialogs etc went?


Hmmm, yes this is probably trickier than I realized (though defecting companions is actually simpler than I thought). I don't think there's anything wrong with talking to people with each character and getting different options. Might be a little tedious by yourself, but it'll definitely be immersive when an NPC addresses each person differently. As far as I can tell, you have your own main character, and you can choose your three companions at the start, apparently not being allowed to choose the companion that has your origin. I certainly hope you'll be able to influence your companions, set up agreements like you can with multiple players, so that they don't just do X at a certain trigger point, but could do X, Y, or Z depending on your previous interactions. Lots and lots of work to pull that off though.

What will be somewhat awkward is when say, you're trying to get in that town, and one of your characters (say, the dwarf) can't get in, so you have to spend a while getting that character in while your other characters do nothing. I don't think that's too problematic though, and there were situations like that in D:OS too. I'm not expecting that the other companions will just wander off and do their own thing while you're controlling the dwarf, though that would be totally epic in a certain way. Kind of like GTAV, where you control one character at a time, and if you switch back to other characters, they'll be in various (mostly comical) situations. That would be seriously next-gen stuff if they could pull it off in D:OS2, but it's hard to imagine it actually happening.

LeBurns #568409 01/09/15 02:34 PM
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For me thats a Hard Topic.
One of my Most Favorite Parts in Divnity Original Sin were, that you can make your two Lead Characters by yourself. If you play it alone or with Friends, because the Game were so open, you could Roleplay that game, because it felt really like Pen & Paper RPG, and i love that. But what you whishes is, that we get Pre-defined Characters with own personality. That kinda destroy`s the uniqueness of the Game(/Original Sin Series). I kinda have the fear, that happen already, and that also will be a huge "Let Down" for me and my friends, and destroys the Pen & Paper feeling. Everyone of my Friends want to make their own Character, choose their OWN Race. If we want to travel es four Dwarfs, the Game should let us be... maybe i missed the part, were they said, all 4 players can make their own Characters, with their own personality, but for me it sounded, that there are predefined Characters, which plays the other three Players. And truth to be told, i don`t like it. If there are any Predefined Characters, they only should be Optional to pick up for Soloplayer, but not important for the Mainplot. If so, i already can say, that the Game lost three buyers(except me, i`m huge divinity fan and would also buy it, if it is piece of s****)...


I hope also, we will be able to save our Characters as Characters and not only as Savegames like in Original Sin.

@Baardvark:
Sorry but i don`t like your Idea/Concept. Maybe if its optional or via Mods. For me one of the good points about D:OS were, that you have to combine the Strenghts of your Characters(because all of them also have weeknesses). To Plan and play tactical. And for that, you need 100% control of all the Characters. If you in a Fight, did plan something and than some of your Companions run away...sorry but no...

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Originally Posted by LightningYu
For me thats a Hard Topic.
One of my Most Favorite Parts in Divnity Original Sin were, that you can make your two Lead Characters by yourself. If you play it alone or with Friends, because the Game were so open, you could Roleplay that game, because it felt really like Pen & Paper RPG, and i love that. But what you whishes is, that we get Pre-defined Characters with own personality. That kinda destroy`s the uniqueness of the Game(/Original Sin Series). I kinda have the fear, that happen already, and that also will be a huge "Let Down" for me and my friends, and destroys the Pen & Paper feeling. Everyone of my Friends want to make their own Character, choose their OWN Race. If we want to travel es four Dwarfs, the Game should let us be... maybe i missed the part, were they said, all 4 players can make their own Characters, with their own personality, but for me it sounded, that there are predefined Characters, which plays the other three Players. And truth to be told, i don`t like it. If there are any Predefined Characters, they only should be Optional to pick up for Soloplayer, but not important for the Mainplot. If so, i already can say, that the Game lost three buyers(except me, i`m huge divinity fan and would also buy it, if it is piece of s****)...


I hope also, we will be able to save our Characters as Characters and not only as Savegames like in Original Sin.

@Baardvark:
Sorry but i don`t like your Idea/Concept. Maybe if its optional or via Mods. For me one of the good points about D:OS were, that you have to combine the Strenghts of your Characters(because all of them also have weeknesses). To Plan and play tactical. And for that, you need 100% control of all the Characters. If you in a Fight, did plan something and than some of your Companions run away...sorry but no...


Well again I'll say we kind of had both already. NPC's who are designed already with backgrounds that we can have join us, and others we can just hire. All DOS2 needs to do is give us more control over the one's we hire, give us also the NPC with stories, and you have the best of both worlds.

To be honest I like having little control over the NPC's. Heck even while playing DAO I had the NPC's auto-level just so I couldn't custom build them. Having total control just make the 'team' overpowered in a hurry and I like the challenge of working with what they give me (other than the PC of course).

But again ... again, it's easy for DOS2 to give us both.

LeBurns #568692 06/09/15 11:53 PM
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Some thoughts I've been sitting on for a few days:

So single-player... I can't see a satisfying way for the competitive questing to work in single-player. I am sure that there are some people who would enjoy RP'ing questing different sides, trying to one-up or cheat the other one. I am on the side who thinks that would be stupid.

The big reason why is this: If I have full control over all party members progress as they go about questing, then I have full control over which side wins. Because I can only control one person's actions at a time, then I am controlling one person's progress at a time and it is completely at my discretion how far I let them get.

The entrance to the town thing is another example of how multiplayer and single-player might work against each other. In multiplayer, it's cool for the dwarf to be turned away at the gate, because the Dwarf's player gets to go off and have a solo adventure while the other party members are wandering around town. Great! But in single-player, I can only control one group at a time, and so I'm forced to split my focus and leave one group somewhere. (Well, okay I can scratch this comment as it is possible to talk a guard into letting everyone in.)

Either I spend time controlling the dwarf and finding a way to get the Dwarf into town, or else I leave the dwarf and wander town with everyone else. Just getting the party back together could feel like busywork.

In single-player, I don't see any point to killing a fellow party member or sending them to jail, especially since Larian has indicated that you WILL be forced to take them with you to the next questing zones and the end of the game no matter what. So killing/jailing party members seems completely counter-productive and useless in single-player.

The only thing which would seem to be a possible solution was if your party members were AI controlled and could wander around and take actions on their own. But that's only a theoretical solution. It is less that I don稚 have faith that Larian could program an AI to do that, it is that I do not think ANYONE could program an AI to do that. It's just not possible. Human players wander around talk to NPC's, faff around, take their time, go shopping... If there is an AI with its own objectives, it won't do that, it値l try and complete them pretty quickly, and that would change the SP into a race versus the AI. I don't think that Larian has anywhere close to the amount of resources it would take to program a competitive questing AI that would be satisfying to play against. I do not really think ANYONE has that much time and money.

So I guess the only remaining aspects of the competitive questing which will appear in SP are if the party wanders into a certain area, suddenly a dialogue may trigger and a party member stabs you in the back without warning to try and complete their objectives, and then I guess it's a matter of who wins the ensuing fight.

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For what you said about the AI going off and doing it's own thing. It could be programmed in phases. So if you're in phase 1 of a quest, the AI might be in some other part of the world. But if you get to phase 2 of the quest, the AI would then show up and possibly try to compete with you against an objective. On phase 3 of the quest, you may have the choice to join back up with the party member.

Just my thoughts on how it might work in SP.

Stabbey #568696 07/09/15 01:55 AM
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You wouldn't have to compete against yourself in single player, just like it is optional in multi-player (same for killing or sabotaging another character). If you control different characters there are different options, but you don't have to follow them all.

When entering the town in single player, it is also possible to just use the teleporter pyramids once part of the group is past the gate, if you fail to convince the guard to let the rest in.


For a possible AI, if companions can not be replaced, then as long as the game is designed and balanced for 4 characters, they can not permanently leave. They may object to certain actions or quest paths, etc, and there may be negative effects from having a low party moral, but in single player I don't know how feasible it would be to have a character leave, only to catch up to them again the next time you needed all four characters (since the main motivation everyone is working for is more important than the things they disagree about).

FWIW, in games where a party member does betray or leave the party, it has always resulted in me reloading the last save, so I could empty their inventory before that point. In Grandia 2, for example, a character leaves, and even though I was pretty sure he'd be back eventually, he had a couple pieces of unique equipment that gave special abilities in combat. I reloaded, swapped out the equipment just before I got back up to the point he left, and when he came back much later he had different equipment on (so the unique equipment may have been replaced, as well).

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I'm very interested in hearing more about this. Not so much because I don't want to play with others, but I don't want to be trolled by others. Personally I really like the idea of having separate motivations for certain quests, but the idea of sabotaging each during battle sounds ridiculous to me.

I think simply the options are single-player with 4 characters you control each party member and role-play them as you would (be crazy or control them as intended by lariat)

OR

Have competitive type multi-player and and a non-competitive multi-player. Like where you can't sneak potions in my inventory or crush me in battle because I like playing as a dwarf! (probably the only person on earth who loves playing as dwarves).


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There will be a Kickstarter update at some point focusing on single player mechanics.

There was a contingent of dwarf proponents in the Kickstarter comments, and a couple elf advocates, as well, before talk of lizard and undead took over.

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