Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Dungeon Master Mode!

I'm really glad to hear this is a stretch goal, especially since I suggested this to Swen in PM a few months ago =D

Although actually what I had proposed was a bit different - I was talking about an "AI" DM that besides tweaking monsters and such could include things like House Rules and even commentary on your actions / combat results.

What else would you like to see from the DM mode?

It will be nice if people create their own dungeons and put it on workshop or in game for people to try out especially for a single player experience.

Does dungeon master mode mean that up to 4 players control the party members while another player (the DM) controls the monsters and maybe other things of the environment? This could be fun. Especially if people create dungeons specifically for such things. You could consider this as a type of asymetric PvP.

Unfortuanatly I will never profit from this because I play single player. But it is a good idea.

It's also one step closer to being able to do something like a NWN style persistent world.

I'm skeptical about the idea. It seems to be reaching way too far and I'm not sure Larian has the capabilities to get it done. Especially since they're treating this as the equivalent difficulty cost as that of a skill tree, which is ludicrous. (Yes, I know that there's likely some inflation of estimated costs in stretch goals, but to price this at 150,000 is far too low to be realistic, imo.)

It also relies on getting the editor to the point where it's very easy to use. For D:OS 1, they hyped the editor up like crazy, and it turned out to be a tool only professionals could figure out how to use, and it was full of all kinds of utterly ridiculous restrictions, like not being able to edit or change Talents. TALENTS, ffs.

I'd need to know a hell of a lot more about how exactly they plan to get this to work before I could get interested.

What does "in-game-editor" mean? Does this take an existing dungeon and let players make minor changes, like monster placement and triggers and such? Or does it mean "you build the dungeon, room by room, item by item"?

This is also a multi-player only thing and absolutely no use in single-player. I really hope Larian's other games do not go this "Multiplayer-or-bust" way.

It's a fair concern and does seems like an overly ambitious stretch goal. My assumption was that the DM mode would be much more along the lines of those minor changes with random monster, trap, and loot placement than building complete environments room by room.

its very similar (if not equal) to sword coast legends.

if you have 2-5 people, it is certainly great. if not, it is useless.

i have not, so i really dont care at all as long as the actual / main game does not suffer from it.

edit:
maybe the modding tool/editor would benefit from it, b/c the user interface of the DM tools (essentially modding tools) needs to be VERY comfortable to be useable reasonably

I mostly agree with Stabbey. It seems like a very delicate thing to bring, as the editor would have to be perfect in its own way first. If either the editor or the DM mode isn't clear, easy, and powerful to use, it will be worthless and will just have wasted money.

Also, it will only benefit parties of 3 or more players, because I don't see the fun in playing a 1v1 dungeon. This seriously reduces the potential playerbase, as my guess would be that, especially after DOS1, most people are either solo players or duo-players.

Anyway it's the very last stretch goal and I don't really expect we will reach it. Which is maybe why it was put in last position...

Fair to me. There were some broken promises and this isn't something all that simple to pull of I'm thinking. That said, love the idea, love it. I'd settle for if it isn't available at release, they will never quit until it's done post release.

Some skepticism from me as well. There will have to be a massive overhaul of pretty much every system to make DMing in real time feasible. Textures will need to be selectable to be part of prefabs, monster and item code will need brand new UIs, as will dialog and scripting. Well, scripting will probably have to just be some simple prefab things like traps and journals. Presumably someone won't be able to make a whole dungeon full of interesting stuff in real time as someone plays, and they'll want to set the map up before they invite players, just like a (good) PnP DM will spend a lot of time setting things up before the players see anything.

If its planned for post-release, that would probably ease the pressure up a bit. Though at the same time if they could get the DM systems in place early, it could potentially expedite development of the rest of the game (if it's powerful enough to do that).

Stabby's concern has been mine from the start. DM Mode is useless unless the editor is useable at minimum of the NWN toolset. Useable at the NWN2 toolset would be better IMO, but I'm not holding my breath.

IMO if the game design is game first and toolset as a stretch goal I just don't see it getting to where the community thinks it should be. DOS1 was a great game with a toolset as an after thought. I see the same pattern here.

I mean, the engine they used to design the game is hardly an afterthought, and they probably didn't have the funds to improve it to the level of ease they would have liked. Long gone are the days where games were made primarily for their editors so people could make their own content. I imagine it's pretty hard to make that profitable except at the level of top-down RPG Maker kind of stuff. I don't expect Larian to focus on making the editor intuitive as one of their top 3 goals, but maybe in the top 10. Not an afterthought, but not an absurd investment on their part either.

Do mods and UGC sell games? If done well, it's probably a decent factor. Skyrim and the Fallouts and especially NWN probably would've had much fewer sales if they weren't easily moddable. But it's probably less profitable than we would like to think. I wonder how many people play Skyrim without mods vs. with mods, and how many would've bought it regardless of whether there were mods or not? Anyone have any data on this?

Only 14% of Skyrim sales were on pc and not even all of them use mods

source:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/615805-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/64542105

which links to http://www.statisticbrain.com/skyrim-the-elder-scrolls-v-statistics/

Unfortunately, editor + this stretch goal promise a great compromise towards the community.
I like many of the Skyrim mods: travel to Elsweyr, bosses, weapon mods, voiced(!) companions... many people have been catered to by the community at remarkable quality. But for DM Mode... you will probably need to be able to customize the editor itself.

My personal opinion:
I finished skyrim once without any mod. The game is so huge that I will not play it again most likely. There are so many other good games (good = better than skyrim, like D:OS )

I have never used any mods that change the look of the game or any game mechanics. For me, a good story is better than graphics and some old games (like chrono trigger) are still much better than new games with super 3D graphics (better = fun to play).

I use fan patches ( solving bugs) and fan translations (removing spelling errors, like in Pillars of Eternity where I also reported bugs in the forum).

I have created one and a half RPG maker games myself (more a collection of insane ideas than a good game), I played some rpg maker games and I would play a fan made campaign for D:OS. But modding would not be an importand selling point for me.

I bought skyrim for both console and pc, but the console version was ass compared to the pc version.

The only reason why I finished Skyrim was because of mods.

But I also bought it on day 1, so 'mods' weren't a decision in my purchase.

I'd prefer a greater breakdown of the numbers. For example, are they only counting Steam sales, or are they including retail sales? What about third party vendors selling keys that activate on Steam? Up to what date do those numbers count (just the first month or two, or are they current as of last month)? Those numbers tell us nothing, without further information.

Your fact checking is wrong.

There are 9,397,895 owners of Skyrim on steam based on REAL statistics from:
http://steamspy.com/

If 23,270,000 units were sold in total, PC gaming comes out to 40.38% of those sales.

This isn't even a mention to those other Digital Distribution platforms that aren't steam.

Thank you that you cross checked my data! For once, I am really happy to be proven wrong .

Before someone ask. The name of the stretch goal is now Game Master mode instead of Dungeon Master because of trademark.
The post from Swen on KS comments