Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Game Master Lets Talk Fog of War

This is probably the biggest downside to larger levels and exploration in general in GM mode. Fog of war is a must-have feature for running exciting, immersive campaigns because without fog of war players can see every encounter before they arrive at it. Right now the only way to work around this is to port players between areas but that is also limiting.

Exploring an area and slowly revealing what lies beneath the fog is a critical part of what makes exploration fun. Other virtual tabletops have this feature and while I think GM Mode is already superior to other virtual table tops in many, many ways; exploration is not one of them.

Even a simple implementation where GMs can turn line-of-sight-only for revealing terrain or turn FOW off completely (for towns and other non-encounter areas) would be a huge step in the right direction.

Bonus points if GMs can turn off 'shared reveal' so that one player won't reveal the terrain for their party (only themselves).*

*This may seem minor but in my other VTT games there are great moments when someone in the party says "This looks bad." right after they walk around a corner. Its dramatic and it makes everyone want to look- sometimes the player in the lead even back-peddles and says something like 'we should run'. And now everyone in the party has their imaginations running wild- did they see a dragon? Whats going on!? These moments are great and, regrettably, not possible in the current GM mode.

Yeah no FOW is terrible. It's one of those small things where you go REALLY? What the heck were you guys thinking not having this.

For hiding encounters or monsters ahead of party you can use "Deactivate Encounter" option from Encounter panel -> right click on encounter header in Encounter panel. Or hide them one by one with right click menu on particular npc and choosing "Deactivate" This should solve issue with players sneak picking encounters in front of them

Yea, I know of deactivate. And you guys at Larian has done something great with the game, Editor and GM mode. Thank you.

But I do hope that you do not consider deactivate as a replacement for FOW?

I so hope you have planned to release FOW in a soon to come patch. Please say you are at least considering it.

For me it might not be game breaking at this point, but it is not that far off.

Sorry to hear that absence of FOW may be game breaking for you. But i cannot share any details on our current developer plan

It's important for many people. I also hope that it's going to be implemented soon.

Yeah it really kills things when players see things early and expect it instead of opening that door and going oh crap.

Hi Seter thank you for responding. I use the deactivate tool frequently. The problem is it doesnt help with revealing the map itself. For instance what if I wanted a multi-region level where one part is a regular basement but the next part is a secret tunnel leading to an underground base? In the current system there is no way to hide the tunnel and base!

I know we can "get creative" with how we port players between maps but there are times where I really would rather not have to go into a loading screen every time I want to "surprise" the party.

The core issue there is they don't think GM mode is intended for exploring but rather you tell the story and just use the game to load encounters. You can tell by the missing features and small level sizes that this was how they envisioned it.

I don't think there is anything wrong with how they envisioned it (it is functional), but if they hear the same request from the community over and over they may be more willing to expand their original vision.