Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Multiplayer is really boring :(

So my husband and I picked up BG3 because we've been wanting a good co-op game to play together and have fond memories of the classic games. I also really enjoyed the Divinity games (although I never played them multiplayer), which was another plus when we were pondering it.

And overall, the game is a lot of fun. I am enjoying it more than I enjoyed Divinity.

Except. The multiplayer. The cutscenes and NPC interactions are SUPREMELY BORING in multiplayer. We go from enjoying playing a game together to one of us playing and the other watching. Why can't we both interact in the conversations? Why is it limited to one person? We each feel like we're missing half the game. It feels like there really ought to be a way for everyone playing to interact, I mean, if I were hanging out with my buddies and we all started talking to a random guy, then naturally when the conversation moved from one topic to the next, the person interacting with the random guy who had the most interest in or knowledge of the subject at hand would start talking.

We began the game talking to every NPC. Then we started saving before every conversation so that if my husband the wizard starts talking and we discover we're talking to a nature character, we can reload so that I as the ranger can initiate (or vice versa). But now we're so bored with the 'only one person gets to talk' that we're just attacking everyone because we're actually playing together when we're fighting.

It's probably too late in the dev cycle to change this now. But it'd really be nice if multiplayer allowed you to actually play with everyone all of the time instead of just when you're murder hoboing.

You can make 'suggestions' as the player 'watching' a convo. Just make sure the main speaker gives you time to select things to say.

but yeah a way for other players to have dialogue options too then let it go down to iniative as to who gets to say what if two people
try say something at the same time.

I haven't played multiplayer yet, as I haven't found any open sessions so far, but I will still second this. And to give an example, even though nowadays it is no longer that good of an example, please look at Star Wars: The Old Republic and its multiplayer dialogue system.

There, when a player clicks a quest NPC it will bring up a queue instead of going to the conversation right away. It'll also display a radius around the NPC, which other players need to enter, if they want to take part in the conversation. If they do, all players, that took part will see the conversation and if a player choice comes up, a dice roll will decide, which of the players gets to answer. The consequences of the conversation get decided by the player, who got to answer, but independendly of that every player gets the results of their respective choice (like alignment changes in case of SWTOR). What matters is the intention, so to speak.

I already consider BG3 a worthy successor of the series, but I am really, really hoping that multiplayer will be more than just one player following the story and the other three being reduced to combat backup. That's basically what the original series was like. BG3 is different however. In BG1 and 2 the host was Gorion's ward and the other players were basically henchmen. In BG3 everyone will start with the same problem, effectively making them equal. It would be so very cool if this could be reflected in dialogue as well. The origin characters can be recruited as companions and all of them have an oppinion on the players behaviour and would pick dialogue choices according to their personality, if they weren't just pre-written, AI controlled characters. A party of four humans should be able to do the same. This is a role playing game after all and I for one would like to role play my character with friends or even strangers. Being able to do so in dialogue is what D&D would allow you to do.

I hope that such a thing is possible for BG3 as well.

Yes, this is so sad. I thought it was the main thing - to broke dialogs with coop interactions with NPC

Looks like one must pick all Social skills
And others just pick big dmg
That's all

Star Wars the Old Republic despite being an MMO had a pretty good way to keep parties of players engaged during cutscenes. Everyone got to pick their preferred dialogue option (or pass) and the highest roll wins. BG3 having a similar system would be lovely as you could have chances to change the course of a conversation which gives more incentive to stay involved in the convo to begin with. Also would give the option for characters with poor social skills to keep their mouth shut if they want to rely on the charismatic one to handle it. Also gives fun chances for the idiot barbarian to steamroll the nerds who are trying to hash things out peacefully and just force a fight instead.

It would also be nice if some of the checks were more complicated than PASS - good thing happens/fight avoided VS FAIL - FIGHT.
like what if you were 1 off? maybe they are now on edge but the conversation can continue? or what if you only just succeeded? they are a bit less wary but not ready to just give you what you want? I guess some DMs might run campaign with checks being as simple as pass/fail but I think most of the time there were degrees of failure/success. Others have also mentioned that it can be really fun to have the consequences being more varied as you could actually have more interesting things happen on a failed check in some instances.

Yeah, I know that we can make suggestions. It's just the suggestions mean nothing. It's not really playing. I'm still just watching him play if he initiates the conversation, all the suggestion does is make it so when I start chanting what I want him to do I can back it up by hitting a button so he can read my opinion as well. Both of our characters should be able to input into the conversations with NPCs. For example: I don't even get to see that there would have been a dialogue choice based on my race because the game is treating me like I'm not there.

SWotOR party dialogs are the most cool feature, I think. That I was thinking about, when was starting the BG3 coop session (and then we sucks, coz dialogs about "who is first to click/trigger dialog")

Swen said they will allow other party members to join in convos and even in co-op players will have like a voting which options to take. System just wasn't ready in time.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat...rolls_are_coming_just_not_ready_in_time/

I hope multiplayer will have option to let every one can use check roll in dialog. Because is DOS I often start dialog by mistake. I 'm that stupid guy who put his nose everywhere, so sometimes I end in dragon lair.

Oh, that's neat! I missed that bit of information. Guess I'll just wait and look forward to it then, thanks for digging that up!

I have been playing with my wife, and you can already join convos and vote. By joining I mean look at the cutscene and listen. Voting doesn't do anything though. It just shows which option you want. I doubt they would let other people interject in a conversation at any point. That sounds like a nightmare to script. Especially in 4 player coop.

I don't mind waiting though. It kind of reminds me of playing TTRPG's. You wait and listen while another player is playing out a scene with an NPC.

This is nice to know.

I'm curious, are you playing together on the same device or using separate computers to play multiplayer? I'm on a Mac using Gog and as far as I can tell I can't play local multiplayer yet.

We're playing on two different computers on the same network via steam. It's the easiest game I've ever played to set up a co-op. I just create a lobby, then click invite, my friends list pops up and I select him and launch.

Would it be much to add to the cut scenes something like this...

Player A is talking to NPC. Decision made. Player A or NPC turns to Player B and asks, "What do you think?"

Player B either agrees or selects another option.

In the event of a disagreement, a die is rolled to determine which choice is taken.