Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [MULTIPLAYER] shared initiative is a problem for you?

Hello everyone, let's discuss the shared initiative in multiplayer mode.

I've been playing multiplayer a lot recently and I've found that sharing the initiative with other players is causing issues in my gameplay.

Does anyone know the reasoning behind its implementation?
I was wondering if it's really so difficult to develop an option for players to choose whether to share initiative or have each player take their own turn.

Has anyone else experienced this problem or have any suggestions for a solution? I would love to hear from the development team if they are aware of this issue and if there are any plans to address it.

Let's engage in a constructive conversation and share our thoughts on how to improve the game experience for everyone.

So the shared initiative was done to speed up combat, and it does work.

It wasn't originally part of the game but they wanted to make combat more fluid. I can say it has sped things up a LOT. I think it was also meant as a way to *somewhat* mollify the RTWP crowd, but that's probably secondary.

However, it can cause issues especially if you have impatient players, or a de-synch issue. You end up with two people attacking the same target and not realizing it until the action plays out and or just issues where two different players actions are at cross -purposes.

So I have learned to keep an eye on the Turn bar above and I will always go last if I am grouped on initiative.

As for the de-synch issue - it's a problem with internets mostly.
- Save and Reload if you notice it
- Always have the person with the strongest internets and computer host.
- get google fiber or Verizon Fios.
- Never game over wi-fi, direct connection.
-Clean your computer. Your gaming computer is your holy temple, Thou shall not defile the temple with dirty internet sites. :P

I have about 2,000 hours in multiplayer, so I have seen a good deal of this.

I hear you loud and clear, my friend.


I find it interesting to try to make combat more fluid, but it's the perfect recipe for chaos when playing with impatient people...

Maybe that's my problem...

My party is made up of some DIABLO players who have never experienced RTWP, so they want to click on creatures all the time LOL!

Here is where I find your brilliance:


There's nothing better than waiting for the anxious ones and LEROY JENKINS to unleash their clicks and then playing my turn in the tranquility that I like, without any rush.

Or simply finding a group of patient players, right?

Anyway, I still think it's fair to have an option to disable this even if it's only in the room creation screen.

How combat que works is a crucial part of the design for turn-based combat. Larian has been exprimenting with different systems.

Their previous game, D:OS2 would intertwine teams one character at a time - one yours/one enemy/one yours/one enemy etc. That provided a nice regular pace between player and enemy turn, but allows for little interactivity between characters. And of course, is hassle free to coop play.

In the first gameplay reveal of BG3 Larian tried something different - a shared initiative for each team with division into player and enemy turn, and in player turn player was free to move units in whatever order they want (so think XCOM games). From tactical perspective it is a more flexible system, though it has a downside of greatly favouring alpha strikes - who gets to go first has massive impact as they get to make a strike with their entire team, before the enemy gets to act.

After initial feedback, Larian moved to what we have now - a system very similar to the original table-top where each units rolls initative and combat que is build based on that, but they kept a bit of the tactical flexibility of their original system by adding shared initiative - so if multiple characters line up in the row you get "your turn" situation and you can act with them in whatever order is the most tactically useful. As a singleplayer gamer I like this system a lot.

I can easily imagine how it can be messy in coop. A more crude solution would be to add an option to disable this system (a bit like Civ games allow to set simultaneous/hybrit/and turn-based systems), but I wonder if being able to see your coop player's cursor could help as well - it might give players better information as to what they coop player's are thinking of doing. That said, such real-time feedback might need a decent connection, and I have no clue how good is BG3 netcode.

I completely agree with you.

I've played the XCOM and SHADOWRUNNERS series quite extensively, but only in single player mode.
Playing with your whole team before the enemy can act certainly favors you in almost all situations.

However, with the addition of co-op play, it's definitely interesting to experiment with innovative combat systems, both to inspire freedom and to bring us closer to what a real combat situation would be like.

I really liked what you said about the possibility of different strategies in a simultaneous combat, as the variety of decisions increases dramatically when we share initiative.
However, it's still important to have coherence in each player's moves.

So, having an option to disable or enable shared initiative in the room creation would be a good and simple idea.

Yeah, I've seen it cause a bit of chaos is multi-player Let's Plays. Players would run into area effects or waste a spell slot on an enemy that was already downed by the other player. Of course, this can be fixed by communication between players that share initiative, but this communication never really happened. When their turn came around, the players simple went, sometimes leading to wasted turns and wasted resources.

I say if you're going to make a turn-based game, make a turn-based game, unapolegically. I'm not a fan of their 'Swarm AI' either.

Are you guys not talking to each other when doing multiplayer? I mean, even if we don't share initiative, we talk about our ideas for the next actions (among lots of other things). And at least for me talking to each other is one of the main reasons to play multiplayer games in the first place.

The only issue I noticed with shared initiative is related to sneak attack:
Lets say you have the turn order: Player1 -> Enemy1 -> Rogue Player -> Enemy2
If Player1 kills Enemy1, I've noticed that as a Rogue you might not be able to use your sneak attack during that turn if you used it in the previous round (seems like the cooldown is not reseting properly).

Shared initiative does answer some of the little niggles that sometimes come up in actual table-top - "we're on the same initiative, so can't we both move up to the boss at the same time, and then both benefit from the other being there, for our sneak attacks?" Realistically yes, formally no, and the tabletop has ways to work around this, but they aren't perfect and the players can often come out getting less value for their turns than they feel they should have been able to.

BG3's shared initiative does address this - but it comes with its own set of occasional niggles and annoyances as well. The way the UI handles it can be misleading, and there are still the occasional errors where ending one character's turn ends all shared character's turns when it shouldn't.

I'd be very strongly in favour of a "shared Initiative On/Off" toggle in settings - I'd probably still leave it turned on most of the time, personally, but I'd like the option.

The DOS 2 initiative system of ALWAYS alternating between one of yours and one of the enemies was one of its most criticized aspects after armor system and itemization, incidentally.
For several reasons, but above anything else because many felt like it was robbing characters that invested heavily on initiative-related abilities and stat of ways to leverage their qualities.

XCOM, that someone else mentioned, is a whole different beast.
That's basically "Alpha Striking: The Official Game" and the entire gameplay loop there is tuned around the idea that when your team act, it's supposed to wipe the floor with anything moving or breathing on screen before passing the turn.
When you are passing a turn in XCOM and something is still able to shoot you back, you already made a mistake.

The same type of initiative was something Larian proposed before the EA even started but thank god (or whoever covers the role) they reconsidered it quickly because I can hardly think of a worse fit for D&D.

Wait, I thought initiative works just like normal D&D right now?

The only difference between BG3 and TT is that if one side shared the same initiative, they will all go at the same time, which is really no different than TT except in the rarest of situations.

Has something changed?

No, I guess that's precisely what the OP is commenting about.
Personally can't say I have any problems with the current system... But then again multiplayer is less than a tertiary concern for me.

I keep playing a lot on MP with my friends in 3 or 4 player parties and still find it the best way to play.

I deeply analyzed some aspects mentioned here in my last sessions.

Truly, when there is conversation among players, it is totally functional to share initiative, providing beautiful combos in some key situations, but even so, there are still mismatches of actions that harm gameplay.

The DOS2 format does not really fit for playing D&D, especially in 5e. I don't see much sense or reality in alternating with the enemy every turn.

On the other hand, XCOM, with initiative separated by team, I understand as quite functional for a TT in several situations. BG3 emulating the initiative order with the relative dexterity bonus roll as it is in TT is wonderful!

That being said, my conclusion is that the way to organize initiative in BG3 is in accordance with what I understand about D&D, but the sharing of initiative could be optional for those who prefer to have more precise strategies.

And damn, thank you all for the engagement, it's always great to discuss at a high level with intellectually delicious people!