Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Co-op Dialogue - Will it get fixed?

Hi there. Loving this game from A-Z. Only small complaints so far, except one really, really big one:

I would like to co-op this with a friend. However, the way the game is set up now, it is almost impossible. Talking to people is a major bother. You have two choices: stand patiently around doing nothing, waiting for your pal to finish dialogues, maybe press 'L' to sort of follow the conversation. If this gets too boring, you can leave and do your own talking, but then you run the risk of missing out of dual-dialogues.

That's a huuuuge no-no of course, since those dialogues are about the best thing about co-oping the game to begin with.

My question is whether Larian is aware of this glaring issue and have talked about fixing it? Right now, I don't see how anyone can co-op this without either missing tons of content or stand around waiting, basically doing nothing, while a mate clicks his way through a conversation.

My own suggestion for a fix is this:

1 - If you're within some distance of your mate and he initiates conversation, the dialogue box is initiated for you as well, regardless of whether you're involved in the dialogue or not.

2 - If a dual-dialogue starts, regardless of where the other character is on the map, the dialogue will play out with both players involved. Explain it away with the teleport pyramid or whatever, it's better that it doesn't make much sense than if you arbitrarily miss some of the best co-op content the game has to offer. SW:ToR did this pretty well - just give the players a magical way to communicate to explain the fact that you can join in dialogue from anywhere.

Now, Larian is supposedly working on this:


(that's a post from July 2, btw)

It would be really nice, however, to know what sort of solutions are being discussed. That way those of us co-oping could debate whether to put the playthroughs on hold or not.

Anyway, I hope Larian is aware of the major problems with the dialogue system in co-op mode as of now. If the problems persist I think me and my mate will have to play seperate single player games, and that would be a damned shame considering how fun this game could be to co-op.

A fix could be:

When a player is near another one in a dialogue, a button "Listen to the Conversation" appears. The second player then sees a similar dialogue window but can only observe.



Yes =)

copy from the other thread:


I think they could solve this by opening a small chat window - when a player initiates a conversation while being away from the other one - in which the other player could see and follow the conversation - without being forcefully pulled into the dialogue - until he chooses to be.


Of course, if the players are together then they should both be involved in the dialogue.


This chat window would be vary much like the local/global chat window already in the game. Just one like it extra with a specific purpose. Easy to do for the devs and very simple as it only displays the conversation to the other player - who would also have an option of minimizing that small window if she or he isnt interested.


If he or she is interested - then he can just run or teleport to the other player and enter the full real dialogue mode (dialogue window) and affect or get involved into the conversation directly.


(of course, the normal chat would still work and players could communicate to each other through it separately from this, in case they dont have any other means of communicating person to person)

There's a major debate about it here:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...cs-discussion-thread.92752/#post-3370059

I agree that I hope something a little more seamless will be done for this, but I'm a little confused by this statement: "maybe press 'L' to sort of follow the conversation."

Why "sort of"? As far as me and my buddy can tell, following the conversation via the journal works perfectly fine. It's updated live as the conversation progresses and includes the player's choices and everything.

It would be nice if you didn't get yanked out of it when a co-op choice appears and it all happened in one screen.

It would also be nice if you were somehow notified when your partner had entered conversation. Perhaps have a shortcut key you can press to open directly to that chat dialog in the journal (or a new dedicated window just for this purpose).

But for now, until a better/more seamless solution is added, the journal appears perfectly functional. You just have to let your partner know you've started a conversation so they know to manually open the journal. Am I missing something about the journal?

I think it's the yanked out of for coop choice that people are complaining about....

Because heaven forbid should they have to waste 0.05 seconds of their life by pressing a letter on the keyboard again

I would guess it is the fact that you lose the focus of the dialog you are reading when a new dialog starts, makes it hard to follow and if a coop decision comes up you sometimes lack any context and can not open the dialog log to check what was going on.

So yeah, the system has some room for improvement on the UI department, besides that I think it is working fine. But, I would not have minded a more detailed manual or even better simply a rule book for the system.

I don't think it's the time it takes to re-open that's an issue as much as it is that you may not get to finish reading the dialog and make an informed choice of what your character (who heard the conversation) would do. If I could re-open the journal and read the conversation while the decision window was up, it wouldn't be more then a minor inconvenience.

Agreed.

My preferred solution would be if there was a notification that appeared on the screen when your partner entered conversation. Clicking the notification or an assigned hot key would open the dialog in a screen that works mostly the same as the current journal, only you'd also get your co-op dialog choices in that same screen instead of getting yanked to another one.

You could have "auto-open conversation" as an toggle option for those that want to make sure they never miss one.

Any news on this issue at all?

I would think that there are ALOT of players annoyed at this, who are not on the forums at all. It really should have priority 1!

I agree that this is an issue. I want to play through the game with a friend and it seems like one of us ends up missing half of the dialog. Even if you try and use the chat in the corner you are not getting the full back and forth dialog (including the responses from the other player). You also have to contend with other chat that may be happening at the same time and it makes it difficult to follow. Also, the chat box only shows the text if you are right next to the other player. There are a number of times when I am not in the exact room when my friend initializes a dialog and then I miss it completely.

My goal with this game was to play it multiplayer co-op from start to finish with my friend. I see people saying that I should play single player for the story, but I do not want to play single player. I like coop games and it is why I backed this game in the first place. Being forced to miss out on large chunks of the story just because I want to play coop doesn't make sense.

Maricus, as has been mentioned above, you can see the full conversation including player responses by usingthe Journal dialog screen. Its still not ideal, but theres no reason to avoid multiplayer while waiting for a smoother system to be implemented.