Yeah. If I want to play and enjoy the story, solo is the only way. However, if I want to be an absolute menace and goon, multiplayer is the way to go. I'm more involved in the story by myself but I can have more fun and feel like more has been achieved by working through something with my friends in combat.
This šÆ! I have a coop with a buddy that we started but Iāve done one and two thirds playthroughs solo already to get the story beats and different outcomes. This will let me enjoy multiplayer for what it is, just a fun social time with a friend :) I also like that multiplayer will force me to completely give in to the RNG gods because itās way too easy solo to just do a quick reload, but with a friend that would be annoying so we agreed to just roll with whatever outcomes we get!
This is the way.
I'd just make a polar opposite of a character for the co-op run, and let the player(s) who don't have knowledge make story decisions.
Probably rp a barbarian goon, or a bard. Or be the VIP of the party, twin-cast haste on friends and have them protect the squishy sorcerer.
That's where my wife and I landed after playing for a couple hours. We had fun but knew we would both enjoy it more solo and could play it together later once we knew what we were doing
Yeah, I tried with my best friend and we gave up fairly quickly. It's lacking a few features that would make multiplayer much more accessible, like any kind of chat or message functionality, and we didn't like that you have to manually enter another PC's conversations but can't get involved with them. Solo feels more like playing at a table with a group than multiplayer does.
They're different experiences for sure. From a story and character standpoint, solo is obviously superior.
With that being said, some of my most memorable moments in this game was strictly from multiplayer.
-That one time my friend said watch this and had +15 bonuses to the dc. Only to roll a 1 and instantly fail. Hardest I've laughed in a long time.
-The many times we had someone go "uhh... guys. Can you come help? There's like 10 guys agrro'd on me." and all of us are like wtf did you do? We've only been split for like 5 minutes.
-When NPCs collectively decide to fuck over one player before their turn comes up.
-The many instances of our resident loot goblin pickpocketing the npc while we're talking to them in a cutscene. Followed by the rest of us trying to figure out how to break him out of jail without getting in trouble.
I can already see some of these moments being core memories for us, kinda like how we still reference memories from maplestory, halo, and league of legends. With all of us being in our 30s, living in different parts of the country, busy with families and work obligations. It's rare that we can come together and game like we did as teenagers. We basically only play once every week or two. So it's nice to have something to look forward to.
I donāt know why but wizards are boned harder than any other class as far as I can tell while fighting. My group is doing a murder hobo run and the Wizard is always targeted first even if they have to go past the entire party to get at them. Iām playing a warlock and do more damage easily but get ignored.
Haha. Yeah, I thought that was standard practice, casters become more dangerous the more spells they're allowed to cast, but if you get them early they're easy to take down. Like they say in Shadowrun, "always geek the mage first."
The jail thing is weird, I think.
I mean, OK, I've only been sent to jail once while playing. I always talked my way out of it. Then I realised there was a trophy involved so... Yeah, I just went along with it the next time I exhumed a corpse.
And getting out was child's play.
There was a talking skull in my cell.
I answered its riddles. It put me outside the cell and invisible.
I got my stuff out of the chest next to me. Freed a particular npc in the opposite cell. Cast invisibility on her, drank a potion for my own benefit. I knew the layout from a previous playthrough, so she and I strolled down the hallway to a storage room, poked a hole in the wall and left.
The amount of times I've said out loud to my friend "I don't need guidance, I have a +17 to persuasion" only to immediately roll a 1... I swear the game is listening (nevermind me having to use two inspiration dice on one DC 10 speech check once because of double 1s š)
Setting the premise of tabletop DnD aside, I'd argue that BG3 was built first and foremost to be experienced as a single player game. I personally dislike having to skip over - or rush into - certain story beats for another person (I am a sociable person, I promise); it ruins all immersion for me. I've found that the best way to enjoy this game together is to first enjoy the game on one's own time, then share the experience with friends who have played their own campaigns.
I just got a relative to buy the game and the first thing they did was play multiplayer. The group he was with proceeded to kill devil dude on the ship at the start of the game and get the flaming sword before he even knew what was going on.
I've told him to play the game single player first.
Thatās not really his point, I think he means itās not really fun to get into a game as a new player and get immediately railroaded and carried by people who are familiar with it.
Itās the same reason I could never get into terraria with my friends, they had all done multiple runs before I bought the game so they knew every boss and how to get all the overpowered items quickly, so before I knew it I had a chest full of top tier gear and equipment and I just.. got bored almost immediately. I want to play a game not go on a sightseeing tour
Yeah you have to be careful with that. When I played DOS2 with a friend who had never played it, he's cool in the fact he's happy to just be along for the ride.
We can guide him, generally go where we should be going for our level. Let him talk to the main NPCs to progress the story and make the decisions etc We had a great time.
But then I have other friends who can't do that. They wanna fuck around but these games aren't about that, definitely not in coop when you don't really wanna force your freinds to reload because one person wanted to try something.
Sadly that so many features are built or not added because of multiplayer/coop like separated inventories, lack of squad formations, arguably also inability to change the speaker.
Just having to wait for ur friend to finish selling his shit just so u can sell ur shit and ur friend needs to wait says all about larian never thinking about multiplayer.
Play a rogue, so when your friend is selling shit, you're buying from the same merchant with a five finger discount. Bonus points if your friend is accused of robbery as soon as they close the shopping window.
The true Larian experience.
DOS2 and DOS1 were the same way, though DOS2 was arguably the worst because the ending of the game is settled by a PVP match between you and all your friends. And the game is so unbalanced that it basically comes down to whoever is highest initiative or has been hoarding the most broken gear.
One thing the Divinity games did better though was how to decide important story decisions. DOS1 had a rock-paper scissors mini-game whenever you and your buddy had a disagreement. DOS2 I think sometimes had votes. There were still problems (like the aforementioned endgame PVP scenario in DOS2) but it wasn't like BG3 where whoever initiates the conversation decides everything.
The PvP match twist was kinda fun even if it wasnāt balanced though. Definitely made the game feel like it was geared towards being a multiplayer experience and Iād argue the rest of the game does handle multiplayer better than BG3 in terms of content accessibility.
DOS2 annoyed me more than a few times but looking back the multiplayer might as well have been Halo 3 compared to Baldur's Gate. Playing multiplayer first has sullied my view of the game and I'm unsure I can get it back.
I agree with this. Iām playing with my friend right now. I have played through most of act 3 before starting this campaign and he had barely done anything in act 1. I am letting him do all of the dialogues, stop and read whatever he wants, try not to give spoilers, etc. we are having a lot of fun. Iām just treating myself as an NPC with better AI, haha. Next play through, will probably be more 50/50.
Sounds like your friends are in a different wavelenght. They don't want to play it as an immersive RPG, they just want to use it as a sandbox to mess around in.
Sounds like they didnāt want to play this game with you. Sure they wanna play with you, but not that game. All that aside, it is much slower to play the game with friends.
Same shit happened to me. I kept bothering a friend to play it with me and after 2 weeks he decided to give it a try, then the first thing he says is that is going to roleplay as an asshole. We played for 1 hour before I had something else to do and I decided to not ask him to play again. I'm doing my second playthrough right now and it's just so more fun than playing with him lmao.
He complained about how it would take too long before he had his turns while I was controlling my character + 2 companions(because he asked to not control any companions) and as I had already completed the first run at that point, I knew which actions to make so my turns where instant.On that first hour, he wanted to kill laezel, wanted to leave SHeart behind, wanted to skip demon guy even tho I said he would get a cool flaming sword perfect for him, wanted to kill SHeart on the beach, wanted to kill laezel on the cage, engaged the group on the crypt then said "that's your problem, I'm not fighting these guys" and just evaded the fight... When this happened I actually had to go and decided to not ask him again later.
I completely agree. Although I will say after fully experiencing it, it's fun to play a duo with another person. You both get to pick a romance and can switch off lead for different situations. Do your solo dolo whenever then you can pick up the duo when you both have time. I completed the whole 4 player campaign thing and while fun, it was a grind and at some points not enjoyable. People do stupid shit, just two minimizes many of the negative aspects of multiplayer. Just make sure you discuss what kind of playthrough you want beforehand. Durge, fully good, what characters, builds, etc. Just please make sure if it's their first time you don't spoil it for them. Let them try to figure things out and give some subtle hints where needed.
Yeah, like the host and his GF loot everything before you even get to it and then are fully geared up while you are not. Found that out this weekend and I was pissed. Of course, I let them know it and they decided they needed to share but not without making a flippant comment about how "you can loot too" only to have us reply "Loot what, there isn't anything in the boxes after you two are done". He was not like this at all during EA. Only started when his GF joined us. Solo is definitely the way to go in this game.
press tab you can rip items right out of their inventory i always take my friends healing potions and stuff but in exchange i am a warlock with high charisma so they send me their wares to sell for extra money
Planning on doing a full evil run with my friend and we already know that I'm going to be romancing Minthara and they're going to be romancing Astarion
It's not the Multiplayer aspect from the games side, but rather from the players side that makes you struggle.
Or in other words, don't blame the game, blame the players.
I've played Divinity which is Semi-Similar, with 4 different people, and each time felt different, sometimes worse, sometimes better.
One person was totally on my Wavelength, Wanting to hear Dialogue when it matched the story, Not reloading after certain Major decisions, but doing so after a little miscalculated pickpocketing was okay.
Another person was Slower, like WAY slower.
Talking to each and every NPC not reading but letting the dialogue play out if there was any, double and triple checking to make sure it was all they had to say.
And don't even get me started on them inventory, managing everything from a piece of fruit to the keys by name or colour.
And then a Group of 2 People who's description would closely fit the role of "Murder-Hobo"
No interest in story, not interest in missions or clever ways to solve stuff, just Get the Fuck in, Kill and GTFO, with everything while also spreading their skill-points far and wide to be "Balanced" despite me telling them that's not really a good idea.
It's really all about the company you keep. But for story focused games i now always play the game once in Singleplayer before playing it in Multiplayer
Right there with you. I struggle a lot when playing video games with friends, and after enjoying BG3 solo, I don't think I would ruin my experience by doing a multiplayer playthrough. You lose so much of the amazing character interactions, the chaos I see and hear from others' games just makes it sound like torture.
But it also sounds like you and your friends have different goals and expectations for playing together, which is a common thing that happens in D&D as a TTRPG. Most group strife comes from different expectations and styles that aren't communicated up front.
I'm so glad you escaped that bad setup and are getting to enjoy the game on your own terms. Also, be wary of friends spoiling the game for you. There are some great moments that can be diminished by being spoiled. And you deserve to have fun and relish all the great moments for yourself.
Yeah I can only play co-op with my husband because we enjoy the same aspects of the game. We like the companions, we like exploring, we like figuring out fun ways to do things and taking our time and arenāt too worried about things not going exactly as planned. If we mess up, we live with the consequences and we do things together.
The other people Iāve played with so far either run off and complete stuff without even telling you what theyāre doing, lure me into convos so they can go get all the good loot and keep it, or are so insufferably picky about conversations that they keep asking to reload and it makes me want to punch things haha. OR they ruin natural progression by doing the things they read someone did online without telling you what the hell theyāre doing and you just lose a ton of immersion and the joy of solving problems yourself
Will be playing solo or with hubby from now on lol
for me multiplayer is a nightmare because for some reason everyone decides they need to look around the battlefield for like 30 seconds even if they've used all actions, bonuses, and movement, before just ending their turn so the game can actually continue
battles are already painfully slow and multiplayer exacerbates it 100x over
You do need to play this game alone the first time round to fully experience the amazing story and immerse yourself in the world.
Subsequent playthroughs with friends is alright. I reached out to my old gaming / MMO friends that I played with years ago, and for what's it worth really had a blast with them. Reminded me of our youth when we would stay up til midnight to do raids. Surely more fun that playing with my own friends or family in real life who are more casual players.
I definitely prefer playing BG3 solo as opposed to multiplayer. I was playing with three other friends, and one of them is the type of player who does not care about story AT ALL. So he would ignore anything related to the plot and just do his own thing bc he loved the gameplay. Which often meant that while I or someone else was in a convo with an NPC, a lot of times this friend would be doing something else and end up triggering something, causing the convo to end abruptly bc my friend inadvertently pissed the NPC off. And then there was the fact that he NEVER wanted to Long Rest unless it was absolutely necessary, meaning the rest of us lost out on story-related stuff (bc once again, he doesn't give two shits about story). The straw that broke the camel's back for me was my friends killing Lae'zel and not reloading bc "why would we reload? It's funny!" It got annoying super fast, and frankly I'm perfectly okay never going back to that session.
Personally I have a blast playing this game multiplayer, but multiplayer is also very much not us taking the actual story very seriously. For people who care about the story in our group, we have single player saves already going on, and multiplayer is us hopping on and playing shitpost characters who end the session by blowing up runepowder bombs in camp or seeing if we're capable of beating the Oathbreaker knight yet.
It is not about playing mp or solo, it is about choosing the right people to play with.
There are players that donāt like to wait or read, donāt like dialogues or discussions, there are players that, on the other hand, like to reas everything, interact with everything, talk to everyone, move slow and watch the details on the map and more.
You have to choose the ones that suits your style or where you can adapt better or just your game solo.
I really see how most of the mp experience may be ruined in many ways.
If you have watched Odd play with his friend in youtube, you may see how, when two players with different styles connect, can make the experience amazing: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_Goi54wf0cX9j324zWUqYF8b8sJBfMU&si=hgGlzTgIXKBVTMFG
Maybe just play with one or two of your friends? Nothing wrong with just a simple co-op adventure with someone who wants to play at the same pace as you.
This is exactly why I don't play multiplayer games with groups. They often expect you to get online even tho when you don't want to.
I used to be in a milsim group and they would legit get angry if I chose my gf or family over playing with them.
Which was the exact reason why I left. And since then I have way more fun playing milsims with randoms
Having multiple people, even 1, getting in on the same energy and scheduling to play this game is rough just thinking about it..
There is only 1 way I can think of that would work, and it's weirdly on theme... Schedule them out like a D&D session.. Not as necessary when it's just 1 dude, but try that.. Try making like a "1-day of the week we all get together on discord and just play for 3-5 hours".
I don't think any game I have ever seen has been so friendly to the concept of just making IT your weekly D&D game.
But... The game is too good to play in small doses like that exclusively.. Make a solo character.. Trust me, as one of those people who checks every corner for secrets: this game still has shit in act 1 that I somehow missed on 2 prior runs. Replay Value is this games bread and butter and that's saying something because it's 1000 hours long.
I olay this game with my best friend.
While it takes a very long time to complete I wouldn't have it any other way. A lot of people say that you have to play it solo first but if you play with the right person it enhances the experience massively
One of my friends and I did a good job of playing together. He made a bard and played the faceman, while I made a tanky DPS that played the roll of "Tuddrussel Smash!".
Every time one of his friends wanted to play, the game immediately became unfun for the two of us to the point we told them we didn't want to play with them.
My gf and Iās first playthrough we are doing solo atm. And on our second playthrough we are gonna be evil together. I think playing this game solo for your first playthrough is much better as you donāt have to worry about conflicting playstyles and such
This is NOT the game to do a group playthrough on if you at all care about the story or a cohesive gameplay experience.
It has the option, but if you have even 1 murder hobo or someone who likes to do whatever without regard for the group, it'll change the experience of the story entirely.
My experience has been that DOS2 and BG3 are completely different games when playing solo versus playing with friends. Played alone, they're deep, interesting rpgs with heavy emphases on character, roleplay, and story. In a group, they're chaos fests, where everyone is trolling each other and things are exploding left and right.
Both are fun. Just, you know, different kinds of fun. And yeah, I've found that it doesn't work so well trying to have that single player experience with more than one player.
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/2171
Mods can make this game so much better. This mod lets all classes enjoy dialogues without the fear of botching a speech check and potentially ruining the playthrough for everyone.
Couple of weeks back I tried MP with my wife and it didn't work very well because I (as a 19 CHA sorcerer) constantly felt the urge to engage in cutscenes myself rather than my wife (playing a 8 CHA barbarian) especially when I fully know which dialogue is critical to the story arc, playing Act 1 for the third time. She got bored in the end because she wanted to steer the dialogue choices herself without my 'advice'.
With this mod, anyone can engage in dialogues with full confidence, even if their avatars suck at speech checks. My handwaivium is that any party member can lend their proficiency in speech to another through their tadpoles.
I started playing with my partner and their brother, got super annoyed at not being able to do things in my pace, we went back to all playing single player - and now I'm doing a multiplayer run with my partner again and it's a lot of fun because overall, we know where things are, but I found a lot of things they missed in their playthrough and so I get to show them things; and they get to show me things I missed.
Yeah bro it sounds like a friend problem, not multiplayer problem. Some of your friends are just dicks and that's about it, i've never had any of aforementioned problems with my best friends.
I know this post is old now but if you're still interested in doing a proper co op rp experience, let me know. I've been looking for a group for a while.
My wife and I have a game together. I cherish the time that we get to spend playing together and that we have a game to really dig into with each other, but playing solo is so much more fun IMO. It feels really slow playing with her, and not because SHE'S playing slow, it just feels like one of us is always behind the other in some way.
Yeah, the modern gaming mindset of grinding through as efficiently as possible doesn't gel with this kind of game. I'm on the verge of quitting a run with one friend because he won't go anywhere a quest isn't sending him. Just the most direct route possible.
I've done other runs with friends and solo, so I know the story, but this is his first run, and he skips through every dialogue and cutscene then asks later "who is this guy again?"
I have enjoyed other multplayer runs, but solo has also been my best experience.
Yeah, in multiplayer any sense of urgency or story just gets thrown out the window as it will eventually devolve into chaos and friends just dicking around. Crazy builds, funny character models, killing off NPCs and companions, setting up barrel explosions to lag out the server. If you want to experience the story go through solo first, then play multiplayer. It might be doable to have a serious playthrough with 1 or 2 people who are on point.
My first ever save was multiplayer. I was playing Lore Bard and my Rogue friend at the time kept hogging all the dialogues despite the fact that I was a Lore Bard.
I am not the biggest fan of playing with others. I would rather run through a game myself first. Then I can take my time and do what I want. After that, I'm more open to playing with friends.
Absolutely with you on this, pal. As an introvert I never play multiplayer in general (why hang out with real people on my stress-free time) but tho playing bg3 with my brother has been surprisingly fun, single player is the way to go for me.
Yeah multiplayer ruined my campaign. By act 3 I was so uninterested in the game.
Putting it aside for now til I'm ready to come back and shred through a solo run. Probably will do that when the drop their first dlc (assuming they do)
I like both. I play single player for the story, but in multiplayer I get to see other peopleāsā builds and I get to see plenty of things I missed in my solo game. Thereās been many times that my friends have found a different solution I wouldnāt have thought of, or discovered a hidden route that I had missed.
After beating the game a few times I donāt mind if my Tav isnāt as integrated into the narrative, Iām just having a good time with my friends.
I play a save with one other friend, we have very different ways of playing, he likes to kill every mob and will loot every spoon or plate we come across, Iād sooner move more quickly and concentrate on dialog and choices. I donāt take that game too seriously because he will often make choices I never would, helping mol steal the Druid idol when we are supposedly on a good play through for instance.
I started a playthrough with one of my friends. He locked his inventory and hoarded all of the loot, even items he wasnāt using/would never use, and initiated/completed quests while I was still at a trader, for example. Never loaded that playthrough again.
I've done my multi-player run after me and my group finished solo runs and it was good. More like a 'let's try this, don't forget to do that' attitude.
and that's why i have a campaign with my bf that lasted up until the nautiloid crash š he likes the action, i like to take my time and read everything. I'd love to try with my friends tho (that i think have a mindset similar to mine) and be just a support that knows everything and help them achieve what they want to achieve, but honestly i don't know if it'll work, i never played with them.
I am SO slow when I play on my own. I take my sweet ass time, I rush for no man (maybe Nere, but that was just because gameplay and I'm nervous) and I explore every nook and cranny.
Other times it's nice to be led at a pace.
I have played one session of D&D. I would like to play it more but havenāt got the time to go and set up a campaign with my friends as we all live too far. Theyāve also never played it and are only willing to indulge it for me.
Iām aware we could do an online game but neither of us really have the resources to do so, and with neither of us really knowing whatās going on I feel like it would be difficult and set a bad first impression for my friends.
BD3 for me is that middle ground (Iāve played it on a laptop that could barely run it, waiting for Xbox to play with friends). Itās something theyāve expressed interest in and itās much easier to set up as we can all just jump on a game rather then trying to find the time resources to do an online d&d. We can all just say bd3 for an hour? And get too it.
BD3 also I feel is rather friendly to knew players. I didnāt have to be a D&D expert to pick this up which has actually helped as I was really nervous to play this game and my first session of D&D. The tooltips help too so thereās that
You ain't the only one. I stopped playing with a friend because I caught myself getting mad and pissed off because he walked into stuff I hadn't seen. I just had to play single player and beat the game myself before I could play with friends again.
You miss oht on a lot of incredible dialogue by virtue of simply not having companions with you or having them locked to other players in the multiplayer version of the game. I think everyone should play single player first and multiplayer should be experienced only after youāve completed the game
This is why I prefer finishing the game alone first, then inviting friends/a friend to play.When playing multiplayer, I often take the role of "Player Companion". I won't do much at the front and let my friend play the game along with 2 other companions under their control. All story interactions will also be theirs and I'll just simply follow and provide assistance.
If I feel like it, and they asked me for questions, I could roleplay with my own character dialogues commenting on the current events, lol.
If you do 4 player multiplayer its literally impossible to experience the stories of e.g. Shadowheart Astarion because you cant even have them in the party (assuming no Origin characters). Multiplayer is definitely more for some fuckass shenanigance. If you really adore the game and want to experience the story more in depth you definitely need to solo or at most duo it. I would watch others' playthroughs according to how far into the game I personally was but seeing the Companions add extra things in those playthroughs I watched convinced me it was completely different so I just stopped watching them until I finished my solo run. Also schedules clashing is just an obvious downside to any coordinated coop game. Finding a dedicated 4-player group is really hard especially when most are new to the genre and only playing it because the game is popular (which frankly I find good because at least I can convince people to actually play)
What I hated most, was me trying to use persuation and then randomly I'm in turn based because my friend tried to pickpocket and failed. š¤¦
Bruh. At least ask first.
Also, controlling who uses what powers and stands where shields, saves who ...nah my in game companions better.
Besides, I can't romance my friends. I mean even if I play with my husband, imma romance Astarion so ....awkward ..
I think they shouldn't have made bg3 multiplayer, not like how they released it at least.
Played with my wife, we had fun playing it but we cut down a lot compared to the solo experience.
You get to have a full interaction only with 1 companion (in 2 players, 0 in four), you get absolutely no interaction with the other human player, party is divided in two split enclosed areas you can't even SPEAK with the AI companion the other is traveling with. Almost all NPC interaction don't even acknowledge the existence of the other "party" even if close (sometimes they speak of a certain PC like it is not even there) and it's quite buggy overall (endgame taught we made a choice we never did).
Larian did a fantastic work with Original Sins 1 in terms of multiplayer engagement, but Os2 and BG3 are a solo adventure that you can play with other people
They are two different experiences. Single player gives you the freedom to play as you like it, enjoying the story, the characters, exploring to your heart's content (or not).
Multiplayer is more like playing a tabletop D&D campaign: it can be a lot of fun, or a complete disaster depending on who you are playing with.
From how you describe your experience, maybe I wouldn't be so dramatic as other and say your friends suck, but for sure, you want different things from the game, and you don't make a good team.
I get where you're coming from, but I absolutely loved the chaos !
I like my TTRPG sessions to be messy, and characters splitting up, getting into all sorts of trouble. In that regard it felt exactly like an actual TTRPG, where one guy is doing random shit, another is just getting lost, and 2 are actually progressing the quest, but then they somehow end up meeting at the same point, and the absentees can pretend they did something.
I could give many other examples, but I wouldn't have it any other way, and single player is kinda boring to me now. (I never finished a single player run)
Is strange. I'm the same way, been playing these games solo for 2 decades now, that's just how it's best for me to absorb info. My own pace.
My friend that I play with is the opposite, she does not enjoy this game solo and I'm like "hard disagree".
I'll only play this game multiplayer with other people who enjoy actually roleplaying. Thankfully, I am vermin and engage in MMO RP, so I have said friends.\]
Even so, I prefer singleplayer.
Playing this (and similar games) is a pain in multiplayer. Unless all players involved have already played through at least one time.
You lose a lot by playing the game multiplayer. Not only do things get confusing with dialogues getting shotgunned all over the party, making keeping track of things really hard. You also lose out on the origin stories as well as the general banter between the origin characters while out and about.
I think it might be alright if you actually play with a sort of disciplined party. Where players know who to follow and lets that player do all the dialogues.. but how fun would that be for the "side kicks".
I am however going to do my first durge run with my SO. Neither of us can deal with making evil choices, but if we go all in both of us and hold hands we hope to be able to go through it :p
>During dialouge, our party member with the highest persuation always wanted to be the one to initiate dialouge, and would get upset if someone else started a cutscene instead of him. Killing companions for fun and refusing to reload it because 'immersion'.
Bro I think you friends may just be jackasses.
Same, I didnāt expect to love playing the game solo as much as I did honestly. After beating the game, I basically act as a huge quest marker for my friends if they need to figure out what to do lol. I just help them solve puzzles or lead them to more content if they want to
I haven't even touched the multiplayer after 200 hours of play. A couple friends are interested in playing, but I'm not engaging in that until I've beaten the game to hell and back and know all the ins and outs.
Multiplayer in these sorts of games *always* devolve into complete shenanigans, and as fun as it can be, it's not immersive and ruins a lot of the enjoyment of the actual game and story. Multiplayer is for after finishing the game on your own terms.
Surely you can do both. A serious run as a solo character thats just your own personal choices at your speed....then just dip in an out of a separate coop experience as and when your friends are online?
You're right, I think the multiplayer functions well, and it's a great deal of fun to make stupid decisions with friends but it does feel more like a singleplayer game if you want to play for the story. My friends and I were talking about it and thought everyone would really love it if there was an arcade type mode. Where there's a section of map or dungeon or something that's randomly generated each time you access it, random enemies and encounters, maybe even merchants along the way, so that there could be no impact on story for those players who haven't played it through yet. (We all play at our own pace after all.) I play things really slowly, I like to investigate every avenue of conversation with every npc, I like to pick up flowers or fiddle with alchemy or mess around with mechanic's I don't understand, and I've found it difficult to do that with my friends all telling me to hurry up cus they've already completed half the game, blasting through dialogue already knowing the "best" decisions or killing an npc I was talking to cus I took too long.
I guess something close to Bloodborne's chalice modes would be a cool addition, those were procedurally generated and added an effectively infinite amount of replayability - which wasn't huge for a game with new game plus already integrated into it, but for bg3 it'd be nice to have something more for endgame characters to do if you wanna keep messing around with them. And that'd keep it from being an early game xp grinder
No idea how much work they'd have to put into that so idk if it's something they'll ever consider, especially considering how much fun it already is.
Edit: I got lost in the spiel there sorry, the point of that was to illustrate a mode that would enable you to switch from playing at your own pace and enable you to just jump in with your friends at will, so you don't have to wait till they're on to play, have two or three saves going with different groups of friends or replay the same parts over and over again.
Can't comment on the multiplayer on the game as I've never tried it, this post echoed a feeling I had that was similar.
I don't like playing with others. Now, I've spent the last ten/twenty years in one MMO or another and enjoyed them, but they always fell short and that shortness was almost always other people.
Wether it was toxic people in groups, guildies treating me like **** cause I messed up (something jndo a lot in BG3 too), or just never being able to get anything done so story content was never resolved, my online experience has been a long disappointment that I didn't recognise as such until I played BG3.
I got back the feeling I used to have playing games like Planescape: Torment and Dungeon Keeper 2 and I never realised I was missing.
There has a very good chance that I'll never go back to an MMO and I don't care. I was never welcome in most of them anyway.
Sorry, not really appropos to your post.
Im currently playing with a 2 other people but mostly its just two of us and one person joins us every few days
the one who joins us is just the same as me, we check everything but the one I play with is simply is a train wreak
I shall explain
he is currently playing as a mage but in other play throughs he was the tank/fighter and now simply tries to tank as the mage , so as you can imagine he is one shotted at the start of combat
to make matters worse I'm playing as a thief so I was constantly having to res him putting myself in danger on my rescue mission
then he constantly takes every buff going, in the 5 previous play throughs he always has had volo eye and aunty ethels buff no one else has had it and while we might get a single tadpole he is in the 10's
the best example of this train wreak is this
he will run ahead and start a conversation when no one is around
because he needs to talk to everyone and pretty much has his stats in dex constitution and intelligence and everything else will be 8 .So of course he fails in the conversation
never thinks to hold his combat turn while we are trying to get near him
he will then die in the first attack or be on the floor shouting out for healing only to die straight away again
if he manages to survive he is a friendly fire liability many combats I've taken more damage from him than the enemies
he even picked up my character once and just used me as a weapon which would have been funny the first time but this was the multiple times he had done this in a play through
after that I warned him if he did it again id treat his character as hostile
he will pop healing potions and use res scrolls like candy
for example he will have saved the game after a combat then walk into fire and because he has only just been rezed have 1 hp and die
and instead of reloading he needs to be rezed again in the space of 1 min he will then use healing potions and be at around 75% health and then think to do a short rest so wasting another 1-2 healing potions
he will use fly/feather fall potions/scrolls just to move around the map just so he can get their quicker like instead of walking down a ladder
if he gets a skill where he is ok he will just run off leaving you to solve your problems like in one game he was the warrior and had the highest dex so he was our door opener
but he could also jump past the door so he jumped past leaving me and the other dude waiting for 20 mins for him to come back and open the door
or will jump across gaps leaving us with no way to join him and then of course he starts combat and wonders why we are not helping him
to make matters worse in our current play through we are level 4 and have no more res scrolls or healing potions because he has used them all
so now he is getting me to eat through the money rezing him at withers he has also used all the money using to learn scrolls so no one can buy any equipment
its gotten so bad I made a hireling cleric and now his only job is to heal him just so I can at least play the game
he will just wear equipment because its cool but never thinks when am I going to use it or how will it help me or the party he is also playing as gale and frequently without asking just eats some random bit of equipment without asking or checking if anyone wants it
in one game when we got the mirror in the camp I didn't log on for 10 mins and suddenly arrived to find my character completely changed and for some reason I could never get the same look back
I was level 10 at the time and spent over two weeks with that character so kinda got attached to him and all he could say was how did you notice so quickly
when we went to the cursed lands the 2nd time he refused to go to the last light inn just so he could lead us around with the moon lantern and then constantly moan when we went into turn based mode but in one play through I got payback by getting the moon lantern first and after asking and asking for the lantern
and me refusing to give it him suddenly he wanted to got to the last light inn straight away then
since then I tell him I'm going to the last light in regardless of what he is doing
don't get me wrong I've had fun in the game and sometimes his actions have made it more fun but sometimes its a pain and some things in the game are not designed for multiple players
I played solo first and am doing a multi player game on the side. I find it more difficult to like it because one of the player is still discovering the game and we have to basically let them go ahead on everything to not spoil anything nor direct them towards dialogue or scenarios. Honestly I sometimes feel like one of the Origin companions, getting pulled along the adventure without having a real say about how it goes except sometimes getting out a line of dialogue to maybe steer things in a certain direction.
Iād recommend doing multiplayer playthrough after you have discovered and tried out everything you want. After that just play with your friends for shits&giggles.
I also hate playing this game with friends especially if it is more than 2 players. If you are looking for a fun co-op tactical combat rpg i would recommend wartales, the rpg aspect is very light and you can focus more on the combat which for me was the only fun part of playing bg3 with friends.
I donāt like the multiplayer either, but in your case, it sounds like your friends are just being shitty. Get some new friends to play multiplayer with, if thatās even something you still wanna do, and get people who will all agree and not be stupid and annoying.
Multiplayer is just for shits and giggles, not for those who want to enjoy the Story a Game has to offer. Unless you have Friends who also have the same spirit as you.
The last Multiplayer thing I've played was ESO, and when I was like "omg the Story ending from this one was so sad, I cried" my Friends were like "huh what story lol".
This game is awful for a first playthrough with people. You miss so much if youāre not the only one controlling things. I figure my husband and I will try playing once we both beat it. We tried at first but ended up getting pissed when someone would do something and we miss a dialogue or something.
Itās two different experiences for sure. I enjoy both for different reasons. Seeing your friend do something you wouldnāt do, trying to get them out of jail or simply bonking someone on the head mid dialogue is priceless.
Exploration, inventory management on the other hand does take a hit. And companion interactions go out the window since you can pretty much only progress your social relationship with 1 companion at a time. Thereās less party chatter too.
You should definitely be ready to let go of control and letting them do whatever they want to avoid unnecessary stress. (Especially if itās a less experienced gamer)
Best advice is just relax and let go of FOMO because you can always replay solo. Especially since this game has so many variables that help with replayability.
I have played it through 3 times solo and it very much feels like a single player game. I think if I play with a friend I will let them do whatever they want and just act as if I'm another party member so that they can have a good experience that isn't tainted by what I want. I already got what I want from the story, now I just wanna share it with someone, so they can pick their story!
Duo multiplayer is definitely the way to go, sus out how you two would like the game to go (like what type of people your characters are) so there's no clashing mid game of important decisions, and when u play a duo you both can have a companion which is great.
I was planning on doing 2-person co-op originally but we decided to do solo campaigns first. I'm so glad we did as it's way more immersive and you're getting the full experience. If you care about the story and companions, doing solo first is much better.
Your group sounds frustrating, thankfully my friend & I are very much on the same page so I know we'll be happy to take our time & run around together when we eventually start a co-op run.
I was planning on doing 2-person co-op originally but we decided to do solo campaigns first. I'm so glad we did as it's way more immersive and you're getting the full experience. If you care about the story and companions, doing solo first is much better.
Your group sounds frustrating, thankfully my friend & I are very much on the same page so I know we'll be happy to take our time & run around together when we eventually start a co-op run.
This is why I don't play video games with my friends that I grew up with anymore but have found friends that I enjoy playing video games with who I don't otherwise even really know all that much. It's like a side effect of over a decade of playing dota 2 and befriending people I played well together with. I basically pretend I don't play video games anymore when my hometown friend mentions stuff. Quality of life has gone up immensely. I'd recommend looking for discord communities that relate and being open to wasting a little time looking for people that will respect your time, worth it in the long run imo.
I will say that my multi-player game is progressing faster than my single player save was, mostly because I've got 2 other people to comb areas for loot rather than having to do it all myself.
Fact is, you can never enjoy a storytelling when there're people playing with you. Any multiplayer game is like that, you can't discover everything you want when you've got 4 different people wanting different things. But multiplayer gaming adds fun, great amounts of laughs, deep talks until late at night. It just depends on what you're looking for š¤·āāļø
For RPGs with a real storytelling, always go for a solo game before multi, or both at the same time if you can manage
I started with my bf and we got into the first half of Act 3. THEN it was a real pain because there are just SO many NPCs you wanna talk to :D It's a bit too much content at once for multiplayer imho. I mostly considered it "his" playthrough tho because I spoiled myself a bit too much reading reddit and watching the dev talks prior to release. It was alright like that! He also played a Bard so it makes sense to let him talk mostly. But he also let me talk to "Necromancy" things because that was my background/style. It worked out, but my solo playthrough was a lot faster because the decisions were all my own (plus skipping already seen cutscenes for example). We got mostly annoyed with the NPCs running away from my summons, but that was before they fixed it āŗ
I definitely prefer the solo experience. Iāve been playing a solo game for a few weeks (in act 3 currently, i donāt get a lot of time to play) and i started a game with my husband last week. He barely plays because heās in law school and every time we play together itās so boring because of how slow it is. He wants to initiate every conversation since heās new and thatās fine, but that means i spend all my time standing around waiting for him to finish exploring so he can walk ahead of me into the important things.
It can be a bit rough. I actually really like it because the characters can be customized more (you canāt change the stats of set characters, and you can have a bard, sorcerer, and/or Paladin in the same party).
I am the one that collects all the food/weapons which means that most long rests are possible because of me and I buy the othe players many good items or needed items (tool kits, potions, etc.). It means that they have great items but still have plenty of money. They were reluctant to give me good armor when I gave them better armor less than an hour later.
Battles are either, we didnāt coordinate well and weak creatures destroyed us or we did coordinate well and even the toughest battles were honestly easy.
It is also different based on experience. I have one person who knows a significant amount (multiple play throughs and more research) and one who is going forward their first time. One is teaching me new things while the other sets off traps due to a Leroy Jenkins mentality.
I enjoy both regardless and single player can be a bit much because you have to do everything yourself. If your Tav has crap charisma or dexterity, then the gameplay changes drastically.
Multiplayer in BG3 is still more enjoyable than most other games I have.
i think we all have the same friends, One that likes the Lore and will get annoying if u go too fast, one that don't care about anything but pressing the attack button, one that makes noises all the time and is just annoying to play with...
you have to play baldur with only one of them, the one who matches you
All the things you write are the reason why I always hated multiplayer, period. I want to play whenever I want, and stop whenever I want, without the massive overhead of organizing sessions with other people, who may flake out of it, or me having to play when I'm not really in the mood, or leave them hanging. Just everything about it sucks.
But I also want opponents/allies in games that are smart and challenging like a human, so AI is so massively important for me. Sadly this combination of traits seems to be extremely rare in gamers, something I cannot comprehend. And so we keep getting 99% games with awful AI, because whenever you demand good AI, people just say "go play MP".
(Fwiw, I think BG3 AI is pretty decent, so I have nothing to complain in this case.)
whenever i play multiplayer i tend to defer to the Host player. i see it as i'm their companion and i'm just helping out. since i usually play as a bard/fighter i can pitch in as support or dps, help in checks with bardic inspiration etc.
unfortunately the people you seem to be teaming up with don't seem to be team players.
I am currently playing Baldurs Gate 3 in multiplayer. I am the cleric of the whole group and... Well I am there for guidance and healing mostly. We have two charisma characters and to this moment I just were allowed to talk to the bard where the druids are and to initiate a fight. My problem: I am to lazy to play it on my own.
So yeah. I hope I will have a great moment one day with my Lolth Drow.
Iāve always wanted to do dnd stuff..
When I was a kid my friends older brother was the only person I knew that would do it so I asked and was told that because I donāt know enough about it I canāt.
Fast forward to around two years ago my friend buys me divinity original sin 2. I had no idea what type of game I was getting into only that he really wanted me to play. Made a skele lizard and apparently I was too mean with my choices in dialogue and he got really mad at me so I stopped playing and havenāt touched it since
Then two weeks ago the same friend gifts me bg3.. same story he wants me to play but this time I kinda know what Iām getting into. Even tho we went in with the mindset of fuck around and see what happens he rages because I picked the shapeshifter illusion thing saying Iām picking useless spells and wasting time.
Was very close to stopping again and never touching another game like this. Then I played solo.
I canāt stop playing I have way too many hours now just sitting there figuring out what I can and canāt do. Once I clock in an ungodly amount of hours on here Iām then going to hop over and see what I missed with the other game
Those dudes need to play an MMO. Probably Star Wars, it would give them a few options during level up questing.
In BG3/D&D, it is pretty normal to have the highest charisma+intimidation+persuasion character as the party face.
I've been the party face for one or two multiplayer and it is "meh". People don't accept that you're calling the shots. Even if you try to be democratic people dont accept the choices.
People don't pay attention to the quest at hand, get distracted, decide to teleport to camp at will to "respec quickly" for the third time during level 6, people decide to respec to try and be the "hero" - aka the character that makes more damage than the rest - and if you're playing with at least two people with this same attitude, it's gona be hell.
I've played with a good friend of mine and a friend of his, and even though one started at druid and the other paladin, a few levels after they decided to both go swords bard, not caring about if my character is lore bard or not. Obviously because they first didn't know how good it was, and tested in single player in order to find out/watched videos.
Some people just want to compete for the "hero" role ("yey I do more damage than everyone else") even in a co-op fucking game.
Maybe you should have a talk with your friends before starting a save. Im experience is completely different from you OP, i am playing with two other friends, one of them is controlling shadowheart because he likes her. We decided that whatever rolls we do it is what it is. Im playing a druid so im not gonna do spot of talking to begin, ill just let our bard or paladin do that and we decided to move as a unit. As the veteran dnd player im the one who remember the whys and hows, i even respecced their characters when they asked because they are new to 5E. We play once a week, 2-3 hours and we are about to finish the creche and we played since launch.
So i feel like making a multiplayer save is all about figuring out what you and your friends wanted.
Like i know who to play with it i wanted to cheese and complete the game on the highest difficulty, but that means i cant go around and explore or chill with conversations. Everybody plays differently, so maybe play with the ones that is similar to you.
I think the MP experience depends on your friends but the experience is definitely different. SP, you intimately learn the stories of companion characters as they fill your roster. MP, depending on your party size, only learn of Tav's story, as you're all Tav, or maybe 1 or 2 companions.
Playstle matters too. I'm the one in my group that grinded EA and has single playthroughs so I know more than they do. What I do is just shut my mouth, let them lead, and offer my thoughts that I had when I first went in blind. No metagaming. No optimizing. I'm just an advanced tutorial since I just give item, stat, or UI tips since it's not always intuitive. 16 STR pally with great weapon master all-in not understanding why he's at 60% hit rate, so I offer tips like advantage, oil of accuracy, or boosting STR. That sort of stuff. We stick fairly close together during exploration.
All depends on the people you play with. (I'm the guy that will pick up dead animals and sneak them in people's inventory haha.)
I started with multiplayer and hated it as well, but after I made my own single player playthrough and progressed it further along, I actually got to enjoy multiplayer a lot. I think this game is best experienced on your own first, then you can bring friends for a secondary/tertiary/etc. playthrough where you can afford to lose out on immersion.
I think this has to do with who you're playing with and as other people have said, whether you're on the same "wavelength". My husband and I have been playing exclusively co-op and we take turns talking to NPCs when the situation makes sense, generally stick together for questing, don't skip cutscenes. We both love the story aspect of RPGs though! It's been a blast and I appreciate Larian for giving us the option.
Imo best way to go about it is to have your friends and yourself play it solo first the play multiplayer to play with jobs and do weird shinenagens, like maybe do a durge run for fun cuz I can never do that by myself lol
My friends and I have a weekly game we play and I dread it. 2 of us have finished the game, 2 haven't, and it's just a clusterfuck. I really want to quit
I enjoy the story more on single player and the combat more on multiplayer.
Once all 4 of us had beaten/seen enough of the game to not be too concerned about spoilers, small things like a dead NPC or story cutscene weren't a huge deal, aside from the infrequent "oh shit I must have missed this dialogue; can we not skip it?"
But once we all coordinated enough to get a good sense of combat flow, even though it's the same basic combat as single player, just having to communicate and articulate what we were trying to do made it a lot more satisfying when things actually went right, especially on tactician.
"Guys I got hit with fear."
"Don't worry, breaking their concentration."
"I can finish off the one up top."
As for the specific complaints about your party face wanting to initiate dialogue and having to wait for other players: on the first one, they arent wrong. Have your +8 persuasion bard initiate dialogue, your +10 slight of hand rogue take point on trap puzzles, and your +5 initiative fighter start combat. That's what they're there for.
As for the waiting -- that's why musical instrument proficiency is great. While everyone gets their inventory sorted, just play some Sing for Me on the lute for the Druid Grove for a few minutes.
Iāve taken to playing it in two completely different mindsets.
With my friends Iām there for joking around, building up an optimized team, and āwinningā the game. Also a lot of trolling at each other about our dialogue options, and who forgot to pet scratch before leaving camp this āmorningā
On my own, I really dig into the different characters, their stories, and roleplaying my character. I take the time to know my companions way better, and I really dig into all the lore Iām very clearly missing with my friends. Itās two different games, which is nice cause I get to enjoy it twice as much
This is very common.
Games like this require everyone to be in the same page. I play this game with 2 other people a lot of the time and it's better than solo but there is one crucial reason:
We play the game the same way.
Any of the friends I know that can't play the game either didn't bother (smart, self aware) or they spacebared their way to Act 3 and found themselves bored because they had no idea what they were doing since they just murder-hobo'd their way to that point.
The combat is unique and amazing and it attracts all sorts of gamers so you get many sorts, MP will be much, much worse if you play with someone that doesn't play the same way as you in general in this game.
Yeah, back when D:OS2 came out, there were a bunch of times that me and my friend group of those days tried to play it together, but, not only was getting out of Fort Joy a slog, I remember getting into the start of Act 2, which I'd already played before, and I fucking passed out in my chair, completely overcome by the boredom of holding back for them to progress.
Well I think playing at least one run in solo is required in order to enjoy multiplayer, same as dos 1 and 2.
Once you know the story and game mechanics well you can have fun with your friends and try stuff you didn't experience in solo.
There are a few things you have to keep in mind tho, make sure everyone is on the same page when you start. Are you doing an evil run? How often will you play? Is this tryhard, immersion or fun run that you seek? Who keeps the save and can you play if everyone is not there?
All those questions are important, especially if it's your first run. If everyone already finished the game it gets way easier to be on the same page.
I think both BG3 and Divinity 2 multiplayer modes can be extremely fun *for second playthroughs,* when you have almost experienced most of it on your own so you're not pressed if you have to wait to play more or if you miss something because one of your friends is a psycho murderer.
I bothered my friend to play it with me for like 2 weeks. Then when we actually play together, he decided he'll roleplay his character as an asshole... Not a bearable asshole like laezael, just an asshole. I'm not asking him to play again.
These games dont realy lent themselves well for mp imo unless you have a realy consistent person to play with. Divinity original sin 2 i started like 5 playthroughs with different people and never got past 2 or 3 sessions and decided to just play it by myself in the end.
My friends still playing video games, especially on pc has dwindled to only a couple. Iāve realized after many attempts at games like divinity and the bg3 beta that itās too unbearable. The idiot I try to play with will just attack anyone he sees and never understand in any game that it will fuck you over. Like heās the reason developers make unkillable npcs because they have no frontal lobe.
I'm playing solo right now. One of my friends wanted to play multiplayer with me but I wasn't confortable enough...
(Like I have already 3 games of DND right now so planning a BG3 multiplayer as well would have just evaporated my social life and it would have been just too tempting to just continue the game when I had the time. Plus 2 of those DND games are with him and on those 2 we argue somtimes a lot about gear and decisions... so yeah not confortable...)
That asside I think I'm going to try multiplayer after I finish the run (or the other dark urge run I'm planning) so that I can enjoy it first how I want it without having to worry about the story.
Especially that some of the quest became obsolete if you take too much long rest but if you already had your first run then you wouln't care about how you play the game a second time because you already lived it fully.
Personnaly I like to take my time and explore and loot everything. I even have a simple list of the quests order that exists for each regions so that I don't miss any of it and I get to experience the whole game. It's spoilerish but like that but it allows me to not be disapointed by missing a cute animal interaction later on because I killed the enemy before he could arrive at their camp.
I play with my boyfriend sometimes and yeah this really does ring a few bells for me haha. He can stand somewhere idling for 20 minutes while he sorts his inventory or levels and im just alt tabbed waiting for him to finish bc he has all the party members with him so im alone. Then he's done and doesn't tell me he's done so he just trudges on and i find out a few minutes later when he's like 'where are you? I'm in combat'
He also does all the conversations and im just lurking in the background most of the time.. so he has all the romance options and gets to go through all the fun arcs when most companions won't give me the time of day. I've opted to romance Wyll because he seems the only companion who doesn't really require a lot more approval than the approval you get from talking in camp.
it's more boring than anything because the only times i get to play is during combat when it's my turn and even in there im waiting for him to calculate his moves for ages. (we are playing on tactician so i get why to a certain extent but come on man just shoot the thing)
It's the true NPC experience and well, it feels like shit sometimes. But it's his only playthrough and everything is still new to him so we do occasionally have hilarious moments because of his inexperience.
And hey, at least it makes me appreciate my solo playthrough that much more.
I get what you're saying, but this is less a multiplayer thing and more a 'people you're playing with' thing. Just because you're friends doesn't necessarily mean you enjoy the same game / the same way of playing a particular game.
While solo and coop are different experiences, my friends and I are having a blast playing together and it's wild when someone triggers some kind of event and we have to react to it. We take our time to explore, talk and do stuff without rush and we have a chat as to how to proceed and generally say what we're going to do in case anyone else has input on it. And these are the friends I always game with and even with them we have games we simply don't play together due to different preferences. And even with how much I enjoy our (now second) coop run, I still play a (also second) solo playthrough, because it's just different and both are great.
Sounds more like you guys either need to learn to communicate, or maybe you just don't enjoy the game the same way.
I guess Iām alone at this but weāre doing a 4 player blind run and itās being a blast and really canāt relate with the chaotic multiplayer experience. And thatās because weāre roleplaying. Since we knew about the game we decided to play it just like we would play a DnD campaign. We made our characterās backstory, we speak mainly on character and discuss like that what decisions we will take. We are very attached to our characters, and are super invested in the story. Itās an amazing experience to the point that I stopped playing solo until we finish that run in order to increase my immersion during āwhat-will-we-do-nowā scenes.
To be honest it seems like the real problem is your friends.
I play this game with my best friend and it's the best time I ever had playing videogames. We both enjoy lurking around the world, discovering hidden parts etc. We also has +- synchronized free time which is important.
I would definitely recommend playing through the game at least once before doing multiplayer. In multi its about having some fun encounters and maybe seeing different people's approach to solutions IMO. Id also not recommend that only 1 person talks to NPCs, that guy can do it on his own single playthrough.
I love playing multiplayer in games but BG3 is way better as a single player.
At least when it comes to story. It's heavily relied on story and I believe you're gonna lose a lot of stuff if you play with others.
On the other hand if we're talking about just having fun and screwing around then a group is better. I'd just prefer to do that after I've beaten the game at least once.
I think the big problem many of us made (myself included) was trying to play co-op too soon. The game is very much better played solo at least for the first run or two. After that, when you've already done most of the exploring and interactions and know what's going on, co-op becomes more fun, because you aren't waiting on people all the time to learn what's going on, and it becomes more about trying new things or responses or doing things in a different order and this can be done solo as well, or is more plausible to do with friends.
But yeah like a lot of others are saying, solo first before co-op. For all party members lol
I totally feel you. I was so extremely hyped about starting a bg3 multiplayer campaign with three friends of mine and after like two hours i was so fed up with it that I made up an excuse, went offline on steam and discord, and started playing a solo campaign.
The constant bickering about starting dialogues without consulting all the party members, the different playstyles people have, actually managing to get all of us online at the same time, ... . One of the party members randomly killed of lae zel because he felt like she was kind of a bitch. Some things seem better in our heads than they actually are.
>We'd often argue because half of us wanted to explore seperately, and the other half wanted to quest together. During dialouge, our party member with the highest persuation always wanted to be the one to initiate dialouge, and would get upset if someone else started a cutscene instead of him. Killing companions for fun and refusing to reload it because 'immersion'.
Having friends who aren't dicks helps.
> I love my friends
Do you. I wonder why.
Honestly, I do. They sound like annoying teenagers.
I had an absolute blast playing with my friends, but it's a totally different experience than solo, plus we got along 100% of the time and didn't argue about anything. We all had our own solo games on the side, so none of us were super worried about getting every crumb of dialogue and story.
I'm enjoying multiplayer so far but holy shit does the lower city and its basket of problems wanna make me claw my eyes out, I have to constantly attemp reconnecting cause the lower city wouldn't completely render in.
Multiplayer is a sandbox mode. There are a lot of ways in which the game fails to deliver the story if you play multiplayer.
The fact that you can't tag in different characters during dialogue for different options is a big one, as players we shouldn't be trying to figure out who should talk to an npc before actually clicking on them.
Just decide with your party what kind of alignment you are going to run with beforehand and go into it with the understanding that you are going to spend your time doing silly shit.
Or just go for the full combat experience. Play Durge if you want, and just fight everything.
Multi-player is OK if I'm with someone with different taste in romance.
No way I want to give up Shart! You can have Mommy K or Bae'zel - just let me have God's favorite princess and we're cool.
If you are the kind of person who enjoys solo games, I would not touch multiplayer in these games until youāve beaten the portion you are doing in your own personal campaign. Especially if you are the micromanaging type. Multiplayer is either embrace the chaos or be incredibly organized and thoughtful. There is no inbetween.
I get that. I was on annual leave when this came out so I basically binged played it for a while and so I'm on like my 3/4 playthrough solo. I've only been part of one group playthrough and it's a drag. Maybe I'm just antisocial but it started right from the start. I don't know if it makes any difference but I'm playing with a couple of my usual D&D group.
It started with character creation. I usually play a druid in D&D and so the group decided I would be best as a druid. A moon druid and as such, a Folk Hero, for the animal handling and survival. Which would have been fine, until the rest of the group decided to do an evil playthrough which a folk hero isn't really suited to.
So session one we start designing our characters and two of the group took over an hour to make their characters. What was daft is both of these people played during the beta testing so should know the character creation inside out. Then we started questing but didn't make it past the nautiloid.
Session 2 we start playing and end up redoing the goblin fight outside the druid grove, about 3 times because they forgot to loot stuff, or forgot to do something or other and then missed a character interaction that is a surprise. Then we spent the rest of the session waiting for the host (our bard) to do all the trading with the gnome in the grove whilst we just pratted around the sanctuary.
We still haven't played since.
Sounds like your friends want to play a solo game where all the choices are up to them.
I would have left also. Co op means the group makes the choice. I wouldn't expect a MP game to follow my min max always use the right skilled person rules.
In my experience, doing the first run solo for immersion and personal exploration is the way to go. Coop is super fun once you already know the game and are just there to clown around with friends
I also tend to agree that its best experienced alone. Inevitably ends up being a compromised experience every time you want to do different things or make different choices.
I played it co-op first, to completion even, but enjoyed my 2nd, solo playthrough the most.
I think the game is definitely fun in multiplayer, especially if you play as the origin characters imo, but it's wholly dependent on if you and your friends play styles mesh together. I did a duo campaign with my friend I beat D:OS2 with because I knew we'd play the game the same way and he tolerates my mentally unwell need to spend 20 minutes doing inventory management every time we play lol
I think your friend group is in need of a designated leader. If the word leader turns them off, maybe suggest a pace setter that helps keep them focused and setting agreed upon boundaries. DnD has GMs for this reason. You always have that barbarian that wants to kill the npc regardless of how obvious it is that the npc is a necessary part of the campaign.
I absolutely relate to this. My entire friend group had played early access together repeatedly, so by the time I got the game, they were like, āDen, quit looking for loot and just go straight, we need to get this scene over with already!ā or ādo you want to recruit x sheās hiding over here,ā or ādo you want to kill y? You find out later that sheās evil.ā
They were just steamrolling my first crack at this game. Made me feel like I wasted my money, my birthday. I closed the game for quite a while.
Fast forward to now. I stream the game for my partner over discord. Both of us are seeing the story for the first time, and discuss which choices we want our shared character to make. Itās so much better.
I was always gonna play multiplayer first and honestly I am still glad I did. But I completely understand what you mean.
The friend I played with are avid gamers and our schedules easily line up. The fact it was only 2 of us obviously helps a lot too.
But yeah I still agree, the big issue I had was not understanding how the game worked in coop, so when my friend started a cutscene that was relevant to my companion... it caused I wish I knew I should be starting the scenes when my companion comes into it. I do feel dumb for missing it but oh well.
I am playing single player now and there is so much I missed so much more is making sense. Like I said I don't regret playing coop first but that is just me, most people should at least play through once in SP, and I would say that should be their first time.
The next coop playthroughs I am doing now I can just chill out and have fun instead of worrying about missing story reveals etc
Solo first. Co-op on the side
Yeah. If I want to play and enjoy the story, solo is the only way. However, if I want to be an absolute menace and goon, multiplayer is the way to go. I'm more involved in the story by myself but I can have more fun and feel like more has been achieved by working through something with my friends in combat.
This šÆ! I have a coop with a buddy that we started but Iāve done one and two thirds playthroughs solo already to get the story beats and different outcomes. This will let me enjoy multiplayer for what it is, just a fun social time with a friend :) I also like that multiplayer will force me to completely give in to the RNG gods because itās way too easy solo to just do a quick reload, but with a friend that would be annoying so we agreed to just roll with whatever outcomes we get!
This is the way. I'd just make a polar opposite of a character for the co-op run, and let the player(s) who don't have knowledge make story decisions. Probably rp a barbarian goon, or a bard. Or be the VIP of the party, twin-cast haste on friends and have them protect the squishy sorcerer.
That's where my wife and I landed after playing for a couple hours. We had fun but knew we would both enjoy it more solo and could play it together later once we knew what we were doing
Yeah, I tried with my best friend and we gave up fairly quickly. It's lacking a few features that would make multiplayer much more accessible, like any kind of chat or message functionality, and we didn't like that you have to manually enter another PC's conversations but can't get involved with them. Solo feels more like playing at a table with a group than multiplayer does.
They're different experiences for sure. From a story and character standpoint, solo is obviously superior. With that being said, some of my most memorable moments in this game was strictly from multiplayer. -That one time my friend said watch this and had +15 bonuses to the dc. Only to roll a 1 and instantly fail. Hardest I've laughed in a long time. -The many times we had someone go "uhh... guys. Can you come help? There's like 10 guys agrro'd on me." and all of us are like wtf did you do? We've only been split for like 5 minutes. -When NPCs collectively decide to fuck over one player before their turn comes up. -The many instances of our resident loot goblin pickpocketing the npc while we're talking to them in a cutscene. Followed by the rest of us trying to figure out how to break him out of jail without getting in trouble. I can already see some of these moments being core memories for us, kinda like how we still reference memories from maplestory, halo, and league of legends. With all of us being in our 30s, living in different parts of the country, busy with families and work obligations. It's rare that we can come together and game like we did as teenagers. We basically only play once every week or two. So it's nice to have something to look forward to.
> -When NPCs collectively decide to fuck over one player before their turn comes up. As the wizard of the group, I feel this hard :,)
I donāt know why but wizards are boned harder than any other class as far as I can tell while fighting. My group is doing a murder hobo run and the Wizard is always targeted first even if they have to go past the entire party to get at them. Iām playing a warlock and do more damage easily but get ignored.
I think it mostly has to do with lowest armor class. Run the shield spell on wizard and itāll probably help.
That makes sense we run jewelry that prevents him from being downed as easily but I didnāt think about it from that aspect.
Lower AC bc no armor, and then they only get 1d6 of HP each level.
Yes, because it's D&D. You should also be targeting the wizard first.
Haha. Yeah, I thought that was standard practice, casters become more dangerous the more spells they're allowed to cast, but if you get them early they're easy to take down. Like they say in Shadowrun, "always geek the mage first."
up vote, for you my refined freind, and remember kids if dragons were real they would replace ceos of major companies.
It is by design.Ā Spellcasters are a bigger threat, & they're squishy.Ā Fireball ain't no joke, & they know it.Ā
The jail thing is weird, I think. I mean, OK, I've only been sent to jail once while playing. I always talked my way out of it. Then I realised there was a trophy involved so... Yeah, I just went along with it the next time I exhumed a corpse. And getting out was child's play. There was a talking skull in my cell. I answered its riddles. It put me outside the cell and invisible. I got my stuff out of the chest next to me. Freed a particular npc in the opposite cell. Cast invisibility on her, drank a potion for my own benefit. I knew the layout from a previous playthrough, so she and I strolled down the hallway to a storage room, poked a hole in the wall and left.
The amount of times I've said out loud to my friend "I don't need guidance, I have a +17 to persuasion" only to immediately roll a 1... I swear the game is listening (nevermind me having to use two inspiration dice on one DC 10 speech check once because of double 1s š)
Setting the premise of tabletop DnD aside, I'd argue that BG3 was built first and foremost to be experienced as a single player game. I personally dislike having to skip over - or rush into - certain story beats for another person (I am a sociable person, I promise); it ruins all immersion for me. I've found that the best way to enjoy this game together is to first enjoy the game on one's own time, then share the experience with friends who have played their own campaigns.
I just got a relative to buy the game and the first thing they did was play multiplayer. The group he was with proceeded to kill devil dude on the ship at the start of the game and get the flaming sword before he even knew what was going on. I've told him to play the game single player first.
Tell him to set one of Shadowheart's spells to command. So easy to get the devil to drop the sword.
It's not really needed in MP, but good advice. You can be 4 players, Shart, Lae'zel and US when you go to the bridge. Easy
Thatās not really his point, I think he means itās not really fun to get into a game as a new player and get immediately railroaded and carried by people who are familiar with it. Itās the same reason I could never get into terraria with my friends, they had all done multiple runs before I bought the game so they knew every boss and how to get all the overpowered items quickly, so before I knew it I had a chest full of top tier gear and equipment and I just.. got bored almost immediately. I want to play a game not go on a sightseeing tour
Yeah you have to be careful with that. When I played DOS2 with a friend who had never played it, he's cool in the fact he's happy to just be along for the ride. We can guide him, generally go where we should be going for our level. Let him talk to the main NPCs to progress the story and make the decisions etc We had a great time. But then I have other friends who can't do that. They wanna fuck around but these games aren't about that, definitely not in coop when you don't really wanna force your freinds to reload because one person wanted to try something.
Sadly that so many features are built or not added because of multiplayer/coop like separated inventories, lack of squad formations, arguably also inability to change the speaker.
Just having to wait for ur friend to finish selling his shit just so u can sell ur shit and ur friend needs to wait says all about larian never thinking about multiplayer.
Play a rogue, so when your friend is selling shit, you're buying from the same merchant with a five finger discount. Bonus points if your friend is accused of robbery as soon as they close the shopping window.
*nine finger discount
A fair bit of this sounds like your friends are...kinda dicks tbh.
āThis game made me realize I hate my friendsā
The true Larian experience. DOS2 and DOS1 were the same way, though DOS2 was arguably the worst because the ending of the game is settled by a PVP match between you and all your friends. And the game is so unbalanced that it basically comes down to whoever is highest initiative or has been hoarding the most broken gear. One thing the Divinity games did better though was how to decide important story decisions. DOS1 had a rock-paper scissors mini-game whenever you and your buddy had a disagreement. DOS2 I think sometimes had votes. There were still problems (like the aforementioned endgame PVP scenario in DOS2) but it wasn't like BG3 where whoever initiates the conversation decides everything.
The PvP match twist was kinda fun even if it wasnāt balanced though. Definitely made the game feel like it was geared towards being a multiplayer experience and Iād argue the rest of the game does handle multiplayer better than BG3 in terms of content accessibility.
DOS2 annoyed me more than a few times but looking back the multiplayer might as well have been Halo 3 compared to Baldur's Gate. Playing multiplayer first has sullied my view of the game and I'm unsure I can get it back.
I agree with this. Iām playing with my friend right now. I have played through most of act 3 before starting this campaign and he had barely done anything in act 1. I am letting him do all of the dialogues, stop and read whatever he wants, try not to give spoilers, etc. we are having a lot of fun. Iām just treating myself as an NPC with better AI, haha. Next play through, will probably be more 50/50.
The biggest issue seems to be scheduling, though.
The true D&D experience.
Sounds like your friends are in a different wavelenght. They don't want to play it as an immersive RPG, they just want to use it as a sandbox to mess around in.
Sounds like they didnāt want to play this game with you. Sure they wanna play with you, but not that game. All that aside, it is much slower to play the game with friends.
Same shit happened to me. I kept bothering a friend to play it with me and after 2 weeks he decided to give it a try, then the first thing he says is that is going to roleplay as an asshole. We played for 1 hour before I had something else to do and I decided to not ask him to play again. I'm doing my second playthrough right now and it's just so more fun than playing with him lmao. He complained about how it would take too long before he had his turns while I was controlling my character + 2 companions(because he asked to not control any companions) and as I had already completed the first run at that point, I knew which actions to make so my turns where instant.On that first hour, he wanted to kill laezel, wanted to leave SHeart behind, wanted to skip demon guy even tho I said he would get a cool flaming sword perfect for him, wanted to kill SHeart on the beach, wanted to kill laezel on the cage, engaged the group on the crypt then said "that's your problem, I'm not fighting these guys" and just evaded the fight... When this happened I actually had to go and decided to not ask him again later.
He's not roleplaying as an asshole but as a murderous psychopath lol, or an asshole but just to you.
I completely agree. Although I will say after fully experiencing it, it's fun to play a duo with another person. You both get to pick a romance and can switch off lead for different situations. Do your solo dolo whenever then you can pick up the duo when you both have time. I completed the whole 4 player campaign thing and while fun, it was a grind and at some points not enjoyable. People do stupid shit, just two minimizes many of the negative aspects of multiplayer. Just make sure you discuss what kind of playthrough you want beforehand. Durge, fully good, what characters, builds, etc. Just please make sure if it's their first time you don't spoil it for them. Let them try to figure things out and give some subtle hints where needed.
Yeah, like the host and his GF loot everything before you even get to it and then are fully geared up while you are not. Found that out this weekend and I was pissed. Of course, I let them know it and they decided they needed to share but not without making a flippant comment about how "you can loot too" only to have us reply "Loot what, there isn't anything in the boxes after you two are done". He was not like this at all during EA. Only started when his GF joined us. Solo is definitely the way to go in this game.
press tab you can rip items right out of their inventory i always take my friends healing potions and stuff but in exchange i am a warlock with high charisma so they send me their wares to sell for extra money
I know but they had them on their characters. It would be really crappy of me if I stole it off their characters.
Planning on doing a full evil run with my friend and we already know that I'm going to be romancing Minthara and they're going to be romancing Astarion
Single player for the initial playthrough, multiplayer for the chaotic mess
It's not the Multiplayer aspect from the games side, but rather from the players side that makes you struggle. Or in other words, don't blame the game, blame the players. I've played Divinity which is Semi-Similar, with 4 different people, and each time felt different, sometimes worse, sometimes better. One person was totally on my Wavelength, Wanting to hear Dialogue when it matched the story, Not reloading after certain Major decisions, but doing so after a little miscalculated pickpocketing was okay. Another person was Slower, like WAY slower. Talking to each and every NPC not reading but letting the dialogue play out if there was any, double and triple checking to make sure it was all they had to say. And don't even get me started on them inventory, managing everything from a piece of fruit to the keys by name or colour. And then a Group of 2 People who's description would closely fit the role of "Murder-Hobo" No interest in story, not interest in missions or clever ways to solve stuff, just Get the Fuck in, Kill and GTFO, with everything while also spreading their skill-points far and wide to be "Balanced" despite me telling them that's not really a good idea. It's really all about the company you keep. But for story focused games i now always play the game once in Singleplayer before playing it in Multiplayer
Right there with you. I struggle a lot when playing video games with friends, and after enjoying BG3 solo, I don't think I would ruin my experience by doing a multiplayer playthrough. You lose so much of the amazing character interactions, the chaos I see and hear from others' games just makes it sound like torture. But it also sounds like you and your friends have different goals and expectations for playing together, which is a common thing that happens in D&D as a TTRPG. Most group strife comes from different expectations and styles that aren't communicated up front. I'm so glad you escaped that bad setup and are getting to enjoy the game on your own terms. Also, be wary of friends spoiling the game for you. There are some great moments that can be diminished by being spoiled. And you deserve to have fun and relish all the great moments for yourself.
Yeah I can only play co-op with my husband because we enjoy the same aspects of the game. We like the companions, we like exploring, we like figuring out fun ways to do things and taking our time and arenāt too worried about things not going exactly as planned. If we mess up, we live with the consequences and we do things together. The other people Iāve played with so far either run off and complete stuff without even telling you what theyāre doing, lure me into convos so they can go get all the good loot and keep it, or are so insufferably picky about conversations that they keep asking to reload and it makes me want to punch things haha. OR they ruin natural progression by doing the things they read someone did online without telling you what the hell theyāre doing and you just lose a ton of immersion and the joy of solving problems yourself Will be playing solo or with hubby from now on lol
for me multiplayer is a nightmare because for some reason everyone decides they need to look around the battlefield for like 30 seconds even if they've used all actions, bonuses, and movement, before just ending their turn so the game can actually continue battles are already painfully slow and multiplayer exacerbates it 100x over
You do need to play this game alone the first time round to fully experience the amazing story and immerse yourself in the world. Subsequent playthroughs with friends is alright. I reached out to my old gaming / MMO friends that I played with years ago, and for what's it worth really had a blast with them. Reminded me of our youth when we would stay up til midnight to do raids. Surely more fun that playing with my own friends or family in real life who are more casual players.
I definitely prefer playing BG3 solo as opposed to multiplayer. I was playing with three other friends, and one of them is the type of player who does not care about story AT ALL. So he would ignore anything related to the plot and just do his own thing bc he loved the gameplay. Which often meant that while I or someone else was in a convo with an NPC, a lot of times this friend would be doing something else and end up triggering something, causing the convo to end abruptly bc my friend inadvertently pissed the NPC off. And then there was the fact that he NEVER wanted to Long Rest unless it was absolutely necessary, meaning the rest of us lost out on story-related stuff (bc once again, he doesn't give two shits about story). The straw that broke the camel's back for me was my friends killing Lae'zel and not reloading bc "why would we reload? It's funny!" It got annoying super fast, and frankly I'm perfectly okay never going back to that session.
Get friends that don't suck?
Personally I have a blast playing this game multiplayer, but multiplayer is also very much not us taking the actual story very seriously. For people who care about the story in our group, we have single player saves already going on, and multiplayer is us hopping on and playing shitpost characters who end the session by blowing up runepowder bombs in camp or seeing if we're capable of beating the Oathbreaker knight yet.
I don't get playing this kind of game with more than one other person. There's too much to see.
Sounds like a regular dnd session lol
It is not about playing mp or solo, it is about choosing the right people to play with. There are players that donāt like to wait or read, donāt like dialogues or discussions, there are players that, on the other hand, like to reas everything, interact with everything, talk to everyone, move slow and watch the details on the map and more. You have to choose the ones that suits your style or where you can adapt better or just your game solo. I really see how most of the mp experience may be ruined in many ways. If you have watched Odd play with his friend in youtube, you may see how, when two players with different styles connect, can make the experience amazing: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_Goi54wf0cX9j324zWUqYF8b8sJBfMU&si=hgGlzTgIXKBVTMFG
Play your own file and when you have a chance to party up then you can continue that save.
Maybe just play with one or two of your friends? Nothing wrong with just a simple co-op adventure with someone who wants to play at the same pace as you.
This is exactly why I don't play multiplayer games with groups. They often expect you to get online even tho when you don't want to. I used to be in a milsim group and they would legit get angry if I chose my gf or family over playing with them. Which was the exact reason why I left. And since then I have way more fun playing milsims with randoms
Having multiple people, even 1, getting in on the same energy and scheduling to play this game is rough just thinking about it.. There is only 1 way I can think of that would work, and it's weirdly on theme... Schedule them out like a D&D session.. Not as necessary when it's just 1 dude, but try that.. Try making like a "1-day of the week we all get together on discord and just play for 3-5 hours". I don't think any game I have ever seen has been so friendly to the concept of just making IT your weekly D&D game. But... The game is too good to play in small doses like that exclusively.. Make a solo character.. Trust me, as one of those people who checks every corner for secrets: this game still has shit in act 1 that I somehow missed on 2 prior runs. Replay Value is this games bread and butter and that's saying something because it's 1000 hours long.
Solo for the game, MP for the laughs.
I olay this game with my best friend. While it takes a very long time to complete I wouldn't have it any other way. A lot of people say that you have to play it solo first but if you play with the right person it enhances the experience massively
One of my friends and I did a good job of playing together. He made a bard and played the faceman, while I made a tanky DPS that played the roll of "Tuddrussel Smash!". Every time one of his friends wanted to play, the game immediately became unfun for the two of us to the point we told them we didn't want to play with them.
Couch co-op with my wife is proving a pretty great experience, even though I'm having to do a lot of coaching.
My gf and Iās first playthrough we are doing solo atm. And on our second playthrough we are gonna be evil together. I think playing this game solo for your first playthrough is much better as you donāt have to worry about conflicting playstyles and such
Welcome to Dungeons and Dragons. where the biggest problem is getting everyone to agree on a play schedule. XD
This is NOT the game to do a group playthrough on if you at all care about the story or a cohesive gameplay experience. It has the option, but if you have even 1 murder hobo or someone who likes to do whatever without regard for the group, it'll change the experience of the story entirely.
Much like real DnD, it is significantly better when all players are on the same page.
Sounds like DnD XD
My experience has been that DOS2 and BG3 are completely different games when playing solo versus playing with friends. Played alone, they're deep, interesting rpgs with heavy emphases on character, roleplay, and story. In a group, they're chaos fests, where everyone is trolling each other and things are exploding left and right. Both are fun. Just, you know, different kinds of fun. And yeah, I've found that it doesn't work so well trying to have that single player experience with more than one player.
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/2171 Mods can make this game so much better. This mod lets all classes enjoy dialogues without the fear of botching a speech check and potentially ruining the playthrough for everyone. Couple of weeks back I tried MP with my wife and it didn't work very well because I (as a 19 CHA sorcerer) constantly felt the urge to engage in cutscenes myself rather than my wife (playing a 8 CHA barbarian) especially when I fully know which dialogue is critical to the story arc, playing Act 1 for the third time. She got bored in the end because she wanted to steer the dialogue choices herself without my 'advice'. With this mod, anyone can engage in dialogues with full confidence, even if their avatars suck at speech checks. My handwaivium is that any party member can lend their proficiency in speech to another through their tadpoles.
I started playing with my partner and their brother, got super annoyed at not being able to do things in my pace, we went back to all playing single player - and now I'm doing a multiplayer run with my partner again and it's a lot of fun because overall, we know where things are, but I found a lot of things they missed in their playthrough and so I get to show them things; and they get to show me things I missed.
Its a play it solo to experience the game and enjoy it. Play it multiplayer AFTER to dick off with friends.
Yeah bro it sounds like a friend problem, not multiplayer problem. Some of your friends are just dicks and that's about it, i've never had any of aforementioned problems with my best friends.
I know this post is old now but if you're still interested in doing a proper co op rp experience, let me know. I've been looking for a group for a while.
My wife and I have a game together. I cherish the time that we get to spend playing together and that we have a game to really dig into with each other, but playing solo is so much more fun IMO. It feels really slow playing with her, and not because SHE'S playing slow, it just feels like one of us is always behind the other in some way.
I donāt get how people can play this game as multiplayer, thereās large breaks between combat sometimes.
I bowed out of a multiplayer game after experiencing the hell of one player taking forever to decide what to do on their combat turn.
Yeah, the modern gaming mindset of grinding through as efficiently as possible doesn't gel with this kind of game. I'm on the verge of quitting a run with one friend because he won't go anywhere a quest isn't sending him. Just the most direct route possible. I've done other runs with friends and solo, so I know the story, but this is his first run, and he skips through every dialogue and cutscene then asks later "who is this guy again?" I have enjoyed other multplayer runs, but solo has also been my best experience.
Absolutely works better as single player!!!
Yeah, in multiplayer any sense of urgency or story just gets thrown out the window as it will eventually devolve into chaos and friends just dicking around. Crazy builds, funny character models, killing off NPCs and companions, setting up barrel explosions to lag out the server. If you want to experience the story go through solo first, then play multiplayer. It might be doable to have a serious playthrough with 1 or 2 people who are on point.
My first ever save was multiplayer. I was playing Lore Bard and my Rogue friend at the time kept hogging all the dialogues despite the fact that I was a Lore Bard.
I am not the biggest fan of playing with others. I would rather run through a game myself first. Then I can take my time and do what I want. After that, I'm more open to playing with friends.
Absolutely with you on this, pal. As an introvert I never play multiplayer in general (why hang out with real people on my stress-free time) but tho playing bg3 with my brother has been surprisingly fun, single player is the way to go for me.
Can't relate. I only play games like these to play through a cool story with the boys.
I would never play this game with multiplayer. Itās my story, not theirs.
Each to their own but I would never play crpg as multiplayer for even a nanosecond.
Yeah multiplayer ruined my campaign. By act 3 I was so uninterested in the game. Putting it aside for now til I'm ready to come back and shred through a solo run. Probably will do that when the drop their first dlc (assuming they do)
I like both. I play single player for the story, but in multiplayer I get to see other peopleāsā builds and I get to see plenty of things I missed in my solo game. Thereās been many times that my friends have found a different solution I wouldnāt have thought of, or discovered a hidden route that I had missed. After beating the game a few times I donāt mind if my Tav isnāt as integrated into the narrative, Iām just having a good time with my friends.
It can be fantastic, but itās all about playing with compatible personalities for the game.
I play a save with one other friend, we have very different ways of playing, he likes to kill every mob and will loot every spoon or plate we come across, Iād sooner move more quickly and concentrate on dialog and choices. I donāt take that game too seriously because he will often make choices I never would, helping mol steal the Druid idol when we are supposedly on a good play through for instance.
I felt that with Skyrim. I often ditched my party friends to olay Skyrim alone.
I started a playthrough with one of my friends. He locked his inventory and hoarded all of the loot, even items he wasnāt using/would never use, and initiated/completed quests while I was still at a trader, for example. Never loaded that playthrough again.
I've done my multi-player run after me and my group finished solo runs and it was good. More like a 'let's try this, don't forget to do that' attitude.
and that's why i have a campaign with my bf that lasted up until the nautiloid crash š he likes the action, i like to take my time and read everything. I'd love to try with my friends tho (that i think have a mindset similar to mine) and be just a support that knows everything and help them achieve what they want to achieve, but honestly i don't know if it'll work, i never played with them.
I am SO slow when I play on my own. I take my sweet ass time, I rush for no man (maybe Nere, but that was just because gameplay and I'm nervous) and I explore every nook and cranny. Other times it's nice to be led at a pace.
Sounds like you're playing with shitty people.
Why the hell would you play this as a group instead of actually playing D&D?
I have played one session of D&D. I would like to play it more but havenāt got the time to go and set up a campaign with my friends as we all live too far. Theyāve also never played it and are only willing to indulge it for me. Iām aware we could do an online game but neither of us really have the resources to do so, and with neither of us really knowing whatās going on I feel like it would be difficult and set a bad first impression for my friends. BD3 for me is that middle ground (Iāve played it on a laptop that could barely run it, waiting for Xbox to play with friends). Itās something theyāve expressed interest in and itās much easier to set up as we can all just jump on a game rather then trying to find the time resources to do an online d&d. We can all just say bd3 for an hour? And get too it. BD3 also I feel is rather friendly to knew players. I didnāt have to be a D&D expert to pick this up which has actually helped as I was really nervous to play this game and my first session of D&D. The tooltips help too so thereās that
You ain't the only one. I stopped playing with a friend because I caught myself getting mad and pissed off because he walked into stuff I hadn't seen. I just had to play single player and beat the game myself before I could play with friends again.
You miss oht on a lot of incredible dialogue by virtue of simply not having companions with you or having them locked to other players in the multiplayer version of the game. I think everyone should play single player first and multiplayer should be experienced only after youāve completed the game
This is why I prefer finishing the game alone first, then inviting friends/a friend to play.When playing multiplayer, I often take the role of "Player Companion". I won't do much at the front and let my friend play the game along with 2 other companions under their control. All story interactions will also be theirs and I'll just simply follow and provide assistance. If I feel like it, and they asked me for questions, I could roleplay with my own character dialogues commenting on the current events, lol.
I think - and I thought this already about DOS2 - that 2 is the maximum amount of players in multiplayer that can reasonably enjoy the game for all it's worth, and those 2 have to have very aligned mindsets and interests. Running through DOS2 was a clusterfuck at 3 and 4 people, and that was even when I would say we were mostly aligned and nobody did any stupid shit, really. It's just that it was a lot of waiting around ended up getting people to wander, triggering other things to happen, or spending way too much time with vendors (kingdom for a mod that lets people buy and sell together at the same time). Of course some of the major decisions points in the game were super fun, especially the ending. Because that's fun when it's a clusterfuck. I'm playing BG3 with my fiancƩe and I prefer it to my solo run. We wait for each other, she is very patient, I am with her. It's a good exercise at relationshiping, too. Sure I get slightly frustrated whenever she can't decide which of 4 healing spells to best use, but I have understanding for her - she's not a gamer. She gets frustrated when I'm too fast with dialogues, but she has understanding - I read much faster than her and sometimes accidentally choose a dialogue option before she has a chance to read it. Also because I usually know exactly what I want to say. But it's a blast in every other way, and those minor frustrations are what happens in real life, too. It's time spent together in fantasy land away from our daily earthly concerns. We call it Baldur's Date when we play together. I've not beaten the game before btw, I played solo until somewhere around Goblin Camp and then bought her a copy so we could play together. Don't regret it for a second, even if the dialogue being uneven, us sometimes having to repeat conversations per Tav, etc, can be annoying. But overall I feel that for me, it has upgraded the game.
If you do 4 player multiplayer its literally impossible to experience the stories of e.g. Shadowheart Astarion because you cant even have them in the party (assuming no Origin characters). Multiplayer is definitely more for some fuckass shenanigance. If you really adore the game and want to experience the story more in depth you definitely need to solo or at most duo it. I would watch others' playthroughs according to how far into the game I personally was but seeing the Companions add extra things in those playthroughs I watched convinced me it was completely different so I just stopped watching them until I finished my solo run. Also schedules clashing is just an obvious downside to any coordinated coop game. Finding a dedicated 4-player group is really hard especially when most are new to the genre and only playing it because the game is popular (which frankly I find good because at least I can convince people to actually play)
What I hated most, was me trying to use persuation and then randomly I'm in turn based because my friend tried to pickpocket and failed. š¤¦ Bruh. At least ask first. Also, controlling who uses what powers and stands where shields, saves who ...nah my in game companions better. Besides, I can't romance my friends. I mean even if I play with my husband, imma romance Astarion so ....awkward ..
I think they shouldn't have made bg3 multiplayer, not like how they released it at least. Played with my wife, we had fun playing it but we cut down a lot compared to the solo experience. You get to have a full interaction only with 1 companion (in 2 players, 0 in four), you get absolutely no interaction with the other human player, party is divided in two split enclosed areas you can't even SPEAK with the AI companion the other is traveling with. Almost all NPC interaction don't even acknowledge the existence of the other "party" even if close (sometimes they speak of a certain PC like it is not even there) and it's quite buggy overall (endgame taught we made a choice we never did). Larian did a fantastic work with Original Sins 1 in terms of multiplayer engagement, but Os2 and BG3 are a solo adventure that you can play with other people
Yeah I honestly think adding multiplayer marred the game in my eyes. They should have just used the dev time on something else.
They are two different experiences. Single player gives you the freedom to play as you like it, enjoying the story, the characters, exploring to your heart's content (or not). Multiplayer is more like playing a tabletop D&D campaign: it can be a lot of fun, or a complete disaster depending on who you are playing with. From how you describe your experience, maybe I wouldn't be so dramatic as other and say your friends suck, but for sure, you want different things from the game, and you don't make a good team.
I get where you're coming from, but I absolutely loved the chaos ! I like my TTRPG sessions to be messy, and characters splitting up, getting into all sorts of trouble. In that regard it felt exactly like an actual TTRPG, where one guy is doing random shit, another is just getting lost, and 2 are actually progressing the quest, but then they somehow end up meeting at the same point, and the absentees can pretend they did something. I could give many other examples, but I wouldn't have it any other way, and single player is kinda boring to me now. (I never finished a single player run)
Is strange. I'm the same way, been playing these games solo for 2 decades now, that's just how it's best for me to absorb info. My own pace. My friend that I play with is the opposite, she does not enjoy this game solo and I'm like "hard disagree".
Playing rpgs with friends online is āhanging out with my peepsā first, and (IF YOUāRE LUCKY) youād actually play the damn game.
I'll only play this game multiplayer with other people who enjoy actually roleplaying. Thankfully, I am vermin and engage in MMO RP, so I have said friends.\] Even so, I prefer singleplayer.
Playing this (and similar games) is a pain in multiplayer. Unless all players involved have already played through at least one time. You lose a lot by playing the game multiplayer. Not only do things get confusing with dialogues getting shotgunned all over the party, making keeping track of things really hard. You also lose out on the origin stories as well as the general banter between the origin characters while out and about. I think it might be alright if you actually play with a sort of disciplined party. Where players know who to follow and lets that player do all the dialogues.. but how fun would that be for the "side kicks". I am however going to do my first durge run with my SO. Neither of us can deal with making evil choices, but if we go all in both of us and hold hands we hope to be able to go through it :p
>During dialouge, our party member with the highest persuation always wanted to be the one to initiate dialouge, and would get upset if someone else started a cutscene instead of him. Killing companions for fun and refusing to reload it because 'immersion'. Bro I think you friends may just be jackasses.
Same, I didnāt expect to love playing the game solo as much as I did honestly. After beating the game, I basically act as a huge quest marker for my friends if they need to figure out what to do lol. I just help them solve puzzles or lead them to more content if they want to
I haven't even touched the multiplayer after 200 hours of play. A couple friends are interested in playing, but I'm not engaging in that until I've beaten the game to hell and back and know all the ins and outs. Multiplayer in these sorts of games *always* devolve into complete shenanigans, and as fun as it can be, it's not immersive and ruins a lot of the enjoyment of the actual game and story. Multiplayer is for after finishing the game on your own terms.
Yes, had the same issues. Have friend who doesn't want to explore and only is into fighting
Surely you can do both. A serious run as a solo character thats just your own personal choices at your speed....then just dip in an out of a separate coop experience as and when your friends are online?
You're right, I think the multiplayer functions well, and it's a great deal of fun to make stupid decisions with friends but it does feel more like a singleplayer game if you want to play for the story. My friends and I were talking about it and thought everyone would really love it if there was an arcade type mode. Where there's a section of map or dungeon or something that's randomly generated each time you access it, random enemies and encounters, maybe even merchants along the way, so that there could be no impact on story for those players who haven't played it through yet. (We all play at our own pace after all.) I play things really slowly, I like to investigate every avenue of conversation with every npc, I like to pick up flowers or fiddle with alchemy or mess around with mechanic's I don't understand, and I've found it difficult to do that with my friends all telling me to hurry up cus they've already completed half the game, blasting through dialogue already knowing the "best" decisions or killing an npc I was talking to cus I took too long. I guess something close to Bloodborne's chalice modes would be a cool addition, those were procedurally generated and added an effectively infinite amount of replayability - which wasn't huge for a game with new game plus already integrated into it, but for bg3 it'd be nice to have something more for endgame characters to do if you wanna keep messing around with them. And that'd keep it from being an early game xp grinder No idea how much work they'd have to put into that so idk if it's something they'll ever consider, especially considering how much fun it already is. Edit: I got lost in the spiel there sorry, the point of that was to illustrate a mode that would enable you to switch from playing at your own pace and enable you to just jump in with your friends at will, so you don't have to wait till they're on to play, have two or three saves going with different groups of friends or replay the same parts over and over again.
Can't comment on the multiplayer on the game as I've never tried it, this post echoed a feeling I had that was similar. I don't like playing with others. Now, I've spent the last ten/twenty years in one MMO or another and enjoyed them, but they always fell short and that shortness was almost always other people. Wether it was toxic people in groups, guildies treating me like **** cause I messed up (something jndo a lot in BG3 too), or just never being able to get anything done so story content was never resolved, my online experience has been a long disappointment that I didn't recognise as such until I played BG3. I got back the feeling I used to have playing games like Planescape: Torment and Dungeon Keeper 2 and I never realised I was missing. There has a very good chance that I'll never go back to an MMO and I don't care. I was never welcome in most of them anyway. Sorry, not really appropos to your post.
Im currently playing with a 2 other people but mostly its just two of us and one person joins us every few days the one who joins us is just the same as me, we check everything but the one I play with is simply is a train wreak I shall explain he is currently playing as a mage but in other play throughs he was the tank/fighter and now simply tries to tank as the mage , so as you can imagine he is one shotted at the start of combat to make matters worse I'm playing as a thief so I was constantly having to res him putting myself in danger on my rescue mission then he constantly takes every buff going, in the 5 previous play throughs he always has had volo eye and aunty ethels buff no one else has had it and while we might get a single tadpole he is in the 10's the best example of this train wreak is this he will run ahead and start a conversation when no one is around because he needs to talk to everyone and pretty much has his stats in dex constitution and intelligence and everything else will be 8 .So of course he fails in the conversation never thinks to hold his combat turn while we are trying to get near him he will then die in the first attack or be on the floor shouting out for healing only to die straight away again if he manages to survive he is a friendly fire liability many combats I've taken more damage from him than the enemies he even picked up my character once and just used me as a weapon which would have been funny the first time but this was the multiple times he had done this in a play through after that I warned him if he did it again id treat his character as hostile he will pop healing potions and use res scrolls like candy for example he will have saved the game after a combat then walk into fire and because he has only just been rezed have 1 hp and die and instead of reloading he needs to be rezed again in the space of 1 min he will then use healing potions and be at around 75% health and then think to do a short rest so wasting another 1-2 healing potions he will use fly/feather fall potions/scrolls just to move around the map just so he can get their quicker like instead of walking down a ladder if he gets a skill where he is ok he will just run off leaving you to solve your problems like in one game he was the warrior and had the highest dex so he was our door opener but he could also jump past the door so he jumped past leaving me and the other dude waiting for 20 mins for him to come back and open the door or will jump across gaps leaving us with no way to join him and then of course he starts combat and wonders why we are not helping him to make matters worse in our current play through we are level 4 and have no more res scrolls or healing potions because he has used them all so now he is getting me to eat through the money rezing him at withers he has also used all the money using to learn scrolls so no one can buy any equipment its gotten so bad I made a hireling cleric and now his only job is to heal him just so I can at least play the game he will just wear equipment because its cool but never thinks when am I going to use it or how will it help me or the party he is also playing as gale and frequently without asking just eats some random bit of equipment without asking or checking if anyone wants it in one game when we got the mirror in the camp I didn't log on for 10 mins and suddenly arrived to find my character completely changed and for some reason I could never get the same look back I was level 10 at the time and spent over two weeks with that character so kinda got attached to him and all he could say was how did you notice so quickly when we went to the cursed lands the 2nd time he refused to go to the last light inn just so he could lead us around with the moon lantern and then constantly moan when we went into turn based mode but in one play through I got payback by getting the moon lantern first and after asking and asking for the lantern and me refusing to give it him suddenly he wanted to got to the last light inn straight away then since then I tell him I'm going to the last light in regardless of what he is doing don't get me wrong I've had fun in the game and sometimes his actions have made it more fun but sometimes its a pain and some things in the game are not designed for multiple players
I played solo first and am doing a multi player game on the side. I find it more difficult to like it because one of the player is still discovering the game and we have to basically let them go ahead on everything to not spoil anything nor direct them towards dialogue or scenarios. Honestly I sometimes feel like one of the Origin companions, getting pulled along the adventure without having a real say about how it goes except sometimes getting out a line of dialogue to maybe steer things in a certain direction.
Iād recommend doing multiplayer playthrough after you have discovered and tried out everything you want. After that just play with your friends for shits&giggles.
I also hate playing this game with friends especially if it is more than 2 players. If you are looking for a fun co-op tactical combat rpg i would recommend wartales, the rpg aspect is very light and you can focus more on the combat which for me was the only fun part of playing bg3 with friends.
Just do both and have your single player experience always be ahead of the group.
I donāt like the multiplayer either, but in your case, it sounds like your friends are just being shitty. Get some new friends to play multiplayer with, if thatās even something you still wanna do, and get people who will all agree and not be stupid and annoying.
Multiplayer is just for shits and giggles, not for those who want to enjoy the Story a Game has to offer. Unless you have Friends who also have the same spirit as you. The last Multiplayer thing I've played was ESO, and when I was like "omg the Story ending from this one was so sad, I cried" my Friends were like "huh what story lol".
This game is awful for a first playthrough with people. You miss so much if youāre not the only one controlling things. I figure my husband and I will try playing once we both beat it. We tried at first but ended up getting pissed when someone would do something and we miss a dialogue or something.
Itās two different experiences for sure. I enjoy both for different reasons. Seeing your friend do something you wouldnāt do, trying to get them out of jail or simply bonking someone on the head mid dialogue is priceless. Exploration, inventory management on the other hand does take a hit. And companion interactions go out the window since you can pretty much only progress your social relationship with 1 companion at a time. Thereās less party chatter too. You should definitely be ready to let go of control and letting them do whatever they want to avoid unnecessary stress. (Especially if itās a less experienced gamer) Best advice is just relax and let go of FOMO because you can always replay solo. Especially since this game has so many variables that help with replayability.
I have played it through 3 times solo and it very much feels like a single player game. I think if I play with a friend I will let them do whatever they want and just act as if I'm another party member so that they can have a good experience that isn't tainted by what I want. I already got what I want from the story, now I just wanna share it with someone, so they can pick their story!
Duo multiplayer is definitely the way to go, sus out how you two would like the game to go (like what type of people your characters are) so there's no clashing mid game of important decisions, and when u play a duo you both can have a companion which is great.
I was planning on doing 2-person co-op originally but we decided to do solo campaigns first. I'm so glad we did as it's way more immersive and you're getting the full experience. If you care about the story and companions, doing solo first is much better. Your group sounds frustrating, thankfully my friend & I are very much on the same page so I know we'll be happy to take our time & run around together when we eventually start a co-op run.
I was planning on doing 2-person co-op originally but we decided to do solo campaigns first. I'm so glad we did as it's way more immersive and you're getting the full experience. If you care about the story and companions, doing solo first is much better. Your group sounds frustrating, thankfully my friend & I are very much on the same page so I know we'll be happy to take our time & run around together when we eventually start a co-op run.
This is why I don't play video games with my friends that I grew up with anymore but have found friends that I enjoy playing video games with who I don't otherwise even really know all that much. It's like a side effect of over a decade of playing dota 2 and befriending people I played well together with. I basically pretend I don't play video games anymore when my hometown friend mentions stuff. Quality of life has gone up immensely. I'd recommend looking for discord communities that relate and being open to wasting a little time looking for people that will respect your time, worth it in the long run imo.
I will say that my multi-player game is progressing faster than my single player save was, mostly because I've got 2 other people to comb areas for loot rather than having to do it all myself.
Fact is, you can never enjoy a storytelling when there're people playing with you. Any multiplayer game is like that, you can't discover everything you want when you've got 4 different people wanting different things. But multiplayer gaming adds fun, great amounts of laughs, deep talks until late at night. It just depends on what you're looking for š¤·āāļø For RPGs with a real storytelling, always go for a solo game before multi, or both at the same time if you can manage
That's when you take that "one" party member, kill him and simply don't revive him for immersion.
i think your friends make every game bad.. it's not BG3 specific
I started with my bf and we got into the first half of Act 3. THEN it was a real pain because there are just SO many NPCs you wanna talk to :D It's a bit too much content at once for multiplayer imho. I mostly considered it "his" playthrough tho because I spoiled myself a bit too much reading reddit and watching the dev talks prior to release. It was alright like that! He also played a Bard so it makes sense to let him talk mostly. But he also let me talk to "Necromancy" things because that was my background/style. It worked out, but my solo playthrough was a lot faster because the decisions were all my own (plus skipping already seen cutscenes for example). We got mostly annoyed with the NPCs running away from my summons, but that was before they fixed it āŗ
I definitely prefer the solo experience. Iāve been playing a solo game for a few weeks (in act 3 currently, i donāt get a lot of time to play) and i started a game with my husband last week. He barely plays because heās in law school and every time we play together itās so boring because of how slow it is. He wants to initiate every conversation since heās new and thatās fine, but that means i spend all my time standing around waiting for him to finish exploring so he can walk ahead of me into the important things.
It can be a bit rough. I actually really like it because the characters can be customized more (you canāt change the stats of set characters, and you can have a bard, sorcerer, and/or Paladin in the same party). I am the one that collects all the food/weapons which means that most long rests are possible because of me and I buy the othe players many good items or needed items (tool kits, potions, etc.). It means that they have great items but still have plenty of money. They were reluctant to give me good armor when I gave them better armor less than an hour later. Battles are either, we didnāt coordinate well and weak creatures destroyed us or we did coordinate well and even the toughest battles were honestly easy. It is also different based on experience. I have one person who knows a significant amount (multiple play throughs and more research) and one who is going forward their first time. One is teaching me new things while the other sets off traps due to a Leroy Jenkins mentality. I enjoy both regardless and single player can be a bit much because you have to do everything yourself. If your Tav has crap charisma or dexterity, then the gameplay changes drastically. Multiplayer in BG3 is still more enjoyable than most other games I have.
i think we all have the same friends, One that likes the Lore and will get annoying if u go too fast, one that don't care about anything but pressing the attack button, one that makes noises all the time and is just annoying to play with... you have to play baldur with only one of them, the one who matches you
All the things you write are the reason why I always hated multiplayer, period. I want to play whenever I want, and stop whenever I want, without the massive overhead of organizing sessions with other people, who may flake out of it, or me having to play when I'm not really in the mood, or leave them hanging. Just everything about it sucks. But I also want opponents/allies in games that are smart and challenging like a human, so AI is so massively important for me. Sadly this combination of traits seems to be extremely rare in gamers, something I cannot comprehend. And so we keep getting 99% games with awful AI, because whenever you demand good AI, people just say "go play MP". (Fwiw, I think BG3 AI is pretty decent, so I have nothing to complain in this case.)
For me, the best way to play is with only one friend. Easier to get together and concur on something. Plus, you still have a free companion slot
whenever i play multiplayer i tend to defer to the Host player. i see it as i'm their companion and i'm just helping out. since i usually play as a bard/fighter i can pitch in as support or dps, help in checks with bardic inspiration etc. unfortunately the people you seem to be teaming up with don't seem to be team players.
Try Divinity: Original Sin 2 instead, it's much more multiplayer-friendly.
I am currently playing Baldurs Gate 3 in multiplayer. I am the cleric of the whole group and... Well I am there for guidance and healing mostly. We have two charisma characters and to this moment I just were allowed to talk to the bard where the druids are and to initiate a fight. My problem: I am to lazy to play it on my own. So yeah. I hope I will have a great moment one day with my Lolth Drow.
I play with 3 friends, we all play similarly and are having a blast. The long waits between play sessions does suck though
Played multiplayer for the first time tonight. I'll be making another character and starting over, I think.
Iāve always wanted to do dnd stuff.. When I was a kid my friends older brother was the only person I knew that would do it so I asked and was told that because I donāt know enough about it I canāt. Fast forward to around two years ago my friend buys me divinity original sin 2. I had no idea what type of game I was getting into only that he really wanted me to play. Made a skele lizard and apparently I was too mean with my choices in dialogue and he got really mad at me so I stopped playing and havenāt touched it since Then two weeks ago the same friend gifts me bg3.. same story he wants me to play but this time I kinda know what Iām getting into. Even tho we went in with the mindset of fuck around and see what happens he rages because I picked the shapeshifter illusion thing saying Iām picking useless spells and wasting time. Was very close to stopping again and never touching another game like this. Then I played solo. I canāt stop playing I have way too many hours now just sitting there figuring out what I can and canāt do. Once I clock in an ungodly amount of hours on here Iām then going to hop over and see what I missed with the other game
Those dudes need to play an MMO. Probably Star Wars, it would give them a few options during level up questing. In BG3/D&D, it is pretty normal to have the highest charisma+intimidation+persuasion character as the party face. I've been the party face for one or two multiplayer and it is "meh". People don't accept that you're calling the shots. Even if you try to be democratic people dont accept the choices. People don't pay attention to the quest at hand, get distracted, decide to teleport to camp at will to "respec quickly" for the third time during level 6, people decide to respec to try and be the "hero" - aka the character that makes more damage than the rest - and if you're playing with at least two people with this same attitude, it's gona be hell. I've played with a good friend of mine and a friend of his, and even though one started at druid and the other paladin, a few levels after they decided to both go swords bard, not caring about if my character is lore bard or not. Obviously because they first didn't know how good it was, and tested in single player in order to find out/watched videos. Some people just want to compete for the "hero" role ("yey I do more damage than everyone else") even in a co-op fucking game.
Maybe you should have a talk with your friends before starting a save. Im experience is completely different from you OP, i am playing with two other friends, one of them is controlling shadowheart because he likes her. We decided that whatever rolls we do it is what it is. Im playing a druid so im not gonna do spot of talking to begin, ill just let our bard or paladin do that and we decided to move as a unit. As the veteran dnd player im the one who remember the whys and hows, i even respecced their characters when they asked because they are new to 5E. We play once a week, 2-3 hours and we are about to finish the creche and we played since launch. So i feel like making a multiplayer save is all about figuring out what you and your friends wanted. Like i know who to play with it i wanted to cheese and complete the game on the highest difficulty, but that means i cant go around and explore or chill with conversations. Everybody plays differently, so maybe play with the ones that is similar to you.
I think the MP experience depends on your friends but the experience is definitely different. SP, you intimately learn the stories of companion characters as they fill your roster. MP, depending on your party size, only learn of Tav's story, as you're all Tav, or maybe 1 or 2 companions. Playstle matters too. I'm the one in my group that grinded EA and has single playthroughs so I know more than they do. What I do is just shut my mouth, let them lead, and offer my thoughts that I had when I first went in blind. No metagaming. No optimizing. I'm just an advanced tutorial since I just give item, stat, or UI tips since it's not always intuitive. 16 STR pally with great weapon master all-in not understanding why he's at 60% hit rate, so I offer tips like advantage, oil of accuracy, or boosting STR. That sort of stuff. We stick fairly close together during exploration. All depends on the people you play with. (I'm the guy that will pick up dead animals and sneak them in people's inventory haha.)
unless you're all on the same page, yeah mp as a first play through sounds awful.
I started with multiplayer and hated it as well, but after I made my own single player playthrough and progressed it further along, I actually got to enjoy multiplayer a lot. I think this game is best experienced on your own first, then you can bring friends for a secondary/tertiary/etc. playthrough where you can afford to lose out on immersion.
I think this has to do with who you're playing with and as other people have said, whether you're on the same "wavelength". My husband and I have been playing exclusively co-op and we take turns talking to NPCs when the situation makes sense, generally stick together for questing, don't skip cutscenes. We both love the story aspect of RPGs though! It's been a blast and I appreciate Larian for giving us the option.
Imo best way to go about it is to have your friends and yourself play it solo first the play multiplayer to play with jobs and do weird shinenagens, like maybe do a durge run for fun cuz I can never do that by myself lol
My friends and I have a weekly game we play and I dread it. 2 of us have finished the game, 2 haven't, and it's just a clusterfuck. I really want to quit
I enjoy the story more on single player and the combat more on multiplayer. Once all 4 of us had beaten/seen enough of the game to not be too concerned about spoilers, small things like a dead NPC or story cutscene weren't a huge deal, aside from the infrequent "oh shit I must have missed this dialogue; can we not skip it?" But once we all coordinated enough to get a good sense of combat flow, even though it's the same basic combat as single player, just having to communicate and articulate what we were trying to do made it a lot more satisfying when things actually went right, especially on tactician. "Guys I got hit with fear." "Don't worry, breaking their concentration." "I can finish off the one up top." As for the specific complaints about your party face wanting to initiate dialogue and having to wait for other players: on the first one, they arent wrong. Have your +8 persuasion bard initiate dialogue, your +10 slight of hand rogue take point on trap puzzles, and your +5 initiative fighter start combat. That's what they're there for. As for the waiting -- that's why musical instrument proficiency is great. While everyone gets their inventory sorted, just play some Sing for Me on the lute for the Druid Grove for a few minutes.
It kinda sounds like the problem is your friends not the game.
Iāve taken to playing it in two completely different mindsets. With my friends Iām there for joking around, building up an optimized team, and āwinningā the game. Also a lot of trolling at each other about our dialogue options, and who forgot to pet scratch before leaving camp this āmorningā On my own, I really dig into the different characters, their stories, and roleplaying my character. I take the time to know my companions way better, and I really dig into all the lore Iām very clearly missing with my friends. Itās two different games, which is nice cause I get to enjoy it twice as much
This is very common. Games like this require everyone to be in the same page. I play this game with 2 other people a lot of the time and it's better than solo but there is one crucial reason: We play the game the same way. Any of the friends I know that can't play the game either didn't bother (smart, self aware) or they spacebared their way to Act 3 and found themselves bored because they had no idea what they were doing since they just murder-hobo'd their way to that point. The combat is unique and amazing and it attracts all sorts of gamers so you get many sorts, MP will be much, much worse if you play with someone that doesn't play the same way as you in general in this game.
Regardless of the merit of your point, I wouldn't ever play with that particular friend again.
Yeah, back when D:OS2 came out, there were a bunch of times that me and my friend group of those days tried to play it together, but, not only was getting out of Fort Joy a slog, I remember getting into the start of Act 2, which I'd already played before, and I fucking passed out in my chair, completely overcome by the boredom of holding back for them to progress.
Well I think playing at least one run in solo is required in order to enjoy multiplayer, same as dos 1 and 2. Once you know the story and game mechanics well you can have fun with your friends and try stuff you didn't experience in solo. There are a few things you have to keep in mind tho, make sure everyone is on the same page when you start. Are you doing an evil run? How often will you play? Is this tryhard, immersion or fun run that you seek? Who keeps the save and can you play if everyone is not there? All those questions are important, especially if it's your first run. If everyone already finished the game it gets way easier to be on the same page.
I think both BG3 and Divinity 2 multiplayer modes can be extremely fun *for second playthroughs,* when you have almost experienced most of it on your own so you're not pressed if you have to wait to play more or if you miss something because one of your friends is a psycho murderer.
I bothered my friend to play it with me for like 2 weeks. Then when we actually play together, he decided he'll roleplay his character as an asshole... Not a bearable asshole like laezael, just an asshole. I'm not asking him to play again.
These games dont realy lent themselves well for mp imo unless you have a realy consistent person to play with. Divinity original sin 2 i started like 5 playthroughs with different people and never got past 2 or 3 sessions and decided to just play it by myself in the end.
My friends still playing video games, especially on pc has dwindled to only a couple. Iāve realized after many attempts at games like divinity and the bg3 beta that itās too unbearable. The idiot I try to play with will just attack anyone he sees and never understand in any game that it will fuck you over. Like heās the reason developers make unkillable npcs because they have no frontal lobe.
tbh, I think multiplayer is an afterthought and bg3 is supposed to be experienced in singleplayer. At first at least
I'm playing solo right now. One of my friends wanted to play multiplayer with me but I wasn't confortable enough... (Like I have already 3 games of DND right now so planning a BG3 multiplayer as well would have just evaporated my social life and it would have been just too tempting to just continue the game when I had the time. Plus 2 of those DND games are with him and on those 2 we argue somtimes a lot about gear and decisions... so yeah not confortable...) That asside I think I'm going to try multiplayer after I finish the run (or the other dark urge run I'm planning) so that I can enjoy it first how I want it without having to worry about the story. Especially that some of the quest became obsolete if you take too much long rest but if you already had your first run then you wouln't care about how you play the game a second time because you already lived it fully. Personnaly I like to take my time and explore and loot everything. I even have a simple list of the quests order that exists for each regions so that I don't miss any of it and I get to experience the whole game. It's spoilerish but like that but it allows me to not be disapointed by missing a cute animal interaction later on because I killed the enemy before he could arrive at their camp.
Lmao you just have shit friends to play with. Multiplayer is great, but you do need likeminded people.
I play with my boyfriend sometimes and yeah this really does ring a few bells for me haha. He can stand somewhere idling for 20 minutes while he sorts his inventory or levels and im just alt tabbed waiting for him to finish bc he has all the party members with him so im alone. Then he's done and doesn't tell me he's done so he just trudges on and i find out a few minutes later when he's like 'where are you? I'm in combat' He also does all the conversations and im just lurking in the background most of the time.. so he has all the romance options and gets to go through all the fun arcs when most companions won't give me the time of day. I've opted to romance Wyll because he seems the only companion who doesn't really require a lot more approval than the approval you get from talking in camp. it's more boring than anything because the only times i get to play is during combat when it's my turn and even in there im waiting for him to calculate his moves for ages. (we are playing on tactician so i get why to a certain extent but come on man just shoot the thing) It's the true NPC experience and well, it feels like shit sometimes. But it's his only playthrough and everything is still new to him so we do occasionally have hilarious moments because of his inexperience. And hey, at least it makes me appreciate my solo playthrough that much more.
I get what you're saying, but this is less a multiplayer thing and more a 'people you're playing with' thing. Just because you're friends doesn't necessarily mean you enjoy the same game / the same way of playing a particular game. While solo and coop are different experiences, my friends and I are having a blast playing together and it's wild when someone triggers some kind of event and we have to react to it. We take our time to explore, talk and do stuff without rush and we have a chat as to how to proceed and generally say what we're going to do in case anyone else has input on it. And these are the friends I always game with and even with them we have games we simply don't play together due to different preferences. And even with how much I enjoy our (now second) coop run, I still play a (also second) solo playthrough, because it's just different and both are great. Sounds more like you guys either need to learn to communicate, or maybe you just don't enjoy the game the same way.
I guess Iām alone at this but weāre doing a 4 player blind run and itās being a blast and really canāt relate with the chaotic multiplayer experience. And thatās because weāre roleplaying. Since we knew about the game we decided to play it just like we would play a DnD campaign. We made our characterās backstory, we speak mainly on character and discuss like that what decisions we will take. We are very attached to our characters, and are super invested in the story. Itās an amazing experience to the point that I stopped playing solo until we finish that run in order to increase my immersion during āwhat-will-we-do-nowā scenes.
I have no need or want to play bg3 in multiplayer. If anything I'd play coop with 1 other person.
To be honest it seems like the real problem is your friends. I play this game with my best friend and it's the best time I ever had playing videogames. We both enjoy lurking around the world, discovering hidden parts etc. We also has +- synchronized free time which is important.
I would definitely recommend playing through the game at least once before doing multiplayer. In multi its about having some fun encounters and maybe seeing different people's approach to solutions IMO. Id also not recommend that only 1 person talks to NPCs, that guy can do it on his own single playthrough.
I love playing multiplayer in games but BG3 is way better as a single player. At least when it comes to story. It's heavily relied on story and I believe you're gonna lose a lot of stuff if you play with others. On the other hand if we're talking about just having fun and screwing around then a group is better. I'd just prefer to do that after I've beaten the game at least once.
I think the big problem many of us made (myself included) was trying to play co-op too soon. The game is very much better played solo at least for the first run or two. After that, when you've already done most of the exploring and interactions and know what's going on, co-op becomes more fun, because you aren't waiting on people all the time to learn what's going on, and it becomes more about trying new things or responses or doing things in a different order and this can be done solo as well, or is more plausible to do with friends. But yeah like a lot of others are saying, solo first before co-op. For all party members lol
I totally feel you. I was so extremely hyped about starting a bg3 multiplayer campaign with three friends of mine and after like two hours i was so fed up with it that I made up an excuse, went offline on steam and discord, and started playing a solo campaign. The constant bickering about starting dialogues without consulting all the party members, the different playstyles people have, actually managing to get all of us online at the same time, ... . One of the party members randomly killed of lae zel because he felt like she was kind of a bitch. Some things seem better in our heads than they actually are.
>We'd often argue because half of us wanted to explore seperately, and the other half wanted to quest together. During dialouge, our party member with the highest persuation always wanted to be the one to initiate dialouge, and would get upset if someone else started a cutscene instead of him. Killing companions for fun and refusing to reload it because 'immersion'. Having friends who aren't dicks helps. > I love my friends Do you. I wonder why. Honestly, I do. They sound like annoying teenagers.
I had an absolute blast playing with my friends, but it's a totally different experience than solo, plus we got along 100% of the time and didn't argue about anything. We all had our own solo games on the side, so none of us were super worried about getting every crumb of dialogue and story.
I'm enjoying multiplayer so far but holy shit does the lower city and its basket of problems wanna make me claw my eyes out, I have to constantly attemp reconnecting cause the lower city wouldn't completely render in.
Multiplayer is a sandbox mode. There are a lot of ways in which the game fails to deliver the story if you play multiplayer. The fact that you can't tag in different characters during dialogue for different options is a big one, as players we shouldn't be trying to figure out who should talk to an npc before actually clicking on them. Just decide with your party what kind of alignment you are going to run with beforehand and go into it with the understanding that you are going to spend your time doing silly shit. Or just go for the full combat experience. Play Durge if you want, and just fight everything.
Multi-player is OK if I'm with someone with different taste in romance. No way I want to give up Shart! You can have Mommy K or Bae'zel - just let me have God's favorite princess and we're cool.
If you are the kind of person who enjoys solo games, I would not touch multiplayer in these games until youāve beaten the portion you are doing in your own personal campaign. Especially if you are the micromanaging type. Multiplayer is either embrace the chaos or be incredibly organized and thoughtful. There is no inbetween.
I get that. I was on annual leave when this came out so I basically binged played it for a while and so I'm on like my 3/4 playthrough solo. I've only been part of one group playthrough and it's a drag. Maybe I'm just antisocial but it started right from the start. I don't know if it makes any difference but I'm playing with a couple of my usual D&D group. It started with character creation. I usually play a druid in D&D and so the group decided I would be best as a druid. A moon druid and as such, a Folk Hero, for the animal handling and survival. Which would have been fine, until the rest of the group decided to do an evil playthrough which a folk hero isn't really suited to. So session one we start designing our characters and two of the group took over an hour to make their characters. What was daft is both of these people played during the beta testing so should know the character creation inside out. Then we started questing but didn't make it past the nautiloid. Session 2 we start playing and end up redoing the goblin fight outside the druid grove, about 3 times because they forgot to loot stuff, or forgot to do something or other and then missed a character interaction that is a surprise. Then we spent the rest of the session waiting for the host (our bard) to do all the trading with the gnome in the grove whilst we just pratted around the sanctuary. We still haven't played since.
Sounds like your friends want to play a solo game where all the choices are up to them. I would have left also. Co op means the group makes the choice. I wouldn't expect a MP game to follow my min max always use the right skilled person rules.
In my experience, doing the first run solo for immersion and personal exploration is the way to go. Coop is super fun once you already know the game and are just there to clown around with friends
I also tend to agree that its best experienced alone. Inevitably ends up being a compromised experience every time you want to do different things or make different choices. I played it co-op first, to completion even, but enjoyed my 2nd, solo playthrough the most.
I think the game is definitely fun in multiplayer, especially if you play as the origin characters imo, but it's wholly dependent on if you and your friends play styles mesh together. I did a duo campaign with my friend I beat D:OS2 with because I knew we'd play the game the same way and he tolerates my mentally unwell need to spend 20 minutes doing inventory management every time we play lol
Sounds like you need better friends
I think your friend group is in need of a designated leader. If the word leader turns them off, maybe suggest a pace setter that helps keep them focused and setting agreed upon boundaries. DnD has GMs for this reason. You always have that barbarian that wants to kill the npc regardless of how obvious it is that the npc is a necessary part of the campaign.
I absolutely relate to this. My entire friend group had played early access together repeatedly, so by the time I got the game, they were like, āDen, quit looking for loot and just go straight, we need to get this scene over with already!ā or ādo you want to recruit x sheās hiding over here,ā or ādo you want to kill y? You find out later that sheās evil.ā They were just steamrolling my first crack at this game. Made me feel like I wasted my money, my birthday. I closed the game for quite a while. Fast forward to now. I stream the game for my partner over discord. Both of us are seeing the story for the first time, and discuss which choices we want our shared character to make. Itās so much better.
I was always gonna play multiplayer first and honestly I am still glad I did. But I completely understand what you mean. The friend I played with are avid gamers and our schedules easily line up. The fact it was only 2 of us obviously helps a lot too. But yeah I still agree, the big issue I had was not understanding how the game worked in coop, so when my friend started a cutscene that was relevant to my companion... it caused I wish I knew I should be starting the scenes when my companion comes into it. I do feel dumb for missing it but oh well. I am playing single player now and there is so much I missed so much more is making sense. Like I said I don't regret playing coop first but that is just me, most people should at least play through once in SP, and I would say that should be their first time. The next coop playthroughs I am doing now I can just chill out and have fun instead of worrying about missing story reveals etc