I really hope this review I read on steam is not true. My wife and I were really looking forward to picking up GD this week so that we could play all aspects of the game… including story… together over LAN.
(If I read/understood the review correctly) If only one of us is going to experience the story, cut-scenes, dialogue, etc… that will probably prevent a purchase from both of us. I can understand leaving some decisions to the host, or making decisions of the host impact the game for the group… but putting a blindfold on the rest of the parties view of the story makes no sense and IMHO spoils the experience for the group.
Any official word if this is the way it is now, and will always be?
Is the only delivery method for the story and/or choices these dialogue screens? Meaning, does the group get to see/hear most parts of the story as it unfolds and the quest log/tracker updates? Do they really miss the story, or just the decision points?
Half the reason we keep playing Diablo3 is because my wife loves the story, the other half is because she loves picking up loot.
EDIT: Looks like we are revising/pasting our threads at the same time… or I only read half of it before typing my reply
So in theory, could one of us interact with the NPC and cancel before advancing the story so the other could interact and get caught up?
Also good news, the quests update for all players in coop. The dialogue can only be read by one player, and if they make a decision in the dialogue. However you should be able to see the updates in the quest log, there’s a pretty nifty log with tons of info there. There are also little notes you can pickup to get little tidbits of side story.
I’m starting to think this won’t be a big issue for my wife and I (assuming we can take turns interacting with NPC’s, prior to advancing) playing over LAN.
If we were trying to play coop via Internet mode with a 3rd person who kept blasting through the NPC dialogue… then we’d probably get frustrated; luckily for us this won’t be the case.
Maybe they’ll implement a read-only (can’t make a choice) mode for the non-hosts… then they wouldn’t have to worry about locking the NPC down to maintain control. Or maybe have the group elect a party leader who is the only decision maker if they don’t want to assume the host would want the role.
This makes me think of the little “replay” dialogue in Titan Quest within its quest log.
In my experience with Multiplayer Lan with 1 other person is that usually whoever is the host has less lag then the other (enemies attacking too far away only to hit) and also take in mind that there are quest choices and whoever chooses whatever option will result for both players.
Otherwise multiplayer can be quite fun especially when you try to combo certain builds like one super tank/healer and another pure offensive.
I wouldn’t say that the review is untrue, but it definitely does not reflect my experiences playing co-op with my wife. We are always looking for great games with solid LAN-based co-op, and Grim Dawn is definitely one of the best we’ve found.
In local (LAN) coop, latency is rarely an issue, and assuming you’re playing together in the same room, any quest dialogs that are not spoken in-game can simply be read aloud. Take turns with quest dialogs and turn-ins and you’ll get the story. Or better yet, take turns reading the text aloud to each other. Reading to your spouse is a forgotten pleasure these days, one I highly recommend. The important text of each quest will appear in your codex so you can read them whenever you want. Also, a lot of the lore comes from finding in-game documents and notes, which are immediately available in the codex for everyone to read as soon as one character does so.
There are a few co-op issues, but they’re pretty minor. The main problems we’ve found:
When a guest goes through a rift gate, the host may get a few seconds of lag
If the host player quits the game while the guest is still logged in, it sometimes causes the guest’s game to hang.
If you use a key binding to pick up loot, the host player will automatically pick up loot that is normally invisible, even if you’re using instanced loot or filtering by item quality. That means the host can “steal” the other player’s loot even when using instanced loot. Just don’t use a key bind and that’s not an issue.
Usually when both players loot a quest item and one person turns it in, it disappears from both inventories, but sometimes it doesn’t, and you’ve got to drop it on the ground to get it out of your inventory.
Sometimes the host’s character location does not get updated on the guest screen, and seems to be standing in one place. However pets and spell effects still show normally, so you can tell where they are from that. Simply going through a rift gate and coming back again fixes this problem when it happens.
There are some quests which are NOT shared across the party, but must be taken and turned in per-player. Most of these are faction reputation quests, and are not critical to the main story line. The main reason for this is that it’s possible for different players to make different choices with regard to some factions, and have different reputation levels. This can cause some humorous situations.
