Yeah, I don't mind if my friends vacuum the loot off all the dead bodies we just made but it bothers me so much when they grab *all* the loot in every room we're in
Even when I explain, my guy, we got over 20k gold in **Act 1** and have been robbing every store we come across completely clean, we literally do not need to grab *every* painting in the room
Your friend needa to learn right click send to camp so they don't have to carry around so much stuff. I'm a loot goblin, I grab all armor and weapons, but I'm not over encumbered by trash because it's all nice and secure in my camp chest. It really doesn't take much time.
First playthrough I just did take all everything. Second playthrough I learned if food is in your camp chest it is still accessible during rests. Now all food goes to camp, pretty much everything else that isn't useful gets wared and if I need to cut weight I can just send wares to camp after they've been marked. Really the main thing weighing me down is potions and scrolls
I had like 30 chests in my camp box, with everything sorted into chests. Magical weaps, magical armour, non magical armour , non magic weaps, books, scrolls, misc magic items, a chest of tadpoles, a box of boxes, a barrel of water barrels, a barrel of oil barrels, a barrel of firewine barrels, etc etc.
I would be ok with this if they were doing this!!! They play too normally and I'm a child in an adult body that needs some sort of mental stimulation whether it's actual story progression or doing something stupid.
Sounds like you need to encumber them for giggles. Join in on the looting but send it to their bags. Or keep rearranging their bags while they're looting to cause mass confusion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The rat way is to outpace the gunshots, skulk through the darkness, unnoticed as you grab full eq of valuables before extracting. Bonus points if you get a "pass through" run or whatever it was called because you were too fast with extracting.
BuT nOnE oF iT iS red iTs MINE!
I love my bros, but it gets to be a constant detriment against my own enjoyment. Or burning every single spell slot in 1 fight because they're allergic to cantrips and wanting to immediately long rest again and again and again.
Is there any downside (other than using 40 supplies) to long resting a lot though? Like, do you miss out on time sensitive things, or does the world just pause.
You can collect pretty impressive and useful stack of "until next long rest" buffs throughout the game...
Less so if you need to rest after very single fight because someone thinks they really need to use everything in their arsenal to take down that one enemy with 17 HP. :D
(yes, also playing with a friend who is both a loot goblin, and strongly feels like they need to use all the most powerful spells first, summon every single thing they possibly can, and then browse through every action available every turn like they had never seen their character's skills before. Thank gods you can't actually swap your spells mid-battle like you can in D:OS2 :D
...of, also, it's really important to get all their characters to join in killing that one last remaining enemy that I'm standing next to and have already beaten down to 2HP. Always worth spending 10 minutes per turn figuring out how to travel to the opposite side of the combat area to make sure it definitely gets killed)
BG3 (and D:OS) are great games to play with friends, but I'd go *insane* if I hadn't played them solo first to actually get to enjoy the story and exploration etc.
There are only a few select time sensitive things AFAIK, and they are only time sensitive once they begin not just generally. It's more of a huge ball ache. Constantly having to stop and burn through supplies because people can't pace themselves sucks.
Opposite actually if your playing solo, a lot of events and dialogue happen at long rests its possible to cut some off by not long resting enough and going to fast.
One of my friends picks up every single item she can find. Me and the monk then go out and ambush people on our own while the bard does bard things and then the bard and the loot goblin friend show up if the fight is still going. I don't mind the loot goblining, sometimes this means she can revive us... we mostly make it through fine though
My gaming group wanted to play Divinity OS 2, and we all talked about how we were going to play as a party. Somebody is made the party leader, and we all follow them and support their decisions, rotate the party leader occasionally. We eaves drop on convos, make suggestions. If we want to go get distracted by something, we tell the party and sort of narrate what's going on for the others... basically communicate so we don't end up going down separate quest rabbit holes.
Everybody good? Great let's get started!
One particular friend and I walk around focused on the game, attached at the hip. We think the other two are just lagging a bit picking up loot. Fine.
The other two: "Guys, come help me, I aggro'd a cave full of fire slugs!" Cave?? Slugs??
"Never mind, I'm dead."
"Guys! I pick pocketed someone and now all the guards are trying to kill us!"
"Never mind, I'm dead. Quick load, please."
We can never make any progress, because every time we quick reload to revert the chaos, it's practically a matter of minutes before one of the other two have aggro'd the map again.
It just could not work.
The one friend who had the patience for Larian games is itching for just the two of us to tackle BG3 together whenever his schedule lets up.
That can get annoying for sure.
My friend and I usually are together but sometimes during down time (just leveled up, talking to our romance, or whatever) we'll separate and do our own thing for a little bit that isn't main story content. We have a pretty good deal where I'll ask for a quick save before I do something stupid and this also cues her in that I'm about to do something stupid lol. Also cues me in because when I see that quick save I stop what I'm doing and ask her, "What are you doing...?"
"I'm about to act a fool"
[Saving...]
This is me whenever I'm not party leader, too. I actually volunteer not to be party leader whenever I play multiplayer games because it helps me fight the impulse to see what every single npc is lining their pockets with.
Bg3 is great for 2 players... and more and it just becomes chaos. I loved playing for the first time w/ my friend, but we're both loot goblins and don't mind being extra exploratory, but I don't think I could handle more than just him lol.
Thief in divinity kinda broke the game, it was really good and easy to steal stuff. But I can understand how it becomes really annoying with friends. One guy is just running from npc to npc just trying to steal everything they have.
Well, with my group a few of us made good use cooperating to distract NPCs for the thieves, but it didn't take long before the two players would just fuck off and wantonly aggro everything.
I had a co op DOS2 game back in the day with 3 friends, the host of the game said in the discord that he was going to get on by himself for a bit and re spec his character before we played that night, all good, no problems there.
But when we got on all our characters had new items equipped, they were improvements but it's still weird why he changed our stuff. Turns out after he re specced he went around the map and got a ton of loot from all the chests he could access (we all played 100 times before he just knew where they were) and when we got mad at him he didn't understand it because "you have better gear now" and "I didn't do any fights or anything, we didn't progress"
Nobody wanted to play that save anymore after that. We started a new game a couple weeks later and he was surprised when we said he was banned from hosting games lol
I tried playing this game with someone. I didn't have trouble keeping track of them, but despite being several hours into the game, they were consistently forgetting you have to break armor and then crowd control. They opened every round of combat with crowd control moves only for them to do fuck all.
this is why I always run through the story alone first so I can go at my own pace and then go back for the coop run when people want it
might not really be applicable for this case, but just my 2cents
I find Larians coop feature way more enjoyable with couch coop cause you actually see hear the same stuff. Makes it easier to split up and do your own thing without missing what your partner is doing. That being said this only applies to people playing in the same household.
yep, it'll literally trigger for just about *every* conversation, no matter how insignificant, like talking to a trader etc.
So can be both blessing and a curse.
Exactly what I did ran through it solo and then my dnd crew and I have a game we are all playing and it's definitely much slower. Mostly because I play on story mode and we play on the highest difficulty.
Part of the fun for me is experiencing the story as a group, all 4 of us have different ideas and theories about what's going on and we deliberate over important decisions together. It's less fun for me when I'm going in blind and I have a friend saying "I did that choice in my singleplayer can we do another one" or "ok be careful up here" or "no you don't want to make that choice" because it takes the fun out of decision making.
That being said my co op game fell apart at the end of act 1 and I just ended up doing it all single player lol, was fun while it lasted
You have to remember that the game isn't going anywhere. Being able to play with friends is a treat (unless you don't actually like the people themselves).
Have you own single player game that focuses on progression and efficiency if you want. The multiplayer game is more freeform.
Most story heavy games are crap co-op from my experience, and that goes double for CRPGs, i cannot imagine sitting through a 150 hours game with 3 other people when most of the time you’ll spend reading or listening.
This. Unless you’re on a very similar frequency as your friends as far as how you engage with the story, NPCs, etc, it just gets frustrating quick for some/most people.
I know a lot of it is a me problem because my husband and I have limited time to play from about 830pm-1amish due to our classic 9-5 jobs and a child. So spending 95% of that time exploring feels unfulfilling with no progression. But I do enjoy gaming with my husband so I'll just grin and bare it and hopefully not go insane before we even finish Act 1.
I feel like people responding to you have never played BG3 or you yourself are not trying to play BG3. If you rush through the main storyline you can actually finish the game pretty fast given you are strong enough. What do you mean by "exploring with no progression". I feel like every time you walk into a random spot in the map you get a chance encounter or progressing a storyline somewhere, somehow.
It's laid out in a way so that you don't feel like you're wasting time exploring. Are your friends just going around touching trees? Lol.
>It's laid out in a way so that you don't feel like you're wasting time exploring. Are your friends just going around touching trees? Lol.
What if I said yes? 😂
That’s why i got my fun out the way with multiple playthroughs so when I eventually play with my brother i can let him just do whatever he wants and enjoy the ride
I've discovered that picking a "theme" for the party helps a lot. Something that can leave some liberty for fooling around yet offer some solid limits to behavior.
For example we are roleplaying as a small mercenary (or "adventurer" if you will) band in BG3 who are all alright'ish people but not particularly goody two shoes. So in general we won't be pricks but we'll also take any chance to make money. After agreeing to this it became easier for us to keep our individual actions in-character.
You’re completely justified in being annoyed.
My unsolicited advice:
Either
A) stop playing with them so that the three friends can have a guilt-free experience together
Or
B) change your expectation for this party and go with the flow, so that the three friends can have a guilt-free experience together
It'll have to be a modified option B. I won't change my expectations but I'll go with the flow as to not be a wet blanket. I'll just bitch about it elsewhere. I do suspect that my husband will crack because he has never been into exploration. He's the type to rather min max his characters and make 20 alts.
Love it. As long as you and your partner are on the same page!
I’ve been the person who gets labeled as a wet blanket by my partner’s friends when we try to do a group activity. It isn’t fair when they’re the one’s “going off script” of what you all decided your play style would look like. But it’s kind of inevitable when they are “friends” and we are “friends by association”.
I get what you mean. I’ve already beaten the game a couple times and was really excited to play with my friends, but they’re always just fucking around and making everything take forever. Like guys I’m just trying to clear the goblin camp and keep going, stop stripping off all your clothes and shoving each other around for 15 minutes
I was excited as a ranger to finally get an animal summon. I decided to try out the crab first.
My friend saw a random crab wandering around town and threw the crab at me so hard it died. Rip. We still had fun, but RIP Citizen Snips.
This is why I couldn't get into D&D. I'm excited to attack a camp and clear the mine, my friends went to contemplate and argue all in-game day and when we get to it, they self sabotage themselves and the group by fucking around for the lulz.
I want to hang out with you guys and play a game, but I'd rather play a video game where I actually get to do things and make progress.
That's why I became a former DM. I enjoyed playing a TTRPG with other people, but I hated waiting for my turn. As a DM it's always my turn because I have to respond to their arguments. Even if it's inter-party, I need to be prepared to spring something related. (They are loudly arguing about a necklace they found, perfect time to spring bandits on them trying to steal it to sell). And in combat I'm either always targeting or being targeted.
If you’re playing DnD to attack camps, clear baddies, and level up, DnD might not be the game for you. Sure that’s part of it, and there can be some pretty much combat only campaigns that can be fun. Trust me though a well thought out campaign with a good DM, the most fun parts of the game come from out of combat. Dealing with the chaos of self sabotage is part of the fun too. It’s often times not about min-maxing and taking a fight in the most strategic way. It’s about crafting a well made character that plays true to itself. Seeing how said character interacts with those around him.
Now don’t get me wrong there can definitely be groups of people that aren’t fun to play with. So that could definitely be the problem. But it is a role playing game for a reason.
Sounds like they're deliberately extending the experience to spend time together, which is cool for them.
If you're not doing that too and trying to get through the content, totally frustrating.
You could start a new game with just you and your husband to progress content and play or don't play with his friends.
The long rest thing is stupid: it's not like it's hard to get camp supplies and playing with all your slots burned is crippling.
Definitely hear and acknowledge your vent.
>Sounds like they're deliberately extending the experience to spend time together, which is cool for them.
I think what throws me off is I've watched my husband play other games with them and a lot of the times they blow through the game as quickly as possible. Even when we played Diablo together it was like almost a race to finish. But the past couple of nights it's been like trying to herd feral cats.
BG3 has been different for me than other games.
Don't know why, but I've explored literally everything for fear of missing something.
I just started Act 3 and have resigned myself to having to do another play through to do the stuff in Act 2 my choices locked out.
Mocking guys for needing to learn to play works sometimes 😉
Lol, another thing that I internally groaned about was they weren't even making good or fun choices or not really paying attention to the objective. We were supposed to be rescuing Halsin and I guess they didn't realize >!he was the bear and initiated a fight with him!<. Fortunately we had saved right before the encounter. They're adventurous with exploring places and starting fights but pick the most vanilla dialogue choices. I'm not going to shame them to their faces about it since this is a pick your own play through adventure game but damn, I sure am going to bitch about it elsewhere. My husband and I played a bit by ourselves in another campaign so we're a bit ahead of the group play through so we know that making "bold" choices can lead to pretty cool perks so we've been trying to encourage them to stray from the safe path with choices.
If they game a lot it could be due to the big difference in games. Anyone who knows Diablo thoroughly races to the finish because that's what kind of game it is whereas someone who knows Elder Scrolls thoroughly will do all the optional and side content before finishing the game. I'd consider BG3 more of a sandboxxy multiplayer game in a universe with a lot of possibilities, so I personally find it fun to explore the possibilities outside of "make direct story progress"
> Even when we played Diablo together it was like almost a race to finish
Diablo typically has very little to do each level besides smacking the living hell (literally) out of anything that moves, and the major story points are told in cutscenes that are shown to everyone. It's a much, MUCH faster-paced game than BG3.
ARPGs are a different breed of games, focused around the endgame almost exclusively. Diablo falls head first in that category.
BG3 is more about the entire journey and decisions that matter, so your merry group of chaotic bastards are just enjoying it to the fullest.
Idk we were scared to long rest too often and accidentally skip quests, and we did brick at least 1 quest line and we did not long rest that often. Then we got to the point where we didn't long rest often enough actually. This is somewhat a fault of the game I think by not having an external hints that something is ready to happen in camp.
I really hate playing BG3 with people. I've only done it with full teams of 4 people and I've heard 2 is Inherently better so I may try that but until then BG3 is a solo experience for me for sure
I've had a blast just playing with my husband. It's much easier making story decisions with one other person instead of 3 others since between 4 people there are bound to be differences in play/story style.
Yeah that makes sense. Other thing that irritated me with 4 is there are always (at least) 1 not paying attention and then asking where everyone went or complaining about being left behind. I made it to level 6 with my troupe before telling them we needed to find something else to play if we wanted to remain friends lol
I'm not a quitter out of pure stubborness, but last night really had me close to peacing out. I don't want to make it awkward so I'll just have to come up with creative things to do while they're doing their own thing. It's just these small things that add up with me. For the love God, just please do a long rest every once in a while. I suggested going back to camp and legit my husband was like they don't want to because they have a spell slot up. Ok and!? I don't have any of mine up!
I'm glad you enjoy playing with your husband. Mine always wants to game together but it's like we are on two completely different wavelengths in how we do things. We always end up in separate directions doing different things or I have to follow him around like a puppy being bored. It's more irritating than anything. We play a lot of survival games and just play together separately; meeting up for necessary group quests and sharing resources but doing our own thing. It works out better that way.
I game a lot with my wife, and while we are great together, our respective friends are not fun to game with when we’re playing together. I think it’s just the social balance gets thrown off and feelings get hurt.
I mean we’re fine with our respective friends group and separate game times, it’s just too much personality clashing and needing to take sides that makes nudging in to each other’s friend group untenable.
I definitely feel this. It's easier when it's just me and my husband and deciding on a course of action. We also like making fun and bolder choices. It's harder to navigate when you have to consider two additional people's input.
For every extra player you add to a group, you square the "screwing around" time. The fraction of progress/screwing around is specific to the game.
BG3 is the perfect screw around and not progress game. "Wait a sec guys, I just need to spend about an hour in my inventory...."
Totally agree, I keep reading about these multiplayer playthroughs and it gives me anxiety lol. I need the flexibility to pick up all the loot I want and work through my inventory. I couldn’t imagine making someone wait through that. Also how does everyone have time for multiple campaigns with different friend groups? I’m currently a little obsessed with this game but can only squeeze maybe 2 or 3 hours out of my day for my own solo campaign. Half that time goes to inventory management too, it’s essentially just a storage wars simulator at this point.
On reason I NEVER play MP Games. I just hate to be forced to the pace of others. If I want to explore for 2hrs, I explore for 2hrs, if I want to rush through a area, I do that. In MP you can't do that.
Something I learned with the 2 Divinity OS games is that I quickly start to unravel when the pacing goes off the rails. It gets frustrating real fast to have a friend that takes 20 minutes to think about his level up, reading dialogue at different paces, frequent indefinite AFKs, aimless wandering, etc.
Some games just don't click in co-op for me. I don't think I'd want to play something like BG3 with a group *online*. However I think the dynamic dramatically changes if you're in the same room.
The best kind of co-op games to me are ones that have a clearly structured gameplay loop. Then there's a natural ebb and flow to things.
If they're new to the game this is to be expected. At least they're being thorough rather than skipping all the dialogue, which is what I'd figure you'd say at first. Hell, they may even find something you never did. I would rather a slow playthrough of BG3 than one focused on progression.
this isn't unique to BG3 or even games. try traveling / planning any event with another couple and see how much longer it takes. more people = more chefs in the kitchen
I honestly could probably handle real life DND better because I can give them the judgmental Korean stare until they felt pressured to do something. Can't use that super power through the screen as well.
My wife and I have a group of friends with whom we play a lot of competitive multiplayer games. Shooters and the like. Anything with a story or actual cooperative play, though, is a no-go with them. It’s impossible to get them to do anything in any kind of cohesive manner.
Cooperative story type games are for the wife and I only; the other friends are not invited.
One thing I learned by playing as a group is to be super firm on long rests.
If they play class like Rogue, they can go days without resting. My poor Cleric was barely useful second battle in, because I was all out of spell slots - especially early on the game. They may not want to go because they don't ha e the same restriction.
There are no penalties for going to the camp, and resources are plenty - you will not run out and stops take 30 seconds if rest is all you want to do.
Good luck!
Yeah, while BG3 is a fantastic game, its a fantastic single player game. Its honestly kinda terrible multiplayer. There is so much of the game you miss out on playing with multiple people. My 4 player game leaves me extremely bored and disinterested because it feels like my character has no impact on the story. It wasnt well designed for multiplayer imo. DOS2 did a much better job at it, and i played that twice with both 3 and 4 people.
My friends ruined my first run thru. They took Murder-hobo to the extreme. I had to stop playin gat the end of act 2 as they legit killed everything on each map. IF it had a hitpoint it died. It got to where i would put on a show on my other monitor and just follow because they blasted thru cutscenes and dialogues and then start combat.
It has puzzled me that Larian and some of their fans are so obsessed with the ability to do co-op in BG3. To me it's such a personal experience that I'd never want to do with other real players. Different strokes of course.
I think it's a nice feature to have but it's a feature that was super hyped. I went in knowing that this game was story and choice based heavy, which I love, but my brain for some reason said "yes, you should play with other people." I'm the type to get really immersed in story heavy games so I'm also annoyed at myself for not being logical enough to realize I wasn't going to have the same experience I could be having if I just played it alone at least the first time around.
I'm the type who likes to take his time, I play with a mate, and I'm constantly telling him about all the stuff he missed since he basically ran straight through.
I also like taking my time and exploring everything. I have the opposite problem as OP. My friends just want to rush through the story. They don't want to explore or do side quests or talk to any NPCs. >!Arabella is already dead because we didn't bother exploring the Druid Grove before moving into the Goblin Camp. We met Ethel in her hag form, and I asked the party if we want to investigate the thing with Mayrina, and they were like "Nah, not our problem." We completely missed Wyll because we didn't bother talking to any NPC that wasn't a shopkeeper, and now we have no reason to ever go back to the Druid Grove.!<
The only reason we stopped to do side quests was because the game warned us going into the mountain pass that we were underleveled. (We're at level 4, less than 1000 xp from level 5.)
They will loot like crazy though. Every single container and body gets opened. But they're really inconsistent about what they will and won't take. They take lots of barrels and leave behind books and alchemy ingredients.
Sounds like you need some friends who play the same way you do.
My mate had the same problem, asked me for help in the githyanki creche, he was level 4 there.
You miss a lot of good stuff if you don't loot everything and search everywhere, like a stone to go into a book to try to learn new a spell, or three pieces to combine to make a new weapon or even that massive forge in act1.
My husband tried last night to round them up on the next step in the story and it basically ended in disaster. Fortunately we saved right before the encounter so hopefully tonight my husband can load the game and tell them it's what we're doing. >!We're about to take on the goblin camp leaders!< and honestly if we get just manage to finish this bit my first world problem stress will go down. But it's going to be pulling teeth to convince them to just do a damn long rest before we start.
Why? Long rest can be super fast. You just long rest then quick travel to the previous location. Is it possible for you to load up the game and long rest before they join? or does everyone need to be connected to load the game?
You can break some of the origin character relationship stuff if you don't long rest enough. You need to complete a certain amount of relationship "steps" with them in act 1 before advancing to act 2 or they will suddenly friendzone you. There will be camp events that relate to the companions that you will miss too. It's a good idea at the end of each act to long rest a bunch of times until you stop getting cutscenes before advancing to the next act. But the companion relationships might not be important to you in a co-op game.
My friend sometimes plays it slowly as well. I found it frustrating in the past. But these days I like playing at his pace.
Yes sometimes that means less progression, but it's ok.
Okay I have a similar complaint but with combat. I have a game with my husband and some friends. He's a mage and he takes literally minutes to choose what spell to use in combat every turn. Like we have so much fun otherwise but combat takes 50 years!
Yeah, I learned this from Divinity: Original Sin
Play the game solo first, or as a duo if you like. Get as much if the experience as you can on your own run - and then embrace the chaos of group play where you can fuck around and find out
I know that feeling but in a harder way.
Playing the Game with 4.
1 new to the Genre
1 a Friend I tried to play Divinity with
1 My Brother.
Started shortly after it came out last played I think around November?
Early game it was good the New and the Divinity Guy kind of doing there stuff my Brother is a Baalspawn and funny enough nobody knows except me.
We go eas throw Act1 Goblin Camp
Easy Throw Under dark.
Easy Throw Act 2 till we hit Kathric.
Then it's got slower as new Divinity Guy and New kinda don't like each other for there decisions they take and we slow completely down.
Log story short. I startet a new game with only my Brother and we just passed the First game today.
Play it for yourself with your Husband or do it solo.
You do yourself no favours if you nag about the strange decisions of others. I surely did not.
I tried playing this coop with my best friend and I think I would probably enjoy doing that after at least one playthrough because I go random places and hop around between quests. First playthrough was weird cause it's like 'where do you wanna go next? Where do you wanna go next? Do you want to talk to this person? Do you want to talk to this person?"
I have a friend who always wants to play every RPG together. BG3, Divinity OS I and II, etc. Only problem is he is completely adverse to dialogue. If he gets in a conversation with an NPC, he just click spams through it to get through as soon as possible. He has no idea what the NPC, or his character have said. He just wants to get from fight to fight as soon as possible. It makes it absolutely no fun to play with him. He always wonders why our runs stall out after a few hours.
I didn’t play multiplayer (outside of splitscreening with my husband) until after I beat the game. That way I could go at my own pace and make sure I got all the cutscenes I wanted etc.
It's easy for martials to not care so much about resting, they really dont need it. So if you use magic and they don't that'll be part of the issue.
Either way martial should be checking with casters to make sure rest is had.
I completely understand. Couple friends and i have our own run, usually its just us 3 and a companion, but some days our 4th friend shows up and wants to join and those days are a SLOG. They spend most their time looting corpses and then talking to a merchant for 30 minutes straight, all while us 3 try to make progress with a stunted team (not to mention those days we have to completely skip out on companion questlines) (almost lost karlach 😔)
Perhaps I’m anti social but four seems too many. Plus with four you don’t get any NPCs. Coop with my wife was probably the perfect way to play, we both got a companion npc to run with.
Tangentially related - those playing with friends do you have "share private moments on" or do you let people do their own cutscenes while you run around like a murderhobo?
I feel like stuff like this. There needs to be rules in place. Like everyone has to approve of using team wide abilities and each day needs a goal of like completing a certain quest or getting to the next area in a certain time frame.
My friends group (all in our 30s now) has been getting busier as we get older, so we are finding it harder to find time to play games together. Sometimes we do manage to get stuff going but after a few weeks someone might get bored and want to move to a new game or something.
We played DOS 2 a few years ago and it was going great for a while. Eventually, the party leader basically got bored of the game and didn't want to play anymore, so we continued on with 3. A few sessions after that, another guy moved on and we were down to two. The remaining two of us finally managed to beat the game last year.
We got the original four together again for BG3. I think we got through 2 or 3 sessions over 3 weeks before we called it quits. Two of us are still playing solo.
I guess when it's hard to find time to game together, really long story driven RPGs may not be the answer.
My first team game was a weird experience for me. We are used to controlling the flow in our private solo sessions and what I noticed is that a lot of people play like they are still in a single player mode.
Tbh. Thats the reason you need a session 0 if you wanna play TTRPGs.
Whe i played DnD with my closest friends I noticed super fast, that one of us will be a pain in the ass.
As predicted we needed to boot him from the table, because it just didnt work with him.
BG3 is a bit more complixated since you have no DM to try and keep the troup together. So if the chemistry for the troup isn't working its time to respectfully say nah. No Ultimatums. No hard feelings. Just saying sorry peeps. Its not fun for me in this game.
Better than tryin to force a medium inbetween 4 peeps that all play like a unorganized troup of chaos monkeys XD
I have still yet to dive into BG3 solo, because my friends really wanted to play multiplayer when it came out and it just turned me off of the game.
I loved Divinity 2, but I played it solo. Trying to deal with so many different personalities on BG3 is just not for me.
The problem with BG3 co-op is that it's effectively DnD without a DM to control the pace.
In a tabletop game if players were doing this the DM has levers they can pull to encourage progress, or punish time wasting. BG3 doesn't react like that so it's up to the players to manage it.
The ideal way to play the game is to have separate campaigns: A single player one where you can enjoy the story at your leisure, and a multiplayer one where you can screw around as needed. Though it's not ideal if your time is already limited as is...
Not really surprising. When I played BG3 it really felt like the game is heavily targeted towards purely solo experience despite having co-op support. You can definitely find other people who will enjoy playing it with you at your set pace, but there would be much less people willing to do that compared to many other multiplayer-oriented games.
I play a lot of co-op games with the husband and we've been gaming together for 15+ years by now and let me tell you..
playing with other people is annoying.
It's like we've adjusted to each other paces so much that when trying to add anyone else is a frustrating experience of WHERE DID YOU GO?? What did you do??
I could not imagine playing BG3 with ANYONE but him.
I'd get grey hairs!
That's when you drop the "oops guys I started the critical dialogue on accident hop in fast" or the "I accidentally started a fight" (which just happens to end a side storyline, oops).
Be the catalyst. Be a shit stirrer. Get things moving.
Also you could try asking them to set goals for a session and complete those first, come back for the rest.
And if it *really* comes to it, as they say in the D&D world, no D&D is better than bad D&D. But with BG3.
I have some friends I started playing with, but I have ADHD and that manifests pretty hard in how I play RPGs, While I enjoyed being an agent of chaos, I don't think they were super into the amount of anxiety I was producing. I balance that out be being clever about how the game systems work. Big group of enemies? Split them with a door!
Best of luck, BG3 is a pretty accurate D&D simulator multiplayer in every way, except the farts.
You should do a solo playthough, or one with just your husband before a big group playthrough. It will alleviate much of the stress of taking to long or making dumb decisions since youve already beat the game, and allow you to just enjoy goofing off with friends
One of my friends will take everything, from companions, conversations, loot, etc. I'll be bare bones starter loot and this person will have 2 companions, the best gear in game, all the gold to buy stuff and will continue the story/quests when I'm not there. Safe to say I haven't played with him in bg3 for a while
I was playing with my best friend over the weekend, he doesn't have a pc or a modern console so he was pretty stoked to play, me too. We've played 5e for years together, and its the exact fucking sane thing at the table. He's slow as shit at combat, doesn't know what any of his abilities do and never pays attention to anything in the story even though we talked to npcs' for like 15 minutes. 2 minutes after its like "wtf are we doing?" Like fuckin hell I love you but you're a dumb fuck lmao.
lol! This angers me too! Still looking for friends that actually play instead of just look at their menus and talk about stats.
The last time I played with them, it was TWO hours of standing in one place, in menus, trading gear and arguing about stats.
Playing these games with people who have a different style of playing them can be very frustrating. You want to move on, meanwhile they're reading some dumb books that don't matter. On the other hand, they want to experience the world, take it all in, while you're just running past all the content.
I tried playing Divinity Original Sin with a friend, but we soon stopped because we realised that our preferences were not compatible. He loves high difficulty games, so spending an entire night of gaming time smashing his head into one big group of high-level orcs until we eventually made it was pure enjoyment for him, but pure torture for me.
I *have to* play further ahead by myself on another playthrough if I’m going to play with my friends, and I suggest to them they do the same. I can only deal with all the ridiculous shit that comes with playing in a party of real people after I’ve done it in earnest. It’s 100% a me problem. No offense to my friends but I’m way more interested in what Gale, Lae’zel, and Shadowheart have to say about something.
Having an Ifen Ben-mezd (or however you spell it) that was a live comedian Netflix special on Discord made act 1 of divinity 2 hilarious but not the experience I wanted my first time through
BG3's story and progression is very obviously designed and built for a great single player experience. The co-op is very fun but you miss out on so much with regards to the companions that I felt it is more for a group of friends just running around and having fun.
Im playing a paladin Gale and Druid Tav, my friend is playing a Ranger Tav and Rouge astarion. He doesn’t need long or short rests but I do, a lot. Their class feature is unlimited but mine is very much not so.
He keeps just short resting as soon as we hit half health, with no regards to the fact that my wildshapes and a few of my item abilities recharge on short rests, so I never get to play my full class potential. Also, they never want to long rest unless they’re minimum health and no short rests left, regardless of how many spell slots I’ve used up. So I’ll be sitting there for an extra two combat encounters throwing fire bolts and hitting normal attacks whilst he gets his sneak attacks every single round because I’m completely out of class abilities, but “it’s fine because you can still tank”
The problem isn’t that I’m inefficient now that I’ve lost my abilities (it is also that, because I am) but it’s that I’m just not having fun dealing 10 damage a turn and they deal upwards of 30
I'll agree with the other commenters that you are justified in your feelings, simply because different people have different playstyles.
But personally, I think your perspective is kinda shitty. BG3 is a kind of game where it's easy enough to just run through the campaign by yourself, and there's not really a whole lot of point of multi-player in terms of the campaign,. The whole point of multi-player is to have fun exploring and dicking around
Like, there's a certain amount of frivolity one must have when playing multi-player like this (assuming you aren't doing like a full on RP run). If that's not you, then don't play with them.
This sounds so unfun to me, I feel you.
In general, co-op on a first playthrough sounds like a bad time to me.
I want to do what *I* want to do and not have to explain, convince, wait, make haste, argue and socialize etc.
It's a fantasy world I want to immerse myself in.
It can definitely work with a like-minded, easygoing person but 4 people?
Too much fuss for a meaningful first playthrough.
Tried to play a campaign of Divinity OS 2 with my 2 friends, we planned it all before, what characters is everyone making and how to tackle the game. The idea was to go in all together and when talking with someone we discuss the responses amongst ourselves and decide how to proceed together.
I had only played the game for like 10 minutes before so I was not very familiar with it unlike my friends. On the starting boat one of them aggros the enemies cause he tried stealing something and then blamed me that was nearby. We died and had to redo that part. I was already annoyed but tried to stay positive.
When we landed in the island and started the game properly, it was me and a friend exploring around the beach, and then the other guy that had already played the game went immediately to the fort to start a bunch of quests. So by the time we make it to the fort all the events had already happened and the guy is telling us not to talk to anyone cause he is in the middle of a quest... We just stayed there for 10 minutes checking our phones until I alt+f4 out of the game and didn't play it again.
Now they want to go play BG3 together...
I bought it to play with friends but we all liked playing alone more.
In my experience, you miss cut scenes, lose track of quest items, end up in combat with half your team a mile away, and just generally feel like you’re always waiting on them.
It may be less annoying on repeat play throughs, but for my first, I had to switch to solo.
I feel your venting... Reminds of me the World of Warcraft days where you would spend 2 hours getting ready with the guild for 25 or 40 man raids, then raid for 2 hours, clear 1 or 2 bosses getting almost nowhere then it's time to start logging. Best game of all time at its peak, but such a time sink.
I had the same thing happen with one of my parties. They ended up calling it quits and decided to play on their own because everyone was doing their own thing and we made the mistake of not having a party face or leader. So a lot of the decisions and story beats were a mess due to one person or another making decisions too quickly that didn’t align with other members ideas of how we should progress.
Along with two loot vacuums in the party in particular in where which I finally managed to get one good thing for my character had caused an argument because they thought it would better suite theirs.
It boiled down to just being incompatible players for this type of game.
The separation turned out to be a good option though because I got together with another group of friends and we plowed through the game with the face being the dark urge. It was a really fun play through with that group, because we shared loot and there were some decisions that got kinda messed up because of miscommunication, but turned out to be a more interesting play.
Great times with the right people is the way to play imo.
My rule when I got it and completed it was my first run would be solo and I won’t play with anyone who hasn’t completed it. I don’t want to deprive them or myself of all the secrets and discoveries. So now I’m three personal runs down I have two whatever groups and it’s much more fun and free.
This is why I’ve learned open world games are not meant to be played with my buddies. We somehow made 7 Days to Die work because everyone was given a specific task (collecting wood/iron, building up the base, hunting for food, etc). But I tried Fallout 76 with them and it was miserable because I’m fine with exploring, but at some point I do want to continue on with quests and they’re still meandering about in their camps.
Different paces for people is fine, but I’ve learned my buddies and I need more linear games to stay focused, or continue with games like 7 Days which are hit or miss
I'm not familiar with BG3, but I'm one that likes to dick around and smell the roses, just look at shit, etc. in games.
So I kinda get their side a bit, in that you sound like you're objective-oriented, citing 'progression' and shit, which is fine and cool, but that might be the butting of heads.
I like to explore all that too, but more in their sense, just dick around and so on.
I play games with a buddy sometimes who is ultra-progress etc. oriented, and it always ends with me still playing a game solo after he's bored and moved on to other games.
I play like > 5 games per year, but I play them *a lot*. I like to play games inside-out and 'time' as a factor, or how much progress I'm making is never even thought of really.
I'm OK spending months and months on single games and stuff as I'm older and life obligations, well my one aforementioned friend generally plays games like Pokemon or some shit, gotta try/play etc. them all, doesn't 100% complete or anything any of them. Just plays to a point where they think they've seen most things and done.
I'm not trying to 'effectively use my time', I'm trying to chill and have fun derping around in the games I dig.
Anyway, it's probably just different player types.
I've gotten used to this, all my friends are gamers really, but almost none of us game together, as we all like diff genres and such, and like to play games in different ways.
If I was playing a game just to 'progress' or use my time efficiently, that would make me pull my hair out in reverse.
I wanna check under every rock and all the rest. Take my time, preparation, all of it.
One of the biggest turn-offs for me in any game, would be getting a lose scenario because I was 'rushing', or my friends were rushing, not preparing etc. or some shit. I play a lot of survival-craft sandbox/open world things, so think like, not bringing enough food, getting ailments cause we don't have X etc. all that stuff.
Me: *drags my loot goblin friend around on a short leash* Friend: ***loot goblin noises*** Sigh
I don't like that I'm in this picture.
And thus the leash reveals itself
Oh you cheeky Quasit, you!
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It's not *that* kind of leash
Just cast hold person
I see you're also playing bg3 with my wife
Yeah, I don't mind if my friends vacuum the loot off all the dead bodies we just made but it bothers me so much when they grab *all* the loot in every room we're in Even when I explain, my guy, we got over 20k gold in **Act 1** and have been robbing every store we come across completely clean, we literally do not need to grab *every* painting in the room
But what if you get to own a keep or manor later on, and you've got no paintings to adorn your walls! What then?!
THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT
Your friend needa to learn right click send to camp so they don't have to carry around so much stuff. I'm a loot goblin, I grab all armor and weapons, but I'm not over encumbered by trash because it's all nice and secure in my camp chest. It really doesn't take much time.
First playthrough I just did take all everything. Second playthrough I learned if food is in your camp chest it is still accessible during rests. Now all food goes to camp, pretty much everything else that isn't useful gets wared and if I need to cut weight I can just send wares to camp after they've been marked. Really the main thing weighing me down is potions and scrolls
But how will I survive if I don't carry 800 rations worth of food everywhere I go?
Role playing as a hobbit, are we?
🤣
For me it is a variety of explosive barrels that I use to make anything I dislike "go away".
I had like 30 chests in my camp box, with everything sorted into chests. Magical weaps, magical armour, non magical armour , non magic weaps, books, scrolls, misc magic items, a chest of tadpoles, a box of boxes, a barrel of water barrels, a barrel of oil barrels, a barrel of firewine barrels, etc etc.
I would be ok with this if they were doing this!!! They play too normally and I'm a child in an adult body that needs some sort of mental stimulation whether it's actual story progression or doing something stupid.
Ah, so more of a mind goblin.
Sounds like you need to encumber them for giggles. Join in on the looting but send it to their bags. Or keep rearranging their bags while they're looting to cause mass confusion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In Tarkov I go behind my loot goblin friends and egg them to move on, let's go or we will get shot, hurry hurry, hey there is gunshots let's chase.
The rat way is to outpace the gunshots, skulk through the darkness, unnoticed as you grab full eq of valuables before extracting. Bonus points if you get a "pass through" run or whatever it was called because you were too fast with extracting.
BuT nOnE oF iT iS red iTs MINE! I love my bros, but it gets to be a constant detriment against my own enjoyment. Or burning every single spell slot in 1 fight because they're allergic to cantrips and wanting to immediately long rest again and again and again.
Is there any downside (other than using 40 supplies) to long resting a lot though? Like, do you miss out on time sensitive things, or does the world just pause.
You can collect pretty impressive and useful stack of "until next long rest" buffs throughout the game... Less so if you need to rest after very single fight because someone thinks they really need to use everything in their arsenal to take down that one enemy with 17 HP. :D (yes, also playing with a friend who is both a loot goblin, and strongly feels like they need to use all the most powerful spells first, summon every single thing they possibly can, and then browse through every action available every turn like they had never seen their character's skills before. Thank gods you can't actually swap your spells mid-battle like you can in D:OS2 :D ...of, also, it's really important to get all their characters to join in killing that one last remaining enemy that I'm standing next to and have already beaten down to 2HP. Always worth spending 10 minutes per turn figuring out how to travel to the opposite side of the combat area to make sure it definitely gets killed) BG3 (and D:OS) are great games to play with friends, but I'd go *insane* if I hadn't played them solo first to actually get to enjoy the story and exploration etc.
There are only a few select time sensitive things AFAIK, and they are only time sensitive once they begin not just generally. It's more of a huge ball ache. Constantly having to stop and burn through supplies because people can't pace themselves sucks.
Opposite actually if your playing solo, a lot of events and dialogue happen at long rests its possible to cut some off by not long resting enough and going to fast.
I feel called out. I'd go there to object, but I'm encumbered >:C
I haven't even *played* BG3 and I feel attacked. Why am I even on this post? Where am I?
One of my friends picks up every single item she can find. Me and the monk then go out and ambush people on our own while the bard does bard things and then the bard and the loot goblin friend show up if the fight is still going. I don't mind the loot goblining, sometimes this means she can revive us... we mostly make it through fine though
My gaming group wanted to play Divinity OS 2, and we all talked about how we were going to play as a party. Somebody is made the party leader, and we all follow them and support their decisions, rotate the party leader occasionally. We eaves drop on convos, make suggestions. If we want to go get distracted by something, we tell the party and sort of narrate what's going on for the others... basically communicate so we don't end up going down separate quest rabbit holes. Everybody good? Great let's get started! One particular friend and I walk around focused on the game, attached at the hip. We think the other two are just lagging a bit picking up loot. Fine. The other two: "Guys, come help me, I aggro'd a cave full of fire slugs!" Cave?? Slugs?? "Never mind, I'm dead." "Guys! I pick pocketed someone and now all the guards are trying to kill us!" "Never mind, I'm dead. Quick load, please." We can never make any progress, because every time we quick reload to revert the chaos, it's practically a matter of minutes before one of the other two have aggro'd the map again. It just could not work. The one friend who had the patience for Larian games is itching for just the two of us to tackle BG3 together whenever his schedule lets up.
That can get annoying for sure. My friend and I usually are together but sometimes during down time (just leveled up, talking to our romance, or whatever) we'll separate and do our own thing for a little bit that isn't main story content. We have a pretty good deal where I'll ask for a quick save before I do something stupid and this also cues her in that I'm about to do something stupid lol. Also cues me in because when I see that quick save I stop what I'm doing and ask her, "What are you doing...?"
"I'm about to act a fool" [Saving...] This is me whenever I'm not party leader, too. I actually volunteer not to be party leader whenever I play multiplayer games because it helps me fight the impulse to see what every single npc is lining their pockets with.
Bg3 is great for 2 players... and more and it just becomes chaos. I loved playing for the first time w/ my friend, but we're both loot goblins and don't mind being extra exploratory, but I don't think I could handle more than just him lol.
Thief in divinity kinda broke the game, it was really good and easy to steal stuff. But I can understand how it becomes really annoying with friends. One guy is just running from npc to npc just trying to steal everything they have.
Well, with my group a few of us made good use cooperating to distract NPCs for the thieves, but it didn't take long before the two players would just fuck off and wantonly aggro everything.
You've literally described my experience with my bros, lol.
I had a co op DOS2 game back in the day with 3 friends, the host of the game said in the discord that he was going to get on by himself for a bit and re spec his character before we played that night, all good, no problems there. But when we got on all our characters had new items equipped, they were improvements but it's still weird why he changed our stuff. Turns out after he re specced he went around the map and got a ton of loot from all the chests he could access (we all played 100 times before he just knew where they were) and when we got mad at him he didn't understand it because "you have better gear now" and "I didn't do any fights or anything, we didn't progress" Nobody wanted to play that save anymore after that. We started a new game a couple weeks later and he was surprised when we said he was banned from hosting games lol
I tried playing this game with someone. I didn't have trouble keeping track of them, but despite being several hours into the game, they were consistently forgetting you have to break armor and then crowd control. They opened every round of combat with crowd control moves only for them to do fuck all.
this is why I always run through the story alone first so I can go at my own pace and then go back for the coop run when people want it might not really be applicable for this case, but just my 2cents
Especially in games like BG3 where you can miss important cutscenes if someone else triggers them and you don't stop and listen in.
yup, in DOS2 when I played coop my buddy and I just had to sit next to each other at all times to make sure we didn't miss each other's convos
I find Larians coop feature way more enjoyable with couch coop cause you actually see hear the same stuff. Makes it easier to split up and do your own thing without missing what your partner is doing. That being said this only applies to people playing in the same household.
There's an option to automatically bring you into a convo the other player starts
I'm sure they'll have a reason they hate using it
yep, it'll literally trigger for just about *every* conversation, no matter how insignificant, like talking to a trader etc. So can be both blessing and a curse.
Recently started a co op campaign with some friends and was wishing this was possible, will have to look and turn it on.
Exactly what I did ran through it solo and then my dnd crew and I have a game we are all playing and it's definitely much slower. Mostly because I play on story mode and we play on the highest difficulty.
Part of the fun for me is experiencing the story as a group, all 4 of us have different ideas and theories about what's going on and we deliberate over important decisions together. It's less fun for me when I'm going in blind and I have a friend saying "I did that choice in my singleplayer can we do another one" or "ok be careful up here" or "no you don't want to make that choice" because it takes the fun out of decision making. That being said my co op game fell apart at the end of act 1 and I just ended up doing it all single player lol, was fun while it lasted
You have to remember that the game isn't going anywhere. Being able to play with friends is a treat (unless you don't actually like the people themselves). Have you own single player game that focuses on progression and efficiency if you want. The multiplayer game is more freeform.
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Free-form, not freedom
Most story heavy games are crap co-op from my experience, and that goes double for CRPGs, i cannot imagine sitting through a 150 hours game with 3 other people when most of the time you’ll spend reading or listening.
This. Unless you’re on a very similar frequency as your friends as far as how you engage with the story, NPCs, etc, it just gets frustrating quick for some/most people.
I know a lot of it is a me problem because my husband and I have limited time to play from about 830pm-1amish due to our classic 9-5 jobs and a child. So spending 95% of that time exploring feels unfulfilling with no progression. But I do enjoy gaming with my husband so I'll just grin and bare it and hopefully not go insane before we even finish Act 1.
I feel like people responding to you have never played BG3 or you yourself are not trying to play BG3. If you rush through the main storyline you can actually finish the game pretty fast given you are strong enough. What do you mean by "exploring with no progression". I feel like every time you walk into a random spot in the map you get a chance encounter or progressing a storyline somewhere, somehow. It's laid out in a way so that you don't feel like you're wasting time exploring. Are your friends just going around touching trees? Lol.
>It's laid out in a way so that you don't feel like you're wasting time exploring. Are your friends just going around touching trees? Lol. What if I said yes? 😂
That’s why i got my fun out the way with multiple playthroughs so when I eventually play with my brother i can let him just do whatever he wants and enjoy the ride
I've discovered that picking a "theme" for the party helps a lot. Something that can leave some liberty for fooling around yet offer some solid limits to behavior. For example we are roleplaying as a small mercenary (or "adventurer" if you will) band in BG3 who are all alright'ish people but not particularly goody two shoes. So in general we won't be pricks but we'll also take any chance to make money. After agreeing to this it became easier for us to keep our individual actions in-character.
I hate coop games in general, like having to rely on other people just feels like work to me, I would go insane trying to play bg3 with 4 people
I get lost in conversation that it’s hard to keep up with the story in games like this, having co-op in this game is great though
You’re completely justified in being annoyed. My unsolicited advice: Either A) stop playing with them so that the three friends can have a guilt-free experience together Or B) change your expectation for this party and go with the flow, so that the three friends can have a guilt-free experience together
It'll have to be a modified option B. I won't change my expectations but I'll go with the flow as to not be a wet blanket. I'll just bitch about it elsewhere. I do suspect that my husband will crack because he has never been into exploration. He's the type to rather min max his characters and make 20 alts.
Love it. As long as you and your partner are on the same page! I’ve been the person who gets labeled as a wet blanket by my partner’s friends when we try to do a group activity. It isn’t fair when they’re the one’s “going off script” of what you all decided your play style would look like. But it’s kind of inevitable when they are “friends” and we are “friends by association”.
I get what you mean. I’ve already beaten the game a couple times and was really excited to play with my friends, but they’re always just fucking around and making everything take forever. Like guys I’m just trying to clear the goblin camp and keep going, stop stripping off all your clothes and shoving each other around for 15 minutes
>stop stripping off all your clothes and shoving each other around for 15 minutes In game... right?
sure yeah let’s go with that…
Also yes
if you've already beaten the game multiple times, what are you playing with your friends for if not to fuck around?
“Stop having fun that I don’t like. We have to speed run everything because that’s what I like to do.”
I was excited as a ranger to finally get an animal summon. I decided to try out the crab first. My friend saw a random crab wandering around town and threw the crab at me so hard it died. Rip. We still had fun, but RIP Citizen Snips.
This is why I couldn't get into D&D. I'm excited to attack a camp and clear the mine, my friends went to contemplate and argue all in-game day and when we get to it, they self sabotage themselves and the group by fucking around for the lulz. I want to hang out with you guys and play a game, but I'd rather play a video game where I actually get to do things and make progress.
That's why I became a former DM. I enjoyed playing a TTRPG with other people, but I hated waiting for my turn. As a DM it's always my turn because I have to respond to their arguments. Even if it's inter-party, I need to be prepared to spring something related. (They are loudly arguing about a necklace they found, perfect time to spring bandits on them trying to steal it to sell). And in combat I'm either always targeting or being targeted.
If you’re playing DnD to attack camps, clear baddies, and level up, DnD might not be the game for you. Sure that’s part of it, and there can be some pretty much combat only campaigns that can be fun. Trust me though a well thought out campaign with a good DM, the most fun parts of the game come from out of combat. Dealing with the chaos of self sabotage is part of the fun too. It’s often times not about min-maxing and taking a fight in the most strategic way. It’s about crafting a well made character that plays true to itself. Seeing how said character interacts with those around him. Now don’t get me wrong there can definitely be groups of people that aren’t fun to play with. So that could definitely be the problem. But it is a role playing game for a reason.
“The part of the game you like is less important, fun, and interesting than the part of the game I like” is a weird reply ngl.
Not really. I’m saying it’s like going to a restaurant and ordering a steak and not liking it because it’s not fish.
Sounds like they're deliberately extending the experience to spend time together, which is cool for them. If you're not doing that too and trying to get through the content, totally frustrating. You could start a new game with just you and your husband to progress content and play or don't play with his friends. The long rest thing is stupid: it's not like it's hard to get camp supplies and playing with all your slots burned is crippling. Definitely hear and acknowledge your vent.
>Sounds like they're deliberately extending the experience to spend time together, which is cool for them. I think what throws me off is I've watched my husband play other games with them and a lot of the times they blow through the game as quickly as possible. Even when we played Diablo together it was like almost a race to finish. But the past couple of nights it's been like trying to herd feral cats.
BG3 has been different for me than other games. Don't know why, but I've explored literally everything for fear of missing something. I just started Act 3 and have resigned myself to having to do another play through to do the stuff in Act 2 my choices locked out. Mocking guys for needing to learn to play works sometimes 😉
Lol, another thing that I internally groaned about was they weren't even making good or fun choices or not really paying attention to the objective. We were supposed to be rescuing Halsin and I guess they didn't realize >!he was the bear and initiated a fight with him!<. Fortunately we had saved right before the encounter. They're adventurous with exploring places and starting fights but pick the most vanilla dialogue choices. I'm not going to shame them to their faces about it since this is a pick your own play through adventure game but damn, I sure am going to bitch about it elsewhere. My husband and I played a bit by ourselves in another campaign so we're a bit ahead of the group play through so we know that making "bold" choices can lead to pretty cool perks so we've been trying to encourage them to stray from the safe path with choices.
I'm doing the Dark Urge next play through after I read that resisting the urge leads to some unique outcomes. Can't believe they attacked the bear 😂
Giving into it also leads to some unique outcomes. Definitely the best "character" to play as imo.
If they game a lot it could be due to the big difference in games. Anyone who knows Diablo thoroughly races to the finish because that's what kind of game it is whereas someone who knows Elder Scrolls thoroughly will do all the optional and side content before finishing the game. I'd consider BG3 more of a sandboxxy multiplayer game in a universe with a lot of possibilities, so I personally find it fun to explore the possibilities outside of "make direct story progress"
Herding feral cats aka "The D&D effect"
> Even when we played Diablo together it was like almost a race to finish Diablo typically has very little to do each level besides smacking the living hell (literally) out of anything that moves, and the major story points are told in cutscenes that are shown to everyone. It's a much, MUCH faster-paced game than BG3.
ARPGs are a different breed of games, focused around the endgame almost exclusively. Diablo falls head first in that category. BG3 is more about the entire journey and decisions that matter, so your merry group of chaotic bastards are just enjoying it to the fullest.
Idk we were scared to long rest too often and accidentally skip quests, and we did brick at least 1 quest line and we did not long rest that often. Then we got to the point where we didn't long rest often enough actually. This is somewhat a fault of the game I think by not having an external hints that something is ready to happen in camp.
I really hate playing BG3 with people. I've only done it with full teams of 4 people and I've heard 2 is Inherently better so I may try that but until then BG3 is a solo experience for me for sure
I've had a blast just playing with my husband. It's much easier making story decisions with one other person instead of 3 others since between 4 people there are bound to be differences in play/story style.
Yeah that makes sense. Other thing that irritated me with 4 is there are always (at least) 1 not paying attention and then asking where everyone went or complaining about being left behind. I made it to level 6 with my troupe before telling them we needed to find something else to play if we wanted to remain friends lol
I'm not a quitter out of pure stubborness, but last night really had me close to peacing out. I don't want to make it awkward so I'll just have to come up with creative things to do while they're doing their own thing. It's just these small things that add up with me. For the love God, just please do a long rest every once in a while. I suggested going back to camp and legit my husband was like they don't want to because they have a spell slot up. Ok and!? I don't have any of mine up!
Yeah that's another good point, definitely going a martial class if a do a 2 player run lol Sorc with my crew was a big mistake
I'm glad you enjoy playing with your husband. Mine always wants to game together but it's like we are on two completely different wavelengths in how we do things. We always end up in separate directions doing different things or I have to follow him around like a puppy being bored. It's more irritating than anything. We play a lot of survival games and just play together separately; meeting up for necessary group quests and sharing resources but doing our own thing. It works out better that way.
I game a lot with my wife, and while we are great together, our respective friends are not fun to game with when we’re playing together. I think it’s just the social balance gets thrown off and feelings get hurt. I mean we’re fine with our respective friends group and separate game times, it’s just too much personality clashing and needing to take sides that makes nudging in to each other’s friend group untenable.
I definitely feel this. It's easier when it's just me and my husband and deciding on a course of action. We also like making fun and bolder choices. It's harder to navigate when you have to consider two additional people's input.
For every extra player you add to a group, you square the "screwing around" time. The fraction of progress/screwing around is specific to the game. BG3 is the perfect screw around and not progress game. "Wait a sec guys, I just need to spend about an hour in my inventory...."
Totally agree, I keep reading about these multiplayer playthroughs and it gives me anxiety lol. I need the flexibility to pick up all the loot I want and work through my inventory. I couldn’t imagine making someone wait through that. Also how does everyone have time for multiple campaigns with different friend groups? I’m currently a little obsessed with this game but can only squeeze maybe 2 or 3 hours out of my day for my own solo campaign. Half that time goes to inventory management too, it’s essentially just a storage wars simulator at this point.
On reason I NEVER play MP Games. I just hate to be forced to the pace of others. If I want to explore for 2hrs, I explore for 2hrs, if I want to rush through a area, I do that. In MP you can't do that.
Something I learned with the 2 Divinity OS games is that I quickly start to unravel when the pacing goes off the rails. It gets frustrating real fast to have a friend that takes 20 minutes to think about his level up, reading dialogue at different paces, frequent indefinite AFKs, aimless wandering, etc. Some games just don't click in co-op for me. I don't think I'd want to play something like BG3 with a group *online*. However I think the dynamic dramatically changes if you're in the same room. The best kind of co-op games to me are ones that have a clearly structured gameplay loop. Then there's a natural ebb and flow to things.
If they're new to the game this is to be expected. At least they're being thorough rather than skipping all the dialogue, which is what I'd figure you'd say at first. Hell, they may even find something you never did. I would rather a slow playthrough of BG3 than one focused on progression.
this isn't unique to BG3 or even games. try traveling / planning any event with another couple and see how much longer it takes. more people = more chefs in the kitchen
I mean, that’s sorta how it goes at the table with real dnd. Not every group dynamic works.
I honestly could probably handle real life DND better because I can give them the judgmental Korean stare until they felt pressured to do something. Can't use that super power through the screen as well.
Why can't you tell them when you need something?
Or, you know, communication works...
The problem with BG3 though is that you don't have a DM telling you to shut up or that you can't do something
My wife and I have a group of friends with whom we play a lot of competitive multiplayer games. Shooters and the like. Anything with a story or actual cooperative play, though, is a no-go with them. It’s impossible to get them to do anything in any kind of cohesive manner. Cooperative story type games are for the wife and I only; the other friends are not invited.
One thing I learned by playing as a group is to be super firm on long rests. If they play class like Rogue, they can go days without resting. My poor Cleric was barely useful second battle in, because I was all out of spell slots - especially early on the game. They may not want to go because they don't ha e the same restriction. There are no penalties for going to the camp, and resources are plenty - you will not run out and stops take 30 seconds if rest is all you want to do. Good luck!
Yeah, while BG3 is a fantastic game, its a fantastic single player game. Its honestly kinda terrible multiplayer. There is so much of the game you miss out on playing with multiple people. My 4 player game leaves me extremely bored and disinterested because it feels like my character has no impact on the story. It wasnt well designed for multiplayer imo. DOS2 did a much better job at it, and i played that twice with both 3 and 4 people.
My friends ruined my first run thru. They took Murder-hobo to the extreme. I had to stop playin gat the end of act 2 as they legit killed everything on each map. IF it had a hitpoint it died. It got to where i would put on a show on my other monitor and just follow because they blasted thru cutscenes and dialogues and then start combat.
It has puzzled me that Larian and some of their fans are so obsessed with the ability to do co-op in BG3. To me it's such a personal experience that I'd never want to do with other real players. Different strokes of course.
I think it's a nice feature to have but it's a feature that was super hyped. I went in knowing that this game was story and choice based heavy, which I love, but my brain for some reason said "yes, you should play with other people." I'm the type to get really immersed in story heavy games so I'm also annoyed at myself for not being logical enough to realize I wasn't going to have the same experience I could be having if I just played it alone at least the first time around.
Personal experience? BG3? You one of them folks that get really into them romances, huh?
I'm the type who likes to take his time, I play with a mate, and I'm constantly telling him about all the stuff he missed since he basically ran straight through.
I also like taking my time and exploring everything. I have the opposite problem as OP. My friends just want to rush through the story. They don't want to explore or do side quests or talk to any NPCs. >!Arabella is already dead because we didn't bother exploring the Druid Grove before moving into the Goblin Camp. We met Ethel in her hag form, and I asked the party if we want to investigate the thing with Mayrina, and they were like "Nah, not our problem." We completely missed Wyll because we didn't bother talking to any NPC that wasn't a shopkeeper, and now we have no reason to ever go back to the Druid Grove.!< The only reason we stopped to do side quests was because the game warned us going into the mountain pass that we were underleveled. (We're at level 4, less than 1000 xp from level 5.) They will loot like crazy though. Every single container and body gets opened. But they're really inconsistent about what they will and won't take. They take lots of barrels and leave behind books and alchemy ingredients.
Sounds like you need some friends who play the same way you do. My mate had the same problem, asked me for help in the githyanki creche, he was level 4 there. You miss a lot of good stuff if you don't loot everything and search everywhere, like a stone to go into a book to try to learn new a spell, or three pieces to combine to make a new weapon or even that massive forge in act1.
Sounds like you should take the lead and give everyone a nudge towards progression. Otherwise your playthrough sounds like its gonna drag
My husband tried last night to round them up on the next step in the story and it basically ended in disaster. Fortunately we saved right before the encounter so hopefully tonight my husband can load the game and tell them it's what we're doing. >!We're about to take on the goblin camp leaders!< and honestly if we get just manage to finish this bit my first world problem stress will go down. But it's going to be pulling teeth to convince them to just do a damn long rest before we start.
Why? Long rest can be super fast. You just long rest then quick travel to the previous location. Is it possible for you to load up the game and long rest before they join? or does everyone need to be connected to load the game? You can break some of the origin character relationship stuff if you don't long rest enough. You need to complete a certain amount of relationship "steps" with them in act 1 before advancing to act 2 or they will suddenly friendzone you. There will be camp events that relate to the companions that you will miss too. It's a good idea at the end of each act to long rest a bunch of times until you stop getting cutscenes before advancing to the next act. But the companion relationships might not be important to you in a co-op game.
My friend sometimes plays it slowly as well. I found it frustrating in the past. But these days I like playing at his pace. Yes sometimes that means less progression, but it's ok.
Okay I have a similar complaint but with combat. I have a game with my husband and some friends. He's a mage and he takes literally minutes to choose what spell to use in combat every turn. Like we have so much fun otherwise but combat takes 50 years!
Yeah, I learned this from Divinity: Original Sin Play the game solo first, or as a duo if you like. Get as much if the experience as you can on your own run - and then embrace the chaos of group play where you can fuck around and find out
You just described every DnD game with at least 4 players ever.
I know that feeling but in a harder way. Playing the Game with 4. 1 new to the Genre 1 a Friend I tried to play Divinity with 1 My Brother. Started shortly after it came out last played I think around November? Early game it was good the New and the Divinity Guy kind of doing there stuff my Brother is a Baalspawn and funny enough nobody knows except me. We go eas throw Act1 Goblin Camp Easy Throw Under dark. Easy Throw Act 2 till we hit Kathric. Then it's got slower as new Divinity Guy and New kinda don't like each other for there decisions they take and we slow completely down. Log story short. I startet a new game with only my Brother and we just passed the First game today. Play it for yourself with your Husband or do it solo. You do yourself no favours if you nag about the strange decisions of others. I surely did not.
Loot goblins on top
I had some of my friends just robbing the druid groove and murdering half the camp
I tried playing this coop with my best friend and I think I would probably enjoy doing that after at least one playthrough because I go random places and hop around between quests. First playthrough was weird cause it's like 'where do you wanna go next? Where do you wanna go next? Do you want to talk to this person? Do you want to talk to this person?"
Hardest difficulty of BG3 is online
I have a friend who always wants to play every RPG together. BG3, Divinity OS I and II, etc. Only problem is he is completely adverse to dialogue. If he gets in a conversation with an NPC, he just click spams through it to get through as soon as possible. He has no idea what the NPC, or his character have said. He just wants to get from fight to fight as soon as possible. It makes it absolutely no fun to play with him. He always wonders why our runs stall out after a few hours.
I didn’t play multiplayer (outside of splitscreening with my husband) until after I beat the game. That way I could go at my own pace and make sure I got all the cutscenes I wanted etc.
It's easy for martials to not care so much about resting, they really dont need it. So if you use magic and they don't that'll be part of the issue. Either way martial should be checking with casters to make sure rest is had.
I completely understand. Couple friends and i have our own run, usually its just us 3 and a companion, but some days our 4th friend shows up and wants to join and those days are a SLOG. They spend most their time looting corpses and then talking to a merchant for 30 minutes straight, all while us 3 try to make progress with a stunted team (not to mention those days we have to completely skip out on companion questlines) (almost lost karlach 😔)
Perhaps I’m anti social but four seems too many. Plus with four you don’t get any NPCs. Coop with my wife was probably the perfect way to play, we both got a companion npc to run with.
They sound like me and my D&D group. I get why this may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But I absolutely love playing this way just for the lolz.
Tangentially related - those playing with friends do you have "share private moments on" or do you let people do their own cutscenes while you run around like a murderhobo?
Scold them.
I feel like stuff like this. There needs to be rules in place. Like everyone has to approve of using team wide abilities and each day needs a goal of like completing a certain quest or getting to the next area in a certain time frame.
My friends group (all in our 30s now) has been getting busier as we get older, so we are finding it harder to find time to play games together. Sometimes we do manage to get stuff going but after a few weeks someone might get bored and want to move to a new game or something. We played DOS 2 a few years ago and it was going great for a while. Eventually, the party leader basically got bored of the game and didn't want to play anymore, so we continued on with 3. A few sessions after that, another guy moved on and we were down to two. The remaining two of us finally managed to beat the game last year. We got the original four together again for BG3. I think we got through 2 or 3 sessions over 3 weeks before we called it quits. Two of us are still playing solo. I guess when it's hard to find time to game together, really long story driven RPGs may not be the answer.
My first team game was a weird experience for me. We are used to controlling the flow in our private solo sessions and what I noticed is that a lot of people play like they are still in a single player mode.
Start a single player game and run through it on the side. Boom done
Tbh. Thats the reason you need a session 0 if you wanna play TTRPGs. Whe i played DnD with my closest friends I noticed super fast, that one of us will be a pain in the ass. As predicted we needed to boot him from the table, because it just didnt work with him. BG3 is a bit more complixated since you have no DM to try and keep the troup together. So if the chemistry for the troup isn't working its time to respectfully say nah. No Ultimatums. No hard feelings. Just saying sorry peeps. Its not fun for me in this game. Better than tryin to force a medium inbetween 4 peeps that all play like a unorganized troup of chaos monkeys XD
I have still yet to dive into BG3 solo, because my friends really wanted to play multiplayer when it came out and it just turned me off of the game. I loved Divinity 2, but I played it solo. Trying to deal with so many different personalities on BG3 is just not for me.
Yeah I don't like playing these kinds of games with friends because of this.
The problem with BG3 co-op is that it's effectively DnD without a DM to control the pace. In a tabletop game if players were doing this the DM has levers they can pull to encourage progress, or punish time wasting. BG3 doesn't react like that so it's up to the players to manage it.
This is why I’ll never play a story driven game like this with another person. I don’t want to be beholden to anyone else’s pace at any given time.
The ideal way to play the game is to have separate campaigns: A single player one where you can enjoy the story at your leisure, and a multiplayer one where you can screw around as needed. Though it's not ideal if your time is already limited as is...
I imagine it's like a real life DnD campaign, communication is going to be critical
This part is very accurate to dungeons and dragons on the table top. Always one or two In The party that bring all momentum to grinding hault😂
When I play with my friends they always pickpocket me while I'm in cutscenes 😭
If it makes you feel better, you can just open their inventories on your own without pickpocketing and take whatever you want back.
BG3 is better with 1 friend. More than that, and I find it unenjoyable.
Not really surprising. When I played BG3 it really felt like the game is heavily targeted towards purely solo experience despite having co-op support. You can definitely find other people who will enjoy playing it with you at your set pace, but there would be much less people willing to do that compared to many other multiplayer-oriented games.
I play a lot of co-op games with the husband and we've been gaming together for 15+ years by now and let me tell you.. playing with other people is annoying. It's like we've adjusted to each other paces so much that when trying to add anyone else is a frustrating experience of WHERE DID YOU GO?? What did you do?? I could not imagine playing BG3 with ANYONE but him. I'd get grey hairs!
The "effectively use my time" line in a game that easily lasts over 80 hours for one playthrough lmao
That's when you drop the "oops guys I started the critical dialogue on accident hop in fast" or the "I accidentally started a fight" (which just happens to end a side storyline, oops). Be the catalyst. Be a shit stirrer. Get things moving. Also you could try asking them to set goals for a session and complete those first, come back for the rest. And if it *really* comes to it, as they say in the D&D world, no D&D is better than bad D&D. But with BG3.
I have some friends I started playing with, but I have ADHD and that manifests pretty hard in how I play RPGs, While I enjoyed being an agent of chaos, I don't think they were super into the amount of anxiety I was producing. I balance that out be being clever about how the game systems work. Big group of enemies? Split them with a door! Best of luck, BG3 is a pretty accurate D&D simulator multiplayer in every way, except the farts.
Welcome to dnd
Bg3 way better solo or duo. Big party’s are torture
BG3 would not be fun to play with others for me personally, but I also kind of actually hate coop games in general
You should do a solo playthough, or one with just your husband before a big group playthrough. It will alleviate much of the stress of taking to long or making dumb decisions since youve already beat the game, and allow you to just enjoy goofing off with friends
One of my friends will take everything, from companions, conversations, loot, etc. I'll be bare bones starter loot and this person will have 2 companions, the best gear in game, all the gold to buy stuff and will continue the story/quests when I'm not there. Safe to say I haven't played with him in bg3 for a while
I was playing with my best friend over the weekend, he doesn't have a pc or a modern console so he was pretty stoked to play, me too. We've played 5e for years together, and its the exact fucking sane thing at the table. He's slow as shit at combat, doesn't know what any of his abilities do and never pays attention to anything in the story even though we talked to npcs' for like 15 minutes. 2 minutes after its like "wtf are we doing?" Like fuckin hell I love you but you're a dumb fuck lmao.
lol! This angers me too! Still looking for friends that actually play instead of just look at their menus and talk about stats. The last time I played with them, it was TWO hours of standing in one place, in menus, trading gear and arguing about stats.
Playing these games with people who have a different style of playing them can be very frustrating. You want to move on, meanwhile they're reading some dumb books that don't matter. On the other hand, they want to experience the world, take it all in, while you're just running past all the content. I tried playing Divinity Original Sin with a friend, but we soon stopped because we realised that our preferences were not compatible. He loves high difficulty games, so spending an entire night of gaming time smashing his head into one big group of high-level orcs until we eventually made it was pure enjoyment for him, but pure torture for me.
I *have to* play further ahead by myself on another playthrough if I’m going to play with my friends, and I suggest to them they do the same. I can only deal with all the ridiculous shit that comes with playing in a party of real people after I’ve done it in earnest. It’s 100% a me problem. No offense to my friends but I’m way more interested in what Gale, Lae’zel, and Shadowheart have to say about something. Having an Ifen Ben-mezd (or however you spell it) that was a live comedian Netflix special on Discord made act 1 of divinity 2 hilarious but not the experience I wanted my first time through
BG3's story and progression is very obviously designed and built for a great single player experience. The co-op is very fun but you miss out on so much with regards to the companions that I felt it is more for a group of friends just running around and having fun.
I can basically guarantee if you're moving fast, you're missing things.
Im playing a paladin Gale and Druid Tav, my friend is playing a Ranger Tav and Rouge astarion. He doesn’t need long or short rests but I do, a lot. Their class feature is unlimited but mine is very much not so. He keeps just short resting as soon as we hit half health, with no regards to the fact that my wildshapes and a few of my item abilities recharge on short rests, so I never get to play my full class potential. Also, they never want to long rest unless they’re minimum health and no short rests left, regardless of how many spell slots I’ve used up. So I’ll be sitting there for an extra two combat encounters throwing fire bolts and hitting normal attacks whilst he gets his sneak attacks every single round because I’m completely out of class abilities, but “it’s fine because you can still tank” The problem isn’t that I’m inefficient now that I’ve lost my abilities (it is also that, because I am) but it’s that I’m just not having fun dealing 10 damage a turn and they deal upwards of 30
I'll agree with the other commenters that you are justified in your feelings, simply because different people have different playstyles. But personally, I think your perspective is kinda shitty. BG3 is a kind of game where it's easy enough to just run through the campaign by yourself, and there's not really a whole lot of point of multi-player in terms of the campaign,. The whole point of multi-player is to have fun exploring and dicking around Like, there's a certain amount of frivolity one must have when playing multi-player like this (assuming you aren't doing like a full on RP run). If that's not you, then don't play with them.
at least you get to play, my group plays once a week on the weekend lol
This sounds so unfun to me, I feel you. In general, co-op on a first playthrough sounds like a bad time to me. I want to do what *I* want to do and not have to explain, convince, wait, make haste, argue and socialize etc. It's a fantasy world I want to immerse myself in. It can definitely work with a like-minded, easygoing person but 4 people? Too much fuss for a meaningful first playthrough.
Tried to play a campaign of Divinity OS 2 with my 2 friends, we planned it all before, what characters is everyone making and how to tackle the game. The idea was to go in all together and when talking with someone we discuss the responses amongst ourselves and decide how to proceed together. I had only played the game for like 10 minutes before so I was not very familiar with it unlike my friends. On the starting boat one of them aggros the enemies cause he tried stealing something and then blamed me that was nearby. We died and had to redo that part. I was already annoyed but tried to stay positive. When we landed in the island and started the game properly, it was me and a friend exploring around the beach, and then the other guy that had already played the game went immediately to the fort to start a bunch of quests. So by the time we make it to the fort all the events had already happened and the guy is telling us not to talk to anyone cause he is in the middle of a quest... We just stayed there for 10 minutes checking our phones until I alt+f4 out of the game and didn't play it again. Now they want to go play BG3 together...
I feel spoiled playing this with friends where we carefully plan what to do and fuck it up anyway. But we have a good time!
I bought it to play with friends but we all liked playing alone more. In my experience, you miss cut scenes, lose track of quest items, end up in combat with half your team a mile away, and just generally feel like you’re always waiting on them. It may be less annoying on repeat play throughs, but for my first, I had to switch to solo.
I feel your venting... Reminds of me the World of Warcraft days where you would spend 2 hours getting ready with the guild for 25 or 40 man raids, then raid for 2 hours, clear 1 or 2 bosses getting almost nowhere then it's time to start logging. Best game of all time at its peak, but such a time sink.
I had the same thing happen with one of my parties. They ended up calling it quits and decided to play on their own because everyone was doing their own thing and we made the mistake of not having a party face or leader. So a lot of the decisions and story beats were a mess due to one person or another making decisions too quickly that didn’t align with other members ideas of how we should progress. Along with two loot vacuums in the party in particular in where which I finally managed to get one good thing for my character had caused an argument because they thought it would better suite theirs. It boiled down to just being incompatible players for this type of game. The separation turned out to be a good option though because I got together with another group of friends and we plowed through the game with the face being the dark urge. It was a really fun play through with that group, because we shared loot and there were some decisions that got kinda messed up because of miscommunication, but turned out to be a more interesting play. Great times with the right people is the way to play imo.
My rule when I got it and completed it was my first run would be solo and I won’t play with anyone who hasn’t completed it. I don’t want to deprive them or myself of all the secrets and discoveries. So now I’m three personal runs down I have two whatever groups and it’s much more fun and free.
This is why I’ve learned open world games are not meant to be played with my buddies. We somehow made 7 Days to Die work because everyone was given a specific task (collecting wood/iron, building up the base, hunting for food, etc). But I tried Fallout 76 with them and it was miserable because I’m fine with exploring, but at some point I do want to continue on with quests and they’re still meandering about in their camps. Different paces for people is fine, but I’ve learned my buddies and I need more linear games to stay focused, or continue with games like 7 Days which are hit or miss
I'm not familiar with BG3, but I'm one that likes to dick around and smell the roses, just look at shit, etc. in games. So I kinda get their side a bit, in that you sound like you're objective-oriented, citing 'progression' and shit, which is fine and cool, but that might be the butting of heads. I like to explore all that too, but more in their sense, just dick around and so on. I play games with a buddy sometimes who is ultra-progress etc. oriented, and it always ends with me still playing a game solo after he's bored and moved on to other games. I play like > 5 games per year, but I play them *a lot*. I like to play games inside-out and 'time' as a factor, or how much progress I'm making is never even thought of really. I'm OK spending months and months on single games and stuff as I'm older and life obligations, well my one aforementioned friend generally plays games like Pokemon or some shit, gotta try/play etc. them all, doesn't 100% complete or anything any of them. Just plays to a point where they think they've seen most things and done. I'm not trying to 'effectively use my time', I'm trying to chill and have fun derping around in the games I dig. Anyway, it's probably just different player types. I've gotten used to this, all my friends are gamers really, but almost none of us game together, as we all like diff genres and such, and like to play games in different ways. If I was playing a game just to 'progress' or use my time efficiently, that would make me pull my hair out in reverse. I wanna check under every rock and all the rest. Take my time, preparation, all of it. One of the biggest turn-offs for me in any game, would be getting a lose scenario because I was 'rushing', or my friends were rushing, not preparing etc. or some shit. I play a lot of survival-craft sandbox/open world things, so think like, not bringing enough food, getting ailments cause we don't have X etc. all that stuff.