Warning: All Your Chars are Belong to Host

[shank]

I bought the game for 360 yesterday and played it for most of the day with a few friends in co-op. Today I started up the game and tried to load my character, but my character or a save game was no where to be found. After testing with the original host and scouring the web for info, it turns out your characters are only accessible in the host's saved game. So, I can not play my character unless my friend, who originally hosted, is online and wants to play. Was anyone else disappointed by this limitation? Any reasons why this is a good change of pace?

Edited June 26, 2011 by shank

[AddziX]

I bought the game for 360 yesterday and played it for most of the day with a few friends in co-op. Today I started up the game and tried to load my character, but my character or a save game was no where to be found. After testing with the original host and scouring the web for info, it turns out your characters are only accessible in the host's saved game. So, I can not play my character unless my friend, who originally hosted, is online and wants to play. Was anyone else disappointed by this limitation? Any reasons why this is a good change of pace?

If you have a look through the forums, you'll find that it's a pretty hot topic at the moment. A lot of people are hoping for some kind of announcement from Obsidian that they're working to patch it for perpetual characters and fix the shared screen/tethering.

 

Personally, I'm just bashing through the single player. The multiplayer seems a little pointless, unless you have a committed group of players that you will always be able to play with.

[Sannom]

I bought the game for 360 yesterday and played it for most of the day with a few friends in co-op. Today I started up the game and tried to load my character, but my character or a save game was no where to be found. After testing with the original host and scouring the web for info, it turns out your characters are only accessible in the host's saved game. So, I can not play my character unless my friend, who originally hosted, is online and wants to play. Was anyone else disappointed by this limitation? Any reasons why this is a good change of pace?

Welcome to three months ago!

[MonkeyLungs]

Many people are only going to discover this when they purchase the game. Very few folks like to hang out and do discussions on video game forums.

 

To the OP: The reaction to not having pertsistent character saves has been bad. Check any forum about DS3 and its a recurring theme. There is no reason that benefits the gamer for this decision. this decision was made solely to benifit Obsidian's developers because it allowed them to get couch co-op or local co-op (aka co-op on the same machine) working in a stable fashion and then just make online just like local co-op. No effort was made to enhance the online multiplayer above the same machine local co-op.

[greylord]

Any reasons why this is a good change of pace?

 

No reasons that I know of. It's a hot topic currently.

[Alpha]

OLD NEWS. The devs advertised that before release the game.

[Gix]

OLD NEWS. The devs advertised that before release the game.

No they didn't. They specifically said that the single-player characters will be separate from the multi-player characters.

 

I quote:

your single player characters will be distinct from your multiplayer characters -- however both can be persistently grown, equipped and adventured with over multiple game sessions.

 

...

 

"Co-op players can absolutely expect to have the loot and experience they gain in multiplayer games to be saved to their multiplayer characters ... Achievements and Trophies earned in multiplayer are still saved to your profile as normal and there are additional awards that you can only receive from playing in a multiplayer co-operative game."

You know what that tells me? It tells me that I have a single-player and a multi-player character.

 

Now, I don't specifically mind the lack of multiplayer characters. I won't go raging at Obsidian for that but guess what? That's not a system to match DS3 players together. We're already limited to having one unique character per game (out of 4, mind you) and now we have to resort to having your own personal friends to have a copy of the game to play it with them and ONLY them... assuming they're aren't bickering about who gets to play who... which happened on my end.

 

Whenever you like it or not, it's a terrible system. Especially for PC gamers.

[Alpha]

OLD NEWS. The devs advertised that before release the game.

No they didn't. They specifically said that the single-player characters will be separate from the multi-player characters.

 

 

 

Yes , they did.

 

Google it and you will find that the devs and some reviewers mentioned that in interviews/preview.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Alpha

[Tigranes]

"Co-op players can absolutely expect to have the loot and experience they gain in multiplayer games to be saved to their multiplayer characters ... Achievements and Trophies earned in multiplayer are still saved to your profile as normal and there are additional awards that you can only receive from playing in a multiplayer co-operative game."

 

And that is exactly what happens. They just can't be imported to different games.

 

It's kinda silly to get hung up on devs 'lying' when they didn't, anyway - much more important is whether the design works for you or not. I don't care, but I can see why others don't like it.

[MonkeyLungs]

Mr. Chapman's statements there are like vague psuedo politico stuff. He could have just came out and spelled out how the multiplayer works in a way that doesn't leave room for misinterpretation.

[Bakercompany86]

All in all the system isn't a huge problem, but its not super supportive of great online MP either.

 

I wouldn't mind it if for the online MP you saved specific characters to your system that could only be used online, and local coop was a totally different save. I'm not sure why they made this design choice. Again not a huge problem the game is still great and very playable, but it would double the fun factor if this was changed. I'd even forgo the camera fix for something to change the MP aspect.

 

I also want the loot tables adjusted for MP games only. Whenever a human player is present his loot drops should be equal to the host character. I don't care about the gear my tag-along AI gets, Anjali does just fine with her gear even though its half of what my Reinhart has. But if there is 2 humans, it should be 50/50. 4 it should be 25% a piece.

 

I'm not sure why the loot so greatly favors the host character. In a MP setting, all eggs shouldn't be in the hosts basket.

 

Fix these 2 to 3 issues which are relatively minor, and I would have zero complaints about Dungeon Siege 3.

[Renevent]

"Co-op players can absolutely expect to have the loot and experience they gain in multiplayer games to be saved to their multiplayer characters ... Achievements and Trophies earned in multiplayer are still saved to your profile as normal and there are additional awards that you can only receive from playing in a multiplayer co-operative game."

 

And that is exactly what happens. They just can't be imported to different games.

 

It's kinda silly to get hung up on devs 'lying' when they didn't, anyway - much more important is whether the design works for you or not. I don't care, but I can see why others don't like it.

 

The bolded statement is very misleading...it's not your mp characters it's the host's.

 

With that said I was well aware of the MP setup in the game prior to purchasing the game...it's disappointing just the same though. This is the worst MP implementation in an ARPG I have ever seen.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Renevent

[rafoca]

It is not his fault. Most of the people won

[MonkeyLungs]

It was said in such a vague way because they didn't want to be clear about how the saves for characters worked. People who try to say that statement quoted above is not intentionally vague really aren't being fair. People only make vague statements like that when they are afraid to be direct.