My Multiplayer Game

Dragonfolk2000

For the longest time I've been trying to get my friends to buy and play Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition with me. Some of us went through the effort of making or choosing custom portraits and one of my friends has promised us that he'll eventually make a voice set that only speaks in Simlish. We had planned for four players (myself and 3 others). I had attempted two-player games before (each time with a different player) and it seemed to work out so far.

I think things first went wrong when one of my friends suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth (I couldn't contact him for whatever reason). He was originally going to be the protaganist because he had the most sense of all the new players. I originally did not want to lead because I had played the game so much that the other players wouldn't get to really explore since I know where to go. The other two players were not so good as one had little common sense and the other had little common sense and dyslexia (he plays the bruisers, obviously). So I caved in and said I'd lead.

Then a fifth friend appeared with his school laptop and said he wanted to play. He didn't have any money so my dyslexic friend installed his copy onto this person's computer. When it initially didn't work they came to me and asked me why it wasn't working. My answer was "I can't really say. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to buy these games legally." They eventually got it installed and running but without the folder from the user's section we couldn't get his custom portraits to work.

Then we finally got to character arbitration and we all started building characters. Some of us pre-generated (at my request) characters and were ready from the beginning. As soon as we entered the game my dyslexic friend's game crashed. When I was handed control of his character I noticed that unlike everyone else he started at level 5. Furious, I started a new game and changed the options to only allow statistics of a character. For some reason this prevented us from using our pregenerated characters (or the one from the old multiplayer game we had started) so we started over again.

This time my third friend (the one with little common sense) decided that instead of sticking with the character he said he'd make the first time instead made a fighter. We entered Candlekeep and he immediately bought all the best suit of armor and his appropriate weapons. The dyslexic friend got upset saying "You can't have more than one beat stick in a party! I needed that armor!" Great, I love it when a plan comes together.

Remember that fifth friend? He neglected to mention he had a crappy laptop and failed to mention until after I had rushed us out of Candlekeep that he was lagging and was unable to buy any starting equipment for his archer. The game ended with us standing outside candlekeep with one unequipped character, a fully-equipped swashbuckler, a barbarian with no armor but a big sword, and a fighter with armor and a tiny sword. During the whole game everyone but me kept disconnecting.

We eventually determined that the connection issues that the others were having were due to three people using one internet source (I was at my own apartment but the other three players were at the dyslexic guy's apartment). The unexpected fifth friend simply has a crappy computer and we'll either fix it next time or we'll tell him he can't play until he gets a better laptop.

Now that I think back to the days when my dad, brother, and I would play BG2SOA, our game sessions would often end up like this as well. You know, connection issues, misunderstandings, and many bottles of headache medicine. Although we all all had our copies of the game legally...

zur312

what is the question?

BelgarathMTH

I think @Dragonfolk2000 is venting some frustration, and the essay made me smile. I thought it was sort of like an Andy Rooney bit, and perhaps also an invitation for other people to share their multiplayer experiences, right, Dragonfolk?

zur312

"internet friends" and internet friends are too different categories and i think you tried to play with "friends" that is why

Baldur's Gate is really cool game on multi with good friends and good party not as fluent as Diablo 2 but still

Dragonfolk2000

These are people I know from real like, belgarathmth is actually closer to what I was trying to say. I'm not asking a question, I'm sharing an experience and hoping to hear from other people about their experiences and how they dealt with their problems. I didn't think I had to ask a question whenever I started a thread. After all, it is called 'General Discussion'.

ChildofBhaal599

never played multiplayer. it is hard for me to get on at the same time, and my rl friends play console loved your story though. maybe the next update will have the better multiplayer and the matchmaking?

Dragonfolk2000

We had a second session recently and it went considerably better. People still dced occasionally but we solved our connection problems by simply restarting the program whenever we dced (like we were refreshing it or something). We didn't bring 'School Laptop' guy back in this time so immediately upon beginning the game we kicked him out of the party. I saved his character first though, in the event that he does get a better computer he can then resume his old character.

Due to Dyslexic's complaints I told the third friend (we'll call him Bart because that's what he named his character) to make a new character. I told him that if he still insisted on playing a fighter he should play a kensai so the two of them wouldn't be competing for armor. It wasn't until after this game session that I realized that Dyslexic was playing a barbarian who wielded two-handed swords. They SHOULDN'T be competing for armor or weapons because barbarians can't wear heavier than splint and Bart was currently specializing in bastard swords (at my request since werewolves are annoying in this game).

So we immediately jumped into things. I was in control of my own character, a swashbuckler who dreamed of becoming a cleric and had two proficiency slots in two-weapon fighting. Essentially I was to cap my open locks and find traps at 100 and then dual class into cleric so we'd have a healer. My one pip at level 4 would finish out two-weapon fighting and then I'd use my cleric pips to become proficient in flails and hammers (thus setting me up for Ashideena in BG1 and Flail of Ages in BG2). Since we have two other melee characters there's no need to put a non-proficient swashbuckler in the front so I'm sitting in the back with a sling and throwing rocks at enemies.

So after fully exploring the first wilderness area (and murdering all squirrels and bears in the process) we proceeded south to High Hedge and did the same in that area. As we travel along I am explaining different tips and lore about the game. I greatly emphasize how important it is that we immediately travel to Thalantyr's inner sanctum and not go exploring around his house. And by 'explain' I mean that I quick-saved and let them try to kill the golems (spoiler alert, they all died).

At some point during all this fun Bart's non-magical bastard sword broke and we took a detour to Beregost so we could 'borrow' a +1 bastard sword from the Thunderhammer smithy. We calmed down Marl, killed some spiders, and accidentally started Neera's thing too early and we got killed (I was still stealing the bastard sword at the time so Bart was somewhat useless and died). We proceeded to deal with Silke and while Dyslexic was aware as to why you needed to keep hitting Silke Bart was not. We hoped that he wouldn't find out why. He found out why and we were forced to reload.

We reattempted the Silke and Neera fight and won. We picked up Neera (because as a group we agreed that she was awesome to have around) and I posed the question as to who should control her. No one wanted to control a spellcaster (except for me) and I said that someone should take Imoen then because I'm not controlling all the NPCs. Dyslexic took her from me and it actually has worked out pretty well since. We also had to take two tries to defeat a dwarf assassin but once that nonsense was cleared up we returned to High Hedge and finished clearing out that area.

We then traveled to the area south of high hedge and rescued Melicamp. We returned to Thalantyr and after what seemed like a million reloads we finally got Melicamp restored and we got our xp. Then we tried tackling Bassilus, which was a giant disaster at first as Dyslexic was confused immediately and attacked one of the non-hostile zombies that didn't despawn. With that, the rest of the undead turned hostile and shot us all full of bolts. Our second try went a lot better.

We learned about the BS of Ghouls and Ghasts, showed Zargal that he ISN'T the strongest there is (it's actually Dyslexic) and we finished this area. We made it back to town and sold our excess stuff (hanging onto a certain hammer) and we save and shut down there.

In total I think Dyslexic dced about 5 times and Bart dced 3 times and myself once (It might have been related to me checking my Marvel Avengers Alliance game during a load screen). In all it was a much better game session than last time and I think we all enjoyed it a lot.