Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback camera/character movement

So I just purchased BG3 on Steam (will be playing on PC) and man, did I get a rude awakening as to the horrible camera/character movement controls!

Larian Dev's should be ashamed of themselves for having such a horrible scheme for camera/character movement, its convoluted and cumbersome and tiring!

I have played DOS and DOS II on a console in the past and I had no issues with camera or character movement but on PC or maybe this game its just BAD!

I mean, why cant they just use the WSAD keys for forward/back/left/right and the movement of the mouse itself for camera movement?

Push mouse left while holding the W key has the character moving left and the camera follows the character, move the mouse forward and you look up/pull back you look down (or you can reverse these as can be done on consoles) so simple but instead we get this convoluted system of middle mouse button to swing the camera, left mouse button and the Q and E keys, its just a pain i the A$$ to play, takes all the joy out of playing the game!

If you want to see what a easy smooth camera/character movement system should be like, spend $20 bucks on Steam and buy the MMO New World and play it for a few minutes to see whats its like to have a easy/simple system in place.

As it is now, after a while it really becomes just tiring to play the game with all the camera/character movement hoops that i have to jump through!

I really, really hope the devs read this message, b/c in 2023, no game should have such bad controls!

Regards

Just wait until you get too close to a big rock 🙂🥲

Well, I did go to that one spot early game where you move the rock, and getting the camera angle just right to be able to jump down and move on was a choir.

I just cant believe that this game, being in early access for two years an no one said anything about the camera/movement system!

And to top it off, there is no option to play this game on PC using a CONTROLLER!

But regardless, you would think that with the development of DOS and DOS II, all coming on PC first, that they would have a buttery smooth camera/movement system in place but I guess NOT, since after all that time and experience, they are still reinventing the Inventory and UI systems (DOS and DOS II where also magical/melee user systems).

Needless to say, I'm very disappointed and having to constantly fiddle with the Q, E, Home buttons just takes me out of the immersion in the game.

But I suppose nothing will change, game comes out in August and we have what we have, very, very disappointed.

Bg3 has no sky and will crash when you try to look at it. Hence, a lot of the UI's wonkiness. I've been playing with mouse only, except for dialogue choices. It's not great, but it's not the worst I've had.

Really stay away from big walls of rock. The camera still gets stuck in them. Since the game has a lot of verticality, the spider boss level was annoying as hell. They still have to fix that, so we may see minor changes yet. Bg3 comes out whenever it's done. There's no real deadline, at least.

Well, the date is August, so eight Months from now, its not much time to revamp something as major as the camera/movement system.

With DOS and DOS II behind them, both of which came out on PC first, you would think that camera and character movement would be as smooth as butter but this is what we have, its truly sad!

I just cant believe that they spent so much time bragging about reinventing the inventory system and UI (with all their experience with the DOS games) but they totally neglected the most important part of a game as far as UI is concerned CAMERA and MOVEMENT!

Yes, I really had a hard time i.e no fun, in the CRYPT fighting the grave robbers and than the undead mages.

I'm thinking about returning the early access back to Steam, if its not to late.
Heck, I just found a bug, when I switched the Q and E keys in the key binds, my characters no longer moved , none of them! I fixed it by resetting the key binds and doing the switcher over again, that fixed it while still giving me what I want.

And I agree, the camera sometimes seems to have a mind of its own.

And why don't they allow you to play with a controller? Dam, they will be making the game for PS5 and XBOX same as the previous games of DOS and DOS II, surely they already have the know how to implement Controller functionality!

it's actually not true. the game has proper skyboxes, futhermore the engine allows moving camera on z axis

here

The one key area of the game that needs attn - I think the whole verticality nature of the game has presented sone challenges.
I’d be happy with the ability to just lock the camera to character of my choosing

By doing more than double-clicking on that character’s portrait or pressing the hot key that homes in on the character, I take it?

Is it the fact that the character lock is so easily lost if you try to look around as you move that bugs you? I know it does me sometimes. Though not as much as that the hot key and double-clicking don’t work in the same way, or at least didn’t, the homing key reoriented the camera whereas I want it to do the same as double-clicking and just centre on the currently selected character with the current camera direction and level of zoom.

More generally, I agree the camera makes battles and exploring when maps use verticality a right pain. And this is a huge pity given they could otherwise be a plus point.

Yes - currently that just re centres the camera to the character - I’d like the option of a fixed over the shoulder view.
I’ve never played other Larian games how does camera work in DOS 2 ? Can you lock it to a character ?

Many problems with the camera, I play with my main character as the main lead and with left mouse button pressed I can follow him but as soon as he takes a turn, the camera does not FOLLOW so now I have slow down or stop and reorient the camera with home or q/e and that's like 90% of the problem, along with the camera dropping off cliffs, doing things I did not initiate, just crazy!!!

What I don't understand is how this was not the BIGGEST complaint to Larian about the game, its been in early access for two years!!
How was this problem not made a big issue of??

It’s been brought up many times, but what can you do. I am hoping for pad support, as I hope it will play better with pad.

What I do nowadays (it is a bit clunky, but I found it to work the best) is press left mouse button to move and use Q&A to turn.

Two request I made in one of my feedback was to pressed LMB camera to follow he direction, and for “smart camera” akin to Deadfire, to be implemented - so I could move camera away from the character, but it would gently snap back to him after giving a mover order.

That is what I (how I play) but even at that, its very clumsy and tiring after a while.

I've played DOS and DOS II on a PS4 back in the day and I don't remember the controller having any issues with camera/movement, so I don't know if they just don't know who to do a PC game or if they have new people that don't know how its done, but the other question is, why no controller support on the PC version ?

As UI has been in constant development, my guess would be that they wait with controller support, until they finalise UI. However, as far as I understand Stadia version had some form of controller support, so

and now that I've played for 14 hours, Steam wont give me a refund, I'm stuck with the TURKEY.
Next time I'll my PC game on GOG, they have a 30 day return policy.

YES, they were developing for STADIA so they should already have had controller support b/c it was going to release at the same time as on PC--hmm whatever happened to that code, I really hope its in the final version, perhaps it will play better with controller.

I played Cyberpunk 2077 on STADIA with their controller and it was GREAT! They have refunded my purchase for the game and controller/dongle since they are shutdown now.

I'm really hopeful now that they will have controller support on day 1 of the PC release!

If i remember right, in DOS and DOS II on my old PS4, the left joystick controlled the camera and the right one controlled the character, this was very easy and precise, something that using the q/e/w keys just can't give you on a keyboard.

I agree controller support for PC would be a good thing, though I do tend to prefer keyboard and mouse for most games.

For that reason, I at least hope that Larian will at least allow us to map a key to “Walk forward” for the currently controlled character (and ideally change the behaviour of the homing key to mirror that of double-clicking a character portrait). With a bit of key remapping that would give us the ability to have something more like an over-the-shoulder view. It wouldn’t be perfect but would be so much better than now.

(I know we can click and hold to move in the direction of the mouse, but I find that unresponsive, annoying when your character or other objects are in the way of where I want to go, and clashes with the use of the mouse to interact with things. I’m glad it’s an option but desperately want to be able to map a walk forward button as well.)