Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Game Instability, AI Meltdown, and Low AC Priority

Once releasing Halsin, I opted to take on the remainder of the encampment with the assistance of the bear. A wardrum got beaten midway through the Drow fight so all the enemy's aggroed, however by the time I got to rooms above the spider pit, a goblin had already been tossed in the spider pit for some reason, and the ranger enemies were busy killing the newly aggressive spiders. The Hobgoblin boss was stuck in a cowering animation while I started to mow through the goblins until I set the bear on him. After I finished off the hob, the AI almost entirely broke down. wait times for AI turns could take anywhere from 20 seconds to 5+ minutes to process, my own inputs became non-responsive or resulted in multiple turns worth of movement with no ability to use Actions/Bonus Actions, and the combat at one time got stuck in a loop of turning off the combat encounter and then restarting with a new initiative roll as one of the AI combatants lost sight of my team and then found them again.

This combat encounter lasted in excess of a hour if we include the Drow boss encounter and had probably around 20 enemies that got aggroed through the course of it all. My GPU is below spec in case that's relevant, but I'm wondering if the combat system is having difficulty keeping up with long, drawn out encounters or if the number of enemies that had to be accounted for was too much for the AI systems.

Among other issues I encountered there was a common occurrence of the AI completely shutting down if one of my characters had to be healed/resurrected multiple times in a combat. It's extremely unfun getting stuck in a loop of Healing the downed guy, only for an archer to knock him down again just before he gets his movement over and over again because the AI happens to be biased towards Spellcasters, but it's even less fun to have the AI's brain stop functioning because the mage got picked up 10 times. On that note, it feels like there is almost no reason to acquiring gear for higher AC on your melee characters as the AI simply hard focuses your spellcasters who CAN'T wear armor. I suspect the AI is simply reading the Percent-to-Hit and taking the easy option, but all this results in is turning Mirror Image / Mage Armor into mandatory Turn-1 spells for your casters for EVERY SINGLE encounter. There needs to be a different sub-system for Target Priority beyond "Easiest to Hit" Gale and Shadowheart were basically never a threat to the enemy when compared to Lae'Zel and my Custom PC as Fighters because all of the damage was coming from 2-Handed Heavy weapons rather than spells. I'm sure there are ways of abusing spellcasting that make this difficult to implement but there HAS to be an improvement to the AI's Threat Level analysis. If I can determine that Gale is going to get shot by every archer in the encounter then that's not a fun tactical phenomenon to work around, it's a chore for me to set up the pin cushion mage in a location where I can heal him.

Please Please Please, create a "Drag" Action button. Or at least a Right-Click -> Drag option. Having to burn an action to Help a downed teammate and then Bonus Action, Shoving them into cover because the archers won't let him use his own legs is insane. I'm debating the usefulness of Spellcasters at all since they're just a massive drain on your healing resources due to AI aggression against low AC. I had to stockpile apples and pumpkins just to be able to heal Gale between fights or risk running out of potions. My next play through of the early access will probably by a full martial team to test the limits of the AI's targeting bias. Ranger PC, Lae'Zel, Astarion, and a tanked up Shadowheart probably.