Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides BG3 Party Movement Mechanic

A sensible list.
I’d object just the fact that auto-follow could stay as a toggle-option.
You know, for people who like to suffer.

Autofollow is the lazy answer to not having a proper party movement system. Just like the pathfinding seems baby steps even for enemies.

There are many issues with the system as it stands and it seems obvious that it at heart has a MP feel to it as individually the characters are fine right, by and large.

I am going with a hybrid of it's likely to stay vs what I would like to have, vs a complete redesign, as I am not sure that's likely, but here goes:

- Assign a Leader slot.
Let's say far left (even is split parties), slightly raised or highlighted or whatever as a visual reminder. Party members follow/rearrange themselves to that PC and not to the one I double clicked (as that pulls characters out from where I just placed them AAAARGH!).

- Characters copy Leader Action
If all characters are in Party mode, any Action I select should be copied by the others, Stealth, Jump etc... (Ia ppreciate Jump requires "space", but the AI should allow the leader to move forwards and rubber band / snap to the leader once space is there to Jump and form up.

- Formations
Loose, tight, single-file, etc... Currently everything is too loose. THe main character moves forwards, the others wait and then join seemingly at their leisure. If I stumble into Combat, my main character is several metres ahead of my party, okish if all ranged, bad if melee. Would also allow easier navigation of areas.

- Un-Link/Re-Link All
There are times the game wants you to use TB individual commands, but then it should make doing that convenient and easy. Step 1 is to allow us to unlink or relink Everyone at will, rather than just by dragging individuals.

- Single Click select and Camera focus
I would like to click on a portrait and have the camera pan to that character If I assign said character a task, say, stealth and investigate a chest, it should uncouple them from the team (again this assumes they don't switch to no teams and having to always select all to move a party)

- Cast to Portrait
In the thick of battle I want to select my spell target based on Portrait, either top left in inititative queue or (if my party) then bottom left

- Talk to party member should be right click
Speaks for itself, too easy to accidentally start a conversation, one could get used to it as is, but I think wanting to start a chat with someone doesn't need to be that easy

Those are the first "concepts" that spring to mind based upon building what is there. That is not to say I would do it that if given free licence to re-do the system, but given the MP aspect and potential controller friendliness, I have tried to keep it based on what we already have,

I will add as I go along, or jump onto some of the other concepts people have

Every time I swap character, my party members will walk around wildly to follow the character I selected, this is pretty annoying when u just want to cast guidance on someone.

When you really think about it, it's somewhat hilarious that we need to discuss all sorts of convoluted workaround to salvage a system that has virtually no redeeming qualities compared to a 20 years older alternative.

What's worse, if being controller friendly was the real crux of the issue, nothing is preventing Larian to keep the control scheme unchanged when playing with controllers (and even then, while admittedly I didn't give it much of my time to test it extensively, wouldn't be surprised if better alternatives already exist).

Originally designed as pure PC Game with an RTS controls feel and yes it worked great as a PC game designed for opertion in Real Time.

I certainly don't disagree with you, I guess I am approaching it from the "someone must have had a reason" aspect and looking to offer improvement suggestions. Even if that reason was "it kinda worked fine in DoS and to save time we have just adopted that to make sure we hit release based on current budget." Who knows what might change given a strong EA uptake, etc...

We are also just going on the assumption that what is in EA is by and large finished mechanics in need of refinement, whereas they could easily be expecting to do an overhaul but didn't want to delay EA as a result. Hence my stance I guess.

I also still struggle as a solo player with the concept of stealthing / moving characters into a location and others triggering a combat, but the one I initially stealthed is considered outside of combat and not in the turn queue. It's odd. Probably works better in MP, but as a solo play it isn't intuitive, not at first at any rate, maybe I need to play more.
I think I would extend the radius of putting characters into TB mode once Combat has started, but find a way to show they are not yet involved, other than leaving them out of the inititiative sequence.

As of right now if I think I have someone in a sneaky position and initiate combat, I don't immediately see that my sneaky rogue isn't yet in combat and I miss "their turn" if I am not careful.

I agree with those, starting unwanted conversations and not being able to cast at portrait really bothered me.

Also it just makes sense to have scouts and tanks in the front of the party but that doesn't mean they should do the talking.

Not me, I'm with you 100%.

Something really should be done to improve this part of the game, but I am doubtful it will happen. DOS2 had the same system and also has consistently had calls to change the system. What I am finding is that it is worse in BG3 at the moment because character selection does not always 'take' with the first click, and even if it does, attempts to drag and unchain the character aren't always successful, resulting in the character running to the spot where I meant to move the picture.

In general, +1.
However, there are some things to say about some of the other points.

True. And honestly, this is probably my biggest gripe with the whole thing. I want to move one character on their own? It takes a minimum of 3 actions to do so. Right click, ungroup, select, move. Maybe I could bind some shortcut keys to do it, dunno, haven't really investigated that far, but it's really annoying to have to ungroup everyone, all the time, right click, ungroup, right click, ungroup, right click, ungroup, and then start moving. And then the reverse when combat is over and I just want to move them as a group again. This whole system would be made a lot less cumbersome if there was simply a group all / ungroup all toggle button. Perhaps there is? I'll have to look and see if I can find one. Even then, I still think that would be more convoluted than the intuitive point and click of the way the previous BG games worked.


Perhaps, I'm not sure this is true though. I'm inclined to say that technically it's not. If you ungroup all of your party members, select the one you want, and then only move that party member, it's just as precise as the other systems. Of course, if you're used to the normal way of doing things, you're going to spend a lot of time trying to do things the old way, and that will MAKE you inaccurate, because your inputs will be errors. Not exactly a problem with the system itself, though.


This is definitely false. You never really need to give anyone quick instructions on where to position, it's a turn based game. Take as long as you want. However, of course, the fact of it being turn based and not time critical definitely isn't a good excuse for having a clunky interface.


True. But again, not really because the system itself is inaccurate, but rather because a lot of my inputs are errors, because I'm used to doing things a different way. It would still be nice to have a more intuitive interface, of course.

Counter-objection: the entire thread is about the part of the game that controls in real time. No one is complaining about the turn-based controls.
And you have just to look at the countless posts of people [rightfully] bitching that trying to cast Guidance on a companion gets easily messy if you don't take "preparatory steps" before (like forcefully switching to turn-based mode or unchaning/re-chaining characters).

I don't think the movement system is going to change to allow multiple characters to be selected. The way it is now, it is extremely "controller friendly" and since controller support is going to be added, I doubt they are going to create an entirely new movement system that will be completely separate from the controller based one and only work with mouse and keyboard. The movement system is also very "multiplayer friendly."

That said, I think there are some more simple things that can be changed to make it much less frustrating.

1. If you press "c" or click the stealth thing, just make every character currently linked to the one you are controlling go into stealth or come out of stealth.

2. Provide a way for party members to teleport to one another. Do it just like the pyramids in Divinity. This will solve the issue of one character jumping over something and then having to manually jump every other character to them.

I don't see how changing it for mouse and keyboard would prevent Larian from sticking to the same questionable scheme when playing with a controller.

But still, let's not waste our time worrying about what we think they are going or not going to do. This is not about making predictions, but judging what's there.

Let's stick to the facts; does it suck or it does not?
It does, it fucking does. It sucks so badly it's almost universally loathed by anyone who doesn't work at Larian (and maybe even among them) or isn't "Mr Not so fast".

In a forum where even arguments about crap being edible have their defenders, that alone should be an alarming tell that something is wrong.

Not sure if this has been stated already, but if you wanted to control each party member individually, you could break the party apart and move each one individually. That is an option. Again, let's see what Larian can do when released.

Well, of course it has. The entire discussion is specifically about how annoying that is. Especially because:
1- You need to relink them later to move them as a whole group.
2- Once separated you are forced to move each one of them individually. You can't select multiple units and move them together...
3- ...Which also means you can't give group commands like "Jump" or "Go stealth" for multiple units at once.

I don't think it sucks as much as you think. There's definitely problems, but I think they can be solved by making tweaks to what's there as opposed to completely changing it to be more like the RTS style of BG, Pillars or Eternity, etc.

If you get rid of the headaches of things like stealth, pathing, etc. Then I really don't think it's that bad. I mean this system was basically used in DOS 1 and 2 and tons of people love those games.

Everything can be salvaged somehow to some extent, but at some point a wise man has to realize when all the effort is just going on putting more lipstick on a pig.


Yeah, well... How? By making these things automated improving the auto-follow? This is all a long series of convoluted work-arounds that are simply trying to ignore the core of the problem.
The system doesn't work. It's counter-intuitive, cumbersome, slow to use and a waste of time to adapt to.

It's not just that the alternatives are better in some areas. It's that they are better in every single one and the only redeeming feature of the system ("Just control one character if you want, the other will follow") has been done better by other games and can STILL be used passing at other control schemes.

If people love DOS games it doesn't mean they love everything about them. I enjoyed them very much but I absolutely hate this chain system. And why make all those tweaks when you can just use a normal established system?

I get that you don’t like the system, but that’s really just an opinion.

If they changed the system to be like BG2, you would probably have just as Divinity fans complaining about it.

The system as it is has some major problems that are making people hate it.

Stealth is one, pathing through surfaces is another, and party members not following when you jump is a third.

If these get fixed, I think the system will be much better.

Heh. I'd be ready to take bets against that.