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

Frankly I'm also not a big fan of a "chain", neither in D:OS2 nor here. Larian has a ton of great ideas, but this, IMO, is one case they are probably wrong. I would prefer some smarter system that allows to select one part member by single click and direct only him, then maybe reset this selection some way, even if by just good ol' box selection of all portraits.

There also needs to be some tolerance to small movement by a leading character. Right now even small movement by selected character causes your whole party to often run around regrouping and what not. Relax guys, I just moved 2 centimeters towards a vendor or some NPC, no need to raise such a fuss.

Switching to another character to cast a buff makes them all go wild too there, like here in this example in this vid:

https://youtu.be/mn-ty-yGv_Q

Yeah i agree with the dreadful movement. Cant position/strafe in combat easily, cant avoid dangers, cant do basic things without chaos insuring.

Not to mention you cant even move past an ally, which your supposed to be able to do with double movement required. eg: 10ft instead of 5ft



Agreed

All correct. And really, the fact that some of us are TRYING to adapt to this system since DOS 1 and if anything the dislike for it has only grown over the years should be a big tell for Larian.

Here's another youtuber reviewing the Early Access Build end then pointing out as a side note how much he didn't like the controls:

EDIT - Direct link since embedding doesn't seem to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-y6mvpXQAc

It's not like youtubers are Gospel, but just to highlight how I don't even need to go and prompt people to speak against i: it's a system that many are naturally incline to dislike and criticize because it simply works poorly in most scenarios.
And even when you can make it appear somewhat functional, relatively speaking, it's still worse than the alternatives.

I hope there's some feedback from Larian soon. Would be nice to know if they have acknowledged that there is some serious flaws with the current way hits game handles movement and character control.

Yeah, I know it's not exactly realistic to expect someone from Larian to suddenly butt into the thread and say "We are doing exactly what you guys are asking", but I must admit I'm growing increasingly anxious to have ANY sign from the studio that they are aware these controls are in a dire need of a revamp, because the longer they stay as they are, the less likely it becomes to see the issue addressed later in production.

It's a worry even about other areas of the game, because as I said the flaws of this controls scheme act as a bad foundation to build up on even for other features (i.e. a possible increased in party size).

Just crossed this randomly on reddit. It was a discussion about party formations:




It may not be the issue everyone talks about all the time (well, except me), but at some point one have to ask: did any topic among this community ever find a similar overwhelming consensus about a certain design decision being bad?

Hopefully there will at least be some kind of respons from Larian soon. Maybe a longer post or vlog where they address the more common complaints and critiques from the community.

+1 i hadnt commented on this thread yet, but wanted to add a +1 to say that i agree with the others who have also posted here with concerns about how party management/movement is handled in game to get it back towards the top lists (jumping for each individual party members comes to mind). i found party movement both difficult to control and not really intuitive for a player new to larian's systems with the locking/unlocking mechanic

i would also add to this that the current operation of the camera control, mainly the locked camera/zoom angle, does party management no favors and can make it also difficult to navigate the map

some ppl also mentioned party formations above, and while i think this would be a nice feature to include (like the original bg games), i dont think party formations is as high a priority at this stage of the game - particularly if party size is set at 4, bc with 4 party members is party formation really impactful? i see it mostly as front/backline and thats it with 4 members, whereas with 6 i could see some more applicability.

This, it happened in both the Blighted Village and the Goblin camp as I tried to go around on the sides, in both situations I had to make a jump and immediately the rest of the party goes off on foot to regroup. Yes, I could remember to separate the party, but its super cumbersome, especially with as often the game wants to do some light platforming with the jump feature.

The number of times I've carefully positioned all of my crew for an ambush only for none of my party to get a turn in the first round of combat is what annoys me. If you have one character in the fight and the rest of the party free to run around outside the combat, it's pretty immersion breaking, but I understand why, for multiplayer... but they never seem to get a turn in the first round of combat.

More than anything, party formations have hardly any reason to exist as long as your companions will keep repositioning randomly all around you at the drop of a hat.

Has anyone tried Solasta Crown of the Magister? If so, how does it handle group movement outside combat?

Played the demo and liked it, but I'm not a fan of that aspect personally.
It uses a strange system where every single movement even out of combat is on a grid and the party moves as a unified block.

Ah, I see. Not sure if that is much better either. But i'm going try it out once im done with the BG3 EA.

Not to drag the OT too much, but here's a Fextralife preview if you're interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj9OKUTy7HA

Thanks!
The movement looks a bit strange. Like blocks as you said. But it at least look like you can select and move individual characters without messing around with chain/unchain

Larian party movement and control has been an issue brought up since DivOS1 and was considered critical to address during DivOS2 development but nothing came of it. I would really like to see it changed to the classic CRPG control but I can say with 99% certainty that it is not going to happen. It didn't happen for DivOS2 despite feedback, I don't see any miracles happening this time.

That said +1 please change the awful party control mechanics.

I guess our hope in this case is trying to leverage the fact that this is supposed to be a follow up to the Baldur's Gate franchise rather than a new Divinity.
Which admittedly is not that strong argument, and in my opinion completely secondary to the fact that it's simply far worse than the alternative.

If I have to be honest I'm just surprised to see that while almost no one seems to like the current system, very few of us seem to consider addressing it a priority over other overblown topics like "Rest can be spammed" (yeah, well, it was always the case even in the older games).

Well, in my 8 main suggestions sent via the Launcher, it was my #1 issue (among my over 100 posts on the forums). It is a constant annoyance and it would improve the fun and playability for all.

you not being able to operate the system, doesn't mean it's bad. Having to get used to a system doesn't make it bad. You people just suck at adapting and if you run into trouble you start crying. Same shit every day. if you wanna ambush at the start of a fight, untether your party morons and go into turn based mode before engaging if the enemies are patrolling. LEARN THE GAME GODDAMNIT