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

^Targeting from portraits is another big one.

When it comes to UI and party controls, I think BG3's problem is that Larian hasn't designed them for a D&D CRPG, they've just tried to adapt the UI and controls from Original Sin, and those aren't adequate. They need to go back to the drawing board on this stuff and re-design after looking at how other D&D and D&D adjacent CRPGs have have handled turning D&D into a playable, understandable video game. Players need all the information that would be on their tabletop character sheet surfaced and at their fingertips with breakdowns for folks who aren't familiar with 5e. They also need to be able to quickly and easily manage a party of four characters, both moving them around the map and sorting/using their various abilities and items.
This whole game feels like a D&D mod for Original Sin 2, not a game designed from the ground up to be Baldur's Gate 3.

Targeting from portraits is something that Larina did in DOS 2. I'm sure it will come here as well.
That's arguably the least of my concerns about future controls, frankly.

I put this issue at the top of my list of feedback requests.

Yeah, if they're going to listen to just one complaint when it comes to game mechanics I hope it's this one.

We should keep bumping this topic then. There's virtually no disagreement that the party controls are bad, so let's keep this under Larian's nose.

Removing the body block within the party I think is really the first and easiest step they could take to eliminate half the problems. It would make it so we aren't totally reliant on a jump action, just to path a PC to a spot that would otherwise be within the movement range were it not for other party member's body blocking. Clicking a spot on the map the PC should move the shortest distance possible, since according to the rules they can pass through another PC's space, as long as they aren't ending their movement within that space. This should apply outside of combat and within combat too. Right now movement in combat is waisted trying to run around other PCs, or trying to reach the specific spot selected on ground which then shows as unreachable or only jump to reach because of the body block. Kind of silly to imagine a melee with medieval weapons where everyone has to stay outside of each other's person space at all times. Like how would that work in the real lol?

Next step would be to just prevent the other PCs from shifting all over the place when pathing movement outside of combat. Half of this jogging around in circles from the unselected PCs I think would disappear once the body block within the party was nixed. Another complimentary feature would be a quick toggle to auto unchain via a button, instead of this awkward drag and drop method. Outside of combat using unchaining or dragging off to try and position a party leader position is just very tedious.

Formations in a party of 4 are obviously somewhat less interesting than formations for a full party of 5/6, but even with 4 you still have a couple basics. These should at least include the wedge, the square, the T (which is basically an inverted wedge), a gamma type formation (similar to the T formation, but with one flank strengthened rather than the middle) and then just the straight line for walking in single file.
Basically these kinds of shapes...

△ ▯ T Γ I

The last would be particularly helpful for scouting, and for dungeon crawling where you only want 1 PC walking point due to possible traps, or combat encounters, or hazards on the ground etc.

Can't really say I agree.
While body block shouldn't be there for allies (even tabletop rules claim players should be able to pass on a square occupied by an ally as far you don't stop there) this kind of workaround doesn't come even remotely close to address most of the other issues listed across this entire thread, with particular focus on the problems related on making group movement and more granular coordinate maneuvers quicker and more intuitive to put in practice.

Just to repeat my solution. Group - ungroup button. When the party is ungrouped everything happens individually, when everyone are connected everything happens for everyone. Sneaking, jumping, movement. Whatever.

This was suggested since the beginning of the thread (I suggested it myself as a bare-minimum alternative to a completely redesigned control scheme, which would be preferable) but only as a partial workaround.
Because it addresses only a general annoyance (having to group/ungroup characters individually) but not the core of the issue (1. being unable to select multiple units at once and to give them group commands).

I am with you, totally!

I dunno... seems to me the one click group all - everything done as a group from that single click on, would pretty much cover that functionality.

There aint no group commands in the game mechanics so if you mean being able to select two and issue a single command to both, that just doesn't exist.
And it didnt exist in originals either.

Once the fighting starts you issue orders to each character individually anyway.

Uh, yes, it DID exist in the originals, actually.
And in every other more recent title that borrowed the same RTS-styled control scheme.

You could absolutely select any arbitrary number of units in BG1, 2 etc and give to your selection generic commands (move on click, stop, attack, enter stealth, etc).

Both in and out of combat, given that the two modes weren’t even strictly distinct and shared the exact same controls.

No reason why you shouldnt also be able to do that in this scheme. Those are the very basic commands and needed relatively rarely. Most of the time you select individual characters and issue commands for them. I was thinking about anything more complicated which is individual for each character.

Just to throw in my 5c, I hate the chain follow system. Even if it would actually be smooth and easy to use, I would still hate the principles of it.

Classic BG controls are much better. Only selected characters move. Marquee select multiple characters. Most importantly a keybind for select all.

Add a follow toggle where unselected characters follow currently selected character(s) so we can still have this choice as well.

And add auto jump.

Adding my vote here. I just went through the Underdark and it was an awful experience trying to manage the party in some of the areas there. It's like the game is lacking basic functionality you get in other party-based cRPGs.

Not just other party-based CRPGs, but other party-based CRPGs from 20+ years ago. It's ridiculous that Baldur's Gate 3 controls this poorly.

There's a lot to like about the Underdark, but the mixture of terrible controls and terrible "super-deforming" camera made the experience a bit of a nightmare at times.

It could use some improvement, but it didn't ruin the game for me. I was still having a great time.

After playing through the burning inn again, yeah, I'm not a fan of the current control setup. I don't mind environmental hazards, but this just felt like I was fighting the interface, not the environment.

True, but it's one of those bad things that can be fixed without firing the whole studio and rewriting the code.
KiSS, very old truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

quote from there, but the page explains it better "The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided." ^

"Leonardo da Vinci's "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", Shakespeare's "Brevity is the soul of wit", Mies Van Der Rohe's "Less is more", Bjarne Stroustrup's "Make Simple Tasks Simple!", or Antoine de Saint Exupéry's "It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars, urged his designers to "Simplify, then add lightness". Heath Robinson machines and Rube Goldberg's machines, intentionally overly-complex solutions to simple tasks or problems, are humorous examples of "non-KISS" solutions.

A variant – "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" – is attributed to Albert Einstein, although this may be an editor's paraphrase of a lecture he gave"