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

IDK maybe because we’re realists and understand that Larian can implement a few quick fixes to greatly improve QoL but there’s very little chance they’re going to bin all their existing code and start again?

We really need a "hold position" command and it would solve a lot of the problems I encounter. When I'm jumping onto a precarious position and we're all hiding, I can't have idiots wandering around into view of my hordes of enemies.

I just want marquee select. Seriously, how hard is it to implement?

"All their existing code"?
Just how much ingrained and "hard coded" into the game do you actually expect the UI to be, exactly?

Pretty deeply I’d say considering they’ve used the same schema for three games now instead of rebuilding it, and during that time there has never been the ability to select more than one character at a time. As someone mentioned earlier there was pressure to change it for DOS2 but it didn’t happen.
Anyway, I’m not saying it shouldn’t change if they are willing and able to. But there’s no harm in putting in some more modest requests as a Plan B.
My personal ideal would be to focus on my MC and let the companions take care of themselves in an intelligent manner – closer to true D&D where you only have one character – at least until combat begins. I’d love to see Larian push boundaries and do something new in that spirit, like Dragon’s Dogma did, and let go of the past. As many have mentioned, there are already several great infinity clones out there. But I understand I’m almost certainly in the minority on this.

a keybind to mass unchain your party and mass rechain + have a keybind that orders all party members to the mouse cursor location seems feasible enough, they'd just have to get functions tied to certain buttons, this would sidestep the need to select multiple characters which seems incompatible with how the game functions with the whole UI changing to fit whichever char you have selected

the ordering the party to 1 location would be to assist in rechaining the party together after unchaining them and spreading them to strategic locations before entering combat.

I would like that as well as the marquee select. If Larian could just add those two they would be on the right path when it comes to party control.
And no, I don't think it would require that much work to implement something like that. Not trashing all their existing code and start over again as some people seems to think for some reason.

That just means people at Larian for some inane reason seem to be very fond of their shitty control scheme, it doesn't mean there are any meaningful technical obstacles to doing things differently.
Which is precisely the part where it becomes a dire need from our side telling them insistently that NO, it actually sucks a whole lot.

Of the top of my head there are five useful formations for a party of four: the line and the square, that you brought up, but also the Diamond, and the T and it's reversed, upside down brother.

Diamond (♦️) is probably the formation I would use the most. Heavy melee in front, secondary melee and half-fighters in row two, the most frail character in the back. The T puts three melee or fighty characters up front and one frail in the second row. The upside down T puts the heavy alone in the front and the frail one in between the other two, flanks secured by less frail companions.

However, allowing formation isn't just about the shapes of the formations - it's also about who goes where. If I can build my own formation I can have my wizard character in the back even when he is the selected character. That way he will be protected during exploration yet still be the one who enters dialogue when I click on an NPC. And that kind of quality of life features makes party/character selection so much less of a hassle to handle.

Yeah I like the T and ⊥ too in principle, but I was thinking that formation probably doesn't matter all that much within TBS combat, since once you enter battle there's not much to be gained by holding a formation in this game. At that point its a free for all race either to reach an opponent and start whacking, or get out of the way or to the high ground. So its really more for the roaming outside combat, like whether you want the group to be spread out or all close together when the combat begins. But even there people are mostly meta gaming it I'd guess and approaching combat in whatever position/formation will gain them advantage, since good ambushes are rare and you can scout with the camera.

I'm a control freak, so I also wish I could hold/lock position build formations and move in a more coordinated way, with simple efficient clicking, not click and drag portrait to deal with chains. But that's cause I still dig infinity's RTS type control/command scheme with a marquee or select all hotkey.

I could probably get into something like Dragon's Dogma as an alternative approach for the roaming. It wouldn't feel particularly Baldur's Gate, but at least it would coast along in a more interesting sort of way when outside of combat. I was rather hoping for something more engaging from movement outside of combat, maybe taking a page from Zelda where in addition to jumping players could actually climb and swim and whatnot, maybe use ropes and like. But even the most compelling environments here are just kind of like ziggurats for king of the hill and geared more to combat than free form exploration. In other games I always find myself wanting to head up the wrong side of the mountain, or jump off the tallest rock, and mess about that way, and this sort of teases that 3d and cam control, but doesn't really deliver when it comes to the roaming. That territory has been thoroughly explored in action games where you only have a single character, but I can imagine a lot of cool animations and ways it might work in a party based game where it hasn't really been done yet.

Anyhow, just to echo the other concerns, I'm not super happy with the current controls. Its not fluid enough to be relaxing outside of combat, and overly exacting for simple stuff like just jumping over a rock or having everyone else stand still while you're making the attempt. I think in a desire to keep the party "looking" active and dynamic, they end up with that frenetic jogging about that has been described as chickens ambling without purpose. I just want to be able to issue the commands to each PC separately and have them not trip over themselves or each other, run around the long way, catch on fire or whatever. BG1s innovation was basically to make itself Diablo x6 hehe. I get that this one is different because TB, but I don't want to play the whole thing in 6 second intervals just so that movement outside combat feels like I'm still in control, which I guess is the way its done right now. Just seems like they could get something simpler and more responsive for the roaming part, which is the majority of the game after all.

Apparently really hard.

(Me too.)

I'm afraid that kind of select may prove not that comfortable in ful 3D with somewhat short zoom distance, verticality and complex environment.

I did wonder about that, what vertical plane is the marquee on etc, but you could likely just treat the viewport as a plane and select whatever you can see with a marquee. I think the trouble partly stems from Larian having built their model as co-op focused (which is partly why they’ve been really successful). I also think they’re aiming higher than traditional infinity-style CRPGs and trying to take this kind of micromanagement out of the game where you feel the need to boss each partly member around constantly. And that actually suits D&D 100%. The only problem is they’re not there yet – the clumsy AI gets you in trouble which makes you want to exert more control. That and there are a couple of QoL commands missing.

If they ever give us the ability to summon multiple creatures like you should be able to in 5E then marquee select would be very useful though – unless you like exploration with a controller (as I do), in which case you’re going to have a big gaggle of crocodiles etc bumbling around behind you.

^If Larian is trying to take micromanagement out of the game, they've failed pretty hard. The DoS controls and UI have made BG3 so much more fiddly and cumbersome than the old games in the series ever were.

Plain truth.

Some of the most important group commands I dream for.

- Everybody gather up (auto move to reconnect chain group)
- Everybody wait for orders (break chain group)
- Everybody stop moving

And let's not forget "Let me control how many characters I want".

How many characters do you want to control? 4 is pretty big

He means cases for more than 1 less than 4.

No, it's fucking NOT. Four people is on the anemic side as far as parties go.

Besides, I was referring about being ACTUALLY able to control more than one character at once, RTS-style.
Precisely what the current Larian control scheme doesn't allow you to do.