I don't follow you on the whole sort them out in proper order from tanks to squishy comment you said. Could you explain that, as your companions get positioned in a fight by you, so idk what you mean by that for order sorting.
Are we advocating to not even want BG3 to not be a turn based game anymore? My comparisons to BG3's UI mostly stem from DOS2. I'm thinking if maybe we're all just not seeing what we want on the same page.
No, we are not talking about turn based vs. real time with pause modes here, there's a different, huge topic for that.
What I mean by "sort them in the proper order (my character 1st, and 2-3-4 sorted from tankier to squishier)" is that in BG3 your character isn't automatically set all the time as the 1st character in the party UI and every time you separate them, and then group up or they are grouped up by the game, for example when you leave the camp: they end up in a random party order decided by the game and not in the same position I already arranged them before. This is about their order they are shown in the party UI. Same happens in the (parallel) inventory screen, which shows them in random order as well sometimes and there can't even drag to fix it.
This is important because in order to select them, both in party mode and separated, the easiest way is by clicking the F1 key for the first character, F2, F3 and F4 for the others. Selecting with the mouse may take a few tries since the game struggles to recognize correctly what was clicked, same when targeting something. So using the keyboard F1 to F4 shortcuts is the only reliable way to select. The problem is that F1 always selects the first character in the UI, and I expect that to be always the same character, so I can act quickly.
Many times the enemy is moving around, so I have to issue orders fast, to put them in good positions, before the fight starts. During fights there is no need of quick reactions anymore since it's a turn based game, but outside the fight mode, turn based is off and a reliable way to direct your party members is needed, otherwise you will end up in a bad position at the start of the fight.
Here comes in the "impatience" you mentioned, and why the party management in BG3 is so frustrating, thus making the entire game less fun. BG1 & 2 had a fantastic party management UI: remembered the position of each member and never lost it during rest or entering another instance or anything; you set it once and stayed like that. Same in Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity and every game I ever played. Even the console focused Dragon Age Inquisition, and clicking on any portrait once, selected it instantly, was no need to use keyboard shortcuts like F1 here. Not even talking about formations, following and so on.
The party UI it's so bad in BG3 that looks like was intentionally made to annoy the players. I just can't believe it that this can go past any programmer by mistake: it's like this by design. Only they know why. What isn't broken, don't try to fix it: every game before had a basic UI that worked great, from 2D to 3D, in every game. There was no need to anything fancy rubber chewing gum effect and aiming for a spot in the Guinness World Records for the worst UI ever made in an RPG game.
