Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback S&F. QoL, UI and controls. Illustrated. HUGE

Right on, I had fun just text editing some quick symbols and font colors to see what looked decent at the tiniest of possible scales.

I think a lot of this stuff is pretty conventional by now, and there are certainly limits to color stuff, say the number of colors that even a non colorblind person can differentiate at a glance.

I think its a definite mistake though to use White as the color for the Main/Selected Character. White allows what should be the most important information being displayed to drift into the background. If anything White should be used for neutrals rather than Yellow, since color should be used to convey the most impactful and critical information. But even if they keep Yellow for neutrals, Red for hostiles, there are still enough off colors in the rainbow for a full party of 6. Just as an example

Party Leader 1: Λ
Party Position 2: Λ
Party Position 3: Λ
Party Position 4: Λ
Party Position 5: Λ
Party Position 6: Λ

Party Λ
Hostiles Λ
Friendlies Λ
Neutrals Λ

Yellow is a strong color that seems a bit wasted on Neutrals. They could easily be white to save yellow for something else, but at least its a quick read for now.

Or maybe they could actually do this in such a way that the player could edit some of this UI color stuff? Since, again, not everyone perceives color in the same way, and some people might find certain color combinations or pairings of colors much easier to read than others. Thinking esp of the colorblind.

They could also use pattern or texture to enhance the effect. Since their graphics peeps aren't limited to simple text or emojis or whatever like we are here on the forums. Instead of an open arrow they could use an elongated triangle or different arrow designs. Just about anything would be better than the current planchette design where the direction point is so tiny. Right now the mini map PC planchette uses white and black as the bordering color. Maybe using 2 colors for the PC arrows could work, where the outside border is always green and the secondary color corresponds to the characters party/leader position? That might be a cool way to include related color customization on the paper doll and in the UI. The PC might even use red, yellow or blue as identifiers for PC position in that case, provided the map icon/arrow for party members was sufficiently different from the other markers for hostile monsters or neutral/friendly PCs. Which would give a much nicer rainbow effect option for the controlled PCs, if we ever did get a party of 6, or just for people who just don't want to stare at too much magenta and cyan and such all the time hehe.

I find many of BG3s color convention choices kind of odd, since they don't follow the conventions of the earlier BG games. I wonder are these just another UI hold over from DOS2?

In BG1/2 Party members under your control were always Green. Yellow meant that someone was horrified or panicked or berserk and out of control. Red meant Hostile. Neutrals didn't show a colored circle below their avatar, but just a flashing white or blue one if they were speaking/barking or if you were interacting with them directly.

I think I would actually prefer if the party was all Green like the old BG games and they just use numbered player positions if desired, saving the other colors for other useful information that might be displayed on the mini or portrait. But since they already split between White (selected PC) and Blue (followers) I'd prefer they carry the concept all the way, so I can at least tell which of the followers is which from the mini map at a glance, (whiteout having to cursor over, or double click or things of that sort) but yeah, I wish the main colors for the PCs were not White and Blue, because those aren't sufficiently vibrant to pop.

Having Green as the color for Friendlies in BG3 just bugs me, since the previous BG games have me trained to think that green always means the party or the characters/summons that we have full control over. So I didn't like that change at all, like why mix that up in BG3? This is one of those minor areas where a little bit of UI continuity with the earlier BG games might help.

Green is the color for the PCs in Baldur's Gate games, and of lucky M&Ms! not for some blowhard like Aradin and his crew lol.
They should change that back right away.

If they opt not to use color for Party position differentiation, then I'd at least like the selected PC to always display as Green (not White), with a green circle on the Avatar, and then carry that through to the portrait displays as well, so its crystal clear who's selected. I know its different in other places, but in traffic control here Green means safe go, Yellow means caution, Red means danger stop, and those colors all jump out. It would be nice if the game used the same thing for traffic control on the mini map, or in TB combat. White is subdued and doesn't convey much at all. Blue can work well, but it depends on the Blue and vibrancy/saturation. It can either jump way out at you like modern LED Christmas lights (to the point where its the only thing you see), or slip totally into the background which is how the current 'follower blue' reads to me right now.

Sorry, not to ramble endlessly on the color thing, since there are many subjects in this thread already worth highlighting, but I just think their color choices in BG3 for UI Party/Mini-Map/NPC-Reaction etc were not the best, and there is still time to change that stuff.

I also wish more effective use of color would be made with the ghost paths when issuing movement commands or performing actions like jump. So using jump as an example, a scheme where Green means likely success, Yellow means some check/caution, Orange means likely injury or falling prone, and Red means a high risk of damage or possible death. Indicated in the ghost path preview before committing to the action. The same could be used for other types of pathing while moving in combat, like where an attack of opportunity is likely to be incurred. Just so that players can get more information quickly from their screen. That's different than like mini-map or portrait colors for factions or player position, but could also be improved if some of those path/ghost preview type UI elements had simple color gradients to convey simple information.

Arrows could be used not just on the mini-map, but in TB combat they could display on character circle in the main action screen (and for enemies the same). This could be done in Iso, or from whatever camera angle, at the character's feet. Since the game has made "facing" and "getting behind" something such an important part of the gameplay, the game needs to show us clearly who's facing where. So we can see how best to get behind them, and do that without incurring an attack along the way. Sometimes the animation isn't the clearest, so it would be helpful to have the shapes on the ground, with the arrow's actually coming off the Avatar's circle (at their feet) to show the facing direction, and what counts as the rear/flanks as opposed to face on.

Right now the game has a lot of kinks in the previewing of stuff before actually acting/moving, I'd like to see them lean into the ghost animation a lot more, and introduce colors and information on a preview screen. Like showing what can be reached or targeted or what's in range, without actually performing the action or the attack, or anything that requires you to commit to doing the thing before finding out whether it has any chance of working, just based on how well you can eyeball stuff and parse the animations and environments. Not that we need a full grid or hexes on the ground, but some kind of info lattice that could be toggled on via a ghost preview with color coding would certainly be cool.