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

I have to say, I'm not particularly a fan of the "JRPG" approach where the rest of the party becomes basically an abstract incorporeal during exploration.
It would feel more like a cop-out because they can't do group control/formation/positioning decently than a proper solution.

Also, a clarification about this point:

I don't think this would be necessary at all.
When I say that the current system is "unsalvageable" I don't literally mean that they should recode the entire thing. What I mean is that you can't keep the salient traits of this system and have something genuinely good.
On the other hand it's also true that you could get a good system simply MODIFYING the current one. Playing with the recently discovered "chain/unchain all" is making it even more evident than before.

1- Allow ACTUAL selection of multiple units. Like, if I SHIFT+Click a certain number of characters they should be the selected separately from the rest.
2- the selected portion of your party should all execute generic, non unit-specific commands. You know, "move", "stop", "hide/unhide", etc.
3- Allow formations and especially allow the players to select/edit which formations they want to use. Personally in almost any CRPG I played I've always been very comfortable with the standard tight "2X3" made famous as default with BG1 and 2, where you have two frontliners, two characters in the middle and two in the rearguard (here's a very short clip to show what I mean ) but obviously to each one its own.

These three modifications alone would go a long way to completely redefine how the current controls feel. After that it would just be a matter of making everything feel as "snappy", clean and responsive as possible.

EDIT- Damn, didn't plan to make the video "embed", let alone this big. The forum apparently does it on its own with every youtube link.

Yeah I mean that would clearly be preferable. I kinda enjoyed the theater scope there actually haha, might as well go big!

The ghost thought was just an expedient, definitely not as a best case. While I'd rather move formations and select via dragging marques and such like out of the rts command and control tradition, at least the incorporeal thing during non combat movement would avoid most of the mini headaches I encounter along the way.

But in actual combat, that doesn't solve any problems really.

Just a stop gap idea for something they might be able to pull off and turn over with a relative quickness, whereas I expect it would take a bit longer for them to do the kind of overhaul I'd actually like to see. Maybe they'll get there, it does seem to be moving incrementally somewhere, but all the selection and movement controls feel really oddball to me. It just pulls me out of the experience, for a game that I'm otherwise kinda digging and really hope settles in for the long haul out of EA.

It's especially aggravating when after combat 3 characters immediately rush through fire/acid/twisting vines to get to the selected character. The uncontrollable party movement that happens all the time is infuriating.

Having to drag a character "away" from the group to move a single character is also really annoying. And then you have to manually regroup them later which feels really clunky and glitchy on top. All of this is so unnecessary! 99% of the time you just need a "select all" button or a quick marquee selection when you want to move the entire party. And click on a portrait or character to select and move a single character.

You could also accomplish what Larian are trying to do with a simple "follow" switch added on top of a classic party control scheme. If you want to move a single character and have the rest follow you automatically, flick the switch and select a character. There's no reason to ruin the whole control scheme for such a feature that creates much more trouble than it's worth.

In last patch Larian actualy implemented button (toggle party its named in option i think?) that will instantly splits or joins all party members, that are close enough ...
Its pretty usefull, even tho it still have some bugs.

For example its joining them in random order, it ignores how you have them sorted ... but that is minor problem.
Worse is the fact, that you can easily forget that summons, and temporary companions tend to run toward your character no matter the dangers ... this is how i lost Sazza.

I tested it somewhat, and it seems this behaviour is intended, and not a bug:

• When you split the group and then join it back, the currently selected character goes to position 1 (becomes the party leader);
• When you split the group the second time after that and join it again, this time having the previous party leader selected, the game seems to be remembering the initial party order (that you had before the first split) and restores it.

It appears they put some effort into its implementation, since it behaves consistently. However, as with most LTC-related changes that Larian makes, it feels like another layer of epicycles added to the Ptolemaic system: an awkward and unwieldy crutch to help a bird walk, even though it was supposed to fly instead.

I feel practically sorry for Larian devs, it looks like they are going to get rid of LTC eventually, but because of the enormous internal friction they have to do it the hard way.

P.S. Just in case, +1 to the thread's original idea and purpose.

I'd noticed some strange things in the chain system.

• There is a menu with the option to group/ungroup when you right-click the portraits, but the game usually doesn't respond to the click. You have to try 4-8 times.

• When I ungroup a character, 90% of the time it's because I'm going to use it, but the game doesn't select that character right away. For this reason, usually, after ungrouping a character and clicking to move it, I realized that the wrong character is going to the position I'd sent.

Yeah, I too feel that clicking the character portraits, be it right or left click, from time to time feels very unresponsive. Not always, but every now and then. Which of course only adds even more frustration over the already subpar control mechanics.

For now managing with hotkeys is recommended.

f1-f4 for your characters to select them from Left to Right.

Then you have the Unassigned Grouping Key that you use to split them/unsplit them. Need to go into Keybinds to assign it first, I use Tilde "`"

We still need a hotkey for group stealth.

I didn't know that. Thank you.

I rather liked the way Solasta handled the party grouping, default being the whole party follows you and then you can click an individual portrait to only move that one character, and a small icon above the portraits to go back to moving the whole group again. Of course, I also didn't find much need to not move the entire party in Solasta either, while in BG3 I've run into a lot of situations where I would like to move each character to a different spot for a surprise attack or some such. This whole chaining/unchaining system was terrible in DOS2 but I pushed through it and just never really unlinked my party members at all because, much like Solasta, I didn't really come across any situations where I felt like I needed to have them all spread out so much. BG3 has me remembering exactly how much I hate this grouping system, and focusing on it more than ever because I actually do feel like I need to have my characters spread out in different spots at combat start in these.

Combined with the whole group not going into stealth together even when they're all chained together so I have to individually select each one to make them go into stealth, it just makes the entire group movement a mess in my opinion.

I agree fully with the above. The party common action or following behavior should be two separate things. I think Pillars of Eternity implmented this more logically.

Well, yes, that's precisely the "traditional RTS control scheme" we've all been advocating for in the entire thread.

It's weird that Larian refuses so stubbornly to embrace it, because it's not really an unproven novelty, but rather the standard the entire genre has made use of since the dawn of this specific formula. Bg1, BG2, ToEE, PoE 1 and 2, Pathfinder Kingmaker, WotR... Basically any notable title in this subgenre borrows from there and refines the formula to some degree, while Larian is trying to reinvent the wheel... And making it square in the process.

Can I just do this, every time the thread gets another dozen pages? Yes!
lol

Nothing to add, just a +1 to all the above in the hope it improves chances of notice by Larian.

I just read this post played the game, and noticed something.

If I drag the party portraits apart it seems easier to micromanage the members.

Would this work for tricky situations like you have described?

No? That’s precisely the system we have been criticizing from the beginning.

Also, if anything the recently introduced “Group toggle” key bind is a better workaround than “dragging portraits apart”.

Your initial post was complaining about how party members would move on their own. Toggling off group stops that, no?

I also noticed that there is an option for tactical view. That is making my encounters much easier to deal with. I wonder if they help with the "camera height" issues as well.

Also, isn't the "ghost chain" idea just exactly what final fantasy rpgs have been doing for ages?

Every post I made in this thread "was complaining" about the fact that separating characters with the chain system is a shitty, convoluted mechanic that makes the action way more cumbersome that it should be. It involves a certain number of unnecessary intermediate steps (like dragging portraits and whatnot) to achieve what other systems do intuitively in fractions of seconds.
The point was never that I could find no option whatsoever to move characters individually.

I could also put the game in forced turn-based mode at any given time and move each one separately, but that would still be a far cry from being a comfortable control scheme and a gold standard in the genre.


And that's an argument in its favor... How?
Aside for the fact that no, that's actually a fairly different system, last thing I'd want from a party based CRPG is to "control like Final Fantasy". Classic or modern makes little difference in that sense.

Ok, personal advice: if you had just ignored me, I would have went away. I obviously didn't have a lot of insight to offer you. I was obviously being foolish by only skimming your 30 pages of arguments and I was very close to deleting my original comment when I came back and saw your response.


Back to this: I'm reading your first post. Please go back and read your own first post. At that point, an observer would think that you didn't know about breaking the chain. Other people have responded to your post as if they also thought that you didn't know about breaking the chain.

I'm here as a new CRPG player, and if you think that unchaining is uncomfortable, I've got 20 other things in CRPGs that I think are even more uncomfortable. In a way, I'm very much on your side, however I can't tell why you're drawing the line here instead of on the other 20 things. I would bet it's because you're used to playing other CRPGs and are used to the other uncomfortable things.


Communication Problems:
"that's an argument in its favor... How?" Please try to avoid over-using that sentence structure. It is counter productive. "How is that an argument in its favor?" is the way to say the same thing without sounding childish and overly combative. I understand you are in Italy and so your exposure to the English language may be limited. To a native English speaker this phrasing is reserved for combative and immature conversations. The internet is full of combative and immature conversations, but it has been getting better very quickly, which is why your wording sounds like a holdover from 2000.

You seem to take issue with the word "complaining" but I use this word because you are using phrasing such as "xxx... how?" and "the last thing I want." This kind of language reduces your communication to a lower level, one that is easily labelled "complaining" instead of being thought of as a reasonable argument. This problem even showed up in your first post, where the moderators changed your subject line.

It is possible that you are only trying to use "flowery" language to liven up your words. I personally have a history of doing that and I ended up having to stop because of similar problems.

Back on topic: Here is how it is an argument in its favor or at least worth pointing out (I thought this would be obvious): You and others have been talking as though "ghost chain" is some sort of unique concept that has just been invented in this discussion. If you think about ghost chain like it is some made up idea, you are ignoring a lot of information about the concept that we can gather from its history and its current use in other games.

Game designers consider the big picture when they make decisions, and if you are trying to influence the game designers you would be helped if you address the things that they consider.

Because ghost chain has been in use in many other games, it has a history that we can observe and we know that it has been broadly adopted already in other genres.

Because Final Fantasy and others have used the ghost chain, it is implied that it is a solution that gamers have accepted for decades. It also shows that other developers have decided that this is an acceptable compromise between realism and convenience. Given the broad adoption of the ghost chain, it seems as though nobody has decided that it is "bad" enough to avoid.

When you argue against "ghost chain", this is part of what you are arguing against. This is helpful knowledge for you if you want to succeed in influencing people's opinions. You need to address the opposing point of view.

"the last thing I want" is not helpful if you want to influence people's opinions. It's just a personal opinion when you talk like that. You shift the conversation to your personal preferences, and it is super easy to discount your ideas when you do that.

Everybody has a personal opinion. Real facts are what get things changed. Nobody is here to be your emotional caretaker and it makes you sound like you're throwing a tantrum when you talk about your personal wants.

Instead, you can say "I don't think this is acceptable because of x reasons" and then there is room for constructive discussion and finding a solution.