At a minimum the game should support WASD for movement of the selected character, and provide a true orbital cam. That would not be my ideal scheme for a party based game, where I'd prefer to actually control the whole party, but it would at least be serviceable for general movement outside of combat, and allow me to play the game without wanting to pull my hair out every 5 seconds. I would not object to lazily playing this game with a controller, even if I had to padmap it myself, but currently that's impossible, because the controls here are so rigid. I'd prefer that the functionality which is required to make controller support viable eventually, be accessible through the keyboard and mouse scheme as well. This is the only game I've ever played where the movement and camera controls felt this punishing and this inflexible, and where I couldn't adapt it to something more comfortable via keybinds or some kind of options setting.
Most of my irritation in BG3 occurs during movement outside of combat, or during the transitions into/out of combat, so a driving character and orbital cam would at least make that portion of the game (which is actually most of the game) a lot more tolerable. I'd prefer over-the-shoulder for roaming outside of combat, but I'd even settle for POV over what we have now. You can tell from the way the current camera functions that there's nothing that would fundamentally prevent them from adopting such a scheme if they wanted to.
They desperately need to unlock the Z axis for their cam. Even if its not a full 360 orbital, the pitch on swinging the Z Axis is currently ridiculous. They have the Z axis camera angle pegged to the zoom distance, which is brutal. I can look down at almost 90 degrees if I zoom out fully, but can't even look up 10 degrees?
Right now the title of this thread remains a misnomer. It implies that there is a "Party Movement Mechanic" that actually exists in BG3, when there really isn't. All we have is a single character movement mechanic. Otherwise it's follow the leader with arbitrary AI pathing that we have no input or control over in the moment. You can cycle the leader position, but that's it. If it's going to play like that anyway, they might as well provide an orbital cam and control scheme that suits that sort of style more naturally, like virtually every other 3d rpg out there. Again, not my ideal, but it would be better than this.
Toggle ungroup all isn't nearly as helpful as I made it out to be initially. I wish that was the panacea here, but it's just not enough, and too unwieldy to be practical for the duration. The movement control scheme in this game is really ill suited for scouting and ambushing, to the point where I wish I could just drive from one combat to the next and have the party effectively disappear in a line behind me until the battle is joined or an encounter is initiated.
