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

Yes, the amazing and lovely accordion effect.

This happens because the movement is based on the poor idea of :

• The selected character follows the player's commands, and so will move to the given destination when the player asks (and even that isn't clean, since there's a delay for the character to start moving),
• The other characters (in the same group) are tracking the selected character at all times.

I don't know how their tracking algorithm works (aside from "poorly"). Sometimes, if the selected character merely turns around, everybody moves to go to the back of the selected character. Sometimes, the selected character can move quite away from the others before they figure they should perhaps try to catch up.


As I suggester earlier, Larian should replace the concept of Groups by that of Selections.


What is a Selection ? Well, as far as the code/logic is concerned, it's exactly the same as a Group. Just by a different name. But the way you form it is different :

A Selection/Group is formed simply by ... selecting characters. No need to add a tedious extra step to lock down the current selection as a Group.

Also, what happens when you issue an order to a Selection is different :

• When the player issues a Move command, all the Selection/Group receives the command and moves at once. (No "track the leader" thing.)
• They remain as much in formation as possible during the trip between the starting and the ending points.

Note that this does not necessitate developing a UI for the Selection. As far as the portrait and the Actions Bars (left and right of the portrait) are concerned, it still shows the same as for one character.


Consequences :

• If I use Select All and click somewhere, everybody goes there.
• If I select 1 character, now it's a Selection of size 1, and if I move the character, only this one moves.
• If I select the other 3 characters, now it's a Selection of size 3, and if I move them, only these 3 move.
• If I select just 1 of these 3 characters, now it's a Selection of size 1 and I can use his/her abilities. Nobody else moves, since they're not selected anymore.

You know, how as it has been over the past decades in dozens of games allowing you to control groups of characters. (Also how it works in many softwares, including the omnipresent file browsers of every operating system. Selecting several objects don't lock them in a group.)

Here is a good example of bad party move mechanics.



Notice how painful it is, especially when he is attempting to jump from place to place around the tower. He even has one character drop down and land on Wyll, damaging him... By jumping on him on accident. Lae'zel jumps down first, takes damage, he has to switch characters because the rest won't follow, when he does, Lae'zel jumps back up. So she drops down twice in the end and takes damage again.

This video displays the issues pretty well, I think. He both struggles and is pummeled by the arcane turrets at just about every turn, and then the jumping area is clunky and painful as well. By the time he gets to the bottom, his people are pretty hurt, and he needs to rest. Why? Because he was careless, yes, but a lot of it has to do with the movement mechanics.

This is an hour and a half long video. I'm guessing most of the movement is okay, but there's probably a problem area somewhere? It might help to provide a time stamp.

*

All of that said, I feel like some of what you're talking about is just a "git gud" issue.

Exactly ...
That video dont show us bad movement mechanic, it showed us bad player who made a lot of misstakes. :-/

As they say "There's none so deaf as those who will not hear".

By the gods of Faerun!

The whole thing is time stamped. Check out the Approach to the Tower. He gets pummeled a lot by those turrets constantly clicking back and forth and wrestling with the mechanics. Yes, it's user error, but it's user error because he's getting pummeled by turrets because he's wrestling with the mechanics. And this isn't him at the beginning of the game. He's obviously played it enough that he's already at the Underdark. This is Part 36 of his walkthrough for Patch 6. He's not a new player, but he's still wrestling with the mechanics, and at one point he even makes a few comments about how frustrated he is with the mechanics.

But the biggest one is Alternate Entrance to the Tower. Yes, there is naturally user error. He could unchain everyone and move them one person at a time as they jump down from the mushroom. But the point is that it's an EXAMPLE of the bad movement mechanics. This kind of stuff happens everywhere especially in the Underdark. Jump too close to one of your own and you not only take fall damage because you jumped down from a big distance, but you also jump too close to one of your own and knock them prone and injure them. Why? Because they ran into the space you were jumping into. Lae'zel jumps back up because she's still chained to the main. You have to - one person at a time - have every single person make the jump including your spawned minions like the quasit. It's slow and clunky and painful.

Then, jump ahead to like 26:00 and you see that he is trying to cast Light, but he can't because Lae'zel is carrying Sussur Flowers and is too close. He moves Shadowheart away from everyone, and Lae'zel just pops right over to stand next to her. He has to first unchain Lae'zel, have her run to another area of the room, and then he can finally cast Light with Shadowheart.

Complex mechanics. What would be easier? I click on Lae'zel. I move Lae'zel away. Because I selected her, she was instantly unchained. I click on a button. Everyone is chained again. When jumping down. I have everyone grouped. The person I'm controlling makes the jump, and everyone follows because they are chained together. If they all get hurt, they all get hurt. That's on me because I made the jump with everyone grouped. If I wanted only one person to jump and scout the area and try to provide a safe way for everyone else to follow, I'd click on that one person's portrait, which immediately makes them no longer chained, and make the jump separately. THAT is easier mechanics. Not this make each and every person jump one at a time business, and if you forget to unchain they might actually jump right back up and have to make the jump all over again business.

THAT is the point we're trying to make here. It's clunky and slow and painful, and it could be so much easier. SO much easier.

This stament is corect and i would like to express my complete agreement with it.
It indeed could be done so much easier ...

Approach to the Tower:
Instead getting pummeled a lot ...
- he could use single character as a bait (behind a cover ... there is few places there), that automatronic turret will fire on while rest of the party will kill it to death.
- he could use stealth to get around them both and ignore them completely, since turrets dont have sonic receptors, they would immersively not recognize another person while focused on first one
- he could use sussur flower he was obviously carrying by either throw them on the turret, or sneak to the turret with them (turrets will turn off when antimagic field reach them)
- he also could use bomb, satchel with smoke powder, or shatter ... aka things that will destroy this turret within single turn, instead of hiting it with an arrow on wich (unless i remember incorectly) they are resistant and on wich he have lowered hit change bcs turret is hidden in the shadows (wich also could have ben easily resolved)

Alternate Entrance to the Tower:
Instead of have to - one person at a time - have every single person make the jump including your spawned minions like the quasit ...
- he could easily just send Lae'zel there and activate the tower with her ... since there is nothing except few looting containers in this tower (except those turrets that gets all disabled once tower is turned on, and mechanoids on the top floor) there is litteraly no reason to bring "slow, clumsy and painfully" the whole party.
And if he was here for the first time (wich he isnt concidering GM4Him own words of this person being experienced player) he could send there Imp first to explore for potential dangers ... or he could simply run there with the others *if needed* since as we know, one of benefits of turn based combat in this game is the fact that while game waits for your battle character to make your move, rest of your party can litteraly travel around the world and still reach back in time.

Trying to cast Light:
Instead of have to first unchain Lae'zel, have her run to another area of the room, and then he can finally cast Light with Shadowheart.
- he could simply unchain Shadowheart and move her litteraly two steppes away ... bcs the sussur flower effect have incredibly short reach.
- OR he could imply not drag sussur flowers with him all that time, since he didnt use it even once during whole video. O_o

It indeed could be done so much easier ...
Completely agree without a single doubt.

Actualy you just switching single problem for another one ...

Situation:
Preparing for combat.
Click on Gale, to cast Mage Armor for him and my Tav (sorcerer) ... then use Arcane Recovery to get the slots back (i indeed to this, bcs otherwise i often forget about this and still have Arcane Recovery prepared in time when no other party member is capable to fight properly.
Click on Wyll to summon Imp and cast Armor of Agathys on himself ...
Click on Shadowheart to cast Aid for my party ... then i use bless and finaly prepared to fight i rush forward ...

Just to find out that my Tav is fighting alone, since everyone else was clicked and therefore unchained.
So they are all standing there, lookit at me getting murdered to death, while their own bless is looooong gone (and therefore even mine, since Shadowheart lost her concentration).

Would that mean that system is bad? Not at all ... it would mean that im a fool, bcs i forget to chain them all back.
Just as this what you showed us is all players fault, since he forget to unchain his party when he needed to.

I agree.

What's clunky, slow, and painful is the play, not the mechanic.

This is just a player problem.

Git gud, as they say.

"They" surely say a lot of stupid shit.

Nobody likes to be told they need to git gud. I get it, friend. It's a tough pill to swallow.

There are many players who think it's a poor interface (+1 from me) - sure, I completed the game with it, but it overly-complicates simple tasks. As noted in 40 page of comments. Can you use it? Sure. Do you wnat to? I sure as hell don't. Maybe people can mod in a decent replacement, if Larian are wedded to it, as they seem to be.

Not here they don't; not if they wish to continue saying things.

It also wasn't worth quoting an extremely long post just to add that.

Well 39,5 of them is just "yes it is" > "no it isnt" ...

Specific example of what it overly-complicated for you would be appreciated tho.

They asked for specific examples and then replied, "get gud" and "please provide examples."

I give up. If you can't see that the mechanics are clunky and frustrating after watching that guy wrestling to jump his entire team down mushrooms, and so forth, injuring his team just by jumping into one another and how long it took to actually get them all down, I don't know what's going to convince you. But you know what, I don't have to convince you. I'm just hoping Larian realizes it and does something about it. You can disagree all day long, but it won't matter. If Larian doesn't fix it, lots of unhappy players.

The only nose-scratcher I was able to find in that video was at 21:35-22:00, which isn't technically a party movement or party management issue (although it's perceived that way from a player perspective) but rather an Ai-grid pathing issue. (Notice how he's fine and has no issues on the multiple mushrooms up until the very last). Either way, I've forwarded a report for it.

I do think the issue is mostly compounded when you zoom in. I really like to be zoomed in because I get a better immersion. However, the slightest things then get in your way. Just last night I went up to the door on the beach. It was just me and Shadow heart. I clicked on the door, tried to pick it, failed, turned around, and just tried to walk away. Shadow heart got in my way, and I accidentally clicked on her, sparking a conversation. I tried again to just click on some ground and hold the mouse button so it would move. Nothing happened because I was right up against the wall, and it wouldn't register my mouse click. I swiveled the camera and tried to click on something again. Still didn't work. I had to completely zoom out swivel the camera and even move the camera away from the building and then click on a bear patch of ground. So, I think the issue here is that for the most part movement works okay when totally zoomed out. But don't ever zoom in or you're going to run into a lot of issues. When my character jumped off the ship I was zoomed in while trying to make the jump.

But that still doesn't correct the chain issues. Just like in the video, the guy had to unchain people a bunch of times to get them to do certain things instead of a simple click on the character portrait. It was a lot of unnecessary wrestling with the change system when it could be as simple as click on a button and everybody's group together, or hit a hotkey. Then click on a person's portrait and just that person moves, or hit F1 through F4. And it could be as simple as if the party has changed they follow you no matter what even if you took damage from the jump. That way you don't have to constantly select each and every person one at a time to get them to make a single jump that you want them to make. The same would be true for stealth mode. If your group is chained together and you hit stealth while not in combat, then everybody stealths. If you want two people to stealth have it be something like hold the shift key and click on the portraits you want to group together. Then hit stealth button and both people stealth.

When you have four characters plus a couple of animals, and even an NPC or two, this one character at a time stealth and jump thing is such a pain in the butt. And the more characters you have around you, the harder it is to click on open available spaces just so you can move around or search a chest. These are the pain points I'm talking about, especially compounded now that in patch 6 you can actually injure your own companions by jumping into them.

Oh, issues of how to manage party through UI interaction have been forwarded to the feedback team on multiple occasions and variations, with a lot of great ideas from big to small on how to improve it. So the toilet-chain as it is called as a talking topic on the forums and other socials is more of a dead-beat repeat point of people trying to convince eachother than anything else. Larian has already received the message, the hope is rather if and how it's addressed in the future and to what extent. I'm just looking for that small chance of a novel new idea being bred from it, although nearly everything is a repeat of points that have been made a dozen times already at this point ^^

Ah. Then I'm done with this thread. Thank you.

So, let us know when other topics are reported up to the devs so I can stop beating around those bushes too. 😁

Eh, it could have some weight if it came from someone who was actually good.
From a person that couldn't spot the difference between a good or a bad UI if his very life depended on it? It isn't worth a wet fart.

Why don't YOU share a video with us where you show us how practical this is to use when you are doing something more than just strolling around with the entire party in idle in a semi-vegetative state?

I realized at this point that you have a selective memory worth of a goldfish, but we had PLENTY of extremely specific examples of where this UI fails to be practical and comfortable on a regular basis.

Here's an example from 20+ pages ago:


But no, let's listen to Mr "Git Gud" smugly explain why it's not that bad, simply because you can CLUMSILY work around these issues or maybe even just because your fingers don't rot away while using it.

P.S. The only thing that changed in the game since this was posted, for the record, is the keybiding to chain/unchain the entire team with a single press.
Which admittedly DOES make the system more bearable, but it's a fare cry from making it good, efficient or even just pleasant and intuitive to use.