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

which begs a question why didn't larian just allow the click and drag selection of the party members for players that uses the keyboard and mouse? is there a specific reason why they need to have this chain system for KBM?

Your guess is as good as mine.
I've been complaining about this crap since the DOS days, the overwhelming majority of people who ever bothered commenting about it every single time the topic comes up seem to agree (if with different degree of care) that the system is simply bad...

But Larian seems to be quite adamant about sticking to it no matter what and at best putting some stitch on it.
And what's worse, I can't remember a single time they ever acknowledge publicly that they are aware of the criticism or why they are so stubborn about it.

Sorry, I haven't read all 40+ pages of this thread, but... I agree, this is one of the more frustrating aspects of the game.

Does this seem to be worse in Patch 7 than 6 to anyone else but me?

Climbing seems to be the worst. I'll have 4 characters chained, click on a ladder, and the results are often ridiculous. Characters climbing up and down multiple times over each other.

Chaining characters in stealth mode seems spotty at best, with some following some of the time, but not at others.

During normal movement the party seems to follow very slowly.

I would prefer the older method of setting a party configuration/marching order and them moving in lock step.

It would be nice to get an official reply to this.

Been playing patch 7 -- first time in new area, I skipped patch 6.

The art in patch 7 is amazing, the music is really good, the battles are really fun and challenging but -- Mystra perverse -- this new area highlights everything that I don't like the movement system. Group jump -- lost Wyll and Shadowheart. Characters walking into lava.

After playing WotR and Solasta I just feel the movement system is a battle, one the players will always lose.

Don't fix this movement system, start from scratch. Pull the weed by its roots.

Lol. Couldn't have said it better.

Ugh! I can see what people are saying here. It seems the movement mechanics and companion pathing is WORSE! Right at the very beginning, I have Shadowheart, my Drow Mage, Astarion and a Raven Familiar in my party. Not big. Nice, small group. I jump down to go to the little cove where the Harper stash thing is not far from Astarion's pod. Everyone follows. All is working well.

Go back. I'm in the nautiloid and stop. Wait. Where is everyone?

Ah. They be waiting back by the little jump up from the path to the Harper stash. They decided that jumping is too hard and they're going to just take a break there for the rest of the day.

So I go back. I select Shadowheart. My Mage drops down and joins them. Shadowheart jumps up and my Mage joins her. We start off. Astarion and my Raven don't follow - I call the Raven Rendzer.

So I ungroup. I select Astarion. Get him to jump up and join the others. Regroup. Raven still won't follow. Yep. Had to do each character one at a time.

But that's not all. We're going around on normal terrain. Everyone was following just fine. I get to Lae'zel. Wait! Where's Rendzer? Hmmm. For some reason, he's decided to stop. He's too tired to keep going. He's way back in the nautiloid still where the fishermen were.

So I have to select him AGAIN all by himself and have him join us.

All throughout the Dank Crypt, Rendzer kept stopping and would not follow. I had to keep getting him to rejoin the group manually.

Then Rendzer died. Why? Because he followed me for once into the room with the stupid fireball traps and grease that springs up out of the floor plates. After I triggered the trap and ran for it, my Mage was clear and I turned off Turn-Based mode not realizing that Rendzer had followed even though I ungrouped everyone. Not only did he follow me into the chamber, but when I turned off Turn-Based Mode, he didn't even try to rejoin my Mage, who was clear of the chamber. He just hovered there by the sarcophagus and let the fireballs blow him to smithereens. RENDZER NO!!!!

Then, just because, I regrouped everyone with my Mage by the door, and they all ran dutifully behind my Mage INTO THE EXPLODING CHAMBER. Fortunately, I realized the error of my ways in time. Before the explosions caught anyone who'd just entered the chamber in a fiery death, I ran towards the other side - and fortunately, this time, they followed.

Sheesh! What a mess!

Larian! PLEASE make the next main thing you fix be the movement mechanics. You gotta fix the whole darn thing. It really is bad - not all the time, mind you, but it really really seems to be getting worse, not better, and again, especially when zoomed in.

I think it has gotten worse. In the grymforge if a low strength PC makes the jump onto the platform near the dormitories, the rest of the party will fall. If you aren't micromanaging the trail on the final boss battle your characters will walk into lava. Same goes for the mephit fight. I even had shadowheart miss that first infamous fire jump near the nautaloid crash. And, yeah, In that corridor before Shadowheart's pod I somehow walked into the mind flayer - cambion fight. Not getting better . . .

I'm serious about a root and branch reprogramming. Areas like grymforge are fun if you feel in control of your party but are slogs otherwise. With the chain system I never feel in control of my party.

I get that the games with good controls -- WotR and Solasta -- are unity engine games and this is the unreal engine but with the amount of talent that Larian has assembled they should be able to find *someone* able to replace some of the gears in this machine.

I hate the jump mechanics. I can never tell if a jump is going to hurt my characters, or if a jump is needed or not unless it says, "Can't reach." Characters jump up 30+ feet into the air, etc.

My Drow Mage jumped down at a spot that looked like a maybe 5 foot drop. She lost HP. Why? I can scoot off the edge of a 5 foot drop and land just fine in real life, and I am NOT athletic.

I REALLY REALLY think they need movement mechanics that are more like Solasta. I click on a spot, and my character gets there in the most normal way possible. If they need to jump to get there, they jump - provided they can actually do it. If the jump requires a roll, the game tells me, "DC 10 Athletics Required". Something like that. And if the jump is up and its ridiculously high, they just can't do it. None of this Gale jumping up 15-30 feet business. Come o. Don't make jumps like that. Make the characters climb instead.

No jump button necessary (though available for some cases, like in combat, where you might need to jump over something as opposed to going around, like a box is in your way and it's less movement to jump over than go around). Example: You are at Grymforge. You need to jump from one platform to another. No jump button required. You select the platform you want to go to, and your character jumps across automatically. No button necessary. If a roll is required because it's a considerable distance, it says, "DC 10 Athletics." Boom. Now you know that it's a big jump and you could take damage. You need to drop down 15 feet? Select the spot you want to go to. Game makes you climb down instead of jump because that's a bit further of a distance. Or, if they think it shouldn't be able to be climbed, the game warns, "DC 10 Athletics." Hmmm. Now you know if you select that space you'll potentially get hurt.

And for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE make it so characters can move through other friendly characters. I got stuck AGAIN in the Dank Crypt trying to fight Mari and Barton and their mercenaries. Guy at the front entrance, Shadowheart won initiative and was stuck behind everyone else, so she couldn't move through them to get to a blank spot to attack. She had to use a Bonus Action to Jump to the free spot, as if she was jumping over their heads. Why? Just let them pass through friendly spaces. Don't make me waste a Bonus to move through someone. Astarion was the same. Instead of using 2 weapon fighting, I had to use a Bonus Action to Jump over everyone's heads so he could get to a free spot to attack the one guy they were all fighting.

And the climbing up and down thing is still happening. Happened to me twice. One time was outside the crypt. Climbed down the ladder, and Lae'zel, Astarion and Shadowheart climbed down and right back up again. At least they didn't jump down this time.

And in Patch 6, man, so many times people caught on fire from Grymforge or just died because of pathing issues. The last time I did the area where you go mine mithral and go to the little island near the elemental, I had to just leave everyone behind and only send my main. They were all dying because of exploding bubbles or just plain landing in the wrong spots and getting set on fire. It's not fun.

Still no lassso select??? i guess we need to use the chains in strategy games now because the system is that good... can't wait to see it in TW warhammer heh.Why is this system still a thing in any game.

If Larian gets anything from the community at all out of EA/these forums it should be that the Chain/Autofollow system currently implemented makes for terrible gameplay and usablility and needs more work.

+1 for movement rework

Say no to the toilet chain!

+1 to go with a classic - going all the way back to Baldur's Gate for goodness sake! - movement style

Maaaaaybe not all the way. Just a tiny bit.

Wrath of the Righteous/Pillars of Eternity 2 would be "far back in time" enough, as far as I'm concerned.

Oh yeah, that's what I meant. Don't go allll the way back to the beginning. There are modern examples (those two in particular) of good design in this respect.

Oh, don't get me wrong, there's nothing particularly bad about the original two BG in terms of controls and UI, I just wanted to stress that there's absolutely no need to go back twenty years to find more virtuous examples of what Larian is doing so poorly.

Copying these up-to-date statistics over: highlighting mine. Thanks @Flooter

Is it wrong to feel this validated by a forum post? By the way Maximuuus took the time to read 29 pages of posts, which I certainly didn’t do, so most of the credit goes to him. Also, his categorization is probably more accurate than mine.



Here’s my grain of salt on the movement system. It used to smell like butts and cooties. Ladders used to drive the PCs mad, leading Wyll’s imp to destroy wooden ladders on occasion. Many, many other things were wrong with it, in and out of combat.

It’s gotten better, though it desperatly needs four things:
1. Group formations. I don’t care how eager Gale is to fight, he needs to park his ass at the back of the line, away from the sharp things.
2. The group sneak button needs to set everyone to hiding if at least one PC is not hiding, This stops the dance routines where pairs of PCs take turns crouching.
3. There needs to be a better way to select a portion of the party. Ungrouping then merging feels more like a hack than an UI choice.
4. Characters need to stand still unless I’m actually walking away. If it means they’re walking a few meters behind, all the better to keep Gale away from the metal bits.

I’d also like a preview of what I can reach with my movement during combat. The game sort of tells you, but it’s contextual and not entirely reliable.

While I don't disagree with ANY of these observations, I hope it's clear to anyone reading this (and to you writing it) that these are all roundabouts ways to remark once again that, yeah, in the end to be actually comfortable it needs to be a typical CRPG "RTS-like" control scheme that allow multiple unit selection.
At least out of combat.

Once in combat it doesn't really make a significant difference, since the game is turn based and the control gets to a "one unit at the time" regardless.