Mod edit: previous title; "The way Larian manages party movement is dreadful"
Sorry for the blunt title, I tried a more polite "Honest feedback: I don't like the way Larian defaults control of the whole party" but I ran out of characters half way through the sentence.
Aaaanyway, back to the topic.
This control based on the position of a single character with all companions defaulting on auto-follow is genuinely cumbersome when you compare it to pretty much any other RPG in the same subgenre: the old BG games, Torment, Icewind Dale, Temple of Elemental Evil, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder, etc., where you simply cliclck and drag to select multiple characters, keep them in a formation you can rotate dragging the cursor and you can quickly send each one of them in different direction with ONE click.
There are several problems with the Larian solution:
- it's slower to use properly when precision is required. - it's less accurate. - it's a mess that turns into a comedic skit with idiots running randomly anywhere in any situation where you need to give everyone QUICK instructions on where to position. - that mess can be deadly when there are combat triggers and/or traps around.
I can't honestly think of a single excuse to defend this "innovative" system they introduced since DOS1 in comparison with the above-mentioned titles.
I have to ask my fellows forum dwelllers: is there ANYONE who actually likes the Larian system the most? And if that's the case can that good soul (may the gods have mercy on him) tell us WHY?
IMO the behavior of such movement were designed by Larian with a simple rule where game can be played by a controller controlling just 1 character while the remaining party characters follow suit. It's not that they could not design the old way. It's simply because design were to cater for consoles and controller.
Controller does not have mouse precision. So to click and drag with a controller i'm not really sure how it can be made better. The way i see it Larian doesn't want to make a different control scheme for the Keyboard and Mouse so PC gamer will be forced to follow the "controller" way. That is why Pathfinder is a more superior game since it's quite obvious that Larian designed the game for consoles in mind.
