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

We've been screaming into the void for two years straight and never got straight answers in return.

The time for kiddie gloves and "Please notice me, Larian-Senpai" is long gone, frankly. I'll talk about whatever I don't like however I like.
You can feel free to sugarcoat your criticism if that makes you think it will make things better.

How is it working for you, Tuco? With 2 years of not addressing your concerns? Surely only the developer is to blame. A game developer listens to the majority of its audience, trying to respect the interest of the minority in the process. If you want to represent a majority (and you want, from what I've seen on the forum) you might want to reconsider your approach? Because when squabbles like this happen, it already doesn't feel like a majority. It is in your interest (once again, if you really want to make the game better and represent your vision, not just bitch around the forums, which I doubt is your motive) to convince others that your view is the thing that would benefit us all. You are convincing at first, your initial posts are very well-structured and free (almost) of sarcasm and irony, but it seems that you can't stand the opposing point of view without trying to make a person look stupid?

Sugarcoat, hahaha, funnily that little judge perfectly adds up to your overall image! I don't have any personal feelings towards you, it pains me to see though that we can't agree on anything. I'll try to focus on helping people without irritating you guys, the anti-dev policy party! Will focus on other things like helping people and stuff

Despite its style, Tuco is the majority by far in this thread as proven by the numbers I've given on page 36.
Not sure he had to convince many of us though.

EDIT : Oh and there's absolutely no chances that Larian hasn't already seen what I showed in the video tons of times if they've played any of their games yet.
Feel free to send them the link if posting on their official board is not enough.

Well, conversely it leaves me indifferent.
It's not really my problem.

Yep. "despise my style" I don't really need to do any strong convincing because the majority of opinions arguing how bad this control system is every time this topic comes up ANYWHERE, on any board, is downright *plebiscitarian*.
We are talking numbers like "80% of people don't like it, 15% think it has a lot of problems, 4% don't really care and 1 single JandK every now and then will defend it with his life (and then secretly hate it anyway, when ACTUALLY playing the game, because let's be fucking serious for a second)".

How is it working out for me? Poorly, given that Larian doesn't seem to care how bad and unpopular it is and I will never get a game with good controls.

Still, not sure why the guy is even rambling about this now, since I gave up on any hope to see the chain system improved more than a year ago.
We were talking about the importance to have a better formation control precisely as a bland attempt to salvage thisbad joke of a control scheme.

It sucks and someone at Larian is too proud or too stubborn to change it. Its actually worse than in DOS2 which is pretty frickin hard to believe and should be embarrassing for a developer.

Has anyone from Larian ever directly commented on this? It's obviously a major constant problem with the game for a very significant number of players for painfully obvious reasons, but it seems at least something that would be manageable for them to fix (at least in relation to e.g. adding massive features like day/night cycles and all associated proper gameplay mechanics). I have to assume it's just stubborn pride at this point as Ranxerox mentioned. Not exactly a great look for a developer that used to give the appearance of caring about player feedback, some years ago.

thats exactly what i had in mind. DOS2 was a great game , but the party control/formations were terrible.
someone would think larian would try and improve on that... instead they managed to make it suckier. kudos to whoever does this i guess.

Meanwhile the guy who invented it " They just don't understand my genius!"

sometime my party will get stuck and not want to go up the ladder or follow the party, they arnt disconnected from the party in anyway they just wanna do their own thing it seems.

Some other forum members have had the same problem. Characters climbing up and down ladders rather than just going where we want them to has been a problem since long before patch 9, but as far as I’m aware refusing to climb them at all is new with the December release.

See, eg, https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=838367.

well thats good im not the only onw

Having a member suddenly missing and find out he has been stuck somewhere.
Seeing a member of your party going up and down a ladder/vine/whatever multiple times till it registers "oh the party is up/down that ladder/vine/whatever" its so bad its funny at this point.

Idon't like shaking up old threads but I have to express this SOMEWHERE and this is the best place for it. One of the worst things about the movement mechanic is the way that it makes companions trail after you. I absolutely HATE how often my character initiates a cut scene, that cutscene leads to combat and then the rest of the party has to waste their turn getting into melee rangewhile my magic-using main character is stuck at the front. The moment most burned into my head is the whole scene with Spike. I vividly remember all the little clicks and tweaking I had to do to ensure my Tav wasn't just out on her own in front of all the enemies.

The only way I have found that offers me any modicum of control is using two hands.

One controls the mouse and the other deals with grouping/ungrouping, selecting individual members (F1 F2 etc), centering on the character/group and camera control.

I've gotten pretty decent at it but the system is so bad I still suffer occasional glitches (characters mistakenly trying to pickpocket party members while sneaking etc). I never climb ladders as a group nor jump as a group.

It's all very tedious but it is the only way to feel in control.

so I have issues with party members blocking other party members in tight quarters. The rules state that a character can pass through a square that is occupied by an ally, but this isn't the case in this video game. This is frustrating in the extreme. wasting a character's turn because they can't reach an opponent.

M o v i n g A r o u n d O t h e r
C r e a t u r e s

You can move through a non hostile creature’s space.
In contrast, you can move through a hostile creature's
space only if the creature is at least two sizes larger or
smaller than you. Remember that another creature’s
space is difficult terrain for you.
Whether a creature is a friend or an enemy, you can’t
willingly end your move in its space.
If you leave a hostile creature’s reach during your
move, you provoke an opportunity attack, as explained
later in the chapter.

Its probably too late to address this but it, and a few other 'design choices', detract from the flow of the game and causes no end of frustration for me.

I am also not a fan of the way the camera jumps from attacker to attacker when I'm trying to coordinate my party in combat. A toggle to stop the constant camera shifting would solve this, especially in a turn based scenario.

Just my two cents. My biggest gripes come from the 5E rules rather than game design.

Yeah, characters blocking each other is an annoying occurence. In fairness to Larian, I think it's worth remembering that in tabletop, a creature's "space" is denoted by a 5 foot square, so being able to move through that space is basically meant to represent them not blocking you from passing by when you're in reach. BG3 doesn't have that level of abstraction, so when characters are blocked, it's them physically, literally in each other's way. It's still inconvenient though and changing it could be justified by simply saying they're taking a step or two to the side.

Yeah, I made this suggestion on Discord. However, in such a situation, I was always able to jump through other party members. So, I guess, they assume the player will simply bunny-hop through their compatriots if need be. Bunny-hopping around is a common means of traversing the battlefield in BG3, however ridiculous it might look.

I was just watching the last WolfheartFPS video about quality of life improvements he would like to see in the game.

When it came the part where he addressed (again) the chain system I realized that it’s kind of sad how even people like him, that are almost terminally afraid to voice any strong criticism of the game, have been brought to the state of BARGAIN where they have to negotiate a way out:

“I’m not to say the chain system should go away entirely, b-but maybe PLEASE do something of any kind to make it a little bit less shit, if you can be bothered”.

Yeah, these are definitely all the hallmarks of a control scheme well designed and enjoyable to use.

And we are still here pretending moving back to a more traditional click and drag would be something highly controversial.

So, group movement is clunky at times, yet some people want 6 characters? Are these the same people?