Noticing an absence from a crowd isn't trivial. Think of a school teacher. They can see everyone in their classroom but they still have to call out every name at the start of class to make sure no one's missing.
Brilliant choice of profession.
I can asure you that if someone is missing in my class, i know.
It may come as surprise to you, but you learn those faces quite quickly ... sure, you may not know exactly who is missing at first sight, but that "someting is off here" feeling jumps in just after few days.
And that is exactly all you need in this case aswell.
The game is effectively asking that the player make a roll call at the beginning of every combat, under penalty of lost turns.
This is not true tho ...
Sure, if you simply "walk into the fight" you loose your first turn, but if you enter combat by attacking its all benefits ... unless you notice too late, but as i said abowe that is on you, not game.
My issue here is that this is the only information provided by that side of the screen. There's no other reason to look there unless the player is actively thinking about who might have been left out of combat.
I would argue that main and certainly not the only purpose of that part of UI is to control wich characters will follow your controled unit, or wich unit you will control.
Since the only 2 ways to even have someone who didnt join the combat with rest of the party is curently to:
A) Separate him from the rest of the party ... therefore interact with this part of UI.
B) Contolling him and go to stealth with him specificaly ... therefore interact with this part of UI.
I feel like its existence is relevant ...
Sure, "teoreticaly" it is possible for player to either control absolutely everything through shortcuts and never even look that way, or stealth with whole party and have all but one discovered ... but pardon my skepticism, those sounds like too purposefully contructed options to take them under concideration. :-/
small icons that appear inconsistently on summons don't help a lot.
Didnt know about this ... never happened to me. O_o
To be fair, the bottom side has a million buttons and icons, which like to move around and aren't clearly legible.
Even more reason to pay atention to any changes isnt it?
Also you are talking about hotbar ...
Im talking about "enter turn based" wich becomes "end turn" button ... wich gets shiny blue outline representing your movement ... quite noticeable change in my opinion.
And "short/long rest" wich become "flee combat" button ... wich gets red instead of gold ... also quite significant change imho. :-/
That and the combat log usually get more of my attention than anything else.
Would that take enough atention to notice wich of your characters are fighting?
I feel it's useful feedback to let Larian know that making sure everyone is in combat requires some sort of active attention and proactive steps. This way they can decide whether that should be part of their game or whether they'd rather have their players' attention focused elsewhere.
By the same logic its useful (also most likely just as useful) to let Larian know that some of us like it this way and dont want to click several "this character is not in combat, was that intentional y/n" before every encounter.
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If the only way to use them is through BG3's OP implementations
Wich it isnt. O_o
