[*] The ability to specify subgroups of your team and easily swap between them, rather than having to manually select the subset of specific party members each time.
You can't really "specify subgroups" in DOS or BG3. You can specify A subgroup (i.e. leaving a certain number of characters chained) and everyone else has to stay unlinked. The alternative option is having more players controlling a subgroup each... Which in practical term is not really better than just having two players using a more traditional control scheme. In fact, if there is a thing that a traditional RTS-like UI can do far better, is precisely to make it trivial to select (through click and drag or click + Shift) and separate different portions of even a larger group.
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[*] Auto-pathing around traps and hazards once these have been spotted by the party (though still doesn’t always work properly).
Pathing is a different issue than direct control, but even then I wouldn't really consider BG3 a particularly virtuous example of it.
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[*] The ability to ungroup your party members (and group all party members within a specific range) with one click: this often is all I need to do when taking control of party members other than as a group.
Well, it's not what *I* need, on the other hand. And even here the alternate option is far better because "selecting and separating party members" just involves clicking on them and moving them individually, without any preamble like linking and unlinking.
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[*] Follow-my-leader single file-ish movement, so the character we have selected stays in front even in tighter quarters or if we change directions.
I personally have a fierce dislike for any sort of "auto-follow" type of control, but even then these have been an option in the genre since Fallout and Planescape Torment (just to name two notable examples) without ever needing any sort of chaining. And while I can't exactly speaking flattering words of the first, the second is basically the traditional Baldur's Gate control type, just with the auto-follow as an OPTIONAL toggle. Dragon Age Origins did the same: it offered an auto-follow as an optional toggle, for the masochists who liked it.
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[*] Buggy ladders, etc. I don’t think I need to say more there!
Admittedly terrible, but that's not part of the control scheme, strictly speaking. Just a pathing bug.
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[*] Handling of animal companions, summons, temporary members by just attaching them to one of our party who then can’t move independently of them. Should work more like Lae’zel, Us and SH in the prologue.
I don't even hate that summons are automatically linked to the character that made them... I hate that they automatically move toward that character after being summoned even without being prompted to do so, on the other hand. Which is a side effect of the auto-follow being on by default on them.
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[*] UI for reordering or configuring the party into subgroups (rather than just grouping/ungrouping them all) feels clunky. I think it would immediately feel better if we didn’t need to drag the portrait quite so far to break the chain, but I’m also sure folk are right there’s a better, chainless option for accomplishing the same functionality.
Well, there has been one since the dawn of the genre: click and drag to make a multiple selection. Quicker, more intuitive, rearrangeable at will without many preambles.
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[*] Companions get stuck, especially when a jump is needed. (As an aside, I think I’d prefer it if our controlled character also auto jumped when not in turn-based mode.) [*] Pathing isn’t great - I’ve seen worse but could definitely be improved.
I don't disagree, but as I said I don't consider pathing strictly a component of the control scheme. Ironically enough BG3 makes it one just by attempting to automate most of the control instead of leaving the player granular control over the party.
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[*] As Gray Ghost says we should absolutely be able to specify that auto-triggered conversations are with our PC rather than whoever in the party an NPC reaches first or who we’re controlling (or rather, as this option was added for patch 9 but is broken, it should be fixed). I also think we should be able to swap party members in the course of conversations but that’s a whole different topic.
Once again, I agreee (and I wrote about this other issue a lot) but I don't consider it strictly control-related.
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[*] It’s not possible to map a key to move forward (click and hold left mouse is slow to respond and unreliable given other left mouse functions).
I'm not sure I would ever need it? Maybe I'm just not seeing what type of use you are arguing for.
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[*] It’s not possible to specify a formation for our characters to arrange themselves into when they come to rest. I’m not sure how much this really matters given turn-based combat, but I still feel it as a lack. Plus it just looks a bit messy, with everyone just standing around looking in different directions, though that’s a small problem compared to the others.
I'm still hoping for a formation system to be included, because I genuinely don't like the default one and it's made remarkably worse when you use a mod to expand the party size. Also stuff I already wrote about, even in the past pages of this same thread (fairly recent ones, too).
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Which I guess is a really long way of saying that I still have lots of issues with party movement as of patch 9, but none of them feel unfixable or to require a complete overhaul of Larian’s party movement design philosophy.
I mean, yeah, they could come up with a series of convoluted, half-assed partial solutions to a constellation of problems that arguably wouldn't really solve everything nor make everyone happy anyway... OR they could give up to the FUNDAMENTAL design problem that is the root cause of all these issues and few more.
Last edited by Tuco; 17/06/2308:52 AM.
Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN
