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

I don't know what you're all talking about, the way party movement works is such a great way to get your companions to blithely set off every trap in the room before you can get your designated trap disarmer where he needs to be. Really speeds up the process.

In terms of the complaint about party members blocking each other, the real problem is that this is a turn-based game that doesn't want you to see some really important informational elements of a traditional turn-based UI. In this case. Compare how movement works in BG3 with how it works in XCOM or the classic Fallouts or those Shadowrun games or even Civilization for that matter. It's all built around tiles. Different games parse that in different ways: in Fallout and Civ you're sharing a general action point pool for movement and combat; in XCOM movement and other actions are mostly separated; and in Shadowrun any movement at all, of any distance, uses up a full action point, of which you only get two per turn. There's also some difference in how the tiles themselves are visually represented: in Fallout, you don't see any tile but the one you're hovering over with your mouse cursor, and the game shows you a number representing how many tiles of movement that will be; in Civ, every tile is visibly demarcated from every other tile unless; in XCOM and Shadowrun you only see outlines representing how far you can move, but the tiles within that outline aren't visible. But it all still comes down to tiles.

Now does this make a game look a little less cinematic? Yes. Does it make movement a little more wooden and the routes characters take more hard-angled? Also yes, although they often end up taking pretty hard-angled routes anyway. But it also means you never have to wonder if this character can get to that location or not. You never have that situation where the game seems to be telling you that you can move somewhere or Charge somewhere or jump somewhere, only for it to suddenly realize that actually you can't do that, or to just not execute the command when you click, or to somehow waste all your movement points on a jump that it turns out you can't make, but you still lose all the movement points for it. For my money, "less cinematic but also less frustrating to play" is a better user experience than the reverse.

The only other turn-based game I can think of that does it the way Larian does it is Pillars of Eternity 2, which isn't a turn-based game. Obsidian added a turn-based mode well after the game released in the traditional RTwP format, and I'm pretty sure that mode never officially left beta. It was just this kind of funky little thing they added in case you wanted to experience the game a different way. I think it's pretty telling that the only other turn-based game that does movement this way is the one that wasn't designed to be a turn-based game at all.

I doubt that's why they do it this way, but if it is, they should really have known there's already a way to do that: make traps (and hidden objects, for that matter) much harder to detect, and only detectable in sneak mode. Isn't that how it always was in the old CRPGs?

In Pillars of Eternity you can set it up so that the game auto-pauses as soon as a trap is detected. I don't know if you could do that for the old Baldur's Gate games, it's been awhile since I played them. But PoE was even a game that used rigid party formations. It was much easier to avoid traps once they'd been detected even without the autopause setting. The autopause was a nice addition, but not necessary at all. In a game like this where there are no rigid formations and characters like to wander around, you really need a setting like that.

Yeah pretty much dead on there. For the traps I really don't mind if this happens cause I'm trying to blow through the area with a quickness. I feel like even without an actual set formation they could still do something via walk speed or something for that too.

Here is another example of where the game gives me a visual that makes me think one thing, but then the handling of party space shows another, but only once you get into the weeds. Lae'zel just has to stare down the warden like a chump hehe... Again, I know Lae'zel will find a way to absolutely crush it regardless, but it's just annoying when you're trying to parse out the space.



I also think the whole jostling around to get into position (in the situations where there is overlap during friendly space) would be such a great place for little voice barks!

Like if Lae'zel yells "Out of my way istik!" and then sorta pushes Minthara a little before the attack maybe. Or perhaps for a character with higher approval Lae'zel barks a line that makes it sound more coordinated, before dancing through the fray like a Githyanki warrior trained in the art of slicing and dicing.

Patch 3 targeting has been rough on account of thresholds. Doors and Ladders are being extra obnoxious even more than before, but I think the issue is more general. The circular marquees we see on the ground place and our preview ghost animations just don't match what's in front of us on the screen sometimes. The game sort of suggests we'll have more nuanced movement than we get, which cause frustrations. These issues are exacerbated by stuff like verticality, and trying to position the camera properly, and only being a Y axis invert invert in my case, but I think it could be cleaned up a lot just by making more allowances for that kind of overlap. Or giving us those sorts of moments.

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lol

Well done

For targeting, one of the main challenges I have is getting the camera into a position where I can see both the target and source/attacker at the same time. This can get quite difficult, particularly with certain spells that have multiple confirmation clicks, or where there is environmental stuff or another body that could lead to misfire. Also when using stuff like the meta magic distant spell, or throwing across crazy distances, where the range is like right at the limit of the field of view. Here's an example...




It just takes a lot of fiddling to get the right angle, where the things I'm trying to see are also being obstructed by UI elements, say the Mini Map or the Portraits/status icons which tend to be at either end. If you F10 you lose everything but the cursor, so that runs an even greater risk of missclick. Also when things like verticality or ledges interrupt a jump, and the player then freezes and falls down to a lower level losing their bonus action on stuff like that. Even just basic movement trying to dash from one spot to another and avoid AoO or surfaces and such.

Another one I've noticed, is anytime I'm using the enlarge spell or playing with a large-sized summon, targeting the opponent in close combat melee within the field of view will display a message like "cannot target self" with a weapon attack.

This is similar to like corpses on top of other corpses on the ground where you can't click the one you're after, but a bit more intense on account of being in combat. In those situations I have to do stuff like drag my attack cursor to the portraits at the top of the screen, which is awkward. It would be nice if we could select out, friendlies from hostiles. Or if a grendade is thrown at a companion's feet and you need to pick it up, but can't click through the companion avatar, or swing the cam to a position where you can see the thing you're trying to interact with.

Finally, there are all the instances where you want the character to move max distance to close their range before taking their action (like for advantage say, or just to get the option to make an attack at all with a sightline) vs all the situations where you want the character to stand absolutely still and not move a single step.

Distant spell Misty step is a big one for that. Or dimension door, that's a good example of a spell where you really want to see the ghost preview of the source/caster and the targets. Many arrows too, especially the teleportation arrows, same deal there, but basically anytime when making a ranged attack and you want to make sure the character doesn't step into an attack or a surface.

I feel like these things should be hotkey'd, like with a click or a click/click as opposed to a click/hold, if that makes sense. But right now everything is a click/hold and keep the key depressed, with the confirmation of whatever action pegged to the final release of the mouse click. This is just rough on the fingers after a while. Like it's the same deal for me as having camera rotation pegged to the middle mouse wheel rather than RMB. It's fine for an hour, tough after 10, ya know heheh.

I think on the whole the BG3 UI is very much a hold/drag/slide stuff around type interface. It's grabby like that, and there's a certain charm to that I guess, the hotbar and inventory is very much like that, but then it can get to be a bit much. Like the windows often need to be slid and shifted, to insert stuff you've gotta slide other stuff around, to select a character you gotta go through this whole process, or manually group/ungroup and it's very depress the key/keep it held down, which again taxing ergonomically.

I don't know, we've been kicking around on this for a long long time, so I just don't know what all I can say on it, but my two biggest things would be this, and they don't even have to do specifically with party movement, but it would make it all so much easier for me...

For interface/view: Free Camera with a way for us to control pitch and raise or lower the camera POV by elevation along the Z axis.

Support for Y/X Axis inversion for targeting with the cursor. I've literally been playing upside down for 3 months now unmodded. That's how much I like this game! But for real, maybe we could get thrown a bone on that one, cause Native Camera Tweaks has exactly what I need. Like just give me that built in and I'm solid. Those are my big ones. I think peeps perhaps think camera pitch and axis inversion isn't an issue here cause the game is mostly iso and works fine that way, but then this breaks down when you pitch-in to eye level, aiming above or below the horizon/sightline. The game understands what's happening here, cause it's pegged to the zoom, but its using standard Y Axis at that point, when you switch from forwards/backwards to up/down. Targeting isn't just for attacks but for movement, so probably the best example I can think of would be something like the floating furniture platforms in Raz's Tower. Trying to get the camera where I wanted it, just to see the ground planes there, that sort of stuff. Currently very grueling as a Y invert, and I don't mean just on controller, it's the same for the mouse cursor in M&K, which is the main way I play this game, so any little bit on pitch control I would take in a heartbeat! Lol

Oh and formations! Mainly long lead and short lead follow (a way to set a follow distance for the group tether), then the line and the basic shapes there, but like based on the leadership order of the character portraits. This is also very grab/hold/slide currently, if you want to make grouping selections with the portraits on the left. A quick character selection via a menu similar to the current camp inventory menu would make me pretty happy at this point. Mostly this would affect non combat exploration and how the players enter initiative, and not really be applicable within combat, but generally what I want there is a way to join initiative as a party, even if ungrouped, so it doesn't go all real time weird there. So everyone can go TB at once, but also being able to do that without necessarily walking into the encounter all bunched together in a random diamond formation, or having to do tedious timing with ungroup and entering tb sequentially one by one. So you know, jumping to another character mid turn so you can enter initiative with everyone properly without losing a turn/round for your team, then returning to the initial character after doing that etc. Just takes a lot more fiddling around than I'd like. Some kind of shared initiative option for the ungrouped characters and summons, more or less, but just a 1-click type button, the same way stealth all or the group/ungroup all buttons work right now. The workaround of hitting group all again at the last second doesn't really work, cause unselected characters will attempt to close the distance to the selected character, when usually I want them to remain in position, but also join initiative and go TB when the currently selected character is doing so.

I feel like this could be a toggle and cut down a lot of micromanaging for pre-positioning the party. The group hide type buttons could also re-duplicate under the current leader position, like for co-op or trio type group formations but where 1 player might still be controlling several summons or companions at a time, but not necessarily all of them, like in SP. Essentially so the group commands are keying off just the characters that are currently grouped together, instead of the whole gang. For the 2/2 and 3/1 splits. Then maybe enlarged icons for active concentration spells, and reworking the status icons by the leader portraits so they display vertically instead of horizontally. Right now they can take up almost a 6th of the screen, but going vertical in say 2 or 3 columns for the status icons, we could probably get more screen real estate for the field of view, and larger/taller portraits and status icons at the same time. Just being able to minimize specific elements of the UI, especially the mini map, but while keeping other stuff up so we can still interface with it, like the cursor/portraits or status icons or toggles etc. That would be useful I think.

I just had to reload a game because after COMFORTABLY winning a fight the entirety of my party thought it was a brilliant idea to start moving (and jumping) around frantically and passing multiple times through the still-ongoing "wall of fire" I casted with the druid.

Ok, it's my bad for forgetting how shitty the chain system is and not ungrouping the entire party, as it's usually a good habit to do in any fight... But if this happened to me while I was playing my other "Honor mode" game and costed me a party wipe I would have lost my shit at this stuff.

I don't understand the UI layout for cancelling Concentration spells at all.

The button to cancel these spells displays directly under the large round portrait, with a tiny icon at the far left of the hotbar. Problem is that the "End turn" button is on the complete opposite side of the screen, at the far right of the hotbar. The group/ungroup all button is also on the far left of the screen, whereas my cursor is typically just coming off a hotbar spell/action icon or the end turn roundel or the button to enter/exit TB mode all over towards the righthand side.

If I need to quickly select a character to cancel a spell like Wall of Fire this is frustrating, cause first I need to stick that initial selection to get the full hotbar to display for that character. For example, say you have the summoned Woodland Being cast Spike growth, but if you also got a couple elementals or skeletons she's maybe sandwiched between like 5 portraits increasing the chance you click the wrong thing. The problem could be mitigated by ungrouping automatically and remaining in turn based mode when combat concludes, but don't have a setting like that in the options.

I dislike the chain movement scheme. Ungroup/Group all is inconvenient. Generally what I want is a 3-1 comp or a 2-2 comp. If there were leadership positions, then we could have the leader for group A, leader for B and maybe key off that, but under the current scheme it's pretty rough. Camp management for switching characters and buffing dailies is very click/time intensive. Pinballing around to cast long strider or spells like that at camp is tedious. I wish there was a way to cast stuff like goodberry more conveniently too. Having a pair of druids supply the camp with goodberries takes like 20 clicks with as many spell animations, and then another half dozen clicks to shift inventory/char select. Like I'd rather watch a mini cutscene at that point, which would probably accomplish the same in terms of flavor.

Also like couldn't everyone just have the meta-magic distant spell when we're at camp? In act III this gets particularly tough since there are only a couple camps, and they're spread out. Running around camp is charming, but sometimes I just want to tell everyone to come gather around the fire so we can get shit done, and then they can all strut back to their tents maybe?

I wish I could just camp here some nights, in that tiny little room at the flophouse. You know like where everyone is standing right next to each other elbow to elbow. I'd take that hehe. Two bits, no prob!



Also having spacebar as the skip turn key feels pretty insane. It's way too simple to accidentally depress that key and screw yourself over without a double confirmation. Spacebar was the pause button in BG1/2. If anything it should be the button to enter/exit TB mode, since it's relatively easy to slam the spacebar when you're in a panic. Instead here it's shift + click Spacebar to enter Turn based mode, and regular click Spacebar to End the selected characters turn and also skip convo and also loot-all. So pretty much roulette for clumsy thumbs there between the various modes and functions for that key lol. I don't know, just feels like they could come with something a bit smoother for all this. I find the chains hella clunky and way too easy to trip over, ungroup summons is also hard to remember, since that has another manual click to activate the links in the chain. Seems like it's always either one person getting left behind, or everyone else doing something I don't want them to do. You know like jump down a ledge, taking damage, jumping back up the ledge only to have to take damage again, while selecting another character. The up down ladder thing, still largely similar. Companion pathing is generally much better with traps and somewhat better with surfaces, but then the companion AI and for the most part the enemy AI, does poorly with stuff like cloud of daggers or walls of fire.

Here's a screen showing the display for the concentration spell icon relative the other stuff. Pretty tiny. I feel it should be much larger and like right next to the End Turn/TB/Flee buttons or most of the other toggles so it can be quickly cursor'd over to from there...