Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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#961096 Yesterday at 07:42 PM
Joined: Aug 2023
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For a successful AAA title, BG3 has an amazingly bad UI. Much worse than the original two games, too.

Examples:

In the character creation and levelup screen, you dont have simply a list of options that you are going through, as it was in the original game, and really in most games. There are options in all kinds of other places, too. For example gender isnt in the list - its somewhere to the right at the bottom. To make it even more confusing, when you switch to the graphics designer, its now at the top. Just so you arent in danger to find the option again. Unsurprisingly, if you watch people play the game, you see them forgetting setting an option all the time, because you have to move the mouse in all kinds of places.

For example when Bard levelups to level 3, they can set two Skill Expertises. They dont have their own entry in the list. You literally have to search for the option. Its extremely well hidden.

For that matter the graphics designer isnt an entry on the list either. You again have to find its very own button, again easy to miss.

The controls within the game are horrifying, too. You constantly have to move the camera separately to the group. That was actually in the original game, too, but there it was a 2D game where it made way more sense. In a 3D game its needlessly complicated to do.

The formations from the original game have not been copied. You kind of control who the leader is, but everything behind is a mess. That often matters when battles start and the allies are very far behind.

The original game was very big on having a pause and having a hard pause button and having automatic pause. In BG3 all you have is reload. I frankly dont get why people even bother with the ironman mode, I misclick far too often for that.

The worst one is this though:

Every time I try to maximize a container, the container is closed and my character starts running around wildly whereever my mouse ended up. I just interacted with a container. I clicked on the bar that controls the size, then moved the mouse. So why does that give commands to the character ?

I have literally tried to overload my character just so it would stop moving. Even that doesnt work. Even grossly overweight my character still moves. There is no other way to keep my damn character in place either. I cant sit down, or anything like that.

I'm a programmer. Not a gaming programmer, mind. But back when I was at university, I learned how design UI.

Is UI design no longer teached in universities ? Or what is the problem here ?!?

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Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
Much worse than the original two games, too.

The original 2 games were made by different developers in a different engine. So no wonder it would be different.

You're better off comparing the UI to other Larian games... Which aren't a whole lot better.

Of course, some parts of the UI also suffers due to facilitating Consoles. While there are some differences between PC and Console UI's, there is a lot of things that are shared. Which, always causes them to be clunky on PC because it has to work for controllers with limited numbers of buttons to interact with things. Notably, because of the shared release of the game on PC and Console (Compared to prior Larian titles that were released on PC first and then later a Console port was made after the fact. Meaning the original game was entirely built with PC in mind)

Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
For that matter the graphics designer isnt an entry on the list either. You again have to find its very own button, again easy to miss.

I honestly have no idea what you're referring to by "Graphics designer"

Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
The controls within the game are horrifying, too. You constantly have to move the camera separately to the group. That was actually in the original game, too, but there it was a 2D game where it made way more sense. In a 3D game its needlessly complicated to do.

I'm pretty sure there are settings and keybinds to have the camera follow your character. I know I explicitly turned them off because I'm used to playing CRPG's where moving the camera independently of characters is normal (And often better for actually moving, especially long distances, clicking to move directly on a location far away > constantly clicking to move to locations a few feet away until you reach that far away destination)

Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
The formations from the original game have not been copied. You kind of control who the leader is, but everything behind is a mess. That often matters when battles start and the allies are very far behind.

At a guess, I'd assume that this is in part due to their auto-pathing mechanics. Where party members will do things like jump across gaps or even jump up/down elevations to follow your party leader. Which probably doesn't vibe well with the more traditional formation pathing.

This sort of thing also wasn't in Divinity titles so you spent more time manually teleporting party members across every gap you encountered. (Which was helpfully mitigated with the teleportation pyramids)

Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
The original game was very big on having a pause and having a hard pause button and having automatic pause. In BG3 all you have is reload. I frankly dont get why people even bother with the ironman mode, I misclick far too often for that.

BG3 has the largest button on the UI being the "Enter Turn-based Mode" which is functionally a pause. It also has a keybind associated with it. This is actually better than a pause in many respects because it allows you to actually interact with the game in the turn based mode, meaning other NPC's are frozen in place and any timers (Such as temporary buffs) also don't tick down.

I think there are also settings for auto-turn based toggles. But I can't recall as I never desired to use them (As someone who also turned off most auto-pause interactions in older CRPG's since I found it more annoying than useful in most cases)

Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
Every time I try to maximize a container, the container is closed and my character starts running around wildly whereever my mouse ended up. I just interacted with a container. I clicked on the bar that controls the size, then moved the mouse. So why does that give commands to the character ?

This is just a side effect of using the same button (Mouse clicks) for both movement and interaction. Alongside a somewhat janky container interface.

Meaning that a misinput (Either by mistake or due to janky interface) can lead to a character command. This happens to be a staple issue plaguing literally every "Click to move" game that ever existed (With the more commen thing being loot based ARPG's like Diablo where you can accidentally click on an enemy or item on the floor instead of moving or vice versa). Which is why it boggles my mind that this form of input is continually made instead of being replaced by many, much better systems (Like WASD movement - Which is actually what Console uses in lieu of click to move)

Meanwhile, this interaction when done intentionally, is fine. Most of the time I don't click to close a container and simply walk away from it, reducing the number of inputs I make.

Of course, containers and inventory definitely could use a spruce up in terms of design. I'm just thankful that it doesn't use the awful Tetris inventory of old but that's about the only positive there is. (And don't get me started on the horrendous trader UI... Which has not improved from Original Sin titles where it was also garbage)

Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
Or what is the problem here ?!?

Most likely a lack of resources put into the system and instead devoted elsewhere.

The entirety of the UI design in BG3 very much feels like it was worked on up to the point where "It technically works" and then it was left alone. No refinement or polish, just the bare minimum to function (Which in some cases required a patch... Literally Bard's expertise needed to be patched to actually be changed, by default you literally couldn't change it at all. Made all the more ironic given that Rogue's Expertise always worked fine)

Where all these resources were put instead? I cannot say.


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