Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Color me impresed for pathing!

So I went to the Tea House to go to the Underdark.

In the dead crones museum of horrors, I met a Halfing that I hadn't encountered before (incidental).

Close to her I got to the waterfall looking entrance and tried to pass to get to the portal.

When I clicked on the other side it instead marched me in the other direction, back upstairs.

I was at first "OH Great!"

I watched as my party traveled up a ladder, out back, through the portal (into the acid shop), through the next area, until they finally navigated to the other side of that waterfall portal.

*Blink Blink*

I am starting to gain more confidence in the coding, that perhaps the reason the team has not yet tackled some of the obvious flaws is perhaps because they are busy hammering out aspects of the story that we can't see...such as the new artifact (only way past that).

Nice job on the pathing!

Please please please please do not praise the pathing in this game!!!

It is abysmal. Prime example. In the grymforge I jump with the party leader onto a platform only to watch the other 3 memebers of the party simply walk off the edge to their doom. Even assuming they couldn't make the jump (which they could) they shouldn't just walk off a cliff! Having to super mario each party member individually around an area of the game is both tedious and frankly a stupid design decision.

Yup. Followers still run into hazards, traps, or they just flat out refuse to follow. I get it pathfinding is difficult, even without having to navigate NPC through hazardous terrain. Either give us precise team controls or create the best damn pathing system in the industry.

This is GOOD pathing? I'm so confused as to what happened. You got ported somewhere and they DIDN'T port with you? Instead they traveled up a ladder, out back, through the portal (into the acid shop), through the next area, until they finally navigated to the other side of that waterfall portal.

Were you being sarcastic?

I'm assuming that the first post was, indeed, sarcasm - because no-one in their right mind would consider clicking on a point fifteen feet away, and having the party path for several minutes out the back of beyond and over hill and dale, through other transitions and teleports etc., to get there, to be 'good' pathing.

Any time you feel like making a concession to say "I know that pathfinding can be hard to do" etc., just pause for a moment and remind yourself that Larian designed and build this engine, Larian designed and built this world space, and Larian designed and built the method by which they interact with each other - the problems they face are problems entirely of their own making. You can still make the concession, of course, and it can be hard - but don't let yourself forget that.

Its prob just dos 2 pathing like how most of the engine is dos 2 still

Not at all (no sarcasm), I obviously missed something, like having to click on the waterfall or something. The game found an alternate route for me that was pretty involved; a level of dungeon awareness I have not yet seen.

Did I mentioned it knew to climb ladders and go through portals. If I occasionally loose track of a party member, it may be because they did not have the jump distance of the other players...OK perhaps they could shout "Hello, are you going to leave me here" to let me know.


This is an amazing game in so many ways, but is definitely an odd duck. It does what other games has never done before, then stumbles over pebbles (like not understanding how to balance the mood of the story...a recent concern in another thread).

No, you don't - the game's just dumb. The game was unable to handle its own pathing tools sufficiently well to understand that jumping across the gap (which is a jump that every character can make, even at Str 8) was the correct and intended command, and instead interpreted it as a long path that could very well have run you through any number of hostile situations, or traps, - which it would also have been blind to and triggered, if there had been any.

Having a pathing AI that knows how to interact with the movement tools of the world it exists in is a basic expectation - it's nothing to compliment. Indeed, the fact that this game cannot always do that reliably, and that the pathing AI frequently gets hung up on repeatedly climbing and descending ladders, is something to be criticised.

[quote]If I occasionally loose track of a party member, it may be because they did not have the jump distance of the other players...[quote]

And yet, at other times, rather than wait, they path through hostile territory in order to 'goo around the long way', which is almost never what any player ever wants them to do.

And yet, at other times still, the characters are granted the ability to jump the distance they couldn't to catch up - ai followers jumping distances that you could not jump, if you were controlling them.

And it is not consistent in this, at all.

No, this is a system that needs a boatload of work, and is not in a praiseworthy position at all.

Not to mention - to stay with Auntie Ethel's encounter- If you climb down the roots to her lair, companions stop following you altogether and you have to bring each and every one down separately. That, too, is nor great pathing.