Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Allow pausing, please!

Which is precisely why I said...

They probably won't though.

The Divinity series (and BG3 now) are the only PC games that I can think of that don't allow player controlled pausing for single player. I'm unsure why the standard pause and queue is hated so much much here, by developers and Divinity fans alike.

i dont get it. you can pause the game outside combat. just hit SPACE ...

*presses the space bar*, but "There is combat nearby." Game won't enter turn based mode here, just as an example. Pressing Escape here might pause the game, but it appears to be unknown when this actually works. Not to mention that pressing Escape blacks out the game screen and would make queuing an action or even looking around impossible.

Indeed. Other TB games have pause available too, so the whole 'it's TB so don't need pause' argument and the 'it will be costly extra programing for just a few people' argument are both total b.s. The current way of pausing is ridiculous and non-functional. A true pause function, limited to single-player, would be very easy to implement. Larian's unwillingness to provide it is not rational and baffling.

Spacebar causes game to enter turn based at any time not just combat

To be honest it's actually makes me feel very pessimistic about Larian's willingness to change their ways.

It's not the same.

Please elaborate

It is bugged: (1) Some NPC don't respect TB mode and just walks away (2) You cannot enter pause aka TB mode when "There is combat nearby".

I'll elaborate in more detail: I want a working pause that actually and instantly pauses everything in the game. Hitting escape or entering turn based mode don't do that. The Divinity engine doesn't allow player controlled controlled pausing in this fashion. The developers have designed certain NPCs and activities to always remain active. Quitting out of the game is my only option to truly pause right now. I'm beginning to understand, though, that of the million+ players that BG3 EA has, less than ten of us see this as a problem. They never fixed it for the Divinity games and also refuse to allow modders to fix it. Apparently, only the tiniest fraction of us use pause in this way and would like to see the engine updated to allow it. If not in Larian's official forums, Steam forums, GOG forums, Beamdog forums, I don't know where this might get any real feedback. I guess that I'm kicking a dead horse at this point and the million+ other players are perfectly fine having no real way of pausing the game.

I would definitely pause a lot more if, you know... I was actually given the option to do it.

Curious how they're going to handle cinematics. NPCs still doing their thing, taking area effect damage, etc. If they end up fixing cinematics to allow pausing, will modders, at least, be able to add a working pause?

Using Turn Based when out of combat is not the same as pausing. Even if this feature was working as intended, which it isn't, causing some very awkward moments...

When you have a normal run-of-the-mill pause like any normal run-of-the-mill game has since Atari games.... you can give commands to multiple characters quickly. When you use turn based out of combat, you have to do it one at the time and see it through the end of the command before you pass the turn to the next character ect. It takes forever to use it just for positioning.

If you want to move just 2 characters, get ready to pass the turn to the other 2 you don't want to use as well, cos you're cycling through them.

Its a HUGE waste of time that a simple pause would correct.

If this engine is not designed for such a basic feature, I'm honestly baffled at Larian. I don't think I've ever heard of something like this before. I'm a fan of Larian and I like the engine, but holy crap that's borderline inept engine development.

"The developers have designed certain NPCs and activities to always remain active" This makes absolutely no sense, why would anyone do that, specially in a game where time does not pass until you rest at camp?

I have to call BS on this claim. Because I can't imagine auntie making her eat spoiled tarts over and over again until we arrive. (no real names to avoid spoilers)

You've never paused a game to go afk?

Nothing moves, at all? Hell, I actually expected esc menu to pause the game like every other single player game I've ever played.

Turn based mode waits for input. Pausing does not. I don't care about stopping stuff to target. I want a "no time passes, hard stop" of the game to go afk to.

but why tho? Nothing happens unless you move. and nothing happens since its turnbased combat, you can not return to your computer and all of a sudden be dead. Up until now I havent seen any movement happening regardless of the players either so its kind of static until you take action, no?

This is just not true. Time passes in the game world. Other characters move about and do their thing. The in-game world changes while you are afk.

Pathfinder: kingmaker already has turn based so you shouldn't have needed to install a mod for it. You can switch back and forth between turn based and real time on the fly. The addition of turn based is extremely nice, it makes a huge difference in some fights (like fighting swarms is so much easier in turn based.)