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

I started this thread and made this request over a year ago, long before EA and the subforums were created. With the serious trolling and bad information that the thread is receiving, I'd like to request for it to be moved to the Suggestions and Feedback forum, please.

You can already force turn-based mode by pressing space-bar or clicking the clock. I use it for stealth sections.

Apparently that is not good enough.

I started a new thread in the Suggestions and Feedback forum. Hoping the appropriate eyes might see it there.

Pressing Escape doesn't properly pause much of the game.

Entering turn-based mode, when it's even possible, doesn't act anything like the global pause works in any other game in this genre. Outside of a very small area, it fails to pause anything.

All that I'm asking for is a player controlled global pause. Every other game that I can think of in the industry has a player controlled global pause available. With Divinity's engine, my only option for completely pausing the game is to quit out of it.

Yeah, some people want different things, like a pause that actually stops the time. And others, like me want a pause, so I can use it as a substitute for giving position orders pre-fight, without going through the hassle of doing a turn for every companion. And some want something in between or something more extreme like a recreation of the BG2 system, which kind of includes me as well

I don't understand. When I want to pause the game, I hit spacebar, and suddenly everything around me freezes. Animals stop moving, fire stops spreading, etc. This is not a pause?

I'll certainly try it again now, but there's no way to enter it if there's any combat happening in the background. I haven't been able to test it thoroughly. Having no way to pause that background combat has lead to problems, though. That in itself, I'd say, should warrant the request for an instant and global pause.

Edit: I may be misinformed about how turn based pause works, so, please, do correct me if I'm wrong. If I am actually allowed to enter turn based mode, does it actually pause *everything* in the world or just a few things, similar to how pressing Escape works? And, other than the player's character, does pressing Escape actually pause *anything*?

What many others on this forum have said is that it only stops everything in a small radius around your character. In the rest of the game world, time is still running and everything is still moving.

I haven't reached a point where there isn't combat in the background yet, so I haven't been able to turn on turn based mode outside of combat yet. In combat, though, only a very small area gets paused properly.

You're both right.
On one hand, no that shouldn't be "good enough". A proper, actual pause would work better in many ways.
On the other hand, in the current state of the game, the fact that forced turn-based mode acts only as pause in a small area is of relatively low relevance, since the entire game world is frozen in time to begin with and the passing hours mean absolutely nothing.
I spent hours with the game alt-tabbed without even entering turn based mode at times because, really, what's the difference? Nothing is going to happen anyway, time doesn't pass, night doesn't fall, characters don't grow tired, etc, etc.

I really haven't made it very far into the game yet, but lots of things, such as combat, are still happening in the world around me and I have no way to pause any of this. Maybe I don't understand how the gaming mechanics work yet, but is everyone here saying that nothing outside of the player character's small area really happening? There's actually nothing at all happening in real time? I don't have to worry about NPCs killing each other or anything of that sort?

But this is specifically what several others have said does not happen, as in, time does pass inside the game and characters away from your character do move. So it seems we're getting some contradictory claims. PLEASE could someone test it out, verify, and give us a clear idea of how time works when in forced TB or if you alt-tab?

Btw, the way I did things when I played D:OS was to hit quicksave before going AFK, then when I returned I quickloaded the game to return to my game state. Works well enough though clearly a serious pain in the ass to do.

They "move" in a closed loop and they don't actually do a thing that alters their status until the player gets in a close range.

I.e. If two characters are fighting, they will keep swinging and inflict NO damage to each other until you're close.
If they are conversing, they will loop the same few sentences ,etc.

There's NO time progression in the game until the player rests. And even then, it's limited to few very specific scenarios that have already been activated.
(I.e. If you entered the druid grove, you have to save the tiefling girl from the bugbear assassin before resting or she'll be dead the next time you enter the area. If you don't rest, you can take your time visiting the entire region palm to palm and you'll still find the bugbear ready to assault her when you approach the area).

@Tuco: Thank you for the detailed answer!

With the movement that is still happening, I'm still left wondering how things like environmental hazards work. Will the moving NPCs kill or damage themselves by moving into them?

I've heard of a burning house, as another example, that is very time sensitive. How do the pausing mechanics work for something like that?

Currently you can have part of your adventurer group locked in combat, while others are not, like staying back and hiding. Currently it is not possible to switch to turn-based mode for those members not in combat as there is combat clos by. This puts the player into disadvantage as you have to make hiding checks, etc. for those adventurers in realtime without the option to pause movement or switch to turn based mode.
I also would like to switch the game into turn based mode any time I like to just to take my merry time plotting my devious plans to become the ultimate tadpole ruler of Faerun.

Hey thanks for the insightful details. I'd still very strongly prefer a true pause function, but this I should be able to live with.

So you think you have the enemy flanked, then you decide to take the rest of the team, sneak around aaaaall the way to the owlbear victim, jump up the cliff, run around all the way back to the wall and then fight the first goblin fight at the cove with 3 characters atop the wall.

This is wrong. Please just have an option to not just pause but also freeze the game world instead. Would greatly improve performance and bring back the BG feels.

There are too many unpolished elements concerning credibility of the game world and I hope it won't pile up. Resting, teleporting, lack of day/night cycles and the strange decision to not have the rest of the game world adhere to the same space-time continuum than the party.







if you dont interact with the mindflayer and the fisher, all of them are gone when you come back, there probably are progression trigger that can cause the world to move on. going to camp and back again in the cave where flind and gnolls attack the Zent, will kill the Zent.

otherwise it's pretty dead, waukeens rest is still burning and people are still pushing one week in

What's bizarre about this one is that it's one of these rare cases where you CAN fail the quest due time limits (once you trigger the event it's marked as a failure if you rest before concluding it) but the building keeps burning no matter how many days you rest after that.

So many people are using Bitter Divorce rod on this thread... I bet OP is more than satisfied with the actual implementation.