Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Unchain my party

Like so many of us, I have been playing a plenty in the last couple of days. And many of the quirks and feedback given already is something I also experienced. But the more people say it, the more chance that Larian picks up on it. So in that regards, I am putting my 2 cents out there.

Please, change the party mechanic by having them not grouped together as default. Plenty of times a plan has gone to sh*t because I forgot to unchain the characters and they stumbled after me, when I already had them in position.
Another thing that would help this greatly, would be to be able to select all of the party by just dragging the mouse cursor over the screen and selecting them that way. Just like any rts out there. Maybe even have keybounds to chain\unchain them together quickly.

And staying on the topic of character selection. I have also noticed that selecting the characters by clicking on their portraits does not always trigger them and you have to click them again to actually select them.

And now something unrelated to the party. Please Please, stop having back to back to back skill checks during conversations. I had to do 3 intimidation checks in one conversation to get the result I wanted. This is not fun. It is fun the first time, but after having the thrill of succeeding it and being confronted by another skill check and then another was not so fun. If my DM would be doing this in my home game, I would call him out on it and explain to me why he thinks this is necessary.

I don't understand. This sounds like a player problem, not a game problem. The feature is there and ready to be used. The issue is you forgot.

That is almost certainly something that will stop happening with more time playing.

Why would you want your party unchained by default?
So you can move each character across the map individually, sounds like a step backwards...IMO

Quick chain/un-chain entire party would be nice however

party formations I would also like to see,

It would be nice to have "chain" or "unchain" and then it stays that way until you toggle it the other way.

Probably, but it is still a piece of feedback on my experience that I wanted to share. Sure things will go better the more you play, but it still feels not optimized. If you want to tactically place your characters quickly and efficiently before battle. I believe that this can be better by having the separated by default. or use hotkeys to group them and ungroup them. See it more in the light of Quality of Life feedback.

hotkeys to group them and ungroup them +1 +1 +1
but unchained by default is incredibly tedious, I certainly don't want to click 4 times everytime I move to somewhere on the map.

Hotkeys and party formations I definitely am totally on board with, but I think having the actual default being everyone unlinked would be more tedious than not.

yeah, in hindsight, setting it to default might be too much. formations and hotkeys to quickly go through the party and group and group them would be a welcome addition.

I don't love at all the chain/unchain system
But at least, a hotkeys to group them and ungroup them + a party formation option is necessary

Or there should be a shortcut to degroup the whole party at once instead of having to unchain them individually.

Oh my god, yes!! It just felt deflating talking to Nettie to get the Antidote requiring check after check after check. I get it, if the check is supposed to be convincing someone of something they really don't want to do then set a difficult Required Roll. Don't have the NPC say "Good point, but I'm still not doing that".
If this was happening in a game I was playing with a DM I too would be asking if it was really necessary for multiple of the same bloody check. It's railroading is what it is, they offer the choice but don't really want to come up with any other result than the story intended one.

Jumping on the bandwagon that simple "chain/unchain everyone" buttons would go a long way to improve convenience.

And speaking of jumping, it would be great if the AI knew how to jump, so I wouldn't have to individually control everyone to jump over a gap.

Mass ungrouping and mass jumping features, yes I dig those.

I find the chaining and unchaining system as a whole to be really clunky and inconvenient. The standard cRPG method of just being able to click one character portrait to take control of them, and then being able to drag a square to select them all is a much more intuitive and clean system. Having to actively drag character portraits to and from each other is tedious and doesn't really add anything, And the lack of party formation options is really inconvenient too. You can't put tanks out in front, mages and rangers in the back, if you're caught by surprise in a battle you'll start in a jumble. Overall the system feels like a step backwards from what modern cRPGs are doing.

I agree

I do not understand why Larian invented the chain mechanic in the first place.

I definitely don't enjoy having to chain and unchain the group each time I want to move them around separately or as a group. I would much prefer, just like in BG1 and BG2, to be able to select as many members of the group as I'd like and take them, otherwise have them stay where they are/where I put them.

The chaining system is clunky and annoying, and leads to stupid situations requiring loading that could easily have been avoided with a non-retarded system. It does not spark joy

What we basically need, assuming we're not going to get rid of the chaining system entirely, is 2 hotkeys: Chain/unchain all and chain/unchain selected character. At least this way we do unchain the party at the click of a single bottom instead of having to drag n' drop them with the mouse.



Yeah, the lack of formation or anything like that doesn't really mesh well with the tactical aspect of D&D and party-based RPGs in general, I think.

My suggestion for this would be to provide a chain / unchain hotkey. Let me press 1 hotkey to select all my characters for movement, and let me press the same hotkey to deselect that let me move them individually with the Function keys for quick selection. Drag select would be great, but I doubt they'll make bigger changes like this before the game is released.

The chaining mechanic is simply a worse interface that drag selecting your party and moving the selected characters where you want them. Just count the number of steps you have do to with a chain system vs a traditional drag select system. I think part of the difficulty Larian has is that drag select works fine in an overhead or isometric view, but not so well in a 3D over the shoulder view (kind of like how NWN had 1 companion on auto-follow) and they've got both camera angles.

As an example of why it's bad, in one fight I wanted to have Astarion sneak to the top of a rock and initiate the fight while my other two characters hid to the side of the rock, ready to engage. So I unchain him (1 long unchain), then click him to the rock. Then I send my other two characters to the side (2nd action). Halfway there I realize I should probably send a melee character to Astarion in case the enemy climbs the rock in front of him, so I click my melee character over. But my third character follows her and either way I have to long unchain them and send them to Astarion. Now I can finally send me third character to the side to engage from behind.

In general, Larian's chain mechanic gets clunkier and clunkier the larger your party is. The unchain mechanic takes longer than a drag or a hotkey select and sometimes you mess up and chain people together when you're trying to unchain one from the rest. And since there's no way I know of to move everyone together without rechaining them, you have to spend double the actions that you would in another system.

Yeah, it's sad to see that we can't do that like in the older games. I mean, here we are in a game literally called Baldurs Gate not being to move our party like we used to do, whereas in other CRPGS, that are BG successors only in a spritiual sense, have this implemented without any problems. Really, what is the problem with party formations or being able to select character by dragging the mouse over a certain area?

Today I was playing and it take me a half hour to make a perfect set up before fight because all time, one of party member follow me even when stelth option was on. This is no problem if 4 players playing game but if I am playing solo all my characters want follow leader so often they just walk in to trap.