Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Solasta UI vs. Baldur's Gate UI

Bottom line. Solasta is simple, easy, and works like a charm. Everything is clean and organized including all your spells, special abilities, etc.

For this many people to be in agreement, that's gotta tell you something.

More does not always mean better.

You can in Pathfinder, actually. Pathfinder has a hybrid hotbar/sorting system. It sorts by spells, martial abilities and class features, and belt slots for equipping consumables. It also gives you a large hotbar for the sole purpose of ease of access to your most used spells and abilities. And that’s a game that can potentially go up to level 20.

And that’s the major difference between Pathfinder and BG3’s current system. Pathfinder’s hotbar is again only for ease of access. BG3’s hotbar is used for literally everything but the common actions to the left that you have to manually organize.

Maybe actually play all three games first before declaring that a giant hotbar is the end solution, because there’s a big reason why literally no other cRPG agrees. People seem to forget that Larian is relatively new at this, but at the same time, the Solasta devs and Owlcat are even newer and even they have far more functional UI.

BG3 has zero excuse besides hoping that the UI is just a placeholder carryover from DOS2 at this point. Like a lot of other problematic things in regards to everything but the cinematography and dialogue.

So not Solasta, but I'm replaying Pillars of Eternity 2 right now and am really enjoying the UI.

One of the things that I like about it is that, while that game has a ton of consumables (potions, drugs, scrolls, grenades, summoning items), you can only access the ones that your character has loaded into their belt (you get four slots, but can spend your training to expand to six) - anything in your main inventory is inaccessible during combat. This gives you a single belt button to press to access all of your consumables. You could have every consumable in your inventory show up this way, but I enjoy the side benefit of having to plan around what I think my character might need and then speeding up combat because I don't have as many decisions to make.

Spells and abilities are automatically sorted into their own areas, sorted by class (and level, in the case of spells). Again, it's pretty clean and does a good job of showing you what resources are available and required for different kinds of casting. There is no concept of upcasting spells, but I could see using that same UI in BG3 and then having the player right-click on the spell to upcast or use metamagic.

Every place in the game where there is text, you can right-click keywords to get definitions. This applies both to game terms (so you can e.g. find out what stats and conditions do) as well as lore (so you can find out more information about this well-known city that your character has probably heard of or what some word in the local dialect means). This goes a really long way toward helping the player understand what's going on and feel at home in the world of the game.

There's a lot more; but these things, in particular, were on my mind and I wanted to share.

Talking with you looks really pointless...
You're asking what a spellbook have to do with hotbar but you suggest a button to open the spellbook on the hotbar a few messages earier.

I have to ask 1varangian question again... (you didn't really answered)


Really looks like you don't understand those references.

I didn't admit that I would be fine with button on the hotbar... I admit that I would be fine with buttons opening something (like in Solasta, PoE, Pathfinder, BG1 and 2, and so on...).
I don't care about hotbar and I don't need one if I have buttons. The thing with "bags" is also tedious and it just require inventory management instead of hotbar management, which is not really more fun.

But why?
I dont quite understand why cant we simply have both.

As it was with spell levels ...
There was simple solution to allow people either give any spell level they want into hotbar (old system), or add there all at once with popup menu (new system) ... what was wrong about that?
Why do minority need to subject majority even in times, when all that is needed to satisfy both is adding something new, and JUST DONT REMOVE THE OLD ... :-/

Well, it may seem like "many", since there is not many people actualy active on this forum, few dozens top ...
If i find you 50 people who believe that Earth is flat ... will that be true?

One more question ... does this rule aply on count of people who likes this idea? :P

I have litteraly no idea how to explain it to you so you understand. :-/

This is how it feels right now:
My question: How about give to bar a icon, that will open your spellbook.
You: I dont like it.
Me: It dont need to be actual "spellbook" i dont care if you get popupmenu, i just wanted to know if you would like the "all in one" icon.
You: Consumables is not added to spellbook.
Me: ???
You: You are dumm, you were talking about spellbook and now you are asking about spellbook.
Me: ??? ... ???!

Really, if this does not help ... just not even the slightest idea how. :-/

I did ...
And i shall repeat myself: no, no, no, no, no ... no and no.

Do you need to me answer every single game specificly? :-/
NO i did not play BG1 ... only seen videos.
NO i did not play BG2 ... only seen videos.
NO i did not play Pillars of Eternity ... only seen videos.
NO i did not play Pathfinder ... only seen videos.
NO i did not play Solasta ... only seen videos.
NO i did not play DOS ... only seen videos.
NO my experience in RPG is not based on MMO.

I dont see any difference, but w/e if that is what do you need ...
I still dont understand why do i need to play completely different game, so i can rate UI of game that i curently just played.


Well you need to give that button somewhere ...
And whole point of all my replies was just to find compromise.

I know you "dont care about hotbar" that is kinda obvious, if you read title of this topic.
But i do ... and that is why i wonder about a way to satisfly everyone (if possible).

I just hope you dont try to tell me that if icon for spells popupmenu will be floating on exactly same place as it would, if it would be in hotbar ... its somehow sudently better.

More isn't always better. A giant hotbar is just another bunch of slots to manage. I don't want to micromanage my consumables, spells, powers..etc that much. I'll be constantly moving the slots around as I gain levels, collect different consumables and changing spells. I don't want to fight the UI. I want the UI to work for me.

I prefer minimal UIs because I want to see the game. I don't want to stare at my UI. If there's a beef I have with Solasta's UI is that I wouldn't mind it if they reduced the size a bit but other than that, it's pretty impressive.

I just purchased Solasta after the latest Spring update, and I completely agree with the original post. The UI in Solasta is very clean and easy to use. I’ve always hated the constant managing of hotbar icons in BG3, and the lack of a good spellbook interface.

Solasta also shows how well D&D 5e combat works in a video game without many changes. Moving a fighter next to an enemy actually means something. Reaction pop-ups are great and only take a second to decide where to use that reaction. Some characters don’t have bonus actions and that’s fine (I really don’t miss dipping weapons or free shoves).

And athletics/jumping is so easy, just click at a destination and everyone in the party will climb and jump there if they are able. No need to unchain, select character, click jump, click destination (at least you don’t have to repeat that anymore for every character in BG3).

All this doesn’t mean I don’t like BG3, in fact I like it a lot. It’s just unfortunate that Larian decided not to try more pure 5e rules first and change what needs changing later in the EA.

Very much agree!

Same. Love BG3. I still honestly love it more than Solasta. Just saying. BG3 would be 100,000,000 times better with a simpler, Solasta style or close to it UI. And same goes for implementing the 5e rules better. I'm sorry, but they advertised BG3 as authentic D&D 5e video game. They need to make it more true to 5e then. Solasta proves the 5e rules work just fine in a video game. There's no reason BG3 can't do it too.

You should really look at the keybinds for solasta. Then check out NwN, Kingmaker, whatever elses action bars. You should see numbers on them.

Games a click fest btw, watch any YouTube vid. You trade more clicks with keybinds. Not a good trade.

I agree so much with this post. +1

YES. my only concern is that through these posts, Larian might think we want BG3 to be like Solasta, when actually we want BG3 to be like DnD 5e.

There really isn't any downside to having things pre-sorted like in most other cRPGs.

One of the major things about having a pre-sorted UI for things like spells is that less frequently used spells are more likely to cross your field of vision, and while quickly reviewing them, you may remember something about those skills and spells that offers a potential solution. I know I've already run into that kind of possibility several times while playing the Pathfinder games, PoE, and Solasta. But the saying 'out of sight, out of mind' really applies to the giant hotbar that DOS and BG3 uses. Now that I think back on my hundreds of hours in both games, I don't really consider using anything but my most used tactics in both games, because I'd have to fish through actual menus to even notice everything else, and then take the extra step of manually dragging something I might consider using to the hotbar to even use them to begin with, and then get rid of them after the fact and carefully sort out the hotbar again in order to keep everything tidy.


Cool. We weren't talking about keybinds to begin with, we were talking about actual functional UI design. But I'll humor your argument anyway.

You may click more in Solasta, but it's very precise. As opposed to having to wrestle with things like clicking on a jump button and fishing for an angle that will actually let you jump across for lord knows what reason, when your party members somehow already get to follow you automatically right after you cross. Besides, Solasta's devs will likely add in keybind support later on, as it'd be a trival thing to do compared to having to redesign the UI from scratch, like what many hope BG3 would do later on.

Solasta's dev philosophy was to build from the ground up. Larian choosing to refurbish the DOS2 engine for BG3 trapped them into building from the top down. The latter philosophy is impressive at first and distracts the masses quite well, but it falls apart when people start actually thinking about it, and changing things after the fact becomes a lot harder.

+2 ( maybe I should say +2 million)

Well, in this case certainly is ...
You have hotbar, working perfectly as intented ... but its kinda small. Solution? Make it biger.
Simple & effective solution.

And that is exactly what i dont understand ...
You say you dont want to do that ... yet you would do that ... but why would you, if you dont want to?
And dont try to tell me you need to, since if you need to, that would mean that everyone need to, and since i have 324h played on this game, and i never needed to "constantly moving slots around" ... its clearly not needed. O_o

And one more think i dont quite understand ...
If this sugestion will be included, and we get "button" that will allow us acess to all our spells at once ...
I dare to presume it would work the same as curent popup menus, we allready have ... meaning we will not be able to rearange our spells.
Where is difference between having "all spells in the row" on hotbar ... and having "all spells in the row" in popup menu after you push the button? How is that suppose to be anyhow clearer?

//edit:
I mean ... just compare:


Funny thing, that bar from early builds take even smaller part of screen than solasta UI ...
But that might be bcs Solasta have camera quite closer (as it seems).

I just happen to think this is much clearer. You only get the row of spells once you click the 'Cast spell' icon. There, your spells are grouped by level. Each spell icon has a small '+' sign if you are able to cast it with a higher level spell slot.

Cool, keybinds are related to the ui and making it functional. Did you know if you hit V it opens up the spell section of your ui? There is no 1-9 spell slots, all your spells are hidden behind a pop up. You get it now?

Comparing the ui to a jump feature...is this a thing now? We are talking about the ui btw.

That last part is just you making stuff up

The thing is with Solasta lots of people hate the simple art/design, but I think this can be changed super easily to make it amazing (in the end Im sure they will update the looks). The base UI function is already nearly perfect.
BG3 is the complete opposite, and way worst off. The baseline UI mechanic/function is REALLY bad, while it looks alright (I admit I love the retro BG2'esk icons...).

+1 Totally agree with this

This post is mostly about UI, but it is also about overall game mechanics.

I have played NWN 1 and 2. I've played BG1 and 2 and Icewindale. I've played the old Pool of Radiance games and Pools of Darkness. I'm a long time fan of all these D&D RPG games.

I have no real complaints about Solasta's gameplay, UI, keybinds, etc. other than maybe when I use Q and E to rotate the camera it is a bit slow to rotate and it is a bit annoying that every time I zoom in and out I have to re=click on the Party Mode button to lock the camera back on the party leader.

Oh...and I don't particularly like that if I select Ranged attack and I can't actually hit an enemy I can't switch back to melee, or vice versa. So if you accidentally click on your Ranged and switch from Melee to Ranged, you're stuck.

I like this about BG3. I don't have to worry about exploring my options in BG3. I can click on all sorts of things and check out what my chances are of success, switch to something else, check out how that might be, etc. Gives me more flexibility for testing out different moves and learning more what works and what doesn't. So in this regards, BG3 beats out Solasta, and I've given Tactical Adventures my suggestion in the past that they need to give players a bit more room to breathe in this regards. Although I get that a character wouldn't be able to switch weapons and then switch back in a single round, it is frustrating and causes characters to have to skip turns if you are just trying to see if a Ranged Attack might be better than Melee. I also like that BG3 tells me my chances in Percentage. I think that is much more New Player friendly than expecting New Players to know that they have to defeat an enemy's Armor Class to hit.

All this said, taking the UI in BG3 apart piece by piece:

1. Character Portraits don't register when I click on them. Solasta's works every time. Single Click.
2. I have to painstakingly Right Click and select Ungroup on each character portrait to unchain a character from the rest of the party to have them do something different. Solasta is a single click on their portrait and they are ungrouped. To rechain in BG3, I have to Right Click and select Group on each character portrait to reform the party. Solasta is a single click on a Party Mode button.
3. Solasta's got a nice Character Summary window when you select the character right there on the UI. Tells you all the major details you need to know about that character. BG3 requires you to go to the Character Sheet screen to see AC and so forth.
4. Solasta's UI tells you what each separate character can do based on their class, etc. per round when in combat. BG3 just lumps all skills, abilities, etc. into 1 hotbar regardless of your class and what your character can do. So in Solasta, if you are a Fighter with no spellcasting abilities, there is no Cast Spell option on your UI. You have Attack, Shove, Disengage, Use Item, and that's pretty much it. No clutter. No useless buttons. If you are a Paladin and have a Power, a button appears labelled Power, and you click it and pop up a smaller menu of your powers like Turn Undead and Lay on Hands. Boom. Clean. Crisp. All organized for you. No playing around with hot bar and so forth.
5. In Solasta, jumping and climbing is automatic. I select my destination, if my character can go there, they just go there. If an Athletics or Acrobatics roll is required, the game auto-rolls it for me. If my character fails, they fall prone. If they succeed, they continue on as normal. BG3 makes you click on a separate jump button, try to play around with the terrain to make the jump line up to exactly where you need it to, and then click again to lock in where you want to go. Then you jump sometimes ridiculous distances without so much as a roll no matter how far the distance. As long as the game determines that your character has a certain Athletics skill level, you can make the jump without a roll. Only if you drop down does it have you roll and if you fail you fall prone. Otherwise, it doesn't matter if you jump 20 meters or 5 meters. So BG3's jump system takes more clicks and requires more work when all we, the players, care about is that we want to get to a certain destination. So I think BG3's jump system would GREATLY benefit from a jump system similar to Solasta. Just point and click on where you want to go. If your character needs to jump, they jump. If they can't make the jump, the game tells you, like Solasta does, "Your destination is unable to be reached." Plain. Simple. Easy.
6. Disengage works every time in Solasta. If I disengage, no matter how close I get to an enemy or no matter where I move, I am not attacked with AOO. In BG3, because Jumping and Disengage are tied together, not only do my characters unrealistically jump all over the battlefield all the time, but many times my character will move away from an enemy, trigger AOO, and then jump to the destination I chose for them to go to. So even though I trigger Disengage, they still get attacked by AOO because the game determined that they needed to move away from the enemy first before jumping to wherever I wanted them to go.
7. Why do I need a button for my melee weapon, a button for my special melee attack, a button for my ranged weapon, a button for my special ranged attack, and a toggle that switches from melee to ranged and from single to dual in BG3? Half of the time, these buttons don't work properly. I'll click on my primary Melee Attack button and the Ranged icon still appears showing a ghost image of my character looking like they are going to do a ranged attack. So then I have to click on it again and sometimes even a third time. Half of the time, when it comes to dual wielding, the characters default to the Dual setting which causes them to use both actions on an enemy that is almost dead anyway. So he has like 5 HP, I kill him with Sneak Attack, and Astarion wastes his Bonus Action striking at thin air. Solasta's is simpler and easier. I have 1 button for attack. There is a toggle right above the Character Summary to switch between Melee and Ranged. A single radial button next to Melee and a single next to Ranged. I want to hit an enemy. I select Attack. Select enemy. Done. If I have 2 weapons and I want to do a second attack with my Bonus action, after my first attack, I select Attack again. Select enemy. Done. Plain. Simple. No wasted Bonus Actions. If I have a special ability like Menacing Attack Melee and Menacing Attack Ranged, the Power button appears on the UI. I select Power and all special abilities appear labeled accordingly. I click the button for my power, click on the enemy, and done.
8. Action options and Bonus options are clearly grouped together on the UI in Solasta. So you are fully aware what options are what. From left to right your Action options appear first. Then your Bonus options. All clearly labeled as such and even color coded to make it really clear that they are two different categories of options. In BG3, there is no clear designation for what options are Actions and what are Bonuses. You have to hover over them and check to see which they are. It is so easy to confuse which spells only require Bonus actions versus which require Action actions.
9. Then to top it all off, BG3 doesn't even make typical 5e Actions actually Actions. So even if you are a D&D guru you are easily confused as to which is an Action and which isn't because they didn't even keep Disengage as an Action, or Shove as an Action. They made them Bonus Actions and put them all in the same area of the hotbar. It's just very confusing trying to remember whether a Jump/Disengage is an Action or Bonus Action, Shove, Dip Poison, Throw something, etc. Is Throw an Action or Bonus? I can't even remember right now. I think it's an Action. But if it's an Action, why isn't Shove an Action? Aren't they both technically attacks against an enemy? Again, Solasta stays true to D&D 5e rules so if you know 5e rules you will know that Shove is an Action, not a Bonus Action.
10. Solasta makes it so shove can both push enemies away and off ledges but also force them to fall prone and thus be easier for Melee attacks to hit. BG3 only allows you to shove people off ledges and away from you. There is no shoving to make them prone. Well, at least if there is I can't figure out how, so that just goes along with what I'm saying anyway.
11. Solasta's Initiative order actually works, every time. There is no skipping around and bouncing back and forth between characters in initiative order. BG3 glitches, skips characters in initiative order, and if you aren't careful when initiative order is grouped together, you may accidentally skip one of your character's turns because you hit the End Turn button when characters are grouped in initiative order. Besides that, Initiative covers the whole left side of the screen. In Solasta it just runs along the top in order. Clean and simple. Now, I will say, that one thing BG3 does right in initiative is that if two characters are grouped together I can move the second one in order first. So if one is in the way of the other or I want them to go before the other then I can do that. This is nice. In Solasta, several times I've had situations where I wished I could move one of the two before the other. So in that regard, BG3's freedom of grouping initiative is nice. Overall, though, it is glitchy and painful compared to Solasta's which is nice and clean and easy to understand.
12. Sneak/Caution. In Solasta, if you are in Party Mode, you click a single Caution button and everyone sneaks. In BG3, if I want everyone to sneak, I need to select each individual character 1 at a time and select Sneak. Same to UN-sneak.
13. Sneak works better in Solasta. It isn't just some line of sight cones like in BG3. If you start to sneak too closely to an enemy, a little Stealth meter starts to appear above your head. The better your character's Stealth, the slower the meter fills. So a Fighter with 0 Stealth and Disadvantage on their Stealth rolls can't just sneak up and pickpocket a merchant who has their back turned, nor can they sneak up on a goblin or bugbear or whatever and kill them with a single hit. If your stealth isn't great, you get spotted real quick. Also, in BG3, I've noticed that if I'm stealthing it, and I wander even remotely into an enemy's cone, my character has to usually roll Stealth like 3 times before it finally stops. It's very frustrating. I've noticed that any rogue I've created, no matter how good, is spotted while stealthing it simply because the game makes me roll like 2-3 times every time I wander into a line of sight cone. So even if I succeeded in my first 1 or even 2 rolls, I'm usually spotted by the 3rd or sometimes even 4th rolls. Now, I get that it might be Disadvantage that they are accounting for, but this is the only time I've ever seen Disadvantage rolled for more than once. Usually, if I have Advantage or Disadvantage in BG3, it is a single roll and it just tells me if I succeed or fail. (Example: I have Advantage when attacking. In BG3, my Percentage chance of success goes up. A single roll is made. Game tells me if I succeed or fail. Game doesn't show me that I'm rolling twice.) So it doesn't seem to me, at any rate, that it is because of something like Disadvantage.
14. Backpacks have meaning besides just as inventory management items in Solasta. If I pick up a backpack that is better than my original, I can carry more weight in items. Backpacks in BG3 are pointless except to store items like keys and books that you don't want to clutter your inventory. Frankly, I sell them now because they are so pointless to me. I have tabs in BG3 that help me sort items if I want to, so if I keep all my items in my regular items menu and I just want to see my Consumables, for example, I select the Consumables tab. Backpacks, therefore, are meaningless to me in BG3 because they actually make item management more labor intensive since any item in a backpack doesn't sort along with the main inventory. The ONLY good backpacks are to me is to transfer multiple items from one character to another quickly. But then, it takes me just as long to put all the items in the bag as it does just to Send to Astarion, or whoever. So why bother with backpacks? To me, they are just another useless item in BG3.
15. Crafting is simple and easy to understand in Solasta and takes time. In BG3, the few times it lets you craft, it has been very confusing. Pull open the recipe. Try to remember all the items you need to put together. Do it in the right order. Anyone can do it, by the way. It doesn't matter if your character knows how to craft a potion or a sword, every character can craft any item in BG3. Meanwhile, Solasta tells you if you have the right items on the Crafting screen. It tells you on that screen as well whether your character is proficient or not. It tells you what tools you need. All of it is laid out easily for you to see and manage.
16. Time. Exists in Solasta. BG3, time is SO vague that you can take as long as you want to do whatever you want. In Solasta, time is measured and you have exhaustion and fatigue and so forth if you don't rest and eat properly every day. In BG3, whatever. No one cares. Goblins will take a month to attack the grove. It's okay. Just play around with the locals all you want. Crafting takes no real time at all. Make a 2 handed magic sword in some random basement in minutes.

Anyway, there's a lot more I could say, but the point that I'm making in this comment here is to show you what we're trying to say in regards to why Solasta's game mechanics are superior right now to BG3. Overall, Solasta's is cleaner, easier, more functional, more true to D&D 5e, more well balanced, more New Player friendly, more realistic, etc. etc. etc.

So you can say whatever you want to try to defend BG3's current UI and game mechanics, but overall, I hope these points will at least be considered by Larian. Again, I love BG3. I like it more than Solasta. I think overall it has so much more potential than Solasta. I want BG3 to do really well. So I am hoping that Larian will do SOMETHING to improve BG3's UI and game mechanics. It doesn't have to match Solasta. That's not what I'm saying. I just want them to make it more user friendly and more New Player friendly so that the game is cleaner, clearer, more understandable, and functions. If Larian doesn't want Solasta to actually come out on top as the #1 D&D 5e game this year, Larian is going to HAVE to fix the UI and game mechanics. Defend BG3 all you want, but there seems to be enough of us agreeing with this that they need to take it seriously.