Speed-up during the turn-base battle system?

[PrinceJelly]

I would personally like to see a fast-forward button on a hostiles turn.

A few spoilers up ahead!


If I was re-doing a battle, dying or going back to an old save due to a crash or something.

It was especially draining it is during the goblin battle within the fortress.

There are some bugs during that battle, two to three hostile AI (I think they were the elven characters) were standing in place for a very long time before making a move or ending their turn. (Not sure if that's fixed now pardon me.) A notable character would be Torturer Spike would not move at all, he would just stay in the one corner until my characters could reach him at the other side of the fortress.

I really do like the battle system, but an additional button whenever encountering a large group would be helpful.

Thank you so much for the game Larian and all your hardwork!!
I really enjoy and love the game so far.

[Razorblade]

Fast forward systems speed up animations, not AI processing. Faster animations aren't going to fix the AI bottleneck that is the source of the issue.

[dolby]

yeah no improvement in patch on this, sadly... BG 3 is one of the slowest TB games out there combat wise. And the Ai is just dumb as a doorknob. Not great on both counts, both need a fix...

heh, It feels like we are geting some crazy camera action with animations but that's not the case at this point that would be welcome. it's just Ai thumb twiddling and doing god knows what...

[Alealexi]

The AI was faster in this play through than in the last patch. This is a good sign that they are making the AI faster at least.

[BW022]

Originally posted by PrinceJelly:

I would personally like to see a fast-forward button on a hostiles turn.

That might be counter productive. Yes, you might save a few seconds, but it increases the chance you miss something important and then have to spend minutes and minutes scrolling around, looking at combat logs, or end up making suboptimal moves. If someone casts hold person on you and you miss it... you'll drag the combat out far longer trying to get do something. And you'll be frustrated as heck.

One of the top things in table top which draws out combat is players not paying attention. You target the wrong goblins (missing that goblin #12 was already hit), have to have the other players or DMs explain the situation again, etc., etc.

My list, other than the technical, is to just learn from the table-top games.

Technical
* Camera. Too much time scrolling around.
* Tab Targeting. Too much time scrolling and panning to control the able.
* 3D. Use it less. It takes way too much time getting LOS.
* Movement. Detached from attacks. Too much accidental moving into terrible positions because it decides to move you before attacking.
* Movement. No grid. Way to much time (and error prone) knowing where you can and can't move, wasting movement, drawing unnecessary opportunity attacks, etc. See Solasta.
* Dice rolls. These seem a lot slower than Solasta.

Standard Table Top Solutions
* Less enemies. Use waves, use other effects to suggest numbers, minions of you have to, etc.
* Smaller maps. Too much time wasted scrolling, too much time moving, too few chances to use AoE damaging or crowd control spells, forces ranged combat too much. Large BG3 maps also force more panning and LOS targeting.
* Enemies often way too spread out and starting too far way.
* Lower creatures hit points. 5e would never have waves of 30hp goblins or three ogres at 3rd-level. Even if you have advantage its still a slog to get through 200-400hp.
* Remove advantage/disadvantage with height. Makes high ground and ranged combat to unbalanced. If you start a combat in the 'wrong' position, its a time waste or save scrum.
* Surrender/flee. Few monsters ever just flee, forcing you to waste time finishing off every last creature when the fight is not in doubt.
* Vary encounters. Have a lot of easy ones and then one hard one. Players are more likely to appreciate a two hour slog if they just finished 3-4 thirty minutes (easy) fights which still advanced plot.
* Have other ways of ending the combat or goals other than killing monsters. Maybe your goal is to get through a room and close the door behind you.

There are lots of 5e methods to speed up combat.

[Myunihausen]

Very good post BW022, I agree. Whether they do it the right way or just cheese it with a fast forward button, I really hope they at least address it. The game moves so damn slow while waiting for the enemy I start finding other things to do between my turns.

Also, and this might not affect Larians story part of the game, but may greatly hurt what players can create with the DM kit. The large scale battles that are common for the upper levels will not be possible at this rate.

I'm glad more and more people are talking about this.

[PrinceJelly]

That's an amazing Idea to speed up combat, great post BW022! Thanks for your input on a technical standpoint. That would make a lot more sense to level out the enemies, especially slog since they are optional battle anyhow.

A lot of the bugs may had happened because I first destroyed the goblin drums before initiating the fight.

Completely agree on the accidental moving part, it can be extremely hard to till if they're in range or not.
I ran often into that a lot while playing DOS2 and I wish Larian could fix this in BG3 even with tactical view it really did not help.

I can understand large scale battles if the team was spread out, however that would then need you to plan that out before the battle (if you only knew what was happening due to a walk through or going by an old save to redo your approach on tactics.)

[N/A]

Originally posted by BW022:

-snip-

Game would be way closer to what I hoped it would be if these suggestions were applied. Good post