Alright, let's see if I'll find the words to explain what the problem is...

 

When you left-click to move your party around, your mouse cursor marks the place of the middle of your front row (i.e. the middle top square in the 7x7 custom formation grid). The direction of the formation, however, is the same as the direct line from your party leader to the clicked spot.

 

This is not the correct way to do it, IMO.

 

The problem arises when your party leader's spot on the formation is not on the longitudinal line. See image below: my party leader is my main character, the lady with the bow, but her place in the formation is on the far left (relative to the formation). When I click just slightly left from Edér, trying to nudge the entire formation a bit to the left, the whole formation turns right almost 45 degrees. From the picture you can see the new direction is clearly the line from the archer to where I just clicked.

 

My suggestion is this: the new direction for party formations should be calculated from the average location of selected party members to the spot you click. I believe this would result in the least surprising and usually also the desired behaviour.

 

Any thoughts?

 

You know if you hold down the right mouse button, you can rotate the formation on the ground, yeah?

You know if you hold down the right mouse button, you can rotate the formation on the ground, yeah?

 

Thanks, I totally know that. That doesn't mean left-clicking shouldn't be handled properly, and I find it irritating that I have to constantly right-click-and-drag just to do what the game should do automatically. I can't think of a case where the current behaviour was the desired behavior when your party leader is not on the centre line on the formation.

No arguments there - With my "inverse T shaped" formation (Tank in front, healer behind - Everyone else in the back in a row) I constantly have to force stop my party because the formation calculations go completely out of whack.

 

More often than not the Tank is in the back - And this is with constant Right click positioning.

Party formation should also be saved for all scripted interactions so non-tanky PC won't get instagibbed the moment combat starts in one (fight on bridge in act 2, skaen cult, etc.)

Bump. This should be fixed.

Party formation should also be saved for all scripted interactions so non-tanky PC won't get instagibbed the moment combat starts in one (fight on bridge in act 2, skaen cult, etc.)

Just out of interest, are you for some reason leaving your squishy PC in party slot #1, which is default?

 

I haven't noticed any problems such as you mention while playing, and I suspect it may be because while I do use a custom formation while moving around, I rearrange the party's order of members such that the tanky ones are first in the party list and the squishy ones - such as a PC wizard - last.

Yeah this has been mentioned many times, back with the backer betas, and would be a nice quality of life fix.

 

Party formation should also be saved for all scripted interactions so non-tanky PC won't get instagibbed the moment combat starts in one (fight on bridge in act 2, skaen cult, etc.)

Just out of interest, are you for some reason leaving your squishy PC in party slot #1, which is default?

 

I haven't noticed any problems such as you mention while playing, and I suspect it may be because while I do use a custom formation while moving around, I rearrange the party's order of members such that the tanky ones are first in the party list and the squishy ones - such as a PC wizard - last.

 

 

Not too sure what's going on there, I've never had this problem either. Though it's happened many times to me in the IE games.