Better groups

powerfulally

As we can select characters by pressing numbers on a keyboard, I believe it would be more convenient to assign the groups to the keys by yourself, like in e.g. Warcraft 3 (ctrl+number, could be other key in BGEE of course, and then pressing number to make a group active). It shouldn't be very hard to implement and I think it could be useful, as the keys 1-4 are in better reach than e.g. 9. It shouldn't work in inventory though.

Ravel

The only problem I see with this, is that Ctrl groups, imo, don't lend well to this type of gameplay. You're almost exclusively either giving a move command to the entire group, or combat commands to single character - as the commands for a selection of characters are too basic (dialog, attack, stop) for the type of individual attention most classes demand in order to be used effectively. Even most "auto-attackers" still have abilities/items to activate, and thus need to be individually selected.

You could still add the functionality, and i'm sure some people would use it. I could see it being used mostly to control the scouting vs non-scouting members of your group, so that you aren't having to constantly scroll back and forth between them and drag-select them for each little piece that your scout has cleared.

But, like I said - I really don't see it being terribly useful beyond that, because of the lack of detailed commands for more than one selected character - combined with the fact that they each require more attention than those commands can provide.

Sadly, with the large list of features already on their plate... i'd rather see their time go to something else.

Daedalus87m

For singleplayer it's not that usefull IMO, but for multiplayer when you want to control more than one character and don't want to pause (it's annoying for others) it would be a big improvement if you could group your characters the way you want it.

scriver

This is something I often wish I could do as well. One example of situations when it would be convenient is when you want the group to attack someone, but not with the spellcasters (as to not disrupt spells). Then you have to pause and either select everybody then deselect the casters, or select the attackers one by one. It doesn't seem like much, but when you have to do it time after time after time it gets in the way of the fun.

powerfulally

@Ravel I think it would be effective to hold spellcasters at the back of your party, I could even walk like this switching between mages and fighters and if a battle appears they would be already at the back. It's more convenient to select the group first and then single character. I'm playing BG from beginning now and it really annoys me when Dynaheir walks into a battle and dies instantly if I don't select her and my archer character and then entire party, I could have it with two buttons and two clicks if the grops were set to my custom needs. Adding such functionality shouldn't be very hard, something like groups already exists with numbers over 6, the only thing I'd like to see is leaving a choice of these groups (maybe not with numbers, because 1-6 are still good for selecting single characters, but some other key would be fine as well).

Fluid29

I like this idea. Seems pretty useful for tactical maneuvres i.e. to keep chars with low hp in the back of the party. I would probably have 1st meelee, 2nd range, 3rd mages. Wasn't there a functionaIity in BG to select like the first two chars with num7 and then num8 was the 3rd and 4th character. Or sth similar. I hardly remember it. Furthermore i think one could change the actual position of the characters on the right bar. So this would maybe work as well for tactical purposes. Don't know how much other stuff the developer will implement. But then again a functionality like this shouldn't be too hard to implement.