I've played Larian games before even DoS1 but DoS1 was the first game that made me pay attention to the studio name, i spent thousand(S) of hours in divinity with different mods and i've been on larian's side since before they even got popular and dare i say mainstream.
I'm done with Baldurs Gate and here are some things i noticed that could greatly improve the game.
Make the game feel more immersive for PC-only-players
I've played tabletops in real life (back when i had a social life) + I've been playing almost every bigger name CRPG that came out on PC so i'm very used to cprgs and also DnD system but i'm also an " avid " pc gamer outside of my single player game adventures so i have a lot of friends who are not necessarily as nerdy as me and who are not familiar with DnD.
For a " PC " player it looks very un-intuitive when your warrior has 23 AC and is dodging every attack and then your Rogue is getting hit by everything with its 14 AC. I understand it because i know how the system works. A highly armored warrior can dodge attacks, the attacks can glance off of their armor and do nothing or be completely nullified by the armor itself which can be explained in a dnd/tabletop environment where your primary source is " Imagination " and " storytelling " but in a PC game where the primary way of giving the story is VISUAL then if you have your warrior be super heavily armored and somehow dodge everything > it can confuse people (who do not understand the idea behind it)
There is a very easy way to " fix " this. Make it so that half of the missed hits have a different animation where the warrior actually uses their shield to actively BLOCK an attack or the attack simply hits them but glances off of their armor > This is a MINOR change (adding an extra animation with some RNG chance for the animation to trigger between this and a dodge) but it will go a very , VERY long way in convincing non-DnD players on how the system works. This is one of the things thats been irking me from DnD games as far as i remember but mostly in stuff like Pathfinder i remember my warrior just being a ballerina on the field dodging everything when in reality the idea of high armor class is that some attacks are completely negated and do nothing.
The same can be done with damage. A lot of people complain about 6-24 damage because its so WILDLY inconsistent. In a DND setting you can have the game master explain stuff like " you throw melf's acid arrow but your enemy managed to react and tried to move out of the way, the arrow barely grazes them for 9 damage!" or the gamemaster can say something like " the enemy is completely taken by surprise and the arrow hits them directly for massive 22 damage". Etc, It can be justified, explained and reasoned by the game master on why its so inconsistent but for a PC player who is NOT a tabletop player and who is playing BG3 either cus of hype or someone told them its good (i know like 6 people who are not crpg/dnd players that are playing bg3 atm) it is very confusing why the same skill can do 6 damage or four times more damage, this could easily be solved with some visual help from the game itself. Add some grazing animation that would justify lower damage hits. It will barely take any resources to implement but it will go a long way for making the game more immersive and believable.
The importance of Iron Man mode and high difficulty
Okay so. I mentioned i have " thousands " of hours in Divinity but i did use mods (epic encounters)/difficulty mods because once you get to the game, it is fairly easy. Some people like being the hero of the story and having plot armor and just walking through the world but some people feel much more immersed if every single enemy has some weight behind them. In low difficulty for experienced players its pretty much faceroll and there's no thrill or excitement.. and without Ironman mode even if you're distracted or you make a mistake, you can just reload.
The reason why i played so much div 1/2 is because i played them BLINDLY with max difficulty and ironman mode, AS I DID FOR EVERY OTHER CRPG. I've had some runs in DoS1 where i get randomly cheesed by some Lava trap after 10 hours and lose my save game because of it. I've died so many times because i neglected an enemy or a terrain or an environment and i had to restart. I was punished for it and while at the time you may be salty, looking back this is what made the games so special for me. In the end i was so good at exploring things that i could " sense " traps and the way i moved changed, the way i fought and approached enemies changed after dying so much.
Right now, in BG3, i do not respect any encounter. I just kill them or if i do happen to die cus of bad luck or neglect i just load game. I hate save-scumming so much, it completely takes away all the thrill of the game. I do not respect anyone in this world, i went to the city and just got bored of lockpicking so i just started smashing down doors and if someone came to scold me i would either not respect them or not fear them at all. I have no fear from anything. I remember in one of my pillar of eternity 2 runs when i was playing on ironman and i met some God randomly and i was trashtalking him and he 1shot me and killed my group LMAO. I lost hours of my life for that save game but you know why this is good? Because the next time i get an encounter with someone whos supposed to be badass > I WILL BE MINDFUL OF WHAT I SAY AND IF I DO DECIDE TO BE COCKY ILL HAVE TWICE THE BALLS FOR IT.
You *must* understand the perspective of Ironman mode. It COMPLETELY CHANGES the entire approach towards the world, towards conversations, combat, party building and exploration. Traps are much scarier when you can't save scum, everything is so much more meaningful.
I do believe that Larian is probably planning on adding ironman when the game is more polished and has less issues and part of me thinks they did not add it yet because they don't want players to be salty/annoyed if they die to a random bug or a random issue with their iron man character, i hope im right but im making this thread in the hopes that someone from Larian will see it and that they will acknowledge the importance of this. The world is so much more fun when it is genuinely threatening, it puts things into perspective and it makes the journey feel more epic in the end.
Both DoS1/2 have ironman so i don't see why BG3 does not, as i said i believe it will but i hope that i can relay the importance of this mode in all sorts of similar games. Save scumming completely demolishes the video game experience for me..
and yes, you can tell me " you can just not save scum and play without it" and i probably will but it is not the same when you impose artificial restrictions on yourself.
those are my two major points,
i wanted to mention that there's no inventory quick arrange button (which is annoying) and in general the inventory is super messy.
Wanted to mention that randomizing gear a bit more can be great for game-replaying, it looks like all of my friends and me are using the same artifacts which is kind of a bummer, knowing all the existing items kind of takes away from the game
there's a lack of stats / can't see your crit rate and half of the traits are very misleading and its hard to test them when you can't see your stats properly
and lastly, this point may be a bit controversial and especially since nowadays its " unacceptable " for games not to be **fully voiced** but damn, sometimes i miss the days of games where the majority of the conversations were not voiced.. you could have long conversations with random side characters in some of the older CPRGS simply because it was just text and it did not need to be voiced. I'm not sure if there's a way to add more meaningful conversations with much, much, much more choices without having to voice them in 2023 cus a lot of ppl might whine bout it but personally i would like it much more.
I talk to too many characters who have literally nothing to say, i spent 90 minutes save scumming to save Harper Lassandra and then she doesn't even want to talk to me (lol)
