But again, that's my point. They weaken the game by minimizing the sense of urgency instead of increasing it and creating more intensity. The game would be so much more exciting if they put time limits on things. They don't even have to be harsh time limits. They just need to be realistic ones. Maybe 6 days is too much for the gobbos to attack. Although I think if you do 12 long rests = 6 days, that's a pretty huge amount of time that you still have to complete the quest.
I am constantly rewarded for bad roleplaying and punished for good roleplaying. If I play this game in a way that makes logical sense, hurrying to get the tadpole out of my head, I miss out on tons of stuff. If I take my time and not care about the invader in my skull and ignore everyone who is telling me to find a healer quickly, I get lots of better gear and story stuff. That is the exact opposite of how any game should be. That's exactly the opposite of how D&D is supposed to be played and ANY RPG. Reward good gaming. Punish bad gaming. Don't punish good gaming and reward bad gaming. Don't call this a D&D game if you aren't going to reward players for good roleplaying. Don't even call it an RPG because you aren't truly roleplaying if you are just playing a game where you run around leisurely and collect whatever you want and ignore the story. The story IS the RPG. That's the whole point. You put yourself in the role of a character you created.
I don't care what way you slice it, if I'm going into the hag's lair to save Mayrina, and I rest for 8-20 hours before facing the hag, Mayrina shouldn't be there no more. If I don't save the Tieflings by the time the druids complete their ritual, they should be kicked out and slaughtered by the goblins. That is the story. That's what everyone keeps telling me in the game. Hurry and kill the goblins or stop the ritual or everyone is going to die.
So take the dang tadpole out of it even and just take it from that point of view, cause it seems people are getting hung up on the dumb tadpole. If you don't kill the gobbos in a certain amount of time they are going to show up and kill everyone. The druids right now take days upon days upon days to complete the ritual, and I'm ending day all the time to make a week or more go by and they are STILL doing the ritual. I'm like. "Yeah. I'm not worried, Tieflings. I'm gonna sit on a bench for a while, sleep all I want, maybe stroll along the road and so forth cause I know as a player that those gobbos are never coming and those druids are never gonna kick you out. Unless I actually join the villains, those gobbos are never going to attack.
And that, right there, is another punishment. I actually found the game so much more epic when I chose to be evil and agreed to help the gobbos attack the druids' grove. That was a cool battle at the gate when I betrayed the gobbos and still wound up helping fight back. So, I want Larian to let me have this fight if I don't kill the gobbos in time. Give me the ability to help defend the grove when the gobbos attack because I ran out of time. So if I want to take all the time I want so that I can help fight gobbos with the help of the tieflings and/or druids, then let me do so. But again, that battle should have more gobbos and the druids should be either helping, if I kicked Kahga out of her position, or they should push us out of the grove so that we have to find another place to defend ourselves in or die.
How would this sense of time and realism hurt the game? Why so much resistance to it? The only reasoning I can see as to why anyone would resist this idea is that they want the ability to leisurely explore the world and not feel rushed. But this approach only slows down the pace of the game and it isn't even remotely believable as a story goes. The GOBLINS FIND THE GROVE...RIGHT AWAY. They know where it is. It should only take them a few days at most to prepare the attack to wipe out the tieflings and the druids. Same with the ritual. It's already started. It shouldn't take a week or more for them to complete it. No matter how much you might want to just stroll along and explore, that's not the way the story goes. That's not how it has been laid out.
It would only make it more exciting and meaningful and allow people so many different consequences to their actions if they reward good playing and punish bad playing. Maybe the first time I play, I do so well that I don't even trigger the gobbo attack on the grove. The next time I play, I don't do as well and the gobbos attack the grove and I have to choose to either try to save Halsin or help defend the Tieflings. I don't even kick Kahga out of her position, so the Tieflings and I have to fight the gobbos maybe in Blighted Village or at the Dank Crypt or something like that. Maybe the third time, I still have to fight the gobbos because I didn't hurry enough, but then I managed to kick Kahga out so we fight at the grove gate.
So I'm talking about excitement level and pace of the game and intensity of gameplay. It still could give you enough time to explore and complete all the side quests, but only if you play the game well. If you don't play the game well, you might fail to complete a number of quests and therefore miss out on rewards for completing the quests.
And that's another point. I should be rewarded with the best items after I complete a quest. So after fighting the hag in a timely way, I should be rewarded with the best gear. If I beat her after Mayrina is already sent away, I should get less good gear. Still good gear for beating the hag, but not as good as if I'd saved Mayrina too. I should be able to pretty much ignore the useless gear all around the world because if I beat the bosses I get all the best gear anyway. The rest of the gear and items in the game should be stuff that is nice to have if I pick it up.
I'm honestly of two minds about how much tension I want from a roleplaying game, but while I don't know if I would want the experience you're describing, I do think the experience you're describing would be a very satisfying one. Honestly it's a problem I feel like most RPGs have to some degree or another, though BG3 feels particularly notable. They all tend to have quests that inspire urgency, but exploring the world is part of the fun and point of the experience. I feel like the Dragon Age games, particularly DA2 and DA:I did the best job of avoiding that pitfall and justifying spending time exploring. 2 was focused on you just living your life, with arcs going on in the background but the main story was, in terms of narrative, about you as Hawke making a life and how your actions and the world around you respond to each other. Whereas in DA:I, you're kind of in a holding pattern against your main antagonist, trying to errode his power base on different fronts and needing to amass a power base of your own to do so, so ever side quest was in some way in service to that central goal. So you almost never feel that dissonance that's at play in BG3.
