After finishing my first playthrough as a halfling wizard and browsing the forums a bit one of the issues I've seen come up has been, difficulty and how faithful the game is to the 5e ruleset.
From what I can see it's a pretty even split between people who like the changes and D&D veterans who would rather just see a faithful recreation. I guess I fall into the camp of why not both? Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 both had difficulty settings in place that would let you play an easier version for a more casual experience and then if you wanted something more authentic to 2e it simply removed any handicaps it was offering to the players like increased health or fudging dice rolls. If it was possible decades ago I'm sure it'd be possible now.
5e can be very punishing at lower levels and as a DM I've been known to fudge rolls for players just starting out. Having your party wiped by a trap or a group of goblins with some unlucky rolls simply isn't fun for new players so I can see Larian wanting to take steps to make it a bit easier and more enjoyable by incorporating other game design elements they know help mitigate that. Where they're at now though, I feel is an unhappy compromise where you still have the difficulty of a DM who doesn't like you very much but they're still bending the rules in strange ways that don't make sense to you.
If a difficulty scaling could be put in place that ranges from Pushover DM who keeps fudging rolls to keep his party alive cause they're all having a good time anyway to rules lawyer 'I don't care if you rolled that character an hour ago you failed your death saves and your body is unrecoverable' DM would make most people happy.
Another suggestion I wanted to add that's semi-related is the implementation of the respec system. One of the coolest features of the old Baldur's Gate games was the ability to import characters from other playthroughs. Being able to start the game at level 10 instead of level 1 would be a gamechanger for replayability. I'm sure some difficulty scaling would need to take place but I haven't met a single person who loves a game and then doesn't want a New Game + mode. The grind for experience at the beginning becomes an enjoyable power fantasy albeit less challenging but a different kind of fun that anyone playing with the rules lawyer DM wouldn't have experienced up till that point. Occasional unbalanced encounters to either show off how powerful or how underpowered for that matter your characters are can be fun if treated right.
I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.
