Quest tracking is pretty loose I agree, but this problem isn't obvious until you get past Cyseal.
Once you left Cyseal, you'll realize how bad it gets. I literally had to rely on my co-op partner to guide me through cause it was impossible for me to keep track since I was uninvolved for most of the conversation.
In fact, I felt Larian want to make the game slightly open but as a result, many players went to areas out of sequence, faced enemies above their levels and get wrecked. Or encounter puzzles that they may not have a ready solution.
All I can say is, cut down on the puzzles - and less of a huge map where parties have to have to find a specific item to fetch. Make it more focused and compressed like Cyseal. And don't derail the players with too many details like telling them about THE END OF THE WORLD when they barely started on their first murder investigation.
What do you mean with with as focused as Cyseal? I was level 15 before I was even close to clearing the murder case and its not done even now by level 19 ;-)
De-Railing works fine right from the beginning. Actually the only moment in the game that was really challenging was in Cyseal when I reached the light-house and that boss was 3 level above us and even than I can not say that it would have hit us out of nowhere, we knew that his boss was not meant to be done at such a low level.
The high level enemies are sometimes a little challenging, but they are not really unfair ever. And I am running a party that spend not a single point onto perception.
The game is quite fair to players that roam around in areas which they do not belong in. The only exception of fairness might be the beach with the mines. Those did catch us by total surprise, though the level of the npc was a big hint to stay away.
