I know without a doubt Larian will not make normal difficulty use core rules, but how much hand holding do you think is required to keep 5e within modern normal expectations? And how much easier/harder from Core do you think they will give us?
Personally I don't think you can measure difficulty in terms of "core rules" usefully 'cos video games and table top games work very differently; for example monsters are controlled by stupid AIs rather than evil DMs so they need to be buffed significantly to afford any sort of challenge, there is no perma-death so encounters need to be balanced so key encounters are more likely than not to result in party wipe on first attempt or the game will have no tension or sense of danger (you have to be scared your whole party will perish in a video game adaptation, not just your own character).
If we assume the game will be balanced roughly in line with DOS2 in terms of overall difficulty then the dice issue may become a major talking point amongst many players coming to D&D from that game (which will probably be quite a lot) mainly 'cos missing was not really a thing in DOS2. I'd say we can expect whining on two fronts:
1. As with PF: Kingmaker folk will complain some of the monsters are too strong, too many buffs, impossible to beat (especially early game).
2. As with XCOM folk will complain the evil and/or incompetent devs have "rigged" the dice against them
Although whine 2 didn't apply, whine 1 was applicable to DOS2 (for example with the frogs and crocodiles in Fort Joy). Did it matter, did DOS2 sales suffer? Did they hell. Those of us with experience in these games helped new players out so they could win some of those early difficult encounters on release, that put them is good stead for the rest of the game really, the knowledge spread, millions of people bought the game frogs and crocs notwithstanding.
Whine 2 will come into it more I think with BG3 and there are two parts to this to look out for IMO:
a) in combat one effect of the game being TB rather than RTwP is that the consequences of missing a single individual swing/cast/action are likely to be much more serious than in PF: Kingmaker for example (.cos like-for-like TB is much easier than RTwP so encounters are balanced differently to compensate e.g. individual enemy attacks are much more deadly than in a typical RTwP scenario). This is likely to lead to much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about RNG a la XCOM. As with XCOM folk will have to learn that discretion is often the better part of valour and those of us that have some experience in D&D systems will need to help newcomers to figure out how to fight clever and not just swing blindly. As both DOS2 and PK: Kingmaker showed, if a game is good enough, fun enough, most folk will put in the effort to learn how to play it.
b) outside of combat the skill and dialog checks are going to be a bigger problem for BG3 I suspect. I think a lot of players will really, really want certain NPC interactions go a certain way and are going to find it very difficult to accept failing rolls for them thus routinely resorting to save scumming. Similarly players will really, really want to know what's in that chest, behind that door, up on that ledge and find it very hard to accept being denied that knowledge by RNG.
It is this one, whine 2(b) if you like, I see as being the biggest potential problem in BG3 for a lot of players. The combat one, whine 2(a) if you like, can be overcome by learning to fight well and altering the odds in your favour. But you can't do anything about a one-shot WIS or CHA roll in the middle of a dialog. A lot is going to depend on the severity of the consequences of failing such rolls and/or their reversibility down the track IMO.
