This was a well written. I'm really tired of reading the same rage threads over and over. So, thank you for putting this in a nice digestible format.
That being said, I've seen a lot of posts saying that magic is underpowered, rogues are underpowered, etc. To be honest, I felt like my Ranger was my only viable character. I've also seen another poster asking that Rogues be nerfed because he felt they were too powerful. I'm not suggesting that I'm right. I just don't think there's an actual balance issue. Instead, I suspect that certain playstyles make better use of certain characters. I probably subconsciously try to use my party in ways that makes the most use of my favorite character.
The only other thing I'll point out is that a couple of these are contradictory. Not trying to be rude, just trying to nail down what the actual problem is.
Melee is not viable, but combat is too easy. Could you elaborate on this a little because I don't see how both can be true. Like if all your melee characters are getting downed in battle... it's not too easy. I also suspect people feel that the combat is too easy/hard because of the unpredictability of the dice rolls. It's not the kind of slow and steady slog like in most RPGs. There's a psychological aspect too, if combat works out for you when it's based on a dice roll you think it's easy. If it doesn't you think it's too hard. Neither is true... it's luck. If you have other information to change my mind I'm all ears.
So there are too many empty containers, but also too many consumables, and too much actual wealth so you don't have to buy anything. Afaik all of the containers are able to be opened. So... to change that would fundamentally change the game. I'm not sure what the fix is here. I wasn't drowning in money and just bought accessories for my party when I had a lot of equipment to sell.
I honestly think the fix is optimizing the inventory interface, as you said. Its very clunky right now and you wouldn't feel like you were wasting time. I know that sorting items from a box is way to clumsy right now. Click to open, right click, send to whichever character needs it for each item, skipping over trash then 'X'ing out of the persistent box is crazy. If you could just walk away from the box and have it closed, you're not wasting time in that menu.
These are good to know. Must've just been how I played. Melee can be unviable and combat still be easy. I played with Shadowheart, Gale, and Wyll. I tried Astarion and Lae'zel for a while but just felt like in general melee got wrecked by all the fire, either from enemies or from aoe on my own consumables/spells, so it wasn't worth using. The encounters outside of the Underdark were really easy. Like, I think you could go with pretty much anyone in your party and easily make it through everything not in the Underdark. But once I hit the Underdark, I felt like there was absolutely no way I could fight with melee. It was all from a distance. But like you said, totally could've been how I played. I could be wrong.
As far as empty containers go, maybe I should rephrase it and say that it's not fun to check 15 barrels that are empty. Like after I check 4 empty barrels, I wanna know if all 15 are empty or not. So still be able to open them, but have them all marked as empty instead of having to click through each one.
I might have just not looked close enough at what NPCs had for trading too, I dunno. I'll make another playthrough and pay attention to that.
