Yeah, i feel there could be more player involvement (reactions atm are just setup as automatic you dont have to decide anything during combat) and more tactical choice (a lot of universal bonus actions getting tired fast, the fact that i dont really have to position my chars around the enemies, they can just superhero jump away and back anytime with the disengage addition) than it is in the current build. Also there are some unneccessary clicking (backstab, dash double-click), small UI frustrations to be sorted out, but i dont worry about these, its still EA. Regarding universal actions i know Swen mentioned during an interview they tried out the dnd way and a lot of other alternatives and they felt with the dnd way player turns got too limited. I get their point but its kind of a double-edge sword, as now many people feel they went to the other direction too much and it already gets repetitive (and it will be a really long game designed for multiple playthroughs).
One thing i believe they could think about to improve on (also related to tactical level of combat) is the resource (spells, special skills, actions) management acpect and the pacing of the game. Lot of dnd rules, classes, enemies are designed around this aspect, so Larian either start to change each of these and get into a loop of further complaints or they have a think about how this can be brought closer to make it more exciting. At the moment the narrative and the tactical part of the game overlaps due to the camp including both (long rest and story progress) which makes this even more complicated to tweak but they might be able to separate the two. Im really looking forward to a DNd game which nails this aspect and the pacing is one (party heals, spells re-prepared) long rest/two-three-four encounters and combat decisions, preparation and resource management therefore feels very meaningful.
I have to say, the effects, sounds and visuals are spectacular and the animations are fluid (though again, the Jumping animation seems just a little too unnatural to me), there are a variety of spells and actions (and some of them have really cool gameplay additions not just flat damage) which is nice so the foundation is cool but i also feel the whole thing could be MUCH more tactical even with small tweaks. This is still early EA so i believe they are experimenting with these things still, im hoping we will end up with some customizable rules.
I was pleasantly surprised when they admitted they had to change the original shown team-based initiative system because testers felt the longer times of lack of player involvement while enemies moved together kind of killed their interest, i think that was a good direction as they listened to feedback and even improved on it (with the function that chars can act at the same turn if next together) to make it more tactical. They also commented that new version is also spicing up decision making on actions rather than just using the same winner tactic over and over.
Oh this got longer than i planned. Anyway, due to the above im fairly optimistic, they always iterate on things, fingers crossed we get a "our plans for combat tweaks" community update in the near future so they can let us know how they plan to approach the common complains.
