OK. I've replayed now testing my suggestions. Here is the result (sorry for the length. Obviously I care too much about this game):
I didn't actually have to long rest until after the Dank Crypt. I didn't even need to short rest before then either. So, again, if we untied dialogue from long resting, I'd be able to trigger Gale's mirror image dialogue and Shadowheart's "I'm not sure this is such a good idea" dialogue after the first long rest which I could have done after the Dank Crypt. This would make more sense for a long rest but not necessarily the end of our first day. Again, we're fighting against time. Shadowheart even says there is a mind flayer tadpole in our heads that are going to turn us into a mind flayer, so we need to hurry and get a healer, and Gale urges us to do the same too. So it makes more sense to rest for about 8 hours and then it is evening. Then we move on during the evening, meet Lae'zel, fight the goblins at the gate to the Druid's Grove, talk to everyone in the grove, fight harpies, sing a song with the bard, etc. After all this, my characters have pretty much exhausted their spells and need another long rest. So I long rested. This would make sense to be the end of the first full day. At camp, trigger Gale's second dialogue about Go to Hell along with other dialogues triggered by this point. Good first day. Makes a lot more sense than saying this was 2 days instead.
I also tested item management. I only picked up valuable items that were either weapons, armor, food, potions, special items, etc. I dropped all keys after using them and didn't pick up books and tomes, spoons, bones, knives, etc. I didn't need more than 30 inventory slots for items in total between backpacks I picked up and so forth per character. I was also able to buy the Armor +1, not the Leather Armor but I think it's Scale Male +1 bought from the Tiefling Blacksmith. I also purchased metal boots and helmet for my druid. Didn't need all that useless junk to lug around, painstakingly manage and sell. Wasn't needed. I also didn't use food in combat. Actually, didn't use food at all. Used only a few potions too. Still had like 6 potions remaining. Didn't even short rest once. So, all the useless junk is truly not needed in the game at all.
So, after testing, I still think that the game would be so much better if Larian did the following (tweaking the list a bit):
1. 2 long rests a day, not 1, with 2 short rests between long rests. So 4 short rests a day. Again, long rest = 8 hours. Short rest = 1-3 hours. So between 2 short rests and 1 long, that's roughly 12 hours. If you actually play the game for about an hour and short rest once or twice and then long rest, it would make sense that it is about 12 hours. Thus, it makes sense to have 2 long rests and 4 short rests in a single 24 hour day.
2. Long rest changes day to night or night to day so we can move about by night. I know many think it isn't important or needed, and if push comes to shove it's not, but I will fight for it nonetheless. It is SO much better for immersion and for stealth missions against enemies and makes SO much more sense to me. Again, in real life, I would NOT be trying to sneak into a goblin camp to kill their leaders in broad daylight. That's just suicide. Night gaming would really make the game SO much more fun and realistic. I'd love to stalk about with Astarion during his prime hunting time; at night.
3. Either remove food altogether or give it more purpose. I honestly didn't need food at all even when I didn't pick up every little thing I could. So either give it a purpose, like you expend 1 food item per person per short rest and maybe 2 food items per person per long rest, or implement an exhaustion/fatigue system and food staves it off or helps you recover from it or something. Right now, food is just kinda pointless. If you want to make the game easier for new players, you have to create difficulty levels and the easier the difficulty level the more potions you give players, not food.
4. If people don't like random encounters, then maybe it should just be that resting is restricted when someone is in a hostile area. The point of random encounters is all about preventing players from basically killing a goblin leader and then resting for an hour or two in the heart of a hostile goblin base. That just makes no sense. "I killed 1 of the goblin leaders. Is that okay with you other goblin leaders? Is it okay if I just rest now for an hour or two in your lair? Thanks." No. I get why you want to let short rest be anywhere. It's easier for newer players and cuts down on the need to find a safe zone. Still, hostile areas should restrict this ability. It would mean that if my characters can't get back to a waypoint then they can't rest, either short or long. So if there are hostile goblins between me and a known waypoint, I can't just fast travel to camp and rest. Therefore, I can't just short rest either because enemies are lurking about. I need to try to sneak out or find a safer spot to rest. So, in my example of the goblin base, if I kill the gobbo leaders, and I know I can't just waltz out the front entrance or I'm going to get attacked by a thousand goblins, and I can't just short rest or teleport to camp, I might need to find my way into the Underdark until I come to the waypoint down there before I can finally short rest, OR I might have to try to find another way out, OR find a corner of the goblin base that is safe. What's the point of this? Makes more sense AND makes the game more exciting. If I know my characters are already really weak and can't do much, and I'm hunting for a resting spot, I am much more on edge than if I can just rest anywhere whenever I want or teleport anywhere whenever I want. I'm going to be SO much more careful wherever I go if I know that around any corner I could run into an enemy who might finish me off. If you want the game to be truly exciting, you have to restrict things like resting so that people are actually scared for their heroes that they might die at any point. Right now, I know I can teleport anywhere at any time and rest. I literally killed the gobbo leaders one time and teleported to the Druid's Grove and sold all my gear and went about my business. It was like I just strolled right in, wiped them out, and strolled right out as if it was no big deal. I actually found the evil path much more rewarding because at least that was more exciting when the gobbos attacked the Druid Grove and I chose to betray them and fight for the Tieflings instead. At least that was an epic fight where if I failed everyone would die. So I don't need potions or healing items much at all right now in BG3 because there's no restriction to resting endlessly. I only need a few emergency potions so that during combat I have the ability to heal faster. That's it. Restricting players provides greater danger which thus creates greater excitement. No restrictions makes the game too easy and items practically useless.
5. Untie dialogue from Long Rests/Camp. In other words, let me trigger dialogues as soon as they are available without ending the day. Regardless of what someone has to say, instead of saying "I'm tired, let's call it a day", maybe they could say, "Hey. Can we talk?" Even if important dialogue must be tied to camp, let me trigger the dialogue by fast traveling to camp without necessarily ending the day. The point is that I don't want to End Day every time someone has something important to say to me. That is SO contrary to what is happening to the characters. It just seems so stupid to me to End Day just because Gale wants to say "Go to Hell." Like other players, my first few playthroughs really skipped a lot of this because I was fearing that if I ended day too many times I'd turn into a Mind Flayer. Even when people said it was different, I didn't believe them. I was thinking, "You don't know. You haven't the foggiest idea what's happening to us. I'm not going to risk it. I'm going to end day as little as humanly possible so I don't move 1 step closer to whatever is happening to us." So I missed a ton of dialogue because I was playing it smart and doing well enough in the game that I didn't need to End Day frequently. Basically, I was punished for doing what I should be doing.
6. I would still love an Auto-Search Area feature. I'm not asking for much. Larian has already put this into place in many areas when it comes to finding traps or hidden objects. Dank Crypt lever to open the door being one such example and the traps in the Dank Crypt being another. Make it so that wherever I go my character is Auto-Searching for useful items so I'm not being forced to play Hidden Objects games in every inch of the world. Items Larian wants me to find should be lower difficulty, along with common weapons and equipment, so I'm sure to find them, and items that are more like bonuses should be higher difficulty. Useless junk like forks and knives should simply not be highlighted. If you want, keep it so people can still pick them up, but at least make it so that I can find the good stuff easier.
The Necromancer's Lair Key is, again, the perfect example. To find the key, I had to carefully hover my mouse just right over the key in order to highlight it and pick it up. Even when I did finally manage to spot it, I tried clicking on it and instead accidentally picked up an item near it. Highlight important items if I succeed in a Perception check and make it easier to pick up important/special/useful items.
So even if you don't get rid of all the useless junk, help me find good stuff easier so I'm not wasting so much time carefully searching every little corner of every little room in the game. Some might like this, but I've read many posts of people who do not. It slows the pace of the game down tremendously. Since I now know (well, not really) where all the items are that are good, I was able to speed run up through the Druid's Grove pretty quickly, since I was only picking up useful items and ignoring all the junk and since I knew where everything was. SO much more entertaining and less troublesome from an items management perspective and hunting/searching for useful items perspective. The game went along at a much faster pace because I wasn't stopping and searching through every empty container, etc.
I'm just saying, if you want to make the game more fun and exciting, especially for new players, you really should make it less cumbersome to find cool stuff. If you really value finding every cool item in the game, make sure you create a character who is proficient in Perception.
7. Inventory management efficiency. OK. So, I did discover some issues with my idea of limiting slots. It is pretty annoying having to have only 30 slots of inventory because you can't just have 1 character pick up everything and then redistribute it amongst the others as needed. Still, I think that Larian should at least give items their proper weights. Ring Mail should be 40 lbs, not 20. Leather Armor should be 10, not 5. It seems like weight is halved and characters' carrying capacities are doubled. I say that we should at least keep to the D&D 5e rules for this, if no other restrictions. Items should weigh what they're supposed to and characters should be limited by their Strength times 5. If you want to carry more than Strength times 5 in lbs then you get your movement reduced by 10 in combat and you move around the map slower out of combat. Hit the next Encumbrance level and get your speed reduced again, etc. By carrying only what I needed to, it made a lot more sense from a weight perspective. I distributed out the armor amongst different players and at most each character was carrying maybe 1 extra suit of armor and a few weapons each, and I still kept the weight under their Encumbrance thresholds even IF the weight was what it should be.
So it can be done and you can still manage the game just fine with these greater restrictions.
What is the purpose of restricting? Roleplaying games are supposed to be immersive. That is the whole point of the game. You are supposed to put yourself in your character's shoes. Having the ability to pick up endless items, carrying around six suits of ring mail because they only weigh 20 lbs, etc. is very unrealistic. Sure, it's a video game. Sure, it's all pretend. Whatever. That's not the point. The point is that the game is supposed to have some semblance of reality so that players can become their characters. It is supposed to have restrictions of some kind because the real world has restrictions. It is difficult to become your character when you have no restrictions at all. You can't get into a box if the box has no boundaries. Likewise, you can't get into a character if the character has no limits.
Besides this, again, it's all about human nature. I find it way too easy to just pick up everything because I can and it's easier to hit Take All then to select each item I want separately. So then I wind up finding myself naturally searching every inch of the room for every little item and picking up everything because I don't want to miss anything and I can pick up endless things without consequence. Then, before long, I naturally find myself with tons and tons of useless crap in my inventory that I have to waste time managing. Now I have to make sure that I carefully sell each thing I want to sell and carefully NOT sell things I don't want to sell. (I've made that mistake more than a few times, selling something I didn't want to because I thought it was useless junk because I simply had too many useless things in my cue that I was selling.)
In other words, I have to go against my grain to NOT pick up everything. If I don't, I have to manage every stupid little pointless thing and it wastes my time when it is truly unnecessary to do all this. If I can get through the game without having to manage all this stuff, why make me even have to deal with all this useless stuff? It's just pointless clutter that distracts from the story and overall excitement of the game.
That is the whole point I'm trying to make. Limiting items in the inventory forces players to not pick up so many things that they have to then sift through. Limited items means limited need to sort items and sift through them and so forth. If I can only have maybe 30 items, I don't have as many items that I need to then sort through, etc. Again, though, I'm fine with an unlimited number of items slots, but having the weight limits then at least restricts me a bit more from being able to carry around so much useless junk. If I have to drop 10 lbs of stupid stuff so I can pick up another suit of Leather Armor, bye bye 10 lbs of useless junk.
Still, I have to agree with many. Overall, getting rid of the junk would just negate any need for all of this. I used to think allowing players to actually interact with their environment, to pick up forks and knives and such, was such a cool idea. Having it in game, though, is only fun for about five minutes. After that, it becomes tiresome, and when it prevents me from finding cool items because they're hidden amongst the clutter and I have to carefully point my mouse on the cool stuff to find them and pick them up, now it is much more important to me to get rid of the junk.
But, I get it. For pack rats, fine. Leave all the junk in the game and make it so Take All still picks up everything. I get that Larian is trying the best they can to make everyone happy and ultimately if I don't want to pick up everything I don't need to. I'm fine with that PROVIDED Larian gives me something to easily dump the crap. In other words, you already have the Items tabs. Tweak the tabs and ensure that all items default to their proper categories. Categories could be: All, Weapons and Armor, Potions and Magic Items (such as magic necklaces, rings, etc.), Food and Drinks, Wares (like spoons, forks, plates), Key Items (such as story items that will be needed for the future), and Miscellaneous (for those things that really just don't go anywhere). Then give us a Drop All button and a Sell All button for each tab category (All and Key Items being exceptions so you don't accidentally drop or sell things you don't want to). So if I pick up a bunch of spoons, knives, forks, etc., let me Drop All Wares so I don't have to lug them around if I don't want to (when not at a merchant). Likewise, give me a Sell All button for each category. So if I want to Sell All Food and Drinks at a vendor because I need just a bit extra gold for that Great Axe +1, I can do so with the click of a button. Likewise, if I want to Sell All Weapons and Armor not equipped, I can do so with a quick button click. Add to this that anything put in Backpacks should be excluded from Drop All and Sell All so that backpacks are more valuable for storing and saving items. Put all the stuff you want to make sure you don't sell in packs. Then when you hit Drop All or Sell All in a category, you don't drop or sell the item because it's in a pack.
And again, Multi-Select, Drag And Drop Items feature is still a must have. Can't budge on this one. We need a way to just move a few items at a time rather than 1 item at a time or all items at a time. However Larian wants to do this, we need Multi-Select for items.
9. Reduce the repetitive conversations. This is also an annoyance in the game. We need to cut out all the "I care about our lives; our FUTURES!" type convos. Ambient noise instead, please. And shorter phrases when you reclick on people like merchants. A simple, "How can I help you?" is all I need, or just don't have the character say anything. Let me click on them and go right into the merchant screen. No convo after the first one. If I reclick on someone I've already spoken to, instead of repeating the last thing they said, a simple, "This person has nothing more to say" would do. That, at least, lets me know that I'm done with that person. I talked to them all I can. For important mission-quest characters, they could maybe repeat the quest for you; providing important details in case you forgot them. Otherwise, just silence the repetitiveness, please.
How is this? Does this make more sense? Is this a better set of tweaks? What do you all think?
