Nah. You all misunderstand. I love the game as is. Even if they change nothing, it's fine with me. Give me more content and races, etc.
Let me put in another way. From the beginning, this game was marketed as a D&D 5e game. It was said that the game is 5e with Larian as the DM. So why do you have so many people screaming for Larian to be more true to the 5e rules? It's because they marketed it as 5e.
If they want to make their own game and make it like DOS and DOS2, whatever. I've never played them. I don't really care. The game is fun. I enjoy it.
But, again, I'm making suggestions that I think would make the game better. You might agree. You might not. Larian might agree. They might not. Whatever. Fine by me. I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from is all and hoping they implement at least something I'm suggesting.
And the bottom line is, the game would be 10 times more exciting if Larian pushed players. Think of games where something is chasing you and if you don't hurry your butt up that thing is going to kill you. THAT'S the kind of thing this game needs. All I'm trying to say is that in the prologue they need something to encourage players to move their butts and not just casually stroll through the Mind Flayer ship. Have demons bust into the room you're in, giving chase. Have explosions push you onward. Again, if you initially limit item space, that would also help encourage people to move their butts and not stroll through the ship. You can't pick up much anyway, so move your booty. Lae'zel and the devourer nagging me does not make me want to move faster. It's just more annoying and I ignore them because I can take all the time I want right now.
I'm just saying, when I initially played the game, I was under the impression that time was important. I felt so much more excitement and a need to keep moving. When I realized that there was no real consequences for this, the game became so much less exciting. When I found out I was being penalized for pushing my characters because I was missing out on all sorts of character development because it is linked to long resting, I was even more upset.
Limiting characters makes everything more meaningful. If I can only heal HP with a health potion unless I rest, suddenly health potions are SO much more precious to me. I'm going to horde those babies as much as possible instead of selling most of them because they're worth more gold and I can heal with spells and food and rest between every battle without consequence.
If resting is done the way it is supposed to, 1 short rest = 1 hour and 1 long rest = 8 hours, and 2 long rests basically means 1 day. If I rest my brains out, and suddenly find that the mind flayer parasite is taking over my body, or the tieflings suddenly report that the goblins look like they're gearing up to invade the grove, I'm going to either replay the game with a bit more caution in the future, or in my current playthrough I might think twice about continuing to rest so much. I might kick my butt into gear faster to get to the goblin base and kill those leaders, like Wyll wants me to.
I at least hope they implement some of my suggestions as difficulty settings or something so that people like me can have more of that element of excitement. It's not the same to pretend like I have to rush when I, in fact, don't really need to. I can make it all up in my own head and pretend like my characters can't carry an infinite amount of stuff, but the reality is always there, staring me in the face. Thus, tension and danger and consequences for actions are missing from this game. The only time I even remotely feel like I might fail is during boss fights, and honestly those are more frustrating right now than exciting. It's not fun when a boss surprised your group, makes several actions, completely reduces one of your characters to 0 hp in one turn, and all before you can even act once. That's not exciting. That's frustrating, and that's why there are so many complaints about the game being too hard.
And, I ask you. What reward is there in playing the game better than someone else or even better than your last playthrough? If I'm an expert D&D player who can push my characters through most of Act 1 with very minimal resting because that's the more realistic way the game should be played because, again, there's a MIND FLAYER TADPOLE MESSING WITH YOU EATING YOUR BRAIN, shouldn't I be rewarded in some way for good gameplay? Instead, I'm rewarded more for NOT pushing my characters to move their butts and find a healer for their problem. I get better gear for casually exploring everything as if I don't have a care in the world, picking up endless amounts of stuff to sell and acting like I'm not stressed in the slightest. I even am more rewarded for dragging my feet because I get more dialogue character development if I DON'T hurry. That, to me, makes no sense at all. I should be rewarded with better dialogue, better treasure, better overall results, greater successes, etc. if I play the game better and push my characters harder. I should not be rewarded for disregarding time altogether and resting constantly so that I can easily wipe out enemies with refreshed spells, etc.
Likewise, if I'm totally messing up and failing a lot and having to rest a lot, shouldn't I be penalized by having more dreams about my secret crush and having goblins attack the druid's grove or druids kicking tieflings out, etc.? Shouldn't it stress me out MORE if I take my time and really just chill and vibe and sit on benches and watch the world pass me by? If I know goblins are coming in 3 days if I don't kill the gobbo leaders, I will set killing those leaders as a priority over visiting the hag or trying to get to the creche or whatever. Likewise, if I know that the more I long rest the more that brain bug is going to start taking me over, as I originally thought in the original playthrough, then I'm going to do just like I did in the original playthrough. I'm going to push my characters hard to find that healer. Excitement! Danger!
Right now, it's a fun game, but it's a casual one. I'm just saying it could be so much thrilling and exciting and edge of your seat simply by adding limitations and consequences and some semblance of time and realism.
And finally, why are people so against an Auto-Search feature? Why does everyone like spending so much time searching everything in the room? Again, when playing D&D, you roll a Perception roll. DM tells you if you find anything useful. You move on with the story and the game. It's all about pacing. You make people search every empty dang container to find a magic item or some more gold and it slows down the pace. The game becomes more slow and clunky as opposed to thrilling and full of excitement and danger.
I'm not even saying that they need to get rid of the ability to manually search everything. If you want to play that way, fine. Just at least give people like me the ability in the Options to have an Auto-Search function enabled so I don't have to search through all the crazy, boring stuff just to find useful items. I have never played a D&D game where searching for treasure was so time consuming. Item management too. Either put treasure in limited boxes that are obviously loot boxes and not going to ever be empty or give me an Auto-Search function that searches through all the empty contains, etc. for me. Give me SOMETHING to make it not so slow and tedious to find cool weapons, gold and such. Even a Search Area button that I can hit and there's a small cutscene showing your party searching the whole room for good stuff. Something to make the game a bit faster paced and less like a Hidden Objects game.
