Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian! Please stop punishing good roleplaying

Yes! Great points!!

Did you watch the opening? If that happened to me, and people described what's supposed to happen as flesh turning to gore and face splitting open, I would NOT be casually exploring the world. Id be rushing like crazy to find a cure, and my sleep would be MESSED up. I would have a hard time resting, not resting every 10 minutes of gameplay just so I can trigger all the character development.

The fact that people keep saying that they were told it's not urgent makes my point for me. They can say that you should not be rushed because there is no sense of real urgency in the game. There's no consequences for chilling and gibing other than being nagged by some people who even tell you that's nobody knows what is really happening. THEY DON'T KNOW.

Im sorry, if this was RL, I don't think a single person would be stopping to search every little container in the game. They'd be moving their butts, working as fast as possible to find a cure.

That is why, in other posts, I suggested 2 long rests a day. In D&D a long rest is 8 hours. Not 20. It least 2 long rests a day gives players the ability to rest twice in 1 day, recover spells and HP. This would slow down how much time you are actually expending by resting and recovering. So 2 long rests = 1 day, 6 = 3 days. Thus, after 6 long rests, gobbos attack the grove or something.

Now I'd like night play, but if they don't do that because it's too hard, fine. I can rise with the dawn, adventure for an hour or two, long rest 8, adventure and hour or two and long rest 8 with a few 1 hour short rests in there to equal 24 hours. I can even say I did all my adventuring during the day. But this way, at least, im not playing for 10 minutes, resting 24 hours, playing for 20 minutes, resting for 1 hour, playing for 5 minutes, resting 24...it makes no sense to me.

But, again, the point is reward me for pushing myself and challenging my character's. Give me more dialogue, better equipment, etc. for good gameplay, for staying true to the story. That is how D&D is supposed to be played. You don't reward players for trailing off on side quests and completely ignoring the urgency of the main quest. Good DM's are supposed to reward good role playing. They don't punish them for it.

The pace if this game would only be helped by consequences for playing the game casually. You take too long, people die. That's real life. That's how D&D is meant to be.

The loot is a whole separate issue of its own. There's simply way too much. Too many containers you can interact with, vast majority of them empty. Too much trash loot like spoons and plates when there actually is something.

Can we please filter out 95% of the empty containers and worthless loot so the player doesn't have to deal with them?

No. Not separate. It's about pacing of the game and rewarding players for taking it slow. Give me a fast way to search for good gear. That speeds up the pace and keeps it moving and exciting.

Right now, it's like I'm punished if I don't take it slow and painfully search every little thing because I've found cool stuff just about every playthrough that I missed before because I still didn't slow down enough.

I don't mind missing stuff if I fail a roll. That's my PC just missing something. I don't like missing something because I didn't hover just right over it.

Gives me a Perception check for all good items. If I succeed, my characters find stuff. I pick it up. Game moves on.

About searching everything... I think they sould make the search like it is in DOS2: if you press and hold the action button you will search everything inside the range of your character.
I'm pretty pretty sure they will implement something like that on next updates or on full release.

Not really. If the situation above was in any way similar to real life, I think most people would choose to spend their last days with their loved ones, because the possibility of them miraculously finding a cure to an unknown deadly disease is close to zero. Most people aren't genius scientists or doctors.

That is why comparisons to real life will only get you so far. Fantasy adventures tend to have unrealistic premises, because they tell the stories of great heroes and villains. So of course you assume your character will find a cure, because they are the main character starring in an epic fantasy saga, and not the fantasy equivalent of the sims.

The issue is that in BG3 the narrative is tied down to mechanics that clearly favour the players who spam rest, and for no good reason. This limits the roleplaying opportunities, because the only consequence of not resting is losing game content. That was how BG2 build it's narrative too, and frankly one of the areas where Larian should improve, not follow the example of the predecessor.

True you get clues from the beginning that things aren't so dire, but what kind of person would be aware that they are at risk of turning into a horrific monster at some unstated point in the future and not make stopping that their primary goal? Like, sure we see that a bunch of other people have been infected with tadpoles and haven't changed after a pretty long while, and some people would take that as permission to slow down, but we don't have a clear sense of how long the True Souls have been a thing or if it's guaranteed that you're not going to change earlier than they will. You have the equivalent of a ticking time bomb in your brain and you don't have a clear estimation on how long you personally have, that's not all that comforting. When you use your tadpole powers you are even told that your character feels themselves losing something they can never get back. It's still perfectly rational to try and hurry to find a solution.

You don't at the beginning, but you come across two unchanged people who have died with tadpoles in them very quickly, and then you come across several living people with tadpoles in them, and you know they have had them for more than a few days at the very least, because of the events that you've already been told about. So again, it's not like you stop the quest for getting it removed, it's just that you no longer have the sense of "if I don't find a cure before I camp I'm going to change into a mindflayer".

From the very beginning, they start to dial down the urgency, with Astarion even proposing to harness the power of the tadpole in your first conversation with him. I'm not arguing the severity of having the thing in your head, but the game itself immediately starts to reduce the importance of remedying the issue ASAP. If you choose to roleplay that aspect, at that point, it's on you since the game itself is not driving that narrative as you progress in the game; the opposite actually.

This just comes off as a excuse to have auto search. Did you bring this up in another thread and get shut down? If your roleplaying a character how would your character be able to auto search containers if your in a rush? No you can't, if you are trying to punish yourself that's all you pal.

Not quite that bad if you're willing to let your companions take the lead on some convos. They all have tadpoles too and can each do the "I'm a True Soul" thing once a day. So you could get in four of those between long rests if you played it right. More if you took trips to camp to swap in whoever is hanging out there.

That's kind of what the OP is saying; the game actively punishes you in several ways for taking the ticking clock it established vividly right at the beginning seriously. It sets up a very fast-moving ticking clock, tells you that the ticking clock isn't ticking as fast as you thought (though at no point does it tell you it's actually stopped ticking, it's just ticking more slowly by some unknown degree) and then if you try to RP the reasonable reaction a person would have to that of making fixing the problem their top priority, setting everything else aside for later, then you get punished for it.That's bad narrative design. It's also bad narrative design to establish such an urgent ticking clock and then immediately undermine that urgency. The game should lead by telling you that the tadpole SHOULD have transformed you, but it hasn't and there's no telling why or how long you have. So the player is introduced to the narrative time constraint in a manner that reflects the actual level of urgency at play in the narrative, rather than the game setting up one expectation and then immediately laying things out in a way that fights against the emotion they inspired in the player. On my first playthrough for instance, I did not pick up the clues about the tadpole not being super urgent until a fair while into things, so I spent long stretches really strapped for resources and having a very hard time, as well as skipping most story content to try and get to the Githyanki patrol, which ended with me getting TPKed.

Also on that subject, it really frustrates me how they presented the Gith patrol questline. It is one of the first pieces of clear information given to you, literally by the first person you meet in the game, who is also the first companion you get in the game. It's the first concrete lead you're given to a solution for the inciting incident of the plot, AND it's given to you by the character that gives you most of your early information on what's happening to you. It's also one of the only leads or pieces of information in general that you basically always get no matter what you do. It really FEELS like that's meant to be the main quest, right? It's given so much weight and it's presented so definitelly and clearly, while with every other possible solution you're kind of left to infer that it's worth doing. I mean in theory you could miss the druid grove and until they tell you about Halsin it seems totally extraneous to what's going on with you. I assumed that the druid grove was just an optional side quest when I first ran into it, not the main quest of the zone. It is really bizarre and this game just does not seem to know how to present information to you well a lot of the time.

And that is exactly my point. If you want the game to go from good to EXCELLENT, you need to drive the narrative. You need to reward players for driving harder and challenging themselves, not the opposite. The game, right now, rewards me more if I don't drive towards the goal. If I carefully move around the map, searching every pixel, I find better weapons, armor, magic items, books, tomes, etc. that give me more context and story. If I rest a lot, I get more dialogue and character development.

I'm saying that Larian needs to do the opposite to make the game an incredible experience. Drive players to the helm of the mind flayer ship.

MAJOR SPOILERS!!!

This is how the game should be to make it a fully exciting and incredibly intense experience instead of just a nice, casual game:

I wake up after escaping the pod. I realize there's nothing around me to endanger me at least in the immediate future. However, I can hear combat outside. Everything is on fire. My heart is pounding. Now's my chance to escape if I seize the opportunity. I glance around the room. (Hidden Perception check. I succeed in rolling a 14, though the game doesn't tell me this. All items nearby that have a difficulty of 14 or lower are highlighted that are of any worth at all. Items like spoons, knives, forks, plates, food are not highlighted. Basically, my character is just looking for weapons and armor and anything that might help them escape like potions and explosive items.) I rush to these highlighted objects and grab them and bolt for the door. I don't waste any additional time trying to search every nook and cranny because the room is on fire and the mind flayers could return at any moment.

But let's say someone starts to actually search the room through all the other stuff Larian has planted around the room. Suddenly, the wall explodes and a mind flayer comes crashing into the room. He's not dead. Demons also drop in, battling with the mind flayer. One of them starts moving in my direction but doesn't quite reach me. The game instructs me that fleeing is a thing, using Tutorial to indicate that you should not fight this battle. You aren't going to win. So you hit the flee button and leave the room.

You're in the next room. Another hidden Perception check. You roll a 9. Only items with 9 or lower difficulty are highlighted and only if they are weapons or equipment that can be useful to escape or are story items, etc. I grab them and hear, "We are hear. We are trapped. Help us!" So naturally I go to try to see if I can help someone else escape, because I'm a good character in this playthrough. So I rush to the devourer and interact with it. Another Perception check. The two boxes nearby are highlighted. Something good inside that might be worth a look. I rush to them and grab them. I drop back down and start to explore more of the items in the room. Larian allows this for only a few minutes. Then, all of a sudden, the door from the chamber you had just been in is opened, and demons enter the chamber. At this point, you can either fight and die or run again out the flaming doorway to escape the inside of the ship. An explosion as you exit seals off the passage behind you. At least for now you've escaped from the demons.

You reach Lae'zel and fight the imps and reach the top of the ship. You start to explore. Boom! A dragon lands on the deck near you and begins to battle the imps and thralls on the ship. Now, you can either hang around and search bodies or bolt. If you hang around, again Larian gives you maybe a moment or two, but if you don't move your butt the dragon suddenly shoots flames near you. Enough to give you a warning. Get your butt in gear or you're going to be dragonfodder. You race to the next level up to escape the raging dragon. You get into the area where Shadowheart is.

This scene, I would expect Larian to allow more time to interact and explore. You are trying to save Shadowheart and so forth. Therefore, allow players maybe 5 minutes before, again, something like imps in greater numbers appear to attack you. After all, Lae'zel already warns you to leave Shadowheart because you are going to die if you don't, so why not make it so that if you don't just leave her you will actually potentially die? Wouldn't that make the situation more intense and exciting? If you explore around for more than a few minutes you might get attacked by even greater numbers of enemies?

So you flee again and dart into the next chamber. Let's add a small cutscene where Lae'zel does something to seal the entrance behind you, thus keeping out the imps that were chasing you. You heal and rush into the helm. Then the helm scene plays out like it does now, because they've already got something like this in place where demons show up if you're taking too long.

Finally, you are on the beach, and a new day has started. Here, you might take a bit more time to adjust to your environment and explore a bit. This is natural and makes sense. Here you might pick up items you think you might need for the future including fish that might spoil soon. You just escaped from the Hells. You're freaking out because you're infected with a mind flayer parasite and are told you might turn into one. So you would naturally want to hunt for supplies that might help you survive as long as possible. You meet Shadowheart and fight devourers.

Now, at this point, the game suggests and teaches you about long rests. That's fine except that at this point the game should warn you that long resting has consequences. Time progresses from day to night whenever you long rest, and certain events are time sensitive. So only use long rest when necessary.

Right there, now I know that if I long rest things could go really bad for me. I realize I'm half dead, so I only short rest. That makes logical sense to be able to do every 8 hours without explaining to people that an hour just went by. We don't need time to be that sensitive that if you short rest you'll miss something. So I short rest and move on. Still Day 1. I meet Astarion, Gale and reach the Dank Crypt. I convince the mercs outside to leave me alone and I make my way inside. After fighting Marli and Barton and the gang, I am now almost dead again and have expended all my spell slots. Hmmm. Long rest seems reasonable now. So I rest for 8 hours just inside the Dank Crypt.

I have no problem with the mechanic that you just teleport to the mysterious camp that has no real place on the map. All it means is that the adventurers wandered about searching for a campsite to call their own and it took some time to find and they finally found it. Great. You have a campfire scene and trigger the first camp dialogues. Larian allows you to trigger all the dialogues that should have been triggered up until this point so that you get the Gale Mirror Image dialogue and Shadowheart's I'm not sure this is such a good idea dialogue. These make sense at the first camp. I rest. 8 hours goes by. Let's say they don't even change it to night. Big deal. Only 8 hours went by, so it could still be daylight out. I'm good with that. However, the point is that it is still Day 1.

So I complete the Dank Crypt after my first long rest of 8 hours. I short rest. Still doing good. I meet Lae'zel and fight the goblin fight outside the Druid's Grove. With them defeated, I maybe short rest, move about the grove, talk to a bunch of people, fight some harpies, etc. I long rest again. Now the first day ends and I have my second set of campside dialogues. Gale tells me to Go to Hell, etc. Because I even went through the Druid's Grove, I trigger Raphael too. How exciting! All that happened in just 1 day. Day 1 is now complete and I didn't even miss out on any dialogue. Along the way, I found all sorts of useful things with my hidden Perception rolls not slowing the game down by manually searching every little crack and barrel. I could have explored manually more deeply if I really wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything, but that is my gamer's choice at this point. I have no problem with that kind of thing if that's what a gamer wants to do and the story isn't driving you to rush so much that you can't search things. I could see people taking their time through the Dank Crypt searching all the nooks and crannies searching for diamonds in the rough that could even potentially help you with your situation.

Day 2 begins. I explore outside the Grove. I meet Ed and his siblings, Scratch, and wander my way into Blighted Village. Oh man! The battle with the goblins has left me almost dead with no spells. I need to long rest. 8 hours later, I'm back in Blighted Village exploring around. I meet more goblins and need a short rest after. Still good with this. I explore some more, find the spider's lair, and curiosity gets the better of me. Halfway through, I'm nearly dead. I didn't even reach the matriarch. I need another long rest. Dang! Day 2 is over now. Astarion tries to bite me in the night. I find out he's a vampire. Dang! Incredible discovery for Day 2. Back to the spiders' lair. I fight the boss fight. Almost die. Dang! I need to long rest again and do so. 8 hours go by. Still Day 3. I head south into the bog and meet the hag. I discover she's a hag and that someone is in trouble. I can't help myself. I have to do something to save Mayrina.

Now, here again, timing should come into play. I fight the Red Caps and defeat them. I should now have a limited time to get my butt down into the hag's lair to save Mayrina or it is too late. This should be like a Final Fantasy 7 prologue moment. I have thirty minutes on the clock to get my butt into her lair and fight her or Mayrina is shipped off to Hag's school in Baldur's Gate, or whatever. I might spend some of that time looking for lotions and potions I might need to recover from the Red Cap fight and the future fight against the adventurers that are being controlled by the hag, and maybe one of those potions could give me spell slot recovery so I can fully replenish my characters for the really nasty hag fight that is to come. Instead of making us do something like rest 8 hours before we do the final hag fight, which is totally unbelievable, let me find a set of 4 potions that gives my characters full health and spell slots back. Man! That hag can work miracles!

I fight the hag, she nearly wipes me out completely. We barely beat her, like I did in the first playthrough, with only 1 person left on their feet and by shoving the real hag into a bottomless pit. Now I need another long rest for sure after finishing with Mayrina. Man! That was intense and I barely made it. So I long rest. End of Day 3.

That night, at camp, a Tiefling is sent to me by Zevlor. "Goblins have been seen at their camps gearing up for an invasion. We suspect it may only be another day or two before they attack us. The druid's have said that they will give us until the goblins begin to march towards the grove before they are going to complete the ritual. Please do something before it's too late." My character then thinks in game, "Dang! I've wasted too much time already. I need to hurry if I'm going to save the grove." I, the player, am now cued in that I need to get back to the original main quest before it is too late. The next morning, I explore the rest of the swamp, just because I can't help myself, I find Kahga's deception and bring it back to the grove. Good gameplay! Now, I've dethroned Kahga and spared the Tieflings from at least getting kicked out of the grove when the goblins show up, if I don't make it in time to kill the leaders.

However, I'm also back to needing a long rest to recover. So 8 hours goes by. I move on towards the goblin camp. Ah, but during camp during that long rest Lae'zel approaches me. "You're wasting too much time. We know where the creche is. If you don't take me to the creche today, I'm going to leave your party." Now you have a tough choice. Either get your butt to the Githyanki before you long rest again or you'll lose Lae'zel forever as a party member. I hurry north instead of towards the gobbo camp. Lae'zel, I decide, is more important to keep around and I still have a few more days to get to the gobbos. I head north and west, encounter the Flaming Fists and Zhents. Oh crap! I need another long rest. I don't want to lose Lae'zel. So I risk it to get to the Gith just using potions and short rests to heal. I have no spell slots anymore, but at least I'm full health.

I reach the Githyanki, they betray us. 3 out of the 4 party members die, but 1 escapes back to camp using the flee feature. Well, now I have to spend money on the currently useless lich guy in order to resurrect my fellow party members. Now the lich guy has more value in the game. I don't have enough gold. Oh well, guess I can only resurrect 1. Let's say Astarion and Wyll and Lae'zel all died in the encounter. Guess I'll resurrect Lae'zel and just add Gale and Shadowheart to the party. Later I can resurrect the other two, but I'll need more gold for that.

Now I can rest another 8 hours, but if I do I will never get the item I need to find the Githyanki creche. Dang! Another tough choice. If I sleep, the Gith will be long gone by then. If I hurry back to the spot, I can still fight them and maybe kill them and get the item. Decisions! Decisions!

I go back, fight them, get the creche location and I'm golden. Now I can sell items, get enough money and resurrect Astarion and Wyll. Long rest means another day is gone, but at least I keep Lae'zel. End of Day 4. Back on the road, I spot the dead bodies and I've agreed to help the Zhents so I go looking for their shipment. I battle gnolls and Tyrites to save the Tiefling hunter. I need another long rest. 8 hours. Half of Day 5 is almost over already. At camp, Wyll approaches. He's angry. "Why do we keep wasting our time when the goblins are about to attack the grove and kill all the tieflings? If you don't get to the goblin camp tonight, I'm leaving the party and will try to do it myself." So again, I know that I need to beat the goblin camp before my next long rest or I'll lose Wyll. Good thing, I've got nothing left to do now but head towards the goblin camp. I make my way in, fight some gobbos, and get to Gut. After battling with her, I'm almost dead and need another long rest. I decide Wyll isn't worth it. I can't push on. I long rest, returning to camp. Day 5 ends. Wyll departs in the morning. It is Day 6 now. When I wake up and find Wyll gone, a Tiefling approaches. "It is clear the goblins are going to attack at dusk. If you're going to kill the leaders, you'd better do so now!"

So I rush back only to find that the entire goblin camp is hostile towards me because I killed their priestess and then went and rested for 8 hours. They discovered her dead body and figured out it was me and my companions. Who else would it have been? The battle is too fierce just to get into the base. I lose most of my team gain and am forced to flee. I return to camp and resurrect the fallen. No choice. I need to long rest again. A Tiefling is there when I wake. "The Goblins are coming! If you are going to help us, you have to come to the grove now."

The Astarion says, "You know, we could really use this opportunity to sneak into the base camp to find this Halsin fellow. Leave the Tieflings and Druids to die. Who cares? If we don't rescue Halsin...well. He's our last chance for a cure right now. Right?"

Another tough choice for the player to make. How exciting! I can either sneak into the goblin camp easier while the goblins are all fighting Tieflings and Druids, who should fight as a united group if I proved Kahga is evil, or I can help the Tieflings and Druids fight off the goblins. What do I do?


Sigh. So, hopefully you see my point. This is a much more exciting story than what Larian is giving us right now. Add consequences to slow actions and bad things happen. Keep the pace moving and you are rewarded by having good things happen. If you move fast enough, you save the Tieflings and Druids, or whatever. It is a reward for good roleplaying. Likewise, finding Kahga's deceptions and dethroning her should reward me with NOT having Tieflings kicked out and the ritual complete even if the goblins come and attack. I should also be rewarded for this by having the Druids actually helping defend the grove against the goblins at the gate. Consequences for bad roleplaying and rewards for good roleplaying create incentive to play the game good and makes the game more meaningful and intense and exciting. If I know that I only have a few days to do something or people are going to die, I'm going to feel the tension and stress, and I'm going to try to prioritize my goals a whole lot more. What we have now is too forgiving. It lacks tension and excitement because there is no negative side effects.

I've never been a fan of the "Hurry! You're going to die! Soon!" games like the "Curse of the Azure Bonds" or the "Neverwinter Nights Mask of the Betrayer" games. Your first run through the game you actually believe the "Hurry! You're going to die! Soon!" lie and try to cure yourself as soon as possible, only to be disappointed. THAT is the biggest punishment for good role playing! If, say, you were able to get cured early in the game, and then spend the rest of the game determining who did it to you, why they did it, and trying to stop them, or getting revenge, THAT would be better role playing.
In BG3, like BG2, you start out in a rush, trying to just get out of there A.S.A.P.! But it's not until you're on the beach and meet Shadowheart, who says that you're going to need supplies, do you learn that you need to start looking for stuff. A BETTER role playing option would be to encounter someone, perhaps Lae'zel, in or near one of the first mindflayer pods that directs the player to find some better gear as happens at the start of BG2.
As most of the Companions mention seeing the player STRUTTING about the ship, why not let us see them too? (even if we can't get to them?)
As I am found of the Rogue, and love roleplaying one, I am disappointed with the Rogue in BG3. Or should I say, why bother role playing a Rogue? EVERY Class can do EVERYTHING that a Rogue can do! The difference between having a Rogue lockpick or disarm a trap, and some other class doing so should be miles apart, not the same thing. In Early Access I've been forced to play a Warlock for the damage output because it can do everything a Rogue can, but deals more damage.
The bottom line is this, every class has it's perks and it's weaknesses, role playing involves playing to the perks, and dealing with the weaknesses. (often by having companions who cover the weaknesses) I love role playing, but BG3 currently centers around maximizing damage, and almost completely ignoring any role playing aspects.

You can type out as long of a novella as you like, and you are welcome to roleplay the game as you wish, but the reality, is that that game almost immediately starts minimizing the initial sense of urgency through the story progression. It's obvious from their choices that Larian specifically chose to lessen the need to rush about and try to get the tadpole removed as quickly as possible.

But again, that's my point. They weaken the game by minimizing the sense of urgency instead of increasing it and creating more intensity. The game would be so much more exciting if they put time limits on things. They don't even have to be harsh time limits. They just need to be realistic ones. Maybe 6 days is too much for the gobbos to attack. Although I think if you do 12 long rests = 6 days, that's a pretty huge amount of time that you still have to complete the quest.

I am constantly rewarded for bad roleplaying and punished for good roleplaying. If I play this game in a way that makes logical sense, hurrying to get the tadpole out of my head, I miss out on tons of stuff. If I take my time and not care about the invader in my skull and ignore everyone who is telling me to find a healer quickly, I get lots of better gear and story stuff. That is the exact opposite of how any game should be. That's exactly the opposite of how D&D is supposed to be played and ANY RPG. Reward good gaming. Punish bad gaming. Don't punish good gaming and reward bad gaming. Don't call this a D&D game if you aren't going to reward players for good roleplaying. Don't even call it an RPG because you aren't truly roleplaying if you are just playing a game where you run around leisurely and collect whatever you want and ignore the story. The story IS the RPG. That's the whole point. You put yourself in the role of a character you created.

I don't care what way you slice it, if I'm going into the hag's lair to save Mayrina, and I rest for 8-20 hours before facing the hag, Mayrina shouldn't be there no more. If I don't save the Tieflings by the time the druids complete their ritual, they should be kicked out and slaughtered by the goblins. That is the story. That's what everyone keeps telling me in the game. Hurry and kill the goblins or stop the ritual or everyone is going to die.

So take the dang tadpole out of it even and just take it from that point of view, cause it seems people are getting hung up on the dumb tadpole. If you don't kill the gobbos in a certain amount of time they are going to show up and kill everyone. The druids right now take days upon days upon days to complete the ritual, and I'm ending day all the time to make a week or more go by and they are STILL doing the ritual. I'm like. "Yeah. I'm not worried, Tieflings. I'm gonna sit on a bench for a while, sleep all I want, maybe stroll along the road and so forth cause I know as a player that those gobbos are never coming and those druids are never gonna kick you out. Unless I actually join the villains, those gobbos are never going to attack.

And that, right there, is another punishment. I actually found the game so much more epic when I chose to be evil and agreed to help the gobbos attack the druids' grove. That was a cool battle at the gate when I betrayed the gobbos and still wound up helping fight back. So, I want Larian to let me have this fight if I don't kill the gobbos in time. Give me the ability to help defend the grove when the gobbos attack because I ran out of time. So if I want to take all the time I want so that I can help fight gobbos with the help of the tieflings and/or druids, then let me do so. But again, that battle should have more gobbos and the druids should be either helping, if I kicked Kahga out of her position, or they should push us out of the grove so that we have to find another place to defend ourselves in or die.

How would this sense of time and realism hurt the game? Why so much resistance to it? The only reasoning I can see as to why anyone would resist this idea is that they want the ability to leisurely explore the world and not feel rushed. But this approach only slows down the pace of the game and it isn't even remotely believable as a story goes. The GOBLINS FIND THE GROVE...RIGHT AWAY. They know where it is. It should only take them a few days at most to prepare the attack to wipe out the tieflings and the druids. Same with the ritual. It's already started. It shouldn't take a week or more for them to complete it. No matter how much you might want to just stroll along and explore, that's not the way the story goes. That's not how it has been laid out.

It would only make it more exciting and meaningful and allow people so many different consequences to their actions if they reward good playing and punish bad playing. Maybe the first time I play, I do so well that I don't even trigger the gobbo attack on the grove. The next time I play, I don't do as well and the gobbos attack the grove and I have to choose to either try to save Halsin or help defend the Tieflings. I don't even kick Kahga out of her position, so the Tieflings and I have to fight the gobbos maybe in Blighted Village or at the Dank Crypt or something like that. Maybe the third time, I still have to fight the gobbos because I didn't hurry enough, but then I managed to kick Kahga out so we fight at the grove gate.

So I'm talking about excitement level and pace of the game and intensity of gameplay. It still could give you enough time to explore and complete all the side quests, but only if you play the game well. If you don't play the game well, you might fail to complete a number of quests and therefore miss out on rewards for completing the quests.

And that's another point. I should be rewarded with the best items after I complete a quest. So after fighting the hag in a timely way, I should be rewarded with the best gear. If I beat her after Mayrina is already sent away, I should get less good gear. Still good gear for beating the hag, but not as good as if I'd saved Mayrina too. I should be able to pretty much ignore the useless gear all around the world because if I beat the bosses I get all the best gear anyway. The rest of the gear and items in the game should be stuff that is nice to have if I pick it up.

I'm honestly of two minds about how much tension I want from a roleplaying game, but while I don't know if I would want the experience you're describing, I do think the experience you're describing would be a very satisfying one. Honestly it's a problem I feel like most RPGs have to some degree or another, though BG3 feels particularly notable. They all tend to have quests that inspire urgency, but exploring the world is part of the fun and point of the experience. I feel like the Dragon Age games, particularly DA2 and DA:I did the best job of avoiding that pitfall and justifying spending time exploring. 2 was focused on you just living your life, with arcs going on in the background but the main story was, in terms of narrative, about you as Hawke making a life and how your actions and the world around you respond to each other. Whereas in DA:I, you're kind of in a holding pattern against your main antagonist, trying to errode his power base on different fronts and needing to amass a power base of your own to do so, so ever side quest was in some way in service to that central goal. So you almost never feel that dissonance that's at play in BG3.

Look, I could make a long reply detailing the flaws in many of these arguments. I could point out that the issue boils down to the idea of a 'critical path' and optional sidequests which exist in most crpgs. Some games handle this better than others, but the tension is always there. Even the Witcher 3 had this dissonance. I could point out there is in fact a story reason to explore, which is Gale's quest for artefacts.

Of course you should be 'punished' for only following the critical path. If that were not the case the inverse would not be true, ie you would not be rewarded for dealing with the optional quests, which is utterly ridiculous.

Furthermore it is obvious, as many people have pointed out, that the game is laying clues for your motivations as a character to develop throughout the act. The why becomes as important as the how in other words.

This game is based on choices. You can choose to beeline to the githyanki (which will be mechanically hard I grant) or you can choose to listen to your gut if you pass the insight check which lets you know Laezal's holding something back from you. Hell, you can choose to kill her if you really want. I've seen the Ethel quest referred to a sidequest, but in fact you can learn a very crucial piece of information if you choose to let her help you. One that stands to the why AND the how. Shame it is gated behind certain choices and a literally crippling penalty.

If a dm had the nerve to tell me how I choose to make my character act according to his motivations is "bad roleplay", I'd walk out of the session never to return. Times a hundred for my character in a choice based crpg. Feel free to rp your own character the way you want and let me do likewise. I personally feel that treating a story as a desperate race against time without considering common issues like pacing, balancing quiet moments with tense ones, is a one trick pony, one that would become tiring very very quickly. But that is just my opinion.

I won't even ask people to stop suggesting that the game should be tailored to fit their narrow interpretation of the narrative and motivations. The reason being the game is highly unlikely to include any such suggestion and, after all, everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter how badly thought out or applicable to only a few people.

But what is NOT an opinion is that there are other people who find a motivation to explore the story as presented without this suggested haste. They're not doing it "wrong", just differently.

Did you know you are complaining about the way RPGs are structured?
The passage of time and urgency are always things that the games dont care about.
Whether you like it or not, time limits aren't too popular, and for good reason. People just don't like them.
In BG2 (as in most games) you could ignore the entire main storyline and clean most of the map before going to spellhold.