Oh, don't get me wrong. Again, I don't want them to remove the encounter. I love the dragon being in it and all.
A good DM presents situations like this which cause players to panic Oh my gosh! The DM just sat a dragon 20 feet away. We're so dead.
But then, good DMs provide a logical and fun way out. In my Afflicted story, Shadowheart wasn't in the party, so Qudenos and Voss, dragon and rider, flew off to find her because she had the weapon. Voss would not allow anyone to claim that victory but him. HE would be the one to have the glory of presenting it to Vlaakith.
And the fight is a good encounter, but with higher level PCs and/or larger party size. That's all I'm saying.
I agree, I am not sure anyone wants the encounter gone or totally re-written even, there's purely a frustration with it because if you stumble into it like the game (assuming you have Laezel with you) promotes, then you are nearly always launched in a really frustratingly hard fight without the perfect dialogue choices (and rolls? can't remember...). I don't know, I mean there's a murderous dragon, Laezel has hardly been queen nice etc... maybe there is enough here to warn you about strolling into this encounter, yet we want rid of this tadpole and the game seems to suggest this is a good path, so it should play out in such a ways so as you can back out. For example, if you choose to handle the conversation yourself and you are not Gith, it might be useful if Laezel (if present) interjects (sensing something is amiss) and gets you all out of the fight without you having to fumble through dialogue choices, all be it still offering you the player the chance to overrule her and initiate the fight (because choice is good), but then knowingly rather than unwittingly.
Plus the commander flying off in a "I'm too good for this fight" cliché just feels daft, yet obviously we can't handle a Dragon at this level so it has to be taken out of the equation, it's here that the writing (imho) could do with a tweak to make the encounter feel more like an opportunity gone wrong and into something dangerous and then a choice between trying to grovel out of it or fight, all whilst actually having a good reason for the dragon to fly off.
I dunno, maybe with the dialogue tweaks coming in Patch 5 this may feel different and I know a higher level would help, but honestly the game isn't linear so without knowing how much of an arse this encounter is, it would help if there was some form of clue the game gave the player before hand, think the skull icon for Witcher3, though I would perhaps prefer a dialogue trigger (not cinematic, just early enough to make you think twice about running forwards), even something as mundane such as "are you sure this is a wise course of action...?", just so you the player know this encounter might be better left until later on, but not gated off, in case you want to try your luck/skill anyway.
