What a surprise! Raggy doesn't like what everyone is saying in regards to changing the game to make it better.
Look, it's not about nostalgia. It's about proper encounters for variety and so that you ACTUALLY defeat the monsters you are fighting. You aren't just defeating an enemy that is called a certain monster and who looks like a certain monster.
Let me put this in a different way. It's like a kid wanting to be an NBA Allstar. "I want to be like Michael Jordan!" Then, a talent scout comes along and says, "Hey kid! You wanna be like Michael Jordan?"
"Yes!" says the kid.
The talent scout then takes the kid to a basketball court with nets that come up to the kid's chin and are so wide the kid would have a hard time missing the shot. The kid is also facing toddlers as his opponents, and those toddlers are hardly skilled at the game.
"Do you feel like Michael Jordan yet?" asks the talent scout.
"I sure do!" says the kid. "I'm a super star!"
Is the kid really earning the title of NBA Superstar? Absolutely not. Someone has completely dumbed the game down to give the kid the ability to FEEL like a superstar without actually having to do much to BE a superstar.
That's how I feel about BG3. We're fighting imps and intellect devourers and phase spiders and gnolls and githyanki and hobgoblin warlords and Nightsister Drow (Minthara) who are supposed to be elite drow warriors, and ogres and hags and red caps and wood woads and mud mephits and AN ADAMANTINE GOLEM, and bulettes and minotaurs and so on and so forth, but they are all so dumbed down and nerfed that we aren't REALLY fighting these creatures. We're PRETENDING to fight them because it feels good and we want everyone to be able to win the trophy.
I want Larian to remove the kid gloves and let us play the game right, building encounters appropriately so we can ACTUALLY be heroes in a D&D Baldur's Gate world. If you want to keep the party size at 4, then you limit the difficulty level of the monsters you can fight. So, you can't fight intellect devourers with only 2 level 1 characters (your MC and Shadowheart). No, if you want to fight intellect devourers, even severely injured ones, you need at least a party of 4 + Shadowheart for you to even stand a chance.
You want to face a phase spider matriarch + 2 phase spiders and up to 18 baby phase spiders? At least a party of 6 would be advised and at least level 4 or 5. Don't even allow the players to go down there until they meet these requirements or they're going to die.
Don't allow the githyanki fight until they are at least at party of 4 and level 5 or 6, or party of 6 at level 4 or 5.
Over and over again, that's the bottom line. The game doesn't feel like D&D because the encounters are designed to be WAY over the heads of the party you can have at the time you encounter these monsters. So, the monsters are babied down so we can actually beat them so we FEEL like we are so super awesome.
