On the side note within the thread :
On a side note, I was having this shower thought that is somewhat amusing how most of the "gameplay improvement" this Early Access introduced so far in its entire first year or so consisted essentially in reverting a lot of very questionable Larian homebrew stuff (advantage for high ground, backstab advantage obtained just walking slowly around people, etc) or implementing missing D&D features.
Oh, I think they improved "gameplay" (in which I include ruleset, mechanics and UI, but exclude graphics, character customisation, etc) in more ways than you give them credit for. From what I can remember :
- Patch 3 introduced the Party-Follows-On-Jump, so we don't need to select each party member and order them to jump (a massive improvement for the handful of players out there who play solo and with a party of 4 characters, instead of with a bunch of friends where everyone controls only one character).
- Patch 4 (or 5, can't remember) introduced a shortcut (perhaps now even a button in Patch 7?) to Group All/Ungroup All.
- Patch 5 introduced a new UI system for Ability Checks in conversation, so we can now buff the speaker without having to get ouf ot conversation, select Shadowheart, cast Guidance, and get back in conversation.
- Patch 5 introduced a new food-for-rest system, which I heard really made the Long Rest not so easy to spam, and didn't introduce additional inventory management.
So, I'd say that we had a really fair share of major gameplay improvements that were not related to the DnD rules and Larian's homebrew.
(And with some luck, Larian can fully give up on many of their very unique UI systems, the way they gave up on some of their homebrew DnD rules. At some point, you've got to stop patching something that doesn't work into something that still isn't great, and build something good from the start.)
Coming back to one of the core topics of the thread :
In one of my attempts, I also experienced a fight where I won but I had my party wiped seconds later, since the game went back to real time and every companion had the SPLENDID idea to improvise a cheerful stroll in a pool of lava in an attempt to RUSH toward the character I had selected in the moment the boss died. I had to reload once again and remember to UNCHAIN the goddamn entire party as soon as the fight started, so "Thanks again, toilet chain" I guess?
Ouch. That is terrible design. So players no basically have to either just unchain every battle, or 'predict' when they'll need to, to save their party.
Sadly, this issue has been there (and reported many times) since the start of EA. It is one of the several ways in which the game can essentially screw players, without any mistake on their part. Also, it is one of the many good reasons why the Larian chain is a bad system for the party control. (Without the "one character selected and the rest of the party follows" paradigm, this would not happen.)
