I agree with much of Flooter's previous post. And this does not make me happy. I'm tempted to react to several points, but I'll focus on the main one.
None of this is going away. The resting system may be reworked but Larian’s publicly stated philosophy of letting players break the game will remain. They will give their players every tool to destroy their own fun and trust that players won’t. Larian should at least help new players handle their freedom by keeping the incentives consistent.
That's a very good summary. But I would add a pair of things.
1)
The incentives are not just inconsistent, they are plainly contradictory.The writing and the food system send the message that "time is important and you should not rest all the time". But the camp scenes system and the absence of any time-sensitive event send the message that "time does not exist and you should rest after every encounter" (be combat, social, discovery ... everything).
2) I'm happy if Larian wants to let players "break the game", and I'm happy to let players who want it do so. But
there needs to be something to break in the first place !Imagine a Platformer (or, indeed, a CRPG) where the Main Character can get hit by enemies and there is a Damage Tracker system. After how many hits do you have to retry the level ? (Or after how many hits does your CRPG character fall unconscious ?)
BG3's current answer is "however many you want". There's no design there.
Players who don't want to break the game do not know what constitutes a reasonable challenge and when they should press the "retry stage/fall unconscious/reload" button. Players who want to break the game can't : there's no point finding the cheat codes or clever shenanigans that allow to reset the Damage Tracker at will, if there's no threshold that the Damage Tracker should not exceed.
So Larian should not just help new players. They should, simply put, design a Long Rest system. Make a choice. And
then think about how to let players abuse it.
And of course, if Larian has already design such a resting system so, then I'll add the two usual things. Firstly, it would be nice to let players test it. They said EA is for testing systems after all. Secondly, it would be nice to communicate about it, so we don't keep giving feedback on the resting system.
