Originally Posted by 1varangian
Every time I see a game with a long list of toggles and options, I get the feeling the devs don't have a clue how their game should play and just gave up and left it up to the player. I don't think it speaks well for the game, and I hate wading through endless pages of difficulty micromanagement.

Difficulty levels have been enough for a long time to play a game in a way that is suitable for anyone. I think it's pretty entitled to want a toggle or option for everything. Players should adapt to the game, that's part of the challenge. Everything that matters can be easily consolidated into 4-5 difficulty levels you set and lock before starting a playthrough.
Absolutely - I am a big believer in systems being interconnected - that's also while I dislike small DLCs and prefer major expansions. If you can remove individual parts from the game without negatively affecting the game, then it is not a well designed system.

Even difficulties are dodgy - I find that games tend to be designed around one or two difficulty settings at best. There are only few titles I can think of that offered a wide range of difficulties that scaled nicely - meaning where satisfying to play both on lower and higher difficulty settings.

There is definitely place for some options, even ones that "break" the game. Accessibility options and cheat codes are always welcome. That is however, different then designing game with a variable ruleset. On top of that BG3 "core" (default set of rules) still require a lot of work and balancing. If we ever get a nicely polished core ruleset, then one can start thinking of ways to expand it. The panic from the OP is unwarranted though - there is no indication that Larian is interested in creating flexible system.