To that point, I think that if players have to turn to outside sources to follow the rules of a game then that's a failing on the game. The ui and tooltips have definitely improved, but there's still an obtuseness there that hasn't been addressed.
I wrote a longer post that discussed this in more detail and with more examples, but got to the end of it, refreshed, and saw just,... more of these oddly sycophantic posts who have come out of the woodwork in the past month or so to bang the drum of this game being the bee's knees in every way.... completely ignorant or outright ignoring of the long years (at this point) of fairly thoughtful discussion that is the exact counter to their empty assertions, and I didn't find myself having the motivation to actually post it, when I know it's been said before, explained before, discussed before, and gone into solid critical detail about before.... and knowing that these individuals, and those that will come after them next month, when they get bored and drift on, will continue as they are, ignoring and denying.
The number of times I've written responses to these posts... then sat reading them, vetting my language, reading them again, and thinking about what odds they have of actually having any kind of impact on anyone.... and then ultimately just shut the browser window unsent.... is really quite a sadly high number at this point. I do find myself wondering if my exhaustion on this is not adding to the problem in itself as well... thanks for continuing to speak up Grey ^.^ I'll see if I can't try again...
==
If a video game requires or even strongly wants for players to look outside of itself - to player-made guides, youtube videos, discussion threads or fan faqs, just to understand its core systems, what they mean, and how they work, then the game has
Failed to convey itself properly. Yes, people will figure it out, generally speaking... but it's still a failure of game design and a substantial black mark against any title.
BG3 is in this exact position right now; no it doesn't need 'a little improvement' - it's a mess. The game is positively
Rife with instances of "Why didn't that apply?", "Why won't it let me use that?", "Where did that damage come from?", "Why did that effect end?", and worse "That shouldn't have ended then...", "It said I get a save for that...", "What does that condition even mean/do/affect?", "What does that tooltip even mean?" and so on... It's improved a little bit, but it's still an absolute shambles in that regard. It's definitely far, far, below anything even approaching acceptable for a game of the calibre that it is making itself out be.
An accessible game means a game that is
Clear; BG3 is NOT clear about a huge proportion of its mechanics, fails to explain them, and has misleading, incorrect or confusingly written descriptions all over the shop.
An accessible game means a game that is
Consistent; Bg3 is NOT consistent in its mechanics or its functions; it is rife with floating damage, unattributed rolls, inconsistent notation, incorrect or misleading descriptions, as well as conflicting and sometimes directly contradicting functions with nothing to clarify how they interact or why.
D&D is
Not a difficult gig; it's the opposite, in fact. 5e translates
Excellently into a video-game format, needing only a small amount moderate QoL adaptations and adjustment to create a smooth and clean translation of the ruleset; this should have been the easiest part of the whole process for Larian, because it's all done for them already, and it translates beautifully - it was designed with that in mind, in fact. Not to the extent of 4e being designed specifically for video games, but deliberately with ease of translation into digital media in mind. They don't need to worry about clarity or communication, or descriptions in tooltips, because all of that has already been done for them and made available to them, in its entirety, by the license they have - it's all there, and has been designed for accessibility, approachability, clarity and ease of ability to pick up by new players, right down to the clear and consistent notation and the short descriptions that can in most cases easily fit on a pop out tooltip without losing any information. It was all prepared and ready for them to use, by professionals who have been doing this for nigh on fifty years.
This was the ultimate softball for them - it should have been the element of least consideration that they needed to spend the least amount of time on managing, so that they could spend more of their time and resources focusing on making everything else that's needed for the creation of a timeless and enduringly excellent video game. But somehow, they have managed to make an inconsistent, disjointed, unclear mess of the whole thing, full of incomplete, conflicting and sometimes even flat out incorrect information... and it still is, and they're still trying to scramble out of the mess they've made.
The idea that there are crpgs out there that require reading voluminous bricks of manuals to even get by in is a ludicrous strawman - it's simply not true. Any half decent video-game will let you 'get by' in it without understanding the underlying ruleset fully; that's not a selling point or an excuse for Larian's troubles here - unnecessary troubles of their own making as they are. Larian's audience have traditionally been people who are afraid of words and who hate reading - or at least Larian seems to think that's their audience; they write their descriptions and tooltips as though they're terrified of using more than ten words, try to cover the information needed in as few words as possible, and frequently succeed only in creating a confusing, unclear, misleading or opaque tip that clarifies very little. I've never played any video game that failed to convey its mechanics to an acceptable level related to the complexity of the mechanics and the game, as poorly as a Larian title, and BG3 does not appear to be diverting from this habit yet - though there are signs, at least, that they are trying to.
