Hmm, I was actually okay with the current setting being “normal” difficulty, especially if some of the cheese, like hide and shove as bonus actions, and the admittedly sometimes dodgy enemy AI, is fixed. Though I agree that with addition of level 5 we now become too powerful for the opposition, even though I know some encounters and enemies have been tweaked.
But broadly, I think the game is pretty well balanced. Yes, someone working to optimise their character, equipment and strategies for combat is going to steamroller the enemies, but they should! There should be decent harder difficulty settings for players who enjoy this to test themselves against.
But I think the normal difficulty should be based on what would be challenging but achievable for a player who hasn’t played the game multiple times before, who has a character that is a decent example of their class but also is balanced for exploration and dialogue, who does at least some side-questing but doesn’t maximise their XP, who uses equipment that is appropriate but not stellar for their level and tactics that are sensible but not optimised, and definitely do not involve using any exploits or cheesing. And I think that, with some notable exceptions, that is on the whole what EA achieves. Or at least did before level 5 was added.
