1. Exp gain:
the exp gaining pace is way too fast. For higher difficulty options, I hope it's about exp gain reduction instead of making enemy hit harder and harder to kill. For example, remove the exp gain from killing enemies.
I wouldn’t worry about XP gain for now - pacing XP should be as simple as Larian checking how much XP they have per chapter, deciding how fast they want players to progress and tweaking the numbers appropriately. There are a multitude of reasons why XP gain might have been set like that for a testing build.
XP gain not being granted when sparing enemies is an issue. A minor one, but still. XP for kills is always a troublesome system - if solving quests without combat gives XP, that usually the optimal thing to do is to kill NPC involved for additional XP. Again, minor issue but still a sloppy design.
I prefer if XP is granted for completing tasks rather than usual actions (Deus Ex, Pillars of Eternity) - that way game encourages roleplaying/efficient play rather than none sense all play. Alas, it seems so many people are trained to expect XP after each kill that they fail to see the truth
2. Quest Reward:
I hate the MMORPG style of quest reward selection in this game. It's killing BG3. For instance, there is a NPC before meeting Nere, if you give her back her boots, she will offer you a quest reward, but you get none of those reward if you simply kill her.
Yeah, I don’t like the feel of the system either. You also highlight this annoying inconsistency in BG3 design. On one hand Larian seems values systemic consistency to the point of breaking the balance of their games. On the other hand, they also completely disregard any systemic logic at random points for whatever reason.
