I strongly dislike the "if you don't like it don't use it" take, and I find it very dismissive and thoughtless.

- If I play a video game, I generally try to be effective in what I'm doing, unless I'm setting a particular challenge to myself.
- Even if I do set particular challenge to myself, I try to be as effective as I reasonably can be within the challenge I've set.
- I generally only get to the point of setting challenges for myself if the foundation of the game is solid, enjoyable and pretty decently balanced already.

Core point: If I find myself making excuses to play ineffectively, or feel like I'm not playing effectively within the bounds of what I'm doing, I generally do not enjoy myself; at the very least, it's a sore point that saps my fun.

- I enjoy variety, and I enjoy using a decently thorough spread of the abilities and options at my disposal; identifying the effective ways and places to use various elements of the game system, and tackling the game's challenges with the tool kit presented to me.
- The less variety I find myself engaging in, the less I enjoy my experience.

Core Point: If find myself making excuses to avoid doing something that I know will work because it was the same thing I did for the last dozen situations, I generally do not enjoy myself; at the very least, it's a sore point that saps my fun.

This leaves me at this point: If I play game where one or two things are the 'always works, always win' solutions, to the point that doing other things instead feels actively ineffective, or like I'm pointedly ignoring doing the effective thing for no reason beyond it being boring and repetitive - that I must be actively ineffective to explore or use the majority of my toolkit, then the reality is that I am not going to enjoy myself, and the game has Failed to create or present a compelling system for me to engage with.

Most video games that I play that are more advanced than little home-made flash games, avoid this problem; my thresholds for what I've described here aren't that high.... BG3, however, fails to avoid this problem, for me at least, so far.

Saying "Well, if that ability works too well and makes everything else pointless, why don't you just not use it?" is patronising, and frankly, a little offensive, as well as being dismissive. It assumes I'm not, and it ignores the fact that doing so will not, in any real way, improve my enjoyment of the game, when I know that the "I win" button is there, at all times, and that I'm just wasting time and being ineffective for no functional reason by not using it. It's not a "ruining your own game experience and then being upset" situation - it's a "Damned if I do and damned if I don't" situation - and that is a fault of the game's design and balance. If I could turn my brain off and be mindlessly entertained by the flashy colours and bright explosions, and the game congratulating me and telling me I win every time I push the same one or two buttons over and over, perhaps I would, and perhaps I'd enjoy the combat in this game if I could: I can't do that... I need the game to be better.