Withers and the mirror are the classical example of "convenience that kills any immersion". When you have it you use and abuse it, but then you realize that the game lost something in the process, as virtually no decision feels like a long term commitment anymore.
The stats and class of your companions don't matter, yours even less and you can even re-edit your look constantly. After a while it feels like nothing has any weight.
I mean... Neither of those things really mattered much in Divinity either. With companions being literal blank slates and their starting "Class" being derived from them literally asking you "What class do you want me to be?" upon recruitment.
Even in other games like Owlcat's stuff, it barely matters. Other than the arbitrary restriction of "You can't respec below the minimum level they can join you at" which means like level 1 is locked in for the first couple of characters and later ones are locked in to like level 3-5.
I'd much rather effort is put into making things that actually matter be where decisions require committment (I.e. Actions and dialogue options) rather than making me have to restart a run because a feat happened to not perform like I thought it would.
Or things like me just using Hirelings because the actual companions have garbage stats (Which is the case for Pillars of Eternity... I at least was able to mod PoE2 so that companions didn't suck complete and total balls. Same is true for Owlcat's Pathfinder games, I ended up modding so I could full respec the companions so I could undo absolutely horrendous decisions made by the default characters that made them garbage so I didn't have to just use custom Hirelings for the entire game)
I'm not even going to argue against their inclusion because i know how popular they are and how much people would whine about their removal, but I'm still free to comment that I don't like them.
At most I could argue that I'd love to see their use severely limited in any future version of "Honor mode".
For instance: say goodbye to respec to "8 STR" later only because you are going to use the STR 23 gloves. If you want to do that trick, you'll have to suck up going through the whole game with STR set at 8.
Honestly that's more of an issue with dumb things like items that set stats to specific things rather than the system itself. Given that Divinity games never had such things (Also most other DnD based games don't have them either), there's no reason why they would necessarily be a thing going forward.
The camp is bad in the sense I'd prefer an Owlcat-like system where your potential camping spots are contextual to the world OR you can simply camp anywhere there's enough space for it at your own risk.
The instanced pocket dimension is aggressively meh, as far as I concerned. I could kinda of dig if they managed to make it contextually meaningful maybe (i.e. In a sci-fi setting your base could be the starship you move around with).
Please note, that I never said anything about actual camping. Just the notion of the camp itself as a sort of hub area to sort out things like managing party members, equipment and the likes. Actual camping is pretty redundant unless you have a stupid Spell Slot system whereby you "Manage" spell slots by making people have to rest. Which rarely actually makes for anything interesting.
Especially in games like BG3 or Pillars of Eternity where there's 0 consequence for resting after literally every fight. Solasta at least limits your ability to rest based on specific locations and Owlcat games do a combination of location based things (Though there's always the cheese of just backtrack and leave the area and rest aboard your ship/in the wilderness) or better yet the PotR Corruption system. But even then it doesn't really add too much besides annoyance that your casters simply get progressively weaker while your martials run around at full power doing way more stuff with no consequence...
Which hinges around the design of casters just being flat out stupid broken when you get to high level where 1-2 spells wipes out entire fights and resting is redundant because you just use these OP spells and plethora of spell slots to blow through everything.
"Non combat experience" is a sloppy solution that doesn't solve really anything (i.e. you can still abuse the system getting the exp reward for the non-combat solution and THEN triggering the combat anyway for the extra exp.
A far better system would be a "goal driven" one. "You get the exp ONCE to solve a certain encounter in whatever manner, but then if you go murderhobo you don't get any extra reward for it".
Yes, I stated that it isn't the best system. It is however the best one that has been done. Most other games forgo the act of even having any semblance of addressing the issue by having dialogue options to skip fights provide little to no experience in the first place so you HAVE to murderhobo to get the exp.
BG3 at least took some initiative to provide this alternative. They just need to continue down the path towards making things more flexible. Where you gain exp from interactions once by any means (Of course, the trickier aspect is the loot part of being a murderhobo... You get everyone's stuff that way where it's harder to hand out said items for alternate methods...)
- One thing that I'd love to see return in one form or another is a REACTION SYSTEM. For all the silly concerns people had before they added it to this game that it would "slow the combat down", having the option of the occasional input even during the enemy turn never stopped being thrilling.
Personally... I don't really care.
Reactions have never really felt particularly interesting. Though I can't tell whether that's the mechanic as a whole, or just the rather few actual effects that can be utilized as a reaction.
Then again, even in games like XCOM with "Overwatch" things to provide reactionary behaviour, it never felt particularly interesting.
Interrupts however, are interesting. But only because of the stupid D20 system, whereby things like Reckless Attacks, Shield, Portent Dice, Warding Flare etc. being used to fudge unfavourable rolls is useful. But I'd rather simply not have to rely on a die roll for things to function in the first place.
- Another feature of BG3 I hope to see return in future Larian games is STATIC HANDPLACED LOOT. Words can hardly explain how much I loathed the randomized itemization of the previous DOS 1 and 2 and how much I dislike "random loot" in general.
Honestly... I'm not sure where I stand on such a thing.
Like, yes, DOS's randomization being based on that luck stat and opening every container and magically finding loot was kind of stupid... But most of the notable loot was from static locations (Usually drops from boss enemies or vendors) and in fact I don't recall really ever using much of the randomly generated items beyond like level 2, it was always the staticly found items I used instead.
Static loot placements are the bane of BG3, where the beginning of every run involves the obligatory slalom between each piece of loot (Exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of good items are on vendors...)
I'd rather see more randomization in loot so that runs feel different, so you're not just always running the same path to get the same items for the same builds. But obviously not DOS's luck based "Any container can contain any item"
Though all CRPG's do very much like their static loot... In some cases it makes sense, for noteworthy loot to be in specific places, like held by X boss or behind Y event.
But, I think the main issue is just how much of this "Specific" loot exists. With it often being enough to fully kit out your entire party (And then some), rather than the odd 1-2 notable items supported by an assortment of random magical items. So you end up doing this slalom of loot gathering to gear up rather than going for content because you can fill up on random magical items to tide you over until you eventually pick up a notable item as a replacement for something.
