About the duration of combat.
First the obvious.... if you feel that combat too long there can be 2 reasons:
1. the combat is boring. When you Play a Chess game is the combat also taking too Long? You Play a Game because its fun. If Parts of the Game feel boring then Solution can never be to shorten or skipping that part but instead making it fun. So i tanslate your complaint into more partymembers make the game unfunny. Wich is abit of paradox for a Party based rpg.
2. it feels too Long because you dont wana fight at all. The feeling of accomplishments and loot is Not coming fast enough to be satisfiying. It feels like work to get to the loot. Again this hasnt to do with partymembers but with Game design and the generation of players (younger generations are more used to easy and fast progression in anytthing Not just games).
In fact Most turnbased rpg are taking ALOT longer than bg3 in combat. Basicsally all the former turnbased DND games take longer than bg3 in combat. The whole reason to make it turnbased is giving you more time to think about options and having more options. Saying combat takes too long means you would rather prefer realtime combat. I can live with that too of its fun. But in no way duration of turns can ever be an issue of the combat is fun.
A lot of what you wrote there was wildly incorrect.
I’m not going to bother explaining why point by point, but if you want to have engaging conversations you should ask questions rather than make incorrect assumptions.
