Fatigue in the game would be more true to D&D 5e rules. If you don't regularly eat and drink and rest you would suffer fatigue. If Larian implemented a fatigue system, then food would not be needed to heal. You could just do away with food healing at all. It would then be specifically for preventing fatigue or removing it. This is what it was meant to be in D&D anyway, not hp recovery. So, in my book, that would be way better anyway, more meaningful and realistic and would create a bigger difference between potions and food. It would give food a bigger purpose, which was the reason I suggested making food only recover HP in camp. Add a fatigue system, and do away with food recovering HP. I'm good with that.
I do agree, though, that they should implement consequences for wasting time. If you take too long to attack the goblins, for example, they just show up at the druid's grove and start attacking. Things like that. This could easily be implemented with what I said: 2 long rests equal a day, not 1. After you long rest like 10 times, 5 days, the goblins show up and attack. Something like that would create more of a race against time element that would keep players on their toes and keep them from abusing the rest system to recover after every single battle.
But ultimately, we HAVE to uncouple the dialogue/story/character development aspect from long rests. It's ridiculous to have a character hardly do anything and then say they need to rest just so they can spark a conversation. I've literally had sessions where I adventured for 5 minutes and suddenly they want to end the day. Dumb.
Agree with all of this. I can see maybe adding fatigue and food not healing as a menu option though, as some people (not me) seem to like the current unbalanced system a lot. I would still prefer a system with one long rest per day and 2? short rests (not sure what is usual for this) but resting would be a lot less confusing if they could add a day/night cycle. Characters should definitely be able to talk to us at any point rather than just at camp.
It's also stupid because you have a tadpole in your head and everyone is telling you that you can turn into a mind flayer if you take too long. So, when I first played through the game, I thought, "I'm not resting if at all
So much this. Let companions talk to us on the road, or implement short rests where your party sets up a little camp wherever you are right then, and you can talk to companions then.
And Larian needs to do something about the conflict between tadpole urgency and resting. If they really really need us to rest and get that cutscene showing that the danger isn't as immediate as we suspected, then find a better way to force it. Give our characters levels of exhaustion (we were just kidnapped, put in vats, implanted with tadpoles, fought our way out, and then fell out of a ship), or in the Gale/Lae'zel introduction scene have one of our characters hear a horde of goblins approaching and heavily imply we need to find a place to lay low for hours, or something.
As it is now, like GM4Him, in my first playthrough I tried my best not to rest, thinking that there was some sort of time pressure. I first rested significantly after leaving the Grove, which resulted in the game never showing me that "hey, we're not all turning into mindflayers!" scene, so I continued rest as little as possible. This resulted in me missing even more cutscenes/dialogue.
They added a slight bit more suggesting that we aren't going to turn into mindflayers but it is still not enough imo. None of this new stuff would make me feel comfortable just taking my time doing whatever. I still only rested because I knew I would miss dialogue with companions, not because I wanted to. I would think most people would still want to find someone to remove this unwelcome tadpole as soon as possible since it does not belong. Perhaps they should add something implying that the tadpoles cannot be removed at all and we have to deal with them.
Sorry, totally against an exhaustion system in this game. I mean it is fine in games like XCOM2 where you have a bunch of soldiers to work with when your others become "wounded" or "exhausted", but in this game, with these few companions it would be terrible. Can't say that I ever had an issue of not camping to see the rest scenes. That is a new one. I mean after a few battles, you have to to get your short rests recharged. Not to mention, I was pretty sure they weren't going to make the main character a mindflayer in the first chapter.
I had no need to use short rests on anyone except my warlock. I as the player obviously knew we wouldn't turn into mindflayers, but my characters would not have this information and most of them wouldn't just believe someone saying this to them. Even if I was playing an idiot character who believed everything they were told, I still would not find myself needing to rest as often as the game seems to expect us to for companion dialogue.
Maybe all it needs is a line like "Lets get back to camp and I will explain" to make it feel less dumb. You wouldn't have to end the day, just return to camp.
That would be a good idea if they can't decouple dialogue from camp.
