Just so you know, I do care if Larian makes money. I want BG3 to be successful. I want them to make more.
That said, people who have never played 5e are standardly the ones who say things like, "It would not work well as a video game or be fun. It's only good for TT." I think it's a common misconception, along with a number of things said.
Items, for example, are still very important in TT. BG3, however, turns them into the have all be all, making everything else null and void.
Example: Clerics are still supposed to be the primary healer class. You can have other healer classes, but cleric in 5e still is king of healers. Not in BG3. Have a potion? Throw it at friends and heal them. You don't need to be a cleric or druid to heal. EVERYONE heals.
Wizards? In 5e, they are still the most versatile spellcasters. Not in BG3. EVERYONE can cast spells because items now give anyone the ability to: Entangle, Create Water, Ray of Frost, and so on, and since everyone can use revivify scrolls and well, all scrolls, any spell is anyone's game.
So why need classes at all in BG3? They're pointless. Don't even get me started on how BG3 destroys the Rogue class. No Expertise to make them far better at certain skills, no Fast Hands to make potion drinking as a bonus action only available for rogues, no lots of things.
And the health restored during Short Rests is meant to symbolize resting, eating, bandaging and tending to wounds, fixing armor and equipment, etc. And it is supposed to be limited by Hit Dice. Yes, you can heal during that time, but it does not in any way replace a healer. Trust me. D&D session tonight. During combat, one character was almost knocked out of the fight. The healer was all that stood between them and being dropped.
The point of short rests is to avoid the need for players to have to Long Rest to continue. It isn't to replace the healers in any way. Those hit Dice go fast.
Descent into Avernus. My players didn't long rest once during one of the beginner dungeons fighting the cult of the Dead Three. I didn't let them. Why? Didn't make sense. Yeah. They were glad to have a cleric in the party. They short rested once, for they were in a hostile dungeon. It in no way replaced their healer.
Anyway, my point is that people don't even give it a chance. Then they say it is unappealing or it won't work. 5e is hugely successful. D&D is exploding with popularity. So if 5e is the edition that is making D&D so popular, why are people writing it off without even trying it?
I did see you mentioned that you hope there's a mode. I do too. But I hope they don't just balance everything based on the nerfed version in EA and then kill us with the 5e difficulty that is too hard to beat because every encounter is Deadly. That's what I'm afraid they'll do. Then they'll say, "See? It doesn't work.". Well, yeah. You're making 2 level 1 characters face 3 intellect devourers - 3 of them. Naturally, that's gonna be next to impossible if you use genuine rules and stats. The only way to make that encounter work is to increase party size to at least 5 and wound those puppies to start with.
