Yeah, I'm fighting with the camera constantly, which (as I mentioned) I have no problem in other similar games.

I played only a bit, and I like it for gameplay choices. I think they're overdoing it with surface effects, that is very D:OS thing, not really DnD thing.
Generally I find that they strayed away from DnD 5e way, way too much, for no good reason (as Solasta have shown, you can implement 5e rules into a video game successfully, and end up with combat that is actually better and more tactical than in BG3).

I had a very WTF moment when I met intellect devourers and fought them - they are very infamous in 5e for being able to devastate even mid and higher level parties due to the ability to consume the target's brain, along with the ability to sense and locate any creature with INT of 3 and up in 300 feet (92m) radius - so as DM, you never throw them at low level parties (let alone lvl1), unless you want to teach them a lesson in humility (for murderhobo parties)...or you're downright just a mean mofo who likes to TPK your parties for fun. Yet in BG3 you fight and easily dispatch 3 of them at lvl1...yeah, just no.

As I said, I've played only a bit and like it for the choices (after all, Larian is very much influenced by Ultima VII and P&P RPGs). But, so far, I don't really feel the BG vibe of the old games, and they very much botched implementing DnD 5e properly, especially in combat. I will definitely keep on playing it once I get the time, since I can see there is potentially good game underneath it all, but so far I'm a bit lukewarm about it.

Well, in most games a failed dice roll is an avoidable or bad outcome. In BG III it just is a different story path for most of the time. You always can fight and kill everyone, even your intended companions. But you also can persuade or intimidate hostile characters to avoid fights. If you talk to friendly or hostile characters and fail a dice roll, it might lead to a fight you wanted to avoid, but that still is a very valid option for the game.

I feel like the problem is that in actual D&D the DM will have way more creative options in mind for fail-states, something which you can't easily replicate in a scripted computer game.

Most of the time there's a clear definite good outcome in BG3 dice rolls, and when the bad ones come >50% of the time, that just encourages trying again.

The developers tried to mitigate the problem by offering multiple options sometimes, which is effectively trying again with a slightly different stat, but their RNG, like most computer RNGs, sometimes is stuck in the same state for a few seconds, so you end up just failing multiple times in a row, even with karmic dice.

Define a bad outcome. If you side with aunt Ethel or with the villagers, which is the right outcome? A dice roll can decide that, if you fail to persuade them to lay down weapons for instance. Which exactly is the 'bad' outcome?

I assume if you click on a skill check option you want it to succeed because otherwise, you can just use standard conversation choices to achieve the same result.

(I mean, you could want to see what happens differently specifically if you fail the check, but then we're back to my previous point in that case).

Reading into that article more, as well as watching LK's video on the matter made me realise that some indie devs need to stay in their own lane and not act like they know absolutely everything about the industry (especially if their games are very small time projects and don't have renown to go with them).

This is also a terrible excuse when you consider that R* is releasing a barebones digital port of a 4 gen old game, with no extra additions or enhancements and they are asking for £50...

I'm sorry to all the nitpicky devs at those American studios (even EU ones like Ubi and CDPR), but the bar has in fact been raised. Indie devs clearly should not be aiming for what BG3 is doing, unless they have the staff and the cash flow to make it all happen (as well as a great producer/game director who isn't a nonce like Chris Roberts), but there is virtually no excuse on earth for why AAA studios/publishers cannot meet this bar, especially when you consider the money they waste on marketing or buying out Streamers for their esports scenes or just to sponsor.

I find it kind of disheartening that we've reached this point with the games industry, where game devs are acting super salty that there are other devs out there who make a game that isn't insanely watered down and streamlined, that isn't diming you for more and more coin, and is able to set a new standard. All I can say to those devs is to get back to it and actually listen to your community (you know, what the Saints Row devs didn't do for example), and if they are asking for multiple endings or intricate systems, then listen and do it, don't pear back the systems and the quality so you can just cash in and ask for more money for less, because then you're far more likely to get shown up by another studio doing more for less, and then you have virtually no one to blame but yourselves. 

Well, I can see where some of the indies are coming from in regards to this, but it is still weird to counter an argument, that hasn't even been made at that point the thread was made. But yeah, if you judge an indie game in regards to Baldur's Gate you should rethink, because a game like that needs resources.

But it is another story when this Diablo 4 designer chimes in and saying stuff according to the lines that larian rides on experience of previous games and such. Diablo is an old series and Blizzard has a lot of experience with it. And also Blizzard/Activision is much bigger than Larian. So yeah, Blizzard doesn't get a free pass, Diablo totally can be judged by BG standards, as can Starfield or Final Fantasy. These teams have the experience with their series and they also command resources bigger than Larian.

Update:

We have a very strong candidate for GOTY.

In Metacritics all-time list it now sits at 15, right after Breath of the Wild.

It reads like that indie dev has an innate fear that their future games will be compared to BG3, and I feel like that is why he made that entire thread to begin with.

I also feel like his fear shouldn't really be placed upon himself like that, because he's only so far been doing smaller projects, absolutely nothing in the scope of what BG3 was doing or even higher of that within the AAA space, which is why I feel like he should have stayed in his own lane and not spark a "hold on now" moment with the public.

Could you imagine Toby Fox coming out and going "don't expect me to make a Star Citizen"?, it'd come right out of left field, feel weird and not much would change, because none of us here expect Toby fox to suddenly scale up to making a game on the scale of SC. 

This is why people are having to go out of their way toe explain what that indie dev failed to covey, in that it took Larian 20+ years to get to where they are (they filed for bankruptcy twice even, and still managed to stay alive and not be bought out), they didn't just crop up over night, they've been working at what they wanted to eventually cultivate for decades.

The indie dev has no real reason to panic, whilst the AAA devs need to pipe down and pay more attention to their CEO's/execs pushing them to breaking limits, instead of going for the easy scapegoat of the century "blame the gamer", which is funnily enough what I saw happening in the comments section of LK's video:

Basically, the smaller indie studios shouldn't even be worrying, because as long as they themselves come out honest with their audience in what they plan to build and what they are doing, then people should be fine as we have been for years now (people have been happy with MC before it was bought by MS, happy with Stardew Valley, Undertale, etc). AAA studios on the other hand do not get the free pass as you've said before, and I feel like they know this, which is why some of the devs are very quick to chime in, just like the time they chimed in when Elden Ring was getting glowing praise and raising it's own bar.

I think the bigger issue here, is that AAA devs are either too scared or lack the spine to truly unify and stand up to being treated better by execs, or simply getting those execs to stop making the worst possible decisions (like releasing buggy games, diming customers, slicing up games into pieces, not giving devs enough certs, crunch time and not having long dev cycles), because at this moment, the devs are telling us to tone down our expectations for nearly anything (if you go by their core logic, don't expect more, expect less), in order to let them just stagnate and hardly change, while letting them have some semblance of a job.

if they are truly ruffled by BG3's quality and success, then maybe they need to find a new job or actually make a stand against those not allowing them to make it possible within their companies, because it's not us the customer here that has to give, these studios are here for us, they exist because we buy their games.

Indie devs make games to sell for the most part, but they are mostly born of passion and at times can be passion projects in their spare time, whilst AAA are not any of that and are primarily designed to make money, a product to sell, not "here's this game I spent my own free time making with love and care and I only ask for £10".