The game combat and everything surrounding it is great, and keeps pulling me back to play the game. But the thing that at some point always turns me off is the gameworld being a backdrop or excuse for the combat. I understand the reason that they abandoned the simulation aspect, but you can't shake the feeling that the only thing that has a tangible progression is your company. Almost nothing you do really affects the world in a lasting way, the lairs and enemies appear randomly or worse, just because you got a quest for it, instead of the other way around. At some point you get tired of the bandits that appeared out of nowhere to steal an idol/staff/whatever in every village, the lairs that randomly appear all the time to spawn huge amount of enemies, you start not giving a fuck about fixing a towns problems because you realize there are no problems, the problems appear so that just you can get into combat (which is great). The crisis happening over and over again in a loop. Except for a town changing hands or permanent destruction setting (which goes the whole other way, as it could be a great quest to rebuild a town), nothing matters. Sure, you remove a town penalty or give it a buff, for it to disappear 2 days later and replaced with another idol stealing thief or whatever. There's enough content and areas to explore, and I don't see the need to forcefully create problems so that the player can have a contract.
I think the main design issue is the "single contract" quest structure, from which all this things boil down. The journal should have been more open, you go town to town, collecting quests, solving issues as you go along, having more agency in the order you do them. The worst culprits are the faction ones that take you to the other side of the kingdom to do a quest and you can't take any other while you go through those towns. Personally, I would have gone with the world creating 100 lairs, with them growing in power as time goes on and creating issues for the surrounding town. When you clear them, they aren't filled for a couple of months and they start from a low point again. Basically, make the lair locations permanent, instead of random spawns that disappear when you clear them, that's horrible for the world credibility. And the main problem that lack of world tangibility is that you can't create long term plans, you can't set yourself high level goals. Except for making an expedition for the black monolith, or some of the new locations, the rest is just random combat excuses.
Anyway, ranting just because the game is fucking great and just needs an extra push in the simulation aspect of the world. Make the consequences for clearing areas more lasting, don't create places out of nowhere, allow the player to feel like an agent in the world, with consequences for their actions, instead of the world adapting so that the player can get into fights. Probably for a BB2. Really, don't use the single contract structure for the sequel.
