Kardwill: Happened to me. I reloaded a prior save and went to save Dinaheir. But to be honest, it was all my fault. It was pretty obvious you had to go help her as fast as you could. Minsk made it very obvious. It's just we are so used to take our sweet time for everything in CRPGs, that we don't believe in urgency anymore.
I don't think it is because we are used to it. Party is core of party-based RPGs. I don't remember a single RPG before BG1, which would allow so much party shenanigans. Control over the party should be in the hands of player. No "ifs", no "buts", no stinky timed quests which drive party members away from you in droves :)
Kardwill: "Yeah, the princess is being sacrified to beings from the nether realms just on the other side of that wall, but it won't trigger before I open the door, so I'll check those random barrels and take a nap first. Oh, and maybe make a quick shopping trip to the nearest town, to resell my loot, since the high priest is probably loaded with stuff and I need some space in my inventory"
Too much "realism" in video games usually goes against gameplay. Thankfully, it is just video game, so you don't need to manage defecation and wash-time of your characters as well as sleep regime, washing clothes, etc. I wonder why it doesn't break "immersion" for some people that their characters never wash themselves and their clothes?:)
Kardwill: It's a way of thinking that has become instinctive when I play computer "RPGs", and it's one of the reasons I don't "click" with the genre as much as I did in the past (or as much as I still love "real" tabletop RPGs, with a GM to instill the illusion I'm in a real world and not just in a jumble of scripts)
That's because tabletop RPGs =/= CRPGs. Tabletop RPGs is just way to drink beer with friends and pretend you are something else than what you are. CRPGs are abstract models just like chess, but with more visualisation factors and distinctive mechanics. Unlike tabletop games, people play CRPGs for their gameplay and not to role play someone. When you will start looking at CRPGs as games about exploration of dungeons, getting loot and powering-up your characters instead of "role playing" something, you might like this genre more.