Larian already has to look at feedback from players who simply missed things and assumed quests were broken or things were not in the alpha/beta yet, etc. I doubt some minority of players save scumming and saying the game is too easy are going to throw off the overall difficulty feedback Larian is getting, or their own experiences playing and internal beta testing.
So, again, it's not just about how the developers digest feedback on combat difficulty, that's just a point Tanist latched onto and decided to rest his entire argument on.
But (I'll bite), why assume it's a minority of players who use the save/load feature when a special container fails to yield useful rewards? Unlike the way Tanist spins the story, one doesn't have to reload a save game for hours to get better rewards from one of these special containers. It's simple enough that within minutes you can find yourself saying
"Ah, much better loot". It takes a handful of seconds to reload a saved game created while standing in front of one of these special containers.
Hypothetical question: if frequent save-scumming was something you did while playing Divinity : OS, and you posted feedback during a difficulty discussion (without mentioning your save-scumming habit, perhaps because maybe you assume everyone does it, or it's not worth mentioning, or you consider it a legitimate part of the game, etc) do you think the developers would not take your opinion into account? What about [insert long-time forum member here]'s opinion?
Combat difficulty is a topic that comes up frequently, and if there's one thing that seems guaranteed to show up in every discussion it's a bunch of differing opinions on whether combat is too easy or too difficult. Even comparisons to the same fight result in wildly differing stories, where one player argues they can't beat it while another is suggesting it was too easy to even be memorable.
We can debate why all these different experiences are happening.. could be because of gear, could be because of skill, could be because of how you built your character.. but "could be because of gear" is definitely in there. Nobody should be pretending otherwise, especially when we have all played the game and know what a dramatic difference one tier of weapon can make compared to the next. And when someone abuses the current setup to "save-scum", they can end up with the best tier equipment at a given level fairly easily, and not even have that practice entering their minds when hopping into a difficulty discussion to measure their e-peens with everyone else. In the typical gamer's mind, s/he does better only because they're just better at playing the game.
I think we're being a bit naive to assume that nobody providing feedback here or on the Steam forums does that, but whatever. And (regardless) it's not the sole reason behind fixing (or not fixing) this abusable loophole in the design.
