Far as I can decipher the issue raised around the AP bar, it looks like a question of "should the game draw attention to the obvious?".
A lot of people have had their first experience with the game, I've had my first time playing the game, back in beta (before the little tutorial screens were even made). And yet I could differentiate between foreshadowing, a humorous "that looks important" remark, and understand where the AP bar was and how it worked just by seeing what changes when a battle starts and noticing the bubbles going red as I planned my first move. I am willing to bet a lot of people did.
So I do ask myself, what is it that differentiates those of us that can figure the game's basic mechanics with just the short, but ample information the game gives in text, all the information it gives as feedback to your actions, and those that would ask the developers to make the game tell them what to do when new, previously unexplained information suddenly shows up on the screen.
And just to be clear, everything on the screen is information sitting in front of you. It's simply up to the user to interpret it.
Well, from all this, my personal conclusion tends to go towards "the issue is between the chair and keyboard" rather than towards the game not explaining enough. The devs said they want the player to think and make decisions, though the game at times sends a conflicting message.
In closing, I reiterate that this is just how I see things, and I suspect a number of others do as well. Am I utterly wrong, am I off the mark, am I too damn intolerant, am I onto something, I don't really know.
What I do know is that I fully support Larian's path of making the game challenge the player not just to beat it, but to also understand it.
