Stabby's concern has been mine from the start. DM Mode is useless unless the editor is useable at minimum of the NWN toolset. Useable at the NWN2 toolset would be better IMO, but I'm not holding my breath.
IMO if the game design is game first and toolset as a stretch goal I just don't see it getting to where the community thinks it should be. DOS1 was a great game with a toolset as an after thought. I see the same pattern here.
I mean, the engine they used to design the game is hardly an afterthought, and they probably didn't have the funds to improve it to the level of ease they would have liked. Long gone are the days where games were made primarily for their editors so people could make their own content. I imagine it's pretty hard to make that profitable except at the level of top-down RPG Maker kind of stuff. I don't expect Larian to focus on making the editor intuitive as one of their top 3 goals, but maybe in the top 10. Not an afterthought, but not an absurd investment on their part either.
Do mods and UGC sell games? If done well, it's probably a decent factor. Skyrim and the Fallouts and especially NWN probably would've had much fewer sales if they weren't easily moddable. But it's probably less profitable than we would like to think. I wonder how many people play Skyrim without mods vs. with mods, and how many would've bought it regardless of whether there were mods or not? Anyone have any data on this?