I don’t want to be a paying (not paid) tester. Sure EA is for bugs and minor changes but at its current state, I don’t think it should have entered EA. Personally, EA shouldn’t be longer than a year. Six months is ideal to get the kinks out and build up hype.
Hype shouldn’t last almost two years. And developers shouldn’t expect paying customers to test their game for major changes. And if BG3 requires only minor changes, there’s no excuse to keep it in EA for almost two years.
I think as gamers we put up with way too much with developer antics.
I wouldn't say we're paying testers. We paid for the game and will get full access when it releases. It's more of a pre-order with the option to play (and test) it early as a volunteer tester.
But I understand your point. EAs should either* be short and focused on bug-fixing, or long and involve communication with the EA players and possibly big changes to the game based on said discussions. And, unfortunately, BG3 EA is seeming like it will be very long but focused mainly on bug fixing and releasing content that would be put in the main game anyway. Honestly, Larian probably could have waited 6 months to release EA, released with the Druid class, and not really lost any EA efficiency.
*In a perfect world, EAs are both short and involve discussions with players leading to big changes, but these situations are rare. I won't mention the game-that-must-not-be-named as a good example of such an EA.
