This is pointless. Why are we debating this? It doesn't matter what any of us thinks they said or meant. No amount of defending Larian matters. None of this matters except 1 thing.
This game is a D&D game. D&D fans want D&D 5e rules. If they don't put a setting in to make D&D 5e rules more strict, D&D fans are going to be upset. Thus, they will lose D&D fans. Just go back and look at the post history. See how many posts are from people upset about not getting true 5e rules. It's not the minority.
This forum is quite small and you don't get that many posters here, though. The amount of posts here don't say much, at least not compared to big data from steam sales & charts. I'd not expect a corporation Hasbro's size to make commercial decisions based on forum posts. Consider that the other big name game WotC ic currently marketing for is Dark Alliance, which happens to be a co-op PC / console action game. My guess is that why WotC went with Larian; their target is the co-op gaming market, especially consoles, which is where you get the big sales.
