I don't expect anything to change markedly without overwhelming community support, which is difficult as most players do not actually express their opinion openly. My assumption is that Larian try to determne the opinion of the silent majority from their gameplay data, but whether this is a good proxy is hard to say.
So, just give the fans exactly what they want, and everything will work out. Right?
Wrong. Generally speaking, the more intensely devoted fans in a fandom are usually outnumbered by the casual fans. But the more devoted a fan becomes, the more active (and louder) they become in the fandom. So while a few million casual fans might enjoy an episode of a show without ever making that fact widely known, a handful of devoted and occasionally unhinged fans are screaming about how the show is Ruined FOREVER, which can be seen and heard by everyone... including the people making the show. The creators may then start pandering to these voices exclusively, believing them to be the voice of everyone watching (which these fans will often claim to be) — but "everyone" in this case may in fact consist only of a handful of people, and what this minority wants and what the less-noisy fans want can differ drastically.
This presents a major problem. The property can end up becoming a private club, accessible only to a select few. Excluding the casual fans means they'll simply drift away to find something else to spend their time on, and raising the entry bar too high means you run the risk of locking out new fans who may have been interested in the property, but now find it too difficult to access. While the vocal minority might now be satisfied (and you can't even count on that), they rarely translate to enough ratings and/or sales to justify the property's continued existence — and to make matters worse, even this hardcore minority that you catered to may begin to drift away for numerous reasons (changing tastes, burnout, lessened interest, etc). This results in diminishing returns, ending in eventual cancellation if unchecked.
Furthermore, the overall quality of the property can begin to suffer if you just listen to the vocal minority; just because someone is intensely committed to a particular work of fiction doesn't necessarily mean they know what makes good fiction work.
Yes, this is pretty much true, and has led to many videogame properties changing over time to target the perceived needs of the mainstream audience.
Most of the money in the games industry is made from F2P and MMO properties that draw revenue from stores offering pay-to-win and/or "desirable" cosmetic items. These are not the sort of game that I want to play, but I recognise that for ANY game to justify a AAA development cost ( say, tens or hundreds of million $ ), the developer MUST lean towards the mainstream to some degree.
So, we end up at the current position, where Owlcat can make a very faithful D&D game, but the audience that want to play the game is too small to justify a AAA budget. Conversely, Larian are in a position to make a AAA game, but can probably only afford to do so by leaning towards the mainstream, and deviating significantly from a faithful D&D representation.
This very simple financial reality means that no amount of righteous fury from the more committed D&D audience has any chance of influencing key design decisions in BG3, and may simply result in offending the developers, which is probably self-defeating.
I would expect ( or hope ) that the released game does take note of elements that have caused disappointment, and allows optional settings where financially practical, and moddability where this is not the case. But during early EA, while there are no optional settings available ( stability and completeness are more important ) I do not expect much more than minor design adjustments.
