This is true; EA is a different branch than the development branch. Things aren't developed directly into EA, representing a live feed of current development progression. So what ever is / isn't added to EA doesn't reflect development progression at all, as that's just specifically hand-plucked from the development branch and moved into EA (otherwise you'd have to constantly retroactively remove bloat gamefiles from unreleased content to protect from datamining etc) so it just makes more sense to treat the two branches separately.
So pretty much spot on, it'd be misleading for oneself to view EA as a live viewport to peek in at current development progress. What ever is there is deliberately there. Larian has a considerable QA staff to handle performance profiling, bugs, verifying updates etc; The main purpase of EA is to provide a small tasting, like holding a finger in the air to feel where the wind is blowing, and use that knowledge of what people respond positively or negatively to for their advantage in developing the rest of the game. But the rest of the game isn't meant to be seen by us until it's finished.
This is as I always understood it to be. Thank you for confirming it though.
So does Larian ever leave things in the EA for dataminers to find that is designed to mislead/misdirect them?
