I hope Larian read and consider the views expresed in this thread, as it provides a reasonable sampling of the way players approach the game ( i.e. we are all different in what we look for in RPGs).
To address the thread topic directly; yes, EA as we currently have it is lacking in many ways, but that is perfectly well understood by Larian, and probably intentional. Most video games start with an outline to work towards, with the final game often resolving to something quite different than the original imaginings.
By my personal "guesstimate" EA was released with less than 50% of the content planned for Act 1, and as of patch 6 has, maybe, 60% of Act 1. I base this on the observation that there appear to be 3 general paths laid out to follow.
1. The "Halsin" path, where you move through the Goblin fortress to the Underdark and follow the trail to Grymforge, and ( eventually ) continue to Moonrise Towers. This is the path that seems most complete, but we don't really know how much more content there might be before reaching MT.
2. The "Minthara" path, where you follow M's instructions through the Druid grove, then meet her Drider underling and take the Risen Road to Moonrise Towers. This is a partially complete progression, perhaps less than 50%, but, again, we don't really know.
3. The "Lae'zel" path, where you largely Ignore the Goblin/Grove questlines and instead move through the Gith encounter and on to the Creche in the mountains, probably also ending up at Moonrise Towers, but we don't know that at present. This path is barely started in EA as of patch 6.
On top of finishing these "paths", Moonrise Towers itself may or may not be in Act 1 ( we don't know ), and we will also have an unknown amount of content related to additional companions (and probably existing companions), that we have not yet seen. We can also expect a steady stream of "tinkering" where we receive additional/changed content.
Perhaps 60% of Act 1 is actually an underestimate of the current content?
One thing I particularly like about the way Larian are approaching the story is that the 3 "paths" mentioned above are really more like suggestions than linear game tree pruning.
There are actually very few choices you make that reduce your agency; most obvious being when you become hostile to members of a faction, you generally lose access to questlines associated with the faction, but may gain access to other quests elsewhere. But even if you make a faction angry, it is not clear that that locks you into a particular path. At present, you can happily trash the druid grove for Minthara, then follow the underdark route through Grymforge, killing Nere et al along the way.
Similarly, as you travel around the EA map, it seems almost every encounter hints at future content either in Act 1, or more likely later Acts. Even the dead postman hints that you may be able to visit his employer in BG, and little of this hinted content seems in any way gated.
In fact, the only real binary choice that I have seen in EA is whether you continue to use the tadpole powers to the point where the game labels your tadpole dialog choices with "True Soul" rather than "Illithid". And if this is a binary choice with permanent meaning, we do not see this in EA.
So, returning to the original critique of the quality of the "Evil Path", I am personally not even sure what the "Evil Path" actually is; and Larian did not really help by asking us to test "The Evil Path", while at the same time WotC are downplaying alignment in 5e.
There are definitely a lot of discontinuities in the story as it stands in EA, so I'm sure that GM4Him ( and others ) are right in feeling that the game can feel "off" when following certain behaviour paths.
In fact, the more you deviate from the obvious paths, the more the game struggles to cope with a coherent story. I have even had the camp cut-scenes for individual companions delivered out of order.
So, while I understand that we should not criticize a far from complete Act 1 too harshly, I really hope Larian are aware of how inadequate the event-based triggering they are currently using is for the intertwined stories they want to tell.
