Well, not that it really matters that much at this point. We are possibly a couple of patches away from release and everything must be pretty much set in stone.
Yeah, I fear as much.
We're still as free to spend our time giving feedback if we really want to. But, assuming it makes it to The Composer's feedback letters, and from there to an email box at Larian, it may well be moved directly to a trash bin. Release date is approaching, there are probably hundreds of things to finish or polish, and there is quite possibly no more time for actually, fundamentally thinking about improvements and changes. Of course, I don't know what stage of development Larian is at internally, as of today. But the value of feedback has always been strictly decreasing with time, and I fear it's probably next to worthless these days.
Originally Posted by Tuco
[...] I don't think it was irrational to expect some occasional report like "Feedback we are aware of (and conclusions about the design we are drawing from it)" or "What we are working on" between patches. Instead here we go with thew secrecy, the pageantry, the attempt to build hype... And the LONG stretches of complete silence in between.
Not only some communication like that would not have been irrational or unreasonable, but it would also have been quite useful. Indeed, the process of gathering feedback would have been made easier, since a good chunk of the "feedback noise" and irrelevant requests would just not have been posted. And those who would have continued posting feedback would have turned their energy to where it could be useful. (*)
But hey, as I've said before, Larian must have had a pretty solid rationale for choosing to go along the minimal-communication route. So solid that the benefits of this communication policy still outweighed the costs, such as all the criticism they received for feeling out of touch with their player base (**). It's just a shame they never shared their wisdom with us. Who knows, it might have convinced some of us —pretty solid reasons can do that with reasonable people— and they would have received less negative feedback on their lacklustre communication. (See above paragraph about making feedback easier to process and focused on more useful areas.)
* : By the way, is anyone vaguely hoping that a new community manager, or whatever related news is coming, has a chance of finally going into "some detail about how we process & parse feedback and data we get through talking with you, and the telemetry we have in the game" (as Larian announced in Hotfix #11, on 12/5/2021).
** : Fun fact, in a GDC talk about the making of D:OS1 (at about 6:50), Swen said "during the time of Ego Draconis, we had lost touch with our players behind a corporate wall of press releases and so we didn't really communicate with them anymore". Which sounds fun to me, because I feel this is exactly what's been happening during the BG3 EA, with "press releases" renamed as "Community Updates".
