Just pitching in to agree that levelling up at the beginning of EA seems unnecessarily fast, that the speed at which we gain levels would reasonably drop off significantly as we get to higher levels (i.e. I hope we don't get more XP thrown at us to keep a constant levelling up speed throughout the game), and that even a reasonably complete playthrough shouldn't result in hitting a level cap way before the end of the game.
That said, I don't expect Larian to spend time and effort implementing levels that no-one/hardly anyone is going to get to, and I understand that Larian don't want the end game to be wildly unbalanced because some players might be maxing out XP. And I actually prefer a game that doesn't reward grinding for XP overmuch as I like to be able to make choices that roleplay my character rather than do absolutely everything to gain as much XP as I can, but I'm too weak-willed to not do that if the game is going to award me more power and abilities so if there's a level cap that I'm going to hit if I do everything then I feel that gives me more freedom to NOT do certain things that don't fit as well with my character concept (I do realise this may just be my problem!).
In short, I am comfortable with there being a level cap at around 10-12 but Larian have a tricky balancing act in spreading the XP to make sure it's not hit too soon, unlike in EA.
By the way, I wonder if our characters could or should continue to accumulate XP even after they've hit the cap. Even if they can't level up any further in the initial campaign, it would mean they didn't lose out if further levels are implemented in any subsequent expansions. In fact, I'm not sure whether even in EA the characters continue to accumulate XP behind the scenes.
