EA, as I see it, is first and foremost, a way of gathering user data.
What classes we choose, what NPCs we interact with, how we interact with, where we die, where we go off script, what build we make, when we use skills etc.
If we decide to give additional feedback it's because we care. Expecting the devs to follow that instead of data gathered is setting yourself up for disapointment I think. I'm sure all of them were considered at some point at least.
Why the last-minute changes? I doubt they were last-minute. There was a long time since the last EA patch, and even then we don't know what was cooking behind the scenes. I guess Larian just decided to announce them only just now, before launch. I think it's still better than seeing those changes at launch for ourselves.
