Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What was purpose of Early Acess?

I think the obvious one is money, they even said it themselves, they made a ton of money with the EA and they game is much bigger because of it.

Regarding other changes, specially the ''last minute ones'' seem to me like the thing they have in common is the fact that they ''dumb down'' probably in favor of new players and people that doesn't have experience with these games and might feel overwhelmed with systems or aspects Larian doesn't deem as important.

Feedback like the reaction system took a lot of effort and time for them to finally bend the knee because Sven was adamant against it (said by himself) because it would slow down the pace of the game (again, his words). But it also happened to be simpler (because it was almost non-existent) and less ''intimidating'' for new people compared to the new one.

Some other feedback they just get through analysis and statistics passively from the people playing early access and we don't know much about that since last time they mentioned that stuff on PFH 1 or 2 (don't remember exactly but one of the firsts PFH)

And now just at the end they streamlined the races, possibly denied the possibility to choose cantrips and other class traits like the one from bard to take expertise on skills, not adding more basic actions like, hold action and dodge, loading removed from crossbows, etc. All making the game ''easier/simpler'' to get into and if that's not the reason, at the very least they all have that in common. And after seeing ''complete noobs'' trying to get into the game for the first time I can see why they might think mechanical complexity and information overload might pose a problem.

To that I'll add that we don't exactly know what's on the release build but based on the information we have and assuming the final build won't be too different from the one people reviewed at Ghent those are my thoughts.