The issue is that none of these recent rule changes/taking away options will sell even a single copy. Other things will push sales up including you know what. Even the casual will see dnd/from the creators of dos/the bg name and go from there. They're not gonna really pay attention to these stat changes.. so who are these changes for? Not the hardcore. Not the 'fake casual'? Casual players aren't gonna be interested a 100 hour turn based rpg to begin with. The rule changes doesn't change that. So, why changes? And, why not make them optional?
This is a rather myopic argument. Sure, these changes aren't going to make or break purchase for anyone; but they could well affect other important metrics like engagement, play time, replayability. For an upcoming, one-title-at-a-time studio like Larian those things are just as important as they potentially increase sales on the next project. They ran a 6-month internal beta with players from all backgrounds gathering data and feedback on what people enjoy/don't enjoy; understand/don't understand; care about/don't care about. The EA is about metadata, not individualized feedback. That can be rough to deal with but it's how the EA was sold and it's how it played out. Expecting to have a large impact on the outcome of the game without being an actual employee of the studio is, IMO, naive.
