I do get the impression that a lot of the difficulty was watered down because the playtesters didn't enjoy things that were challenging.
While I do love the game, I also believe Larian erred too far on the side on the side easy.
I can't help but wonder what they've learned from analytics thus far. Is the game too easy? Do their numbers show that? I would love to know.
I don't think we'll ever get to know that, unfortunate as it may be.
There are simply too many variables like whether people use mods or if players use everything that's available to them (Illithid powers, potions, broken mechanics, etc) to really get reliable analytics about how people feel about the difficulty.
I suspect you're correct in your assumption that many things seem to have been watered down for the general public though.
