Are you okay? did someone say that to you once?
No, not at all. most of my in person D&D has been very positive ^.^ That's literally just how a lot of Larian's presumptuous game design feels to me a lot of the time, backed up by a lot of their media presence and responses during the EA period. When overwhelming player feedback tells Larian something they don't like, they have a tendency to respond to it in maliciously compliant ways - they still believe that they know better, so go out of their way to do the thing that was asked and make it really bad, seemingly deliberately so... and yes, I know, academically, that that
cannot be what actually goes on, of course it isn't, but that is often how it comes away feeling, and they way they behave in their public facing media does not dissuade this impression. They also have a tendency to make assumptions about player behaviour or player requests, and bundle things up together in moderately tone-deaf ways, and what they do often comes off feeling like they're backhandedly blaming the player base for compelling them to change something. This has been my experience with them, as a company, throughout the Ea process. The fact that choosing a lower difficulty setting forcefully locks you out of systems and prevents you from engaging with them - such as the ability to multiclass your character - is just one example of that.
I've said it elsewhere, but what really puzzles me is why Larian continue to get free passes on so many terrible things that would see other companies torn a new one over. I don't get it, perhaps because the shiny PR gloss and hype, thin as it is, went away for me two years ago.
