Please don't bring a fn' Cyberpunk to the discussion, it's garbage. It was horrible at launch but I decided to trust CDPR with at least story and was fed more garbage. And before you ask, I don't give a damn about 2.0, Phantom Liberty or whatever they call their next patch. I bought the game almost over 3 years ago and was given shit, that was the last time I bought anything from them and I couldn't care less what they did with this trash years later. Same goes for Larian and I find it absolutely horrifying that people will give 20/10 for the game that doesn't even have proper ending. And that's supposed to be "anomaly"? Something that shouldn't set standard? Are there even standards at this point?
Cyberpunk is actually a perfect game to bring to the discussion for all the reasons you mentioned. CDPR pulled some stuff that Larian certainly has not, but it seems like hyping a not-quite-ready product and releasing it is the new norm, and that folks rating games like that 10/10 (whether gamers on Steam or game marketers paid for their opinions) are going to guarantee more of the same. Heck, CDPR is now getting long-term support awards for fixing things they claimed were working at release.
I, too, found the BG3 endings completely anticlimactic at best. I mean... all the hours spent ferreting out each character's macguffin and making sure to follow their stories to the ending, to have that ending essentially be, "Ha! We won. Byeee." was jarring and insulting, in a way. You fight the battle, you get the rewards. That's the deal. Fortunately for my own expectations, I did play EA and so I was not surprised by the amount of bugs and unfinished story, given how little of the actual game EA players got to see (for years.)
But I don't think this is a development decision. I'm sure Larian developers take great pride in their work and want to push out the best possible experience. These decisions are marketing decisions, and if an unfinished game that crashes and burns (like CP2077) can win GOTY and get tons of awards for continued support because it takes them so long to clean up their bugs, there isn't much marketing incentive to delay a product until it's truly ready.
Also, with Hasbro/Wizards involved, much of this might have even been out of Larian's control altogether. DDO is a decade out of date at this point. I'm not sure Hasbro really understands D&D, or cares. They just speak dollars.
Everything is always about hype and bleeding-edge newness. Because everybody wants everything right now, and they'll pay for it and leave gold-star reviews when their ids are satisfied. Sadly, as long as that is what the market demands, that is what the market is going to get. Fortunately, at least with software, there is a chance for iterative fixes. But, like you, I'd prefer to wait for a solid product up front than get to *finally* realize the developer's original ambitions in a years-to-market special edition that should really be v1.0
