I just don't think that Larian lack the courage of their convictions to the extent that implies. Yes, in EA we were giving feedback on part of the game, but they knew that and surely were capable of looking at that feedback and taking a call on whether it had merit given their vision for the overall game. And given that it was always Larian's decision whether or not to make changes in response to feedback and no matter how much they involved us at the end of the day it's *their* game, I don't think there's any reason to assign responsibility for any issues in the final product to fan feedback. There are certainly plenty of popular requests that they didn't accede to.
And in a sense EA wasn't limited to just the start of the game, as Larian have continued to develop and tweak it in response to feedback over the past year. But it was always going to be the case that the more of the game that existed the harder and more expensive it would have been to make fundamental changes, so it made a lot of sense for Larian to get some earlier feedback on the basics before some things got locked in.
So, while there are some changes made in response to feedback that I don't agree with, I have no problem with the process as a whole, and still believe that taking input from fans early led to a better product overall.
