That assumes that all of the team work on all of the content. While there is certinainly some overlap, I suspect the truth is far more complex than that. Every development I did manage to get a peak into (decumentaries, interviews etc.) tended to develop areas simultaneously - breaking bigger team, into smaller teams each developing and having creative control over their own part of the game, with oversight from above to make sure it all fits together.
I don't know what you think happens in game development, but they don't have completely different teams doing the same work on different parts of a games story...
The same team that would be doing all the changes and bug fixes in Act 1 will be doing the changes and bug fixes in Acts 2 and 3.
Since, yes, not ALL the team work on ALL the content. Things are divided up between the specialties. I.e. Writers do the writing for dialogues/books/plot, they won't be writing up code to make systems work. The designers design and model the objects, characters and landscapes, but they aren't going to be doing things like managing the VA etc.
Thus, the teams that were working on things in Act 1, like the story/character rewrites, the system changes etc were doing so in Act 1 rather than across the entire game.
I am also doubtful because act1 didn't change THAT much throughout EA.
Which says much about the actual usefulness of EA and more about the extended development that Act 1 got over the other 2 (We know that Act 1 was in active development for 3 years, while Acts 2 and 3 were in active development for 3 years combined)
That I flat out disagree.
Then I eagerly await your proof that allows you to, with complete and total CERTAINTY, show that EA was directly responsible for those system changes and such things could not have happened with a simply having the entire game going through the same amount of development.
Because we certainly have evidence that shows that EA and extended development of Act 1 is overwhelmingly positive for that specific act. What with Act 1 in every Larian game being by far the best and most polished act in their respective games.
Meanwhile, we also have evidence that their overall games end up with later acts that are majorly lacking, often having people desire additional work in the form of Enhanced Editions to improve them. Which is indicative that there's some sort of negative impact to parts of their games outside of Act 1.
Not to say that EA didn't benefit from two years of aggressive testing, but without it we would just get an untested act1 - not better tested acts 2&3.
Please provide receipts for your claims.
Again, if you are able to say with CERTAINTY, these things.
If they used the same amount of development time but spent less of it on testing Act 1, that would by definition mean they spent more time on Acts 2 and 3 (Unless you're implying that Larian would use the extra time to sit around doing nothing for several years)
Keep in mind that my statement is not that EA cannot be attributed to improvement of the game as a whole, but that we can specifically only be certain about its "Overwhelmingly positive" impact on Act 1 specifically.
There is also a matter of other benefits of EA - a major cash flow, proof of great interest in the title - which would encourage Larian to invest more into BG3 than what they might have planned initially - and possibly get additional funding from third parties to make the game bigger and better.
Again, receipts please.
You'll need to provide information regarding the exact profits that EA brought and that Larian used these profits to increase their development budget if you want to make such claims with CERTAINTY.
In regard to "Proof of great interest", how exactly does EA provide (Significantly) more proof than commonly used metrics like, number of wishlists on Steam, or discussions of forums and social media?
Also, additional funding from third parties? Larian is a self publishing studio. To whom are you referring to with funding from third parties?
