I actually liked participating in EA, there were a lot of nice discussions in this forum. I know, that not all were happy with the results, but the way to the finished game was a good one.
On the other hand: without EA Larian might just be able to release their game as they envisioned it without interference from fans. Just becvause we want something doesn't mean, that it makes the game better.
Or make only a technical EA to test mechanics and builds, don't know, if that is possible.
Indeed, this forum was really nice during EA (even when just lurking around.) Still I'm gonna pass on EA this time.
And I remember the EA feedback loop a bit differently: e.g. it wasn't the community who demanded changes around the dream visitor, it was telemetry data from the EA players that showed, tadpole powers were much less used than anticipated. So they made last minute, story breaking changes, that nobody asked for, in order to make players use the illithid mechanics more.
On the other hand, for game aspects on which the forum has been very vocal, more often than not, people have been
talking to a void. The "toilet chain" discussion is just
one of many examples: When I was using it for the first time, it seemed like a broken relic from D:OS2, not even worth mentioning, because it was
even more clunky now and
surely it would be fixed. Instead it ignited a whole "mega thread" debate where Tuco and others laid out, with admirable dedication, detail and patience, the many dimensions in which the party control system was broken. Almost nothing came out of it.
Also, God forbid, a commuity manager takes an active role in discussions and manages expectations.
Even BG3 as a whole felt to me like a let down. With act 3 indisputably unfinished (e.g. no upper city, no Orpheus story arc, ...) and an abrupt unsatisfactory ending (that didn't even made sense for my playthrough - not to mention my second, well thought-out, completionist run that I couldn't even finish, because of stability issues starting late act 2.)
The PC Gamer interview with Swen and the writers from the other day painfully reminded me again of two things: 1) they didn't have automated regression tests in place for a game of this scope (!) (causing 2 new bugs to appear for every bug they fixed) and 2) they, well, just lost love for the project at the end (!!). In other words, for BG3 we got
the exact opposite of what you would expect from a relatively large studio with indie appeal: the brittle technical foundation of an indie
combined with, ultimately, the lack of dedication of a huge studio. (In contrast, compare this to the love and dedication Owlcat put into PF:WotR even years after its release.)
Really hope, Larian gets their act together with Divinity, but I'll wait for some of the more critical voices here on the forum to give their thumbs up on story, gameplay and stability, before playing it. Not feeling the hype this time. Right now I'm more looking forward to Solasta 2, Osiris Reborn and Witcher 4.
