Add another critical post and mindless rant to the pile.
I'm honestly convinced that essentially all of the criticism, suggestions, and requests that the people playing through Early Access are making are of no consequence to anyone in an official capacity to do something about it. There are hundreds of posts and thousands of comments either praising, or criticizing, or suggesting things, and there's zero indication through the hotfixes and patches that we've gotten as an acknowledgement of the plethora of issues in this game.
I can't imagine any company would specifically put someone on payroll to go through these comments with a fine-toothed comb, compile a report of even the most common issues, and then sit down with anyone of importance in the company and discuss these things. I run a fairly large company as well, and we certainly wouldn't budget someone to take down notes and bore all of us with the minutiae. The members of these forums sure are trying their absolute best to get senpai to notice them, with all of the pretty formatting and compilations of the most common issues and complaints that span for pages and pages with their peers patting them on the back for their diligence, but even a well-ordered composition with valid points isn't on anyone's radar who could actually deliver any of the results that people are looking for.
If you think that they're listening, take a peek at what the hotfixes and patches have been thus far. Even this early in the process, it's a joke.
"Fixed a bug that less than 1% of users on a largely dead platform (Stadia) are experiencing where talking to a specific NPC with a specific item in your bag while selling a certain scroll will cause the game to crash."
"Fixed a variety of multiplayer issues, when solo players are struggling to even get things to launch or run at 15 fps despite being above minimum spec requirements."
"Included a cutscene to placate the 'This is just DOS3' naysayers."
As opposed to making a solid effort in correcting performance issues, which you'd think would be a priority because the more people that can play as far into the game as possible, the better data they'd be able to pull from all of the hours that we're putting in, these minor, seemingly inconsequential niche fixes are being prioritized instead.
Of course, I don't expect full transparency from any company about their business practices or development processes, but with all of these compiled issues, most of which are extremely common, there's not been any official word or even a nod that any of the concerns have been acknowledged, and the community here takes their silence on the matter as either "They're busy working on it" or "They know what they're doing." At this point, I'm not so sure that either of those things is the case.
I spent the entirety (and a few hours more) of the Steam refund period trying to get the game to run properly because it's a mess on anything other than systems that are well-above the recommended specs. I'd say that of the many hours that I've put in, at least 10% of it was just dedicated to trying to get my capable computer to come to terms with the fact that the current "recommended specs" are actually closer to the "minimum requirements." I'd damn near sell my soul for a refund at this point, just on principle alone. Admittedly, I was one of those "It's Early Access, relax guys!" people in a lot of posts here where people had complaints, but without any meaningful progress through EA and no indication via official word that addresses even a single complaint or request, I'm officially on the other side of the fence now as someone who doesn't want to be a part of this process anymore.
I've supported Larian Studios for the better part of two decades and have rah-rah'd for them as an unofficial cheerleader to the point of embarrassing myself over the years, but being a part of this EA process has really kinda shit in my morning cereal and has tarnished my view of the company. I won't be a lunatic and harangue whoever their social media managers are every time that they make a post from their pages, but I just wanted to vomit out some of the negative energy that's been thrust upon me by the silence and blatant disregard from a company that I used to love so much.
But I know, I know, relax. It's just Early Access, no one cares, the game is fine, and you're really looking forward to the final result and I'm going to feel silly when it releases because it'll be game of the year for 2021.
