You automatically assume that whatever game system they had in place was "cerebral" and what they released was "non-cerebral".
Once again, here's a
direct quote from the postmortem:
This was because we hadn't been thinking as much about making a shooter as we should have, and many of our key interactions (weapons tuning, plasmids, length of AI engagement) were designed and tuned for a slower and more cerebral experience. To put it another way, nerdy RPG-like stat changes just didn't seem meaningful in the vibrant and dangerous world of Rapture.
Once we recalibrated the game to be more like a shooter, we simplified many of the deeper systems tremendously so that the user would be able to understand them.Firstly, the developer clearly states that the original version of the game was "more cerebral." That doesn't mean "boring" or "crappy" or "inefficient" or "convoluted" or "overly complex." It means that the game simply required more thought.
Secondly, the developer suggests that the original version had stats. Stats = more cerebral experience and more depth. It forces you to make meaningful choices and think about their future repercussions. You actually have to role play, as opposed to being a master of all things.
Thirdly, the developer states that they removed or simplified these more cerebral features to make the game more accessible.
This isn't a question of whether or not the changes were for better or for worse. That's up to the player, not the designer, to decide. The question here is whether or not they removed/changed the complex features of the game in favor of simpler, more accessible ones. The answer, according to the developers, is yes. Going from more cerebral to less cerebral = dumbing down. Whether or not that's a good or bad thing is up to the player.