I think he nixed rounds so he could add action speed and recovery as additional mechanics, and they are (IMO) extremely cool.
Additionally it removed the degenerate gameplay which the rounds mechanics had, the running around like a monkey with no cost part.
It's obvious it resulted in readability issues for majority of players though, the question is how you would combat/add the above while retaining fixed 6 sec rounds?
You don't have to retain fixed 6 second rounds. All you needed were: clean visual effects, less stacking effects, longer effects that are more significant, slightly slower combat speed, cut the amount of abilities by like 80%, then balance the rest of the game accordingly.
The biggest mistake of Pillars of Eternity's combat system isn't getting rid of the 6 seconds round system, it's the prevalence of a bazillion stacked spell effects that are short lasting and which have poor visual representation, along side a huge addition of per encounter abilities. In Baldur's Gate, you could see a web spell wrap enemies in place, you could see a sleep spell cause them to doze off, you could see a hold monster spell petrify them. The game got by without you having to stack 4 to 5 different detrimental effects on an enemy in order to get through its absurd defenses; it got by without the vast majority of beneficial effects lasting
15 seconds requiring you to keep track of them constantly; and it got by with most of its classes not having to do anything other than click and attack.
A mage armor in Baldur's Gate last, what, 20 minutes? Even the vast majority of 1 round per level effects eventually last through the entire combat by the time you used them regularly. Had you replaced Baldur's Gate's list of spells with Pillars of Eternity's spells, Baldur's Gate would also have a problem with effects constantly stacking on and falling off, and consequently a similar amount of second to second player management.
The perfect description of Pillars of Eternity's system, which I came across in a video review, is that it's
not real time with pause, but pause with real time. The only way to play the game is to pause every ability refresh cycle, which isn't synchronized obviously, so you'll be pausing all the time. This completely wastes the real time aspects of the combat, and you might as well go to a turn based system, which is what Pillars of Eternity's game system was actually designed for, with its tedious management.
A 6 seconds round might help make the combat feel less of a mess, but it'd still suck, because you'd still be pausing every round to mouse over effects and click abilities. The only reason the game is at all capable of being enjoyed is because the AI can handle most fights at lower difficulty levels. It is a
frustrating experience when you're actually trying to control all 5 or 6 characters.
But this has all been said before, so I'm not sure why we're still repeating it. The system sucks because it's too tedious and complicated for real time with pause - emphasis on
real time here because the system was inspired by real time strategy games where a professional gamer managing three marines with no abilities can be considered impressive. Sawyer should've made the game turn-based; or just admitted that he didn't understand what real time with pause is, because it's ridiculous this shit was able to make it through play testing.
Maybe I'd have committed the blunder of buying an Xbox for that (I did buy a PC with the whole purpose of playing Origins).
,nice middle line between freedom and order. I do remember all the cassettes at the bazaars. 1000games in cassette,buy two now and get third for free 
I smell a child of the socialistic party here 