Conversely, the "it's all just flavor and races have literally no distinctive feature" has its downsides as well.
That's obviously false. Being able to move the +2/+1 does not delete every other feature out of the race you chose. I wish most players would stop conflating the "minor value" of a +2/+1 not going in the Only Racially Approved locations as destroying the flavor of the entire world.
I wish most players would stop conflating anything that is remotely "inconvenient" on the short term with something being inherently bad.
"Limiting your options" in this case just points to the fact that an innate difference exists to begin with.
I wouldn't wish for a setting where gnomes and half-orcs have the same average strength, if anything I'd wish for a class system that that would make a non-strength-focused gnome a viable option for a similar role while still taking his differences into account.
We're not talking about a system where gnomes and half-orcs have the same average strength. The world is 99.999% NPC's. Player characters are different from NPC's, that's why they're Player Characters. We're talking about a system where Player Characters can, if the player wishes, be a little different from the rest of their species. If the player does not wish, they can make characters which fall directly in line with the average member of the species.
We should be able to roll at release which will allow players to do almost everything.
So why aren't the people complaining about a +2/+1 going in different spots complaining about being a character potentially able to get a +3 or +4 to the wrong spots? Why isn't rolling for stats not a cardinal sin against the purity of the lore? What's the difference?
This is a nonsensical statement. Is poker a game where success is determined by luck only?
Luck is overwhelmingly important, yes. Your chances of winning are based on the luck of the hand you get and the luck of the cards on the table and the luck of the cards you draw.
You still have decisions to make on what actions you perform and you can make informed decisions based on either indirect (PnP) or direct (cRPG) information you have. If you think that the only things that determines the impact of the character on the game is his numerical advantage or lack of it, you are just wrong.
In DOS 2, when trying to persuade someone, you could pick a dialogue option, and that option has hidden value behind the scenes which may be more or less effective. You can make an educated guess about which of the possible options you're presented with is most likely to succeed, and if you're right, you will win based on your fixed persuasion value and the fixed hidden value of the chosen dialogue option.
However, in BG 3, such an option is usually going to be tied to a skill check of some kind, and success will hinge more on whether the die roll is good. The choice can affect the DC of the check, but ultimately, Luck matters more than the choice you made.
Your weapon, class, feat, play-style or spell selection is way more important than 1 stat point. So arguing that you need to be a specific race to be viable is bonkers.
If one stat point doesn't matter, then why is it a problem for the stat point to go in a non-approved-location? And as a reminder, we are not talking about what the
average member of a race is like. We're talking about a
player character, which are special unique snowflakes.