Larian has decided to have things automated because they feel it hampers in some way their game, for the overall worse, instead of better. Going as far as having every action that causes a reaction to display a popup if you want to take your reaction is too much control. But, I think having reactions pigeon holed to just automatically fire without any type of control is for the worse, instead of better. So, I think a happy medium would be a toggle and priority.
The way I see this is on a players turn (or outside of combat), said player can toggle on/off any reactions they want to go off. So, if a player who sees a caster type and has Absorb Elements, then they will toggle on Absorb Elements. If a player didn't ready a reaction toggle, then it won't fire, because the player didn't expect it or wanted to save it for a later turn. I think this creates an interesting dynamic that reactions have to be chosen to react a specific initiative/turn orders. Also, some reactions can only be toggled on/off during your turn, so this would allow faster initiative characters to surprise opponents and not be allowed to react.
I think that's sort-of what Larian is intending to do with the reaction panel. You can move around reactions on that panel, which suggests ordering the priority and there are little glowing dots rotating around the outside, which indicate if it is set to "auto-cast" or not. (It reminds me of the "auto-cast" dot borders from Warcraft 3.). I was able to move "Riposte" on my fighter to a higher priority than AoO. But the interface needs work, and I think it is incomplete. I hope that you'll be able to select different party members on enemy turns and adjust their reactions on the fly.
