Quick disclosure: I don't care if the game is faithful to 5e or not, all I care about is that the adaptation makes for a fun computer game. Fun is of course subjective, I care more about tactical combat than roleplaying for example, so they are never going to be able to please everyone.
I personally like surfaces, they add an additional tactical layer to combat, with 1 caveat. A surface must be as easy (or easier) to remove than it is to apply. The problem in DOS: 2 with necrofire etc, was that it was very easy for enemies to apply surfaces (in the case of oozes, they did it passively as a "free action" just by moving around), but it took at minimum 2 spells to remove many of them. That meant that it was not economical to remove them and you were better off just "living with them being there" then actually trying to get rid of them.
