Options and difficulty levels still need to be tested and somewhat balanced even if you slap the words "Unfair" onto a difficulty level.
When the Ultimate challenge was added to Deadfire, the developer expectation was, that the challenge could not be beaten at all. Obviously, optional difficulty settings do require testing in some ways, but whether or not they can be completed, or whether or not gameplay is balanced, is not one of them. If someone is deliberately making their experience harder, they should be aware that they can make it harder than they are capable of completing.
"If you're standing in a surface, it's a result of your own poor play." This is an overly general statement. The maximum range on the longest range spells has been cut in half, many combat arenas are designed so that you cannot get line of sight onto enemies without being in range of enemies, and enemies have many additional surface creating effects and bombs.
On most occasions, if you cannot see an enemy, they also cannot see you. If you know an enemy cannot see you, waiting until they move somewhere that is convenient to you, rather than the reverse, becomes an option. In the example above of the Goblin camp, what I did was this. I had just finished the "evil" quest line where you kill the druid grove and so the goblin camp was now hostile to me. I entered via the waypoint, immediately being placed in combat upon arrival and then I misty step above onto the encroachments above it. Following this I used the ladder as a choke point and kill enemies 1 by 1.
In most fights in the EA, there are spots you can move into to break line of sight, thus forcing enemies to move into a disadvantageous position. In my experience, almost every fight in the early access can be beaten in a similar manner barring the bulette (spelling?). There are places you can position yourself that force enemies to move into unfavorable territory and its very easy to deny enemies the opportunity to dump a surface on top of you.
Surfaces don't need to be removed entirely, they can add things, but they need significant adjustments. For starters, they are far too abundant, they require saving throws, applying them from cantrips is far too powerful (especially when a direct hit deals damage and creates a surface), and there are too many ways to create them - largely because most enemies carry tons of grenades and magic arrows for the express purpose of creating surfaces.
There are a lot of points before this which I will skip addressing because we are more or less in agreement. I have no issues with toning down surfaces to better fit the system, I have a very strong sentiment against removing them entirely. Since it seems we agree on that, I will skip unnecessary walls of text on the subject.
Or maybe a range increase like what D:OS 2 has. I had a combat where I was up in the rafters, attempting to get sneak attack from above, but despite enemies being in the circle, I had disadvantage for being "outside my normal attack range".
I suspect there is already something like this implemented, although I am not sure to what extent. If you stand on very high outcrops relative to an enemy and target outside of the "maximum range" threshold, you will find that up to a point, you can still hit enemies without disadvantage. This suggests to me that a system like this is already implemented and just not communicated to the player.
I don't know your exact strategy, so I am going to presume that you are abusing stealth and range to pick off enemies and run away. Especially for your solo character.
Your argument is "if you play in these exact specific ways, surfaces aren't a problem". That's a silly argument. If someone abuses mechanics and reloading enough and most fights can be beaten easily. That doesn't make it balanced for "normal" play. King Tiki explained way better than I can.
I don't rely much on stealth, I rely much more on movement and line of sight. Melee enemies can't catch you when you are using expeditious retreat and ranged enemies suffer against line of sight. Choke points are the tool for dealing with crowds, narrow corridors and doorways are all over the place in the arenas provided to us. The question really is, what constitutes "normal" play. Obviously, you do not balance the game around optimal gameplay or mechanics abuse in the case of reload cheese, but you should not balance the game around someone who is hitting the end turn button without doing anything every single turn either.
