Of all the things that will/could/might change, HP bloat won't be one of them.
Why? Because the game would be too easy without it. To fix it being too easy, they would have to change more than they would be willing to change. And frankly, I'm glad they won't. I've played all those games that you mentioned at the beginning, and BG 3 has better combat than all of them. We'll see where this game stacks up with the full release, but of combat I have no doubts.
They should just add "+25% damage to ennemies" instead of giving us a totally strange and custom experience if they want to increase difficulty.
Easier fix than having to balance every spells and skills.
Vic is right, spells sucks too much and combats are really slow because nothing is really efficient. Killing only 1 ennemy/turn/4 character (sometimes two, if luck is with you) is really boring, especially when we're talking about weak ennemies.
Combats would probably be faster with the rules because your damages are more significant on ennemies HP (and OS is a real possibility).
Larian's HP bloat/AC reduction has no significant impact on the flow of combats as proven by some players (see reddit).
If the problem with the original rules is that player see "50% hit chance" too often, just add consistent mecanics instead of changing everything, leading to the huge and bad consequences we all know.
Bonus on attack roll, slight decrease to AC, consistent advantages, use surfaces to create moderate ennemies debuff,... There are many ways and possibilities for combats to be more fluent... But their HP/AC bloat is definitely not one and it has many consequences...
One is that the game is way less tactical because everything rely on (way too) OP mechanics instead of D&D's rules and balance.
We actually don't really have to think in combats because the game is way too "automatic" and our efficiency only depend on Larian's custom rules. Their rules should be tactical possibilities, not THE way to deal with combats.
