@grysqrl : oh if I continue posting (and I have a few more posts planned) you'll surely disagree somewhere, if you haven't already.
I very much agree with your second point though. That's an explanatory factor that I forgot.
In some video I once watched, the speaker suggested that one thing that makes a cRPG a cRPG, beside merely being on a computer, is that it generally involves a
(possibly somewhat involved) ruleset. While the JRPGs did away with that, a tabletop RPG like DnD, which was the source of the cRPGs, really is still a game with a ruleset. Despite all the streamlining of 5E, it is still useful to understand the rules. These rules involves randomness at every level. Buffs/debuffs are only about probability management, and their value can only be appreciated if you know the rules. Many other games have actions that are guaranteed to do something and new players have an immediate feedback. In comparison, a spell to tweak probabilities does something invisible and provides no feedback. As you pointed, Larian has not yet provided a tutorial for BG3's rules (and understandably so). So the usage rate of buffs could up with a tutorial explaining what's going on under the bonnet, at least for players who'll read. (Obviously this explanatory factor is not the-one-that-explains-everything-on-its-own.)
Having said that, I now see one point where 5E players and BG3 players are likely to differ. A 5E player is more likely to have some grasp of the rules, if not a decent mastery, and thus be better able to evaluate buffs/debuffs. As they actively throw their dice on their Attack Rolls, they cannot go far without starting to pick up the rules, even if a GM had them jump in and create a character in full-roleplay mode. What a buff does in a lot less invisible in TT 5E.
