However, clearly Larian has been erring on the side of radical change so far, defaulting to their cheese over more immersive D&D alternatives. Larian has been somewhat responsive though, so I wouldn't rule out positive changes, even significant ones down the line.
I hope you are right but it's getting harder for me to believe that this is true. This patch turned up the surfaces and the cheese from a 6 to an 8 and it looks like we're headed towards eleven.
There are some good things in this patch -- some improvements to dialogues and the game has many more books -- but it's cheesier than before.
Consider stuff like height/flanking advantage for instance. I see this issue in connection with the larger issue of RNG in D&D. Some people object to a perceived lack of player agency/find that failures/misses are near untolerable. And an excess of this incentivizes save-scumming - which is objectively poor gameplay. Larian has addressed this issue in numerous ways. But they have yet to implement a DIFFICULTY SETTING, ie. one giving bonus to your rolls, even malus to enemy rolls. This in turn would lessen the need for a significant (advantage) bonus to tactical positioning (height/flank), which is objectively unbalancing on multiple fronts (ie. screwing over the Barbarian and their staple Reckless Attack ability).
On top of that abilities that can affect RNG, ie. the feat Lucky, are yet to be implemented.
That said, I try not to expect too much...only way not to be disappointed.
