I agree with the first half of your post. I
expressed basically the same ideas once. A number of others did so in various threads (see also posts by grysqrl and Saito in the above-mentioned thread).
a) It would be great to have a basic and inside-the-box combat that is viable and satisfying. Otherwise, what is meant to be outside-of-the-box, creative and game-breaking tactics become the default. They lose their "aha" value. Or their "moment" value, as you say. Their magic. Specialness stops being special.
b) By viable here, I mean that it should be possible to complete the game using only basic tactics. What many fear is that, as creative/gimmicky strategies become the norm, Larian balances the game's difficulty to be reasonably challenging when using these strategies, and then not using them means playing on a much harder difficulty. So the philosophy of "we just give you systems, now be creative to solve the problems we throw at you" risks, paradoxically, stifling creativity and player agency. It's the idea of fights as puzzles, but of the kind that admit only a few, unsatisfying solutions. Indeed we might be forced to use the "outside-the-box" tactic that the devs used in internal playtesting to overcome a given fight.
c) As a consequence of the two points above, combat risk becoming stale very quickly, and negatively affect the replayability of the game. I have a glimmer of hope that these fears won't become a reality. But anyway ... we'll see how it turns out.
I don't really agree with the idea that specific fights should have specific gimmicks. That would limit genuine creativity. If you come up on your own with the idea of barrelmancing a fight, but then the game says "ah ha, good idea, but this solution is not accepted on this fight", it's disappointing. I don't think Barrelmancy or any other particular Larianesque/cheesy tactics should be fundamentally restricted. I just wish that all fights be winnable without those tactics.
Well ... that's one thing I'd be quite happy to see. At any rate, I think this is all into "Larian's vision" territory, and I'm not too interested in discussing that in depth. Nor do I think they are too interested in listening to how they should make combat in BG3 feel like. Which doesn't mean anyone should refrain from doing it.
