That's my point, Lunar Shower. Ranged characters do okay with the height advantage, but take that away and they're a total shadow of what they ought to be under 5E rules, even without all kinds of shenanigans that one could maybe forgive Larian for not supporting.
Longbows should be able to attack as far away as 180 meters. In the game they have a max range of a tenth of that. A tenth! Given a standard movement speed of 9 meters per turn, you can do the math on the number of attacks a longbow user should get against an enemy approaching on open ground before melee becomes a thing. In this game, however, ranged characters can barely squeeze in an attack before chaff can rush into melee range and mess with attack priorities.
Height advantage does counter-balance the lack of range a fair bit, particularly when you combine with damage boosters like sneak attack or Hunter's Mark or Hex, but it has so much of an effect on encounters that it starts to dominate the meta. Just find a high spot, control access to it, and shoot away. The mill encounter, which is a bit of a pain? Trigger it with Astarion, then dash and cunning dash away back to the village and start killing them from the rooftops.
