I'm bumping this thread as there weren't stated any changes to Chromatic Orb in Patch 7. Please make it work in a similar way to tabletop - it should just deal 3d8 damage + 1d8 for every upcast level of chosen type to its main target. As an elemental effect, it can also trigger existing surfaces like setting Grease on fire on making water electrified, but that's it.
If you want to give players an option to create surfaces and play with them, you can just do that via common consumables. You already did this with things like Bottle of Grease and Bottle of Water, you can just create similar consumables for other surfaces and make them common enough to be decently accessible to players. This will be much better as players would have total control of if and where they want to create a surface.
EDIT: Another option is to make Chromatic Orb deal full mentioned damage to target if somebody is targeted or create a surface it creates now if nobody is targeted. One impication though - even if you do such a change, it shouldn't make it unavailable to be used with Twinned Spell. If you think we need to pick one between making it available for Twinned Spell or creating the AoE if nobody is targeted, just implement the first suggestion because Chromatic Orb is and should be mainly a single-target spell and surfaces could still be covered with consumables.
