Some cheesy and obscure features being the barrier between a "pastime" and "a profound experience" is a bit of an over reaction.
I guess he could have written between "a great game" and "a masterpiece".
For the record, what he quoted was ""craft a credible and consistent game world" and not "some cheesy and obscure features". That's a bit related, but it doesn't sums up the entire point.
I would consider Elden Ring a masterpiece, yet it has tons of cheesy mechanisms, such has most ranged magic, summons and some ashes of war. I honestly think potion throwing isn't even close to those. Would I like to see it balanced though? Absolutely!
As I said, the cheesy part of things doesn't sums up everything.
In regard with "credible and consistent world"... it doesn't make sense that you can walk on healing liquid to heal yourself (or your friend) and, by extension, that everyone having a feet in the surface benefits the effects.
It also doesn't make sense that throwing a potion at someone heal (or any other effects) him.
That's not how it works in any fantasy world, and certainly not in this one. Drinking potion is so much of a basic component of the universe than making it "cheesy/goofy/..." (name it as it pleases you) makes it totally irrelevant.
So is jumping and shoving/pushing, in exemple.
In my opinion masterpiece story-driven RPG have to represent a credible world. It doesn't prevent some fancy or gameplay foccused features of course but BG3 is FULL of dissonance between the world in which it takes place and it's mechanics.
To the point that the universe seems just as customised as the campaign, which doesn't make it credible as we are supposed to venture an area in which many things are set in stones : the Sword Coast.
