Wizardry 8 had linearized stats. Now I suspect that you are talking about the expert skills, that were awarded only if you maxed out a stat, but the power progression for increasing a specific stat was definitely linear outside of granting those skills at 100. Once you obtained the expert skills they also had a linear power progression. I've spent some time recently reading over the very lengthy thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=899973393 because I am thinking of replaying Wizardry 8 when I am done with BG3.
In any case, I am a big fan of both Wizardry 8 and Pillars of Eternity (1 & 2) and I really do not buy that they are all that different in terms of character creation. I submit that the only thing that prevents an "unbeatable game" in PoE 1 and 2 is the respec option. Without that you can definitely fail on the hardest difficulty levels if you make bad choices (especially in 1). Wizardry 8 does not have respec, but it is possible to grind levels indefinitely if you are struggling with an encounter.
Now, Josh Sawyer did go to great length to make all stats worth having in PoE. I don't think that he quite succeeded, but it is certainly true that there are no obvious dump stats. You **can** dump resolve and constitution (and I do dump them when my MC is primarily for dps), but you will suffer if that character is focus fired by enemy AI. This does stand in contrast to Wizardry 8 where Piety is pretty much useless for 3/4ths (or more) of the classes. The no dump stat philosophy forces hard choices, and that is a GOOD thing IMO.
I do think that Pillars of Eternity suffered from rather bad names for some of the stats. Might was a very poor choice for the stat that gives more damage, since everybody immediately thinks "Fighter" when they read the word might. A better choice would have been "Power" since that could easily refer to might or magic. Intelligence should have had a different name too (perhaps "aura" since that describes what it actually does).
