I really think it's too early to call for specific changes like this, and when they start to increase the difficulty they should start with the obvious stuff - like not being able to long rest or switch party members everywhere, not being able to fast travel out of certain areas, not being able to kill off a section of places like grymforge or moonrise without aggroing the entire building, forcing you to walk into an ambush if you failed the perception check, balancing game items...etc.
Just by looking at the patches, they are really in the mode of fixing the experience so conversations happen at the proper times and certain events are harder to miss or avoid. Right now it's like going to see a movie that only has a rough edit and is in need of some reshooting. Increasing the difficulty is a privileged change - and something they could deliver on way later when the hype has died down to make players want to pick it back up after taking a break.
And even if they do all that, if they don't deliver on a bunch of time saving QOL improvements, I doubt people will be playing long enough to care. Too much time is lost in the inventory screen. It's like 1:1 with actual playing time for me which is ridiculous, I'm eventually just going to get tired of it and forget all the wacky builds and party comps I want to try.
