One could argue that it's a bigger break of immersion if your party dies and you have to start again. Really, I think most players are going to be more concerned with winning the combat, because if they lose then they just have to start over. And doing damage is just more obviously reliable for that. In BG3 I find control spells feel like way more of a gamble when I have damage options handy. I tend to use them more in Solasta, but the tweaks in this game have it so that when I'm calculating what's the best way to not lose, reliably doing damage seems like the better option. I would imagine that people look at the calulation as less "if I go all out now I will have to rest" and more "I can go all out now because I can rest after." They want to win, and they approach in the way circmustances allow them to most reliably do that.
You can get control spells to 100% by stacking the spell dc, at which point they are not that much of a gamble.
I find damage spells to be sometimes less reliable, e.g. a glyph spells failed to trigger, because it was placed on a slope and the enemy was standing within the glyph, but slightly higher.
