I think the problem stems from having an open world. If you can sneak behind monster X, or side step it, or find an alternate route to place y, and you end up wiht a very powerful item... well that's a rewarding feeling for the player, for sure, BUT it can mean boring combat that becomes trivial.
You have to account for both of those scenerios, and I think this solution sounds like a decent compromise. You still get a cool items with unique abilities, but it's not going to throw the rest of your gameplay off.
The other option is of course, to gate these items at all times via hard monsters or impassible obstructions that only become traversable later, as unlcoks from story or quests or level. But that quickly becomes tiresome in what is supposed ot be an open world game. What the point of an open world that is gated every which place?
See the thing is when it comes to stat point and dice roll combat there are games that do this amazingly well.
xcom and divinity original sin are amazing in this more traditional rpg combat and have super entertaining puzzle like encounter design and allow for endless experimentation and tactics.
As you say, on the realtime action combat side of things you have things like dark souls and DD
Witcher (and elder scrolls and the rest) are stuck halfway in between ,they are neither here nor there and instead of combining the best of both (which would be very difficult) they severely half ass both to the detriment of the overall gameplay and to the enjoyment I can get out of them.
This was the draw of the original dragon age origins, that they put some effort into the real time with pause top down combat mechanics and encounters.
The sequels did not, and sucked because of it.
edit: in racing games you have two approaches as well ,arcade (burnout etc) and simulation (i racing, asetto corsa, richar burns rally) , but in that genre there are games that have found a way to make the middleground work (forza horizon or project gotham to name two)
In rpgs they have not figured it out, and they really either need to figure it out, or just pick a side instead.
Penis is PC only using Nvidia soft (and sometimes hard) body physics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbrFIp73tbw
(lol the bunny)
the first bit can be like cock magic from south park.