Essentially you are just saying that EF needs a couple more artists who do understand these technical issues to step in at the end of development and oversee the selection of the default settings.  That seems reasonable to me, as I have a similar issue with bump maps.  Those were changed to reflect, I assume, some kind of real world measurement.  To me it seems as the useful range for the bump node is now somewhere between .01 and .001.  Any lower and I see little effect, any higher and I tent to get artifacts.  Not a large working range given the range it actually accepts.