Do caster out of combat options matter?

[clash]

If out of combat options are not required, your campaign writing sucks.

The mistake here is viewing it as being the DM's sole purview what sort of large-scale things happen at the gaming table.

Out of combat options are valuable because they give a player the agency to say what the plot is in a far more open-ended way. Oh, the city I'm in is under siege and the commander of the enemy forces is strutting around expecting a champion from our side to duel him? Eh, I teleport away with the NPC I'm trying to protect - no need to fight that guy. Or, we can just feed everyone with Create Food and Water and wait them out, no big deal. If what you want to do is pass through a sequence of combat challenges posed to you by the DM, the out of combat stuff might not matter to you - but then someone else at the table realized they can drive the plot themselves using things the system has offered to them, and you get table conflict.

It's not a matter of balance between classes, its a matter of disagreement about what 'playing the game' actually encompasses. One person says 'if the DM intends for us to go to the Plane of Fire, we'll get there', while someone else says 'Did you know that the Plane of Mineral just has arbitrary quantities of gemstones lying around? Forget about the Plane of Fire, I smell profit!'.

This is an interesting perspective to me. Basically you're saying out of combat options aren't about being able to solve a problem they are about choosing how you solve the problem.