I sometimes play engines from a starting position. It's a way to make an engine play an opening. There's a game called Sittuyin in which the players take turns setting up their starting positions. Real war is like this. The two sides take time to "shape the battlefield." It's a good point that you are making. Two players could agree on a key position and play from it. There could be a catalog of diagrams of starting positions. Just click on the diagram which would have a title and an assessment like + - = =+ =- and start playing. The mainline Spanish Chigorin would start from a position arrived at after twenty moves! There are many other fascinating long well trodden openings. It would make for faster games because you wouldn't have to struggle through the openings. You wouldn't lose because of how you played the opening. To the extant to which I have accurately described it, I think this is a great idea that you have. Sorry if I missed something important about what you're saying.
Beating the Opening Blues
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I am not a chess pro and the following suggestion is not meant to deride the game as it exists today. I am totally unqualified to do that. However, speaking as a low-intermediate enthusiast who plays games with a 3-day time limit, I find the first six or so moves in the game to be quite boring. I move a pawn to the middle, my opponent counters as expected with a pawn. I move a knight to attack my opponent's pawn, my opponent does the same.
It's not until we've each made at least four moves (often 6 or more) that I really start to become interested in the game.
That's why I would suggest a variation of chess in which chess algorithms randomly perform the first 5 or 6 moves of the game, based on various potential openings, being sure to leave a situation that gives each player roughly the same odds for winning in subsequent human-directed play.
In addition to making the game more interesting to poor players like myself, this scheme would likely present players with new positions and opportunities with which their own predictable openings never provided them -- especially if the algorithms chose moves from the hundreds of chess openings that have been tried in the past. Such a game would also help teach new openings to folks like myself who know little more than "control the board" and "bring out your knights and bishops." As we thus become familiar with openings that we have never even heard of before, our openings in "real chess games" will hopefully begin to improve and show a little more variety.
Talk amongst yourselves