In any art form it's possible to be creative with the minimum of resources. An artist can be creative with just a pencil. But the more resources you have to hand, the more you can explore the possibilities.
If you only know the blues scale, it doesn't stop you writing great riffs. But you are still limited.
Once you get into techniques like slap and tap, it opens up far more avenues. But these obviously get overused, as we have seen on past threads and Youtube clips.
I think Victor Wooten has it nailed. He likens music to vocabulary. The more words you know, the broader your vocabulary. But then again, it's how you use those words. Hemingway's work used a limited vocabulary, but his writing was still amazing.
Whatever you know and don't know, it's all about how you use it.
Does this make sense?