I was getting a little bored, I’m sure we could find something to do in here 
These are all off the cuff replies and I can’t guarantee any will be done.
I am very interested in what other people think about these also and suggest that you leave your reply before reading mine.
- Crafting Too Late: Yea I would agree with this, I think we might move it up to the council chambers at some point. Maybe after a side quest? I like linking it to the smelting halls quests.
- Endless Enemies: I like the voice line hint. I’d be concerned about people who play with the sound off completely. Maybe some void that expands behind you forcing you forward>
- Quest Items Feel Clunky: Yea, I’m not sure if we will make them a physical item, letting them be dropped is rough, especially with the zone persistence the way it currently is. I think the item icon probably needs to be moved to the quest tracker to show that you’ve got something.
- Niche Affixes: This is one that I think is really important to keep around. The individual drop rates of each affix shard (not as a property on a magic item) probably needs some tweeking but I think having these less awesome affixes drop is a great way to scale power over time for new players and make finding the perfect item just a little trickier. Exact rates will be tweeked as time goes on. Who knows, we might add in a way to use them in a non-conventional manner.
- Attributes Less Important: Yea, we are looking at the balance of attributes for a later patch but it’s for sure on our radar. Personally, I’d like to see a little more diversity in attributes at end game. Like having the numbers look a little more leveled out at end game would make me happier. I’m not talking even but seeing builds with 0 Str/Dex makes me sad.
- Skill Scaling Woes: This is a really deep one and you bring up some very good concerns. Lots of the effects on skills start out as “wouldn’t it be cool if…” we do our best to consider the most obvious combinations and try to make every option feel good. I think we do a much much better job of this in newer skills. The process to make a tree has been dramatically refined over the years and most of the problematic nodes you mention are on the older side. I would expect lots of these to get tweeks as time goes on. Great list though, I’ve copied it in to my notes.
- Character Sheet UI Woes: 1. Yes. 2. Little trickier but yea, I think those are good suggestions.
- Respeccing: Sorry, not going to talk about that one right now.
- Crafting Tweeks: Yup, love em all. No promises.
- Map Exploration: Very cool topic, I’m actually binging a series right now called BossKey which dives very deep into this very topic. It’s focused around metroidvanias and other adventure games but I think there is a lot to be learned from it. Grim Dawn does this very well and I think we could probably do it better. I do know that Rik is waiting on some toys that he requested a long while back to be able to add in some things to zones that he has planned. I’m not a huge fan of the Kill 7 of this type of enemy quests, I much prefer the, find this item that can drop from any but it’s in one specific random one so it’s guaranteed to drop if you kill that many but you can get lucky and get it early. I think we’re getting kinda close to achievements with some of these and look at the next category…
- Achievements: Yup, they are coming.