With so many people independently suggesting the idea of a Source Hunter Academy (or agreeing with it) as a tutorial/introduction, I think there's a good chance that it'll be in - but maybe only in the full version (because of the time it would take to create, polish, and test it).
I agree that crafting by dragging items over each other isn't a great system. Will it produce an item, or just swap their places? If it is a combination, what will it produce? Do I want to make that, or would I like to cancel instead?
I like the murder mystery idea, but even I can agree that there needs to be more world-building and setting information, especially on the Source and Source Hunters. Even when reaching the end of the murder quest, there really is no big hook to make me emotionally invested in the story. It's just "oh, okay, I guess I'll go to the next questing zone then.
This has been a recurring issue with the series, because the games tend to give you as much freedom as possible, which also means you aren't pressured so much to worry about the main story. Divine Divinity and Divinity 2 had pretty slow starts, you were expected to reach about level 8-10 before the main plot started in DD, and level 6 or so in Divinity 2.
Even so, Divine Divinity and Divinity 2 did eventually put some parts that helped, like getting locked up in Stormfist by an ungrateful, obnoxious brat, and having your friends and comrades try to murder you in Divinity 2 (and later on what happens to Broken Valley). There's quite a lot of content in the alpha of D:OS, but there's no big moment that really makes you emotionally invested or otherwise care.
In earlier versions of the D:OS story, there were things to make you care - in one of them you were in fact the only two survivors of an attack on the Source Hunter Academy.
