Your whole post makes a lot of sense.
I think Skyrim was really really nice. Especially the freedom and exploration of it. However, I modded it to add more randomness to gathering. I had a project to make a lot of randomized skills, but couldn't figure out some coding issues, so I gave up after only creating and releasing one mining skill. Again, I wih there was more true gameplay improvments than shiny armor and weapons released by the modding community.
Cold issue, boring. Yes. I am having the exact same issue with Rigale (my mount and blade mod), and the exaustion feature I added. Many players don't like it. However, I think early restrictions have a purpose of helping the player improve, not only because he is more powerfull and hits faster, but also, because he can overcome these restrictions, and increase the number and efficiency of his interactions with the world. But this requires a random respawnable world to be effective and interesting, which DoS is not. In rigale, once you are a master in wandering, that you leraned the proper terrain lore, have a few master scouts in your party, get to know the area either through habit and/or a proper map, you can cross the terrain much faster than in the Native game. But it does require some dedication, and it took some thought to come upon this system.
Modders will probably "change" DoS, and I might be one of them, if I can understand anything. This is a big frustration, I have been waiting for this damn editor (like many others) since the first kickstarter day. And seeing the bugs pile is really worrying, because I was really ready to invest a lot of my free time into modding DoS.
I don't feel compelled that much anymore. Because of some stupid system conception failures I already talked about. We will see.
