Well if one is complaining something is too hard and not playing on an easier level, well it doesn't make perfect sense to complain, just knock down the difficulty. Easy would fix difficulty for sure.

Loot, no problem there or are you meaning the identify issue? You can only identify/repair stuff that is on the character that speaks with the NPC character. Unless you bring up Loremaster on one of your players. Knowing that, no issue identifying.

You will notice in time, that you become quite strong fast enough and then to me it seems to easy still. Haven't played hard, soon.