You are forgetting that the more you streamline these things the less the player is actually involved and the less "special" it becomes.
whenever I was forced to send by hand a ton of items from my strong guy to my barter guy I felt very special. I hope that in the DOS 2 that feeling will not be present.
How about a compromise that doesn't take too much off of a player.
Such as, for example, just letting the character identify a character's items... Such as... I dunno crazy thing... Right clicking on them and click 'Identify items'.
That way you aren't uninvolving the player. SURE it might be annoying, but the less you involve the player the less INVOLVED they are. It is something that many super streamlined games never learn, so focused on trying to eliminate every single "annoying" aspect of the game leaving players numb to the experience.
There's streamlining a game to death, and then there's eliminating annoyances that add nothing to the game. There's streamlining that just removes some extra clicks, like letting you use certain party member's civil skills if you're standing near them and there's streamlining that dramatically changes your behavior and experience of game, like fast travel from any location. I've come to like the limited fast travel in D:OS2 compared to the original, which ultimately made the game feel smaller and of less consequence, like you could just teleport around on whim no matter whatever you were, walking is for losers. It's nice to have SOME fast travel, to limit the tediousness of traveling back to trade a certain degree, but limitations to fast travel makes it feel more significant.
For every annoyance, developers should ask: does this really add to the game? Am I taking away something significant by smoothing this feature over, or is just basic quality of life? I think if let characters share civil skills across the map, you're taking something away (a certain realism, and making characters feel special and distinct, as you say.) But letting you share skills if within 5-10m basically just simulates your characters having a conversation, or one character helping another. In multiplayer, if you want to identify an enemy, you still have to find your friend with loremaster to use that ability, without necessarily asking them to identify each enemy, but still recognizing that its your friend that gives you this ability.
I might be even okay with reducing the range of magic pockets (though maybe it already has a limited range? I don't think it does) to create consistency and to encourage players to be prepared in combat. Like, how is it that all these companions have this incredible power? It sure is convenient, but I do think it takes something away. I'd at least like players to find some kind of magic bag of holding or something that explains this.
And regarding identifying items, I'm not sure how much this adds to the game at all. It kind of adds to the vibe that you're finding amazing artifacts that not every person will be able to recognize (except, funny enough, uniques.) It adds slightly to the expense of finding an item. It adds a gold sink if you don't invest in loremaster. But I can't say we've lost much by making green items come identified. I'd rather see another more interesting use to loremaster to replace this, but I imagine its staying. I almost think it would make more sense if blue items were also found pre-identified, but you had to identify unique items.
