One thing that might alleviate some folks aversion to an 'identify' mechanic might be what was done in the original Baldur's Gate series. Basically, classes had a Lore stat that went up with level, allowing one to identify basic items fairly easily, it was just the more powerful items that needed you to cast the spell or pay a vendor to identify the item. I don't remember how it was actually implemented, but Bards had the highest increase in Lore per level, then wizards, then Clerics and Rogues, and so forth.
Yes. IIRC, when a character examined an unidentified item a check was done against their lore, and if passed the full item description would pop up and the item would be classed as identified. But you still had to manually examine the items and, for harder to identify items shuffle them to a bard or other high lore class. If the lore check had used the best score in the party and executed when the item was picked up rather than examined that would have been less of a faff.
I'm not sure whether 5e has an equivalent for items. I guess an Arcana check for magical items would make sense.
