No. 2 is an absolute "no" for me. If you don't like respeccing, don't respecc.
You can say the same about saving game, kind of "if you don't want save scumming, don't do save scumming", the idea here is that Larian mean to make the Honour mode, with emphasis on honour, so players would play as it supposed to be by the D&D rules without exploits. If you don't like it, play in custom mode.
No. 1 I cannot concur with entirely. I like many parts of the game but I really dislike Larian's way of quest design, and that's quite a central part. One aspect is that the story loses coherence in Act 3. What annoy me more however is the frequent absence of hints in quests, replaced by the method to look anywhere and click on anything clickable, typical for Larian sadly (the murder quest for example). Then there is the way they chose numbers for dice rolls in some core situations, to force stuff on you. Which made me sometimes so furious that I was near to stop playing.
First of all, from your logic above, if you don't like how Larian design quests don't play Larian's games. Secondary, "no hints" is how quests were designed in the classical cRPGs (there are hints, but they are not so obvious), so players would try to think and put some effort into solving this. But here there are obvious hints, like the huge markers on the map, including quest with murders, it can't be even more casual than this, they would not make it so easy in BG 1-2. In BG2 solving murders of a serial killer was way more interesting. Do you want them to give you exact instructions at the beginning of the quest? Like who's the murderer and where to find him exactly?
