I wish DOS2 had a stash, too.
It does right? You can send stuff to a chest on the ship. If I remember correctly, in Dungeon Siege 2 you could turn items on the ground into gold. A godsend, even if you could get more at the merchant for it.
Story, characters, art and sound are the primary reasons I play cRPGs (any game really). Simply because I'm very bad at them myself and thus respect people who can (e.g., I really can't draw). Funnily, culture, races, and general background information are one of the lowest reasons why I play cRPGs. Although they should be important as it overlaps with the story and characters. However, I blame games for presenting background information on culture and characters in such a bad way. Either (i) they have no interesting cultures/races (bland, run-off-the-mill) or (ii) they present it with too much text (whole books as in skyrim, or long dialogue as in PoE).
A random thought for your sleepless night. What about mixing several genres, but instead of presenting them all the time, put emphasis on a single genre at a certain stage in the game.
You talk about surviving the rats, so make it a real survival game at the beginning. With the mundane tasks of constructing a bow, even finding food, and (important!) exploration. Some survival games are very good this, the trick is to go over to the next stage of the game before it becomes boring. E.g., when you get equiped enough but fights are still dangerous, switch it to a more tactical turn-based game for the combat. Removing the mundane tasks or automatizing them (like food). If you get more powerful make it a real-time action RPG, or even a brawler. I'm thinking dark messiah of M&M combat here. Bonus points, try to fit a single character system (skill points etc.) for all stages.