That's a lot of words to attack one specific aspect of a game when a game is usually a combination of many factors. The desire to insert a "gamers these days" diatribe hyperbole because of one specific feature is the big giveaway that you're mostly talking nonsense with an eye to an agenda and bait rather than a valid point of discussion.
But the biggest hint that there's something screwy with your presence here is that your codex personality rated Witcher 3 one of your most favourite and bestest RPGs ever made. And AFAICT Queen's Wish's character building looks very similar to Witcher 3's, with only one skill point on level-up, new levels unlocking new things, most of your abilities dependent on equipment, augments similar to mutagens, and etc.
I also find it amusing that over there on the codex so many people have heard one whiff of one specific aspect of the game and are all rushing to use that as their spear to jab at the game and declare "whelp, that's ME not buying it!!!!!!" as if any game ever was either buyable or not buyable (AKA enjoyable or not enjoyable) because of one specific design feature. As if Planescape: Torment is renown for its character builds.
I also find it amusing that one of the codex's most ardent jPRG fanatics has chosen to reject the game unseen because of this one specific feature, even though the main complaint of this feature on that forum is that itÂ… makes the game more like a jRPG. LOL.
If you're looking for reasons not to play something, the smallest excuse pushes you away, even if it's pretty much bullshit. If you genuinely want to try something out of sheer curiosity or historical favour towards a series then you'll excuse all kinds of nonsense
At least not everybody is blind, that said expect anything from Codex is non sense, the forum should be named RPG Blinded Fanatics, Codex is an insane and infamous lie, it's 10% Codex at best because of their blindness and total lack of openness, yeah RPG 10% Codex would be a name that fits more or less.
A game isn't a list of features, it's a whole. But for sure it's more easy to pretend argue on a feature or a list of feature, than to argue on the whole which is really the core of gameplay design.
Queen's Wish isn't perfect (had a ton of fun with it anyway) and in my opinion dev changed a lot of its designs approach and lack of experiment or good comparison point with the use of those new designs approach, hence not everything is working very well.
For once it's not a fake rest system, but the final result isn't perfect, only less fake. The lite expedition approach is very cool but would really work only on base of full respawn, and full respawn without a deep and very diversified procedural generation system just cannot be fun or used very very rarely (as probably very few dungeons in QW). So it's a plus compared to any other Spiderweb game. But the lite expedition approach triggered the lite inventory approach, which is much better than Avadon system but it generates design problems, where put drops in dungeons, how design longer dungeons, how design two parts dungeons, no place for misc items so bye to almost fake systems as food or light but even fake they was more tools for filling, more.
Scaling, I mean smart scaling, is the way to go for very open RPG. But it's quite a challenge for difficulty management, it removes some tools to manage it, and increase difficulty of difficulty tuning. And if it's a better job than in any Bethesda RPG that always implemented a stupid scaling, it''s far to be a scaling masterpiece as was BG2 or DAO.
For the character building, it's better than Avadon, now it can't be compared to Avernum EFtP which uses skills, spells, combats abilities, trainers, special magic books, perks, extra special skills/spells(?) learned only through special ways.
Does Avernum system is really allowing better combats which is a core aspect, not sure. But it also open a few utility aspects which hasn't QW, it's no major gameplay and it's even basic gameplay but it's one more filling tool, as are trainers and special books. Moreover even if the result adds nothing to combats, that it's mechanically more complex is clearly something else.
I had the feeling that many QW design aspect are about controlling better the difficulty to attempt design better combats. But the dev didn't completed it by increased tactical design. He should really study many tactical games to extend his design assets. If not a major benefit of scaling+no grinding+lite expedition approach is lost a lot.
For the respec, I loved it and even late game switched totally two characters to have cultural skills associated with different roles and positions. But I don't know what to say about that, it's very special and I admit a bit disturbing.
It's not perfect, there's too many innovative aspects for dev games (scaling, respec, true lite expedition approach, no grinding allowed, management system adding a layer to party build - it's not a parallel game, more. All of that isn't fully well tuned, but I expect the trilogy will allow improve many aspects, and anyway I had a lot of fun with QW that is among my fave of the dev.