Lungworth

I wasn't planning to start a discussion, but alright, for the first (and last) time I'll give a detailed answer so as not to leave any misunderstandings or hard feelings for the future. Though who am I kidding, it'll turn out the opposite.

C: I signed up for hardcore, I'll keep playing hardcore
L: This isn't hardcore, it's crap

Come on, you perfectly understand these are completely different phrases in meaning. In Baldur, it was about an unexpected change of mechanics in the middle of the game, and "hardcore" specifically referred to permadeath mode. But even so, I kept my word and removed my character from the game after a fatal injury.

Lack of balance with its accompanying minmaxing, that same punishing initiative and malicious randomness have always been there

1) In no prior expedition was minmaxing such a decisive factor. Mind you, I don't deliberately make bad characters, and on average my builds are above average, but here, to avoid wiping on the very first quest, you had to go out of your way with mechanics and avoid stacking critical failures and injuries.
2) Once upon a time, initiative and cleverness would blow up cities, not just players' butts, so this is an argument for linearity, but it's too obvious to bring up further.
3) I have nothing against randomness, but it's one thing when critical failures occur with average stats of 1-100, and another with 1-10. Here, it's partly my fault: I got really tense when Ples wrote that our chance of failure was higher than the chance of a crit, but for some reason I didn't think they'd work in such a brutal way.

just apparently like in everything else, the grass used to be greener

The grass was especially greener in the last expedition a month ago. I'll repeat, Serberia easily made it into the top 2-1 of my favorite games, and if you removed Zeno, the inquisitors, and the random generation at the start, it would have become an unattainable ideal. My point now isn't about your setting or even balance, but about the mechanics of this "hardcore" mode.

Let's take three situations:
A) A raid of a couple dozen bodies on a lich king;
B) A PvP arena at high rating;
C) Ganking level 1 noobs in the starting location;
What do you think belongs to difficult and adrenaline-filled content, and what to what I expressed?

And the argument that "ducklings quack about how it was better before" doesn't work here, because we have Serberia. In Baldur, there were exactly the same two completely unfair and poorly thought-out battles at the start of the game, when characters had no way to level up beyond starting stats. But... the first was a friendly tournament; and after the second, a forest spirit resurrected everyone with minimal "injuries."
I will never nitpick you about battles in the mid-to-late game. I might grumble in a thread, but that's the max. Elulu-suen, the inquisitors, and so on - there players had enough chances to level up and soberly assess their strength. But the start of the game should involve at least some safe zone. Even take and bless everyone upon arrival in Lungwort with Felicia's power: "for the first month, characters don't receive injuries and don't make critical failures," what's the big deal?
But here we got a pure case of option C). Moreover, we actually had to log in with our Baldur twinks (resurrecting lead tank Lok, area-of-effect specialist Alex, and healer Frag), but you yourself discouraged everyone from importing...

Well, maybe I really need to retire, because all these expeditions are turning into sessions of masochism, where you spend whole days against all odds crunching numbers, trying to keep everything in a head occupied with other things, and then all you hear is - this is WEIRD, that's CRAPPY, a third is yet another thing.

Don't twist everything in that light. You perfectly know that 90% of players give positive feedback about your work. In 8 years, I've never personally nitpicked you in DMs: no whining, no criticizing, no asking to rewind time, resurrect my characters, etc. In the rare cases when something really got to me, I always wrote about it in the general thread. Because I'm always open to dialogue, including admitting I'm wrong if it turns out I had a mistaken impression of something.

criticism is when you raise some issue, "Revan, 7 accuracy and 10% crit from one skill is way too strong, maybe this needs to be fixed somehow?" Revan says no, it doesn't. Apparently he has some thoughts on this, or maybe he's just stubborn, not that it matters

It does matter, because that's where the problem lies. Let's be honest, you don't like criticism and you highly value your own opinion and vision. And no matter how you wrap this feedback, the outcome won't change. I can understand this well, because I myself almost never make concessions in life when it comes to my creative work. Like, I'd let some random guys teach me how and what I should do, lol.
But there's an important oversight here: an expedition is not an ordinary game. You're not a developer reading the whining of soyboys from Reddit. In a sense, we're co-owners of one company. Even if the key block of shares is yours, our opinions and decisions also mean a lot. Expeditions are collective creativity. It's a story about us and for us, while the NPCs and the world are just the backdrop. It's not us who should watch the heroics of the GM's characters from the back rows; the GM's characters should watch us (and be envious).

Useful feedback looks like this.

maybe none of what is suggested will be used

That's exactly why over the years, useful feedback has been replaced by more straightforward nitpicking. I remember I used to love writing a big post with analysis and suggestions at the end of each expedition. But what's the point??? It doesn't work and helps in 0.1% of cases. But now I wrote once about how everything is "crap" and look what a discussion I've achieved.

I learned from my mistakes during this fight, but "feedback" in this game is definitely that very thing from under the horse.
Nitpicking (instead of constructive criticism) about mechanics, quest design, or NPC motivation is like reading someone's quest and saying "why isn't it like Tolstoy's, and here a comma is missing... Hmm..."

Here you're exaggerating and wrongly comparing mechanics to quests. As the guys correctly wrote, nobody expects perfectionism from you. But in my opinion, there's been more than enough feedback over the years; you just find some remarks stupid and far-fetched, others as player stupidity, and still others you simply ignore.
And so, if you have feedback for your fellow players about the quality of quests, post formatting, etc., don't hold back...

to meet the (increased, by the way, over the years) expectations?

And that's actually normal. The players have also gotten much better at roleplaying over the years, the quality of quests has improved, and overall in RP everything is just great now. I'm throwing likes on almost every post. We're growing, and you've also leveled up tenfold in a GM sense, so the evolution of expectations is quite logical. I mean, you first win Olympic gold, and then you're surprised that people expect a high level from you...

Perhaps only drawing artifacts and writing musical accompaniment is missing, and even then there would probably be something about crooked anatomy or unmelodious tunes.

Well, don't try to reduce everything to "bad players don't appreciate me." I've already written, and you perfectly know that's not the case; everyone loves and respects you.


Well, and yeah, I'll comment a bit on Nebk's post.
I don't think that when playing in others' expeditions (or running your own), you deliberately did something, but I really liked his argument about demotivation.
Where does this demotivation come from, and from it irritation, and from it criticism? It comes from situations where players can't make the right decision because they think any path can end in failure with equal chance.
Shoot at Zeno - wipe. Don't shoot at Zeno - he approaches and explodes - wipe.
Kill the inquisitors - the countess gets offended for her son - wipe. Spare the inquisitors - they steal the tear - wipe.
Eat the fruits - get poisoned - wipe. Don't eat the fruits - miss out on imba buffs - wipe.
And the saddest part is that no matter how much "feedback" you receive about each of these situations, they're still "good," "well-thought-out," etc. to you. And what kind of criticism should it be to make you doubt the logic of these "cozy" quests?

But let's dig deeper and think about why such quests appear at all. They appear because, subconsciously or not, you like to overpower and test the players. Otherwise, nothing like this would exist at all. Sometimes, of course, like with the inquisitors, you soften up towards the end, but overall there have been enough such situations already. And this is hardly a "things were better before" case: this thing originated back in the times of Laust (or whatever his name was) from Shabbet, who overpowered us.
I'm not calling you a sadist or a villain, but please don't try to deny that your characters and plans always turned out to be above and better than the players. And even when players tried to protect themselves from potential consequences, it didn't help. For instance, the fruits would just start ignoring all immunities. With Zeno, you first provoked us with a maximally trolling situation, and then got offended that we reacted incorrectly, even though you yourself eagerly rushed to take an aggressive action.
Wouldn't it bring much more pleasure to reward people for their cleverness, rather than tripping them up and shoving them in the dirt?

And my last point is related to a change in perspective. You're rarely, but occasionally, also in the shoes of an ordinary mortal player. And notice how proud your characters often are. At the slightest disrespect or attempt at humiliation, they bravely die from any obstacle. It's very strange that you haven't drawn any parallels between this and the "troubles" players face in your expeditions. Perhaps you need to be given more of that corresponding "game" experience, dunno.

And finally, something not too constructive... You say you don't like it when players wipe and all that... But it feels like these emotions arise after the fact... Kind of like when as a child you broke your favorite toy soldiers and got sad, even though you were just throwing rocks at them to simulate being under artillery fire. It's the same here: first you get upset when you miss and place the soldiers closer to yourself, and when you finally hit and smash them to pieces, you suddenly get sad that things turned out this way...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯