The large-scale redesign of settlement maps and exploration thereof in the recent versions is questionable, if not outright bad. First of all, although definitely not foremost, while there are certainly large visual improvements to the maps, some of them look quite crude in comparison to the simpler maps of the past versions: larger tree roots sticking out everywhere on woodland maps, misaligned textures, badly joined shapes sticking one through another, odd colours, especially when it comes to water, places where player can fall or where character animation gets bugged (like on the far end of Helm's Deep wall), etc, etc.
Secondly & more importantly, while new maps are sometimes much larger, they are also greatly confusing in their layout and sometimes outright unintuitive (e.g. Southern Woodelf Camp).
Thus without an easy option to find the character you need it turns into a chore.

Also, in previous versions exploring the map gave you experience, which was very useful when levelling up a new character - one could easily get a couple of levels just by visitng nearby settlements. Now it doesn't work that way at all, because, firstly, it isn't explained anywhere what the relations bonus one gets with the settlement as a result of exploration does exactly, and secondly, whatever it does, you can't use it in any way if you can't find the characters to interact with!
Speaking of character interaction, it seems as though there's less of it. In some places you could get settlement dialogue with more NPCs, while nowadays they only give you standard guard line.
Trade is also less enticing. It used to be that one can at least get a glimpse of better wares in the shops from day one, even if funds for such purchases weren't available. Yet it was aspirational and gave a clear picture of future character progression. Now this 'window-shopping' is for all intents and purposes gone: even with your own faction you can only be offered slightly better versions of your starting gear or other such low-level items, sometimes for quite steep prices.

Coupled with the fact that starting weapon skills for the player were halved for no good reason, it means that there's little sense now in investing in your own character as opposed to your troops. In my opinion, this on its own runs against the spirit of heroic fantasy, but what's worse is that it doesn't quite work out. Neither of the two AI models works as it should: player troops rush towards the enemy at the start of the battle as if it is original Warband, and there doesn't seem to be any improvement in this regard for a great while.
Even one of the initial tutorial battles got somehow broken in the recent versions! Fighting orcs in Lorien used to be a walk in the park, and now they can easily wipe the whole party together with the player, thus devoiding them of the resource point tutorial! In my own experience it happened at least half a dozen times before a lucky accident allowed me to somehow survive. And I've tested it with one of the older versions only days ago, and it was a day and night difference with much fewer enemies and more powerful allies.

So, it seems to me that recent modifications only made game harder, more tedious and less fun. I would like to see these changes reverted or tweaked in such a way as to be less annoying and more welcoming to new players. At the very least I would like to hear what prompted these changes.
It is sadly beyond my ken to do the needed modifications myself, as straight up downgrading to older versions would also introduce old bugs, and I have to add that there seems to be a lot of custom coding in place, because standard tools like TroopEditor cannot, for example, parse most of the equipment given to units in troops.txt.