Great feedback mate, sorry for the late reply I've been in NZ, playing the new PoE update and casting races but im starting to get back into it!
The UI impovements around naming exiles will probably go in a hotfix along with some other stuff.
The scouting upgrades are designed to passively generate mission opportunities for you, but it's overall a pretty simple first implementation of a larger idea around scouting.
The hunting lodge auto feeds the hunter exile, so it always comes out ahead - and it's a decent way to train up lower level exiles or off party members but it often IS a better idea to have your best exiles in the main party (or recovering to join the main party). I find I either dedicate someone to it who's not main party material, retire a badly scarred exile there, or use it to level up new exiles slowly. Overall these upgrades are still pretty barebones though!
I'm definitely thinking about how to rework the crafting moving forwards, there's a lot I want to do there and I agree the cost of higher ilvl gear is pretty punitive (even if the results can be worth it).
Great note on the % prefixes on weapons - they are there so you can "chase" a perfect fire weapon for example by getting flat fire & % fire (and later for damage conversion skills). But there's two issues - they should all share a mod family so you can only roll one of them (I overlooked this!). That's a bigger change ive pinned for later but in the meantime ill lower their weightings at least to make flat damage more common.
Once, again - thank you for the helpful feedback!