You make a great point about having a bloat slider, that's really smart and perhaps someday they will implement something like that, many will say it's up to you to ignore it but that's like saying there is right and wrong ways to play a game. 

However, I disagree with The Witcher 3s loot, if playing on the highest difficulty you need all that shit and to prepare master weapons you have to be Looting everything just like it is in Fallout 4 with the building. 

I fucking hate when they have empty drawers, it's happening in Alan Wake 2 and is properly annoying. 

But yes, Directors cuts need to be part of future updates like NG+ modes are. When FF7 remake finally finishes I hope for a directors cut of those three games to makes a concise experience more closely related to FF7 and by directors cut I actually mean cut, not adding stuff in like in films. Exactly to your point. 

The thing is, I turned it down to easy, ignoring master weapons, ointments and what not. Why am I still getting all this loot fodder you 90% don't need for a condensed play through. TW3 was actually pretty good on 'easy' as you can take on much higher enemies and use other tactics than 'preparation'. Many fun fights with mini bosses, battles of attrition and evasion rather than preparation and tanking the boss.

Adjust loot to difficulty level, makes sense! For example condensed mode, no repair mechanic, no loot for repairs. Not that hard to do with filters. Extended combat mode vs condensed story mode.

As for FF, also battles that don't last for an hour or even longer lol.

And yeah, a filter on empty drawers / chests etc. I wouldn't mind a loot filter in PoE2 as well. (And for loot not to cover the screen during battle, we've died because we couldn't see anything anymore, screen covered in loot names which draw over top lol) Let me set minimums and types for loot I'm interested in, don't show if it doesn't meet the criteria. I do that 'scan' myself now, if base stats
Sure it's more settings again, which can be streamlined and then removes avoidable busy work and clutter while playing. Streamlined loot system as an option!
"Clean up aisle 3" feeling after a big battle needs to go. Don't waste my time with fodder.

Modern rpgs

Devs just love sliders for difficulty without taking these things into account, that's why I hate difficulty sliders and find my self going up or down through playthroughs cause all balance goes out the window. FromSoft do it right, they can balance their games so perfectly, Sekiro is thee most balanced game ever to be made and no difficulty slider. 

Like with FF7r, just sponge after sponge on hard mode that's zero fun to attempt but the game is too easy on easy and too spongey at times on normal. Adjust the stuff you said.

But I'll tell you one thing, you'll never see an "ARPG" without loot issues and limited inventory space, especially a free to play one that sells inventory space, regardless of them selling space it's too woven into the gameplay loop, grind, loot, dump or sell and grind again. Best you're going to get in POE2 is a loot filter like PoE1.  

It depends what you mean by "respect of our time". Really since there's been the popular dichotomy of playtime to $ invested by hour with the maximisation of these aspects, game devs and publishers in some cases have forced themselves into this trap of "easily" and cheaply made side content to affectively bloat and pad either their gigantic world maps and/or playtime by fear of the critics of being short games.

Essentially, I won't mind the matter of the bloat if not interacting with said bloat isn't gonna hamper the main game experience in much capacity.

Actually, there's plenty of good examples knowdays where the side content can be the most fun you can derive from an experience since it can be competently made and also add weight to either the main narrative or feedback into the gameplay loop meaningfully.
Also having a world design that's also worth exploring is something that's gotta be appreciated.

It's kinda why I personally really fell deep into the Xenoblade Chronicles series. The first game had a horrible side quests system(with neat ideas) for the most part. But Xenoblade X and Xenoblade 3 are prolly the among the few JRPGs in the landscape to actually make their side content and world exploration feel like an integral part of their experience instead of being a mandatory sets of mandates by executives oversees and such.

Funnily enough though, short RPGs can be just as engaging and engrossing than longer forms of them since having the possibility to encapsulate your whole experience into a "short" 20-30 hours experiences can be beneficial if the intention is to make the experience a concentration of one's game best elements without the need to add said amount of unnecessary fluff to the experience.

@SvennoJ has some great points regarding loot. Managing loot often becomes quite tiring. For me it's mostly because I need to take some kind of a look at everything in order to decide what to do with it, whereas collecting loot is otherwise OK(-ish). But it's really annoying to have to take a look at dozens of pieces of equipment per fight, even if it's just a quick look. I feel like I'm growing more and more tired of managing of loot the more I do it, because 90 % of it I can do without much thinking, so it's just a waste of my time - exactly the topic of this thread. Game devs need to find ways to make managing loot more respective of our time. Just simple loot filters would already do a lot (Grim Dawn says high, and maybe other games of the same genre too!).

One of the reasons I eventually got fed up with Pokemon Go was inventory management. For the most part, it was very mindless, but there was no way to do it easily or to automate it. That game is possibly the worst offender on the inventory management front, because so much of the game involves inventory management compared to many other games.

My sweet spot is 30-50 hours for a long game. Anything more than that is just too much (even though a lot of my playthroughs have been longer than that i.e. Dragon Quest VIII being 81 hours, Bravely Default II being 76 hours, Final Fantasy XV being 75 hours, etc)

Just to add from my newest thread which is very much related to this topic. Time savers for collectibles.

Nioh 2 has a Kodama sensor that'll ping these on the mini map
Stellar Blade has a very subtle haptic sensation when near essentials and a sensor for can collection 
Alan Wake 2 has a charm you can equip that marks every item and collectible on map when close
Astro Bot has the little birds you can purchase on replaying a level that will alert when close to bots and puzzles