I noticed that in the keep, after all the fixing up, the kitchen magically returns to life, even without a cook. It would be nice if there was a scullery and a cook there, as part of a set of worker folks in the keep collectively hired as "Household Help" by the talking chair. In that set would also be a Gardener, Mason, Milk Maid and Farrier (BTW, how come no horses in this game). I would include a stable in there too, which grants decreased time to travel between locations. Also, each of these folks should be able to periodically give his lordship something of their work if he speaks with them; the cook or scullery can give him one of those meals; the milk maid can offer a bottle of milk, the gardener can give a plate of fruit or herbs, et cetera. Yes, I know that the magic box in the keep accumulates stuff, but it would be a nice touch if the keep seemed to be lived in a bit more with living people. There should also be kids running around, ie the families of those people, including those occupying the renovated shops.

Sterilized game world. I noticed that once the player goes through a particular map, that map is effectively sterilized until the next story line usage need. This imparts a feeling that there's really no need to explore or return to anywhere once you're done with it as there won't be anything new there at all. This makes the game seem more like a linear road than a world worth exploring. I wish more random or level dependent events would occur, perhaps finding secret or hidden passageways but only if player Perception or Stealth was high enough.

Maybe in 2.0?

If they put as many people in the keep as a keep should have, then your computer would freeze.

By that logic the computer should freeze in Defiance Bay. Regardless, they could have... should have placed active npcs into the keep. They are all over the towns, so why not the player's stronghold?

I remember Obsidian mentioning somewhere that they plan on expanding upon the keep in DLC - so let's hope that happens in the first one. We'll see. Yeah, I was quite disappointed with the lack of content around the keep itself as well, a few quests thrown in for a good measure would not go amiss in making it feel more alive, along with some NPCs - even if all they do is drop a few lines of dialogue.

Thank you, my feelings exactly. Also, the Wardens total of 15 bounties is too little. There needs to be a random bounty generator and you should be notified by the keep (like the monthly payroll) if a new one arises. That saves you from even have to run your pixels across the map, reload the screen (and all that that entails), click on mister fancy pants to find out if there's a new bounty, then reload the screen in order to leave, and finally run your pixels across the screen again to continue on doing whatever it was you were doing before you decided to check in with the warden.

Honestly, this is exactly why I don't visit certain relatives; it's too much of a pain in the behind to get there and back, LOL...

Some areas refill a little after moving to new Chapters.
Right now I remember the area where you meet durance (with extra forest lurker and goodchild who you can put in jail), the area where you meet Hiravais (Technically, 3 times, as the first time half area is flooded) and any point where can be a bounty-hunter (Though this is what you critic is).

However, this has been the case since the first game, so not sure if its a nostalgic factor or a cut in economical resources or laziness. EXPANSION my friend, Expansion
Expansion was that thing the game developers did in the past before charging a lot for horses armors and minor tickets :P and seem is a term that any under 15 don't know (This sentence is only with humor intend, not offense at all )

I don't think that would be a good idea, unless you're proposing for these encounters to not give you any experience. If anything, I would like the bounties to be proper quests with little storylines each, feel free to make less of them - as it stands, it was "find a thing, kill a thing" which is kind of boring. Anyway, why should they not be randomly generated? Pillars of Eternity is a fairly tightly designed game, and designers wanted to have control over how fast you're levelling - that's one of the reasons why you get almost no experience from killing things. In fact, they have already adjusted bounty experience reward to stop you from reaching max level before entering Act III. Pff, I played some terrible expansions and I played some terrible DLC, can't rightly say I care all that much :-P All I see is that I'm getting it digitally, so it's DLC to me regardless :-P (of course, at the end of the day, it's whatever Obsidian calls it)

Sometimes, one needs the funds to rebuild the keep, so having plenty of "missions" and getting things to sell will help in that regard, even if it would generate little in terms of XP. What I would like to see is more weapons mods or enchantment items and having additional missions could do that too. I'm also surprised that there isn't any gambling. I was hoping too, that you could get escort missions like the old Fallout caravans idea but instead, the game does it automatically with your reserve NPCs.