Personally, I'd like an actual game with a beginning, a middle and an end. A game that you can play and beat in a satisfying conclusion, not one that drags on and on repetitively and peters out when you finally get too bored to continue.
When you design a game around the ability to keep the same playthrough going indefinitely by playing as your children and grandchildren, then you're not thinking about satisfying endgames, because its not designed to end. Its designed to keep going forever.
It is a Sandbox like Warhammer Total War, Crusader Kings, etc. Maybe Bannerlord is missing some victory conditions easier to achieve than having to conquer all the Empire settlements, but to be honest, all the Sandbox games have the same problem and they are usually boring in late game.
I personally never enjoyed having to conquer the world in Warband, and I didn't even once in 2K hours played. I cannot see how Aging&Death is making the game worse and lower than Warband, except if you enjoy a lot conquering the whole world, which is still doable in this game. It is harder to conquer thw whole world though, because this game is better balanced and it is not all about getting some Swadian Knights and F1+F3 (Fian Champion and Khan's Guard are pretty damn OP though, but I hope they are going to get balanced eventually).
No, for me, levelling still has some issue (it has been improved though).
But, there are still some things that will lack behind long after you have conquered all that you can stomach conquering.
Well, I guess we now atleast have the choice between horsearcher companions or footarcher companions. One small step for mankind.
Yeah, levelling still has some problems but it is just a 100% balanced issue, and not related to Aging&Death now. Maybe it was the case before, but now it is pretty evident that TW is hearing us about we do not like grinding.
I personally dislike the idea about conquering the whole world. Even is the game would be balanced different, I just do not enjoy painting the map. It was extemely boring in Warband, and same in Bannerlord.
I don't like the death and aging system because the time dimension does not fit with the possibilities resulting. I think they wanted to simulate the huge importance of family/clan policies in the middle ages which often overshadowed all other and especially common interests. But it is not possible to interact with the nobles accordingly and the small scale family policy is mixed with worldwide conquest matters, which does not match. As a result we have a small addition with a few family actions but a huge mass of boring "do the same few things forever, but as your child" stuff. It delays a lot of things, hampering big parts of gameplay. It is similar to the nearly non-existing diplomacy in BL, it could be great but it isn't at all.
I don't see much remedy. Warband too for me was boring, at it's core in later gameplay. I don't think any M+B system could do better. Mods like PoP tried but what they did to mitigate the boredom was adding another kind of boredom. Land of Sika for Bannerlord has a story (not finished of course, it's in development), tough enemies and offers you the chance to make your own units, resulting in the nice 0 to 700 loss battles in favor of the player with his little warband. I find it terrible, and PoP was a bit similar.
Tor the wars, while I never saw many 2-day-wars, I recently had several wars in which factions with 2 or 3 enemies did not make peace for a longer time, with the result of getting ripped terribly. Maybe it is random, or did they change something in 1.8.0?
Sure, Aging&Death implementation is not great currently, but this feature opens the door for tons of new features and mechanics like seccesion wars, etc. Aging&Death is a pretty complex feature which is not great currently, but I am pretty sure that modders will take huge advantage of it.
Lacking diplomacy in this game is not related to Aging&Death feature at all. This is an isolated issue that I hope TW or someone fixs in the future.