I think you can take criticism and work towards your vision, I've most certainly done it. Constructive criticism serves to help see where you vision fails by showing its faults. Not all criticism will help towards your vision but a lot does respect your vision too. I'd rather not be frozen in time in a bubble while others move on and improve as creators.
I can't really think of design habits I see in quests that I love or hate... I guess when people are considerate of exploration by opening up choices and shortcuts. Nothing worse than padding out gametime by making players backtrack too often. I also like it when people don't just rely on get key-use key gameplay and acknowledge smart item usage by not making too many items needed for a small collection of screens resulting in constant scrolling or pausing.