re: Stormlight Archives is needlessly complicated

It sounds like you just aren't really that into the massive world-building epic series he is going for with this 10 book saga (he wants this to be just the absolute maximum epic fantasy he can put out). That detail and minutia is necessary for the kind of series he is trying to deliver.

He isn't up to the level of say Robert Jordan for level of description and detail - I can vividly picture all the characters, cities, props, etc. in my head for Wheel of Time. But I think he does a pretty decent job at it. If he went too in depth with the detail of stuff like shadesmar it would grind the story to a halt (that is one big complaint with Jordan).

Plus trying to adequately describe certain things that readers don't have a good comparison to is challenging and it is sometimes better to let the reader fill in the blank for how they think it should look in their head.