I'm actually surprised people are confused by the Black Shroud. I thought it was a lot more straightforward than La Noscea, for instance. I started out in Gridania and although it takes a bit to walk anywhere, I always just saw it as "one way there", which you can see on the map. Elevated places and such are different colors, so it's not too confusing if you need to go up or down to get somewhere.
Going to La Noscea for the first time, though! "HAHA, YOU HAVE FALLEN TO A SLIGHTLY LOWER ELEVATION! NOW YOU WILL HAVE TO WALK ALL THE WAY AROUND!" And I tried to find this one fishing spot and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how the heck to get there. As it turned out, there's a random cave in ANOTHER spot that I had to walk into and go underground to get there. From the map I couldn't really tell that was the way I was supposed to go, especially when the only hint was that I needed to go to a lower elevation and there was a beach right below me.
Not that I would change it; I just found it more confusing than I ever found Gridania/The Black Shroud.
I kind of like that The Black Shroud is unpopular; it means I can go there and harvest/fish/quarry stuff that almost no one else is.
I'd be fine if they changed it to open things up a little more or reduce the walking time, but I never found it nearly as confusing as Yuhtunga/Yhoatar.