Took me a lot of searches to find something meeting my requirements
I think you're conflating things. The "mechanical" in "mechanical keyboard" refers to the key switches. That's it. Then you have unrelated traits such as customization,which can express in using fancy/functional keycaps, feel/keypress experience, and whatever you can imagine and throw at a keyboard. None of your complains refer to mechanical keyboards in particular.
For a scene that is so into customization, it's disappointing how much it sticks to bad choices.
You need to pay attention to what you're saying, because you're referring to different things with unrelated words. If you look at what you're saying, you're talking about custom keyboards. Not mechanical keyboards. Custom keyboards. You even called it a "scene". You're talking about people who buy gear and assemble/modify it to fit their taste. What choice of switches they use is irrelevant. Heck, are you still talking about mechanics keyboards if someone switches cherry MX switches with Topre ones?
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/fan-of-microsofts-windows-pc-a...
But for me, most mechanical keyboards are downright painful to use. The standard rectangular layout is bad for my wrists, the keypress depth is bad for my fingers, clicks are just plain annoying.
Perhaps decades of keyboard use has worn my wrists and fingers down or helped me define what I wanted, but it's split low-profile or bust.
And there's a dearth of such options on the market. Slowly rising, but a paltry fraction of the overall "mechanical"/custom keyboard market, especially as it comes to keycaps!
Maybe I should just grab the bull by the horns and mod a Microsoft Sculpt to be wired, whose only downside is unreliable wireless.
/rant