I’ve seen some excellent suggestions in here that would make the Maw more enjoyable. I really love the one about increasing the eye levels. A couple more eye levels would be great so that you could get through just a little more content. However, if they are very punishing it might not be an overall help. An alternative would be to make each eye level longer. That is, it takes more to get to each eye level. That would let you do more before you have to leave.
There were some other excellent suggestions.
I would add, I would like for them to remove the “lose your stygia” part. They can leave in the part about half of it being on your corpse but just don’t take more from you and remove it completely if you die on the way to your corpse. I’d rather they remove it completely though. If you have completed what you were doing in that area you have to either give up on half your stygia or run back to your corpse hoping you don’t waste your time and die on the way.