Name 2 defining characteristics of PoE.

1. Oh that mob has life regen+soul eater, ignore it and move on (Insert other ridiculous AN mods at your leisure)
2. 99% of what drops on the ground is absolutely useless.

Let's hear yours!

1. Damage scaling is out of control for both players and mobs
2. Archaic UI demands thousands of waste clicks not tied to actual gameplay

I believe this is the core, other problems are mostly created or amplified by those two.

1. It remains the best ARPG made by Diablo 2 uberfans who still don't work for Blizzard. (Well, most of them.)

2. It's the only game Grinding Gear Games has ever released, and they don't even own it or themselves anymore.

Extrapolate on either fact and you can pretty much explain anything good and anything bad when it comes to Path of Exile.

1 - Ultra-complex to the point where the main game is finding unintended interactions. Not just the most efficient path, but literally the main game.

2 - A game which provides infinite options but then actively works to pigeonhole you into a dozen or so builds based on gear availability, scaling, and not giving a crap that 90% of skills are trash

1: i died after everything was dead?

The other i was thinking of already said :(

Lets pick one positive and one negative:
1) Unprecedented character customization options
2) Too much tedium

Thousands of items, but they don't drop so you only farm currency.

Spending less then 100s of hours a league is a waste of time for 99% of the players.

1. It must be the only game i know of that, for years, actively and consistently creates more content to it, then promptly deletes it because it's not what they want the game to be.

2. It wants to be recognized as a hard game, but the high-end gameplay that should be the hardest, is actually the easiest.

1) Aoe go brrr

2) Skill tree yay

1. Out dated user interface
2. No manual. No help at all.