Feedback from a first time PoE player (PoE2)

I want to preface this post by saying that I tried and dropped PoE1 for the overload of VFX and its fast pace which made encounters meaningless.

This is exactly what I LOVE about PoE2! Slower pace, chunky combat, difficulty! Best of all, AMAZING boss designs as well as even normal monster design and fights. Randomized items, fantastic skill tree with so many possibilities, loving it!

That said I have some suggestions:

1) I don't know if I'm missing something but PLEASE let me zoom out more, to the level of where the game itself sometimes automatically zooms out. I hate having to stare at the game at this level of zoom. Pretty please!

2) Character movement sometimes feels a little 'floaty'. If you could give us the impression of heavy footsteps, character being firmly connected to the ground it walks on, it would make the experience that much better.

3) Making maps even larger would be a huge step-up, if possible, so that the world doesn't feel like a series of broken up small shards, it would add to immersion a lot, at least in my case. Too much porting around for my taste. I know that it is a necessity from a design standpoint, it's how the game works, but make us play each map for a longer time (hey, more XP, more loot, more challenge!) so that teleporting doesn't stand out that much.

4) Besides zooming out the camera further, my biggest point of complaint is gender locked characters! WHY am I forced to play a chick or a black guy? I don't care about voice acting when it comes to the player character, it can be completely silent as far as I'm concerned, but PLEASE for the love of God let me choose male/female and the color of my skin. I have nothing against any race or skin color, far from it, but I want to be able to identify myself with the guy I'm playing. I know that some people don't mind it at all but please be aware that there are many of us that do. How hard can it be to implement?


Anyway thank you for a promissing game, I am enjoying it, I hope it only gets better as we move forward.