PoE 2 feedback - What is the vision here exactly?

So, I feel like I have trudged through enough of PoE 2 to give some feedback. Overall, it has some good bits (some bosses, graphics, a few qol-improvements), but it is very clearly an early-access product. What baffles me are all the anti-player mechanics and inferior attempts at solving old and often non-existent problems. It seems like there is a disconnect between PoE 1 and PoE 2 developers, which is worrisome.

PoE 1 had a problem with flask. After a few iterations, it was fixed, and flasks are now in a great spot in PoE1. The charm system in PoE 2 is a massive downgrade and creates new problems related to belts.

PoE 1 atlas is pretty much the gold standard for endgame progression. It currently has only minor problems (5 maps with bad layouts being best for everything and effectively forced atlas nodes). In PoE2, it was totally scrapped in favor of a clunky and frustrating system seemingly just so that players could not play the game the way they want to.

PoE 1 had a problem with upgrading body armors/2-handers, since the cost of 6-linking was so high. This was fixed over the years by making getting links easier (more and deterministic sources). Linking has not been an issue in PoE 1 for some time. The only remaining issue is that it is hard to upgrade gear during the campaign (too expensive to roll sockets/links). In PoE 2, linking is very costly, has to be done separately for each skill and comes with several restrictions (only one support, super high attribute costs, weapons bound skills etc.). The attribute requirements alone are so high that is very hard to do anything not-built in. It is a massive downgrade.

In PoE 1 you level up your skill gems and get progressively stronger by just playing the game. You can buy pretty much any skill gem from vendors and there are a lot of options. Level 21 gems hold value, and most skills are usable by any build. Leveling gems is a good source of extra income. In PoE 2 you upgrade gems with a cumbersome system of drops. Many skills are tied to items. Item level determines the level of skills, so leveling-uniques are scuffed and you can’t really rely on item-based skills as they get obsoleted quickly. I fail to see any benefits with the new system.

At some point, PoE 1 had a problem with life nodes being pretty much mandatory (“path of life nodes”). This was fixed by adding more defensive options and by having a good balance between life/ES. PoE 2 removed life nodes, nerfed defenses and massively boosted ES. This massively reduced player choice and build variability.

PoE 1 has a variety of movement skills/options that allow players to move as quickly as they can handle. This allows players to challenge themselves and plays really well into the power fantasy. PoE2 has a dodge roll (and blink for a price) and slow movement speed. Layouts are long corridors with dead-ends (which have no good reward btw) and there is so much of just slowly walking from A to B. Even D2 understood that players should not be forced into that.

PoE 1 drops too much worthless loot, but it has a lot of drops that do hold value (currency, scarabs, fragments, special bases, keys, Valdos, fractures etc.). PoE 2 drops mostly useless currency and gear. Gambling a white/magic item into a good rare has such low probability that it is just not engaging or interesting.

PoE 1 has a deep crafting system and a crafting bench that makes a lot of drops better (you can fix them to a point). PoE 2 has effectively no crafting. The crafting bench is removed in favor of a very limited socket system with non-removable(!) runes. This downgrade is seemingly because “6 mod rares should be better than 5 mod rares”. I am genuinely confused as to how the gameplay-crafting loop is supposed to work in PoE2.

Melee was in a bad spot for years, but 3.25 brough a lot of improvements. Turns out that boosting numbers (among other things) can make a big difference. Poe 2 is abysmal for melee. Skills have baked in slow animations. There are no good defenses for melee. PoE 2 also includes probably the most hated content from PoE 1: AN-modifiers. Many of the modifiers are just really bad for melee builds.

In general, AN-modifiers are super bad, since they do not augment the rares themselves, but instead create a mechanic for you to engage with so that the rare monster itself becomes pretty immaterial. You are not fighting a rare with lightning dudes, you are fighting a hp bar while avoiding the lighting dudes. Just bad design all around. We went through all of this in PoE 1 years ago.

Forced to click a well to refill flasks? Just why?

There are a lot of other issues, but many of them are just related to the EA-state of the game (like balance and bugs). I just don’t really understand some of the design choices.

It would be very good if we got some sort of a development commentary on some of the design choices. Hear the “vision” so that players know what to expect from the future of PoE 2.

The vision is: GGG gonna keep doing what they think is the "best" for players and if they don't like it, it is players fault.

PoE2 is a PoE1 texture pack with newly added mechanics to increase player metrics. It's GGG's vision to increase playtime for maximizing profits while not acknowledging developments in the arpg genre in present times. Those things have been added to add nothing of value for players, generating more playtime in PoE2:

- slower walking speed to increase playtime
- bigger maps to increase playtime
- casino crafting to increase playtime
- longer campaign to increase playtime
- 1-death-maps to increase playtime
- longer boss fights to increase playtime
- full rng atlas quest to increase playtime
- increased exp loss to increase playtime

Instead of polishing the clunky mechanics of PoE1 and raising accessibility by better ingame help/tooltips, GGG completely missed the opportunity to create something new. PoE2 is a texture pack addon, keeping all the bad stuff of PoE1 where it was.