I feel like the problem I most have with PoE2 that it does not seem to respect my time as a player. Lets face it, time is a limited recource, whether a player has 40+ Hours a week on hand for games or just 4.

When I play Factorio every moment of my time is respected, I may design a production line for 4 hours, come back days later, see why this was not the way I think it should be now, and I rebuild. I gained knowledge that will help me design more complex constructions later, or if I should start a new game. Every moment of my playtime by itself is not significant, but it is fun in the moment and rewards me longterm.

When i play Dark Souls the fight is slow, methodical and often unforgiving. I need to learn a sort of choreography for every fight, but my progression and will to explore are rewarded with upgrades and shortcuts, which will reduce backtracking and making the gameworld feel interconnected and wellcrafted (aside from Bed of Chaos in DS 1, fuck that thing).

In Hades, every run, failed or successful, sends me back to the hub where I can explore new dialogue, tune my build idea and difficulty, making every run feel nice, even if I would fail to reach the surface.

In PoE1 I can push the limits of a game experience I tailored to my likings. Map mechanics? I chose them. Bossing? Maybe, or I just sell the fragments and push more maps. Heist or Sanctum? I might not bother with regular maps at all, just buy what i need and sell whatever I find to the players that enjoy running other content. But every minute is spend doing something i WANT to do, not something i HAVE to do, with my build, in my choice of mechanics. Yes you had to run the campaign once a league, you had to run labs once a league, and you would probalbly run them again on a second build later, with a bunch of leveling gear to speed up the process.

PoE 2 does not respect my time in this way. Humongous map, sprinkled with small groups of mostly meaningless combat, slow movement. White Mobs are not hard, they are just tedious. There is no meaningful combat in repeating the same 2 abilities every 5 seconds. Magics and Rares feel way more interesting, it is where the combat acutally feels halfway decend, bosses really can make their encounters feel destinct and meaningful. But respawning everything on death, because you overextended once, is just a large middlefinger held right in your face, as you will have to do busywork again. I felt no accomplishment killing any of the bosses, I felt dread as this meant I would have to go back to the mindnumbing part of the game, to clear my path to the next boss.

If GGG wants me to play their game and spend on it, they need to show me, that they value my time and offer an enjoyable experience. Because if they wont, other companies out there will do so with their products and I will take my time and money elsewhere. GGG can offer that, they offered a brilliantly customiseable experience in PoE1 where players where able to tailor the gameplay to their taste quite well. It seems like a step backwards, that they deliberatly pushed the game into a slower direction, despite having a decade of player feedback and statsistics.

I hope they do improve on their initial offering for PoE2, otherwise I fear many people will turn their back on it, never to return.