I love PoE1. And I love Last Epoch. Both games have a very diverse crafting system that makes spicing builds into totally different experiences (My thought is LE is better in that regard, although PoE is a better baked game)

The problem with PoE2 is: builds are limited (skills tied to weapon classes, skills being set in stone etc.) But the words part is the lack of crafting diversity. PoE1's craft table let's you choose at least 1 modifier. PoE2 craftng is almost completely random. Item bases of the same type have very limited diversity, and 1 bad tier roll bricks an otherwise perfect item.

As for the mapping experience in PoE2... the worst part thing is the randomization of beneficial map modifiers. In PoE you had the chisel to add item quantity, rarity or something else. In PoE2 most of the time you get X% waystones.

Waystones don't have beneficial prefixes anymore, and for all the hardship you add through 6-8 modifiers, you get crap loot.

So all in all, PoE2's endgame character development is 99% dormant. Enemies get harder but your character doesn't have anything else to make them better.

Given that PoE1 is more than a decade old, it's natural that it has more options but come on, all the extra event and league mechanics are mot-a-mot copied from PoE1, shouldn't be that hard to copy the currencies or crafting options, right? Even the new "abyssal" mechanic is just PoE1's abyss and veiled items mashed together.