PoE 2: Expectations vs Reality - Am I Missing Something?

First of all, I absolutely loved most of the game. I'm new to PoE (I deliberately waited for PoE2 instead of jumping into PoE1 midway) and spent over 120 hours playing. However, there are things I just can't understand. Maybe I misunderstood the game's concept or had expectations completely unrelated to what PoE2 is meant to be.

To be clear - I'm not going to talk about bugs or balance issues. Those are expected in early access, and plenty has already been said about them. This is about core design decisions that will shape the game's future.
Right now, PoE 2 feels caught between two different design philosophies, and I believe settling on one direction would make it a much stronger game overall.

I'd really appreciate other players' perspective here - am I looking at this wrong?I want to understand if these issues I'm seeing are actually intended features that I'm just not getting, or if they're valid concerns that others share too. Would love to hear your thoughts before diving into my detailed experience.

Campaign
Act 1: A Masterpiece
Is simply amazing - challenging, rewarding, with beautiful atmospheric locations. The game holds your hand just enough to show the core mechanics while keeping things engaging.
The bosses are truly amazing - that feeling when you finally beat one after 3-4 tries is just incredible. Playing with friends adds another layer of complexity and it's awesome to see different skill combinations working together (while they do).

Act 2: Still Engaging
IThings stay strong in Act 2. New mechanics like ascendancy and crafting come in at the perfect time, keeping the game fresh just as you’re getting comfortable. This is also when I discovered the poe/trade2 website which was a game-changer (though honestly, the game should tell you about it since it's such a crucial feature). My only real complaint here is the buggy quest system, which sometimes leaves you completely clueless about where to go.

Act 3: Where the Cracks Show
Where things started getting frustrating. While the locations look stunning and the bosses are great, the maps are PAINFULLY HUGE with constant backtracking. Considering how slow the movement speed is, it becomes incredibly tedious. Two people from my 6-player party straight up quit because of this. The game design encourages you to check every corner for quest objectives, but:

Your character moves like a snail
Dead ends have nothing but empty chests at best
Don't even get me started on the constant town portaling.


ENDGAME: Where Dreams Go to Die
I had such high hopes for the endgame. After building my blood mage, saving up gold to respec, buying gear, and finishing the campaign, I was ready for the cool endgame. What did I get?
FREAKING levers, 10x more backtracking than the campaign, mobs that either one-shot you or get one-shot, no bosses (until its boss map which are rare), boring mechanics, zero variety between maps, and absolutely NO sense of purpose or reward.
The endgame feels like a mindless grinder like every other ARPG, but artificially slowed down with sticks in its wheels (slow movement speed, huge maps, backtracking) - just a slower version of PoE1 where you still need to one-shot everything. And this despite the devs repeatedly stating they wanted to move away from one-button builds. Yet one-shotting in the endgame remains the viable way to play.

It ends up being a carbon copy of other ARPGs, but without even a DPS meter or those dopamine-inducing damage numbers, and with an absolutely unrewarding loot system. I can't target what I need - everything is purely random. Given the market prices (yeah, I get it's early access, people abused mechanics, bots traded, market is broken), I'm forced to pick up everything hoping to craft something decent for myself or to sell.
Result? My inventory fills up, I need to teleport back (enjoy those 20-second loading screens both ways), then deal with all the loot management (stash/craft, more on that below).

What made the campaign great was the sense of overcoming challenges, building your character, and that amazing feeling of FINALLY BEATING THAT BOSS AND GETTING MORE CONTENT. The endgame has none of that. But plenty of main minuses are here.

So on top of already drawn-out maps, we're adding these pointless actions that aren't justified by game design and add nothing but mechanical time-padding. And the frustrating part? There are simple fixes that could work (just off the top of my head):

Items: Add the ability to send items through checkpoints or via pets for later sorting and management at base. This way, I can stay focused on actual gameplay without constant interruptions.
Backtracking: Add checkpoints for basic teleportation (not for saving) - considering this mechanic already exists in the game anyway.

These minor changes would make the whole experience so much smoother and let players focus on what's actually fun instead of dealing with tedious inventory management every few minutes. No need for revolutionary changes - just basic quality of life improvements that respect players' time.

Speaking of map design: It feels like it's at odds with the campaign.
The campaign is complex, rich, and engaging, giving you that sense of VICTORY after each level. Then you hit maps and it's just... different. They don't use any of the campaign mechanics, offer zero motivation, and feel artificially stretched out. You just run around killing trash mobs without bosses or any real challenge. The main ways to die on maps? Death effects, random one-shots, or me being an idiot and teleporting into a pack of mobs (yeah, that last one's on me, can't blame the game there).
I understand the appeal of ARPG's beer-and-pretzel's mindless grinding and those sweet dopamine hits from one-button one-shots - it's a proven formula that many people enjoy (including myself). But there seems to be a disconnect between the campaign and endgame design. It would be great to see the game commit to one direction or the other.
If GGG goes for that satisfying fast-paced gameplay, perhaps we could have better movement speed, smoother inventory management, craft and those big dopamine booster damage numbers flying around, and more consistent action. The campaign's complexity, while amazing, might need to be adjusted to match this style.
Alternatively, it would be awesome to see endgame maps build upon the campaign's strengths - maybe with better loot, challenging bosses on every map, special boss-only maps, or other interesting mechanics that maintain that sense of achievement we got while leveling.
Right now, it feels like two different games awkwardly stitched together. Pick a direction and commit to it.

UI/UX
Let's start with the positives: the passive tree is incredibly well designed. Many core mechanics are intuitive, and the overall design aesthetic is really cozy.
However, there are several areas that could use improvement:

1. Character Stats
The character window could really benefit from showing ALL our bonuses and stats. It would be great to see everything from crit chances to various modifiers all in one place, making it easier to understand our character's full potential.
2. Skill Visibility
Having to keep gems just to see our skills feels unnecessarily cumbersome. I really don't understand the design choice here - it's just extra steps that add nothing to the gameplay experience. It would be much more convenient to have access to a complete skill overview without this requirement.
3. Storage Management
While GGG gave us these amazing deep systems like item filters and hideout layouts imports, basic storage management feels lacking. Some quality-of-life improvements for stash organization would go a long way. I know the map tab is already being worked on (kudos to the devs for that), but we could really use better sorting options for gear, currency, runes, and other items. The foundation for good inventory management is there - it just needs to be expanded.

Now, about the crafting system...

Crafting - Almost useless
Continuing the UI/UX discussion - for the love of god, can we get a proper crafting menu? Running between different crafting stations and stash is PAINFULLY INCONVENIENT. A single unified crafting window would make such a huge difference.
The crafting system itself feels completely thoughtless and often gets in the way more than it helps. When simply looting items is more efficient than crafting them, something's seriously wrong. I'd love to see a crafting system with some RNG elements rather than this pure gambling simulator we have now.
Some might argue that making crafting more reliable would destroy the market (though let's be honest, it's already wrecked by bots). But here's a thought: why not create a separate crafting resource system? Make crafting more complex and thoughtful, maybe even add a crafting skill tree. This way, not everyone would be a master crafter - some players could focus on gathering and selling resources, while others specialize in crafting. It would create a more vibrant economy where crafting actually matters, instead of the current unsatisfying system.
Right now, crafting just feels like a source of frustration rather than an engaging part of the game.

COOP
Currently, party play feels underwhelming - it just increases difficulty and drop rates. Whether I'm playing solo or in a group, the experience remains largely the same. It would be fantastic to see dedicated party content like group raids and more multiplayer activities. This seems like a relatively straightforward addition that could add so much to the game.

Conclusion
I know this might come across as a lot of complaining, but it's only because I see so much potential here. The game has an incredible foundation, with amazing variety and possibilities. However, its current state feels like it's undermining these strong fundamentals.

If Path of Exile 2 wants to be a fast-paced, click-heavy ARPG, it should fully commit to that with smoother inventory management, better movement speed, and the dopamine rush of big numbers flying everywhere.

If it wants to build on the campaign’s complexity and challenge, the endgame needs to incorporate those elements:

More bosses.
Better loot and crafting systems.
Engaging mechanics that reward thoughtfulness instead of mindless grinding.
Right now, the game feels like two separate experiences awkwardly stitched together.

Overall, I've genuinely enjoyed my time with PoE 2, and I'm genuinely excited about its future. The potential here is absolutely enormous, and I'm looking forward to spending hundreds more hours having fun and enjoying the game as it continues to evolve and improve. Despite my criticisms, this is a game I truly want to see succeed.

I think this is where the majority of the player base stands with the current state of EA. You articulated most if not all the criticism's I've come to express after playing over 100 hours.

I really hope GGG can effectively communicate the changes they prioritize so the community can feel the game progress, but as of now we need to be patient with Q4 of 2024 coming to a close.

Let's continue to be optimistic with the games future and be cautions about focus on the games potential and rather look at the game as it is.

Thanks, tbh i did not read other threads before, but now i see that there are people who enjoy "hardcore" like game and dont want poe2 to become poe1 (same as me). I think ill give poe2 some time and will return latter.

Completely agree. I hope GGG will make positive changes.

Agree with everything you wrote, end game needs serious rework, hope they will bring many changes and will make end game more fun and things to do. Still EA so hoping for changes too. Will take some break until they do so, steam charts showing many people do the same

That's right. GGG did a great job in the first three chapters of the story, but all the advantages were erased by themselves in the later stages. The outrageous boss damage and the player resistance limit that cannot be increased make all the characters actually the same. They are just walking simulators that kill bosses in one second with different animation performances.

As for the item production, they made it inconvenient on purpose, just to make you buy the warehouse pages for various convenient productions that will be launched later. LOL

The player summary in December can almost perfectly express my feelings, but none of these problems have been fixed so far.

We do play a beta here. So i do expect rough edges, but what i cant deal with is the lack of Patches. We are still waiting for Map Stash, or ore tries on Pinnacle content they promised we get soon. That promise is now almost month old. And we have zero information why that is the case.