Maps are too big and this will become a design bottleneck

The current state of the game presents a clear design contradiction and many forum posts voice this through one aspect or another. It'a the Visceral and Methodical vs Fast and Mindless contradiction.

Many changes in POE2 seems to be pushing it to become more similar to POE1 and, by consequence, to face the same design problems POE1 had.

The current design has spiky challenge separated by lots of unenganging and unrewarding content and i believe this problem stems from the choice of map size and number of monster pacis per map.
If the 8~10 Rares were all the packs in a map and they were closer, I think progressing through the atlas would be less strewsing but just as tense. Huge maps , combined with load times and the potential loss of rewards, generate a punitive feedback loop that does not invite playerw to keep trying and become better at each attempt.

Maps could be smaller with less but more rewarding monsters.
The abyss mechanic (overworld) is an example of how this could be good.

During the exploration phase (campaign), this is less of an issue but it becomes blatant and unavoidable during the endgame and interludes. Plus, many players dread having to replay the campaign to try other characters (i am fine with the eize of maps in the context of campaign).

As campaign has an exploration and quest component, this is fine. But in any approach to building an sctual endgame mode beyond the current placeholder, maps need to become more dense either by having more meaningful and challenging content with smaller separation and less fodder or having maps be shorter.

I'm all in for a Methodical and Visceral gameplay like that of act 1 and 2. But methodical does not mean slow. We need smarter enemies, thougher without being damage sponges or instant one shots. We need more mechanics that interact with enemy attacks. More skills with parry frames, invulnerabilty frames, guard frames, airborne states, super armor, projectile deflection, space control, jump-ins and retreats for other weapons (including casters).