Things that suck the fun out of POE2

I think there are several factors that pull POE2 down and I am not really sure the league mechnaic is even the biggest. Really what it boils down to is that there are so many decisions by GGG that just suck the fun out of the game. So many bizarre decisions:

Gems not levelling. This should be like one of the core features of any ARPG. Uncut gems are great but they should just be the starting level and then they level normally. It baffles me this has not been changed already. Several streamers have mentioned this as well.

Progression curve (feels WAY more like a levelled D4 experience than a POE one. No real sense of getting more powerful. POE1 ALWAYS feels like you are getting more powerful from like Level 8 all the way to red maps and Ubers. I mean it's a god fantasy essentially you go from fearing a rat to killing gods in seconds. You should always be feeling more powerful. But POE2 does not have that. You just sort of feel the same all through the campaign. Yes I am sure there are meta builds that scale fast but not everyone just wants to play whatever the streamers are playing.

Zone are insanely repetitive and because of the size feel less alive. Yes they are too big but the main issue is I think the repetion of fighting the same staged mob fights over and over and over. Also the size leads to way more instances of "triggering" groups of mods which is not immersive. All mobs should roam around which would create way more interesting encounters. And before you say that is difficult Tony Crowther did fully roaming monsters for Captive on a 8Mhz processor

The end game is completely terrible. I know there are plans to fix it, but no clues yet and what they will be

Ascension They took 3 of the least favorite mechanics in POE1 (Sanctum, Ultimatum and TOAA) and made them the Ascension mechanics. I think most hate Lab but I think if they did a suvey replacing Ascension in POE2 with Lab it would be chosen over keeping the way it is

The passive skill true is too big, unstructured and obscure to be fun. There is symmetry and balance to the POE1 tree that makes it compelling. The image of the skill tree is a big part of POE1s success but as big as it is it is structured so well and elegantly that using it is logical. Not so in POE2 for the most part. Example: in the POE1 tree you are almost always 4 points away from another jewel socket.

Sepoarate Atlas trees are uninteresting and unrewarding

They completely failed on visibility. It was supposed to be better than POE1 but is worse. Way too much reliannce on ground effects which really should be more a MMO thing than a ARPG thing IMO. They either need to be removed or made WAY more obvious. But all the effects obscure things to the point often you do not even know where tha main monster you are figting even is.

I could go on and on.

There are some good things and even great things about POE2 such as Act 4, Abyss, boss design, graphics, WASD support (although dodge is worse than the movement options in POE1)

in .3 they seemed to move closer to POE1 but they seemed to reverse a little on that and go more for D4 feel and the Dark souls feel in .4. Mistake IMO

I think .5 will be a big inflection point for POE1. If they don't nail it, POE2 could fall behind POE1 in initial and long term retention.

Arbiter of Ash. It's like they despise people trying to unlock more juice every league.

I dont have a gigantic issue with Arbiter of Ash being a gate, but it is RNG to even be able to fight him which is just amazingly unfun.

Yep.