souls-like boss difficulty + ruthless loot = high fun but low flexibility

so I'm having a lot of fun in the poe 2 campaign despite it being super challenging for somebody like me, with sub-par mechanical skills

now, a key quality of arpgs is the player's ability to customise the experience and create the gameplay they enjoy the most -- e.g. a highly skilled player might get into speedrunning in order to increase the challenge, a mechanically weak player might take it slow and overlevel the content to make things easier, a game mechanics nerd can try to create their own build and not mind having a weaker character because it's their own, truly unique character, etc...

but poe 2's combination of souls-like boss difficulty and ruthless loot means there's much less of that kind of flexibility... grinding doesn't improve your character much (because it takes forever to find more gear, and grinding gear in the same zone faces diminishing returns--also, the gem system gives no power increases from grinding without progression), and the difficulty level means that experimenting with builds, at the cost of not playing the strongest option available, can easily result in a character than can't deal with the content

so, poe 2 feels like a game where there's a "standard" way to play: make sure you have a good build, probably by following content creators, then, if some content is defeating you, keep on practicing it in order to get good at its mechanics

for me, the result is a game where I'm enjoying the campaign, but, in its current form, I doubt I'll be having fun in the endgame, so maybe I only play through the campaign each major release, and spend far less time on poe 2 than I've been doing so far with poe 1

Wouldn't the aim of "balanced characteristics" actually result in less flexibility?

I looked through all the uniques and... like two of them actually had good defensive options and only two of them had good defenses and only two of them had good offensive options. I can't find myself getting excited for the loot because all the uniques are extremely lackluster, I can't find myself getting exciting for leveling because everything has been toned way down in terms of power, apparently getting ascendency points is just about the worst thing in the game, and if I do somehow manage to make a fun build that is fun to play its going to get nuked with no notice.

Sure, early access is early access, but this is silly.

The loot is absolutely torrid and I cannot understand it, loot acquisition is the cornerstone of ARPGs and while the combat system has its entertaining moments this isn't what the genre has developed into.

If anything its a step backwards, making your game about combat purity will just lead it to be compared to other games about combat purity and while PoE2 has its fun elements it isn't DMC, a souls game, GoW reboot and prior etc so its just going to fall short.

Its like a real time version of original sin's combat, which ironically makes it less tactical not more.

Baffling

Yes, that’s true. The situation is made worse by the fact that they’ve removed 95% of the game’s complexity, making it nearly impossible to find a way out for non-optimal builds. As a result, we’re already seeing most players sticking to streamer builds and crying when those get nerfed. And to think, they once prided themselves on PoE 2 being a game where you wouldn’t have to rely on pre-made builds. It’s funny, really.

It's ruthless loot for like 2 acts... play more than 1 day. My tabs are filled to the grim with gear, gems, runes etc. I ended up in maps with hundreds of K of gold and 1.5 tabs filled with gems etc.

There is plenty of flexibility, you just have to play the game for more than 1-2 acts before hoping on the herd mentality bandwagon.

Who wants to have useless loot again? Just zooming away barely picking anything up because you know 3/4 of it is redundant.

You finally have them starting at a humble threshold for loot and it's not even 1 week in.

It's nothing like ruthless because that would mean it's ruthless through all content. It isn't, and if you've played it properly you would know this.

Loot is useless again, more than 3/4 of it is redundant already everything currently different about the loot system could be achieved in PoE1 by putting on a strict filter it isn't an improvement.

If they want rares to be rare then go for it but when I ID it it needs to not be a collection of the worst mods imaginable for the 19th time that isn't progress.

I've done the entire of cruel in the gear I literally grinded ultimatum for in regular act 3 and that stuff was bad to begin with.