VERY DETAILED feedback from not exactly a new poe player

Mods: I've moved the thread to poe2 early access section, to prevent dupes, pls help me delete this posts, thanks.

I wanna try to give as detailed feedback as possible, but I might miss a thing or two.

Firstly, a short background, I've played Poe1 3 leagues starting from Affliction all the way to Settlers, totalling up to 1390 hours, bought 3 supporter packs too. Final build was approximately a 1 mirror build.

IMPRESSIONS:

Firstly, I just wanna say, I love PoE2, it's great, it's totally the right direction. What it brought is depth and mechanics in moment to moment combat that were non-existent in ALL arpgs that currently exist. One button zoom zoom gameplay is so outdated and boring, it's all just a stat check. Besides, it makes 99% of all enemies made being useless & meaningless. What's the difference between a skeleton and a demon? Nothing, because we're zooming and their attacks doesn't matter anyway, it either kills or it doesn't, and they die anyway as soon as you see them. Put 50 different enemies it will still not matter, because in a stat stick game, positioning doesn't matter much, movement skills are just a bonus and almost meaningless. And anyway poe1 exist for that.

But in poe2, positioning matters, movement skill matters, and that's great.

Next, I love the skill interactions to create combos, which creates a more involved gameplay. Old stat stick arpgs relies too much on investing all in 1 skill and everything else being triggered buffs or passive buffs, which is boring and outdated as hell. It's also fantastic that now passive buffs are relegated out of skill bindings, because putting passive skills in skill bindings are one of the most useless thing. And triggered buffs are also useless, playing barbarian in Diablo 4 where we go around and just trigger 3 shouts and use 1 attack was one of the most boring moments in arpg. If something goes to skill bind, make it an attack or defensive skill that is "not" a buff.

Bosses are great, it has spectacle and mechanics. mobs are tricky and dangerous too.

SENTIMENTS:

Passive Tree: I think the new passive tree is great, much better than the over convoluted poe1 version. Although as poe1 players, things do get confusing early on, as the streamlining removes most of the life nodes and the many additional defensive options like spell suppression... which is great. In poe1, all these spell suppression, leech rate, life nodes etc are super confusing for newcomers. When do I take life? Do I need Spell Suppression? Wth is even that? are some of the questions i asked when I tried poe1 for the first time. This time, I can just take nodes that are near my class and my character is still doing fine. Playing as a monk, I just take more ES more Evasion as I go along.

Respecc(Cons): That said, I still think respeccing is way too expensive. I often have to balance between the need to buy gears and the cost of respecc, in fact due to the cost of it, I am now needing to pick up as many magic & rare items as possible and teleport back to town often to sell them for gold, which is truly annoying. The higher level you go, obviously the more mistake you have when you need to respecc, but the cost is also exponentially higher. This is why you see so many ppl complaining about the nerfs because now you have to do respecc which might cost gold that you dont have. This seem unnecessarily hostile for a game that actually wants to encourage experimenting. This is one of the reasons why people just follow builds in poe1, because it is extremely hostile there. If you have ever spoke to many players, most people will just comment "If you're under level 50, just reroll character", because it is easier to level again than to grind the currency that allows you to respecc again. Letting people respecc easier will allow more players to experiment themselves and understand the game better, hence giving a more satisfactory results. Poe1 is a game that totally depend so much on content creators, without a build guide back then, I would never have started poe1, and this is not a result you want to repeat again in this game. Reduce all cost by half or make it flat cost etc, it gotta be a lot cheaper, there's is no point in punishing in this area, it doesn't result in any satisfying gameplay.

Power Levels: I didnt make a good build early on in Act1, so when I reach Goenor, I wasn't melting him, and it was almost a 2 hit fiesta most of the time. It was hard, it took me around 8-9 deaths to beat him, but the result was an epic battle that was memorable to me, and many other players. In a way, I get why ggg wants to keep the power level low early on, because as I got better and got a good weapon from trade in Act 2, I was blasting most enemies and bosses pretty easily even in Act3.
I met the Vaal Construct boss in Act3, and I killed him pretty fast, not even 1 shotting with op builds, but just killing it in less than 20 secs. It looked so cool back then on trailers, but in 20 secs I don't see much of it's mechanics, and so that boss was not memorable for me. So there's definitely an issue with balancing giving players enough power, and having them experiencing great memorable fights too, and I get that that balance is a difficult thing to do. That being said, I consider myself somewhat a decent gamer, not everyone can survive from a 2 hit boss fight in act1, so i do think that there should be some way to make it easier for the wave of newcomers. Without nerfing the boss, my suggestion would be creating a "special artifact", that the player can get and use from the Hooded One, to increase life/defense/dmg by ~30% in Act 1 to 3, at the cost of lower rewards. This way newbies are not gatekept by Act1 boss, experience a decent amount of content to Act3, and when they are better, they can tackle those bosses again without handicap on the next league.
Having some room for very powerful builds are great, but you've said it yourself, you don't want player's to simply come in and 1 shot bosses like poe1, it's not fun and memorable that way. Let player's beat these bosses hard, but let these bosses drop some special items that can make subsequent fights on it to be easier, that way players get to experience it's great design, while also don't tire from crazy grinding of them.

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Currency/loot drops(Big issue): I feel GGG doesn't have problem creating fun game mechanics, but GGG design principle on currency rewards are some of the worst poverty mindset in game design.
I started poe1 in Affliction, and so with the wisp mechanics, it creates a lot of boosts to loot drops, especially the common ones. I was playing a standard boneshatter league starter, and after beating all pinnacle bosses, I started to realize that I need to change build to be able to tackle harder content. I've also understood more about the Atlas passive and decided to change it to be more rewarding. So I simply use the many orb of regrets and unmaking that i have, generously. Transitioned to a Flicker Strike build, and was having fun with all the progression that I had made. While Affliction experienced a lot of inflation in the trade, it also allows me to trade for more currency to then craft things myself. I crafted the Boneshatter Axe(and many other gear) myself, which costs about 7 divines, and sold later for 60 divines, which I use to buy and craft more stuffs. It was really fun, as I get to experiment and try new builds. Then I excitedly anticipate Necropolis league, and without the currency drop boost, boom, I finally felt what poverty feels like. I don't even have enough Alchemy to make maps into rare, barely enough chaos to buy things, and got my 1st drop of divine at t16... after defeating all pinnacle bosses. I got help with currency by my friend who quit league early in Necropolis.

I dont't get why ggg is so bloody stingy with loot drops, it makes gameplay feel so cancerous and poor, like you don't even know why you're clearing maps for. Why would you care about inflated market? If everything is inflated due to abundance of currency, at least players can always try to craft themselves which cost much cheaper. In fact due to the abundance of juicing in Necro league, it was the first time Headhunter was cheap and affordable, and I get to try how fun it is using Headhunter. A player was also generous enough to donate me 100 divs to buy a Mageblood, because it was that affordable that time due to loot explosion.

I've grinded up to 1 mirror in Settlers, and that's helped by the fact that shipping gave me 3 mirr shards, another kind player also donated 100divs, and I even tinkered and manipulated with the auction house a bit. I dunno how people grind 2 mirror build, it is my belief that 2 mirror builds are not obtainable by honest grind, you either work in craft, or gamble(which my friends did) and manipulate in trade. This makes normal grinding so unfavourable.... I guess what I am saying is GGG has such a cancerous poverty mindset on currency drops that it seems like for ggg to give the player anything, they have to do an iron man marathon to gain 1 out of 10 fragments of that currency. I have never seen such a terrible drop rate in other seasonal games, and I don't wish it to happen in poe2.
When I hear Jonathan saying about "you need to always give players a chance that something may drop", it sounded so much bs. I have grinded t17, grinded countless 8 mods 100%+ quant and boosted to 300%+ rarity, I have never seen a single t0 unique across 1390hrs of gameplay, much less a mirror. The reason I go to trade and buy, because i see people grinded so much more efficiently than me, 2000+ grand heist blueprint, and not a single simplex amulet drop, it just discourages me to play that content and try it myself. What's even the point of 0.001% rate of drop?

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My friend made an 8 mirror build, wanna know how? Pure gambling. Someone donated house of mirrors card, and he gambled, sold some cards, monitor the trade price, and trade the differences, again and again, and gamble again. Is this how you want your players to play to make powerful builds?

Poe2 is almost similar right now. Is exalt orb really that great? You get 2 exalt to be slammed on a 3 mod item, then you look at trade site, someone is selling a 1-exalt staff with way better mods than you can craft with your 2 exalts, and you think, why even bother? what am i even crafting?

In poe1, you dont have to pick every items, but in poe2, you have to try and pick magic ones as many as possible so you can get gold which you can use to purchase "hopefully" decent magic item on vendor and try to regal it. If bricked, then go back to grinding again, and grind back that regal too hopefully.... and you're just trying to craft 1 item... not 3. For a game that wants players to experiment and craft more, ggg goes so hard in creating as much friction as possible for players to do it.

I know you think giving too much currency loot is a problem, as it can only go up but not down, but if the loot rate is like poe1, then you are at least 3x too low for anything to matter. You're discouraging players to learn the mechanics of crafting that you have made for them game and just go trade site, which is not a good thing for players to always depend on trade for power ups.

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Crafting(Issues): I do have to commend on simplifying the amount of currencies needed for players to craft. Removing portal scrolls is godsend, and removing fragments of cheap currency is so good. Unfortunately, crafting has way more rng/gambling this time, and once crafted, an item is usually bricked. I think most people want a more deterministic crafting methods, the huge amount of RNG is also why people need more currency to try and get a proper craft.
That said, please make it always streamlined, clear and not over complicated like necro league. I can say unabashedly, that necro league is the most cancerous crafting design in all games that involves crafting, it's so unbelievably tedious and tiresome. A lot of people hate it, and I've tried it myself, crafted an Archmage helm, requires over 3 hours of buying corpses from trade, because of course corpse drops rate is just as bad as loot. And that is after many other people have sacrificed their time to try out the formula for the best possible results, seeing subtractem(poe youtuber) doing a craft for 5 hours is never not discouraging. I crafted once and never want to do it ever again.

Crafting often always require some outside knowledge of seeing a wiki page to see what special mods this item can give. If you're to make special mods, then perhaps make it as a separate crafting section like Rune smithing table, where people can see the exact special mods that they can craft on. Make all the mods that can appear on an item via normal currencies standardized.

Combat mechanics: In my humble opinion, melee is still currently in a worse shape than range class, the defensive options are lackluster while the monsters hit harder. I think it's obvious that people who chose melee want a more intimate action oriented gameplay, so i think giving melee class a boost to movement speed or faster & further dodge roll option will be better and more helpful, this way combat you can weave in and out of combat better without having to adjust the monsters or giving melee more range skills to solve a persistent issue. See, you brought back sanctum in poe2, and it's one of the worse mechanics for melee due to honour. I'm not sure if anyone can play a melee class using that special relic you guys showcased which require the player not getting a single hit, I'd like to see a ggg employee showcase that, especially at high level sanctum.

Investment: I get that poe1 often have some investments in terms of scarabs and fragments in order to tackle a boss/maps, and poe2 perhaps have some of that too. But investment is not inherently a good thing. If an investment require tons of grind and can be lost easily, than it just adds more frustration than retention and fun.
Do you know why Act1 final boss is so fun and epic? Because i get to immediately fight the boss again and learn, adapt and learn. But in poe1 i have to grind 10 fragments again before trying out Maven, which was why other player's advised me to grind 2 invitations so that i can fight maven back to back if i lose and learn from the encounter faster.
Beating lieutenants to get fragments to fight pinnacle boss is alright, but once we get to the boss, it would be nicer that we have the same checkpoint or gate system to try again if we fail, and not just waste those investments away for nothing. (haven't reached maps, but from what i heard you lose the maps and benefits after 1 failure).

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It's a very long feedback in words, so i guess i stop at here first. I guess the summary of things are, I like the direction this game is going and i hope ggg doesn't bend and change because some people think arpgs should be of a "certain way". This is the arpg where skill issue and build issue matters, so don't discard the skill requirements. I have no worries about GGG designing good mechanics and boss fights.

But this is also a new game, ggg need to throw away their design philosophy on rewards, which are rooted in extremely cancerous poverty mindset. Sure getting the right balance is the best, but having abundant resources is way better than being squeezed and feeling poor in resources. The poverty feeling will only results in more people quitting because people felt that they have to slave their life away for a modicum amount of resources in order to progress further from any road blocks.