New to POE! My 2 Cents @ Tier 10 Maps So Far 3 Characters In

Campaign = Brutal but in a fun away. In a souls like way, not so much in an ARPG way.

Item Drops = Brutal. In a very bad way. Almost like this is the reason the campaign can be above and beyond Brutal in some cases. Did not find one item drop that I actually wore throughout 3 separate campaigns, every item was bought from a vendor or gambled.
Checking the vendor every single level and making sure you dont blast a level away by mistake is Brutal, and just terrible. You should not be thinking that the best items in the campaign are coming from a vendor and oh I nearly have enough rare kills/gold for another gamble. Its insane. Then you realize your item level 80 drops which require you to be at least 70 to wear are rolling t1 suffixes and affixes, in the late game? But in the early game you are walled off from higher tier suffixes and affixes? There is no level 20 player running around in 35% movement boots, hell I didnt even know it existed, I had to buy a pair on the trade forum because I have not found a pair of boots or seen a pair over 25%? I am at t10 maps? So technically I would only have 25% movement in t10 maps? and for 6 acts i was forced into 10-15% if i was lucky? On a boss fight driven campaign????(holy molly this is a bad bad bad way of doing things.) Even at the end game, item drops feel absolutely horrendous. You can juice your maps 100x over with whatever you want, the dopamine is just not hitting on these item drops.

Currency? Don't even bother. I did not get lucky once, literally not once. Its almost as if the game is built to make you fail, and actually has no RNG whatsoever. Never mind luck, the currency does not drop like hotcakes, you literally find yourself thinking that you should save the currency for higher level items, which should not be the case if you want us engaging in a crafting system. Which just by the way is not a crafting system. You are not crafting anything, you are playing a game of chance, which is rigged against you, or at least thats how it feels. Last Epoch has a "crafting system" go check it out (while you at it check our their Loot filter and see how its actually done).

Maps are way to big. Campaign areas are way to big. I have literally fallen asleep on my second play through in valley of the titans sitting upright in my chair trying to get through the freaking area.. Passed out.. clean. Brutal.

And Finally the optimization of this game needs to be spoken about. Act 1 seems to be okay but everything else is just bad. I have never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever lagged in a game as much as POE 2 other than, you guessed it, POE 1, however POE 1 still runs better. It is so bad, that it is unplayable. A breach, is unplayable, an expedition is unplayable. And dont tell me to get a new PC, my PC is just fine, WELL over the requirements for this game. Unfortunately after 12 years of bad lag in POE1 its obvious the devs at GGG do not know how to optimize a game properly, and need some serious help, which i hope they will be doing with the 500m-1b dollars they made off their early access players. Yes if you own a PC made by NASA you can run the game just fine. But I dont need a super computer to run Diablo 4 or Last Epoch, and their mob density is 100x the mob density of this game..

Having said all that the potential is fantastic, the skeleton is great, it just needs optimization in various aspects, INCLUDING PERFORMANCE to make it a gem.

Right now im pushing for tier 15, for the sake of it, and nothing else. I dont get excited for item drops, or currency.. its all pretty boring to be fair. The best drops I get are waystones.. literally give me a waystone and im happy, i do not expect to identify a good item nor do i expect to "make" one either.

The dopamine is long gone.

Lets hope they can get it back.