My wife quit, I quit and came back but will quit again

New player here, big noob -> deaths getting close to 400, lvl 87 and 100+ hrs of gameplay. I played POE1 a bit but it seemed generic and ugly so I dropped it. Trying POE2 because my wife and I each got it as a present and decided to give it a fair chance. This game is very bad in its current state but has a lot of potential.

The good stuff:
1. I like the skill gems and how they are independent from gear (as opposed to POE1 which I hated and thought was very stupid and counterintuitive). The skills are fairly diverse and have nice fantasy to them.

2. The graphics have definitely improved and it's nice to see there are some more decent textures and spell effects. I would love for there to be an ultra-hd variant to the game, but that's just wishful thinking. Shinny is good; shinny sells. I would buy shinny things; currently, everything for sale is kind of ugly and low res.

3. The endgame is kind of fun, I like the concept of an endless map, going to a new zone every time, never quite knowing what you're going to find, discovering the fog of war with the towers etc.

4. Crafting your own gear is a bit like playing the slot machines -> you never really win but it's fun to spend those exalts sometimes =))

The bad stuff:
1. It is not new player friendly; at all. Learn from D4; a baby with a controller could pilot a lvl 60 character and win at least 50% of the time. It's not rocket science, you're making it hard for no reason. The endgame should be hard, sure but if you lose players in the first 15 hours what's the point?

2. The game is not co-op/multiplayer friendly at all. The screen clutter alone is insane if you want to play with someone else, especially when the enemies use similar visual effects as players. It just feels bad to play with someone and not just go to different corners of the map and do your own thing just to see what you are doing.

3. The game does not explain things to you. I get that part of the fun is figuring out stuff, going out looking for guides, learning from various sources etc. and that's great... for the -late- game. In the early game I need to go through the campaign and not have to alt tab out of this game to learn how to do something. If I have to alt-tab to understand what leveling build I should be following and not to spend exalts and try to figure out what optimal tablets I should use for towers and all this complex stuff, your UX/game loop is bad.

4. Everything you do is punishing. Trials are punishing, dying is punishing, wrong build is punishing, crafting is punishing, spending currency wrong is punishing; this is an ARPG -> where is my power fantasy? Do I have to play 200+ hours to finally feel op? And if so, what the hell? At least give me some kind of bad luck protection that I can fell or a curve or some limits to content I should not be doing.

There's a bunch of more detailed stuff I could go into but realistically, this game feels kind of half-baked (early access ok, sure, but... really needs to cook way more). My goal is to reach max level on my Stormreaver Sorc and then literally never touch this game again =)) My wife gave up after ACT1 normal; I was hoping I could play with her like we played D4, WoW (competitive M+ even!), FF14, DoS2, BG3 and a few others. The game was just too frustrating and punishing for her. I have more tolerance for punishing games than she does, but even so. The fact that I can't play together with her or my friends is a big disincentive to play an online game. Like, if I wanted a single player grindfest with mediocre graphics, I would just get my pirated D2 copy and have fun with it =))

Bonus:
Nice to haves? Idk, the community is probably crying about this stuff and more for a long time:
1. Multiple builds. Let me make them, save them, change them, try them, tinker with them etc. Literally hours and hours of fun you are making me miss out on because you don't have multiple builds. Idk, let me have at least 5/character. What? No space in the DB for that info? Don't lie, I know how it works XD

2. In-game loot filter -> I had to literally learn how the stupid filters work just to make my own because nothing on the internet gives me -exactly- what I want. This tool is not hard to make; don't be lazy. You already have the backend to support it, just not the interface. Have an intern do it and a senior can easily hook it up.

3. We all know D4 is trash but... idk, currency bag, beautiful graphics, friendly spell opacity controls, just general multiplayer friendliness... I mean, these are just systems... steal some lol, they're free and they are good xD