375hr Feedback - first time POE player

Hi! Had fun with my time in the game, this is my first time playing POE and a lot of the game was a breath of fresh air. The tone, the art, the complete openness of the systems - its really amazing. Ended with a level 80 something Monk and 94 Infernalist Witch (minions)

Framing my feedback as a player, and a game dev.

Campaign
I liked it, Act 3 map lengths seemed maybe 1/4 too large, dragged on a bit. As a first time player Act 2 last boss was my first major wall, then Princess. Felt good to power up and overcome those bosses.

Endgame / Mapping

Truly love the endgame map, supremely fun and great motivator for constant play. Felt i could sit down and do a map or two and be done, come back later, or just stop and chill.

Level Design
Game's sweet spot seemed to be between open terrain maps and the Beach map. Maps like Mire and crypts need more width in the hallways to be fun. Even after the patch fixing minions, they continuously would pile up in thin walkways throughout all maps. Calm down on the trees, or be more aggressive with camera occluding geo, hiding the player sucks.

Events & Progression
I wish the first 2 points of each skill tree were more attainable/accessible. Throughout the countless level 80+ Rituals i did, i never saw an Audience item. Tons of Omens, just never got the opportunity to advance that skill tree or participate in that boss encounter.

Simulacrum seems way out of balance difficulty wise for the first set of points. Understand wanting it to be hard but felt like a huge build up and resource drain of time and anointing maps to get slapped down in wave 10 or 11, even when being able to do level t18 content easily. Progressed to Breach 3 without issue, just kind a lame Delirium events are so out of whack.

Boss progression felt great.

never killed Arbiter. went in once i finally got all 3 citadels down and got slapped into submission. Was good to get an intro, maybe you could introduce him RIGHT AWAY when going to maps in that intro quest - just send them to Arbiter to die. Introduce XP loss (maybe the arbiter is the reason), and give you a frame of reference of what to expect.

Leveling
Enjoyed leveling, and enjoyed the feeling of powering up a ton of maps with +xp when i was serious about gaining levels.

I like the xp penalty, but wish I could anoint a map with the Emotion of Rage or Emotion of Regret to give me the opportunity to play the map again to retrieve 30, 60, 90% of the xp lost after killing a boss in the map. Don't drop anything other than the XP you lost and gold, maybe strip all other drops too; and restrict access to use in a Citadel still.

General UI / Communication of Mecahnics
I had and still kinda have, a hard time understanding the "lingo" of +difficulty; and wish that the Atlas nodes would display exactly what is happening on a map. I was trying super hard to get level 20 gems; would try to run t16's as much as possible on corruption/irradiated maps (level 82), but had no idea how to get to 83, 84 - which i read was how to get those gems.

I had +3 difficulty on bosses, but when i kill a level boss it always dropped +2 levels higher drops, and not +3. Lots of stuff doesnt line up and is just straight up confusing. Turned my brain off mostly and just blasted, but was immensely frustrating to never get a level 20 gem (why is it so exclusive??)

Thanks for the great game, looking forward to coming back in a few months + to see where its at.

Other thought on Mapping and UI

Id love to have bookmarks, or something to allow me to jump quickly to locations.

I hated when i would find an area i wanted to go to, close map, get a new stone, go back and my map position got reset.

Frequently'd forget where i had big XP areas, or other juiced tower areas.

quick jumps to discovered citadels would also be nice.

frequently lost the "home" icon on the side of map

Passive UI

When searching for a specific node, wish the camera would focus on the node. Id type in "resourceful ally" and have to scan the entire tree for a faintly glowing rim. Would make that brighter x 100 or focus camera on searched nodes.