POE2's Design is Schizophrenic & Inconsistent

So you say you want people to have build variety, instead we have meta builds and then a lot of junk builds, and the solution for this many players have thought up is, "just don't play that build" - in a game where the idea is to play your own way.

So you say you want players to play their own way, and yet it seems more like many different archetypes for builds exist and you have to play your build the way the designers have decided your build should play. This is inherent, in the way some combo skills link together and the way some builds, like minion builds, simply play.

So you say you want not just bosses but the game to be challenging, but your idea of challenge is just that the bosses all have a 'big attack' that one-shots you unconditionally unless you are standing in the right spot, and that every boss is structured like Uber Elder where for the first 2/3rds of the fight they're pretty easy, but if you don't have the power to kill them very quickly in the last third, you're going to suffer immensely because most bosses have a last phase where they suddenly grow about 30 times harder.

So you say we don't have 'attrition-based gameplay' but if you run out of flasks then you just can't keep fighting during bosses realistically unless you have a brick of life and mana regen somehow, and if you don't have enough flasks, then you just have to exit the boss and try again, like that's just it for you.

So you say you don't want tanky, one-shot resistant builds, but you've built the game in a way where we are allowed to increase and scale our life, energy shield and survivability, when in actuality you hate that players are not only allowed to do that but sometimes might be forced to or will try to do that to survive the one-shots bosses do.

So you say you've given us hardcore, but you basically don't seem to think players should be playing hardcore like hardcore, and instead should just build glass cannons instead of making tanky builds.

So you say you want to create a game where new players can have an easier time progressing by intuitively understanding the game and its mechanics, and yet once again just like POE1 we have legions of players just saying "I hope you made sure to look at a guide before you get started" which no new player should have to do.

So you say you want to narrow the gap between veterans and new players by reducing the amounts of options we have relative to POE1, scaling down the amount of options we have to quickly get ahead, and yet one of the big differences is that a veteran player in trade is still going to not only complete the campaign even with fresh gear faster, he's going to be able to progress much more smoothly by just buying and trading for items that he needs or wants and picking up skills and working builds that he knows are more powerful.

So you say you want the game to be more accessible in general, which is why players, unlike POE1, are actively PUNISHED when they use precious skill gems to try out skills that they may or may not like or have any use for, and that the game is so difficult and certain act bosses have so much health that it might take up to or more than 10 minutes for a player to beat them.

So you say that you want combat to be slow and meaningful, but it seems more like almost every high end build just uses one skill to blow up everything on the screen over and over, just like POE1.

So you say that you want us to use combo skills, then go on to say that we shouldn't be using combo skills on every single enemy that exists.

So you say that combat with enemies should be slow and meaningful, except that enemies are still way faster than us.

So you say you don't want players to be faster than enemies, because then players would run right past the enemies. And why would players want to do that? Maybe because...

So you say that loot is fine and that expected drops are fine and that item drops are fine and that currency is in a good place, in the right place, but players are thinking about just wanting to run past enemies, REGULAR enemies, some of them structured like minibosses, because enemies don't drop anything meaningful,

So you say that you want the campaign to be fun, but then you've basically structured the campaign like a gauntlet full of checkpoints and respawning enemies so that when you fail to make progress you basically get punished for it.

So you say that you want the campaign to be fun, but instead you've structured it in a way where from your game designer perspective it looks like you can easily control how players grow by telling them non-verbally 'just go farm' yet without actually any contingencies for if newer players are struggling with even that concept.

So you say that you want the campaign to be fun, but instead it's more designed for what it seems the designers want players to endure, rather than what players actually want.

So you say that the campaign, is not fun, and that you will, 'just make it fun' when in fact many would argue Path of Exile 1 has had this problem for a decade and not only, for them, is it still not solved, making the campaign 'fun' for players involves basically a complete revamp and redesign of the ENTIRE campaign and its structure, OR, to make everything so trivially easy that it is misaligned with the designer's idea of what a challenging Path of Exile experience is.

Not only does Path of Exile 2 need a lot of work, it feels like the bones for the game are already set in stone, and outright replacing or changing certain things is just not possible now, and the designers clearly don't want them changed anyway.

Game's not fun, and it doesn't make any sense from a design perspective. If a solid and coherent design for the game is not straightened out soon, these are going to be a long and arduous 2-3 years to release.