The 0 portal experience (among other things) is frustrating and antithetical to what makes PoE, PoE

By far the most frustrating aspect about this game is the fact that you need to run 0 portal maps to use 3 tablets, which forces the player into a "run 0 portal maps or ALWAYS be behind in the economy" state. As someone who loves playing the economy and even made 100 divines relatively easily this league, I'm still falling behind because no matter what build I run, what level they are or what I do, I always die to one-shots in t15/t16 0 portal maps and lose the map, followed up by a "walk of shame" where I have to run the map with no tablets at all.

This is both antithetical to what Path of Exile is known for, and it's also just not a fun or enjoyable experience. I enjoy difficulty. I have thousands of hours on FromSoftware games and done numerous challenge runs. I fucking live and breathe difficult games, I live and breathe being bad at a game and getting better. I liked Lilith in D4 on her highest difficulty, it was hard as fuck, but I wasn't punished wildly every single time I died to her, and I eventually beat her because of sheer will and "getting good". God, I wish PoE2 was like that. I wish pinnacle bosses and maps just had 5 portals, no matter how many tablets you use. I wish I could "get good" and learn a boss or map or activity and get better at it, but I can't. Sometimes, no matter what I do on any build I run, how many hours I put into this game, how much time I spend doing things, I will inevitably die to some random ass one shot I can't avoid either in a boss fight or in clear from some random projectile I could in no way anticipate or dodge away from, and lose a map or pinnacle fight I've spent hours working towards.

I constantly find myself saying out loud, "why the hell can't we just have 5 portals? why can't I just... have fun? why can't I get good? why am I being forced to be punished for nothing I can control if I want to play this game?"

There are so many things about this game that I like. The audio, the graphics, the lore (surprisingly enough), the story, the environment design, the characters, the look of the UI. I can go on and on and on about how good of a pie Path of Exile 2 looks, but the closer to the center you get, the more you realize the pie isn't cooked all the way through, and GGG is more worried about the toppings than they are putting it back in the oven and just letting the damn thing cook. I get that this game is in EA, and I went 3 entire leagues without so much as a peep because I figured they just needed time to do X or Y, but the fact that abhorrently designed, anti-player systems like the current portal system or the lack of a way to lower how much of your screen is covered by your skills to the point where you can't see shit, or the 5000 ground degens in a juiced map, etc. etc. are still in the game, is astounding to me. At some point, you'd think they'd look at the player retention dropping as a result of these things and say "maybe we need to change our philosophy", but that doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight.

I truly hope, and I'm 100% coping here, that after their deserved holiday break (not being sarcastic, they still deserve it), that they come back with some sort of "what we're working on" that really digs deep into the issues that plague this game. A post or stream or interview or anything that tells the players they'll finally work on putting the pie in the oven and just baking it.