My First Impressions After 50 Hours of Playing the Campaign

First of all, I would like to say this is one of the most enjoyable arpgs I've experienced in my 30+ years of gaming. The boss fights are easily the best part of Path of Exile 2. They all felt unique, challenging, and very well choreographed. Every map that I was on, I always looked forward to fighting the boss. The combat and evasion mechanics feels very solid, the recent change to dodge rolling felt perfect.

Melee could use some tweaks, but overall, everything seems to be tuned very well throughout the campaign. Graphics are very nice, and I'm looking forward to further improvements such as fps on console (I'm on XSX), better loading for the menus and less visual tearing while in town.

However, after my 50 hours of playing the campaign, I absolutely must address my concerns. It's enough to make me not want to play the game on full release if this is not addressed.

The first thing is the leveling experience, it reminded me of Anthem—skills drop from the environment. They are not from your character per level like in a skill tree, where you choose or buy your abilities. We have a limited choice and I have to grind and grind and grind just to get the one ability I want, through each level of the map, not the character. At first, this didn't bother me until I got to Act 3, where I still did not have certain abilities to complete my Pyromancer build because a level 11 skill gem just wouldn't drop until I was level 47. I felt forced to use other abilities that I knew I would no longer be using once I got to the higher levels. In hindsight, this was not a pleasant experience at all.

When a player has a build in mind, being forced to use other abilities to upkeep our dps wasn't immersive, not only that, but you would have to relearn how to play your character build when you finally do get the abilities that you wanted in the first place.

Having the skill gems locked behind a level of an area per map did not feel good at all. I believe what should happen is you should be able to choose any skill you want, but they all start at a level 1 Skill gem. Then, as you progress as it is now, you can upgrade the gems to level 2, 3, 4, etc. By the time you get your 9th level 1 skill gem, you should, in theory, be able to have all the abilities you want for your build, they will just be at a lower level, and we upgrade each one as we get higher level skill gems. This way, players like me can get used to how to do their rotations for their build setup as they are able to play the build that they desire.

My second major concern is the loot. Crafting does not feel like crafting whatsoever. It feels like gambling. 90% of the time when I try to "craft" gear, I end up getting stats that are worse than the current gear I got from drops. Out of all the gear I have, only one of them was crafted to exactly what I wanted and it lasted me throughout the entire campaign. This does not make loot feel exciting, whatsoever.
The loot drops, stats, and the crafting system needs a serious revamp of some kind.

Lastly, in-game auction house like in PoE1.

All in all, the majority game is very fun to play, and I would like for this to become a long-term type of game for me. But if these key features are not worked on, I will lose interest extremely fast when the full game comes out.