Respawning enemies and other observations

When Dark Souls introduced respawning enemies, it becomes a test of patience. Are you patient and methodical enough to fight the same enemies in the same environment to pick up your corpse or not. You face the exact same challenge with foreknowledge, so you should be able to. This creates a sense of accomplishment and pads the playtime.

Insult to injury in POE2 is that the loot drops, you see it, lose it, and you don't have any foreknowledge of the map. Giving people a second shot at a map would ratchet up the stress while having a similar effect. If people want to blast through until they die to establish foreknowledge, that's a choice.

The town is cluttered with players, yet you never encounter them outside of town. One of the great things in Diablo 2 was occasionally running into someone on the same quest and working together. If you didn't like what they were doing or how they were doing it, you could just reload the map. Not sure why this game looks like a social hub in town but ever map is instanced. It is unwelcoming to drop back in town, organize your inventory, your town portal disappears and you lose the map. It doesn't make sense to people outside of POE.

I decided, after a few patches, I'll reroll, but what with the incoming nerfs. Watching streamers, I realized the best way to play the game is to use a meta build guide to zoom through the game, build up enough resources and currency to trade for what I need later. I want a satisfying SSF experience where I occasionally run into other players, but this game is based around trade.

Regarding drops, true randomization is brutal. Somewhere, someone has lost every bet they've ever made. As they age, they generally conclude simply not to bet. Diablo's guaranteed increase in stats to your current equipment is too far in the other direction, but POE's current method is too real. More currency is a solution to this problem by increasing the number of bets, but someone, somewhere will still always fail at getting what they want every time. Many people play video games to escape this exact scenario.