Update to my experience with Path of Exile 2 Early Access.

This is a link to my original post about my experience with PoE 2 EA. Read it for context if you want it.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3671315/page/1

So after a fair amount of research I found out that my original chaos DoT build was ruined by choosing Blood Mage as my ascendancy. So I created a new character and Ascended as Infernalist instead and made another Chaos DoT build since my old one worked fine. The difference was massive. Playing as Infernalist instead made it so that I made it to act 3 with relative ease. I wouldn't exactly say that the early acts are too difficult. I suppose my problem was mostly that the early build guides I've come across so far neglect the early game and most of them feel terrible to play early. Or maybe it's just that the skills available in the early gem levels are just shit. I don't have exactly accurate information on that. I can only say that playing with Essence Drain Contagion Unearth was very effective in clearing and bosses.

So you might have noticed that I said I made it to act 3. So why did I stop there? I got my invitation to Ultimatum. I simply cannot understand how GGG thought it would be a good idea to make 2 of the most controversial core league mechanics MANDATORY content in the next game. I absolutely despise Sanctum but at least I didn't fail the trial of the sekhemas a single time. But when I got to ultimatum and died 3 times I just stopped playing. I could keep beating my head against the brick wall and it would eventually crumble, but I would not enjoy my time in the least. Ultimatum is absolutely horrifically frustrating content. Labyrinth was boring in PoE 1, sure, but at least in that RNG couldn't just make your run nearly impossible. At least in that you would know roughly what you're getting into. In Ultimatum I have no idea which of the options is the most dangerous each level. I will actually just need to trial and error it. Which is just absolutely terrible design for mandatory content that locks you out of a core part of building your character. When Ultimatum was a completely skippable side thing it was inoffensive. Yes, it would give you extra rewards but you had other options. Now you actually just don't have other options if you want to ascend. Absolutely terrible.

It would also seem that the build which I got stuck on the end boss of act 2 with was the result of lvl9 skill gems refusing to drop. I had one drop and I needed at least 2 to enable the build. Meanwhile I got 3 on my other character. I have no idea if there are supposed to be guaranteed drops of lvl 9 gems anywhere before the end of act 2 but I did try to complete most of the encounters shown on the act map. So I won't say the fault of that build failing was just my usual terrible luck or if it is a game design problem. I will just say that it was increidbly frustrating and alost made me give up on the game.

How I described the gameplay in my original post is still accruate. The gameplay is sluggish and unsatisfying. While I am able to have a reliably easy experience with my chaos DoT in normal clear, is it not that much fun. Every encounter feels laborious. From what I've seen this changes in endgame. But my original point stands. Making the early game a slog won't make people like it more. I dread having to redo the campaign any time I want to play in a new league in PoE 2 or if I ever want to have more than 1 character at the same time in a league I would have to slog through the campaign several times per league. I doubt I would even bother. I expect I would just stop a couple leagues in. People disliked going through the acts in PoE 1 enough. This is not a good direction.

I've watched the announcement video for 0.1.1. Most of it addresses endgame which I don't doubt is necessary, but I would absolutely argue the early game needs a lot of work too.

In my original post I forgot to explain why I disliked the end bosses of acts 1 and 2. Act 1 end boss has extremely punishing attacks with bad indicators. The large ice explosion I simply walk to the edge of the arena and hope I don't get hit. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It doesn't matter how close I am to the ice patches on the ground. When the boss rains ice beams from the sky the indicators often overlap, which makes it extremely difficult to know where to go to not get hit. And if you get hit even once the slow effect will guarantee you get hit by the rest. This can easily instagib you when the beams start to inflict bleed. Of course the slow effect can be negated by the charm. But since most of the attacks of the boss inflict slow it's highly unlikely you will have any charges left by that point. Oh and speaking of slow. The slow field from the boss spitting ice at you lasts for so long that it can become extremely difficult to avoid certain attacks. So ultimately, the fight is challenging, yes, but it is also incredibly frustrating. So when I beat the boss I do not feel satisfied, I feel relieved that I don't have to engage with it anymore. I don't ever want to fight the boss again. Generally you'd want the feeling the player is left with after a boss to be one where they can't wait to fight it again. This is the difficult thing about difficulty. It's easy to increase tedium with difficulty.

Act 2 boss is a simpler case. The boss simply gives the player extremely limited time to retaliate and in the 2nd phase incredibly small areas to work in without taking damage. This makes the fight tedious rather than challenging. I was mistaken in my earlier claim that the boss simply had too much health or resistance. My chaos DoT took care of the boss with relative ease. But the fight was not any more fun because of it. It was equally boring, just not as long. It surprises me how unsatisfying the bosses have been in PoE 2 so far considering how much I love the pinnacle bosses in PoE 1.

In the original post I made a point about how much the focus on trade has made PoE lose much of the benefits of its systems. And this has only been reinforced through research. The attitudes of focusing the game around trade and having SSF balanced in the exactly same way as trade makes it so that much of the creativity the game would otherwise allow is lost in competitiveness of trade. If drops are balanced around how much the top players are able to get with top builds it makes the game incredibly inaccessible for 95% of people. And people like me who would simply like to explore weird combinations are robbed that experience of creative build making, since I don't have the time or energy to dedicate the thousands of hours needed to become competent at making builds.

And this is only emphasized by the incredibly large amount of traps set in the passive skill tree. I have no idea why they included so many nodes that essentially do nothing for any build at all. Do they really just want to trap inexperienced players into ruining their characters? That seems almost sadistic. For experienced players it just reduces the available options in trees. Because there are nodes you would never ever take as they are just so terrible. It does not add to build creativity, the only effect it has is reducing options for experienced players and potentially trapping inexperienced players.

I know I talked a lot about my view that GGG needs to have a looser grip on meta especially in early game and I fully stand by that. The creativity the game would otherwise allow is severely hampered by the focus on trade.