First time Poe player playing Poe2 on respecing, new acts, monster vibes, and atlas progression

1. First time poe player here: Respecing. When I found out you can respec it meant I could play the game how I wanted to play it, which was creating my own builds and going my own path, even though I could never compete with great builds. Because I knew that when my build inevitably fell flat, I could switch. This was a fantastic play experience for me and the primary reason I played poe2 but couldn't get into poe 1 (where I felt like I had to follow a build guide or be doomed later in the game)
2. I would really like a new act every season, and for the first season I would not mind doing all 4 acts twice (longer campaign) and then maybe when its 5 doing it just once.
3. This may be necessary for reasons I don't understand, but I find it kind of sad in end game that monsters don't match the vibe of their map. The merge felt cool at first, but then it started to just feel like a blur of random monsters every map. Potentially over time I would come to memorize these monsters, but for my playthrough it felt like the "vibe" that the campaign had in those maps was missing. Felt "fake".
4a. Atlas progression: Even while people around me were complaining about how hard getting an atlas point was, my experience with it was very positive. I tried it, failed, and had a goal to achieve. Something to get strong for beyond plain progression. I was excited to one day be strong enough to tackle the challenge that big.
4b. I wonder if people didn't like how hard it was because the game implies that "you only need to be this level" and therefor it should be easy if you are 5+ levels above it, but instead you actually should be about 10+ above it. So they feel bad, thinking that it's supposed to be easy and yet they failed.