Feedback after 70 hours

I'm now at the point where I'll quit, at least for a good long while. So it's feedback time. I'll keep an eye on the patch notes, maybe I'll return at as later date. As it is of now, after 70ish hours of game time the game started to only frustrate me.

Here are my main points of feedback (all subjective to me, and all wihtout any knowledge regarding endgame experience and balancing):

The good:
- There is definetely fun to be had here. The game has potential.

The bad:
- Gear progression is an absolute pain. I tried to go down the crafting path, thinking that I can deal with gear that is not absolutely optimal, but that was a mistake. I basically wasted all my resources on crap and then ended up starting to trade anyways.

- Trading as implemented is very unfun to me. I'm a beginner, so I need time finding the right item, then there is no response in game and bamm... another hour gone with nothing to show for.

- While build variety is great and everything I tried felt different, every built quickly became extremely repetitive. I execute my kill combo over and over and in between I run into something that insta kills me in a way that feels entirely unavoidable, mostly with no means to tell what actually killed me. The beginning of the game feels like an interesting take on combat, the further it goes on, the more tedious it got.

The ugly:

- Campaign maps are too big or need something to save progress. With instances resetting between sessions, I cannot hop into the game without committing to clearing a whole map and then killing the boss. On countless occasions the game didn't give me a graceful way to exit without losing progress for way too long. I have a work life and a social life. This makes it a lot harder to fit the game in without sacrifices that do not feel worth it.

- Boss design feels really bad the further I get into the campaign. All boss fights basically rely on a combination of biiiiiiig health bars, one shot attacks and limiting the arena over time. Learning their mechanics feels a lot less important than having bought the right stuff from the trading website.

- I followed build guides, but I cannot finish my second ascension (too many one shot kills, including the final bosses), I cannot beat the molten lava golem guy (Mektul) and I cannot beat the Viper boss either. I'm generally not the best gamer, but I was able to finish all Souls games without cheese or summons. So I know how to learn a boss an execute a strategy. It feels like I'm being gear checked without a clear way to get out of the gear check other than repeating known maps for hours to grind orbs and then trade. For people who like that kind of thing, that might be OK. To me it ends my PoE2 experience.

- I'd be willing to spend money on microtransactions in your game. I appreciate that the game isn't as predatory as many others. the prices are completely nuts though. 4,50 for an armor set...I might do that from time to time. 45 bucks ... nope...I'm staying gray and boring.

Some ideas for solutions (still subjective):

- If crafting is geared towards trying to roll up something nice bit by bit, there need to be more rolls or better chances to roll something nice. The experience is atrocious. I really don't want to read the words "light radius" ever again.

- Implement a proper way to trade ingame and remove the requirement to be online for it. It sucks.

- Rework the bosses and build better ones. It feels like the game has a lot of potential for interesting boss fights, but at the moment what makes your bosses interesting is not what makes them hard. They have lots of HP and hit like a truck. That's often it.

- Put waypoints next to campaign bosses. Failing a boss for an evening is made extra galling by having to do the map again next day. It creates a strong incentive to keep trying when it's not fun anymore.

- If it was me: Change the crafting system in its entirety by giving more control over what is happening.

- Divide all prices on the store by 10, stop whale hunting and go for more small fish.

Facit: I'm a bit sad the game isn't fun anymore. I'm lvl 45 in act 3 and I would have liked to see how I like endgame. But I have put in about 10+ hours that were no fun anymore already and the game clearly requires many more, before I can progress. For now, I'm done.