Maybe. But there was no guarantee. Maybe you wanted all 36 anyway. So it was still an issue. It was just less likely because you tended to ignore more drops.
So it has nothing to do with crafting, but with inventory management.
It’s like saying that PoE crafting sucks if you only had 1 square in your inventory. It doesn’t. Crafting isn’t changed. Your inventory is the problem because it doesn’t let you pick up everything you want.
When I first started playing Lagon was the hardest encounter in the world. Oh, the humanity. Why would EHG ever put in such a hard boss? Today it’s a trivial encounter. I take a screen shot every time I die now. The ones that got me with goofy damage numbers are Kalidan the Needler, the self-destruct from a possessed Immortal Eye got me once, Possessed Siege golems do goofy damage, especially when you run into like 6 of them at once and there is literally no safe space on the game floor, lol. Void meteors out of nowhere from a Void Shade of Orobyss that I didn’t see spawn in a map I was doing has gotten me (like 12k damage lol). The steam screenshots are a gallery of destruction. 
Other than those examples, I can’t really think of times I died unfairly. Knowing how to build a character to survive is a skill and experience issue. Having capped endurance, endo threshold, resists, lots of life, damage mitigation, etc will keep you alive for stuff you can see.
Crafting can be frustrating at times. Just taking stats to T5 shouldn’t cost huge amounts of forging potential. Using 25 in one pop or whatever makes me scream at the screen. It does happen. But, on the bright side, THE GAME ACTUALLY HAS CRAFTING! It’s not perfect but its pretty good.
Most of what OP talked about are just experience and skill issues. It took me many hours to learn how to play. This season my highest harbinger kills are 1000+ corruption and I have dozens of Abberoth kills. I’m on my 4th 100 character for the season (99.4 atm) and still having fun blasting. Different classes can do different stuff. I don’t expect my Golemancer to kill Abberoth like my Paladin, or my Bear/Squirrel Master to clear maps like my Falconer, but they are all fun in different ways.
Would suggest coming back next season, get more experience, over time your skills and knowledge increase, and it starts to get a lot more fun. It’s not like they are charging for battle passes or anything.
That’s… kinda backwards though?
I mean I get what you wanna say… but you got it switched around there quite a bit 
We see D2, we see PoE 1, we see PoE 2… they got the same inventory system as LE has. Neither of those games has problems with that. So since they don’t it means the inventory management itself is not the issue.
Which brings us to the follow-up mechanics which are the issue… namely crafting.
Why do I say it’s that specifically and not the drop-system in that case?
Because in 1.1 we didn’t have the turtle. Even with 36 uniques dropped the chance to want 12 of them (max capacity of the inventory with the largest items) would’ve been so ridiculously miniscule that it basically never happens. Yes… can… but it’s unlikely. Still was mentioned back then to be a bit of a problem as people saw it. So it already was problematic in a small manner.
In 1.2 you need every single LP 1 unique. The chance for a 0 LP unique to drop from prophecies with a high rank in CoF are miniscule. The chances for example 24 uniques in MG to even drop as more items with LP then you can pick up is even high!
That’s a major issue.
Why in this case specifically and not exalteds or idols? Because uniques are distinctly ‘valuable’ items based on different builds. You don’t ‘phase out’ 0-3 LP uniques unless you got a 4 LP of that one already. Why? Because it is your chance to get a 4 LP one.
Before we had the turtle it was solely 0 LP items which had ‘repeated value’, and there you didn’t need many as you only got Nemesis ‘so often’, there was a hard limit on that. With the turtle? You can put 50 tabs of items inside in a single instance.
It is. Because the main difference between those games and LE is zone persistence. So in all those games you fill your inventory, portal back and dump your inventory into your stash and then you go back and pick the rest of the stuff from the floor.
In LE, you fill your inventory, portal back, dump your inventory and now you can’t go back to pick up the rest.
It’s still part of inventory management and has nothing to do with crafting. It affects crafting, but is not directly related to the crafting system.
Then the issue is the persistence, which all those games are able to do but LE is not
And even then the inventory wouldn’t be the problem as you are supposed to design your loot system based on the mechanics you can provide. Imagine if Grim Dawn would be set up in zones and whenever you teleport back it resets it… then you still wouldn’t run into those issues since the quantity of viable picks isn’t high enough to overfill your inventory.
The same goes for LE, the amount of things which are viable to pick up (through implementations since release) have gone up substantially. It means a culling of those systems is supposed to happen, hence reduction of quantity, increase of quality.
That is why I said it was a zone persistence/inventory management issue. Because it can be solve via both.
Either implement zone persistence and it fixes the issue, or do it like GD and let us have several inventory tabs and increase our carrying capacity by a lot and that will fix the issue as well.
This.
I’ve reached “endgame grind” in D3 (because it’s so easy) and that’s about it. Most ARPGs, I plan a build, play through the campaign, maybe dabble in a bit of the endgame if the build was particularly fun, and then make a new character with a new build. My main issue with LE is that, unless you gear share and go through the dungeons to skip the story, the campaign is really dull and the start is suuuuuper slow for most characters. In Grim Dawn or Titan Quest, I can reach mob clearing power in one or two levels (5 levels max, depending on mastery), same with D2-D4, but in LE…
So I often plan a build and then just get to lv 2 or 3 and go “I don’t want to wait until 10-15 before I start feeling powerful” with Sentinel and Primalist being the hardest for me to get going, probably because their mastery identities are so good (aside from Shaman) that being a regular sentinel or primalist is just boring
I think LE is doing progression speed and and “things to look forward to” the absolute best out of any ARPG.
New skills, passives, skill spec slots, mastery, the next big skill spec tree keynode. There is always that one thing very close and reachable.
There is always the next thing you want to get and basically all builds will come fully together before you even finish the campaign.
But the mob density and map layouts don’t really need you to get massive AoE early on anyway. The first few packs that actually rewards god AoE are mobs you actually oneshot with anything else anyway.
Speed maybe… but overall progression enjoyment is best handled in PoE 2. Good pacing, enjoyable campaign content.
Mind you, 0.1 state, not 0.2 state.
And as also mentioned repeatedly, drop-based issues are what keep PoE 2 back, but gameplay wise it’s the most solid one. No other live-service Hack’N’Slash can keep up with that.
The only game which can is Grim Dawn, and that’s primarily SP.
Disagreed.
The last T11 and T13 skilsl take way too long in PoE to get, if you plan around playing these.
Also I enjoyed 0.2 far far more than 0.1.
Also from a SSF perpsective (which is the only way I play PoE) 0.2 was very very enjoyable, especially with Fracturing Orbs and Recombinators, whic hare both widely avaialble even in SSF.
I disagree mostly because of the baffling decision to make skill gems not level and instead drop based on area level. Meaning that if you have a weaker build that is struggling at some point, you don’t really have many options other than trying to brute force it, which is frustrating.
Since gems (and weapon) are the main source of your power, if you already have a good weapon and are still struggling, the only upgrade option left to you during the campaign would be increasing skill level. Which just isn’t possible.
So you either switch to a better build (which kinda defeats the purpose) or you’re stuck.
There’s no way to simply farm an area to increase your power because most of it is linked to your skill gem.
This is especially the case in areas like the Dreadnought where many builds will struggle. Which leads to frustration and dying over and over again until you luck out and manage to get past it.
True, one of the major downsides, and I agree fully there.
Which doesn’t change that - outside of Act 3 zones which are too large - the pacing of the zones is good in that campaign.
As are the boss-fights, mechanically.
LE is a lot ‘weaker’ in those aspects. Areas in Act 2, 3 and 7 have backtracking issues, not too huge but definitely there. The bosses during the campaign are a darn joke at times, utterly misplaced mechanically at times. We start the revamped Act 1 with a great bossfight at the end, move over to a static worm thingy in Act 2 that’s mechanically so boring comparatively that it’s yawn inducing, going back to a decent fight in Act 3, then a AoE disaster in Act 4 which you either can barely avoid if your defenses aren’t up to par… but otherwise utterly ignore. Act 5 with the spymaster is one major mess because of being basically immortal unless you goat out the melee attack… while he is standing a lot of the time in his DoT area, making the fight frustrating unless you actively cheese it in some way. Act 6 combines those 2 messes of bissfights then together into a culmination of crap. Act 7 is decent actually, mechanically ok, not overwhelming, balance wise not fully there bit a decent designed boss. Act 8 Lagon? You know… all the bosses before could prepare a player… but EHG thought ‘have a hard hitting mini-sized arena boss is a great idea!’ instead, which makes that fight one of the worst-placed ones in ARPGs overall. And we got a ton of shitty fights… like the initial version of Sirus in PoE for example, that was a disaster too, but at least because of bugs mostly. Act 9 is fine again, culmination of everything and fitting mechanically for the progression throughout the whole campaign… just everything before is mostly garbage.
I’m talking about the design of the campaign. Not the design of the loot system, the character progression or the itemization itself. Just the campaign there.
Overall yes… PoE 2 is in a worse state then LE even, but that’s because of design mistakes (gem level cap, miniscule drops and badly managed balancing following that too).
This is why I specified “the start” those first 8-10 levels before you can start getting into the specializations and unlocking passives and more skills really drag for most characters and it basically becomes “use this one exclusively pre-mastery spec to get to your mastery because the start is painful”. Then the “next upgrade is just around the corner” feeling you talked about kicks in.
Basically as soon as you hit the gardens there are packs of 4-5 enemies and unless you’re playing Rogue (who gets Acid Flask and Flurry) there’s not really a good clearing skill for those packs. They’re not hard to kill, but the clear speed between throwing an unspecced acid flask and using Warpath or Wandering Spirits is pretty noticeable in those early levels
My experience with this differs from yours, except with Mage (and possibly Rogue which I don’t like, so I don’t play them).
With Primalist, when I reach gardens, I have my wolf and thorn totems and I just drop them and run and they die offscreen. I use Gathering Storm to clear stragglers.
With Mage it’s more annoying. I tend to use Fireball until I can use Glacier. Even though Fireball still deals AoE, so if you group them tightly you still do fine.
With Sentinel I always use Hammer Throw and that has good clear as long as you line them up, which isn’t that hard to do either.
And with Acolyte I rely mostly on skeletons (I’m a minion main anyway) and wandering spirits.
I always reach the first town at level 4, so I already have a couple points in the first skill, which helps.
So other than Mage, which is defintely slower for me, I don’t have any issues with the first few levels.
Blockquote
Basically as soon as you hit the gardens there are packs of 4-5 enemies and unless you’re playing Rogue (who gets Acid Flask and Flurry) there’s not really a good clearing skill for those packs. They’re not hard to kill, but the clear speed between throwing an unspecced acid flask and using Warpath or Wandering Spirits is pretty noticeable in those early levels
That’s because DoT attacks are very good at early levels. It doesn’t matter which ailments you choose, they are all better than raw damage at the start. Rogue just has the tiny advantage of not having to specc into a skill first. But you can get decent bleed chances on Swipe for example with very few points.
What number of stacks you call decent for dots? 
At the beginning 2 stacks are good already since DoTs have a high base damage amount.
They fall off substantially without dedicated investment and builds though over time.
thats depends on build, from 12 (time rot) to hundreds (ignite spellblade) to thousands (squarell bleed summoner) and many others
2-4 bleed stacks are more than enough on the first two bosses imo.
