Yes, the dichotomy of people’s asks, always was the case, always will be. Most also have no clue that what they wanna see and what would provide the biggest fun longevity is often relatively different.
Some things GGG did were good though, especially things like the opening speed of strongboxes… which were atrociously slow, making you solely wait and run around in a circle. That was simply bad designed. The speeding up solved that, made the design decisions though less meaningful.
What GGG should’ve done is making it a wave-system, having to beat the wave before the next triggers 1-2 seconds later rather then this trickling in.
It was singular packs which died in a single hit and then several seconds of nothing. That was just awkward.
Other things worked less well definitely. But overall PoE 2 is in a better state end-game wise… but in 0.1 it was in a better state campaign-wise.
GGG went ahead to try and balance it but the relatively grating design differences between the two places cause issues, something which EHG also struggles with (and more severely even I would argue) but which can be solved with proper designs and proper scaling.
I would even argue PoE 2 despite being released into EA after a complete overhaul of systems and a lackluster timeframe for even planning and designing end-game (8 months) it’s in a surprisingly good state.
Imagine what sort of product EHG would’ve provided in 8 months. We’re talking about a interactable map with several mechanics unique to it, with 4 bosses specifically for that area having all a small progression system included. That alone is more then EHG managed to provide by far in 0.2, and we’re talking roughly the same amount of workers here as while they took over the majority of the PoE 1 dev-team during that time (what a awful decision btw. which backfired greatly) they also split that between campaign related stuff as it wasn’t finished yet as well as the endgame. While in LE the focus is entirely with the Cycle on the respective mechanic and overall fixes.