What is it exactly, that people want from the sequel?

Bigger skill tree, so you can make even more fun of D4.

The writing was on the wall for PoE2, so I'm not angry or disappointed, I'll see where things go.

I would have wanted:

• less boss fights, not more, I find them bad and boring.
• maybe an interesting take on the gem system, but essentially removing it is lame. They also removed / didn't reintroduce some gems that unlock certain interesting options, so I'm still waiting on what they game is like on actual full release.
• maybe a revision and tighter integration of the more interesting league mechanics (incursion? ava's thing)
• could have done without an idiot plot in terms of writing

the slow combat isn't bad, but the game is confused. You just can't have both fair fights with rare mobs with white gear and white mobs and rare gear. Either one is too easy or the other is too hard, or the items lack oomph. Impossible to resolve.

I agree on the modifier stacking on mobs.

I was excited for...

• the new gem system - there was this promise, that you don't have to roll fusings/chromatic/jeweller orbs anymore to make the sockets fit for your build on a certain item.
• the graphical update - game looks phenomenal, let's be honest here.
• Technical Upgrades on the engine - PoE1 has a shitton of technical debt and runs like ass. I was excited for them to be able to maybe start from scratch, or solve some longer lasting pains, that they never got around to with PoE2 (since the games ended up so different, that they drifted apart).
• More smooth gameplay - I enjoyed the look of some of the older demos. It really seemed like travel skills felt more fluid and combat overall had more flow to it.

But honestly, I'm not really the right person to judge PoE2, I played roughly 10 hours in 0.1, almost finished Act 1 but then Life got a bit in the way and my playthrough fizzled out. From what I remember, monsters were too strong and too fast, playing melee kinda sucked (as is tradition).

I was happy when it was going to just be an extension of the base game that made it prettier, smoother, and skyrocketing the already gratuitous content. I was truly looking forward to not having to admit through the same campaign each league for 8 hours. (Guess why I'm not playing Poe 2 0.20...)

Making it a different game was a clear signal that they wanted to follow The Vision that we'd already seen play out with ruthless mode.

My expectation was combat would be more of a setup/payoff play style with situational skills and players suffering resource attrition over long fights and maps when compared to PoE's use one skill to clear the entire screen as fast as possible so you aren't one shot by a random rare that is harder than the map boss.

A lot of what they've said helped inform that understanding, but it's really hard to meaningfully combine skills when mobs are basically trying to shoot/rush you as soon as you can see them.