General feedback after four months of play

I would like to start off by saying that I enjoy POE for its many strengths as well as quirks. Though I have never been top tier player in POE1, I do think I have a decent grasp of its foundational components.

The release of POE2 had been very exciting and I was looking forward to it with great enthusiasm. Now that I have had some hours in this game, I would like to bring up some things that I think might contribute to its development.

Graphics
While I do love the theme and tone of the game, there are clear signs of assets being migrated over from POE1. One that caught my eye very early were the ground effects. This can be seen with the witches in Clearfell. When she casts her explosion skill, the red circle on the ground is barely visible. This wasn't much of an issue in POE1 since the texturing and the colour palette were very different. However, POE2's texture are much rougher and have a lot more jagged edges. A direct port of these skill and particle effects just don't look as good. Still, I appreciate the visual clarity for most skills, and that they are a lot easier to follow (visually).
A thing that I do not enjoy is the sharp change in brightness between certain maps. I am speaking specifically about maps and the difference in gamma between maps like Vaal Factory versus Steaming Springs. Vaal Factory on a 1.0 scene brightness is near impossible because you have near zero visibility. That also goes for decay.
A lot of obstacles in the maps are not distinguishable enough. In POE1, if a rock is meant to be a part of the map terrain, the player can easily tell because its clear difference in texture and colour to the ground itself, the same object are often indicated only by its elevation difference. This can be seen in the act1's rampart with the clutters around a caravan. I was assuming that I could encircle it, but that wasn't the case. This can also been felt in The Sinking Spire tower map. The tables and bookshelves are homogenized with the ground, and it is very difficult to visually distinguish where something begins and ends. Similar place, in POE1, that I could draw comparisons to are The Archives and The Torched Court. Those places have very distinct differences between walkable grounds versus obstacles.
I understand that we don't want to have overtly exuberant scenes, but it would still be nice if there is a more uniformed texture for walkable grounds so players may associate walkable ground with a certain look rather than relying on the minimap to find the edges of the terrain.

Skills
Given the nature of the game and stage of its development, I would assume many skills will be changed. For that, I only want to bring up a few things for you guys to consider:
- Adding attack time to movement-based attack skills make them very undesirable and sometimes unusable. I feel like another way is to use the channeling mechanic to allow for them to gain full distance at max channel time. Similar to Whirling Blades in POE1, skills like Vaulting Impact could be made into a channeling ability where the distance is proportional to its channel time. With that, a Fully Charged effect could also be applied for rewarding gameplay.
- A z-axis conditional for leaping mechanics would be great. Escape Shot felt very useless, and Disengage feels much better. It would be nice if Escape Shot gets an upgrade to be similar to Disengage.
- Grenades' interaction with a 3D map can be extremely frustrating. At times, I would have to guess if a grenade could be launched over an obstacle or not. This makes Flash Grenades backfiring more often than I would like.
- I have no problem with not implementing all of the movement skills from POE1 into POE2, and I do like the dodge roll mechanic, but I would still like to plead for at least one positioning ability like POE1's ruthless. This is for the fact that many maps are procedurally generated and players are not expected to memorize all of the layouts with their minutia, many times I, and many other players, may become cornered while fighting hordes of mobs due to a part of terrain looking like it was walkable. A repositioning skill, either with a high cooldown or charge up via the energy system, would help to alleviate this pain-point without going down the same path as POE1.
- Locking skills to only one weapon type feels very limiting. Skills in POE1 can be used with weapons that "define" a class, but a class can still choose between axe/sword, fist-weapon/dagger, mace/staff. POE2, so far, has greatly reduced the breadth of player's agency and creativity in this domain. I am not sure where this direction is headed, but enforced weapon specialization would pigeonhole players into very specific playstyles in the long run. (I am not seeing the benefits of this for a seasonally updated game as it greatly limits build variety)

General QoL
- It would be nice to have vendor recipes again. I have always thought of that as one of the strongest components in POE1. While I understand that selling things to vendor for gold is the norm in POE2, "vendor recipes" could perhaps be unlockable within some campaign content (?) similar to Siosa in POE1.
- If the previous point could be considered, then perhaps allow Jeweler Orbs to be made into a higher tier variant. the skill socket system in POE1 is something that forces players to make meaning choices, and I can see how POE2's skill gem plus support socket system tries to do the same thing. However, the flexibility of POE1's system allows a player to simply swap a gem from a 6-link to a 4-link. This is impossible in POE2, and a poor decision leads to a much more punishing outcome.
- Similar to moving items to and fro the stash and the inventory using the ctrl+click/shift+click option, please allow the same for removing socketed support gems within the skill panel. (conditioned with the inventory panel being open of course)
- UI elements:
- Rogue Exiles' health bar is way too prominent and often covers parts of the screen that are of interest (rogue exiles hiding behind their hp bar...)
- The size of the Health and Mana Orbs (indicator) could be a little bit bigger, or perhaps give us a way to scale that UI component would be nice. This was not a major issue for me in POE1 because the way Energy Shield envelops the HP orb gives a very clear indication when change occurs.
- It would be nice if the UX/UI designers would take at look at the accessibility of some of the elements. Sometimes the text colour is way too close to the background colour. If a text frame is to have low opacity against the backdrop of a game that could have a variety of different colours and textures, then there should be a clearer border around the text. One example of this is the detailed information tooltip of items. The words "Prefix" and "Suffix" are very difficult to see.

These are the things that I have irked me the most so far. Again, I am huge fan, and I want to see GGG succeed. The things I am seeing here are the reflections of a specific culture and organizational structure. I am sure everyone at GGG is capable and passionate, and I have no doubt there are solution-spaces mapped out for issues founds/brough-up internally and externally. I would still encourage a revisit of Melvin Conway's paper https://www.melconway.com/Home/pdf/committees.pdf as to make adjustments where necessary.

Thank you for your time and effort.

Regards