League Feedback

Wanted to give some feedback since this league is the first I have really player since the release.

Campaign
I gotta say that the campaign experience got a lot better. Maps felt slightly smaller, also kinda got the layout for most of them down by now. Also it feels really good to have these reward things around every corner, makes it much easier to level the first char without any trading.
Also really liked act 4 and the extra acts, lots of different stuff to find with the treasure map or the omen map and such. Boss fights are cool, mechanics learnable. Only thing I noticed was that the elemental spells felt a lot worse to level around act 2 and 3 compared to the crossbow build I did, although I did trade items for it which I didnt for the crossbow char.
Also felt the impact of the attribute requirement buffs, much easier to equip thise dual stat gems now without needing some weird extra dex on a caster or smth.

Endgame
First of all, the good stuff. Crafting feels way better now that there are some more deterministic options. Especially the blue alt and aug orbs make white items important again (Sometimes felt better to get a white item than a t5 tho).
There seem to be more good skills now, the support gem overhaul also did a lot for the game.

The issues that made it less fun for me were mostly towers and the portal limit.
For towers, it just feels kinda bad when you had 4 or 5 overlapping and then dont find something similar again, also - while the all the unique maps and stuff improved this a bit - pathing towards towers still feels like a chore for me. I kinda miss the PoE 1 scarabs, felt simpler and better imo. I completly understand that you dont just want the same mechanic copied into PoE 2, but I also dont think towers are the way as they are now - even when the new ones feel a bit better.
The second thing - which sometimes made me stop playing for the day - was portals. I feel like I get punished too much for a death, where I dont even know why I died. I know I could put less mods on a map, but it just feels like I would miss out on some loot that way, so I put on 6 and sort out the ones with bad mids for my build. Then I put it into an area I juiced with towers, go into the map full of excitement for loot explosions ... and die to some random thing I didnt even see in a pack of 5 abyssal rares crawling out of a pit. Waystone is gone, tower buffs on the map are gone, I feel bad. I know you want death to be punished, but should it really feel like that? I thought hardcore should be for the people who want that experience, and softcore for less punishment... Would also feel a lot better if we had like 6 portals till t5, 4 portals till t10, 2 portals till t15 and 0 or 1 for t16 or smth - would also make more sense imo for getting people into it and not punishing mods on maps with diffivulty and less portals.

Maybe was a bit of a rant, tldr games improving but I still dont like towers and how portals are handled.