PoE 2 feels more like a chore than a game right now

All of my friends who just started the game got bored and quit before even reaching level 25. Even for someone like me who played last season, the game feels incredibly dull right now. And I’ve seen plenty of similar comments from other players.
Still, I’m continuing with the hope that things will get better in the endgame.
But seriously—how does GGG expect to retain new players like this?

your friends have a lot of patience, took me 3 coffees to barely get to lvl 14 I think and quit after that, its worse than d4 at the moment in terms of a boring slog

not to mention all classes and abilities are basically the same, some sort of generation plus spender, everybody uses a herald of x etc etc

huntress is a hybrid of the worst kind, meh melee, meh range
I started building for lightning arrow and my melee basic attack are often better than the lightning arrow itself, anybody tested it?

Also, wtf is with all the ai generated cosmetics?

I'll wait and see if fun builds emerge. I might play later in the season. But I'm not interesting in "figuring it out" and playing a bricked build in the current POE2. I'll only play a meta build that can faceroll the content.

If that's not the "vision" the devs have for the game, then I'm out. I want to have fun, not play a game that's like a 2nd job. If I wanted to do that, I'd play Eve Online.