I ever encountered in any ARPG. Relevance of items is non existant. Legendary powers do barely matter. Crafting irrelevant. Gems irrelevant. Even not spending skill points does not really make any difference the further you get.
If you are not able to create a worthwhile experience, better look for another job.
Never played D3 did you?
Does that imply D3 mistakes must be repeated?
Not at all, just implies you are ignorant to braindead experiences in video games is all. D3 is just one of many examples that are worse than D4.
Not saying it isn’t braindead, you’re right, but per your comment, go ahead and try to reach 60 without equipping any new items or putting in any skill points and tell me how that goes for you 
Thats not what I am saying. Of course you must upgrade equipment, you must spend some basic skill points to make your build work at all. But lets get real: Upgrading items from 1-60 just means looking if the top most stat is green → swap. That’s what I call braindead.
So, what would you like to see instead?
That’s actually exactly what you said.
Remember, being technically correct is the best kind of correct. And I am technically correct. 50 points for Japhasca!
Most Diablo-like ARPGs do this, even PoE 2 does this to an extent. PoE 1 is about the only exception because you need to match up colors of sockets. Even most MMORPGs work this way. Not entirely sure how more complex you want this to be.
I had a completely different expierence on the very first PoE2 char. Had to grind more levels to be able to do bosses. Had to craft and buy gear (vendor, SSF) to progress. I admit this phase gets easier with new chars because you already stocked some good equip, but it does not remotely get to the point D3/D4 handle leveling phase.
No 50 points, sorry. You are simply ignoring the part where I said “the further you get”.
Conversely, there are many players who play the game for the story and care nothing for what they would refer to as braindead end-game, just killing increasingly more difficult monsters on repeat. Then there’s some who like a bit of everything.
And what game the “leveling” journey matters? one that is aggressive and pushes you towards going back to get resistance/armour cap every 5-10 levels? (spoiler: it wont matter you can still finish the campaign with negative resistances and armour too)
Sorry to say but ALL arpgs are not about the campaign experience specially when ALL of them are seasonal games in general.
It takes like 3 hours tops to hit 60. It isn’t supposed to be an experience.
I just stand in town and open whisper caches.
I enjoyed the D3 campaign the first couple times. It’s a treasured D3 memory for me. But yeah…once I could get to 70 in 5 seconds during the Season. I never did it again.
People were complaining that the leveling took too long, so now it takes 3-5h to reach torment 4 and “endgame”, which is scanning sanctuary discord for boss rotas and improving your gear so that the bosses can be oneshotted by and even bigger number
Thats the crux of the problem he’s frustrated with, genius.
Did you even read the thread genius?
People cried about leveling taking too long. Now it’s a 3 hour tour… and people are crying about that.
If you want a leveling experience… get tf out and go play WoW… genius. As someone else said upthead… this is a seasonal game.
The focus is the seasonal content… not the leveling experience… genius.
Ask a friend or someone in trade if you can tag along on some pit runs? I trade a bac rune or something for let’s say 4 runs and you 60.
I like the what slower pace of leveling a new char sometimes. Game goes so fast at high level so slow down season takes a while, for me then.
Yeah, I ignored armor and resists 1-60, heck even well into T2 I did not care about Armor and Resists. The game has zero challenge or purpose anymore except for playing lawn mower.