D4 is still too non linear in the campaign for it to really be smooth. One minute you have a quest on the east, then you've got one 5 zones away on the south west then back to the east.
At least in poe, it's relatively a straight line through the campaign.
Waypoints in d2 were checkpoints and in D4 are more like fast travel points.
D4 would be quite obvious how little there is in the game if all waypoints were unlocked from the start. Just artificial roadblocks to slow you down and stretch out how shallow the whole game really is.
I played it last night for a couple hours and I was pretty unenthusiastic the whole time. It's still not fun, the skills feel like shit, a skill point increasing skill damage by literally 1-2 damage is just fucking stupid. I get damage is improved by conditionals but all of that lacks any dopamine hits and makes it all feel underwhelming.
Unfortunately the whole game is still flawed in a "is this fun" mindset. There's really nothing to look forward to in any segment of the game.
Skipping campaign further reduces the amount of actual substance the game offers but at the same time, I can't knowingly choose to do hours of "quests" that are reduced to clicking an NPC dialogue option and skipping the dialogue just to get to the next step.
