i just loaded up PoE 2 and immediately upon the game loading into Neketaka i just lost my will to live. running around neketaka and talking to people is literally the most boring shit ever imaginable right now.
You'd think you can just take off and sail to somewhere and do something more exiciting, then, but then the sailing is also slow as fuck.
Pretty much, the whole "quest-driven" approach to exploration is a blight on the genre quite frankly. The only valid models for structuring RPG exploration that exist so far are: the megadungeon (like in Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord), large dungeons in succession (like in Elminage or Icewind Dale), or a free-roaming overworld dotted with small/mid-seized dungeons (Daggerfall, Morrowind).
Deadfire tries the third of these approaches and thankfully confines the quest-driven structure to the main hub (as it should be), but, as you say, slows the overseas exploration down unreasonably by adding those useless and mini-gamey ship mechanics and especially the resource management aspect of them, which Sawyer apparently just had to have after taking that aspect away from the actual field/dungeon exploration. It doesn't add anything substantial to the game, it's not "challenging", just tedious, and gets in the way of free-roaming the islands searching for dungeons since you need to have a clear idea of where you are going in order not to waste food and drink.
Luckily, it does get better on repeat playthroughs, I had more fun with Deadfire the second time around because I knew where to go when I didn't want to advance in the story or do quests. Supposing you are doing a fresh start and are low-ish level, here are some OTOH suggestions of places where you can just go and kill stuff early game:
-Island with Xaurips North-West of Port Maje
-Temple of Tangaloa ruins south of Port Maje
-Oathbinder's Sanctum. Just get the quest, not a lot of talky-questy nonsense, just 2 NPCs.
-Do bounties until they start getting too many skulls, and who knows, maybe even then if you like a challenge.
-Fort Deadlight. Very doable early game and is really a full-blown dungeon rather than a typical mini-dungeon.
There are probably more that other users could add.
Also, you can just roam around getting into ship-fights. If you hate the ship combat system (like I do), just force-board and do them as normal fights, they usually leave you good loot (though it depends on their level) which usually pays for the costs of finding them and boarding. Maybe someone who understands the specific way in which enemy ship levels are determined (area, scaling, etc) can chime in here.
It's a really tedius pace compared to the first game
Not really. In the first game you went from one quest-based hub to another, with the odd dungeon thrown in as part of your progress. There was very little side content or exploration that wasn't based on quests/dialogues, apart from the bounties. The only thing that maybe was better is that the main quest had more dungeon crawling. Maybe. I haven't really compared them, the main quest of Deadfire also has plenty of dungeon crawling.
