The point I don't get is why a system that produced that sort of gameplay, that requires more balancing, more diversity in enemies ("But 3 simple but different enemies can make good encounter!"), another systems on top of it, rebalancing of it's stat and ability system, for some people "still good at it's core".
One thing first: Enemy diversity is totally fine in PoE, although some enemy abilities/spells should be reworked/expanded upon a bit.
Anyway, to answer you question: Because gameplay is fine and PoE was fun to play for the entire 50 or so hours it took me to play through, despite it's flaws.
Because those flaws, while present, for me just prevent it from being a truly great game, but don't make it a bad one.
The problem with the graze/hit/crit system is that it makes a single stat the be all end all of your character offensive capabilities, i have seen characters in robes with good deflection outlast heavily armored characters with shitty deflection, armor doesnt mean a thing if you get crit again and again on every attack, because DR was designed to withstand common strikes. This is kind of a big deal because it creates such a huge disparity between classes with high deflection and classes with low deflection that you may as well not even bother with armor, of any quality.
Well, not being hit is certainly preferable to being hit for less effect. In the end I think that it can create more varied and interesting gameplay than simply having one guy in a strong suit of armor soak everything up. If you encounter a situation where your heavy armor guy gets critted too often, you should maybe start considering some tactic to prevent it. It's not as if the game doesn't give you any tools to deal with it.
I have to admit though, that the importance of deflection is currently a bit too high.
On to hp and endurance, endurance pools are by necessity small, this is because dropping in any given fight is not penalized by outright killing you and because you regenerate all endurance lost at the end of any encounter. then the characters staying power in battle can be smaller. This can be seen as much in poe as it can be seen in any shooter with regenerating health. This is not conductive to good gameplay. Low endurance values also ties to the accuracy mechanics, it used to be that your squishy had time to react if he got swarmed here he cant, he will go take a nap. Plus it also makes most mistakes consequence free, which doesnt exactly make battles tense in any way, shape or form.
Although being dropped in battle can well mean the difference between winning the battle and seeing the game-over screen, so there is an obvious penalty. Personally I would penalize it more, however, through e.g. giving a debuff until next rest when reaching either low health or even 0 endurance. Also health is too high for fighter classes.
And keeping your squishies save is something that can be done in PoE, if you just l2p - even after they get attacked. Not everytime maybe, but hey, no risk, no fun.
Engagement system makes combat static, movement is never a tactical decision in this game, just the result of a fuck up, you failed at positioning at the start. Frontloads decision making in every fight and even goes as far as to provoke reloads if you detect a mistake in your positioning and know youll get breached, ive gone as far as to reload 10 seconds into the fight, only because id be wasting time if i kept going, as the battle with one less dps will take longer, not because i gave a shit if anyone fell.
This is more of a choice you made for yourself than something dictated by the system.
It has been pointed out several times, but engagement does not mean that you can never ever move once the battle has started. You can - and in some situations you should. You just have to learn how to deal with it, something that isn't too difficult if you're actually willing to do so.
Lack of hard counters, this not only creates some pretty fucking stupid scenarios, like ghosts slipping or getting stunned. It also makes every tactic viable against everything, which in turns gives you repetitive gameplay, because why fucking change what already works? it goes beyond tank and spank and can be applied to most tactics that work. Say what you will about them, at least they forced you to change your approach, and in some cases even get creative with your resources.
I agree that the resistances/vulnerabilities of enemies are in many cases too low. It's certainly one of my personally biggest issues with the current state of the game. Certain enemies should be made if not immune then at least highly resistant to certain attacks. The system allows for this, it's just not used to a great extend.
And so far my character's background has gotten her one minor dialogue option, yay. What I would like to see is something like Arcanum, where there were not only interesting attributes and backgrounds that mattered. Not every single one, but still.
