I'm very thorough and spent a good 270 hours on my first run of the game. I didn't finish. I was max level for over 100 hours.
I am impressed. I have no clue how you squeezed that many hours out of it. I thought I was taking it real slow when I finished the game in about 120h. In completionist runthrough I reached a cap deep into act 3, so it seemed well balanced to me. That said with how XP is calculated I can imagine people easily gaming the system. For that reason I prefer PoE1&2 XP system (quests for completing quests, exploration and limited kills per enemy only).
You probably skipped a lot of tough boss battles through dialogue. The Thorm bosses in Act 2, Orthon Yugir, the Creche leaders in Act 1 as well as killing all the Duergar plus Nere in Grymforge. Killing the wardensin Moonrise Tower to save the gnomes and tieflings. There's also many minidungeons like the haunted house near last light inn which has the cave underneath with shapeshifters or the Mason's hideaway. By the time I got to Act 3 I was lv12 after meeting Gortash for the first time.
Avoiding fights through dialogue gives a ton less experience than resolving them through straight combat. Orthon Yugir through dialogue gives like 110 xp while killing him and his minions gives 1500+.
I think this game would have benefitted from going to lv14, but the problem is the power creep is wild through magic items. They would need to rethink a lot of Act 3 combat encounters besides Cazador who's a decent challenge and maybe Raphael. Sarevok and Orin were a joke, and Gortash is not memorable if it weren't for his bugged mines.
Problem with this game is burst is too good on martial classes and sorcerer. HP would need to be doubled in some encounters and maybe nerf enemy damage/amount of enemy multiattacks and instead introduce more CC/rot damage/conditions to cleanse and mechanics to compensate without making bosses huge health sponges hitting your team members for half their health.
