First post - Wish me luck! (Dear GGG)

Dear GGG,

First, thank you for the hard work and dedication you've put into the ongoing development of this game. Many of us in the community recognize the potential and are excited to see it become something truly special. That said, the current state of the game feels deeply frustrating in several core areas, and I hope this feedback will be received as it’s intended: a sincere effort to highlight what’s holding the experience back.

1. Loot Feels Bad and Severely Lacking
Loot is the foundation of any ARPG, but right now, it’s nearly non-existent where it matters most: during leveling. Players are starved for gear, for in-game currency, and especially for skill and spirit gems—which are critical for trying out new builds or making early character adjustments. The entire leveling process feels tight and unrewarding.

Even the new mechanics you’ve introduced, like Rogue Exiles and Azmerian Whisps, suffer from this same issue. These encounters are noticeably more challenging, but the rewards don’t scale accordingly. The philosophy currently feels like “higher risk for no added reward,” and that mindset simply doesn’t drive engagement—it drives attrition.

2. No Real Crafting System – Just a Slot Machine
The crafting system lacks depth and control. What’s labeled as “crafting” is more accurately a high-stakes gamble, where progress relies entirely on luck. You’re given numerous gear challenges throughout the campaign—resist gaps, missing stats, socket issues—but you have almost no reliable way to solve them.

Unless you luck into the perfect drop or sockets/runes line up by chance, you’re stuck. Most players are too currency-starved (again, due to loot issues) to engage with the system meaningfully. Instead, they bypass it altogether and buy what they need from the POE trade site. That’s not crafting. That’s avoidance, born out of necessity, not design. When the optimal play is to completely ignore a core system, that’s a red flag.

3. On-Death and Off-Screen Effects – No Counterplay, No Fun
One-shot or near-one-shot “on-death” and off-screen effects should either be removed or used extremely sparingly. These mechanics aren't engaging—they're disorienting and punishing. Dying just because you walked up to loot and triggered an unseen hazard doesn’t feel like a skill issue. It feels like a design oversight.

Off-screen projectiles and effects that kill you before you can even register them add to this frustration. Combine this with the still-too-fast monster movement speed, and you end up in situations where—unless your build can instantly screenwipe—you’re cornered, body-blocked, and simply die without any viable escape.

On top of that, some monster mod combinations are downright abusive. Haste + Mana Drain + Proximity is a great example of a combo that simply shouldn’t exist. It creates no opportunity for counterplay and only leads to unavoidable deaths. These situations don’t challenge the player—they alienate them.

4. Death Penalty Is Too Punishing for What the Game Asks
Dying costs 10% of your XP, which is a steep penalty, but the consequences often don’t stop there. You also risk losing your Map, Citadel, or Pinnacle encounter—along with all the materials, time, and effort it took to get there. This feels especially brutal when these encounters are overloaded with one-shot mechanics and tight positioning requirements.

If you're not running one of a very small pool of optimized “meta” builds, these fights can take 5–10 minutes, during which you're constantly dancing around deadly mechanics. One mistake often means your entire effort is wasted. That’s not tension—that’s burnout.

5. Balance Is Unfriendly to Build Diversity
Instead of buffing underperforming classes and encouraging more build diversity, it feels like the design philosophy has been to nerf outliers into the ground. The result is a meta that’s incredibly narrow. A few classes and builds get to “play outside the box,” while the rest are stuck playing a much harder, less fun version of the game.

This kills creativity. Players trying to build something fun or personal often hit a wall during the campaign itself—not even endgame—because their build just can’t keep up. The difference between a “meta” build and a homemade one can be the difference between completing the campaign or quitting out of frustration. I’ve personally seen several friends quit before reaching the endgame simply because the build they chose—something they thought would be fun—just couldn’t perform. It feels like the game punishes experimentation unless you're following a professional build guide.

6. Atlas Skill Tree and Towers/Tablets Feel Ineffective
The Atlas skill tree currently feels underwhelming. No matter what direction you specialize into, the payoff is barely noticeable. There’s no sense of progression or power through these choices. The whole system is in desperate need of a rework and significant buffs to make different strategies feel rewarding.

Towers and tablets are similarly problematic. On paper, allowing three tablets and adding more special events sounds like a step forward, but in practice, they feel worse than before. The tablet themselves have been nerfed so severely that even when you optimize tower placement and tablet selection, the outcome is a net negative compared to last league. You invest more time, effort, and planning—and get less for it, again.

Final Thoughts
I hope this feedback is taken in the spirit it’s given: from someone who wants to love the game. The core ideas are there, and there’s clearly a talented team behind the project who is passionate. But right now, the experience is being hampered by systems that are unbalanced, unrewarding, and sometimes outright hostile to the player’s time and effort.

Please reconsider the current design philosophies around loot, death, build freedom, and endgame progression. This game could be something truly incredible—but it needs to respect the time and creativity of its players to get there.

Sincerely,
[A Concerned and Hopeful Player]

It is a difficult tightrope to walk for sure. Regarding loot, I definitely agree that the current loot progression seems deeply flawed at the moment. That said, I have appreciated having fewer things I need to look at. Having to evaluate too many pieces of gear (or requiring a loot filter to play) is what they are trying to get away from, I feel.

I wonder if the answer is to lean harder into the tiered loot system. Right now, you only really see tiered loot in high level maps (t15+). If we got better loot drops more frequently starting earlier, that may address most loot complaints.

That said, currency should drop much more frequently, period. Right now you cannot craft sustainably. We should eventually get to the point where we don't NEED to shlep back gear to vendor for regal shards, socket orbs, or blacksmith materials. Having to do that too frequently is not exciting, it is busywork.