"
I think they are trying to do the opposite.
But it seem that whatever they try to do people are never happy.
(...)
This is what happens when you try to appease the segment of players who's issues are rooted in FOMO, sensitivity to loss aversion or "efficiency guilt".
You can not ever satisfy things for them, because the problem is not with the game, it is with their mindset.
They will always have this issue - in one way or another - no matter what, as long as there isn't a deterministically clear-cut method to achieve 100% optimal lever-pulling juice-effectiveness and simulate a brain-off casino while doing it.
Most of them do not play poe2 to build strong characters and feel satisfaction from leveling up and defeating content, they play loot casino simulator and satisfaction is measured in div/hr. Any response to their "criticisms" that makes it a) harder to pull a lever or b) pulling a lever not as juicy or c) harder to
make pulling a lever juicy, is a step in the wrong direction for them.
That's why getting rid of towers and making the content harder didn't make these complainers happy, because it was never really about towers or the content for them. It was about the perceived "loss" from not juicing up to maximum lever pull efficacy (tower overlaps) while still keeping the lever pulls themselves easy enough for the game to functionally be a click-based brain-off casino simulator.
Now that towers are gone and you just have to squeeze juice directly into the waystone interface, they are mad because when they die, their ticket to the juiced-up casino is also revoked.
Since most of them copy builds and do not 100% understand the way their offense or defense works in the first place, there's no "this is what must be done to deal with this" function that occurs in their mind. It is a "I traded 200 divines for this gear for this build and I deserve to sit at the juice-bar in the click-casino".
The rationalization is incapable of going beyond that because the necessary prerequisite knowledge and understanding of the game mechanics required to do so does not exist. So instead of engaging any problem-solving mechanisms, they just feel bad.
SOME people will try to solve the problem. This is not most people. Unfortunately, the complainers also depend on the problem solvers, because they don't have either the skill, patience, or desire (or all of the above) to solve anything themselves. They are just complainers.
All they really understand is "brain feel the bad feel right now", and sometimes this is due to legitimate balance and game issues. Sometimes it's completely understandable that their online displays of irritation show similarities to the irritability and emotional dysregulation associated with withdrawal symptoms. Hard to pick out the noise from the meaningful feedback. I too, would not want to be the devs lol.
