Why did you stop playing the game?

I stopped playing because it became boring. There is nothing to do in endgame but run endless, boring maps, with stupid delirium mechanics over them and that godawful music.

I stopped playing because loot is still bad and it is impossible to gear character without engaging with trade system. The trade system is also bad

I stopped playing because the servers are atrocious and they keep gaslighting the playerbase that it is DDOS attacks.

I really enjoyed this game when I first started playing but the amount of people playing seems criminally low right now. I know it's a seasonal game blah blah whatever but it's low even for this.

GGG gotta update more and communicate more. This is an early access game.

Edit I thought of more reasons:

XP loss on death is an anti-fun mechanic aimed at no-lifers and streamers and their imaginary "leaderboards"
Crafting is a gamba simulator
Game does not respect players time at all.

End game is a time sinc worh no real reward.
The dopamine runnith dry when the uniques are uless the emotions are emo and the super bosses all have 1 shot capabilities.

End game doesnt respect your time.
But 9snalse unfinisjed sonthere isna modicum.of hope.

i dont like broken engame builds while earlygame is such a struggle. I would like it both to be struggle, but with a smoother transition to quality/powerup.

ie less powerfull affixes, less powerful uniques, more balanced gem progression.
I would like the notables to be more impactful on builds, while less of uniques (especially unique jewels like +3 gem level is absolutely broken op).

Stopped playing few weeks ago, sorry but there is no progress. Nothing interesting drops ever. The picking up items, identifying and sorting inventory is a chore. Whole inventory management is a chore. Exp past lvl 94 is a chore. Unique items suck. Whole game became a boring chore sadly, and missing much stuff that is in other arpg's and keeping old useless mechanics (IDENTIFYING ITEMS!!!) :(

1. Lack of balance patches mid-league, 5 months is just too long and I'm not interested in Poe1.

2. Endgame-viable abilities - too few.

3. No in-game Auction House. (scamming, price fixing, etc.)

I stopped because I grew bored with the current amount of content and choices I had build wise. Swords, Daggers, axes, are my favorite archetypes but they were strangely absent for the start of EA which is a big fumble.

A lot of the appeal of PoE1 for me is the sheer amount of content to explore, though I disagree with certain implementations that make things feel samey. But Heist for example was super fun for me, some leagues I'd just go enjoy playing heist alongside the current league content. Some I tried doing blight, and failed miserably. During wildwood I came up with the idea of using the warcry opens all nearby chests node to make a damageless build that did nothing but run T14 Vaults of Atziri, break all 4 corners and loot everything valuable using the money made to buy more vaults and do more runs.

Another league I focused heavily on Betrayal wanting to beat Catarina for the first time, which I did. The leagues I engaged the most with when they were running were probably ToTa until I started getting oneshot, Harvest because it was new and interesting and chat was very social, I think it was around christmas? and Sanctum as for the first time my pure damage builds were somewhat viable, though I opted to go commander balista anyway. I grinded the village building who's name escapes me, but honestly I didn't like it as I got further into it, the upgrades weren't really exciting and tradeships were misunderstood for a long while. The main part I liked was just playing the stock market with Faustus.

PoE2 visually and systems wise is far beyond PoE1, and I was excited for it forever, but content wise its super lacking right now and missing a lot of the stuff I like about PoE1.

In hindsight of how things turned out, and while I absolutely want new story and new content, and think moving forward is good, They would have alienated the fanbase less and won plenty of good boy points if they had worked to 'Remaster' PoE1's campaign and port all of the existing content over but with adjustments. Starting with a new game means being able to leave a lot of the bloat or mistakes that people are attached to behind, like having mechanics that overlap too closely like having Heist, Sanctum, Delve, etc drop every other mechanic's items without actually doing them instead of incentivizing.

People complaining the combat is too slow, or not as brain off as PoE1 are valid to a degree, but I've always hated that pinnacle bosses were effectively skipped on their mechanics by just phasing them with millions of dps. Some of the most fun I've had was dodging Exarch's meatballs despite a lot of you just portal'ing out. But PoE1 also sucked at movement, so this is a new opportunity to make more engaging bosses which they did. They should just limit mechanics to those bosses and minibosses to keep the ADHD players happy.

I feel like I am physically dragging the character, unless I play some absurd build cant just have fun I need to fucking plan the shit out just give me a sprint

Stopped seriously playing endgame a few weeks into the league. Reasoning is the same as 0.1 - the atlas. It needs to be scrapped and reworked from the ground up.

It's not just towers that are the problem, but also the complete lack of agency in what maps I want to juice and run.

Second problem is the lack of balance. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I think it is flawed. Right now is quite possibly the only time when rapid iteration could be attempted - it is only going to get more difficult with time.

The amount of new interactions added to the game will start growing exponentially - there is no way any of this can be somewhat balanced on the first go.

You need to ignore the whiners, rip the band aid off and tune weekly for at least a month after each patch from now until retail.