Jonathan's recent interview makes me wonder if GGG might be at odds with itself.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

The main reason is money. Retention is just a metric on the way to making money.

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

endgame content in PoE 2 will be FAR less gated, more accessible, and while challenging, hopefully not punitively so to the point where you need 100 divines in a build just to begin to try the top tier content.

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

That's the current design of PoE1, where no-lifers reign at the top.

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

the players walking away are doing so because they had their fun, had a LOT of fun, but are now bored and want to do something else - NOT because they are trying to climb into harder content and continually getting railroaded, only to find out the gear they need to do the next content costs an astronomical sum and they are effectively priced out of content, so they too "get sick of it and leave" but this time out of utter frustration, with no intent to come back.