My Thoughts on what I feel needs to change

Hi everyone, as someone who played a LOT of POE 1 and a decent amount of POE 2, this patch has really been fun for me. I thought I'd write down what I feel needs to change in POE 2 for me to enjoy it even more. A lot has probably been said many times but oh well...

1. PowerBalance:

- I am still unsure what their base line for character power is meant to be. This patch I played ED/Contagion (my favorite build in POE 1 but unfortunately too weak for too long there) and I thought the progression of power for it felt right. I did the endgame bosses very late so I was already pretty strong then though I feel the bosses could be harder and have more HP or phases you cannot avoid to not skip them with DPS completely. My fear though is, that ED/Contagion will be brought down instead of other skills/builds being brought up, which would kill the early and mid game fun I had this time compared to 0.2.

2. Beyond as a nonskippable mechanic:

- I personally hate beyond in POE 1 and I know many who do too. And now in POE 2 it is the core quest mechanic on the atlas. To me this is a terrible decision. The delayed spawning of fast and strong mobs is just very annoying for a lot of build types - especially those with combos that they are trying to promote. Goes against their design, in my opinion. Please Please Please change beyond/corrupted areas to something different for the atlas questmechanic.

3. Delirium as a semi-nonskippable mechanic:

- Delirium was fun in POE 1 but from my opinion also turned out as a terrible design decision there. Since it adds a lot of value to maps that are already way more valuebale in POE 2 (since you cannot easily get T16 with good mods and have good layouts on your atlas with several towers etc) you feel forced to use it. Now every map, that otherwise look so beautiful, is grey in greay with that same sound... GGG please, at least give the option somehow to turn off delirium graphics overlay and sound - don't "force" people into unmaking all that beautiful content you created by turning it into grey blob for some rarity or pack size...

4. Map layouts / Atlas design in general

- This has gotten better but especially for non-hit based combo builds like ED/Contagion, where mob kills are delayed, all those tube like maps are way way way more punishing compared to open layouts. And there are a LOT of those. If you stick with the explorable Atlas, which I am not opposed to in theory, we need more tools to manipulate it.

Grand Project is one step and the only step but very expensive for that reason. Some people might be opposed to micromanagement of that sort (remember sextant blocking in POE 1?) but maybe give more currency that can be used to manipulate the atlas, the map layouts etc. Would add another level of strategy and planing. Like an orb, for example, that lets you reroll the biome type for a map.

A favorite map layout system that you can somehow unlock through beating content and some orb that will turn a map into one of the maps from your favorite pool, increasing the chances to do so the more different maps you have in there (in order to advocate for more variety - which was the general intent of an explorable atlas, i guess?) etc

5. Too many layers of Punishment for dying

- This point ties into the above: you are punished in many different ways for dying. You loose XP, which is already a more severe punishment comapred to POE1, since it is harder to gain XP in POE 2. Then you loose all the content on your map, and if you are travelling, nothing feels worse to having to replay a map like that after you are already frustrated about loosing XP.

Those were the moments for me where I was most likely to end the play for the day. This is especially harsh considering that there are still many things in POE fashion that just knock you over without you realizing what exactly hit you (freezing abyss beam of frustration?) and the defensive powerlevel of many builds still being fairly low comparatively. Not even speaking of visual clarity and ultra fast, delayed spawning mobs etc...

Sure you can argue that you can opt for having more portals and less juice, but I personally just feel that that is not a satisfying solution for this.

6. Rebalance/Freshen up old league mechanics

- For me it feels like some of the first mechanics were more or less copy pasted from POE1 to POE2 to have some endgame content for the release of the Early Access version. They pretty much admitted as much by saying they did endgame at the last minute for 0.1. Now that is a shame in my opinion because especially Expedition is one of my favorite mechanics and looking at their interpretation of abyss it becomes obvious that Expedition could have been so much more compared to what it is in POE 1. And since they are probably focused on brining new content instead of revising "old" content, i fear it might stay in it's current (stale) iterration for a long time. Sure it now fuels the recombinator but that falls flat as well as other crafting mechanics very quickly outdated it.

Imagine what you can do with the remnant-system, maybe have orbs to manipulate those, have some puzzles and combos there ( eg. a remnant with a symbol that tells you if you get those other symbols on the remnants in a specific order all runic monsters killed will revive and have a higher chance to drop waystones or uniques - interactive and interesting stuff like that).

Really really hope they dont let those mechanics rot but have some polish and invention for them in store before the game leaves Early Access or I fear they will stay stale in this form for a loooooong time

Overall I had a lot of fun in 0.3 but there are a lot of frustrating things still in the game. Not having mentioned the usual suspects like Towers, temporal chains ground etc. What do you think should change?