The kiss vs curse feels out of balance

I love the game, don't get me wrong, but with the new changes with this last patch, I'm not sure I can play anymore. I've played POE and POE 2 on and off for a while. This latest season, I decided to push as heavy as I could to cap my character. I hit 96 on my Amazon Huntress, and honestly, after 90, I thought it was a bit too slow of a crawl, but I wanted to push on so I could try some other classes. Despite the hiccups of bugs or the instant deaths that came with them, it was almost enough to get me to stop playing, but the tower nerf brought this to a quick stop.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if given the option, I would opt for a league that doesn't have the XP death penalty. Leveling 1-90 I thought you guys removed the feature and then realized that maybe I wasn't dying. It took a considerable amount of time to muster up proper gear with resists and stats. The auction house feels extremely out of wack as my gear is worth a couple of mirrors, so I'm not sure how anyone can really get up to a comfortable place to hit the level cap. I think now with just a 30% xp buff, 1 death just obliterates hours of play. It's just painful and you're already dealing with the RNG of lack of loot, lack of currency. There is definitely no way to get any upgrades without crafting all day and I just don't think my luck will get me there.

I think the game is beautiful, and the game types are fun and keep it challenging. It just gets negative real quick when replayability would be a key feature of the game on new classes. Starting a new character you feel like you're missing out by not playing it and it's a huge resource dump to start another character. It's just too many negatives that have me feeling pretty burned out and not wanting to invest anymore time in.

I know the changes probably came due to a nerf to currency drops, but the smaller maps, less xp, and wandering around the maps aimlessly feel awful. Cost of the waystones and the time investment just to build them up feels longer then what the maps take to clear. Then all the perfect play for 3-4 hours can get wiped out by a mobbed that stuns you and then another instant kill you wipes all of it away. I'm not sure that is the direction you want, but it doesn't feel compelling.

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Amoeba1976#6954 wrote:

and wandering around the maps aimlessly feel awful.

this is exactly how I feel about this patch as well. Suddenly I'm wandering around blind going down empty hallways wasting tons of my time for nothing, because of rare icon removal.