Farewell to Season 0.4! GGG, You’re Driving Players Away Yourself

As a long-time player who’s followed the Path of Exile series for years, Season 0.4 was supposed to be the long-awaited feast we’d all been looking forward to. Instead, it turned out to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back. GGG’s performance this time is nothing short of "the pinnacle of reverse optimization"—from balance adjustments to gameplay loops and reward mechanics, every aspect is filled with flaws. All I can say is: Farewell to Season 0.4, and good riddance!
I. Mindless Nerfs to Strong Builds & Forced Boss Fight Drags: No Fun Left
GGG seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of "balance"—it’s not about narrowing the gap between strong and weak, but mindlessly nerfing all powerful builds into uselessness. Viable leveling builds from the last patch, such as Lightning Arrow and Deadeye, have been directly gutted to the point of being unplayable. Meanwhile, inherently weak builds receive no buffs at all; instead, they’ve become even harder to survive in the overall adjusted environment, completely destroying build diversity.
What’s even more absurd is the boss mechanic change: the developers added a "temporary damage reduction" buff to all endgame bosses, directly putting an end to one-shot strategies. They claim this is to "enhance combat experience," but in reality, it’s just a cheap way to force longer boss fights. Previously, the whole point of optimizing a build was to tackle bosses efficiently; now, no matter how high your damage is, you’re forced to grind through bosses slowly. This kind of "slowing down for the sake of slowing down" design only makes repeated boss runs tedious and torturous.
II. Inherently Useless Skills & Unnecessary Totem Mechanics: Frustrating Gameplay
GGG’s perfunctory approach to skill design is laid bare this season—countless skills aren’t weak because of Season 0.4 changes; they’ve always had abysmally low base damage, making them utterly worthless. Among attack skills, many melee abilities have lower damage than basic attacks; spell skills either drain mana excessively or deal tickling damage. Even half of the support gems are just "filler," so choosing skills feels like "picking the least bad option" rather than exploring creative builds.
The most incomprehensible change is the forced restriction on totem skills: totems, which should be deployable on demand, are now shackled by an "energy orb interaction" mechanic. You must first generate energy orbs through attacks or spells before summoning totems, and different totems require different numbers of orbs. This change completely disrupts combat flow—it wastes time generating orbs when clearing trash mobs, and running out of orbs mid-boss fight directly cuts your damage. New players get discouraged just trying to learn the mechanic, while veterans are worn down by the hassle. It’s nothing more than adding unnecessary complexity for complexity’s sake.
III. Torturous Campaign & Empty Endgame: Disappointing on Both Fronts
The difficulty curve is ridiculously disjointed: the campaign is flooded with mobs, filled with meaningless detours and dead ends, and yellow mobs can one-shot you effortlessly—making leveling a pure torment. But once you finally grind through the campaign and reach the endgame, you’re met with the polar opposite. The promised endgame system overhaul has been delayed to Season 0.5, leaving only the half-baked Vaal Temple mechanic in the Atlas. Map mechanics are oversimplified and uninteresting, bosses pose no challenge, and you’ll get bored after just a few runs.
The so-called core "Rare Monolith" gameplay even requires defeating the Flame Apex before unlocking 4-mod versions, which directly gates new players’ progress. It’s essentially forcing players to find carries, further ruining the experience. Being tortured early on and bored later—this design is a surefire way to drive players away, and it’s no surprise the international server’s player count is plummeting.
IV. Solo Players Abandoned & Currency Imbalance: A Broken Economy
GGG has completely ignored solo players this season: solo mapping yields are abysmally low—one full day of grinding gives less than a fraction of what a party earns in a single run. Parties, on the other hand, get massive bonuses to mob density and item rarity; when paired with aura supports stacking rarity, their profits double. This creates a vicious cycle: "parties get richer the more they farm, while solo players get poorer."
This huge profit gap has completely shattered currency exchange rates—Exalted Orbs have plummeted in value, and the mid-to-low tier gear market has collapsed. Solo players struggle to piece together a viable endgame set, while party farming groups easily monopolize high-tier currency and equipment. GGG claims to be balancing player gaps, but in reality, they’re creating even greater injustice, pushing solo players to the brink of quitting.
From POE1 to POE2, we’ve always hoped for an improving gaming experience—not repeated perfunctory updates, neglect of player feedback, or being forced into a "one-size-fits-all" playstyle. The root cause of Season 0.4’s failures is clear: GGG is too busy imposing its own vision instead of listening to the community. Please, don’t follow Blizzard Diablo 4’s disastrous path of dictating how players "should" play the game. What players love and enjoy is what’s truly right—not what you (GGG) think we ought to accept.
Splitting your focus between POE1 and POE2 has already resulted in two half-baked products; Season 0.4 reeks of rushed development, shoddy map design, messy balance tweaks, and unpolished content that falls far short of our expectations. Given all this, I’m saying goodbye to Season 0.4. I beg GGG to wake up: stop exploiting long-time players’ loyalty, stop forcing your rigid vision onto us, and start listening to what the community actually wants. Either fully commit to polishing POE2 into a game that honors player preferences, or overhaul Season 0.4 with genuine feedback in mind. Otherwise, more and more players will leave for good, and this years-long passion we’ve invested in the franchise will eventually be worn away by repeated disappointment.

see ya later.