More focus on fundamental core gameplay - less on LEAGUE gameplay

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how I feel regarding PoE 2 after a relatively disappointing (for me) patch and I feel like I've identified an issue.

Too much effort is being spent on developing league content (which I know is eventually part of the core game play, but it isn't the *fundamental* core game play) versus getting the game into the fundamental state that it needs to be in.

The vaal template is quite complex for a league mechanic. Compare the leagues in PoE 2 to the types of leagues we got early on in PoE 1's life. Also note that PoE 1 was in closed beta testing for SEVENTEEN MONTHS prior to its 1.0 release and its first leagues.

The first PoE leagues were Onslaught (HC) and Anarchy (SC). What were these?

Onslaught added 20% ms/as/cs to all zones. Anarchy added rouge exiles. That was it. The second leagues were Domination and Nemesis. Again pretty simple - Domination being shrines and Nemesis being nemesis monsters/new uniques/base types. The game's fundamental mechanical core was still being perfected at this time, and as such leagues were just small interesting things added to make it feel "Newer and fresh".

Obviously a lot is different from PoE 1's initial life to PoE 2s. PoE 2 borrows a lot from PoE 1, and the studio is larger, so its okay for leagues to be a little more complex - but ultimately it should just be a *little* more complex, not overbearing and unnecessary like these temples are.

I think it would be a good idea to go back to the basics, putting less focus on the league mechanics and instead focusing on improving the core fundamental game play such as improving skill balance and improving the end game loop. The campaign is *mostly* great, it just needs some tweaking in A2/A3, but its already at its core a great experience. I want to see the patch notes be pages of changes to skills, not just a few cherry picked skills that get obliterated pre-launch.

This is just a bit of my own thoughts and ramblings, but I hope it makes sense. PoE 1 took a very long time to perfect its fundamental game play before leagues even began to appear. If PoE 2 had taken the same route, right now in patch 0.4.0 we'd still have *no* leagues and far more focus on improving the core game. Now I'm not saying we shouldn't have leagues, its just that there is a bit too much focus and resources being used on designing them at this point in time.